Dvar torah Vayetzei

I saw a picture of a man from the Adat Israel community in Melbourne carefully carrying out the torah scroll from the burned-out synagogue building. I imagine they won’t be reading from it today, but we will… so we can for them.

Today’s parasha for millions of communities around the world is Vayetzei. Let’s see what we can learn from it. This is how it works. We learn our rules and values from the torah through what the Mishnah says the torah says, through what the Talmud says the it says and through what the Shulchan Aruch says it says. We read it through the eyes of rishonim, our first sages, and then though the eyes of achronim, our sages since the 1500s until finally we get to look at it ourselves in 2024. We turn it around and around and see it through the eyes of generations of sages before us. We take the Torah seriously, but we don’t take it literally. We get to decide if its prime directive is Tikkun Olam, fixing the whole world, or a more modest directive of family first. Today I choose family, and specifically sisters.

In the story of the sisters Rachel and Leah, who would want to be Leah, the less beautiful and less loved older sister? In the Torah, it looks like a story of two women fighting each other over one man. But the Talmud retells the story, reinterpreting the Torah, giving Rachel the power to change the destinies intended for her and her sister by two powerful men. For example – in the torah it just says: Leah’s eyes were weak, while Rachel was a woman of beautiful form and face. In the Talmud, in Bava Batra 123, Rav says: it literally means weak eyes but is meant as praise. As Leah would hear people at the crossroads, coming from the land of Canaan, who would say: Rebecca has two sons, and her brother Laban has two daughters; the older daughter will be married to the older son, and the younger daughter will be married to the younger son. And Leah would sit at the crossroads and ask: What are the deeds of the older son? (Esau) The passersby would answer: He is an evil man, and he robs people. She would ask: What are the deeds of the younger son? (Jacob) They would answer: He is “a quiet man, dwelling in tents” (Genesis 25:27). And because she was so distraught at the prospect of marrying the evil brother, she would cry and pray for mercy until her eyelashes fell out. That’s Leah, who through her wounded feelings has the power to reach God through שַׁ֥עַר הַשָּׁמָֽיִם The Talmud in many places says the ‘gates to heaven’ are a unique access point for the prayers of weeping people. Since the destruction of the Temple, the gate to heaven is closed, except for the gates of wounded feeling. now Rachel…

The Talmud gives Rachel the very prized Talmudic quality of humility. The quality is צְנִיעוּת. Not in the modern sense of wearing thick tights but in the Talmudic sense of ‘taking one for the team.’ The term also used is Ulibin (ועלובין). The Talmud transforms the relationship between the sisters as a collaboration rather than a competition. In a story of tricksters getting tricked, Rachel takes matters into her own hands and turns the last screw in the ultimate trickery.

Remember how last week, Jacob had tricked Esau for the birthright and the blessing? In the straight reading of the Torah today, now it’s Jacob’s turn to be tricked by Laban, his father-in-law to be. Jacob loves Rachel and has worked seven hard years to be allowed to marry her when Laban does a switcheroo, and Jacob ends up finding Leah in his marriage bed in the morning. And here’s where the Talmud gets interesting. It makes Rachel an active player rather than just an object in the story. In the Talmud, Rachel has the wisdom to warn Jacob of her father’s intended trickery. She knows her father wants to substitute her older sister in the marriage bed. Jakob thinks he knows better and that he can out-trick Laban, so he gives Rachel secret signs to give to him in the dark on the night, so he will know he is in bed with Rachel and not with Leah.

Still following me? Watch out…The ultimate switcheroo is still coming… This is from the Talmud: ‘When Laban’s associates were bringing Leah up to the wedding canopy to marry Jacob, Rachel thought: Now my sister will be humiliated when Jacob discovers that she is the one marrying him. Therefore, Rachel gave the signs to Leah her sister’ For that act of selflessness, of sisterhood, of compassion, she is rewarded by God.

Indeed, we don’t learn our values from the torah, we learn our values from how we read the Torah. We read the story through the eyes of sages who have highlighted the capacity of sisters to help each other in a cruel world. I too know the value of sisterhood. I would also do anything for my sisters. It’s comforting to know that this value is seen and rewarded in our tradition as well.

