Rituals of closure are common in both the secular and religious realms. An example of the first is the sounding of retreat and the lowering of the flag marking the end of the official duty day on military installations. An instance of the second is the siyyum, a liturgical ritual and festive meal that is occasioned by the completion of the study of a Talmudic tractate. Closure rituals relate not only to the past but to the future as well. On the one hand, the temporal demarcation of a past event facilitates the emergence of its distinct identity, internal coherence, and significance, thereby providing insight, understanding, and, at times, a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, by declaring an end, a closure ritual creates space in which one can—and must—begin anew; the past is to be neither prison nor refuge.

Immediately after the final verse of Shemot, the book of Exodus, is chanted this coming Shabbat we will call out to the reader, “Hazak, hazak, venit-hazek”, which might be translated as, “Be strong, be strong, and we will take strength from you.” (For some reason, it has not become the custom to modify the above declaration and use the gender appropriate “hizki, hizki” when a woman is reading the Torah.) The “hazak” declaration is a closure ritual, a performative parallel to the graphic demarcation in the Torah scroll of Shemot’s conclusion by means of four blank lines. It announces that the first part of the national saga has come to a close with the construction and completion of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. In that endeavor all of Israel was united in dedication to a common goal; each contribution of resources, talent, and effort was vital, while none was sufficient.

The Mishkan was of course of no worth without the presence of its designated occupant: the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence. “For over the Tabernacle the cloud of the Lord rested by day, and fire would appear in [the cloud] by night in view of all the house of Israel in their journeys” (). With the advent of the Shekhinah’s presence the inert structure is animated and a new story begins: “The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting” (). Shemot’s static image of the Mishkan as a place of rest is replaced with Vayikra’s dynamic one: the Mishkan is to be a place where God and humanity meet, where God and Moses converse and where Aaron is to enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.

Clearly, a closure ritual is appropriate as we conclude the reading of Shemot. But why choose “hazak” as the ritual? Why the need to urge the reader to be strong and to wish strength for ourselves? A moment of completion is a complex one. We may feel sad that the end has come. In addition, in the moment of completion we often allow ourselves to feel the exhaustion that we have denied in the pursuit of closure, rendering us unready and perhaps unwilling to face the next challenge that lies before us.

So too, with the completion of Shemot. The reading ends with a crescendo, and yet it will be followed by the blessing recited at the end of every aliyah. We the listeners are afraid that, as with the seven lean cows who ate the seven fat ones in Pharaoh’s dream, the drama and power of the words we have heard will be swallowed up by the ordinariness of the blessing that follows. We also know that more lies ahead, including the tragic death of Aaron’s sons, () which will mar the dedication of the building the construction of which has been described so lovingly in Shemot. Therefore, we need strength. We need to be saved from the depression that accompanies endings and we need strength to face and navigate the stories that will follow.

Yet let us ask further: Why do we not simply declare, “Let us all be strong”? Why single out the reader? A teaching of Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, the mid-20th century author of Mikhtav Me’eliyahu, a collection of mussar essays, provides enlightenment. As we all know, says Rabbi Dessler, there are takers and givers. It turns out, however, that some give in order to take and some take in order to give. Suppose that someone agrees to donate a million dollars to a synagogue but then attaches all sorts of conditions to his gift, conditions that serve the needs of his ego but not those of the congregation. This man is giving in order to take; he’s a giving taker. On the other hand, let’s imagine a dedicated doctor who works night and day to spare his patients from illness and pain. One day, he tells his patients that he is suffering from exhaustion and will be taking a week’s vacation. Only a fool or an ingrate would see this as selfishness. This doctor is taking in order to give; he is a taking giver.

So too with us and our Torah reader. She is our Moses, declaring God’s word to the congregation. Reading Torah is a demanding and exacting task, even for those who have years of experience. (Not incidentally, Vayak-hel Pekudei is the second longest of the weekly Torah readings.) The reading is over, the reader is exhausted. We say: you give us inspiration through your chanting of the Torah. We wish you strength, both out of love for you and because we rely on your strength. You can give to us only if we also give to you.

