A D’var Torah for Parashat Naso
By Rabbi Matthew Goldstone

Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah

Our parasha this week, Naso, contains a passage recited daily as part of the traditional liturgy, which many parents also use to bless their children each Friday night: The priestly blessing (Num. 6:22-27):

The Lord spoke to Moses:

Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel. Say to them:

The Lord bless you and protect you!

The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you!

The Lord bestow God’s favor upon you and grant you peace!

Thus they shall link My name with the people of Israel, and I will bless them.

There is a lot to unpack in this text, but for the moment I want to focus in on the last line of the trifold blessing: “The Lord bestow God’s favor upon you and grant you peace!” In light of the Read More >

Click HERE for an audio recording of this D’var Torah

The Political Philosophy of Deuteronomy
A D’var Torah for Parashat Shofetim
By Rabbi Len Levin

Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel used to say: On three things does the world stand: On justice, on truth and on peace, as it is said: “execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates” (Avot 1:18).

These three principles—truth, justice, and peace—are like three legs of a stool. A three-legged stool is stable, but if any one of the three legs is removed, the stool cannot stand.

There are five laws in the portion Shofetim in which these principles of Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel are implied:

1. “Justice, justice you shall pursue”—a justice based on truth, without favoritism or bribery (Deuteronomy 16:18–20).

2. In matters of legal controversy, there shall be a supreme court to decide the law (Ibid. 17:8–13).

3. You may have a king, but he must have his own copy Read More >
   

A D’var Torah for Parashat Hukkat – Balak
By Rabbi Len Levin

We are reading two parshiyot this week, each rich in lessons. We can only present a few hors d’oeuvres here; enjoy the rest at your leisure!

* * *

The ritual of the red heifer raised many puzzles for the rabbis, to the point that they said that the wise king Solomon, frustrated in trying to solve them, gave up in despair and said: “All this I tested with wisdom, I thought I could fathom it, but it eludes me.” (Ecclesiastes 7:23; Pesikta Rabbati 14:1) The central mystery arises from the fact that it is a ritual for purification from contact with death. We are still struggling to understand the causes of death, which even now are evolving and mutating as we try to cope with them. A favorite question was: How is it that the ashes of the heifer Read More >

Lessons of the Sabbatical for a Time of Pandemic
A D’var Torah for Parashat Bahar / Behukkotai
By Rabbi Len Levin

“Six years you may sow your field…and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord…You may eat whatever the land will produce during its sabbath.” (Leviticus 25:3–6)

What is the proper balance of work and rest in the Bible? Can the institutions of the Sabbath and the sabbatical year inspire us with ideas for dealing with the disruption of that balance in the current health crisis?

In the biblical creation story, man and woman were originally put in a garden where they could live off the fruit of the trees that grew naturally. By their sin, they were expelled from this paradise into the real world where people must earn bread by the sweat of their Read More >

Lessons of the Sabbatical for a Time of Pandemic
A D’var Torah for Parashat Bahar / Behukkotai
By Rabbi Len Levin

“Six years you may sow your field…and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord…You may eat whatever the land will produce during its sabbath.” (Leviticus 25:3–6)

What is the proper balance of work and rest in the Bible? Can the institutions of the Sabbath and the sabbatical year inspire us with ideas for dealing with the disruption of that balance in the current health crisis?

In the biblical creation story, man and woman were originally put in a garden where they could live off the fruit of the trees that grew naturally. By their sin, they were expelled from this paradise into the real world where people must earn bread by the sweat of their Read More >

The Teachings of Leviticus for This Present Moment
A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayikra
By Rabbi Len Levin

This week we begin reading the book of Leviticus. The interpretation I offer here has benefited from the perspectives of the contemporary scholars Mary Douglas (Purity and Danger) and Jacob Milgrom (The Anchor Bible: Leviticus), both of whom have enriched my understanding of the author’s complex outlook.

The underlying unity of the book’s diverse themes can be seen in the theme of purification—purification through ritual (especially sacrifices—chapters 1–10 and dietary laws—chapter 11), purification through medical diagnosis and quarantine (the laws of leprosy and family purity—chapters 12–15), and purification through ethical living and social justice (the teaching of “love your neighbor” (Lev. 19:18) and the Sabbatical / Jubilee years—chapter 25). In the book’s coda (chapter 26), the author promises peace and prosperity if these teachings are taken to heart in the Read More >

A D’var Torah for Parashat Beshalah
By Rabbi Len Levin

This week’s joyful song at the crossing of the Sea is ensconced in the daily liturgy, morning and evening: “Who is like You, O Lord, among the celestials; who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, working wonders!” (Exod. 15:11) Thus the liturgy utters three ringing declarations about God: God creates, God reveals Torah in love, God redeems.

A naïve understanding would have it that God is active and we are passive in these three actions. But a more sophisticated approach asks: Does God act unilaterally? Can anything happen in human history without human participation and cooperation?

