And The Seeds That Were Silent All Burst Into Bloom And Decay (Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia - "Eyes Of The World")

          With the conclusion of Passover and the return of our house to normal, I find myself constantly referring to the Jewish Calendar.  Besides counting the Omer every evening since the second night of Pesach, I start checking the calendar because a new Jewish month begins shortly. I check the calendar because this week the Jewish people commemorated Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. Next week, Israel will observe Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom Ha’Atzmaut (Independence Day). I recently conducted a funeral for a Holocaust survivor. The woman died alone. She had no surviving family members. She never married, never had children. She lived with her sister and when the sister passed away she went into an old age home. The lawyer who looked after her estate explained this to me. Normally, I would meet with the family and ask all kinds of questions in order to get to know the story and the life of the deceased. The silence occurs after the family has shared numerous details about the life of their loved one and that silence is the silence of quiet peaceful pleasant memory. For the funeral of this Holocaust survivor, there was only the silence of an elderly woman’s life and an even more resounding silence in her death. There was no one to tell me about her life nor her death. Rather there was only silence.

          This morning we read from Parsha Shemini. The Parsha is comprised of chapters 9,10, and 11 of Sefer Vayikra. In the first chapter of the Parsha, Aaron has now been separated from the camp, and the people for 7 days. He has now become spiritually pure to make offerings on behalf of the people to God. He now makes the first public offering on behalf of the people and God accepts it. The second chapter is a narrative that tells us about Aaron’s two eldest sons, Nadav and Avihu. They want to approach godlike their father did, however, they are not spiritually ready. They offer “strange fire”, and are immediately killed.  Moshe instructs Aaron and his two surviving sons about the appropriate behavior that is necessary when making offerings on behalf of the people. The third chapter of the Parsha discusses all the animals that are permitted and prohibited under the laws of Kashrut.

        Upon the death of Nadav and Avihu, Moshe has to tell his brother Aaron of his son’s death.  Vayomer Moshe El Aharon Hu Asher Diber Adoshem Leimor Bikrovai Ekadesh V’Al P’nei Chol Ha’Am Ekaveid – Moshe said to Aaron: “Of this did God speak, I will be sanctified through those who are closest to me, thus I will be honored by this entire people.” (Lev. 10:3) In as touching and humane a manner as one will ever read, Moshe tells Aaron that his sons have gone to God. Aharon’s response is silence. Vayidom Aharon – and Aaron was silent (Lev. 10:3). He didn’t cry out, he didn’t protest, but rather remained silent. Ramban, the 13th century Spanish Torah commentator explains that prior to Moshe’s words of comfort, Aharon had been weeping loudly. Moshe’s words of consolation calmed Aharon and he became silent. Aharon’s weeping was not only because he discovered that two of his sons had died but he was unable to make sense of the senseless. Parents aren’t supposed to bury children.  Aharon’s silence was not the silence of indifference, nor the silence of emotional shock. Aharon’s silence was the silence of acceptance.  He accepted Moshe’s words and God’s actions. Aharon’s silence indicated that he was able to make sense out of something that seemed senseless. When his sons died, there was someone to weep for them and there was someone to give meaning to their lives and to their deaths. Only in the aftermath of ascribing meaning to his sons' lives and his sons' deaths were Aharon capable of silence. Only then could Aharon listen to Moshe speak to his remaining two sons as to the appropriate manner in which he and his sons, given their stature and role within the community, must conduct their lives.  

          For the funeral of the Holocaust survivor, there was only silence because no one was able to tell me about this woman’s life nor death. I couldn’t help but think about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Jews whose deaths were greeted with silence because there was no one to talk about their lives, their deeds, their stories. This was not the silence of a pleasant memory after the memories have been shared. Nor the acceptance of death because that person’s life made sense.  Instead, there was only the silence of not accepting the unacceptable nor trying to make sense out of the senseless. 

Peace,

Rav Yitz

Lord, Try To Read Between The Lines; I Had A Feeling I Was Falling, Falling, Falling Lord, I turned Round To See (Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia -"Bertha")

           It has been quite an emotional week. This week is my grandfather’s 6th yahrzeit. Six years later, there is rarely a day that I don’t think about him. Three years ago, this week was our son’s bar mitzvah which we celebrated in Israel. Also, three years ago, on the day our son read Torah at the Kotel, Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. This week, my Rebbe passed away after a long illness. Unable to travel to the States, I had to watch as the service was streamed. Our family attended a Zoom memorial service for a great uncle, my late grandfather’s brother in law (his children and I were very close). We also celebrated with our friends who celebrated their son’s wedding in Israel. We also celebrated our son’s 16th birthday this week. Amid the emotional whipsaw of these moments of joy and sorrow, I have cherished quiet moments of watching the ball game with my son, or a movie with my daughters.