We want our leaders to give us what we need and desire. Too often we are oblivious to their needs and to the limits of their time and energy. They want to give but unless we give too they will ultimately have nothing to give us. Let us make our leaders strong, through love, encouragement, and material assistance, so that we can be strengthened by them.

This commentary was originally published in 2018.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Immediately after the final verse of Shemot, the book of Exodus, is chanted this coming Shabbat we will call out to the reader, “Hazak, hazak, venit-hazek”, which might be translated as, “Be strong, be strong, and we will take strength from you.” (For some reason, it has not become the custom to modify the above declaration and use the gender appropriate “hizki, hizki” when a woman is reading the Torah.) The “hazak” declaration is a closure ritual, a performative parallel to the graphic demarcation in the Torah scroll of Shemot’s conclusion by means of four blank lines. It announces that the first part of the national saga has come to a close with the construction and completion of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. In that endeavor all of Israel was united in dedication to a common goal; each contribution of resources, talent, and effort was vital, while none was sufficient.

The Mishkan was of course of no worth without the presence of its designated occupant: the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence. “For over the Tabernacle the cloud of the Lord rested by day, and fire would appear in [the cloud] by night in view of all the house of Israel in their journeys” (). With the advent of the Shekhinah’s presence the inert structure is animated and a new story begins: “The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting” (). Shemot’s static image of the Mishkan as a place of rest is replaced with Vayikra’s dynamic one: the Mishkan is to be a place where God and humanity meet, where God and Moses converse and where Aaron is to enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.

Clearly, a closure ritual is appropriate as we conclude the reading of Shemot. But why choose “hazak” as the ritual? Why the need to urge the reader to be strong and to wish strength for ourselves? A moment of completion is a complex one. We may feel sad that the end has come. In addition, in the moment of completion we often allow ourselves to feel the exhaustion that we have denied in the pursuit of closure, rendering us unready and perhaps unwilling to face the next challenge that lies before us.

So too, with the completion of Shemot. The reading ends with a crescendo, and yet it will be followed by the blessing recited at the end of every aliyah. We the listeners are afraid that, as with the seven lean cows who ate the seven fat ones in Pharaoh’s dream, the drama and power of the words we have heard will be swallowed up by the ordinariness of the blessing that follows. We also know that more lies ahead, including the tragic death of Aaron’s sons, () which will mar the dedication of the building the construction of which has been described so lovingly in Shemot. Therefore, we need strength. We need to be saved from the depression that accompanies endings and we need strength to face and navigate the stories that will follow.

Yet let us ask further: Why do we not simply declare, “Let us all be strong”? Why single out the reader? A teaching of Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, the mid-20th century author of Mikhtav Me’eliyahu, a collection of mussar essays, provides enlightenment. As we all know, says Rabbi Dessler, there are takers and givers. It turns out, however, that some give in order to take and some take in order to give. Suppose that someone agrees to donate a million dollars to a synagogue but then attaches all sorts of conditions to his gift, conditions that serve the needs of his ego but not those of the congregation. This man is giving in order to take; he’s a giving taker. On the other hand, let’s imagine a dedicated doctor who works night and day to spare his patients from illness and pain. One day, he tells his patients that he is suffering from exhaustion and will be taking a week’s vacation. Only a fool or an ingrate would see this as selfishness. This doctor is taking in order to give; he is a taking giver.

So too with us and our Torah reader. She is our Moses, declaring God’s word to the congregation. Reading Torah is a demanding and exacting task, even for those who have years of experience. (Not incidentally, Vayak-hel Pekudei is the second longest of the weekly Torah readings.) The reading is over, the reader is exhausted. We say: you give us inspiration through your chanting of the Torah. We wish you strength, both out of love for you and because we rely on your strength. You can give to us only if we also give to you.

We want our leaders to give us what we need and desire. Too often we are oblivious to their needs and to the limits of their time and energy. They want to give but unless we give too they will ultimately have nothing to give us. Let us make our leaders strong, through love, encouragement, and material assistance, so that we can be strengthened by them.

