Monthly Archives: March 2015

Parashat Vayikra HaChodesh: organising time and encountering nature. Or “our experience of nature reflects and enhances our experience of God”

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“This month shall be for you the beginning of the months, it shall be for you the first of the months of the year.” (Exodus 12:2)

This is the very first commandment given in bible to the entire nation of Israel and rabbinic tradition understands that it commands us to sanctify each new month, and gives us the authority to declare which is the first day of the month. This declaration was done originally through the examining of witnesses by a Beit Din – rabbinic court – in Jerusalem. Talmud gives very detailed instructions about this activity, not surprising given that this declaration and authority over the calendar by the Rabbis is said even to bind God – the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 8b) declares that the verse in psalms (81:4-5) “Sound the shofar on the new moon for our feast day, for it is a law for Israel, and a ruling of the God of Jacob” (a piece that is central to our Rosh Hashanah liturgy), means that the Court Above does not enter into judgment on Rosh Hashanah until the Court Below has declared the new month of Tishri.

This commandment gives the Jewish people the authority to decide about time. The whole Jewish year, all of Jewish Time, including deciding the date for legal or taxation or deciding ages or festival observance, is dependent on the Court declaring the new month, having listened to and examined all the witnesses who came to speak of having seen the new moon. This control over deciding time is extraordinary, giving the Rabbinic Court a power akin to God’s, Who created time. Being able to control one’s time means being free in a very powerful way – slaves do not manage their own time, and in modern times the balancing of work/life is a critical part of how we experience our lives.

The declaration of the new moon was one of the three activities seen as fundamental to Jewish identity and therefore banned by the Seleucid Empire, against whom the Chanukah revolt took place. The other two were the observance of Brit Milah (circumcision) and Shabbat.

There are two rituals today in which we are able to observe the turning of the month. The first is familiar to many, the Birkat haChodesh read out in synagogue on the Shabbat before the New Moon (except the new moon of Tishri) to remind the community of the fact. Along with the announcement of the date the New Moon would be seen we read: “May it be Your will, our God and the God of our ancestors, that You bring this month to us for goodness and for blessing. May You give us long life – a life of peace, a life of goodness, a life of blessing, a life of sustenance, a life of physical health, a life in which there is fear of heaven and fear of sin, a life in which there is no shame nor humiliation, a life of wealth and honour, a life in which we will have love of Torah and fear of heaven, a life in which our heartfelt requests will be fulfilled for the good. May the Holy One, Blessed is God, renew it for us and for all Your people, the Family of Israel, for life and for peace, for joy and for gladness, for salvation and for consolation, and let us say: Amen.”

But there is another ritual called Birkat haChodesh – and sometimes (wrongly) called Kiddush Levanah – the Sanctification of the Moon, when we bless God as we stand under the night sky in the presence of the new moon. The ritual comes from Talmud, where in Tractate Sanhedrin we find the text of the Blessing: “Praised are you, O Eternal our God, Sovereign of the Universe, who created the skies with Your word, and all heaven’s host with the breath of Your mouth. You gave them appointed times and roles, and they never miss their cues, doing their Creator’s bidding with gladness and joy. God is the true creator who acts faithfully, and who has told the moon to renew itself. It is a beautiful crown for the people carried by God from birth (Israel), who will also be renewed in the future in order to proclaim the beauty of their creator and God’s glorious majesty. Praised are you, O God, who renews new moons.”

Around the Talmudic text we find the idea that the ceremony should take place on a night when the moon is growing (not necessarily the New Moon), preferably on Saturday night when the celebrant will be wearing their best clothes and will be happy. There was a custom of showing one’s joy by dancing and leaping towards the moon, raising the body on tiptoes three times while reciting the formula “As I dance towards you, but cannot touch you, so shall none of my enemies be able to touch me!” and everyone should say to each other “Shalom Aleichem”: “Peace to You”

