Ask Me No Questions, Sing You No Names (Peter Monk & Phil Lesh- "Passenger")

Our 8th-grade son participates in a very unique program that only a handful of Jewish Day Schools in North America offer. The program is called “Names Not Numbers”. A small group of 8th-grade students is teamed with a Holocaust Survivor. This “team” goes through a process of interviewing the survivor. Each team formulates interview questions, conducts the interview, tapes the interview, edits the interview, and produces a mini-documentary about their assigned survivor. The team also has a writing assignment and presentation that is made in front of fellow classmates. In about a week, the final product will be shown before a gathering of parents, family, the survivors and their families, as well as school administrators and various members of the community. It should prove to be a remarkably moving and inspirational evening. Certainly, our son’s experience has been transformational on several levels. He learned a powerful pedagogical lesson. He understands what it means to be part of a team, working together to accomplish a common goal. Everyone had a job, each member of the group had to rely upon each other in order to generate this multimedia presentation. Second, our son touched history, history spoke to him in the voice of the Holocaust Survivor. Our son didn’t just read about something from a third party. He didn’t encounter a primary document. Along with his team, he created the primary document by recording the words and the story of his assigned Survivor’s life. While it is very easy to get lost in the numbers of the Holocaust and the enormity of it; our son saw a number on the Survivor’s arm and that number was so much more than just a number. That number belongs to a name, a person, a life.

This week, we begin reading the 4th of the 5 books of the Torah, Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers. This week’s Parsha is the same name Bemidbar. Numbers is aptly named. The book begins with counting, the counting of people, a census. God commands Moshe to take a census, MiBen Esrim Shana V’Mala Kol Yotzei Tzava B’Yisroel – of all males over the age of twenty, everyone who goes out in the Legion of Israel (1:3). Once the number of fighting age males has been established by tribe, each tribe is placed in a specific formation around the Ark. This will become the formation in which Bnai Yisroel is to travel from the foot of Sinai to Eretz Canaan. Finally the Tribe of Levi, the Priests are counted. However because Levi’s only responsibility is the Ark, and the Mishkan; they will not be able to hold land in Eretz Canaan, nor do they fight. Rather they are now counted and assigned specific functions in terms of maintaining the Mishkan. Immediately after Shabbat, the Jewish People celebrate the Chag Shavuot, The Feast of Weeks, the Festival of First Fruits, the holiday that commemorates Matan Torah – The Giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai.  

God order’s a census of people. However for whom is the counting?  Certainly, God is God and already knows the number of souls that comprise B’nai Yisroel as well as those able to fight. When God wants Moshe and Israel or anyone for that matter to do something for himself the language indicates it. Lech Lecha – Go for yourself God commanded Avraham, and Shelach Lecha send for yourself  God will command Moshe in several Parshiot from now.  Here, God commands Moshe Se’u et Rosh Kol Adat Bnai Yisroel count the heads. Since Lecha- for you does not appear; it would seem that the counting is not for B’nai Yisroel nor Moshe, but rather for God. So, why does God need or want a counting? We have already been told that B’nai Yisroel is Am Segula – a treasured nation, meaning B’nai Yisroel possesses some type of value. Each individual has value and from that, each individual has a purpose. Parshah Bemidbar demonstrates that there is an intrinsic value in the individual.  Halachically, we know this because the Legal Principle of Pikuach Nefesh, Saving a Soul exists. This principle appears in the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Shabbat, “the saving of life supersedes the Sabbath (Shabbat 132a). There is a Midrash in Tractate Sanhedrin which expresses the individual’s importance to God, and therefore God’s desire to count us. “If a person stamps several coins with the same die, they all resemble on another. But the King of kings stamps all human beings from the mold of the first person; and yet not one of them is identical to the other one. Therefore every individual has merit and is obliged to say “for my sake the world was created’”. (San4:5).

We all are given numbers some numbers are branded upon us because of hatred. Some numbers are ways in which government can keep track of its citizens such as Social Insurance cards Social security cards. Some numbers are given to us to keep track of how we spend. Some numbers are assigned us so that we can contact each other. It would seem that it is very easy to lose oneself amid the numbers that are used to identify each of us. However, as our son pointed out, amid each number, amid each survivor there is a story. Each individual, like the giving of the Torah, has his/her own narrative, a code that allows survival. Like the Torah’s survival depends upon study and transmission, the same could be said of the survivors and for each member of the Jewish People. Everyone has a story and a code. As our son explained to us, his connection with the past and any connection he has with the next generation depends upon his ability to receive the transmission of the story, and then transmit and teach that story as well as his story to the next generation.

