Temple Torat Yisrael

This week, we read the opening chapters of the book of Numbers, Bamidbar.  This is a clear case in which meaning is lost in translation:  The book is entitled "Numbers" in English based on the census that is related in the opening chapter of the book, but in Hebrew the title "Bamidbar" means "wilderness" . . . as the book relates the saga of the Israelite journey through the wilderness from Sinai to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.

This is also a week in which the whole world is watching the spiritual wanderings of the residents of modern Israel.

The Christian Science Monitor, The Arab News as well as The Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and every other Jewish news source has covered the turn of events at the Western Wall this week.

One month ago, at the beginning of the new Hebrew month of Iyyar, police arrested (for the umpteenth time) women who were participating in a participatory women's service celebrating the new month . . . for disrupting the peace.  Following these arrests, a series of Israeli justices have ruled that it is not the praying women who have disturbed the peace of this significant historic sight (the Western Wall is the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount, the height on which the long-destroyed First and Second Temples stood). 

Today, the beginning of the Hebrew month of Sivan, saw a new development in the wake of the court decisions.  This month the women returned to pray . . . but instead of arresting the women, as ultra-Orthodox Jews threw chairs, water and worse at them, the police restrained the outraged onlookers.

Since 1948, with Jewish sovereignty over Israel established, a significant dynamic of wandering came to an historic resolution.  We are, in the words of Israel's national anthem: am chofshi b'artzeinu . . . a free people in our land.

But in other profound ways, we have not yet arrived.

The tendency to self-righteousness and even contempt between Jew and Jew is not limited to the conflicts within Israel around the Western Wall.  Although generally less violent, there are those within the Jewish community who label other Jews as violaters of Torah, abductors of innocents, sabotagers of our tradition. 

In my view, we will remain at the very beginning of our spiritual growth as a people as long as we foster theological one-upsmanship and self-righteousness.  I await the spiritual milestone at which all of us who identify with our Torah and our people and our God and our tradition will be able to address each other with theological humility and say: your path may not be mine, your interpretation of Torah may not be that which is practiced in my community, but we are all the children of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah, Jacob, Leah and Rachel and we share the same God, the same values and deserve the same respect.

This week, we read a double parashah, two Torah portions are linked together: Behar and Behukotai.  These two readings are comprised of the final chapters of the book of Vayikra/Leviticus.  Vayikra has been a bit of a hiatus from the Sh'mot/Exodus narrative flowing from leaving Egypt, the revelation at Sinai and the instructions for the construction of the Mishkan/Tabernacle . . . and leading to the book of Bamidar/Numbers in which we will journey along with the wilderness generations of our ancestors to the end of the Torah itself.

The final verse of the first of this week's parshiot/portions reads thus:
"You shall keep my Sabbaths and honor in awe My sanctuary, I am Adonay."

This coming Shabbat, our Torat Yisrael family will gather in our new sanctuary for the first time.  We will carry our Torah scrolls from our interim space in the accommodating TY Middle Road house (we've been a "close-knit" community this year, for sure!) with song and praise and will deposit our scrolls in the temporary ark lovingly constructed for us by instructor Bill Scott and the Amos House Carpentry Class.

This is most certainly a week to contemplate how to honor God's sanctuary in awe.

Through all the many meetings and conversations and consultations and impossible-to-count volunteer hours that have been devoted to the goal of bringing our Torat Yisrael congregation to this moment, we have always kept in mind the purpose of this building.  For the purpose of our beautiful new synagogue building is not just to exist for its own sake, but to provide foster the Jewish learning, worship, celebration and community growth of the members and friends of Temple Torat Yisrael.

The contemporary Jewish scholar and theological, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz writes:  "What does it mean to identify oneself as a Jew?  The most obvious first answer is that a person is a Jew by religion.  In fact, that is a hard argument to make, as odd as that may seem.  There is no basic set of meaningful principles on which all Jews would agree.  And there are huge variations in both practice and belief.

Are Jews members of a race?  This is clearly not the case.  Jews come in every color and exhibit every combination of ethnic features.

Do Jews belong to a nation?  Following the involuntary exile inflicted on us many centuries ago, the notion of Jews as a people living in one place, speaking one language, or even sharing one culture does not fit.

