Zachor: Amalek is our own human inclination to take from the world

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“Remember what Amalek did to you by the way as you came forth out of Egypt; how he met you by the way, and smote the hindmost of you, all that were enfeebled in your rear, when you were faint and weary; and he did not fear God. Therefore it shall be, when the Eternal your God has given you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land which the Eternal your God gives you for an inheritance to possess it, that you shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.”
-Deuteronomy 25:17- 19

 On the Shabbat before Purim we read an extra portion from another scroll, and the Shabbat takes its name from this reading – Zachor! Remember!  Liturgically this is to remind us that Purim will be celebrated in the coming week, and a genealogical link is made in tradition between the villain of the Purim story, Haman the Agagite and the people known in bible as Amalekites.

 The Amalekites, like Haman, are understood in Jewish tradition to be those people who hate without reason or cause; Bible records them as descendants of Esau, though it is hard to understand either their location or their individuality. Both “Amalek” and “Amalekites” seem to be used to describe a people who are outside the mainstream, people who are on the fringes and who threaten the core. The words come to symbolise meaningless, purposeless evil – an opposite of all that faith in God might bring, and of course in our passage we are told that Amalek did what they did because “they did not fear God”. Because of this, they attacked the vulnerable and weakest of the Israelite society, itself a raggle taggle of ex slaves with little strength to keep going. This was not a group who threatened Amalekite society – the Israelites were attacked simply because it was unlikely they would be able to defend themselves.

 Over the years “Amalek” has come to be a symbol of the other, or the enemy. Our tradition has seen all anti-semitic activity as the manifestation of Amalek, and some have gone further – to see any person or people who challenge Judaism or Israel as descendants of Amalek. The terrible killings perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein in 1994 where 29 Palestinians were murdered in Hevron and many more injured, came out of extreme and misplaced belief that they were the enemy and therefore they must be Amalek. But Amalek is much more complicated than a way we might use to designate those we think of as “Other”.

 Amalek is more profoundly found not outside ourselves, but inside us, at our own core.  The gematria for Amalek is the same as that for ‘safek’ – doubt, a way of saying that the anti-divine that Amalek represents is something within us, something that we might manifest if we allow ourselves to do so.  While the etymology of the word Amalek is uncertain, it may come from two words – Am Lakak, the people who lick up – the people who selfishly take from all around without any sense of boundary or of compassion for others. Amalek is the trait that takes, that uses up, that does not consider either the other or the context or the future – it is the greed and selfishness we are all prone to as young children, something we have to learn to rein in and control if we are to live with others and create relationships and do good in this world.

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, (1808 – 1888) and said to be the founder of Modern Orthodoxy, saw the battle between Israel and Amalek in this way. For him the war is between different sets of values – and Israel should strive to be in the category of morality and life affirming activity. In his commentary on Amalek he wrote “We are warned, remember what Amalek did to you, and see to it that we ourselves should not become an Amalek within ourselves. …not to commit deeds of wrong and violence within our personal lives…. Do not forget” this [obligation to wipe out Amalek] – in case there comes a time when you will want to be like Amalek, and like him to deny your [moral] obligation and not to know God, but will only seek opportunities…to exploit your power to harm others.”  

Amalek is not only “the enemy” or “the other” or a symbol of external evil against which we must always be on guard. Amalek is our own human inclination to take from the world, and in taking to stop others from having what they need – overriding their vulnerability simply because we can. Our world is full of such behaviours and we have a responsibility to bring them to mind in order to address them. Be it the anxieties over the fate of the vulnerable in our health and social care systems, or the abilities of large organisations to fix opaque and impossible price structures that penalise the unwary or the ignorant or the cash or time-poor; be it the fate of people at the hands of corrupt leaderships or the use of the labour of children or wage slaves to keep prices down, Amalek walks among us and within us. Before we can blot out such behaviour we must become aware and outraged. Remember what Amalek did… you shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.”

Parashat Tzav: the life blood and the nefesh

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“And you shall not eat any blood of fowl or beast in any of your dwelling places. Whoever eats any blood that soul will be cut off from his people” (Lev. 7:26-27).

The prohibition against eating blood is mentioned in several places in the Torah. God tells Noah “Every moving thing that lives shall be for food for you; as the green herb have I given you all. Only flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.” (Gen 9:4).

In Leviticus 17 we read (10- 14) And whatever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that eat any manner of blood, I will set My face against that soul that eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by reason of the life. Therefore I said to the children of Israel: No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourns among you eat blood.  And whatsoever man…..that takes in hunting any beast or fowl that may be eaten; he shall pour out its the blood , and cover it with dust. For as to the life of all flesh, the blood thereof is all one with the life thereof; therefore I said to the children of Israel: Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh; for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof; whosoever eat it shall be cut off.

And again in Deuteronomy:  “Only be certain that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life and you shall not eat the life with the flesh. You shall not eat it …”. Deut. 12:23-24

What do we mean when we call the blood the life? In each case in these texts the word used is Nefesh; a word which is often translated as ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ but this isn’t a good translation. According to Genesis the human being doesn’t have a nefesh, it is a nefesh – essentially our nefesh is connected to our physical body – it is related to our blood, to our breath, to our ability to eat or take into ourselves. And yet it is also separate from our body, the animating spirit which can be seen in the body and which leaves at death. The nefesh exists on the boundary between life and death, and this has real import on its place in both the ritual purity system, and in the mystical tradition.