Two weeks ago, God promised: Ve-hotzeiti etkhem—“I will bring you out” (Exod. 6:6). In his liturgical poem Kehosha’ta Elim accompanying the Sukkot lulav processional, the 7^th-century poet Eleazar Kalir read this verse ve-hutzeiti itkhem—“I will be brought out with Read More >

Deluge, Ancient and Modern
A D’var Torah for Parashat Noah
By Rabbi Len Levin

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and all their host. God saw everything that God made, that it was good. All the beings and creatures followed the innate laws of their being, as implanted in them by their creator. Everything was perfectly orderly and predictable.

Then God created human beings and granted them free will. All hell broke loose, and all bets were off.

Corruption spread from humans to all God’s creation. The world was reverting to chaos faster than God could catch the divine breath that was hovering over the waters. God resolved to wipe out the entirety of earthly creation, except for a few specimens from each species that God’s chosen human representative Noah would salvage in order to start over.

After the deluge, God considered what changes to institute to give things a better chance Read More >

There Never Was an Idolatrous City
A D’var Torah for Parashat Re’eh
By Rabbi Len Levin

“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse.” (Deut. 11:26)

“I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life!” (Deut. 30:19)

It should be so simple. But life is rarely that simple.

The extreme of evil, which the Torah bids us shun, is idolatry (Deut. 13:2–19). What is idolatry? In rabbinic literature, idolatry is often equated with kafar ba-ikar —forsaking the fundamental principle of Judaism. In modern parlance, we have other ways of expressing supreme condemnation. “Disloyalty,” “treason,” and “self-hating Jew” come to mind. They carry the same valence of scorn, ostracism, and exclusion as “idolatry” in ancient discourse. Each is used implicitly to condemn an opponent as violating the fundamental principle of Judaism.

But there is more than one fundamental principle of Judaism.

In the Pesah Haggadah, we Read More >

Kedushah: From Hierarchy to Complementarity
A D’var Torah for Parashat Emor
By Rabbi Len Levin

“[The priests] shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God; for they offer the Lord’s offerings by fire…and so must be holy” (Leviticus 21:6).

“These are My fixed times, the fixed times of the LORD, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions” (Leviticus 23:2).

“The world stands on three things: on Torah, on the [Temple] service, and on deeds of lovingkindness” (Avot 1:2).

“A bastard who is a scholar takes precedence over a High Priest who is an ignoramus” (Mishnah Horayot 3:8).

“Holiness determines and actualizes the spirit as moral spirit. And in the same way the spirit determines and actualizes holiness as the action of moral reason” (Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason out of the Sources of Judaism, end of Chapter 7).

Can sanctity be reconciled with equality?

Kedushah—holiness or sanctity—is Read More >

The Center of the Torah
A D’var Torah for Parashat Shemini
By Rabbi Len Levin

“The Masoret (textual tradition) is a safeguarding fence around the Torah.” (Avot 3:13)

What is the core of the Torah? At several places in this week’s Torah reading and in adjacent readings, the astute reader will see notes indicating that this or that verse is the center of the Torah counting by verses, by words, or by letters. What is this about?

The Talmud relates: “The earlier authorities were called soferim [scribes] because they counted [soferim] all the letters of the Torah” (Kiddushin 30a).

From this they concluded that the center of the Torah, counting by letters, is the vav in the word gahon (belly) in the verse, “You shall not eat anything that crawls on its belly” (Lev. 11:42). Counting by verses, it is the verse “[The leper] shall shave himself” (Lev. 13.33). And counting by Read More >

The Center of the Torah
A D’var Torah for Parashat Shemini
By Rabbi Len Levin

“The Masoret (textual tradition) is a safeguarding fence around the Torah.” (Avot 3:13)

What is the core of the Torah? At several places in this week’s Torah reading and in adjacent readings, the astute reader will see notes indicating that this or that verse is the center of the Torah counting by verses, by words, or by letters. What is this about?

The Talmud relates: “The earlier authorities were called soferim [scribes] because they counted [soferim] all the letters of the Torah” (Kiddushin 30a).

From this they concluded that the center of the Torah, counting by letters, is the vav in the word gahon (belly) in the verse, “You shall not eat anything that crawls on its belly” (Lev. 11:42). Counting by verses, it is the verse “[The leper] shall shave himself” (Lev. 13.33). And counting by Read More >

We the People, in Covenant with God
A D’var Torah for Parashat Mishpatim
By Rabbi Len Levin

“And these are the rules that you shall set before them.” (Exodus 21:1)

Who are the them before whom God instructs Moses to set the rules in this week’s portion?

Rashi, following the Talmud (Gittin 88b), interprets this verse as teaching that the judicial rules are to be entrusted to the ordained Israelite judges, not to gentile courts or to Israelite lay persons. On this reading, them refers to the judges (playing on lifneihem to suggest lifnim [within]—a subset of the people).

But the context of this passage suggests a broader audience. This verse is a continuation of the speech beginning in Exodus 20:19: “The Lord said to Moses: Thus shall you say to the Israelites: You yourselves saw that I spoke to you from the very heavens.” On this contextual reading, the rules of Parashat Read More >

Reconciliation is Difficult
A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayiggash
by Rabbi Len Levin

“Then Judah went up to him and said, Please, my lord…” (Gen. 44:18)

“And Joseph could no longer refrain before all those standing before him…” (Gen. 45:1) 

Reconciliation is difficult.