Even linguistically, we are splintered.  Hebrew is our official language, the language of the land of Israel and of our sacred texts, but many Jews have no knowledge of it at all.

What we are is a family.  We are the biological or, in the case of converts, the spiritual children of the House of Israel.

We are connected to one another, whether or not we agree with one another, whether or not we even like one another.

We are not a perfect family, but we are a real family."    (Pebbles of Wisdom)

I find Rabbi Steinsaltz's image of the Jewish people as a family very compelling . . . .  As an international family or a nuclear family or a communal family, like Torat Yisrael, we will always have differences of opinion, shared aspirations, a variety of talents to contribute and the desire to turn to family at times of challenge, grief and joy.

When we walked out of our 60 year old Torat Yisrael home on Park Avenue thirteen months ago, I spoke about how wrenching it is to leave the "family home" in which so many of us had celebrated, found spiritual inspiration, shared and forged close friendships, learned and grown as Jews.

Now the doors are opening to our new spiritual home and beginning this Shabbat we will again have a home in which to embed new "family" memories.

How do we honor God's sanctuary in awe?  By filling this space with our presence, by coming to learn and play and pray, by coming to thank God and support our friends and "kvell" over our growing children.  As much as the wilderness Tabernacle was treasured by our ancestors because God's presence among the people was so deeply a source of honor and promise, I'd suggest that our presence in Torat Yisrael's new sanctuary is our most effective means of honoring God in awe.  Our family's journey to East Greenwich is complete. . . . and that, to me, is a source of awe and pride and gratitude.

This week, the Jewish world marked the beginning of the new Hebrew month of Iyyar.  The beginning of each Hebrew month is observed as a semi-holiday called "Rosh Hodesh," the "head" of the month.  The synchronicity of the lunar month and the female biological monthly cycle has led to a long-standing special relationship between women and Rosh Hodesh. 

There are many ways in which Jewish women have celebrated Rosh Hodesh: refraining from cooking or sewing, gathering a group of women together for study or discussion . . . and for more than two decades, a group of women have gathered together every Rosh Hodesh to conduct a prayer service together at the Western Wall in Jerusalem . . . actually the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount.

What began, in the 1980s, as an informal group of women seeking to deepen their spiritual engagement in Rosh Hodesh by gathering at this unique, historic site has become, over the years, an official organization with a director and a president.  Women of the Wall have supporters . . . and detractors . . . all over the world.  As women's prayer groups go, Women of the Wall is pretty tame.  They are guided by liberal Orthodox halachah (Jewish law) meaning that there are passages of prayer they will not recite as a group of women in the absence of a minyan (prayer quorum) of Jewish men.  They are on the left edge of the liberal Orthodox Jewish world because it is quite accepted practice for these women to wear tallitot (prayer shawls) and they do read Torah together (although they have been forced to move their Torah reading away from the Western Wall for several years now).

The photograph above documents this month's new outrage:  Anat Hoffman, chair of Women of the Wall, was arrested with four other women, on the charge of "disturbing the peace" by attempting to pray, early in the morning, modestly, as has been their practice for decades while wearing tallitot and holding a Torah scroll.

This is actually not the first time this has happened . . . but this month's arrest led to an unprecedented judicial decision.  The website thejewishpress.com reported:

After examining the evidence, Judge Sharon Larry Bavly stated that there was no cause for arresting the women, WOW Director of Public Relations Shira Pruce reported.

In a groundbreaking decision, the judge declared that Women of the Wall are not disturbing the public order with their prayers. She said that the disturbance is created by those publicly opposing the women’s prayer, and Women of the Wall should not be blamed for the behavior of others. The women were released immediately, with no conditions.


This decision is long overdue . . . the travesty of arresting and harassing and allowing others to abuse women who are simply trying to pray has been an ongoing source of shame.  Personally, I've never participated in a Women of the Wall service, even when I've been in Jerusalem on Rosh Hodesh . . . largely because I find perseverating about a retaining wall politicizes and distracts from prayer.  On the other hand, I cannot accept the legitimacy of any authority that seeks to prosecute women who seek to pray . . . in a public space . . . respectfully . . . knowledgeably . . . and I am deeply relieved that Justice Bavly has put the weight of her office behind the obvious: "...Women of the Wall should not be blamed for the behavior of others."

