Vayzeiteh - I said this in the Traditional service today

Vayzeiteh In 1988, while racing in the Monaco Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna had a unique experience. He said later: ‘I was driving by instinct. I was in a different dimension. I was way over the limit but still able to find even more. Then suddenly, something just kicked me, I woke up and realized I had been in a different atmosphere than you usually are. It frightened me because I realized I was well beyond my conscious understanding.

He reported he never had that experience again. While travelling at 140 mph, he experienced a moment of perfect stillness.

Today I want to take a closer look at the beginning of the Parasha today using those two modes. The parasha starts… ‘Jacob left Beer-sheba and set out for Haran…. Mode one right? Journey

Then… “He came upon a certain place/Makom and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place/Makom, he put it under his head and lay down in that place/Makom”

Mode 2, right? That is definitely mode 2. So much so that the word Makom is said three times in one sentence. I saw that in a commentary from Ismar Schorsch who lives and teaches in New York, and Professor Schorsh learned it from Abravanel, a Jewish statesman, and bible commentator who lived in Portugal 500 years ago. Ideas can travel, and ideas can land too.

Next line in the parasha…

‘He had a dream; a ladder was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and angels of God were going up and down on it.’ הִנֵּ֤ה סֻלָּם֙ Again travel…journey, mode 1. Now it’s the angels who are on the move.

Next line…

‘And the LORD was standing beside him and He said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac: Remember, I am with you: Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it!” Shaken, he said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the Home of God

So far, so mode 2. Jakob is there. And God is standing there with him. And Jakob understands this profoundly. He understands that he didn’t know it before, but he does now. He understands that God was there all the time. But then next line, the mode switches…Jakob says that this is the Home of God (mode two)

and that is the gate to heaven.” Mode 1 וְזֶ֖ה שַׁ֥עַר הַשָּׁמָֽיִם

I’ve spoken before about what the Talmud thinks about gates to heaven. The short answer is that since the destruction of the Temple, the gate to heaven is closed, except for the gates of wounded feeling.

Between those two modes of God here and God there, is a sense that God is Immanent, here in everything. And also, God is transcendent. Above us somewhere. This is reflected in many Jewish names for God. Transcendent is Shechina is floating above us, somewhere to get to. Ha Makom is right here where we already are. You don’t have to climb up a ladder to get there. Ha makom is comforting and close by. That’s why we use it to comfort mourners… when we say HaMakom yenachem et'chem b'toch shar avay'lay Tzion vee'Yerushalayim. May the Makom comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

HaMakom says God is everywhere and everything: physical and spiritual, matter and energy. Like Jakob the person might awake from a sleep and realise Surely the LORD is present in this place, and I did not know it!” A person might realise that there is nowhere to go to reach God because God is there, was there and will be there. And we forget that. In that moment of complete peace, or bliss or flow, when we have felt part of a bigger life force for a moment, it is then later remembered like a touchstone. That’s what I think what Jakob realises when he wakes up, and then he tries to get there again…

Of all the names for God my favourite name remains Eyn Od. It includes the traveling up a ladder and being in the place. The journey and the destination. It includes in the world and beyond the world. Eyn Od means there is nothing else. There is nothing else to say. Shabbat shalom

Zahavit said this aloud for me at Shul, for Rina

Rina and I started the daf yomi cycle 18 months ago and she was my chevruta.

As brilliant as she was, she never made me feel less than. She always taught and learned with love.

We made a good start, and studying the daf with her over lockdown was a joy.

When we got to may last year, she wrote to me to say she was feeling fluey and achey and couldn’t come over to study and it was BZ’s birthday. She felt awful about that. Crap mum moment she said.

She set herself very high standards with motherhood.

We kept learning sometimes sitting in her sunny garden, those brilliant Rina conversations that you feel privileged to be part of. She was always searching for transcendent beauty in all places.

She loved narrow boats videos, this American Life podcasts, the Beatles and all fine music, poetry and all fine words. She loved to watch turtle swimming videos with Grace on Instagram and sometimes she said she couldn’t do the daf that day because she was doing Maths revision with Eva.