Peace,

Rav Yitz  

And You Don't Seem To Hear Me When I Call (Robert Hunter & Jerry Garcia - "So Many Roads")

Amid the newsworthy coverage of Prime Minister Trudeau’s visit to the White House, amid the bluster and noise that is Donald Trump’s campaign for the Republican nomination, amid the relaxed joy of spring training and the anticipation of another baseball season, my children came home from school last week talking about another terrorist stabbing in Israel. These random attacks have been occurring for months but for some reason this particular attack was very different. The story made the news cycle for a minimal amount of time. No one from our circle of friends in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Diego, Toronto, or Israel, knew the young man., He wasn’t Jewish. Yet when our children came home to talk about the incident, for some reason, the tragedy called out to all of us in a slightly different manner than what we have grown accustomed to. Maybe we have all grown accustomed to Israelis, and Jews, suffering at the hands of these terrorists in Israel. Certainly when a terrorist attack occurs outside of Israel and all different types of people are killed (most recently Paris and California), the news coverage is very thorough and the story occupies a large part of the news cycle. Taylor Force was graduate of West Point, a veteran of several tours of duty in Afghanistan, a Vanderbilt University MBA student who was studying Israel’s entrepreneurial environment that led it to be call “Start Up Nation”. However last week Taylor Force was murdered at the hands of a Hamas terrorist in Jaffa. Those of us exposed to the western press, heard about the story but it received minimal coverage in the mainstream media. It seems that the mainstream media didn’t quite hear enough in order to cover the story or maybe the story itself didn’t call out to the “right” people so that it would receive appropriate coverage. Yes the State Department made a statement, albeit a typically diplomatic statement condemning the violence on both sides of the conflict. Vanderbilt University issued a statement as did the Hillel at Vanderbilt’s campus. Interestingly enough many Jewish educators, and Rabbis took to Twitter and Facebook to offer condolences to Taylor’s family and condemn this heinous act. Even our children heard the calling of another senseless act of terror.  

This Shabbat we begin the third book of the Torah with the Parsha of the same name, VaYikra otherwise known as Leviticus. Unlike Breishit and parts of Shmot which were narratives or other parts of Shmot with were a series of legislative acts, teaching us law after law; VaYikra is something very different. We are all able to relate to narrative and to stories. We can even read the law that governed biblical Jewish society and admire the laws’ humanity, admire the ethical lessons the law tried to teach or even admire the people that the law tried to protect. However when we begin Parshat VaYikra, we all have a problem connecting to the concept of Korbonot, the term used to describe animal sacrifices. We all have difficulty connecting to the various types of Korbonot; the animals permitted for an offering, and the technical aspects of the offering. Do we really need to know how to check of the animal, and to slaughter the animal? Do we need to read about sprinkling the blood of the animal; roasting the animal, and finally eating the animal? Parsha VaYikra and in fact the entire book of Leviticus truly challenges those of us living in modernity. If for no other reason, we are challenged because we don’t have a Mishkan, we don’t have a Holy Temple and we don’t make animal sacrifices. We all understand the concept of proximity within a relationship. A KoRBon from the Hebrew root KeReV, means to draw near, to approach. A Korbon was our ancestors’ way of drawing closer to God. However even before God teaches Moshe all the mitzvot concerning Korbonot, God does something very unique, something that God had never done before to Moshe as a way of drawing him closer.

The first word of the Parsha and the book already creates an environment of “concern for proximity”. VaYikrah El Moshe, VaYidaber Adoshem Eilav M’Ohel Moed Leimor – He called out to Moshe and Hashem spoke to him from the Tent of the meeting saying. (Lev. 1:1). God called, God spoke and God said; three very similar verbs yet slightly different. One calls out to a person when trying to get his/her attention. Rashi, the great 11^th century French commentator, offers several explanations. First this “calling” is Lashon Chiba – a language of endearment. God was calling out to Moshe in a loving gentle manner, and only to Moshe, no one else since no one else heard God’s call. Once called and Moshe approaches, God “speaks” to him. Speaking to someone assumes a partnership or a dialogue. This partnership might not be 50/50, and the dialogue might not be an equally two sided dialogue but it assumes a response. However, “telling” someone to do something neither assumes partnership nor dialogue but rather the transmission of information or instruction without questions. For the first time, God Vayikra el Moshe. God called out to Moshe as a means of singling him out for a vital task: to instruct the Kohanim and the people the appropriate way for them to draw near to God – Korbon. As important as God’s calling out to Moshe, was the fact that Moshe was able to hear God’s call. Moshe was that sensitive, and in tune with his relationship to God.

Sometimes we are not able to hear so well. Sometimes we don’t hear God’s calling out to us. Sometimes God calls out to us for good and sometimes we are called to bear witness. Our silence is a manifestation of fact that we failed to hear a “calling”. When the press misses the story, and focuses upon the bluster of an individual; it fails to hear the calling of its purpose – to bear witness to injustice and evil. Interestingly enough, the world, or at least those connected to the world, connected to digital media, those who pay attention and listen and are able to cut through the noise and really hear the “calling” heard a university mourning, heard a family mourning, heard Army friends mourning, heard classmates mourning. When Prime Minister Netanyahu called Taylor’s family and offered his condolences, an entire country, a country that was not even Taylor’s mourned for him as well. Thankfully our children were able to hear and bear witness as well. VaYitrzror Bitzror HaChayim et Nishmato - May Taylor’s soul be bound up in the bond of life.

Peace,

Rav Yitz