Temple Torat Yisrael

It is hardly an astonishing assertion to state that this week's פָרָשָה / parashah / Torah Reading marks a turning point in the relationship between God and b'nai yisrael / the progeny of Israel.  It is in Yitro that Moshe will climb the heights of Sinai and return with luchot hab'rit / the tablets of the law.  The brit / the covenant between God and Israel is forged at this moment.

This moment of the revelation of the Torah is not the first time that Moshe has experienced unique, intense communications from and, indeed, conversations with God.  From the opening chapters of the book of Sh'mot / Exodus, with the iconic moment of the burning bush, God and Moshe are in almost constant communication.

This moment of revelation of the Torah is, however, the very first time that Israel experiences revelation as a community.  The passages of this week's parasha relate: "And Moses said to the people, 'Don't be afraid, because God is coming for the purpose of testing you and for the purpose that His awe will be on your faces so that you won't sin.'  And the people stood at a distance, and Moses went over to the nimbus where God was.  And Adonay said to Moses, 'You shall say this to the children of Israel:  You have seen that I have spoken with you from the skies.  You shall not make gods of silver with me, and you shall not make gods of gold for yourselves...In every place where I'll have My name commemorated, I'll come to you and bless you.'" (Sh'mot/Exodus 20: 17-20)

As our tradition developed from sacrifice-centric Israelite biblical religion to the halachah / Jewish law- based rabbinic Judaism we practice today, the centrality of community has been a consistent and treasured dynamic of our people.  There are so many elements of Judaism that guide us into community:  We need 10 adult Jews to conduct a service.  We need 10 adult Jews to read from the Torah scrolls.  We need a cemetery, which only a community can maintain.  We need kosher food, which requires a critical mass of Jews to sustain.  We welcome a new child into the world as a minyan, representing the entire Jewish people embracing this new child as one of "ours."  When one of our community passes away, we surround the mourners and help them bury their dead, we sit with them for a week (during shiva) and make sure they have company, meals and community support to say kaddish.

"In every place where I'll have My name commemorated, I'll come to you and bless you."  What does "commemorating God's name mean?"  I'd say it means standing together as a minyan, as a community, an uttering words that we cannot utter as individuals.  It is through Jewish community that we thrive.  It is almost impossible to sustain Jewish life in isolation:  we need education, we need the spiritual and emotional support of those who share that brit/covenant with us.

"In every place where I'll have My name commemorated, I'll come to you and bless you."  I've often said that our Jewish community is a blessing.  This revelation of God's confirms just that:  it is through Jewish community that we find blessing:  the blessing of God's presence, the blessing of each other's presence.

In a parasha/Torah reading of extraordinary events, there lies one verse which I find a true source of wonder:  Jacob is fleeing his home land of Canaan on the way to his mother's homeland and safe haven from his (ostensibly) enraged twin, Esau.

There was no Amtrak, not even a stagecoach, to facilitate this journey:  Jacob made his journey on foot and was required to make camp at night in the middle of nowhere on his way.  It is in this vulnerable night that Jacob dreams:  a ladder stretches from earth to heaven and angels are ascending and descending this ladder.    And then we read:

And Jacob awoke ... and said:  Surely, God is present in this place, and as for me, I did not know it!. (28:10,16)

That's the amazing verse to me:  Jacob did not know that God was in that particular place.

Isn't the first lesson in Torat Tots (our pre-school program) that God is everywhere?  For all that we cannot see God . . .  despite the cartoons and the Renaissance paintings, God has no corporality, no arms or eyes or beard . . . God is omnipresent, in every place.  Jacob, who may or may not serve as a paragon of virtue or faith (that's another d'var Torah!), apparently left home without the assumption that the God of his grandfather, Abraham, would be with him wherever he went.  It took a divinely inspired dream to establish that truth for our ancestor.