By connecting the nefesh to the blood, as the biblical text does again and again, it reminds us that animals that are killed for worship in the sacrificial system, and subsequently animals killed for food, have value beyond what we are using them for. They have an animating spirit which comes from God; this spirit must be treated with respect so the blood is poured into the ground and covered with dust – the animal has a place in creation, its life has significance, the part that we are allowed to eat is what remains after the life force is drained away – the deadened, irrelevant part.

Judaism has a strong imperative to life. The mitzvot are for living by, not (except for three exceptions) to die for. The mitzvah of saving life (pikuach nefesh) overrides almost all the other mitzvot – even if there is only a possibility that life can be saved.  Life belongs to God and must be respected wherever it is found and in whatever situation we find ourselves in. And blood, along with breath, is the symbol of life. So when we avoid eating blood by koshering the meat we eat, we are making a powerful statement about the value of the life of the animal whose flesh we are eating. Like us it had nefesh, it had dimensions greater than its physical existence. And so while Torah begins with a vegetarian diet for the first human beings, after Noah an exception is made so that meat can be eaten in this less perfect world although still as part of the sacrificial system. And it seems that only when the people were settled in the land of Israel, when many would only go to Jerusalem three times a year for the pilgrim festivals, only then was eating meat as part of a non-sacrificial system permitted and only as a response to their lustful physical appetites which could not be controlled– as we read in Deuteronomy “When the Eternal your God shall enlarge your border, as God promised you, and you shall say: ‘I will eat flesh’, because your soul desires to eat flesh; you may eat flesh, after all the desire of your soul. If the place which the Eternal your God shall choose to put God’s name there be too far from you, then you shalt kill of your herd and of your flock, which the Eternal has given you, as I have commanded you, and you shall eat within your gates, after all the desire of your soul.” (Deut. 12:20-21)

We respect life wherever we find it; we care for it and nurture it, and when it comes to an end for whatever reason – we continue to respect it and to remember that the nefesh belongs to God.  Be it animal or human, life is life, absolute and valuable.

 

Encountering God is easy: approach with a willing heart and God will find us

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A modern mind may look at the book of Leviticus and feel the distance. The world of ritual purity and impurity, of worship through sacrificial system etc is not one we instinctively understand and indeed are likely to find problematic. How can it be possible to come closer to God through such acts of ritual sacrifice?
Traditional Jewish practise dictates that young children are introduced to bible by studying Leviticus, based on the statement by Rav Assi who said that young children began their Torah studies with Leviticus and not with Genesis because young children are pure, and the sacrifices explained in Leviticus are pure, so the pure should study the pure. (Leviticus Rabbah 7:3.) I find it fascinating that our children begin not with the narratives that we find so often in books of bible stories for bedtime, not with the great dramas of exodus or Sinai, but with texts that do not pretend to have any historical interest, but are filled with rules and regulations about how to worship in the Sanctuary. The heart of Leviticus is that we have to learn how to encounter the God who dwells amongst us –remember that the Mishkan was built to remind people of the presence of God within and among them.
As we learn a series of rituals in order to approach God and come closer to an encounter with the divine, it becomes normative to think of God as a being who is in relationship with us. Leviticus teaches us that we can approach God, that God is open to our searching, indeed wants us to search. Leviticus also teaches that people do wrong things, both deliberately and unwittingly, and in either case forgiveness is not only possible it is waiting for us. What forgiveness requires is for us to know and acknowledge the wrong, and to do something about it in order to be absolved from the guilt.
Children, who have no difficulty believing in a divine being and who indeed often seem most at home in a world of searching for meaning, are indeed well able to begin to look at the texts in Leviticus that might be off putting for their more world weary parents. Children understand that bad behaviour has bad consequences, and that doing something to mitigate the behaviour will lead to better consequences. They believe that they will be forgiven no matter what they do, that they are loveable and acceptable even if their actions may not be.
So as we read the book of Leviticus, let’s remember it isn’t JUST a rule book for the priests, but a philosophy that says – approaching God is very easy, and if we do it thoughtfully, appropriately and mindfully then we will achieve what we want. The word used for sacrifice (korban) and for nearness share the same root k-r-v. Coming closer to God, having God come closer to us is what the ritual system is all about. We have replaced the structure with prayer and liturgy, but the underpinning understanding is the same. All we have to do is approach with a willing heart, and God will find us.