I have taken part in this ritual within a community exactly five times in my life, but each time have become more aware of the praise of nature and of God’s role as the creator of nature, which is something that we lose often in our liturgical mainstream. Each time the symbolism of the moon, which waxes and wanes, which sometimes hangs low and almost tangible in the night sky and which sometimes is hidden; the moon which influences our world so powerfully but so invisibly – from the flow of the tides to the stable axial tilt; from the comfort of light at darkest night and darkness of a moonless night – the moon symbolises so much more than just a satellite orbiting the earth and lit by the sun. It symbolises continuity, growth and renewal, weakness and ending followed by increase in strength and fulfilment. It is no wonder that Jewish texts liken the people Israel to the moon, with our fluctuating history and our constant return to life – the moon symbolises hope, renewal, constant change within a clear set of parameters. Talmud tells us that Rabbi Yochanan said “reciting the blessing over the moon at the appropriate time is like being in the presence of the Shechinah (Divine Presence).. and the school of Rabbi Ishmael said “if the Children of Israel are privileged to greet their father in heaven once a month, it is enough”. Now while I am not advocating a connection with Jewish ritual only once a month, it is a powerful reminder that our experience of nature reflects and enhances our experience of God. And we can experience nature at any moment – currently the blossom is out on the trees and the spring bulbs are flowering. The encounter with nature only takes for us to open our eyes and see – and from that looking at our world we can feel hope and a sense of the continuity through the changing world. Be it the moon, be it other aspects of creation, be it the Creator, the privilege of perceiving this hope must be enough.

Image by Eric Teske (CC BY-NC 3.0)

Parashat Vayakhel: how do you make a community?

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How do you make a community?

In classical Hebrew there are three different words for community: eidah, tzibbur and kehillah, and they each describe a different way of being a group together.

Eidah is the political body, the whole group of people with like minds and values, who have a shared sense of identity and purpose. It comes from the root to witness and in bible it is used to describe the whole Israelite people who travelling together having had, and continuing to have, a shared experience and a shared destiny.

Tzibbur, a later post biblical word for community, comes from a root that is to do with heaping up or piling up, and is generally used to describe the praying community. It is the descriptor of the organising principle of the Jewish religious community, the minyan, the group within which prayer is shared and heard. The word tzibbur implies that there are diverse individuals who are joined together for a particular purpose and time – normally understood to be communal worship activities. The laws of the tzibbur form the conceptual framework of community living; they are predicated on and sustain the spiritual life of the community.

The third word used to describe community – ‘Kehillah’ is something that contains both the meanings of Eidah and Tzibbur and more. It goes beyond being a community of shared prayer and shared mission, and looks towards caring for the health, educational, social and welfare needs of individual Jews. It is what we now think of if asked to define what a community should be, providing not just for our practical and functional needs, not just for our spiritual needs, but for our social activities, our diverse interests, our wellbeing.

The sidra vayakhel begins with Moses assembling the people, causing them to become a ‘kehillah’. From having led them out of Egypt and through the Sea of Reeds, from having caused them to be fed and given water, from having been the stern Lawgiver to the people, approaching God on their behalf, and bringing rules and judgments, Moses now does something quite different for them. He brings together the whole ‘edah’ as a ‘kehilla’ (Vayakel Moshe et col adat bnei Yisrael vayomer alei’hem: eleh hadevarim asher tziva Adonai la’sot otam” – Moses brought together as a kehillah all the eida of the bnei Yisrael and said to them, these are the things which the Eternal has commanded to do them)

He then instructs them about two things – firstly about Shabbat, a day of rest to follow six days of work, a day when no fire shall be seen in their homes. And secondly about the mishkan, telling them that col nediv libo – everyone whose heart was willing, (ie everyone who wanted to do so) should bring offerings to God, and then he lists an extraordinary number of objects and materials – gold, silver, acacia wood, rams skins, onyx stones…..

The people go and then come back laden with offerings. There is a strange phrase here – ve’ya’vo’u ha’anashim al ha’nashim – literally the men came upon the women. – and midrash tells us that this phrase tells us that the women came to make their donations first, and the men followed them, a lovely inversion of the story that the women had not wished to give their gold and jewellery for the building of the golden calf, demonstrating that they understood the importance of the mishkan and the abhorrence of the golden calf as a worship focus.

Whether this gloss on the verse is a good one is a moot point. I personally do not like it but I find hard to make any other sense of it. But what it does do is draw attention to the individuality of the givers – both men and women, each bringing what they have, what they can do, what they can make. They each use their skills and their materials to the best use of the mishkan. The focal point for the community is being made of the diverse skill sets and abilities of the entire community, freely giving above and beyond what was needed. The creation of the mishkan is a collective act, a symbol of the diverse community, a representation of its shared beliefs. Building it is an event that creates more than a powerful and beautiful edifice – it is an act that organises a people into a community.