We, who were raised with that basic premise of "God is everywhere," have our own difficulty with grappling with that reality.    My rabbi and teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman, Professor of Theology at The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, tells a story about one of his early encounters with his own teacher Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

The two of them had attended Shabbat services on a spring Shabbat at The Jewish Theological Seminary and were walking home together through Riverside Park.  Suddenly, Rabbi Heschel stopped, pointed and said to the pre-rabbinic Neil Gillman:  "There is God in that tree!"

Others might have taken that same walk and commented: "Oh how nice, the trees are budding again."  or "Isn't that a pretty shade of light green?"  But Rabbi Heschel had a very well-developed "awe radar system" . . . he had the capacity to sense and appreciate God's presence in the most prosaic as well as in the most elevated moments.

Our ancestor, Jacob, was able to appreciate the significance of that message God sent him in the dream "you are travelling far from home and I am with you wherever you go."  Rabbi Heschel taught Neil Gillman that God is there for us if we would only open our eyes to God's presence.

All our lives can be richer, more fulfilling, less anxious--all we need do is fine-tune our "awe radar" and let God in to our prosaic and our elevated moments.

Parashat B'har                  Torah Reading:  Leviticus 25:1-26:2 As we approach the end of the book of Vayikra/Leviticus, we read a thought-provoking verse:
"I am Adonay Your God.  It is I who brought you out of the Land of Egypt to give you the Land of Canaan to be your God." (25:38)

We are not often given a glimpse into God's intent.  We are invited to ponder the motivation behind God's act of creation in the first place; we can only guess at the reason God reached out to Avram to seal the first covenant/brit; and the questions only multiply as we witness the stories of the Genesis/B'reishit families and ultimately the saga of Israelite slavery in Egypt.

There are other verses that offer similar insights into God's intent.  Perhaps the most familiar is the verse we read twice a day in the liturgical unit of biblical excerpts of the Sh'ma and the following paragraphs:  "I am Adonay your God.  It is I who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God.  I am Adonay your God."

But it is in this Leviticus verse that God includes the gift of the Land of Canaan to the Israelites in this statement of motivation.  These verses indicate that God redeemed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery in order to "be" the God of the Israelites and their descendents (us!). 

What does this mean?   For centuries, since God first tapped Avram on the shoulder and instructed him to leave home, God has been "the God of the Israelites.?  Right?

Well, yes and no.  Avram, who would be transformed into Avraham . . . the father of a multitude . . . would ultimately serve as the patriarch for Jews, Christians and Muslims.  So the God to whom Avraham was devoted was the God of several faiths.

During the centuries of Israelite slavery (that is the servitude of the descents of Israel/Jacob) it seems as though God was not "shochein" not dwelling among the people.  It is through God's messenger, Moses, that God will, in effect, reintroduce the relationship with the Israelites.

As Israel leaves Egypt they are lead by the God who had seemingly abandoned them for generations, but then crossed all borders and broke all conventions to redeem them from slavery.

And the first major event of their journey back to their geographic home in Canaan is the only collective revelation of the Torah at Sinai.  It is there that the unique relationship between God and Israel is forged.  It is at Sinai that Adonay becomes the God of Israel irrevocably.  "It is I who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God."

And in Leviticus, in the verse we read in this week's parashah, we learn that God also wanted to bring together the people of Adonay and the land of Adonay:  the land of Israel and the people of Israel.  It is with this statement that we learn how central this love triangle of God, people and land is to the core identity of our people.

In the past week, we celebrated Yom Ha'atzma'ut, Israel Independence Day, and we will soon be celebrating Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day (celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem after the 6 Day War).  This is a propitious time for each of us to address the issue of Land and People and God for ourselves.   Some of us, of course, visit Israel.  Some of us make "aliyah" and choose to settle in Israel.  Some of us don't feel drawn to make that "pilgrimage" visit.  Some of us are knowledgeable about Israel and some of us don't know much more than what we absorb through our usual news sources.