There is a bit of irony that this arrest took place during the week that we read the Torah portion Tazria-Metzora.  The parashah (Torah portion) opens with a controversial passage defining the protocol a woman was to follow to restore her ritual purity after childbirth.  One aspect of this passage which is often overlooked as people deal with the apparent inequities of the system is that it is absolutely clear that the assumption was that a woman was responsible for her own state of ritual purity or impurity, that no one was authorized to act on her behalf to rectify a state of ritual impurity, but rather that she was expected, with the means at her disposal, to bring her own olah offering on her own behalf, placing her offering directly into the hands of the kohein/priest herself.  

How odd and how sad that 2000 years after the women of Jerusalem were freely entering the precincts of this outer courtyard bounded by the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount, purchasing animals for their own sacrifices, that their 21st century counterparts should be frog-marched off of that same piece of real estate for exercising that very seem spiritual responsibility established in the Torah.

Justice Bavly has inched us back towards the right direction.  Natan Sharansky is addressing this issue through other avenues at the Prime Minister's request.  We are not finished discussing the issue of women praying at the Western Wall . . . but I sure hope we're done with women getting arrested at the Western Wall.

This week, our Torah portion contains the opening chapters of the book of Vayikra / Leviticus.  In Leviticus, we will generally be taking a hiatus from the engaging narratives of Genesis / Breishit and Exodus / Sh'mot . . . and we will take up the narrative again in a few months when we embark on the book of Numbers / Bamidbar.

In the meantime, we will immerse ourselves in a book of the Torah that is refered to in our traditional sources as "Torat Kohanim" . . . basically an instruction manual for Aaron and his descendants, the Israelite priests / kohanim. What kind of sacrifices need to be brought to the Mishkan / the Tabernacle?  Who shall bring those sacrifices? When?

The Kohanim function with the absolute authority of God behind them and their role in the community is established by birth: Aaron, his sons, their sons for all generations constitute the priests, the kohanim of Israel.

Rabbis, as you see from my photograph above and the photographs of my three immediate predecessors at Torat Yisrael, come in all shapes and genders.  We have no garments which embody the sanctity of the tasks we perform.  We wear kippot and tallitot as do the members of our congregations because our role is not established by birth, we are not the descendents of anyone chosen by God.

In fact, the roots of the rabbinate can be found in something of a populist revolution beginning in the last century or so before the Common Era.  Through the establishment of the Temple in Jerusalem, the priestly caste had evolved into a sort of Israelite aristocracy . . . a closed circle with an essential power base, the Temple and its sacrificial cult.  To be a priest, a kohein, your father had to be be a kohein.  That was the only way in.

In houses of study around the Land of Israel, scholars were gathering to study the Torah and ask existential questions about the nature of Jewish practice in an economy and a cultural setting that was fundamentally different than life in the wilderness during forty years of wandering.   These sages began to ask a question that we are still striving to answer today?  "What is our 'best practice' as Jews in this time and this place?"

Unlike the kohanim, the only thing you needed to become a rabbi, one of these sages, was a good head on your shoulders, the willingness to study Torah with an open mind and a profound commitment to the survival of the brit, the covenant between God and the Jewish people. 

These are the roots of the rabbinate which I share with Rabbi Parness, Rabbi Bloom and Rabbi Rosen . . . it has nothing to do with who our fathers were, it has nothing to do with being invested with esoteric divine powers like a priest . . . or a pope . . . it is about dedicating our lives to keep alive the unique relationship between God and the Jewish people.  And that, my friends, is a privilege.

This opening verses of this week's Torah reading / parashah present a core principle of Jewish tradition that, truthfully, has confused many people for a long time:

"And Moses assembled all of the congregation of the children of Israel and said to them, "These are the things that Adonay has commanded, to do them:  Six days work shall be done, and in the seventh day you shall have a holy thing, a Sabbath, a ceasing to Adonay.  Anyone who does work in it shall be put to death.  You shall not burn a fire in all of your homes on the Sabbath day."  (Exodus / Sh'mot 35: 1-3)

The passage then continues in a direction we would not expect.  Instead of continuing to define "work," instead of listing the activities that are "holy enough" for Shabbat, we move on to a mitzvah/commandment directed to our Israelite ancestors in the wilderness to collect certain rare and expensive items to donate to the construction of the Tabernacle: the walls, the accessories, the priestly garments, the food items to be sacrificed . . . 