Parasha BEHA'ALOTEKHA

Parasha BEHA'ALOTEKHA

What can we learn from the parasha this week about journeys? Not the journey you look back on– in my case from Marais Road Shul in Cape Town to NNLS in London here today.

I want to rather look at journeys ahead of us. Because at that moment, between staying and moving forward, that’s a vulnerable place. You don’t know what’s ahead, but it’s probably difficult out there. Or maybe it’s just scary because you are currently living in the privileged, resting place that we call home. I think of my relative who moved from Latvia to Eretz Yisrael in 1934. She didn’t know anyone there and she went from a comfortable life in Europe with her family, to a hard life in the Middle East digging earth, draining swamps, laying water lines, building water towers and planting orchards. There were no guarantees for her when she left home in 1934. But her brother who stayed behind in Riga, was murdered seven years later. You try to read the writing on the wall, but the signs are never as clear as they are in the parasha this week…

We read that the people of Israel had clouds resting over the Mishkan, deciding for them when to go and when to stay…as it says: ‘Whether it was two days or a month or a year—however long the cloud lingered over the Mishkan—the Israelites remained encamped and did not set out; only when it lifted, did they break camp.’

They also had The Ark of the Covenant of יהוה which travelled in front of them on that three days’ journey to seek out a resting place for them.’ Plus, they had Moses’s excellent leadership and silver trumpets blowing. It’s all very easy for the people of Israel. They don’t have to decide for themselves. Between when to go and when to stay, they just go with the flow. But in terms of survival strategies, that’s not always a good move.

But at that moment between staying and going, between advancing and resting, comes one of my favourite parts of the whole Torah…neatly held together by two inverted nuns which we separate in the choreography of the Torah service on Shabbat. The lines are:

׆ וַיְהִ֛י בִּנְסֹ֥עַ הָאָרֹ֖ן וַיֹּ֣אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֑ה קוּמָ֣ה ׀ יְהֹוָ֗ה וְיָפֻ֙צוּ֙ אֹֽיְבֶ֔יךָ וְיָנֻ֥סוּ מְשַׂנְאֶ֖יךָ מִפָּנֶֽיךָ׃

When the Ark was to set out, Moses would say: Advance, God! May Your enemies be scattered and may Your foes flee before You!

וּבְנֻחֹ֖ה יֹאמַ֑ר שׁוּבָ֣ה יְהֹוָ֔ה רִֽבְב֖וֹת אַלְפֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ ׆

‘And when it halted, he would say: Return, O יהוה, Israel’s myriads of thousands!’

These two lines are familiar because the first part is what we say when we take the Torah out of the Ark, and the second part is what we say when we return the Torah to the Ark. The two lines are like the arch though which we take the torah out, read it and parade it and then put it back again.

As the Torah is returned to the ark, but before the curtains or doors are closed, we sing the second sentence between the inverted nuns ... וּבְנֻחֹ֖ה יֹאמַ֑ר שׁוּבָ֣ה יְהֹוָ֔ה רִֽבְב֖וֹת אַלְפֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃ ׆

That’s a harder one to understand. The English in Sefaria says ‘And when it halted, he would say: Return, O יהוה, You who are Israel’s myriads of thousands!’

What does that mean?

Nechama Liebowitz points out the problem is with the Hebrew word shuva שׁוּבָ֣ה The Hebrew word shuv means ‘return’ but it’s a word that doesn’t take an object and yet here it is, awkwardly followed by a phrase ‘many thousands of Israel’ as a direct object.

Around the year 1,000, in Spain, the commentator Ibn Ezra says it means: Give the myriads of Israel rest that they may be no longer disturbed.

500 years later in Italy, the commentator, Sforno sees it like this: Rest O lord among the myriads of Israel. Let thy presence rest in our midst.

500 years after Sforno, Nechama Liebowitz writing in Israel, describes it in context with the first part like this:

‘He who rose up to Scatter his enemies and remove wickedness from the earth would dwell once more amongst the tens of thousand of his children and followers from all people.’

She compares it to the Messianic time we read about in Zacharia in the Haftorah later. ‘In that day many nations will attach themselves to GOD and become God’s people, and God will dwell in your midst.’

The student of Nechama Liebowitz, Rabbi Chaim Weiner sees it like this: The two sentences between the inverted nuns have military relevance. This means the second sentence means God return our soldiers in peace. Israel’s myriads of thousands are the soldiers that we want God to bring back to us.