This commentary was originally published in 2018.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Aaron and his four sons were the community’s intermediaries in the service of the Tabernacle. They dutifully followed each instruction commanded by God through Moses. All were filled with joy and trepidation.

The parashah begins on the eighth and final day of inauguration week. The ceremony narrated in Leviticus 9 culminates in a felicitous and ecstatic moment of response from God to their carefully orchestrated sacrificial rites: “Moses and Aaron then went inside the Tent of Meeting. When they came out, they blessed the people; and the Presence of the Lord appeared to all the people. Fire came forth from before the Lord and consumed the burnt-offering . . . on the altar. And all the people saw, and shouted and fell on their faces” (Lev. 9:23-24).

But in this moment of awe and ecstasy, something goes terribly wrong. In the verse that immediately follows, Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu offer a “strange fire” to God. And suddenly there is a horrific and tragic reversal. With the exact same words that described the joyous revelation of God’s presence in community, things take an unspeakable turn: “And fire came forth from before the Lord and consumed them; thus they died.” (Lev. 10:2).

There is both a communal and a personal dimension to this tragedy. The community’s loss is twofold: With a shocking suddenness, their moment of celebration has turned to a moment of grief; and they have lost two cherished leaders. For Aaron, the grief is deeply personal. His beloved sons have died in their prime, in the line of duty—a duty he raised and trained them to fulfill. And yet, he is in the midst of performing a sacred rite in which he is the star of the show and the central actor. There is no quiet place to which to retreat to wail, to mourn, and to wallow in the pain. He could not be in a more public setting, or more needed by his community, than he was in that moment.

In the unspeakable void created by these sudden deaths, before Aaron speaks a word, Moses breaks the silence, stating: “This is it that the Lord spoke, saying: Through them that are nigh unto Me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified” (Lev.10:3). And as for Aaron, the same verse reports, “And Aaron was silent” (vayidom) The medieval biblical commentator Nahmanides suggests that Aaron had been wailing out loud, and after Moses spoke, he became silent.

Did Moses silence Aaron’s expression of pain? It is hard to know if Moses hoped these words would bring comfort or if he was trying to repress raw expressions of grief. From the continuation of the chapter, it is clear that Moses felt it was a top priority to ensure that the day’s rites be properly completed. Mourning would have to be deferred for the sake of the religious needs of the community.

Leviticus 10 is a highly generative chapter for rabbinic discussions of Hilkhot Aveilut (the laws of mourning). Ironically, most of the Jewish mourning practices derived from this chapter come from behaviors that were forbidden to Aaron and his surviving sons. They were told not to mourn, and from this we learn exactly how Jews should mourn. They were told not to rend their clothes (Lev. 10:6), and so we learn to rend our garments upon losing a relative (B. Moed Katan 15a). They were told they must continue to trim their hair, and so we learn to avoid shaving for a period of time after the death of a loved one.

We see a similar dynamic in Ezekiel 24. The prophet is told not to mourn the death of his wife, “the delight of his eyes” (Ezek. 24:16). Ezekiel, a priest and a prophet – a community leader – is told to grieve “in silence” (dom) (Ezek. 24:17). The rabbis derive further universal mourning practices from what Ezekiel could not do (B. Moed Katan 15a). Ezekiel was told to leave on his shoes (Ezek. 24:17), and so we remove our shoes when we mourn our dead.

This is tragic, but also powerful. Community leaders often are forced to sacrifice their own emotional needs—especially private experiences of grief—for the sake of maintaining stability, structure, and continuity—and even joy and celebration—for communities that rely on them to remain present and resilient.

I want to suggest that the rabbinic laws of mourning honor Aaron’s sacrifice by deriving mourning rites from the sacrifice he made by not engaging in those very rites. In mourning our loved ones, we recall and pay homage to Aaron’s inability to mourn his sons. Rashi states that Aaron was rewarded for his silence. Perhaps the eternal monument to Aaron’s pain that constitutes the laws of mourning can be seen as another facet of Aaron’s “reward.”