We created Sugya Sistas together, and when she couldn’t learn with me any more,she genuinely loved the idea that it would go on with a chevruta for the day system.

She wrote to me when Hannah signed up...’by the way Hannah Cohen is my sister, I can’t wait for you to learn with her.’

Her loving kindness was incredible and what worried her when she was sick was that she couldn’t answer all the 100s of emails and messages of support she received.

Hopefully people will understand she said

She was happy to have found a beautiful dress for BZ and Yael’s wedding and she looked beautiful in it, but what she noticed was the kindness of the woman who opened the shop especially for her to try it on. Everyone loved her teaching and leyning, particularly my parents. Whenever they would hear her on Zoom Shabbat, they would send me fan letters to send to her.

There are many ways to say goodbye...

I wrote to her on Friday may 7 this year, to say I had found a gorgeous line in psalms 55, 14 and 15

It is translated as:
‘It is you
My equal
my companion
my friend
sweet was our fellowship
we walked together in god’s house.'
Rina said:
I saw that
So beautiful

Neilah 2021

Hello everyone. I’m glad you’re here in shul this evening as we are about to start Neilah. In fact, I’m really glad to see you because I need good people around me when I am doing hard things, and I know it’s going to get harder yet. But I am not afraid because you are here with me.

Rabbi Johnathan Sacks writes in the notes of the Koren Machzor that the question God asks us at Neilah is not are you perfect, but can you grow? I like that question. It speaks to me because in my day-job, I try so hard to be perfect and I fail so much at that. I want perfect experiences all the time, and I need to look around me and see that that isn’t possible for anyone, including me, including you. I need to look around and see that I am not the centre of the universe and that others are suffering, just like me. It’s not easy to go from me to we. It’s very difficult to go from focusing on the self to moments of transcendence.

But if I am here with you, I can see others prevailing, and I just might too.
The point of Yom Kippur is to make you surrender the story of who you are, and to allow you to find out who you really are. The suffering, the prostrations, the understanding that we are like dust, a broken shard, a fleeting shadow, a passing cloud, like a dream that slips away are a means to an end. And that end is to make you put aside your personal isness, and realise your shared innate magnificent beingness.

To make us surrender so that we might realise that we are part of an infinite and intact greatness that is forever. Tonight, there’s a possibility to feel ourselves as part of the whole., so that at the end of the Neilah service, we might hear the words we are saying. And that when we leave, we might remember them.

When we leave here, remembering those words, we can all hopefully experience moments of transcendent beauty. Later on, we can all incline our inner ear to the still, quiet voice of God within us, and we can all bring blessings into other people’s lives and our own. But right now, our job is to give in and surrender to our shared God.

Night is approaching and the end of this unique Yom Kippur is almost here. The day has atoned for us, and we have transformed ourselves by collectively suffering, collectively confessing and collectively praying. We have to be together though for this to work for anyone of us. So I’m glad you’re here; because you have to be in the room where it happens, as the great song goes.

Rav, one of my favourite sages in the Talmud agrees. He says, in Pesachim 85, that when it comes to prayer, the one who is standing outside the doorway cannot be included together with those praying inside. You have to be in the room where it happens. You have to be here, now.

But of course, there’s another opinion. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi disagrees with Rav and says even a barrier of iron doesn’t separate the people of Israel and God.

מְחִיצָה שֶׁל בַּרְזֶל אֵינָהּ מַפְסֶקֶת בֵּין יִשְׂרָאֵל לַאֲבִיהֶם שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַיִם. But most rabbis of Talmud understand that God is rarely available to us directly. Rabbi Elazar says since the day the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayers were locked, but the gates of tears were not locked.

Ima Shalom says all gates between man and God are locked, except for the gates of wounded feelings. In other words, we are close to God’s comforting presence when we are crying and when we are wounded. The Talmud says God is there when we are studying with another person, when we are doing justice and when we are praying together. Right now, tonight the gates are ajar.