I can’t help thinking about the eight Israeli soldiers who died in battle this week. Benny Ganz described them as “the beautiful faces of the people of Israel, the best among us.” Would that all the soldiers and all the hostages be returned home.

For the meantime, in our very long journey from the midst of the wilderness in Sinai, to Israel, to Babylon, to North Africa to Europe and beyond, we are not there yet, and I’m grateful for that. I’m in no rush to get to the end of days, however painful and uncertain it is at the moment. I feel very at home here in New North London and secure in the liberal democracy of the UK. This is my privileged, resting place. I’ve done enough travelling and I’m grateful to be here. But I know that things can change…

There’s another way to read the line from the parasha that we say when we return the Torah to the ark when we ask God to come back to us. In our long journey through history, when we are resting or journeying, where ever we go and however it looks, God really hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s us that must return to God.

Shmini

This is from the parasha today. Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron go into the Mishkan and offer Eish Zara to God, that they were not commanded to do, and God zaps them. And Moses says through those close to me I will be holy. And Aaron is silent.

I want to talk about Eish Zara or strange fire. In our tradition there are hundreds of commentaries on this because many in our tradition are uncomfortable with the pshat version of events. On the surface of it, two enthusiastic sons of Aaron want to get closer to God and are killed as a result and their father Aaron says nothing, while Moses tries to say nice, kind words.

It seems so unfair. Where is the Justice in God’s actions. Why are good people being made to suffer? The boys didn’t seem to do anything wrong and were killed by God for no good reason. In fact, they weren’t just killed, they were burned alive, incinerated. Ribono shel ha olam…And their father says nothing. (Of course, their mother’s response isn’t recorded in the Torah)

Thank God for our Rabbinic tradition to fill in the gaps. The Rabbis of the Talmud, the Midrash and beyond to our modern age, try to explain. They mostly work hard to suggest that the brothers must have done something wrong to merit this punishment.

The reasons vary from it was an improper offering or unsanctioned offering, to them wearing the wrong clothing, to them being naked, to them being drunk, to them being very stoned on the incense, to their arrogance, to them undermining the leadership of Moses and Aaron, to them refusing to marry and procreate. Or maybe it was just a tragic accident. Or maybe they dared to teach the law in the presence of Moses.

I bumped into Laliv yesterday on the high street and she said look at the Rashi on parashat Mishpatim chapter 24, on verses 10-11.

She was right. It was fascinating. For context, this is from parashat Mishpatim in Exodus, chapter 24, on verses 10-11 that we read weeks ago….

‘Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and they saw the God of Israel; and there was under His feet the like of a paved work of sapphire stone, and the like of the very heaven for clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand; and they beheld God and did eat and drink’

Rashi puts that together with what we read today – where they get burned up and he suggests:

‘They gazed and peered and [because of this] were doomed to die, but the Holy One, blessed is He, did not want to disturb the rejoicing of [this moment of the giving of] the Torah. So, He waited for Nadab and Abihu [i.e., to kill them,] until the day of the dedication of the Mishkan.

In other words, God didn’t want to spoil the party, but Nadav and Avihu tried to get too close to God, so they had to die. They believed that they could add to their love of God a greater love, in order to melt into His radiance and so God just helped them along with the melting.

That’s Rashi, but take your pick for the reasons why bad things happen to good people. It’s a very uncomfortable place to sit knowing we are powerless against deaths of children, against pogroms, and the pain and suffering we see all around us. Explanations make us feel better. I hear this a lot. Oh Israel deserved October 07 because of this and that reason. If only we did this and that, then we can escape that suffering. But ladies and gentlemen, I believe that isn’t so. We can be as good as gold and still…

This week I heard the mother of a hostage speak. Her name was Orli Shem Tov. It was on Zoom. Her son, Omer Shem Tov is still held hostage in Gaza and she has had to live with the excruciating pain of that for the last six months. Every morning when she opens her eyes, the pain begins again. She spoke to us from her home in Israel to us sitting safely in London, but her pain was palpable. She told us her son is like sunshine and everyone one wants to be in his company. He is a good kid who loves life and freedom, and he was kidnapped from the Nova festival where he went to party.