This week’s Torah reading provides the climax to a narrative that has been unfolding for the past several weeks. This narrative begs to be read on two levels—on the level of a specific family, and on the level of social groups.

On the specific level, there is a clash of personalities, such as we experience in many families. The personalities are sharply different, and the sharp personal differences generate conflicts that escalate to critical proportions. In a family of strong personalities, Joseph is extraordinary, and he demands to be treated as special. The brothers resent his superiority attitude and find dubious ways to be rid of him, at great cost to their Read More >

Reconciliation is Difficult
A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayiggash
by Rabbi Len Levin

“Then Judah went up to him and said, Please, my lord…” (Gen. 44:18)

“And Joseph could no longer refrain before all those standing before him…” (Gen. 45:1) 

Reconciliation is difficult.

This week’s Torah reading provides the climax to a narrative that has been unfolding for the past several weeks. This narrative begs to be read on two levels—on the level of a specific family, and on the level of social groups.

On the specific level, there is a clash of personalities, such as we experience in many families. The personalities are sharply different, and the sharp personal differences generate conflicts that escalate to critical proportions. In a family of strong personalities, Joseph is extraordinary, and he demands to be treated as special. The brothers resent his superiority attitude and find dubious ways to be rid of him, at great cost to their Read More >

Call for Spiritual Rebirth
A Dvar Torah for Devarim
By Len Levin

“How [eikhah] can I bear alone your trouble, your burden, your quarrel?” (Deut. 1:12)

A paradox. Deuteronomy is the sunniest, most radiant and optimistic book of the Torah. “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God demand of you? Only this: to revere the Lord your God, to walk only in His paths, to love him, and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul” (10:12). “The Lord your God is bringing you into a good land…where you will lack nothing” (8:7-8). “The Lord your God will bless you in all you do” (15:18). “For you will do what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God (12:28).

But it also contains dark passages. There is the historical recollection of the Golden Calf (9:8-21). There Read More >

A Puzzling Law, Seen in Context
A D’var Torah for Naso
by Rabbi Len Levin

“I will not punish their daughters for loose behavior,

Nor their daughters-in-law for infidelity,

For they themselves turn aside with whores

And sacrifice with prostitutes” (Hosea 4:14).

Sometimes the Torah speaks to us as a timeless document, whose proclamations (“love your neighbor as yourself”; “you shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” — Lev. 19:18, Deut. 10:19) are as relevant to us today as when they were first uttered.

At other times, its laws seem situated in a culture and society so remote from ours, that to tease the universal message from its particulars is a frustrating and complicated task. The law of the ordeal of the bitter waters for the wife of the jealous husband is one of those cases.

The Read More >

Breastplate of Judgment
A D’var Torah for Tetzaveh
Rabbi Lenny Levin

 “You shall make a breastplate of judgment…set in it mounted stones in four rows…corresponding to the names of the sons of Israel” (Ex. 28:15–21).

We know from experience how the abstract ideals of religion are embodied in the sacred objects that become familiar through repeated contact and serve as foci of our sense of holiness. Thus, the implements of the Tabernacle — the Ark, the Menorah, the curtain, the table, and the two tablets of the Ten Commandments — became templates for the artwork of the Synagogue, taking varied forms over the two thousand years of synagogue architecture.

One of the more puzzling of these sacred objects is the “breastplate of judgment” described in Chapter 28 of Exodus. It is associated with the “ephod,” a chest-garment of woven gold, blue, purple and crimson yarns, and with the Urim and Thummim, used in oracular consultations. Read More >

On the Threshold of Eternity
A Dvar Torah for Hukkat
by Rabbi Len Levin

“He who touches the corpse of any human being shall be unclean for seven days…” (Num. 19:11)

For an entire lifetime, one builds up a network of interactions with others in society, a network comprising commerce, family, edifices of knowledge, productive endeavor, life in the public square, a living, breathing complex of order, structure, creative output. When one dies, one takes leave of that world of social interaction and goes on a private journey to we know not where, a mysterious realm where all the bonds of this world are dissolved.

The mourner stands on the threshold of these two realms. Being touched by the recently departed, the mourner feels different. S/he cannot go back to participating at once in the activities of this world as if nothing has happened. S/he must linger a while in the liminal space Read More >

A Society of Free Landholders
by Rabbi Len Levin

“You shall proclaim release [liberty] throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to his holding and each of you shall return to his family.” (Leviticus 25:9)

Three years ago I discussed how the Jubilee law served as a beacon to both the American republic and the reborn Jewish homeland, informing their visions of liberty and economic opportunity for all citizens. (See Levin, Dvar Torah Behar 2014.)

To review: “In order to have a chance to remain free, people needed to have a material sufficiency to earn an independent livelihood. Hence, at periodic intervals — every fifty years — the primary source of wealth, the land itself, was to be redistributed to the ancestral families to which it had presumably been apportioned at the original Israelite conquest.”

The Israeli philosopher Eliezer Schweid, in his Read More >

by Rabbi Len Levin

Moses: A Leader with a Small Ego
A Dvar Torah for Vayikra

There are two peculiarities in the opening of Leviticus that elude the English reader.