Neilah means locking, because the gates are just about to close shut and be locked again. This is our last chance. This is a rare opportunity. Together we are going into that liminal space between life and death. Our custom is to leave the Ark open when the Amidah repetition begins, and it is left open until the end of the service. And so, we stand when we can barely stand any more. I remember as a child, looking at the old women who stood and kept standing through Neilah. I can’t, I tell myself, and there’s no shame in it. But I look at the old women who are surely suffering more than me, and I wonder… It’s not about perfection, it’s about growth.

We’ve come a long way today, and we still have a way to go, although the end is almost in sight.

The apex of the service, the emotional peak of the day, is just around the corner. The whole day is a preparation for that moment. We will be saying the words that matter most.

First, we will say the shma together once. Then we will say out loud the verse we usually mutter quietly to ourselves on the rest of the year. We will say it out loud three times together and we will hear each other say it.

Then and only then, when we are exhausted and there’s almost nothing left of ourselves, we will say the clarion call of monotheism. We say it seven times. I count on my fingers as we go. If we keep saying it now, over and over, maybe we will remember when we leave here, when the gates are closed.

Adonai hu ha’elohim. Those three words were first said at Mt. Carmel by the people of Israel who fall on their faces in acceptance of God’s existence. In Kings 18.39 in response to Elijah’s demonstrations of God’s existence, the people of Israel say those words two times. Perhaps, it’s because we are a more forgetful people, we need to say them seven times. Perhaps we need to say them for those who can’t be with us, for our family, friends and teachers who are not in the seats next to us, for the living who are far away, for the dead who are gone forever.

The gates are still open, but they are in the process of closing. We still have time to let go and to let the Neilah service have its way with us, so that when we come to the part at the end, we can say those words for ourselves, over and over together, and let them sink in.

We will be here together saying these words tonight. Please God we will be here together next year.

Gmar Chatimah tova.

Vayeilech

I said this at the streaming service on September 11 2021, on Shabbat Shuva

'Hello everyone. Shabbat shalom. One way or another, it’s lovely to be here again…
Today we read parashat Veyeilech.
In it, we read that Moses tells the people of Israel everything they need to know as they take their next step in their Jewish Journey into the promised land.
He tells them:
Be strong and brave and don’t be afraid of what’s ahead חִזְק֣וּ וְאִמְצ֔וּ אַל־תִּֽירְא֥וּ וְאַל־תַּעַרְצ֖וּ
Then Moses writes down the Torah and he tells the priests to put it besides the Ark of the Covenant. Moses dies confident in the knowledge that his successor is in place and that his Sefer Torah is safely available for future reference.

Cutting forward 1000s of years, in the aftermath of the destruction of the second Temple, Rabbi Akiva and the sages radically reinterpret Moses’s Torah and replace Temple Judaism with Talmudic Judaism, which is where we are today.
The sages of the Talmud are aware that they had changed so much about the Torah and how Judaism is practised, that they imagine that Moses himself wouldn’t recognise it.

There is a profound story in the Talmud about this realisation. In b.Menachot 29b, God gives Moses the opportunity to sit at the back of Rabbi Akiva’s classroom and Moses doesn’t understand what they are talking about.
Moses doesn’t understand God’s decisions either. Twice he asks God why and twice God tells him in no uncertain terms to Be quiet, this is the plan that came up in my thoughts.
שתוק כך עלה במחשבה לפני
In other words, no one can know or control what happens, not even Moses.

That’s what we’ve learned in the time of Corona.

We live in an age of powerful technology, and the Torah is hosted on the fantastic website Sefaria, where our entire tradition is available to us in an instant. And we have streaming services that lets me talk to you now. We live in an age of science where eight new vaccines were developed in one year to protect us, with more on the way.

But with all the knowledge available to us, we also live in an age of uncertainty, where we don’t know where the next terror attack, plague, fire or flood is coming from. Twenty years ago, who would have thought that 3,000 people would die, out of the blue, on a sunny Tuesday morning. Who would have thought a global pandemic would stop me hugging my children for a year.