Because we were so far away, we could only respond with silence when really what we wanted to do was to be there with her and to give her a hug. I am impatient with people that comment from far away when they are not sitting under rocket fire themselves or have not experienced the pain of losing children themselves. People that don’t know the pain of loss that great. I hear Aaron’s silence and cringe at Moses’s explanations.

It’s easier to listen to people who really know. I was pleased to find a commentary from Elie Wiesel on the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu, and why they were killed for offering it. He says, we don’t know.

Elie Wiesel survived the Holocaust. The word Holocaust is derived from the Greek holokauston, a translation of the Hebrew word ʿolah, meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God. His sister, father and mother were offered up in the strange fire of Auschwitz.

He says this: ‘it is to teach us that there are events in life -- in our national life, in our personal life -- events that transcend our understanding. God’s motives and ours are not necessarily the same. There is pain, and there may even be injustice, that we cannot understand. We may try to find answers, but we do not have the answers. We understand that we don’t understand.’

There is so much I don’t understand but am absolutely certain that I am grateful to be here with you all now, and for the wonderful tradition that we all share. We are the lucky ones. Shabbat Shalom.

Tzav

Tzav We all do bad things. We offend by accident and on purpose. We don’t mean to, but we hurt people close to us like our children and our parents, and sometimes we offend complete strangers. We frequently sin in big ways and small against our living planet. We try our best but none of us are perfect. What’s needed is a mechanism for repairing the fracture we have caused and will continue to cause. Otherwise, we will be paralysed by a need for impossible perfection. I believe if you aren’t making mistakes, you just aren’t trying hard enough. Or living in the real world.

When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, people would offer korbanot (sacrifices) for their misdeeds. Today in the parasha, we read about the different sacrifices, like korban hattat (the sin offering) and also Korban Asham (the guilt offering). Although administered by the priests, they were made for the benefit of everyone, rich or poor, powerful or unconnected. The sin offering in particular, allowed for a range of sacrifices, from a whole bull offered by the people at the top to just a handful of fine flour offered by the poorest.

Maimonides has something very interesting to say about the altar where these diverse sacrifices happened . He takes considerable historic licence to say that the altar in the Temple has always been in the same place. Going back in time, he says, the altar in both Temples was in exactly the same spot and it was in exactly the same place where Abraham built the altar for the sacrifice of Isaac all the way back to where Adam was created on that very same spot. He says: ‘Thus, the sages have said: Man was formed from the place of his atonement.’ אָמְרוּ חֲכָמִים אָדָם מִמְּקוֹם כַּפָּרָתוֹ נִבְרָא Quite a flight of fancy for the Great Eagle. But he does it, because he wants to say the potential for atonement is built into all people since the very first person was created. We are all created on that fault line. It is the crack through which the light gets in, some might say.

It’s true today, without a Temple, that people still need a way to repair their mistakes. They still need capara, teshuva, atonement. They still need another chance to do better.

The rabbis that created Rabbinic Judaism after the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 ACE needed to replace those essential processes that used to happen in the Temple. They stopped killing the animals in one large, centralised place and they went smaller, taking the processes into the synagogues, into the study halls and into the courts. The rabbis understood the value of us taking our court ordered punishment.

Take your pick from punishments available. It’s all going to a good cause. Judaism allows capital punishment, lashes or being cut off from your community. The best punishment in terms of getting a second chance is definitely lashes or flogging. Makot in Hebrew.

This brings me to what I really wanted to share with you today. I learned this bit of Talmud with R. Chaim Weiner three weeks ago and it’s a good one. We were learning Shevuot 20b. In it, the rabbis are trying to figure out the correct punishment for taking God’s name in vain when making a false oath. The ten commandments in Exodus are quoted where it says you should not take God’s name in vain because the Lord will not absolve him of his guilt.

Rav Pappa says maybe this means there’s no absolution for this crime at all. But Abaye can’t be having that. He says yes in the Torah it says that God will not absolve him. But there’s another way out. There has to be. God may not absolve him, but the earthly court flogs him and in so doing absolves him of guilt.

That’s why we don’t kill people who take God’s name in vain. Don’t tell anyone but blasphemy is not a big thing in Judaism. I don’t know for sure, but the God I stand before doesn’t need that from me or want me to kill people in his name. Who knows what happens in heavenly courts. We need creative law makers and just courts down here. We need social mechanisms to get people up and to try again, this next time a little better.