The first is that the first clause is missing a subject. Vayikra el Moshe — “and he called to Moses.” Who called? The kabbalists suppose it is an unusual part of God – maybe “Ehyeh” (I will Be) instead of the accustomed “the Lord.” Modern scholars suggest that it shows continuity with the previous passage in Exodus Chapter 40, “Moses was unable to enter the Tent of Meeting because the Presence of the Lord filled the Tablernacle…so He (i.e. the Lord) called to Moses from the Tent of Meeting.”

The second peculiarity is that the word Vayikra (he called) is written with a small aleph as its last letter. There are a number of places in the written Torah where letters are written Read More >

From Sanctity to Social Justice: The Message of Mishpatim

By Len Levin

“And these are the judicial rules that you shall set before them.” (Exodus 21:1)

Last week, God’s majesty was revealed in thunder and smoke, proclaiming the cardinal rules that express universal human morality. The rabbis declared that they were broadcast in seventy languages (Midrash Tanhuma), and history corroborates that they have been disseminated to the ends of the earth.

This week, the focus shifts to the prosaic and the particular: What are the rules for a slave’s manumission after six years of labor? If my ox gores your ox, how much compensation is due? If you borrow my animal and it dies, who bears the loss?

Judaism is famously a religion with a great emphasis on law. The word halakhah (from the verb, to walk) could have been translated “the way” (the Jewish Tao, if you will), but it denotes the detailed prescription Read More >

The Future — A Sealed Book?
By Rabbi Len Levin

If you were handed a sealed envelope that you had reason to believe contained an infallible prediction of the future course of your life—or of the world’s political history of the next twenty years—would you open it?

This week’s portion Vayehi is unique in its orthography of all portions in the Torah. Whereas the beginning of most portions is indicated by a clear paragraph break, with the words beginning on a new line or after a couple of inches of blank space, Vayehi begins after only a two-letter space separating it from the previous text. The rabbis of the third century interpreted this anomaly: “Jacob our patriarch sought to disclose the end of days, but it was sealed off from him.” (Genesis Rabbah 96:1)

Indeed, in the continuation of the portion, Jacob gathers his sons and tells them, “Come together Read More >

“The Deeds of the Ancestors–A Sign for Their Descendants”
A Dvar Torah for Toledot

by Rabbi Len Levin

Imagine the story of Isaac and Rebekah, Esau and Jacob, updated to our time.

Updating the characters is the easier part. We can imagine Isaac as the child of a super-observant, conflicted family, who bears the scars of his father’s life-endangering ascetic practices and the near-permanent estrangement from a half-brother consequent on a family rift. (The character of Danny Saunders in Chaim Potok’s The Chosen has some of these traits.) He has resolved never to inflict on another the trials he has witnessed and experienced.

Rebekah is a cousin, of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish heritage, possibly from the former Soviet Union. While growing up, she heard fantastic family tales about Jews and Judaism, to which she pledged fierce loyalty, but had no direct Jewish education. She has resolved to be forever faithful to Read More >

The Generations of the Wilderness

by Rabbi Len Levin

Should the Israelites of the wilderness generation be condemned for their unruliness and lack of faith? Or admired for their heroic survival in the face of adversity?

Closer to our time: Should Jews of Diaspora be condemned for their effeteness, rootlessness, and apathy? Or should they be admired for their cultivation of intellectual and ethical values, their balancing of universalistic and particularistic concerns, and their sheer survival over 2000 years, keeping the Jewish legacy alive amid adverse circumstances?

“Negation of the Diaspora” was a topic of fierce debate in early Zionist polemics. The exilic mind-set of Diaspora Jewry was compared to the slave mentality of the ancient Israelites. Jews who were too timid to defend themselves against the pogrom perpetrators would have to undergo a change of character in order to reclaim their place in history and build the Jewish homeland.

In a famous exchange of Read More >

To Serve God Without Blemish
by Rabbi Len Levin

“[The priests] shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God; for they offer the Lord’s offerings by fire…and so must be holy.” (Leviticus 21:6)

“Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair said: Torah leads to mindfulness, which leads to diligence, which leads to cleanliness, which leads to abstinence, which leads to purity, which leads to saintliness, which leads to humility, which leads to scrupulousness, which leads to sanctity, which awakens the spirit of prophecy and the resurrection of the dead, to be brought about by Elijah (may he be remembered for good!).” (Talmud Avodah Zarah 20b, Mishnah Sotah 9:15).

We read this week of the strictures of purity incumbent on the priests who officiated in the Tabernacle (and in later periods, in the Temple). They should take special care not to incur ritual impurity except in cases of the utmost necessity, such as performing Read More >

Renewal
A Meditation for Shabbat Hahodesh – Tazri’a

by Rabbi Len Levin

“Let this New-Moon be for you the beginning of New-Moons, the beginning-one let it be for you of the New-Moons of the year.” (Exodus 12:2, transl. Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, Schocken, 1995)

Hodesh = “new-moon” (from hadash, new): the renewal of the moon at the beginning of its monthly cycle. Related to hiddush, renewal.