          This week's Parsha is Re'eh. Moshe continues his discourse. He has already explained the Mitzvot, and he continues to do that. Moshe has alluded to the blessings of life if B'nai Yisroel follows God's commandments. He has and continues to allude to the curses that will befall B'nai Yisroel if they violate the most important commandment-idolatry. "See I present before you today a blessing and a curse" (Deut.11:26). V'haklalah Im Lo Tishm'u el Mitzvot Adonai Eloheichem V'sartem Min Ha'Derech Asher Anochi M'taveh Etchem Ha'yom La'lechet Acharei Elohim Acheirim Asher Lo Y'Datem-"And the curse: if you do not hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God, and you stray from the path that I command you today, to follow gods of others, that you did know." (Deut. 11:28) Moshe presents B'nai Yisroel with two pictures, a world when B'nai Yisroel lives up to it covenant with God and one in which they don't.  He reminds B'nai Yisroel of the sanctity of Eretz Yisroel (the Land of Israel), the consumption of foods that are consecrated to the Kohanim and he warns B'nai Yisroel to avoid imitating the Rituals and Rites of the Egyptians and the Canaanites. Moshe reminds B'nai Yisroel to be careful of false prophets, avoiding non-kosher foods, not living in wayward cities, forgiving loans after seven years, caring for the less fortunate, and celebrating the three pilgrimage festivals of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot.

          The Torah tells us: Ki Im El HaMakom Asher Yivchar Adoshem Eloheichem miKol Shivteichem LaSum et Shmo Sham L’Shichno Tidreshu Uvata SHama – Rather, only at the place that Hashem, your God, will choose from among all your tribes to place His Name shall you seek out his Presence, his dwelling, and come there. Certainly, this is reminiscent of the Kadosh Baruch Hu, at the time of the Akeida, telling Avraham that he will show him where to go with his son Yitzchak. Its reminiscent of Avraham as much younger man, leaving his home and going to a place that God would show him., Certainly we could understand Moshe’s words as a  reminder for B’nai Yisroel that “sanctity”. Holiness, Kedusha is central to  Israel, Torah, and Jewish identity. The Sfas Emet (The Gerrer Rebbe from about 1870-1905) reminds us that HaShem’s choice is not revealed until B’nai Yisroel “seeks”.  We only find answers when we seek, when we look, when we investigate. Because we are commanded to seek Shechino, his divine aspects that dwell among us, we are tasked to seek holiness. Holiness is in Time and Space. Holiness is in our  Neshama, Holiness is in our choices, and in our words, our deeds and the way we live our lives. That is the constant choice we are commanded to make HaYom Today –  a choice that we make each and every day and each and every moment.  

          Indeed, the week has been full of all kinds of emotional swings. Yet it dawned on me that precisely during those moments of joy, sorrow, anguish, and gratitude; “seeking” God is most possible. When we are spiritually sedentary, when we are spiritually lazy, we probably lack the spiritual insight of “sight”  of being able to sense or see God. Yet, when we experience the full range of human experience and emotion, we begin to ask questions. Some ask “why”, although I rarely suggest we ask that question. Rather we ought to ask “How”. How do I make this moment, this moment of anguish, or joy, meaningful? How do I make this moment of sorrow or joy holy? When we ask those questions, and we adapt rituals that express meaning in those moments, we embody the words of the Sfat Emet and seek God. In doing so, we make the week full of anguish, and joy, meaningful and sacred.

Peace,

Rav Yitz

The Wheel Is Turning And You Can't Slow Down (Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia - "The Wheel")

This week we celebrated our son’s 11^th birthday, we also commemorated my father in law’s Yartzeit and my Grandfather’s Yartzeit. As our son’s birthday approached, he asked why so many people whom he knew seemed to have died this month.  I reminded him that he was born this month, so it wasn't so sad of a month; and then I added that this was what life means. There is Joy and Sorrow and Life and Death – balance. Sometimes both occur within the same year, the same month, the same week, and even the same day. The Hebrew Month of Av draws to a close and the new month of Elul begins on Shabbat. As the month of Av departs, I couldn’t help but notice just how a unique Hebrew month it is. What made Av so unique? Well it is considered to be the saddest month of the calendar since it was on the 9^th of Av, the Jewish People commemorated the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Also the Jewish People assign a number of other national tragedies to the month of Av. For the first nine days, national mourning manifested itself in our refraining from Weddings, eating meat (except on Shabbat), shaving, haircuts and attending live entertainment. However a week later, the happiest day of the year occurs. Known as Tu’B’Av or the 15^th of Av, it celebrated the wine harvest, the sages explained that this was the first day in B’nai Yisroel’s 40 years of wandering that no one died. Everyone who was alive on this day on the 40^th year of wandering was guaranteed entry into Eretz Canaan. Single girls are matched up with single boys for marriages. This truly marks the Jewish Wedding season. The Month of Av, sometimes can seem like a typical Sunday for a Rabbi where there is both a Funeral and a Wedding on the same day. Av is the one month that embodies the complete cycle of life: Joy and Sorrow; life and death.            