But Aaron was not completely silent. If we read until the end of Chapter 10, we see that Aaron remained silent as Moses guided the retrieval of the bodies from the sanctuary; silent as Moses told him not to mourn; silent as God shares rules for priestly conduct; silent as Moses told him to continue observing the public sacrificial rites that were to be performed that day. Only in the penultimate verse in the chapter does Aaron speak, for the first time, since the deaths of his sons. According to Maimonides (Laws of Mourning 1:1), those first and only words that Aaron speaks in the aftermath of losing two children (Lev. 10:19) are the source for the biblical commandment to mourn, in general.

What did Aaron say? What words could he speak, in this unspeakable time, that could form the eternal basis of all Jewish mourning?

Aaron’s words are a response to a rebuke from Moses. Aaron had spent the day on which his sons died not mourning, fulfilling every single public ritual rite with impeccable precision – every rite, with one exception. He could not bring himself to eat the sin-offering, as he was supposed to do. This angered Moses, who rebuked his brother.

Aaron responded, “See this day they brought their sin-offering and their burnt-offering before the Lord, and such things have befallen me! Had I eaten sin offering today, would that have been good in the eyes of the Lord?” Aaron’s sons had died in the immediate aftermath of bringing these offerings. How could he bear to eat from the sin-offering? Aaron finally breaks his silence by resisting one act of not mourning. Through this one small act of resistance, Aaron, the community leader who sacrificed all of his private grief for the sake of the community’s stability, finally mourned.

Moses accepted Aaron’s explanation. And Maimonides derived from it the basis of the entire biblical commandment to mourn. This is a profound way to honor what Aaron did. As tragic as the position of community leaders can be, as painful as it is that our tradition asked this of Aaron, there is something redeeming about the way in which Aaron’s sacrifice did not go unrecognized. In all of our mourning, we honor Aaron’s silent pain over the loss of his sons. Indeed, as the additional example from Ezekiel 24 demonstrates, we honor the pain of all who have been called to make similar sacrifices. 

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

Two years later, when most of the Covid patients were being managed on medical floors, the ICUs could once again be used for regular intensive care patients. The close-knit staff on “the unit” were having trouble with this transition, and they called me. They needed help to turn “the unit” back into their ICU. “The unit” was where people went who could not be helped. The ICU was a place of sophisticated technologies and medical miracles. They had witnessed so much loss and trauma in this space, they could not imagine the ICU treating patients who were going to heal and go home.

“It’s not that we believe in ghosts, rabbi, but we literally see the ones we lost—so many of them. Their faces are everywhere”.

When my staff and I entered the unit, we were astonished. It really didn’t look like “the unit” anymore. The walls had been spackled and painted, the floors had been waxed, the windows cleaned. But the staff could still see the faces of thepatients they had lost. I could see them too. We all could. The goal of our visit was to rededicate “the unit,” restoring it to a place of physical healing and a sanctuary for God’s presence.

We began to sing:

“Oh Lord Prepare me, to be a sanctuary, Pure and holy, tried and true

With thanksgiving, I’ll be a living Sanctuary for You.”

Our rededication of the hospital’s ICU echoed for me the original Jewish sacred space described in the Book of Exodus. The double Torah reading for Vayak-hel and Pekudei provides God’s blueprint for a traveling sacred space that the Israelites would build during their journey through the wilderness. As they travelled, they would carry a place for the presence of God and for revelatory encounters between God and the high priests on behalf of the people. It would be a space for doing sacred work and for being with God.

The Torah embeds its design plan with a series of doubles—names, spaces, and imagery.

First, this double Torah reading provides two different parts of the construction that appear to be referred to by different names: the tabernacle (Mishkan) referring to the central space, and the tent (ohel) referring to the covering spread over it and enlarging its area.

In Exodus 40:19 we read:

  וַיִּפְרֹשׂ אֶת-הָאֹהֶל, עַל-הַמִּשְׁכָּן, וַיָּשֶׂם אֶת-מִכְסֵה הָאֹהֶל עָלָיו, מִלְמָעְלָה–כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוָּה ה’ , אֶת-מֹשֶׁה

And he spread the tent (ohel) over the tabernacle (mishkan), and put the covering of the tent above upon it; as God commanded Moses.