We thank You, God, for Your many acts of renewal, from ancient times to the present:

Renewal, as the moon, after vanishing to nothing in the morning east, reappears as a silver crescent in the evening west, with promise of fullness in the days and weeks to come.

Renewal, as the earth, shedding its blanket of snow, peeks up green and violet shoots, harbingers of the blaze of glorious vegetation in the months ahead, and we begin a new calendar year.

Renewal, as each young Read More >

What Is Our Present Day Poll Tax?
A Dvar Torah for Shekalim

by Rabbi Len Levin

“When you take a census of the Israelite people, each shall pay the Lord a ransom for himself on being enrolled — a half shekel by the sanctuary weight…” (Ex. 30:12-13)

“A human being stamps a series of coins with the same stamp and they all turn out identical. Not so the Supreme Sovereign, who stamps out all human beings with the stamp of the first human being, yet every one is unique.” (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)

“Whoever performs a single mitzvah will receive benefit and long life and will inherit the land.”

(Mishnah Kiddushin 1:10)

*****

We read the special portion of Shekalim at the start of the month of Adar. This is in commemoration of an ancient practice, when the shekel-tax was collected at the approach of the new fiscal year for the ritual needs and upkeep of the Temple.

The shekel-tax Read More >

A Community of Shared Narrative: Dvar Torah for Bo

by Rabbi Len Levin

“You shall tell your child on that day: This is because of what God did for me when I came forth out of Egypt.” (Exodus 13:8)

“In every generation, a person should regard him/herself as if s/he had personally gone out from Egypt.” (Mishnah Pesahim 10:5)

This week’s portion is the focal point of the narrative extending from the enslavement of the Israelites through the exodus to receiving God’s revelation at Sinai. We read in this portion of the culmination of the plagues, the exodus itself, and the injunction to memorialize the liberation through an elaborate communal ritual.

It is clear from other regulations of this celebration that participation in it was a central requirement for membership in the Israelite community (see Numbers 9:10-14). An alien who becomes a member of the community becomes eligible to participate in the ritual. Conversely, an Read More >

Joseph and Judah as Paradigms
by Rabbi Len Levin

Everyone loves Joseph. But my mentor Maurice Samuel did not. In Certain People of the Book (1955), he relates how Joseph’s taunting his brothers and later manipulating his awesome power to scare the living daylights out of them reminded him of experiences of being taunted and bullied. Samuel tells the story of Joseph and the brothers from the brothers’ point of view.

Samuel also made a broader, more serious analysis of the historic role that Joseph played, according to the biblical narrative. Joseph was the first in a line of Jews (including Samuel Hanagid of 11th century Spain, Benjamin Disraeli, and most recently Henry Kissinger) who rose to positions of power in the non-Jewish political world. Though occasionally using their position to benefit their people of origin, their primary allegiance was to their gentile patrons. The brothers’ not recognizing Joseph is perhaps symptomatic of Read More >

Way of the Spiritual Seeker

Rabbi Len Levin

The Lord said to Abram, lekh lekha–go to/for/by yourself–from your land, from your birthplace, from your father’s household, to the place that I will show you. (Gen. 12:1) Philo of Alexandria in The Migration of Abraham (around 35 CE) offered the following interpretation: Each individual is called on to embark on a spiritual-mystical journey, leaving behind one’s bodily preoccupations and corporeal ancestral speech, and finding the spiritual center that transcends materiality, where one comes in contact with one’s higher self.

Rashi (around 1080) interpreted lekha “for your benefit.” Abraham is told that this will be the start of his flourishing and becoming the progenitor of mighty nations.

The Zohar (~1280) interpreted it as saying: Know and perfect your spiritual madrega (level of being).

Ephraim of Luntshitz (in the Keli Yekar, 1602) interpreted it as addressed to Abraham and saying: Set out to Jerusalem, the navel of the world, Read More >

Coming into the Home Stretch

by Rabbi Len Levin

A Dvar Torah for Hukkat

We begin a new narrative unit with Chapter 20 of the Book of Numbers. After an indeterminate time lapse in the previous few chapters, the text suddenly announces that Miriam died in the first month. Of what year? Correlating this chapter with Numbers 33:37–39 allows us to infer that Miriam and Aaron both died in the fortieth year of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness. We also learn in the present chapter that when Moses lost his temper with the rock, God decreed that he would die before the people entered the Promised Land.

Thus the narrative is giving us clues that Moses is coming into his home stretch, that in this last year of Israel in the wilderness, the leaders who led them this far – – Read More >

PESAH: THE SECRET OF JEWISH MEMORY

by Rabbi Len Levin

The taste of the maror and haroset are imprinted in my sensory memory, along with the smell of the wine and the eggs. The crunchy feel of the first seder matzah between my tongue and teeth. The sound of the familiar melodies and the voices of my family. The sights–the candles, the tablecloth, the special dishes, the Seder plate, the family gathered around the table. All the senses are engaged. Every layer of my personality– subconscious, conscious, and superconscious–focused on the ritual commemoration of our formative historical experience.

This is how Jewish group memory gets transmitted from generation to generation. This is why we have survived for over three thousand years and have kept up the journey several times around the world and back to our homeland in living memory.