With increasing joy, we explore our dark side: Purim thoughts

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purim shadowPurim is possibly the hardest Jewish festival to explain, to Jews and non Jews alike. A festival whose roots are not in Torah, whose story is found in the only biblical book not to mention God, Megillat Esther is also notable for its lack of references to the Land of Israel, or to Temple rite, or any recognisably Jewish expression. Instead we know this festival for noise making, drinking to excess, the celebration of violence, and some distinctly “unreligious” behaviour and clothing.
Set in Persia in the third year of the King Ahasuerus (said to be Xerxes, King of Persia in the 5th Century BCE), a Jewish man named Mordechai allows his niece Esther to go forward in the beauty contest to be queen after Vashti has been expelled for insubordination. Esther duly becomes that mythical creature, a Jewish princess, but does not reveal her Jewish identity to anyone until plans for genocide against the Jews are unveiled by Haman, the King’s senior minister, and Esther finds herself in a position of potential influence of the King. Esther persuades the King that Haman must be removed from power but tragically the decree, once made, cannot be retracted and so the only remedy is to command the Jews to defend themselves against the attacking Persians. So on the date chosen by casting lots (Purim), the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, five hundred attackers are killed in Shushan, the capital city and seventy five thousand are killed in the rest of the empire. No material possessions are taken – this was simply an act of self defence. The next day, (14th Adar) was designated a day of celebration of the survival, and Esther sends a letter throughout the Empire commanding an annual commemoration of the event.
There is no evidence of Esther or of this particular event outside of the megillah, but the genre of the story of course is one we know well – that Jews living on sufferance in a land that is not their own find that they become disliked or scapegoated or simply political pawns in someone else’s power game. It could be because they are successful in the land and become the victims of jealousy, or else that they are not successful and seen as parasites. Whatever the pretext, the historical Jewish experience has been of differing levels of insecurity and an apprehensive reliance on the goodwill of a host community; usually the apprehension has had a good basis as in difficult times the Jewish community have traditionally been vulnerable. This festival then does not mark an agricultural milestone nor a theological event, but it does speak to the lived experience of a people in Diaspora.
The Havdalah service with which we mark at the end of the Sabbath on a Saturday night is a bittersweet event – we are leaving behind the solace of the Shabbat, and entering a working week once more, with its concomitant expectation that we are facing all the problems of the outside world once more. The service begins with a number of verses taken primarily from the book of Psalms and from the prophet Isaiah, which refer to the protection of God and the hope for divine salvation. One verse stands out for me in this collection of verses that hope for relief from a worrying world – that from the book of Esther “La’yehudim ha’yetah orah ve’simcha ve’sasson viykar The Jews had light, happiness, joy and honour”. (Esther 8:16) which is followed by a heartfelt addition – the response: “Cayn tihyeh lanu – May it be the same for us”. The use of this verse here in the service marking the end of shabbat and the start of the working week, and the response which is added to it liturgically, speaks to me of the clear and frequent anxiety of the Jewish community who, having taken time out from the world to create the Shabbat experience of security, peacefulness and warmth within their homes now know that this time out of time is over for the week and they have to get through another six days in a hostile world before having the possibility of experiencing this peace again.
Purim is unusual because it is a fantasy which we act out for one day each year and for this small amount of time all the usual rules are relaxed. Drinking is encouraged, there is a carnival atmosphere as people wear fancy dress and may even abandon the prohibition of cross dressing (OH 696:8). We joyously and noisily blot out the name of Haman as the Megillah is being read aloud in the synagogue. We celebrate the reversal of our usual story – for once we are the victors not the victims. For once we get to stand up and fight back. In the short space of this festival we act out a revenge fantasy against all those who blindly want to destroy or humiliate us.
But this is not without a degree of conflicted anxiety. While the need to imagine winning against one’s enemies for at least one day a year was clearly understood, at the same time the effect of this fantasy being enacted in a public show was not ignored. Right back Talmudic times (Megillah 7a) we read that Rav Shmuel bar Yehudah taught that Esther had to plead for her story to be told. This is something quite unique in tradition where remembering is the essence of our activity.
“Rav Shmuel Bar Yehudah said: “Esther sent a message to the Sages: “Place me in Jewish memory for all generations!” But the sages replied “Your story would incite the nations against us.”. However Esther replied: [It’s too late for that.] My story is already recorded in the chronicles of Medean and Persian kings.”
– In other words, while the celebration of the story of Purim might damage interfaith relationships, and even potentially contribute a pretext for a pogrom, it could not be hidden away and therefore might as well be told.
There remain a large number of apologetics in our tradition to mitigate the effect of the festival – for example one comment on Esther 9:5 “And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, slaughtering and exterminating; and they did to their enemies as they wished.” Is that the words “vaya’asu besone’eihem kiretzonam” — “they did to their enemies as they wished” is understood to mean that the Jews acted the way their enemies had wished to do to them – in other words this is simply a reversal of the active and passive objects of the verbs, not a new activity.
In the early life of Reform Judaism there was a question whether Purim should continue to be marked – it seemed to the fastidious European reformers to be distasteful, noisy, cruel, uncivilized – all the things we had moved on from, or so we thought. But any idea of removing it from our calendar has long gone – it has become clear that Purim is a necessary festival, allowing us to explore our darker side in safety and with clear and certain boundaries for a very short time each year. Even though we are now not a people who are entirely dependent on a host community but have a land of our own, the story of Purim retains its importance and its meaning for us and we have to express our pain and frustration at having been the scapegoat in so many places over so many generations. The question now is of course, how we engage with our dark side outside of Purim, how the pain which some say our history has bred into our DNA can be dealt with so that it is not suppressed but is acknowledged while not being allowed to colour our judgements today. This is a priority for our generation and those who follow us. As we rightly celebrate our survival through centuries of persecution, and our ability and right to fight for that survival keeping our values and responsibilities intact we should remember the importance of keeping perspective and limits that the festival also highlights, and remember too that our identity is based on the how we behave all the days of the year.