The instructions for building the Mishkan contain distinct parallels to the creation of the world, resulting in a kind of doubling. In both the creation of the world and the creation of the Mishkan, work ceases on Shabbat (Gen. 2:1–3; Exod. 35:1–2).  In the descriptions of the creation of both the world and the Mishkan, the work is judged to have been appropriately done (Gen. 1:31; Exod. 39:43), after which the same Hebrew verb כ.ל.ה. is used to describe the completion of both the Mishkan and the world (Gen. 2:1; Exod. 40:33). Just as God had built a space for humanity, humans were to build a space for God. 

The Torah devotes 31 verses to the creation of the world, and between 300–400 to the Sanctuary. Why does this project with two names and two parts and doubled imagery receive so much attention? And if it is so important, why would it have dual purposes?

A verse earlier in Exodus gives us a hint. In Parshat Terumah (Exodus 25–27), the first of the four construction parshiyot, verse 8 explains very simply to the Israelites why they will build this “Mishkan”:

 וְעָשׂוּ לִי, מִקְדָּשׁ; וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, בְּתוֹכָם.

And let them make Me a Sanctuary that I may dwell among them.

From this verse we learn that God understands the people need tangible evidence of the indwelling of the Divine Presence—a place for God to be. The following midrash from Shemot Rabbah responds with great relational sensitivity to the idea that God will “live” among the people. It explains that theSanctuary was created for two purposes: a place for God to be and a place for encounters with God to be enacted.

The midrash tells of a person who gives his only daughter in marriage to a suitor from another place. The person says to their daughter, “I cannot ask you not to move away, but it makes me so sad to know you will be far from me. Please, wherever you live, build an extra room for me, so that I can come to visit you.” The Israelites are like the daughter, creating a space in their home for God even when God feels distant, and a place for encounters with God when God does visit.

This parable explains that the people needed two things from this relationship; to be assured of God’s presence among them during their journey, as well as a place for special moments that elevate their worship. The people can experience God as a powerful encounter that comes from the formal worship of the high priests, or as a constant presence of protection and comfort. And so the project needs to be both; the Mishkan—a place for God’s presence as well as an ohel moed—a sacred space for Divine encounters.

After our voices quieted, I talked about how “the unit” had been a sanctuary. It once held unforgettable sacred encounters. I had counseled many times there that surely God too, was deeply saddened by the fragility of human life they’d witnessed. It was also, I stretched, a place of God’s comforting presence, joining them through the work of their tender hands and hearts. Now, through this time together, it would be a tabernacle with two distinct, sacred purposes: an ohel moed, a tent of meeting, for coming together to encounter God in doing the sacred work of healing, and a Mishkan, a space for God’s presence to dwell among them.

Quiet tears on smiling faces showed that we had in fact rededicated this Mishkan. This ritual of naming the awful experiences of the past foreshadowed the way the medical staff could envision themselves as God’s partners moving forward and working together to heal the sick.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

In many ways, all of Leviticus is considered the flyover territory of the Torah, something that one needs to get through as quickly as possible to get from the rich narratives of Genesis and Exodus to the wars and reminiscing of Numbers and Deuteronomy. And Tazria is seen as the worst of the worst, with its meditations and legal rulings on childbirth, impurity, and �ٳ�������’a��, which is some sort of skin disease. In addition to being unappealing, it feels irrelevant, and even offensive, to our modern values and sensibilities. So what should we, as Jews living in 2016, make of Parashat Tazria?

I strongly believe that, despite the challenges involved, there is much for us to learn from Leviticus, and even from Tazria. So to choose a pasuk of the week, here is what I suggest.

The Torah requires that, if the priest who is inspecting the person with a skin condition finds that he has �ٳ�������’a��, the priest declare him unclean. Then, “the person with �ٳ�������’a��, who has the skin lesion, his clothing is torn and his head is uncovered, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Impure, impure!’” ().

At first glance, the insistence that the victim be forced to identify himself as impure seems cruel. It is bad enough to be sent out from the camp and exiled by the community at his moment of need. Does he really need to call further attention to himself? Must we add to his humiliation? However, there is another way to read this verse, one that presents a paradigm that applies even when concerns about �ٳ�������’a�� have fallen away.