In every generation each person should see himself or herself as if he Read More >

God is Elevated by the Gift of Our Talents
Rabbi Len Levin

“Speak unto the Israelites, that they take for Me an elevation-offering (terumah); from each person, as his heart moves him, shall you take My terumah.” Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev commented: Every person is obligated to serve his or her Creator through deed and thought, for the person’s intention and holy thought, s/he raises the Shekhina up from the dust, and through the deed s/he raises herself up and does good on her own behalf” (Kedushat Levi on Ex. 25:2).

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak presumably knew Hebrew well enough to know that the word terumah meant simply an offering. Why was a word from the root rum (“raise high”) used to designate this? Perhaps because when a person brought an offering to the priest, he would perform the gesture of raising the basket of produce or small animal as a token of Read More >

Rabbi Len Levin

“Indeed, God is in this place!”

This week, the Torah tells of the first of two climactic encounters that the Patriarch Jacob experienced, both of them occurring at transitional points of his outward career and inner growth. This week we read of Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. The place — Beth El (House of God) — later became (not coincidentally) one of the major cultic centers of the Israelite kingdom.

The rabbis were so impressed by the image of the ladder connecting earth and heaven that in a rather creative interpretation they conflated Jerusalem and Beth El, understanding them to represent one central connecting point, the umbilicus or navel of the earth, the point from which the creation of the world proceeded. They declared the location of the Jerusalem temple to be Even Shetiyah, the Foundation Stone, for on it the world was founded. This Read More >

Behar
Rabbi Len Levin

All Persons Free under God

“Once leprosy had gone, and the figure of the leper was no more than a distant memory, these structures [the medieval European leprosaria or lazar-houses] still remained. The game of exclusion would be played again, often in these same places, in an oddly similar fashion two or three centuries later. The role of the leper was to be played by the poor and by the vagrant, by prisoners and by the ‘alienated’ [i.e., the insane], and the sort of salvation at stake for both parties in this game of exclusion is the matter of this study.” ― Michel Foucault, History of Madness

Prayer, Shabbat and Halakha: The Portable Mishkan
A Dvar Torah for VaYakhel

In his essay “Halakha and Agada” the modern Hebrew poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik compares the structure of Jewish observance to a cathedral. “Halakha is a creative process. It is the supreme form of art — the art of life and of living. The creations of Halakha grow little by little, piece by piece, out of all the stream of human life and action, till in the end the fragments add up to a single total, and produce a single form. Halakha is the master-art that has shaped and trained a whole nation, and every line that it has graven on the nation’s soul has been inspired by a supreme wisdom which sees the end in the beginning.” (Bialik, Revealment and Concealment, Ibis Editions, 2000, 49–50)

I have earlier expressed in this forum how — in Abraham J. Heschel’s felicitous formulation Read More >

Parashat Beshalah
Rabbi Len Levin

Hanukkah

by Rabbi Len Levin

Why do we celebrate Hanukkah? Why is it not commemorated in the Bible or in the Mishnah? And what lessons does it have for our time?

Hanukkah commemorates the clash of Judaism with the dominant Hellenistic civilization of late antiquity. Not only did the Syrian king Antiochus seek to impose pagan worship on the Jews; there were also Jews who actively sought to blend entirely into that civilization. Males disguised their circumcision in order to compete naked in the gymnasium. The Temple was converted into a pagan temple and a pig was offered on the altar. There was the real danger that the practice of Judaism would come to an end.

The Maccabees led a successful revolt, drove out the Syrians, and rededicated the Temple. “Hanukkah” means “dedication” and its name derives from that event.

But the struggle did not end there. The descendants of the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, founded Read More >

Holy Imperfection
By Rabbi Len Levin

In one of his most Promethean poems, “The Dead of the Wilderness,” the modern Hebrew poet Hayyim Nachman Bialik depicts the generation of the world as sleeping giants, who one day will rise tempestuously to declare, “We are the last generation of slavery, and the first generation of freedom!”

Bialik bases his account explicitly on a passage in the Talmud (Bava Batra 73b), where an Arab desert-dweller reported to have seen the “dead of the wilderness,” so huge that a man on a camel with his spear upraised could pass under the bent knee of one of the fallen giants without touching him. He also implicitly relies on the view of Rabbi Eliezer, who in Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:3 claims that the generation of the wilderness have a portion in the World to Come.

The biblical account does not paint such a positive picture of the generation of the Read More >

Yearning for Wholeness
By Rabbi Len Levin

Chapter 19 of Leviticus is one of the most sublime-and one of the most puzzling-in the entire Bible. Imitate God through being “holy”; honor your parents; keep the Sabbath; do not put a stumbling-block before the blind; love your neighbor as yourself-what could be more ennobling and uplifting? But then there are the puzzling parts: don’t desecrate your sacrifice by keeping it till the third day; avoid mixtures in plowing, seeding, and clothing; don’t eat the fruit of immature trees. What does the one set of rules have to do with the other?