This week's Parsha is Re'eh. Moshe continues his discourse. He has already explained the Mitzvot, and he continues to do that. Moshe has alluded to the blessings of life if B'nai Yisroel follows God's commandments. He has and continues to allude to the curses that will befall B'nai Yisroel if they violate the most important commandment-idolatry. "See I present before you today a blessing and a curse" (Deut.11:26). V'haklalah Im Lo tishm'u el Mitzvot Adonai Eloheichem V'sartem Min Ha'Derech Asher Anochi M'taveh Etchem ha'yom La'lechet Acharei Elohim Acheirim Asher Lo Y'Datem-"And the curse: if you do not hearken to the commandments of the Lord your God, and you stray from the path that I command you today, to follow gods of others, that you did know." (Deut. 11:28) Moshe presents B'nai Yisroel with two pictures, a world when B'nai Yisroel lives up to it covenant with God and one in which they don't. Moshe then reminds B'nai Yisroel what the previous generation learned in the Book of Leviticus.  Ritual behavior and ethical behavior go hand in hand. Both are required in order to live a life of Torah and to follow God's commandments. Moshe then explains that even if one grows discouraged in helping the poor, the Jew is still obligated to help. Moshe offers sage advice. Ki Lo Yechdal Evyon Mikerev Ha'Aretz -For destitute people will not cease to exist within the Land, therefore I command you saying, 'You shall surely open your hand to your brother, to your poor, and to your destitute in your land"

(Deut. 15:11).

            The Torah may be many things, but spiritually unrealistic is not one of them. Judaism recognizes the reality. There will always be those less fortunate.  Whether "less fortune" is a physical, emotional, spiritual, economic, or intellectual not everyone is as fortunate as the next person. We learn that tzuris is part of life and it transcends gender, age, and color and nationality. Judaism and in particular Moshe recognizes that in our zeal to make the world better, in our zeal to do Tikkun Olam (fix the world) we may grow dismayed and even beaten down because there is so much suffering. There are so many in pain, so many are in fact destitute. Perhaps that is why the verse begins commanding us to help those who are closest to us and then working outward.  We begin by helping our brother, then those in our community who are in need, then we begin helping the nation. If the order were reversed we would become absolutely overwhelmed that we would become paralyzed. However by starting with the most immediate, and if everyone were concerned with the most immediate their brother/sister and their community, then helping those throughout the land is not so overwhelming. Even the Haftarah that normally coincides with this third Shabbat after Tisha B’Av, and the third of seven Haftarot which precede Rosh HaShanah, reminds of consolation. Our consolation, the consolation that we began receiving two Shabbatot before until the Shabbat prior to Rosh HaShanah is hope. No matter how awful things are, no matter how many destitute are among us; there is hope. If one is helped, that is one less destitute person. Our consolation is that we can always do something. No it may not be enough. But we can always do something. We can always give Tzedakah, we can always educate others and ourselves, we can always learn more than the day before. We can always offer compassion and solace. And we must always care.

            Peace,

                Rav Yitz

Just Want to Have a Little Peace to Die ( Hunter & Garcia - Black Peter)

Last Sunday, I conducted a funeral, and my seven year old wanted to join me. Conceptually, I think it is important that children are exposed to these various life cycle events. I explained that I could not bring him this time because: this was a funeral for a person he didn't know, and I wouldn't be able his Abba, I had to be the mourners’ Rabbi. He understood. However I was intrigued by the request nonetheless. For my son, and for all our children, we want them to understand and accept these life cycle types of moments as a way of understanding how to live with the subsequent emotions due to the event. The most important gift my wife and I can provide for our children is the emotional strength to treat life and death as "matter of factly" as possible. That doesn't mean there are no emotions, rather those emotions are part of the process of dealing with these life cycle issues in a matter of fact type of way. In a sense we want them to be whole and complete people. We don't want them being scared of life and death, we don't want them to grow paralyzed by life and death, and we don't want them to become emotional basket cases or emotional zombies in regards to life and death. We don’t want their souls and their beings to remain stuck in the emotional intensity and extremes of life. This is our Brit Shalom - Coven anent of Peace for our children.