The effect of this "turn without signalling" has been to spark the rabbinic imagination.  A 2nd century rabbinic text, the Mishnah, connects the two passages and concludes that the "work" that is prohibited in verse 2 is defined by the human activities required to construct and create all of the pieces of the Tabernacle described in the ensuing verses.  Thus, building, hammering, planting and sowing, creating fire, cooking, carrying items back and forth, weaving, cutting to measure . . . all of these become prohibited as "work" on Shabbat.

There is another derivation of "work" that is hinted at in verse 2: just as the seventh day was a day of "ceasing" to God--in Genesis/Breishit God rests on the seventh day after creating light and dark, dry land and oceans, plants, animals, stars and moon and humanity--so the seventh day should be a day of "ceasing" from creating for human beings as well.

What is it that we humans create?  Our human endeavors, over the ages, have largely been focussed on providing food, clothing and shelter for ourselves and our loved ones.  It is certainly the case that today, few of us are directly engaged in wielding a hammer, weeding a vegetable garden or cutting a sewing pattern . . . and when we are, it is more often a hobby or personal passion than a direct, compelling imperative to put clothing on our backs, food on our tables and a secure roof over our heads.

In today's complex economy, we provide food, clothing and shelter for our families by going to work and earning a paycheck and by shopping.

It may be physically challenging to carry a carton of books from the basement to the attic, but it isn't "work" in the Shabbat sense . . . that act of "shlepping" is not contributing to the creation of food, clothing or shelter.  It may provide a sense of peace and accomplishment to pull out our knitting on Shabbat afternoon . . . but knitting is a human activity that literally creates clothing and, as such, is an activity proscribed by this definition of Shabbat.

Why bother?
For the majority of us, who have not made the commitment to turn to Jewish law / halachah to guide our actions, why should we turn the week's most convenient errand day into a day that produces no progress in the "food, clothing, shelter" department?

The rabbis of 2000 years ago suggested that Shabbat can be "a taste of the world to come."  If we were to project ourselves into an existence where all that toil and worry about food, clothing and shelter were no longer necessary, what would our lives look like?  No wallets.  No watches.  No ATMs. . . . an existence infused with peace and health and security and time to bask in the presence of our loved ones.  

That is the potential of a "work-free" Saturday . . . a weekly opportunity to taste the world that might be.

Our congregation's move to East Greenwich engages us in the life of the greater East Greenwich community more fully than in previous years, when we were still rooted in Cranston.  The faith community here in East Greenwich is a mutually respectful and supportive coalition of houses of worship in town.  We saw this ourselves when the clergy of several East Greenwich churches wrote letters on our behalf to the East Greenwich Zoning Board and came to testify at a number of Zoning Board meetings as well.
     My clergy colleagues in these churches have told me that together their congregations sustain and maintain an Interfaith Food Cupboard housed at St. Luke's Episcopal Church on Peirce Street.  This is a model of community cooperation with which we are familiar through our participation in and support of the Edgewood Food Pantry housed at the Church of the Transfiguration on Broad Street in Cranston.
     East Greenwich enjoys a reputation as a beautiful town with affluent residents and a superb public school system.  This is a hard-earned and well-deserved reputation.  There is another side to East Greenwich from which many of us are sheltered:  there are hungry adults and children in town who the professionals call "food insecure."  That means they do not always know if there will be a next meal, let alone where it is coming from.
     Chris and Steve Bartlett, who run the EG Interfaith Food Cupboard at St Luke's have reported that in July alone 256 individuals received food from the Cupboard, and this includes 21 new families who had never turned to the EG facility for this support in the past.
     This coming Shabbat is referred to in our calendar as Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Consolation.  The consolation is God's response to us on the loss of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 AD at the hands of the Roman Empire.  The loss posed a fundamental theological challenge to Judaism, as it was through the korbanot, the sacrifices at the Temple that Israel drew closer to God and atoned for their transgressions.  In an early rabbinic gloss on the Mishnah (Avot d'Rabi Natan 4:5) Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai consoles a colleague who is mourning the loss of the Temple.  Rabbi Yohanan says:  Be not grieved, my son.  There is another equally meritorious way of gaining atonement even though the Temple is destroyed.  We can still gain atonement through deeds of lovingkindness. For it is written (Hosea 6:6): "Lovingkindess I desire, not sacrifice."
     