The seemingly indiscriminate mixture of ethical and ritual precepts is quite characteristic of the vision of the author of this section of Leviticus (dubbed “the Holiness Code” by modern Biblical scholars). The late Jacob Milgrom suggested, appropriately, that this author had heard the prophet Isaiah’s denunciation of those who observe priestly rituals and Read More >

by Rabbi Len Levin

Sacred Space and Sacred Time:

This week we take out two Sifrei Torah. In the first we complete the book of Exodus, especially the long sequence of Chapters 25-40 which is devoted to the construction of the Tabernacle and all its appurtenances. In the second we begin the narrative of the Exodus from Egypt, which we will continue and conclude during the upcoming holiday of Passover. The one deals with sacred space, the other with sacred time.

In his book The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel said that whereas the ancient pagans glorified and sanctified space, Judaism sanctifies time. He exemplified this thesis by elaborating on how the Sabbath, that most distinctive creation of the Jewish spirit, creates a “palace in time,” in which we feel transported and uniquely close to God.

Heschel was only partly right. Yes, there is something distinctive about the Jewish relation to time, and much of what Read More >

By Rabbi Len Levin

David Ben Gurion said that whoever does not believe in miracles is not a realist. He may have had in mind the day in 1948 that the fate of Jerusalem depended on negotiation of a cease-fire before the supply of food and water would run out, or a thousand other improbable events on which the life of modern Israel depended.

“God enacted a condition with the Sea, at the time of creation, that it should split upon the arrival of the Israelites.” (Genesis Rabbah, 5:5) The author of this rabbinic saying was cognizant of the Stoic doctrine of natural law-a precursor of our modern scientific view of the orderliness of the physical world-and asserted that if miracles occur, they are part of the fabric of natural causality, not a deviation from it. God works through nature.

In the daily prayer Modim, we thank God for the miracles and wonders that are with Read More >

By Rabbi Len Levin

Why do we celebrate Hanukkah? Why is it not commemorated in the Bible or in the Mishnah? And what lessons does it have for our time?

Hanukkah commemorates the clash of Judaism with the dominant Hellenistic civilization of late antiquity. Not only did the Syrian king Antiochus seek to impose pagan worship on the Jews; there were also Jews who actively sought to blend entirely into that civilization. Males disguised their circumcision in order to compete naked in the gymnasium. The Temple was converted into a pagan temple and a pig was offered on the altar. There was the real danger that the practice of Judaism would come to an end.

The Maccabees led a successful revolt, drove out the Syrians, and rededicated the Temple. “Hanukkah” means “dedication” and its name derives from that event.

But the struggle did not end there. The descendants of the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, founded Read More >

Testament for Universal Humanity
By Rabbi Len Levin

The Portion of Noah concludes the Torah’s universalistic preamble to the narrative of the Jewish people. Though clearly written from a Jewish perspective, it nowhere mentions Israel or Jewry. Abram and Sarai are mentioned at the very end, as among the descendants of the line of Shem, a harbinger of the national narrative of Israel which is to follow. These eleven chapters offer a narrative of the genesis of humanity, with numerous lessons, explicit and implicit, for their moral guidance. They are addressed to all humanity, and have been accepted as a spiritual testament by the Western monotheistic faiths comprising over half the human race.

In Jewish vocabulary, bnei Noah (Noahides, or descendants of Noah) is a technical term. Descriptively, it denotes the entire human race, who according to the Biblical narrative are all descendants of Adam and Eve, but also Read More >

Many Little Things-One Big Thing

By Rabbi Len Levin

“May all Your creatures unite in a single band, to perform Your will wholeheartedly” (from the Uv’khen prayer in the Yom Kippur Amidah).

Jewish thought is a rich network of debates on fundamental issues. I was fortunate to be able to work with Rabbi Gordon Tucker on translating Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Heavenly Torah,an encyclopedic work that reveals the rich tapestry of debate of the rabbis and later Jewish thinkers about fundamental issues of theological outlook within Judaism.

One of the fundamental debates running throughout Jewish thought is: Does God require many little things of us, or a few big things? In the grand theophany at Sinai, did God reveal all the 613 precepts of the Torah? Or did God reveal the ten great principles that underlie all Jewish law, and reserve the explication of the details to Moses later in the Tent of Read More >

The Heifer’s Mysteries: Death and Purification

 The law of the red heifer (Numbers, Chapter 19) is offered in the Jewish tradition as the paradigm of a hok, an arbitrary law whose reasons are known only to God, but surpass human understanding. A red heifer is slaughtered and burned to ashes, then its ashes are combined with pure water to be used in the purification ceremony of people unclean by reason of contact with the dead. The final purification ceremony would take place only after a seven day waiting period following contact with the dead. What could possibly be the rationale of such a ritual?

The 1^st-century Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, after delivering to a gentile an explanation by analogy with exorcism of a demon, was challenged by his students: “You deflected him with a reed! What would you say to us?” He replied: “The dead body does not defile, nor do Read More >

Shavuot: A Voice that Does Not Cease

By Rabbi Len Levin

“The Lord came down upon Mount Sinai” (Exodus 19:20)

I love blintzes and cheesecake. The rabbis based the custom of eating dairy foods on Shavuot on the verse: “Honey and milk are under your tongue” (Song of Songs 4:11). But what are we celebrating? What really happened? Did God really speak to the Israelites, as it describes in the Bible? And how?