Pekudei: Creating sacred space and creating community requires holding each other accountable

Aside

 

The description of the building of the Tabernacle continues and with great detail we learn about the physical mishkan, about the materials that went into creating it, about the cost to the community who freely gave of their wealth and skill, about how the process of creating it became a community project and one which created community as much as the building itself.  Here in Pekudei we have the equivalent of a modern AGM – the accounts are presented in detail so that everyone can see what went on, and no one could hide behind status or mystique. The sidra actually begins “These are the records (Pekudei) of the Tabernacle of the Pact, which were drawn up at Moses’ bidding”

            The building of the Tabernacle was a direct result of the building of the golden calf.  After Aaron had given in to the request to build a god figure that the people could see, once Moses had disappeared into the top of the mountain and didn’t seem to be coming back, God had reluctantly realised that the people needed more than blind trust, more than simple faith – they needed something to hold on to.  So, having attempted to build a god-figure that they could see, God moved them on to constructing a building for the God they could not see – and than of course gave the added twist that this building would not in fact be the dwelling place of God – if they built it said God, then God would dwell among THEM.

            The people were very busy building the mishkan. Though God had provided the blueprint, and had engaged the architect and builders so to speak in Bezalel and Ohaliav, the fact remained that there was a lot more to do, and we are told repeatedly in biblical narrative and in the midrash that ALL the people were involved – both in terms of giving to the mishkan and in terms of supervising or of being accountable to.

            The purpose of building the structure is a little ambiguous – clearly it was needed for the people to have some tangible and existing sign that God was among them, but the greater agenda seems to have been that not only did the people need a sense of the proximity of God, they needed too to feel the support of their companions.  The building of the mishkan was in reality the way to build the community – its values, its processes, its vision.  It also gave the people a much needed task – subsisting in the desert waiting to go into battle in some nebulous future cannot have been easy for them, and must have sapped morale and caused them to question the meaning of their existence.  It is as if God responded to the anxiety of the people when they thought that Moses had gone and they were leaderless by giving them a commission to undertake – in effect God decided to keep the people busy, as they would then not get into the sort of trouble they did around the Golden Calf. Being busy meant they would also stop complaining – a habit they seemed to have polished into an art form already.  So God gave them a task and they formed themselves into a committee and threw themselves into the job.  When the mishkan was completed, and they were busy giving their accounts in sidra Pekudei, one commentator tells us that God said “Woe is Me, for now they will turn their attention away from creativity and working together, and once more lean towards destruction and separation.!

            The writer of that insight certainly understood how the Jewish community can behave – pulling together in times of crisis or shared values, bickering and pulling apart at other times.

                       So, if the purpose of the building was really to create a way of behaving together, so as to build the people into a community, the end of the project must have been a critical time for the Israelites.  I think that that is hinted at in the way the narrative develops, for the other major theme of Pekudei is the robes of the priesthood, and the mechanisms for developing that whole priestly structure, and this of course will lead us into the themes that will be preoccupying us over the next weeks of Torah readings – Vayikra, the book of Leviticus, is largely about the inner workings of the cohanim, the priestly leadership who will have responsibility for the worship of the people.

            But  before we move on to the priesthood, let’s stay for a while with the twin theme of building and of community, what is known in the trade as minyan and binyan. 

We have always been a travelling people.  We have built buildings and then left them behind. What is of prime importance to our people isn’t the place we live or worship in, but what we do in it, not the material structure but the structure of our community. That said, the space in which we come together as a community – our Beit Knesset, the house of meeting which also acts traditionally as Beit Midrash – house of study, and Beit Tefillah – house of prayer, is hugely important for us.  It is the space in which we become a kehilla, the area where we function as part of the Jewish community.  So while rabbinic priority is always on minyan – community, rather than binyan – building, and while we attach more importance to a group of people creating a cemetery and a school before they create a synagogue – and indeed why we teach that any clean and respectable room can function as a prayer hall – it doesn’t have be dedicated or specially consecrated to make it ‘holy’ – we do care very much for our religious buildings.  There is a reason for this, and it can be traced to the building of the mishkan – we learn that how we create and treat sacred space is reflected in how we create and treat each other as people with whom we have a profound bond of covenant.

While the mishkan was the dwelling place of God, it is no accident I think that modern Hebrew has taken the root word shachen and turned it into the word for the local community. In English we live in suburbs – places less than the more important city around which we are arranged, but in Hebrew we live in sh’chen’ut – in a neighbourhood, a place of community.

There is a connection between our sacred space and our community –  a connection so deep and intense that we can create one by creating the other.  Sometimes we see this in the bonds we have with old synagogue buildings – it seems to me that every week there is a letter in the Jewish press about an old – sometimes even abandoned – synagogue needing to be saved for the community.  Sometimes we see the connection in the processes – just as community was built as mishkan was built, so we generate our community and deepen it by involving ourselves in the continuing development of our shared building. 

            This is an ongoing movement for us.  Our building becomes emblematic of our inner belief system, it both shapes us and must be shaped by us.  Sometimes that is difficult and we can get bogged down in detail – the sort of detail that Pekudei is also full of – how much money, how many hooks or nails, who paid for what, where the money went, who said it should…. That detail is important because it shows that all decisions made for the community must be transparent and open to all, it shows that no-one is above accounting for their actions, it shows too that leadership – in this case of the craftsmen Bezalel and Ohaliav – must be given to people who are capable and who understand more than just the details – Bezalel is described as having chochma, bina and da’at – not as being a chabad hasid, but as having wisdom, understanding and knowledge, in other words the widest possible sensitivity to information and how it is used.  He must have been good at the details, but he was good too at the overall vision of what was to be created. And importantly, he helped the community come together in order to create both binyan and minyan.