The only thing that is certain is that change is coming, in ways that we can’t know now. The future isn’t ours to see, as the lovely song goes. But it’s not que cera cera, in Judaism. Our tradition is do good things, do teshuva and do mitzvot.

We are always trying to tilt the arc towards Justice as Martin Luther King said: ‘We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’
Or as Maimonides says on Repentance:
‘If a person does just one mitzvah, he will overbalance himself and the whole world to the side of virtue, where he brings about his own and everyone’s salvation and deliverance.’

We aren’t just victims in the face of the whims of an unknowable God. We can do good things, regardless of a specific outcome.

When things don’t go our way despite our best efforts, we have to allow ourselves to be completely re-invented to the extent that the future form might barely resemble the current iteration. And that it will be ok like that. It will be ok like that.

Moses himself didn’t recognize the changes that were made to his laws, but he had the wisdom to leave us the operating system. He wrote down and placed his Sefer Torah in the Ark of the Convenant for us to re-interpret and live by generations later.
Including these words from today’s parasha…
חִזְק֣וּ וְאִמְצ֔וּ אַל־תִּֽירְא֥וּ וְאַל־תַּעַרְצ֖וּ
Be strong and brave and don’t be afraid of what’s ahead…
As it says in the last line of Adon Olam
וְעִם רוּחִי גְּוִיָּתִי, יְהֹוָה לִי וְלֹא אִירָא:
And with my spirit and my body God is with me, I won’t be afraid

Summary of Mattot Massei

I said this on Zoom Shabbat 2020

This is a very short summary of this week’s Torah Portion Mattot -Mase’ei.

Here is some context. It comes right at the end of the Book of Bamidbar, just before we start the Book of Devarim. It’s the end of one thing and just before the beginning of another. Its takes us right to the edge of the journey from the forty years in the desert to the next stage in our adventure in the promised land. You could title this combined parashah of Mase’ei Mattot: ‘we’ve come a long, long way together, through the hard times, and the good’

It starts with some ground rules, concerning with vows and oaths. If married women make vows, their husbands can annul them and if young girls make vows their fathers can annul them. But the good news is that vows of widows and divorced women hold. It says: “whatever she has imposed on herself, shall be binding on her too”

But before you get too excited about that, it goes rapidly downhill.
Moses makes an awful demand on his officers in his military campaign against the Midianites. He insists they kill all the women and children except for the virgins. Moses distributes the booty to the tribes including the cattle, the asses and the people who are virgins. I’m just going to leave that there.

The rest of Mattot discusses the very interesting story of the tribes of Reuven and Gad who don’t want to cross over to the Promised land. They don’t want to move across the Jordan with the other tribes. They like it where they are, thank you very much. Moses is furious.

He says: “Now you are a breed of sinful men, have replaced your fathers, to add still further to God’s wrath against Israel. If you turn away from Him and he abandons them once more in the wilderness, you will bring calamity on all this people”

But they come to an agreement. Moses makes them an offer they can’t refuse. Moses says: If you do this and agree to join the battle with the other against the Amorites and other local tribes, you can stay where you are in the land across Jordan. He says, if you don’t do this, know that your sin will overtake you. The last Parashah, Mase’ei, starts with a recap of the 42 steps and encampments that made up our long, long journey from Egypt to where we are now in our story. So, as we go forward, we look back at where we’ve come from.

Then God gives Moses further instructions to give to the people before they go into the land of Canaan. He says, destroy their Gods, and dispossess all the inhabitants of their land because if you don’t, they will be stings in your eyes and thorns in your side. God then defines very clearly the boundaries of the land of Israel. North, South, East and West. Having sanctioned bloodshed in war, God then goes on to forbid it very strongly and with lots of detail for the next 28 verses. This is more like it. There is a distinction made between unintentional murder and deliberate murder, with very different penalties. Unintentional murderers should flee to cities of refuge (Arei Miklat) where they should stay until the death of the High Priest. This is because we don’t want more blood spilled by avenging relatives. Straight-out murderers on the other hand, face the death penalty after a proper trial with more than one witness.