“Moses and Elijah did not ascend to heaven, nor did the Glory descend to earth.” Is this a modern skeptic speaking? No, this is the dictum of the second-century Rabbi Yose, recorded in the rabbinic midrash Mekhilta on Exodus (Bahodesh 4), and cited in Abraham Joshua Heschel’s major work Heavenly Torah As Refracted through the Generations (page 350).

It was Heschel’s amazing achievement to show how much flexibility the Talmudic rabbis exercised in interpreting the Biblical narratives of revelation, and the whole Read More >

The Future – A Sealed Book?

Rabbi Len Levin

If you were handed a sealed envelope that you had reason to believe contained an infallible prediction of the future course of your life — or of the world’s political history of the next twenty years — would you open it?

This week’s portion Vayehi is unique in its orthography of all portions in the Torah. Whereas the beginning of most portions is indicated by a clear paragraph break, with the words beginning on a new line or after a couple of inches of blank space, Vayehi begins after only a two-letter space separating it from the previous text. The rabbis of the third century interpreted this anomaly: “Jacob our patriarch sought to disclose the end of days, but it was sealed off from him” (Genesis Rabbah 96:1).

Indeed, in the continuation of the portion, Jacob gathers his sons and tells them, “Come Read More >

Shabbat Ha-Gadol

Herald of Redemption

“Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord.  He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents…”  (Malachi 3:23).

By Michael G. Kohn

And Aaron fell silent . . .

As a congregational rabbi with an aging congregation comforting the bereaved, while fortunately not an everyday occurrence, nevertheless constitutes a significant portion of my time. In addition, as an on-call chaplain at a major medical center, I am occasionally called to come there in the middle of the night to comfort a family who has just lost a loved one. These visits are never easy, even when the loved one has lived a full measure of years and death was expected.

Reactions to a loved one’s passing vary from individual to individual and from circumstance to circumstance. There often are tears; occasionally, cries of anguish. Some want to tell me about their loved one. And others just want to be alone with their thoughts. In this week’s parashah, after the death Read More >

Addressed To Each of Us Individually

“In the third month, on the first day of the month, on this day (ba-yom ha-zeh) the Israelites arrived at the wilderness of Sinai.” Why “on this day”? To teach you that every day one must regard the Sinaitic revelation as a present reality, that God is addressing you and speaking to you today (Rashi on Exodus 19:1).

“Like the smoke of a kiln.” Only like the smoke of a kiln? An understatement! Rather, this is to teach you that the divine utterance modulates itself to what the ear can hear (Mekhilta on Exodus 19:18). Similarly: “The voice of the Lord is in strength (Psalm 29:4) -adapted to the strength of each individual (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana on Exodus 20:1 - “I am the Lord your God”). Read More >

By Rabbi Leonard Levin

A famous midrash tells how Moses argued with the angels that the Torah, though a creature of heaven, was destined for use on earth.  œDo you have urges to murder, to commit adultery, to steal? We earthly creatures, who are imperfect, need laws to tame our urges and work for self-improvement. You are already perfect! It is we who need the Torah  (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 88b-89a).

Ahad Ha-Am, similarly in his essay  œPriest and Prophet,  contrasted two currents in Biblical thought. The prophet had a counsel of perfection, and dreamed of a society where justice would flow like a mighty stream and the lion would lie down with the lamb. The priest proposed a practical compromise, incorporating as much of the ideal as his contemporaries could digest, moving society forward one step at a time. Read More >

By Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath

In Parashat Mishpatim we reach the pivot point of the Book of Exodus. Until now we have been engaged with the exciting history of our ancestors’ release from slavery in Egypt and the subsequent revelation at Mount Sinai. In the following weeks, our Exodus studies guide us through the vision and building of the Mishkan (portable Tabernacle) in the wilderness; the narrative about which is interrupted for a few chapters to recount the episode of the golden calf.

In Parashat Mishpatim Moses receives laws on worship, slavery (or serfdom, or servitude), property, moral behavior, Sabbaths and festivals. These laws immediately follow the Ten Commandments (in Parashat
Yitro from last Shabbat); enhancing and extending them into the mini-law code often called the Book of the Covenant. Parashat Mishpatim concludes with our ancestors’ affirmation of the Covenant.

Moses first brings God’s laws to our ancestors, speaking all that he, Moses, alone Read More >

By Sanford Olshansky

There is a saying that many stories in the Torah must be true, because if they were made up, our sages would have presented our ancient ancestors more favorably. But in this week’s Torah portion of Mattot there’s a story, a story about what we moderns would call genocide, a story so revolting that I would like to believe it’s not true.

In Numbers 31:2, God tells Moses to “get revenge for the children of Israel from the Midianites.” This refers back to an earlier instruction in Parashat Pinhas, to “afflict the Midianites” (Numbers 25:17-18) because they seduced the Israelite men, through prostitution, to worship the idol Baal Peor, as described at the end of Parashat Balak.

Moses recruits 12,000 armed men and sends them to battle. They kill all the adult Midianite men, take the women and children prisoner and burn their cities and homes. They Read More >