 

Parashat Vayakhel: we create and live in holy time

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The opening three verses of Vayakhel deals with the observance of Shabbat: “And Moses gathered together all the congregation of the Israelites and said to them: these are the things which God has commanded that you do. Six days shall you labour, and the seventh day shall be holy, a Sabbath unto the Eternal; whoever does work on it shall die. You shall not kindle fire in all your habitations on the Shabbat day.  Rashi reminds us that the verse order, where the law of Shabbat precedes the laws about the building of the Mishkan, teaches that even the building of the Sanctuary is less important than observing Shabbat.  The Sabbath, the day for remembering God’s creation, for resting from work, is so important that even the holy work of building this place must stop for it.

 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speaks of Shabbat as being ‘a palace in time’. He sees the entwining of the biblical texts on Shabbat and the Mishkan, and understands that sacralising time is far more important than sanctifying space. The pattern of six days of work which are followed by the Shabbat when all labour should be avoided, is a deliberate resonance with the Creation of the world in Genesis. Shabbat is the culmination of the Creation, a weekly prompt to us of our purpose in the world.  Heschel reminds us that “The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space. Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation, from the world of creation to the creation of the world.”

The sanctification of time rather than place is the real innovation in the worship of the incorporeal and transcendent God. Along with its lack of physical dimension, time is universal, it belongs to everyone. Unlike buildings or land, no one can claim that the day belongs to them alone, no one can claim ownership of time. And the sanctification of time does something else. As Heschel wrote “Judaism is a religion of time aiming at the sanctification of time... There are no two hours alike. Every hour is unique and the only one given at the moment, exclusive and endlessly precious.”

Each of us is able to control how we use our own time, each of us has the same resource measured in minutes, hours, days, weeks, seasons. If we choose to pay attention to how we use our time in this world, if we deliberately use our time to work for the purpose of making our world a more sacred place, then we will have understood the message in Vayakhel.  

Heschel reminds us that the verb ‘kadesh’ meaning to sanctify or to separate out for a distinct purpose is first used at the end of the story of Creation, when God “blessed the seventh day and made it holy”, a statement we recite at kiddush. There is no other reference to anything else in creation being made holy. Not the world, not people, not any special place. At the beginning of our history holiness was to be found in time. We became a holy people much much later, at the theophany at Sinai. And places only became holy with the building of the Mishkan, the sanctuary whose completion we read about this week.

 Every hour we have is unique, filled with possibility, endlessly precious, and potentially holy. Once we have sacred buildings it is easy to forget that actually we live in sacred time. But we do; and ultimately each of us uses our own time, making choices about how we spend it, how we allow its use to impact upon us.

 Time is more sacred than space. And all of us live in  time that is limited yet infinitely possible.  As we come towards the end of the book of Exodus, leave behind the stories that begin in slavery and move into the wealth of possibilities that is the desert experience, the constraints of place need no longer oppress us – we inhabit holy time.

Parashat Tetzaveh: Do clothes really make us who we are?

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In this sidra, Moses is told to “Bring near to you Aaron your brother, and his sons with him, from among the children of Israel, that they may minister to Me in the priest’s office, Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, Eleazer and Itamar, Aaron’s sons.  And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for splendour and for beauty.  And you shall speak to all that are wise-hearted, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they make Aaron’s garments to sanctify him, that he may minister to Me in the priest’s office.  And these are the garments which they shall make: a breastplate, and an ephod, and a robe, and a tunic of chequer work, a mitre, and a girdle; and they shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, and his sons, that he may minister to Me in the priest’s office.”(Exodus 28:2ff)

What is the connection between the sacred garments and the work of the priest? Why should the sacred garments be for splendour and beauty? And why should they be made by people who are especially wise?

Rav Kook reminds us that clothing has more than a utilitarian function, to protect us from the weather and to encase our fragile skin in more hardy materials. While animals have fur and feathers for such purposes, we humans are different, we are more vulnerable and have to create an outer layer for defence.  But that is not our only difference – in creating clothes we can also affect how we feel about ourselves and others, clothes can influence our attitudes and our feelings, alter our state of mind, signal something important to ourselves and to others. Essentially clothes can be powerful drivers of our sense of self. It may be simple such as the wearing of a uniform or professional outfit which gives us confidence and standing, it may be bridal wear or mourning outfits signifying change of status or emotional state. Rav Kook sees this function of clothing as having great theological and  ethical value. “It stresses those qualities that separate us from the animals and their simple physical needs. It enables us to attain a heightened sense of holiness and dignity. By covering our heads, wearing modest dress, and fulfilling the mitzvot of tefillin and tzitzit, we deepen our awareness of God’s presence.” (Ein Eyah vol. II, p. 354)

When God sends Adam and Eve out from the Garden of Eden to the exposed world outside, the first thing God did was to make them clothes – garments made of skin to replace the ones they had made themselves of fig leaves to cover their newly realised nakedness (gen 3). It is an act of protection and of love, and similarly to when God marks Cain in order to safeguard him as he wanders the world, it is also a reminder of an awareness of God, that we are more than we appear to be, that we have a spiritual hinterland,  a layer of security beyond the material.