Our consolation, at this distance of two thousand years, should also be expressed through acts of lovingkindness.  I hope you will all take a moment during the summer weeks that remain to drop off non-perishable food at our TY house for all three of our food-support projects: the Edgewood Food Closet, the Chester Kosher Food Pantry, and our East Greenwich Interfaith Food Cupboard.  You can designate where you want the food to go, or you can leave it to Beverly Goncalves, our Social Action Chair, to divide up the food and pass it on to those who deliver it.


Here is some basic information about the EG project:
East Greenwich Interfaith Food Cupboard

 The Interfaith Food Cupboard, located in St Luke’s Parish house on Peirce Street, is open from 10:30 AM -12:00 noon each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The service is available to any East Greenwich resident, member of an East Greenwich congregation, referral from a clergy or someone in need of emergency food.   We are currently asking for donations of the following food products: canned ham, chicken or fish, cereal, oatmeal, canned fruit, soups, pasta sauce, juice and juice boxes, jam/jelly and crackers. Other products that we always need include staples like cooking oil, mayonnaise, salad dressing, mustard, sugar, flour, coffee, tea, etc.     If you would like to make a cash donation rather than food, your check can be sent to your clergy or directly to the EGIFC.  We have a very dedicated volunteer staff and on their behalf, we thank you for your support of the East Greenwich Interfaith Food Cupboard.      Chris and Steve Bartlett

After taking something of a narrative hiatus in the book of Vayikra/Leviticus (which serves as a handbook for kohanim as the rules and roles of the sacrificial system are put into place and issues of ritual purity and impurity are defined) we are picking up where we left off at the end of the book of Sh'mot/Exodus.  In other words, we are "bamidbar" . . . we are in the wilderness.  Specifically, still camped at the foot of Har Sinai.

Here we see Moshe as camp bus counselor (count the kids as they get on the bus at camp, count the kids when they got off the bus at the amusement park, count the kids when they get back on the bus back to camp . . . ): God turns to Moshe and instructs him to conduct a census, a head count.  "We're breaking camp, packing up, and continuing the journey through the wilderness, Moshe, so make sure you know how many people you've got before you leave."  

Then God delivers instructions further instructions for Aaron and his sons, the tribe of Levi:  "At the breaking of the camp, Aaron and his sons shall go in and take down the screening curtain and cover the Ark of the Covenant with it.  They shall lay a covering of dolphin skin over it and spread a cloth of pure blue on top; and they shall put its poles in place. . . .Then they shall take a blue cloth and cover the lampstand for lighting ...they shall put it and all its furnishings into a covering of dolphin skin, which they shall then place on a carrying frame . . . Next they shall spread a blue cloth over the altar of gold . . . "  (Bamidbar/Numbers, Chapter 4)

The act of packing up is also of significance . . . all the accessories that had been so lovingly crafted in order to initiate the sacrificial system connecting God and Israel are now to be packed up as well, and very specific instructions are given to the tribe of Levi concerning how that packing was to be done.

Just a few weeks ago, we at Torat Yisrael packed up the sacred accessories that had enhanced our worship in Cranston for 60 years:  our sacred scrolls, the white high holy day mantles, the eternal lights and the different sorts of prayer books and bibles we read, the Torah crowns and shields and pointers, the memorial plaques and dedication plaques, the ark curtains and doors and the building full of mezuzot as well . . . .  It was a jarring sight to watch these iconic items taken down, wrapped up, packed into trucks and transported to storage.  I had a strong sense that the kedushah, the sanctity, of each piece was being wrapped up along with the item itself.  These objects cannot be reduced to mere "things."  They are infused with the sanctity of their roles as they cover the scrolls, point to sacred words, adorn the Torah, reflect God's light in our places of prayer. 

Just as the tribe of Levy mindfully wrapped up those items preparing to leave Sinai, we have mindfully wrapped and stored our items in anticipation of the day when our new synagogue building will be dedicated.  Then our Torah scrolls, our Torah pointers and crowns and shields and mantles will be unwrapped and brought into their new home.  Then their kedushah will be released from its wrappings and will be free to infuse our new sacred space with the holiness of our Torah and our kehillah k'doshah, our sacred community.