This week's Torah reading challenges us to try to complete the sentence:  "As a Jew, Israel means ______________________________ to me."

I'd love to hear what you come up with!

Parashat Vayakhel                            Torah Reading:  Exodus 35:1-38:20

"Everyone whose heart so moves him shall bring gifts for the Lord--gold, or silver, wool or linen, wood or oil, spices or stones, anything to make the Sanctuary more glorious for God," said Moses.

In this week's Torah reading, Bezalel and his workers actually construct the portable tabernacle and the accessories that God has described in previous parshiot/Torah Readings.

When describing the project to His new project manager, God says "build me a tabernacle that I might dwell among the people."  In other words, God sought to find a mechanism for bringing God and the people closer together.

And just as we welcome new neighbors and bring gifts when they move into the new neighborhood, the Israelites bring gifts to glorify God's new home.

I love this imagery of welcoming God to the neighborhood with gifts.  And even though the gifts that individual Israelites are moved to bring are grand gifts, indeed, there is something intimate and endearing about this gift-giving.  The Israelites respond to God's wish to live among them with open arms and generous spirits.

Today, each of our homes are described by the tradition as a "mikdash m'at" . . . as a sanctuary writ small.  We have the ability to welcome God to live among us in our own homes.  How wonderful if we could welcome God's presence into our homes with the same open arms and generosity of spirit that our Israelite ancestors displayed when God moved into their neighborhood!

Parashat B'shallach                                                                                      Torah Reading:  Exodus 13:17-17:16
Shabbat Shirah/Sabbath of Song

This week's parashah/Torah reading gives us the opportunity to relive one of our people's iconic moments . . . "y'tziyat mitzrayim," the Exodus from Egypt.  On a daily basis, our liturgy brings us back to this moment which is the touchstone of God's love for the people of Israel.  This is the moment that binds us to God for all time, for the God of Canaan "crossed international borders" in an unprecedented rescue mission to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.

In the blessing we recite over wine every Friday evening, "y'tziyat mitzrayim," the Exodus, is evoked as the definitive example of God's love for Israel along with the gift of Shabbat.

This Shabbat should be a real love-fest.  We should be gathered in the synagogue tonight and tomorrow morning, singing our hearts out to the God whose love brought us into existence as a people.

But it's not that easy, is it. 

Some of us have a hard time feeling loved by God because of the challenges we are facing on a daily basis:  illness, loss, fear. . . .
Some of us have a hard time loving God because we don't have a sense of Who we are meant to love.  The imagery describing God in the prayer book and the Torah just don't connect with what goes on in our hearts and minds.
Some of us have a hard time feeling that we are part of a people.  Our life experiences, our education, our background have not brought us to a place where we can walk into a synagogue and feel that we are among our own.

So, we have two choices. 
We can relax into our disengagement.  We can say to ourselves "that kind of passion and enthusiasm for God, for Judaism and for Jews is for others, but it's not for me or my family."

Or we can step into engagement.  We can each say "I am not willing to hand Judaism over to others and have others define Judaism for me.  This is my tradition, my God, my people. I'm going to figure out how to own it."

One of the most vibrant verses in this week's Torah reading is: 
זֶה אֵלִי וְאַנְוֵהוּ אֱלֹהֵי אָבִי וַאֲרֹמְמֶנְהוּ  "ze eili vanveihu, elohei avi v'arommenhu."
"This is my God and I will praise Him, the God of my father and I will raise Him up."

It is the layers of the connection that make this so compelling.  The Israelite, redeemed from slavery, spared the drowning waters of the Sea of Reeds, not only feels that this is the personal, redeeming God, but is also the God of collective, inherited experience.

When we come together during this Shabbat Shirah . . . Sabbath of Song (referencing this Song at the Sea sung by the relieved, redeemed Israelites) we have the opportunity to reject disengagement and reach for that which is ours: our personal God who is also the God of our rightful heritage as Jews.