Jewish tradition speaks of Hiddur Mitzvah – a concept derived from the verse in Exodus at the Song of the Sea  (15:2) “This is my God and I will glorify him”. The Midrash tells us that since it is not really possible to add glory to God, this must really mean that we glorify God by the way we perform the mitzvot – and from this develops the art of beautiful ritual artefacts – sifrei torah covers, tallitot, Shabbat candlesticks, Seder plates etc.  So clearly the notion of Aaron and his sons wearing splendid and beautiful clothes for the priestly function could be seen as part of this idea. And yet, it seems to me that more is being spoken of in the special clothes for priestly work.  Aaron’s clothing sanctifies him. It is not just the wearing of respectfully clean and tidy clothing that is happening here, the clothes literally change the person in some way.

The Talmud makes this idea of clothing changing our perceptions even more explicit “. Said R. Abbahu in R. Johanan’s name, and some derive ultimately [the teaching] from R. Eleazar the son of R.Simeon:  “Because Scripture says “And you shall gird them with girdles, Aaron and his sons, and bind head-tires on them; and they shall have the priesthood by a perpetual statute: When wearing their [appointed] garments, they are invested with their priesthood; when not wearing their garments, they are not invested with their priesthood. (Zevachim 17b).

So the Talmudic rabbis understood that the garments invest them with the priesthood – and removing their priestly clothing will separate them from the priesthood – it is a startling assertion if true, but I think something else is really meant here.  The priestly garments did not make the priesthood, nor did they remove it but they helped Aaron and the priests to feel like they were priests, they integrated the internal reality with the external appearance, and for something so important as ministering before God this was of critical importance.

I once heard of a condition called “Bishop’s syndrome” – I have no idea if it is really there in the medical textbooks, but essentially it describes the sense of disbelief when someone climbs high in the clerical hierarchy and fears that somehow they are not deserving of this status or title. It is characterised by the anxious thought that “one day they will find out I am not a proper bishop”. I guess it could be called “head teacher’s syndrome” or you could insert any role which requires competence and responsibility.   To wear the ‘uniform’ can help ‘create’ the persona, both for the person wearing it and for the person who sees it, and we see this most powerfully today in the medical white coat, or the hi-vis jackets.

I experience this phenomenon when I wrap myself in tallit. Not only am I delineating time for prayer and focus on meaning, I am delineating space around myself, and signalling to myself and to others that I am becoming my more prayerful self.  The fact that I am wearing the uniform of the mitzvot, that I am enwrapped and made rapt in the warmth of prayer, allowing myself to immerse in the sea of prayer and conversation with God helps me in both the preparation and the act.  The beauty of my tallit, the knowledge that it was made with love and mindfulness, all help to make this a special time.  

I also experience this phenomenon when sitting in shul and seeing all the people around me wearing tallit, people who walk in to the room as ordinary Jews somehow become the people of Israel, flocking together, shawls draped over shoulders, creating a sea of prayer – and the opposite occurs when they take off their tallitot and return to the world of the ordinary.

Aaron and his sons are to wear special garments in order to minister before God. The clothes help them cross the boundary from the ordinary to the extraordinary. They help the people to see them not as frail human beings but as priests of God. The fact that the clothes are beautiful, that they are made with mindfulness all help to foster the sense of transformation.

We see clothes today as signifiers often of role or of status – but rarely do we think of them as the agents of change. And rarely do we recognise the power of clothing to direct our thinking, so when we are impressed by someone in expensive or designer wear we may forget that the person inside is not the clothing. The person inside is special, is a child of God, is unique and has gifts and talents, feelings and thoughts –the clothing is an outer layer designed for protection and action. The body is the clothing of the soul – and our tradition reminds us that when the clothing of our material self wears out and is respectfully disposed of, the soul will continue with God.

Parashat Terumah: In the making of Sacred Space, we create Sacred community

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When Jacob left his home and journeyed to Haran he spent the night on the road. There he had a dream of a ladder between heaven and earth, and of God standing above him. When he woke, he said to himself:  Ma Norah HaMakom ha’zeh. Eyn zeh ki im beit Elohim, v’zeh sha’ar hashamayim.   ‘How full of awe is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ Gen 28:17

Sacred space is something that we all resonate with. And in parashat Terumah we have the beginnings of the first deliberately created sacred space.

When Jacob recognised the awesomeness of the place where he had so blithely slept, he simply set up a pillar and offered a sacrifice of oil to the God he had just encountered. He moved on to Haran the next day, keeping with him the memory and the promise God had given him. He had no need to do more than mark the space for future use, but we need more – either because we have never had an encounter with the divine, or because we know that memory fades and we need a more concrete reminder of what God can be for us – we need to inhabit sacred space.

In parashat Terumah God tells Moses to build a sacred space – a mikdash, a place that is in some way kadosh – separate, distinct and special, that embodies an idea and directs us towards it.

From earliest times the commentators have pointed out that what the mikdash does NOT do is to embody God, or in any way be a place where God actually lives. The phrase that God uses “Assu li mikdash v’shachanti BETOCHAM” – let them make for me a mikdash, a sacred and separate space, and I will dwell AMONG THEM is key.Image

The mikdash is the first building to be created for the awareness of God, it will be in the midst of the camp and will be a portable building that moves with the community, but it will be in the making of it – assu – that God dwells among us. Moses is told where and how to build the mikdash.  There are chapters and chapters of detail as to how to build it, with what materials, what colours shapes and sizes, how much everything weighs and costs, where it is to be placed. But all of that is secondary – God’s presence isn’t in the building, but in the people working to create it. The presence of God is something that occurs only when people are actually doing something to bring it about.

