Temple Torat Yisrael

Have you ever heard someone say: "Those people still think Jews have horns!!"

It's an image that has become the iconic expression of ignorant anti-semitism.  We consider that a person who "still thinks Jews have horns" is a person who lives in such an isolated, ignorant world that they have never met a Jewish person.

It's an anti-semitic image that has been around for a very long time.  But where did it come from?

Amazingly enough, this negative image that has plagued Jews for centuries is rooted in bad translation!  

In this week's Torah portion, the Israelites are in the wilderness waiting for Moses to come down from Mount Sinai.  God and Moses have been in "executive session" for forty days and nights, and the people are getting nervous.  When Moses returns, the Torah reports:"And the children of Israel saw that "karan" the face skin of the Moses' face."
וְרָאוּ בְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, אֶת-פְּנֵי מֹשֶׁה, כִּי קָרַן, עוֹר פְּנֵי מֹשֶׁה

The key is the word קרן / karan.  The correct translation is the past tense verb, "shone" . . . but at some point along the way, someone mis-translated the word as the noun "keren" meaning "horn."  Hence, Moses . . . and by association, Jews . . . have horns.

But Moses' face was infused with light from his proximity with God during the revelation of the Torah.  This imagery is one of our most elevating legacies from Moses . . . we, too, can be infused with light in the presence of God and in our engagement with Torah.

So, we may not have horns . . . but we do have light!

This week's parashah/Torah portion contains one of my most favorite passages.  Moshe and Aaron are back in front of Pharaoh for yet another round of pre-plague negotiations.  Pharaoh asks who among the Israelites would go out into the wilderness to worship the God of the Israelites if Pharaoh were to give his permission.  Moshe replies:
"We will all go, young and old: we will go with our sons and our daughters..." (Sh'mot/Exodus 10:9).  

Pharaoh's reply is infused with skepticism:  "He said to them, "Adonay would be with you like that, when I would let you and your infants go! . . . It is not like that.  Go--the men!-- and serve Adonay, because that is what you're asking." (10: 10-11)

There is a good deal of formal counting of "noses" in the Torah:  before getting ready to leave Egypt, at significant junctures in the 40 years of wandering, on the eve of entering the Land . . . Israel gets counted.  In those counts, we've seen that it is the men who get counted:  the heads of the tribes get counted, the heads of the households get counted, the males fit for military service get counted.  So we might get the impression that women don't count in our defining text as the foundations of Judaism are laid down.

This passage shows us otherwise.  Yes, males get counted when there needs to be a sense of how many political or socio-economic units make up the עם/ahm/nation of Israel, how strong a military force is available to defend our people.  But when Moshe and Aaron are talking about who goes and who stays, the definition of עם is inclusive:  men and women,  young and old, sons and daughters, the able-bodied and the frail, the economically significant and the dependent.  Moshe makes it clear to Pharaoh that when Israel leaves Egypt it will be all of Israel, every single Israelite soul counts.

So it is in the best of Jewish communities today:  everyone counts.  Everyone is valued for the talents and the experience and the intelligence and the creativity and the humor and the dedication and the resources we each bring to the community . . . each individual's configuration of these elements is valued as essential to the well-being of the community as a whole.  No one has it all:  some of us are great organizers.  Some of us brainstorm inspiring ideas.  Some of us reach deep into our pockets.  Some of us are there to support mourners.  Some of us lighten the mood at meetings.  Some of us bask in the limelight.  Some of us thrive behind the scenes.  

One of my most beloved "us" moments here at Torat Yisrael is our Torah at the Table Shabbat morning study sessions (the second and fourth Saturdays of the month at 9:15 am).  Around the table, covered with munchies and coffee mugs and chumashim/bibles, we read and discuss Torah.  Any given Torah at the Table can see Cohen School kids and their parents, empty-nesters and grandparents, all studying Torah together, all listening to and pondering each others questions and suggestions.  That's us.  A community of young and old, sons and daughters brought together by Torah.  

Moses described it.  We live it.

4:  Genesis/Breishit 11:5-8 -- "And Adonay went down to see the city and the tower that the children of humankind had built.  And Adonay said, "Here, they're one people, and they all have one language, and this is what they've begun to do.  And now there will be no challenge to anything they initiate together.  Come, let's go down and babble their language so they won't understand each other's language.  And Adonay scattered them from there over the face of the earth. . . "  God blesses our diversity, our different approaches to life and expects us to exercise our intellectual and spiritual and creative gifts.  God does not intend for us to be homogenous and of one opinion or one outlook.  (Which is a good thing considering the "two Jews three opinions" principle!)

3:  Genesis/Breishit 15: 9-10, 12-14, 17-18 -- And God said to Avram, "Take a three-year-old heifer and a three-year-old she-goat and a three-year-old ram and a dove and a pigeon for Me.  And he took all of these for God and split
 them in the middle and set each half opposite its other half . . . And the sun was about to set, and a slumber came over Avram . . . and God said to Avram, "You shall know that your seed will be alien in a land that is not theirs, and they will serve them, and they will degrade them four hundred  years.  But I'll judge the nation they will serve, and after that they'll go out with much property. . . . and the sun was setting, and there was darkness, and here was an oven of smoke, and a flame of fire that went between the pieces.  In that day, God made a covenant with Avram, saying, "I've given this land to your seed . . . . "  This takes a little "unpacking."  Scholars of ancient near eastern history tell us that when neighboring local landowners made a treaty, they would take an animal, cut it in half, spread the two halves apart, and then each landowner would walk between the parts of the severed animal.  This was ancient near eastern choreography expressing: "May my fate be like that of this severed animal if I do not keep up my part of our treaty."  With that insight, the flame of fire passing between the pieces becomes a breathtaking divine declaration and commitment to Avram:  May My fate, God is saying, be like that of these animals, if I do not keep My part of this covenant with you and your descendants, Avram."  God is with us for the duration.  

2:  Exodus/Sh'mot 4:25 -- And Zipporah took a flint and cut her son's foreskin.... This is part of one of the most abstruse and puzzling passages in the Torah, but the one clear element of the story is that Zipporah, Moses' wife, took the transmission of the covenant into her own hands by ritually circumcising their infant son.  Women's spiritual insight and religious initiatives are just as much a part of our tradition as are the spiritual insights and religious initiatives of the men of our communities.

1:  Exodus/Sh'mot 24:7 -- And Moses took the scroll of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said, "We will do everything that Adonay has spoken, and we will obey/listen."    This is the moment we made the transition from a collection of individuals and extended families to a people, to a community.  In an unprecedented (and yet-to-be-reproduced) moment of consensus, our entire people committed to the covenant offered to us by God at Sinai.  נעשה / na'aseh:  we will do it.  נשמע / nishma: we will hear/internalize the terms of the brit/covenant.  And here we are, three thousand years later, celebrating the eternity of our covenant with God.  Wow.

Ok.  I admit, there are way more than 5 reasons I love Torah . . . maybe I'll share another 5 with you next year in my pre-Simhat Torah blog . . . but there is so much to celebrate in our Torah, and I can't wait to celebrate it with you.  The wisdom, the perspective, the compassion, the eternal values, the roots of community, our very identity . . . it's all in our Torah.

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.