Va'era

Today is day 99, the length of time the hostages have been in captivity. Because the number 132 is too big to visualise, I’m thinking of just two men, Omri Miran and Tzahi Idan, who were abducted from Nahal Oz 99 days ago. This is a picture of Omri and his wife in better days.

In the Parasha today, Moses has a problem. No one is listening to him. Not Pharoah who doesn’t want his Israelites to leave, and not the Israelites themselves either. It’s not hard to understand why Pharaoh doesn’t want to lose his skilled slaves. But why don’t the Israelites listen to Moses? Hasn’t God just promised to take them out of Egypt with an outstretched arm? Don’t they want to leave their difficult lives under the cruel Pharoah? The reason given is that the slaves themselves are too downtrodden to see that they have options.

יְדַבֵּ֥ר מֹשֶׁ֛ה כֵּ֖ן אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְלֹ֤א שָֽׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה ‘But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.’

מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה Sforno (16th century Italy) says about kotzer ruach ‘for it did not appear believable to their present state of mind, so that their heart could not assimilate such a promise.’

As slaves for generations, fear of the unknown keep the Israelites paralysed. They keep their world small and (to their minds safe) because they are too traumatised to step out into anything else. They can’t see that the door is open if they just push it together.

I have great sympathy for the Israelites. I’m also scared. I know theoretically I can have what Viktor Frankl calls ‘the last freedom’. He says: ‘Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind even in terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.’ But honestly, I’m more in the Janis Joplin mindset where freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

Last year, on October 07, many of my assumptions were revealed and then shattered. I believed for example that all Jews of all ages and all denominations supported Israel. I believed that what Jews in the diaspora experience is the same as what Jews in Israel experience. I believed that I could change people’s minds through factual debate on Instagram. I believed God was only good.

For most of us, our paradigms are so ingrained that they are invisible to us.

This is mine – I’m a descendant of generations of pogrom and expulsion survivors. A sniff of danger and I’m back hiding in the basket. My suitcase is always packed. I just want to stay safe, keep my friends and keep my job. I’m not interested in resisting the established social order in order to be authentic. I just want to stay alive.

John, my Non-Jewish partner, had no such fear bred to his bones. He insisted we put rescue-the-hostages posters up outside our house. When I tucked in my Magen David on the train, he wouldn’t have dreamed of hiding his bring-them-home wristband.

But we all see things differently – I recently spoke to an American Jewish woman who was terrified lest anyone think she was not publicly 100% committed to the Palestinian cause before anything else. Her belief is tikkun olam, and that any resort to self-defence is a crime.

Another paradigm - On Wednesday I spoke to a 60-year-old Israeli man who picked up his revolver on October 07 and drove down to help the people of the Nachal Oz kibbutz. His belief is - if your friends are in trouble, do what it takes to help them.

I’ve found comfort in reading thinkers who allowed their minds to expand in response to catastrophe. People who experienced the Holocaust like Eliezer Berkowitz although he would have hated me as a non-pious or in his words, non- authentic Jew.

In With God in Hell, he writes that the majority of Jews suffered in the Holocaust because of what he calls ‘the naïve innocence regarding the limits of human degradation.’

I’m wondering about the thousands of Jews in Hungary who didn’t resist going to Auschwitz in May 1944 because despite the evidence, they couldn’t believe the certain fate awaiting them.

That’s also a form of Kotzer ruach.

Berkowitz says he says we need to change how we see ourselves, and also expand how we see our sources. He says for centuries our sources have been reinterpreted in the diaspora to teach that violence and resistance is not for Jews.

Sadly, the Israelites with their kotzer ruach never reached the promised land. Moses schlepped them around the dessert for 40 years and they moaned like bratty teenagers all the way.

If we want to merit our Promised Lands, we first need to see our own kotzer ruach, and occasionally see past it. We need to see the full picture, to know evil exists and feel entitled to resist it. We need to see how amazingly diverse and resourceful we are as a team. We need to have the courage to be comfortable with the unknown, and to wonder what is preventing us from asking what else is possible.

Let’s take a deep breath, hold hands with our friends, and step forward together.