 

 

The synagogue I grew up in, the Bradford Synagogue was the third Reform synagogue in this country and is the second oldest building (Manchester having lost its original synagogue in Park Place). The quotation at the top of the extraordinarily decorated exterior comes from a young Jacob who had just encountered God in a very ordinary place, “Ma Norah HaMakom hazeh. Eyn zeh ki im beit Elohim, v’zeh sha’ar hashamayim.   ‘How full of awe is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” was one that seemed to fit the grandeur of the Moorish Architecture of this beautiful building which was built in 1880 as the Bradford Synagogue for British and Foreign Jews. It was and is an amazing building, with vaulted ceilings and a free standing domed ark with grille-work to the front standing within a huge niche which is painted a midnight blue, and golden stars shine behind it, so that as a child it was easy to imagine being in a different and exotic world. Added to that the rich scarlet of the bimah coverings and the Persian carpets covering the raised area by the ark meant that truly it was (and is) a place filled with awe.. It was an awesome place and a place where heaven and earth met because of the community which met within it, which educated its children and celebrated the festivals and fasts of Jewish time. It was a community always small enough for every single person to matter, for everyone to have to be involved if it would survive.Image

That Synagogue is proof that it isn’t really the building that creates a sense of God, however gorgeous and ornate it might be – it is the people who come to work within it, the ordinary people who in daily life might work in retail or wholesale, be dentists or doctors, teachers or journalists.  Each of them, with willing heart, brought what they had to create a community. The whole key is in that verb – assu. We have to be doing, to making, to be forming and creating the whole time, not resting on our laurels in beautiful places, not turning places into museums of sacred space. Jacob had the right idea when having acknowledged the power of the encounter with the words “Ma Norah HaMakom hazeh. Eyn zeh ki im beit Elohim, v’zeh sha’ar hashamayim.   ‘How full of awe is this place! this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.‘ –  he then he marked the place and moved on.

Sacred space is only sacred if we keep adding to its kedushah by being ourselves people who are kedoshim – people who follow the sacred principles and try to be more like God in our behaviour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Women in Public Space – a proud Jewish tradition in danger of being forgotten

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Where has it come from, this strident male voice insisting that women are so dangerous that they must neither be seen nor heard? When did woman, created equally and simultaneously alongside man in the first creation story  (Genesis 1:27) lose that position in the eyes of some commentators so that they not only feel the need to hide women away from the public eye and mute our voices, but go on to claim that this is God’s will as indicated in bible? And then, for good measure, decree that women cannot study these texts for reasons of modesty?

The position of women in Judaism is under assault and despite what some may say, this is essentially a modern phenomenon. Biblical women are strong personalities, active players in the narrative. Sarah, like Abraham, “makes souls” (Genesis 12:5). God tells Abraham “in all that Sarah says to you, listen to her voice (obey her); for through Isaac shall your descendants be called. (gen 21:12) making Sarah as important a transmitter of covenant as Abraham. The other matriarchs are equally powerful players in the narrative, as are many other women in bible. The Talmud tells of the seven prophetesses in bible (BT Megillah 14a) including Deborah, the only person in the book of Judges to actually be seen making judgements for the Children of Israel  who came to her for rulings  (Judges 4:5). Women scholars can be found in our tradition down the years: Talmud records the comments if first century Ima Shalom,  In the 2nd Century Beruriah, daughter of Rabbi Hananiah ben Teradyon was such a scholar that Talmud tells us “she learned three hundred laws from three hundred teachers in one day” (BT. Pesachim 62b).  Rashi’s daughters learned Talmud.

We have archaeological evidence that there were women leaders in the ancient synagogues from the second century on, that they were active participants in ancient Jewish society long before the rabbinic period. Women have affected tradition through the generations, be it taking on mikveh for themselves or creating their own prayers and techines. Even the way we pray the amidah is based on Hannah’s prayer (BT Berachot 31). So why now as the rest of the world is waking to the benefits of women in public space of is one part of the Jewish world going in the other direction? And how can traditional Jews recite Eshet Chayil (Proverbs 31:10-31) which celebrates the  domestic and commercial skills of a good woman, and at the same time declare that the mere presence of a woman in the public sphere will cause licentious thoughts and so must be prevented at all costs?

The segregation of women in prayer and study is a case in point. Mechitza is sometimes cited today as the gold standard of orthodoxy – yet less than a generation ago many orthodox synagogues did not require such a barrier between the sexes. Its origin is neither biblical nor from Temple period – indeed it most likely entered Jewish practise in medieval times from the practises of the people among whom the Jewish people were living. According to Talmud there was only one day in the year when men and women were separated, on the exceedingly festive Simchat Beit Ha’Sho’eva.  (Sukkah 5:1) Fascinatingly, according to the Talmud, on this day in order to prevent too much rowdy behaviour, there was a rabbinic enactment (takkanah) to separate the men and women, and after some trial an error putting the men outside the courtyard and the women inside, then vice versa, the solution was hit upon – to build a gallery above the courtyard and to place the women safely above the fray. Fancy that- a rabbinic enactment changing the plans of the Temple! Imagine the daring to create an architectural reformation that goes against the original divine blueprint.