God says: “you shall not pollute the land in which you live; for blood pollutes the land.” “You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I myself abide, for I the Lord abide among the Israelite people”

וְלֹ֧א תְטַמֵּ֣א אֶת־הָאָ֗רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֤ר אַתֶּם֙ יֽשְׁבִ֣ים בָּ֔הּ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲנִ֖י שֹׁכֵ֣ן בְּתוֹכָ֑הּ כִּ֚י אֲנִ֣י יְהֹוָ֔ה שֹׁכֵ֕ן בְּת֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל:

The very last law discussed in the very last chapter that takes us out of the desert is once again about women. It says that the daughters of Zelophehad can marry whomever they like but it must be within their tribe if they want to inherit their father’s estate. It names them. They are: Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Noah.

The parashah ends with: “These are the commandments and the ordinances that the Lord commanded the children of Israel through Moses in the plains of Moab, by the Jordan at Jericho” אֵ֣לֶּה הַמִּצְו‍ֹ֞ת וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר צִוָּ֧ה יְהֹוָ֛ה בְּיַד־משֶׁ֖ה אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל בְּעַרְבֹ֣ת מוֹאָ֔ב עַ֖ל יַרְדֵּ֥ן יְרֵחֽוֹ

As President Josiah Bartlet once said: “What’s Next?”

Pinchas,

Pinchas, today’s Parasha, is one of three places in the Torah that describes Yom Kippur. It is described twice in Leviticus In Emor and Aharai Mot and once here in Numbers.

They all describe Yom Kippur as a day of self -affliction. Emor has most of the details about the day as a whole. Aharai Mot makes clear the punishment for not doing the self-affliction. PInchas contains the shortest description of the day.

Emor and Aharai Mot’s descriptions are close together, both being in Leviticus. The Pinchas Yom Kippur description is much further along in Numbers. This is what it says in today’s Parasha: “On the tenth day of the same seventh month, you shall observe a sacred occasion when you shall practice self-denial. You shall do no work. וּבֶעָשׂוֹר֩ לַחֹ֨דֶשׁ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֜י הַזֶּ֗ה מִֽקְרָא־קֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם כׇּל־מְלָאכָ֖ה לֹ֥א תַעֲשֽׂוּ׃

According to the Mishhnah, all three sources are read on Yom Kippur in the Temple by the High Priest. The Mishnah vividly describes the drama of the day… --- Enter stage left the synagogue attendant or the Hazzan He takes the Torah scroll and passes it along to the Head of the synagogue, And then he passes it to the deputy high priest who then gives it to the high priest. It’s a biblical pass the parcel. The high priest stands, takes the scroll and reads the two Leviticus sources to all the assembled people. The sources are close together so there isn’t too much rolling involved. Then he rolls up the Torah completely. He hugs the closed scroll to his chest and says, “More than I have read before you, is written here!” And then off by heart, he says the Torah portion about Yom Kippur that we read today. There’s no reading at that stage, just off by heart reciting. It’s not too long, so the High Priest is not required to have a great memory.

It’s almost as if the ritual in the temple is being given significance by demonstrating that it is all anchored in the Torah. It’s the words describing the actions of the day. Once the actions are no longer possible, once the Temple is no longer in business, the words are all we have left. The words and the story are what remains. But the story continues…

The Mishnah’s description of reading the parts of the Torah about Yom Kippur in the Temple on Yom Kippur is passed along and passed along to the later generations of rabbis of the Gemara.

They wonder about why the High Priest has to say the last source, our Pinchas source today off by heart, without reading it from the scroll. They have a few theories but don’t come to a conclusion. They worry that it will look like there’s a mistake in the Torah script. They wonder if it’s because of wasted blessings. They wonder if it’s a more practical reason which is that it will take longer to roll the scroll to the correct place and that the waiting for them to find the right place will be an afront to the assembled congregation. (We’ve seen it happen a few times at Assif. I can tell you it’s not the end of the world)

The Talmud ends the discussion with a lovely story ….it says after the High Priest concludes his reading, each and every person present brings a Torah scroll from his house and reads from it for himself in order to show its appearance to the community.