This Shabbat we read from Parsha Pinchas. The first few Psukim of the Parsha are a direct continuation of the previous Shabbat Parsha Balak. There is no elapse of time in the narrative. Balak concludes with a plague upon Bnai Yisroel for its worship of Moabite/Midianite god, Baal Peor. Aaron’s son Pinchas zealously acts by killing Zimri from the tribe of Shimon and Cozbi the Midyanite woman. God tells Moshe to reward Pinchas for his behavior by giving him the Brit Shalom, the Covenant of Peace. This covenant is only for Pinchas and his descendants. Keeping in mind that B’nai Yisroel has now concluded it 40 years of wandering in the wilderness and are poised upon the eastern bank of the Jordan River; a new census is taken. Just like we needed to know how many left Egypt, we now need to know how many will enter into Eretz Canaan. After the census is taken Moshe must judge a legal case concerning the laws of inheritance when a man has only daughters. This brief narrative is about the “Daughters of Tzelophchad”. Following this narrative, God commands Moshe to teach the new generation the laws for time bound offerings including the Shabbat offering, the Rosh Chodesh offering, the offerings for the Shelosh Regalim (Three Pilgrimage Festivals etc).

Isn't it odd, or perhaps even disturbing, that Pinchas' zealousness, his subsequent spear throwing and impaling his targets is rewarded with a Brit Shalom - a Covenant of Peace and Brit Kehunat Olam - a covenant of an everlasting Priesthood? (Num. 25:12). Through our modernist lens, I imagine that most people consider or at least can understand why some may consider Pinchas act to be nothing more than fanaticism or vigilantism. If we consider Pinchas' behavior to be no different that some fanatic or vigilante; then have a difficult time in understanding Hashem’s rewarding Pinchas. To offer Pinchas Peace and the Priesthood becomes seems incomprehensible. Ibn Ezra (Toledo, Spain 1090 – 1164) explains that God's Brit Shalom was a pledge that Pinchas would be protected from Zimri's kinsmen (the tribe of Shimon) and their desire to kill Pinchas.
The Torah Temima (Rabbi Baruch HaLevi Epstein – Russia 1860-1940) explains that the reward of Peace and the Priesthood was God's way of demonstrating to Moshe, and the rest of the Elders, as well as ChaZaL - Our sages of blessed memory, that such a deed was the result of unadulterated zeal to advance the glory of God. Yet as I read that all I can think of is a terrorist perpetrating a similar act in God's name. The Torah Temimah explains that since we are unable to determine who acts selfishly thereby committing murder and who acts selflessly (advancing the glory of God); the Brit Shalom and the Brit Kehunat L'Olam would only have been given to Pinchas if he indeed acted selflessly. Again, The Torah Temimah's comment makes the assumption that God would never have rewarded someone for committing a heinous act; rather a reward could only have been the result of an act that had been deemed as "good".

However there is another way of looking at this "reward". The Neziv (Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Berlin Poland 1817-1893; the Rosh Yeshiva of the Volozhin Yeshiva) explains that the Brit Shalom is a guarantee of peace from an inner enemy from whatever lurked within Pinchas that caused him to kill another human being without due process. "The Holy One Blessed He blessed him [Pinchas] with the attribute of peace, that he should not be quick tempered or angry. Since it was only natural that such a deed as Pinchas' should leave in his heart an intense emotional unrest afterward, the Divine blessing was designed to cope with this situation and promised peace and tranquility of the soul." We can now begin to make some sense of these covenants. Once Pinchas committed his first act of zealous defense of God's glory, perhaps it becomes easier and easier to commit a second third of forty-eight act of zealous defense of God's glory. At some point, from the Neziv's perspective, the zealot's soul becomes damaged, the zealot's emotions are incapable of feelings, and the zealot's eyes become unseeing except through the lens of their zealousness. The zealot by definition is an extremist and we know that extremism in Judaism is frowned upon and Halachically unacceptable (see the laws of the Nazarite). Precisely because the zealot does not know peace when he/she commits such an act, in Pinchas' case the only gift God could give was that the tumult of his own soul should cease and he should be whole, complete and at peace.

From this perspective, that Brit Shalom was not so much a reward of external gain as it was a reward for internal “normalcy”, the Brit Shalom and the Brit Kehunat L’Olam seem much more appropriate. Isn’t that what we wish for our children? We know that during the course of their lives there will be moments of tumult. We know that they will experience tension between their belief system and the realities of daily life. We know that they will be exposed to extreme emotions of joy, of sadness, of anguish and of anger. Like Pinchas received a Brit Shalom, we offer that same covenant to our children. Indeed when they do experience extreme and intense emotions of life, we want pray that they will be able to return to a state of peace and contentment with themselves and their lives.

Peace,

RavYitz