The Talmudic Rabbis are well aware of this huge dissonance and dislocation in the tradition in order to respond to the people and attempted to support it with a verse from Zechariah, and as all those who study or write response know, supporting verses from the prophetic books are not enough to create Halacha, and most certainly they are not of the category of biblical law. The sleight of hand would be amusingly audacious if it has not meant within the last generation or so that it has disappeared behind the “because I say so” school of responsa, and emerged as a biblical imperative that must not be questioned.

 The area of the Second Temple known as the Ezrat Nashim was not an area designated especially for women as is popularly imagined, but the first courtyard as one entered the Temple precinct and it is clear that both men and women mingled within it. There is no evidence – either textual or physical, that men and women were separated during public worship until the middle ages when we find the statement in the tenth century Tana D’vei Eliyahu that “a man should not stand among women and pray, because he is likely to be distracted by them” – a statement that seems to imply that men are indeed praying alongside women.  

So why in the last few years has one part of the orthodox world chose to focus on taking women out of public space? Why have the laws of tzniut (modesty) become not a spiritual aid, but a stick with which to beat girls and women, to force them to suppress much of their own selves as an act of piety. Posters abound in the frum world, such as the ones shown on this blog, warning women that if they do not wear suitably modest clothing the messiah will not come, they may cause ill health to others and even to themselves, the world is dependent on their covering up and ensuring that no one might notice them at all as women.  There are attempts to silence the voices of women in public, to prevent women singing even at secular events such as Israel Independence Day or Holocaust Memorial Day, although confusingly the responsa about what and where women may sing are so many and varied that what one rabbi may see as the worst possible time and place is noted by another as the only permissible way for women to sing….  And now women’s prayer minyanim are under attack, something that has happened throughout the ages in the Jewish world as attested by the many prayer books left behind, women praying together, studying and reading Torah together, are suddenly in the firing line for some rabbis determined to have a ruling calling them inauthentic, and outside the orthodox fold.

As a woman rabbi trained and working in a progressive stream of Judaism, this concerns me deeply. While I know enough to know how to challenge some of the so called traditions and see them in their context, and can read and critique the responsa which are steering this flight into a mind-set one cannot even really call medieval, I also know that there is a growing determination to control women as never before, and this worries me. Where is it coming from this strident male voice that is insisting that women are dangerous, that sexuality is impure, that authenticity can be found in a mind set so far from biblical and most rabbinic sources as to be from a different world. What is happening in some parts of the Jewish world that it is consuming not only the rights to self expression of women, but also the dynamism and scholarship and thoughtfulness of so many years in order to make a one size fits all costume to clothe and smooth away and hide from view the diversity, the openness and the audacity of our rabbinic ancestors.

Mishpatim: Respecting life, do not add insult to injury

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Three times Torah tells us not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk. (Exodus 23:13, 34:26 and Deuteronomy 14:21)
Why is Torah so interested and concerned about this practise that it repeats the prohibition so insistently?
The probable reason is that this act must have been one that was practised by the surrounding peoples for religious/idolatrous reasons and it must also have been seen as quite attractive to the Israelite people – otherwise why would Torah mention it?
Talmudic rabbis give no reasons for the prohibition. It is the later commentators from the medieval period who turn their attention to a rationale. Maimonides(died 1204) suggests that it was an idolatrous practise but he gives no supporting text for his statement. Sforno (d 1550) also thought that the law referred to an idolatrous practise in which young goats were cooked in their mother’s milk as a kind of fertility rite and indeed an Ugaritic text translated in the 1930’s seems to talk of an agricultural fertility ritual of doing just this, followed by spreading the mixture on the fields.
But whether or not this was a practise of the surrounding peoples performed in order to bring about fertility or to appease their gods, the prohibition of “basar be’chalav” (meat in milk) is profoundly embedded in Jewish dietary practise, and the three references are used as the basis for three separate laws:
The prohibition against cooking a mixture of milk and meat
The prohibition against eating a cooked mixture of milk and meat and
The prohibition against deriving any benefit from a cooked mixture of milk and meat. (BT Chullin 115a)
However regardless of the origin of this prohibition, and also of the way that the Jewish legal tradition has taken it, there is another, ethical dimension to the statement.
Sforno argued that as well as this being a practise of idolatry, the using of the milk of an animal to cook its child is inhumane, and he compared it to the principle of shilu’ach ha’keyn – the injunction to send away the mother bird from a nest before taking the eggs, so that she does not get distressed in seeing it. Ibn Ezra also understood the injunction ethically, to mean that one should not to kill a mother and its offspring at the same time, as this would show an inexcusable lack of sensitivity to life.
But the ethical message was, I think, best put by Rabbi Hugo Gryn z’l who echoes Philo of Alexandria by suggesting that the passage was in reality an imperative not to add insult to injury – that is, not to use the thing meant to nurture a child as the agent of its destruction. This isn’t about mixing milk with meat, but about cooking with mother’s milk – about bringing together life and death in some terrible symbolic fusion.
Judaism has a profound respect for life – even that of a herd animal. Hence our system of shechita (kosher slaughter) so that a life taken for food is taken reflectively and respectfully. This respect for life is also demonstrated in the value we must place on every human being, no matter what their social status or their state of health and ability to contribute to the community.
Life is a gift, to be enjoyed and valued, respected at all times. Whatever happens in our lived experience, we should take care not to add insult to injury but to treat everyone with the same respect and sensitivity.