By the time the Torah scroll reaches us today, we have interpreted some of the meaning of the text out of existence. In some places, we’ve defined things more clearly like the biblical law of self-affliction on Yom Kippur becomes the Mishnah’s laws of don’t eat or drink, wear shoes, wash, use lotions or have sex. Sacrifices and Temple practise are long gone. The Zealotry of Pinchas has been rejected by the Sages of Talmud. As Rabbinic Jews, we’ve changed the Torah’s literal meaning in many places with an army of legitimate interpretative devices and yet it still remains our beloved and holy Torah.

We still stand today like the High Priest, clutching the Torah scroll as tightly as ever, two thousand years later. We still show the words of the Torah to the assembled congregation and we sing: Vzot haTorah asher sam Moshe lifnei b’nei Yisrael

This is the Torah that God gave to Moses who gave it to the Israelites.

This is the Torah that the High Priest received from his deputy who received it from the shul president who received it from the shul attendant.

This is the Torah we bring from our houses, making it our own.

This is the Torah powered by our love to transcend the literal, to hold a multiplicity of shared meaning.

Zot HaTorah. ---

Emor

The Parasha today outlines the details the Jewish Calendar. It describes Shabbat, Pesach, Rosh Hashana, Shavuot, Sukkot and the counting of the Omer. These are all recognizable occasions that add shape to the Jewish year. It’s amazing to me that there it is written in the Torah and it is also in my brain and my body. The Torah portion today describes the foundations of how my days, my weeks and my year takes shape. I eat matzah on Pesach or I fast on Yom Kippur or I light candles on Friday night. We are the people who do these things. We’ve been doing these things for thousands of years. They call us Jews. But things move on and there are now festivals that aren’t mentioned in the bible. Like Lag Ba Omer which is only mentioned in the 12th century. The earliest reference to Lag Ba Omer is by Isaac ben Dorbolo (12th century, northern France), so it’s quite a modern innovation. As a child, I have vague memories of lag ba omer, spent climbing on the mountain where we lived. We melted marshmallows over a fire, and we made bows and arrows. But that was in South Africa in the 60’s, and lag ba omer is not part of my calendar anymore. In Israel, for many Charedi Jews, Lag B'Omer has become a day of pilgrimage to the tomb of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochei in the Galilee town of Meiron. Apparently, they visit Meiron in their thousands where they dance, pray and celebrate Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochei who revealed the secrets of the Zohar, the book of the kabbalah. Yesterday, there was a stampede in Meiron, and 45 men and boys died there while trying to emerge from the Marquee where they were celebrating. Although I am not like the people who were there, I am in mourning for the part of my family that was. Being a woman, it wasn’t my party, and being a Litvak from South Africa, I’m not a follower of kabbalah, but I do love the story of Shimon Bar Yochei from the Talmud. This is it: Rabbi Shimon and his son were hiding from the Romans. They went and they hid in a cave. A miracle occurred and a carob tree was created for them as well as a spring of water. They would remove their clothes and sit covered in sand up to their necks. They would study Torah all day in that manner. At the time of prayer, they would dress, cover themselves, and pray, and they would again remove their clothes afterward so that they would not become tattered. They sat in the cave for twelve years. Then they emerged from the cave and saw ordinary people who were plowing and sowing. Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai said: These people abandon eternal life of Torah study and engage in temporal life for their own sustenance. The Gemara says that every person to whom Rabbi Shimon and his son directed their eyes was immediately burned. A Divine Voice said to them: Did you emerge from the cave in order to destroy My world? Return to your cave. They again went and sat there in the cave for another twelve months. This time the father had learned his lesson. Although the son had not. Everywhere that the son would burn with his judgy fiery laser beam stare, the father would heal. I love this story because says we can’t live in a cave forever. We need to leave it at some stage and start engaging in the real world with all its imperfections. But it also describes a situation where not everyone is up to that generosity of spirit. The father can, but the son cannot, but that’s the real world too. And for those of us that can, our job for ever and ever will be to heal the damage done by those who cannot show that generosity of spirit.