How does one build a community? One recognises that a community is different things at different times, and it is different things to different people, and yet there is a golden thread that holds it together through time and space. Moses uses two different techniques to cause the community to come together – he creates sacred time and sacred space – or rather he brings the community to come together to create sacred time and sacred space. From being an eidah – a body of people with shared experience and destiny who may have nothing else in common, Moses used time and space to make a kehillah – an eidah that encompasses individuality and diversity and shapes it into shared and sustaining community.

Dedicating time and space to something one values is always the only way to develop it, to learn about it, to grow it. Making sacred space and making sacred time are the lynchpins of making sacred community. But doing in such a way that everyone who wants to can be involved, can give their skills, their time, their interests, their knowledge, their labour – this is the lesson we learn from the ultimate community building project of the book of Exodus, the building of the mishkan, the place where God did not dwell per se, but which reminded the people that God was among them.

Purim: blurring distinctions so that all are valued the same

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We will soon be celebrating Purim, a minor, post biblical, and probably Babylonian festival which has been absorbed into Judaism. The book of Esther tells of the evil Haman who is determined to kill the Jews, of Mordechai the Jew who finds favour with the King for having foiled an assassination plot, and of Esther herself, dependant relative of Mordechai, who is married to the King after he has banished the first Queen Vashti, for insufficient respect.  It is a strange festival in so many ways. Probably a fictional retelling of an older myth, it deals with anything but fiction – the recurrent problem of anti-Semitism. Unusually the book does not ever invoke the name or presence of God, and for the first and only time in our texts or our traditions, it takes pleasure in taking revenge on the ones who wanted to destroy the Jews.

Purim is a sort of inverted, upside down and inside out kind of festival. Beginning with the evil Haman wishing for all the Jews to be killed, it ends with the death of Haman and all who seek to do his work. Many of our customs are deliberately subverted – we wear fancy dress costumes to the service, are commanded to drink until we cannot tell the difference between the phrase “cursed be Haman” and “blessed be Mordechai” (Talmud Meg 7b). We create Purim spiels which make fun of the establishment,  make a lot of noise and create a carnival atmosphere where ‘anything goes’, celebrate the marriage of Esther the nice Jewish girl to a non-Jewish potentate with many wives…. Really, nothing is sacred when we think about Purim.

But that said, Jewish values continue to shine through in this strange festival. Purim reminds us not only of the reality of being Jewish amid a world that seems determined to misunderstand us – but it also commands us to care for those who are needy in some way.   The commandments to eat, drink and celebrate this festival are accompanied by the commandment to give tzedekah.   In the Book of Esther, we read, “the same days on which Jews enjoyed relief from their foes, and the same month which had been transformed for them from one of grief to joy and from mourning to festival – they were to observe them as days of feasting and merry-making, and as an occasion for sending gifts [mishloach manot] and presents to the poor [matanot l’evyonim]” (Esther 9:22).

In our giving matanot l’evyonim on Purim, we are recognizing the need for an inversion in society, a turning upside down of the inequalities we see. By engaging in social action on Purim, we hope to erase the hierarchy of the haves and the have-nots. In this strange carnival time while forgetting our usual inhibitions and turning our usual routines on their heads, we are also reminded that we have the power to transform the lives of those who are suffering, to turn their days of mourning into days of joy.

Giving to the poor on Purim is something intrinsic to the celebration – so much so that even the poor must be given enough welfare from the community in order to be able to give two gifts to the poor themselves. In effect, this law blurs the distinction between rich and poor, so that the perceived gap in wealth is erased. Rather like the Talmudic dictum that one should be so drunk as not to be able to recognise the difference between blessing Mordechai and cursing Haman, one should also not notice the distinctions in monetary worth of different people. All are valued the same for this festival, as we experience a kind of ideal world where truly all are equal.

There are all sorts of ways in which you can participate in the mitzvah of matanot l’evyonim. Many charities and social projects that are dedicated to improving the lot of the poorer in society. The important thing is that in the spieling and the laughing and the reading and the booing and the whole megillah of Purim activities, that this is one we can do quietly and easily.

Esther on scroll binder

image: collage by Caroline and Naomi of Esther made for scroll binding