To understand how �ٳ�������’a�� and its subsequent punishment might relate to the modern world, it is helpful to understand how the Rabbis regarded the condition, which was likely as mysterious to them as it is to us. The most common explanation of how �ٳ�������’a�� occurs frames it as a physical manifestation of our internal failings—specifically, the habit of lashon harah, or speaking badly about others. The Midrash makes a pun, connecting the metzorah, the one who is afflicted with this skin disease,to the motzi shem ra, the one who ruins someone’s reputation by spreading lies about that person (Lev. Rabbah Parashat Metzorah par. 16:6). (This is a fairly typical example of rabbinic punning, one of the Rabbis’ favorite exegetical tools.) According to this midrash, because there are five sections of the Torah that discuss the disease of �ٳ�������’a��, one who is a motzi shem ra has transgressed the entire five books of the Torah.

Building on this assumption, a midrash in the Sifra explains that when Miriam is struck with �ٳ�������’a�� in , it is because she was criticizing Moshe behind his back. The Sifra assumes that evil speech not only causes �ٳ�������’a��, but specifically causes it in the face, because “skin lesions do not appear except through evil speech” (par. 5:7). Following the line of reasoning in this framework, forcing the stricken to cry out that they are unclean becomes a type of karmic retribution. The stricken person had spoken in an inappropriate manner about others, and by declaring his or her own uncleanliness, the person is opening the door to being talked about in the same way. Speaking carelessly about others, without regard to the others’ reputations, will cause one to be similarly excluded from the community.

But surely, forcing the victim to cry out “Impure, impure” cannot simply be about retribution. Generally, following mitzvot is meant to be restorative, rather than punitive, and surely the system would not be set up in a way that would cause others to sin by encouraging them to talk about the stricken. “Impure, impure,” then, must be about something else.

Often, it is difficult to acknowledge our own weaknesses and failings. We excuse behaviors in ourselves that we condemn in others, justifying our actions even as we are uncomfortably aware that we do not really believe we are doing the right thing. Imagine if, every time we wronged ourselves and others, we were forced to stand up and admit it. Imagine if we were forced to declare ourselves impure every time we felt thus on the inside. Imagine if we had a physical sign of our sins and our failings. Would this not help us change—and improve—our behaviors?

So perhaps this is a lesson we can take from this strange parashah, Tazria. While it may be true that we are (thankfully!) not struck by this mysterious disease anymore, the process that one goes through to cleanse oneself can inform the way we think about our own process of self-improvement. If we created a space—an expectation for ourselves—wherein we had no choice but to be honest about our shortcomings, it seems likely that we would strive to improve ourselves and show more compassion for the weaknesses of others. Rather than hiding behind excuses, we would be forced to stand before the world and say, Look, this is who I am, both for good and for bad. And while this might cause us to be temporarily separated from our communities, ultimately it would have the potential to bring us back in, presenting a more honest and more righteous version of ourselves, scars and all.

This piece was originally published in 2016.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

No doubt the reading of the scroll of Esther the night before the massacre deepened Goldstein’s schematic and demented thinking. Its author records yet another round in the interminable struggle between Israel and Amalek. Mordecai and Haman are portrayed as descendants of Saul and Agag. In self-defense, the Jewish subjects of Ahasuerus kill nearly four score thousand of their enemy without, this time, laying hands on any spoils. With chilling literalness, religion’s greatest enemy, Goldstein applied these ancient categories to the population of the West Bank.

Entirely lost on him was the talmudic debate on whether Esther should even be included in the canon. The rabbis imagine Esther demanding of the religious leadership of her day that Jews should annually celebrate the rescue of Persian Jewry which she effected. For political reasons they were less than eager: “You will arouse envy toward us among the gentiles.” They also did not want to clutter the Bible with too many references to Amalek. From the text (Megillah 7a), it is evident that resistance to Esther and Purim persisted for generations, only to be resolved in the end from the bottom up by popular acceptance.

But by then the day had become one of “licit levity” to match the “mock serious vein” of the book, a minor holiday without benefit of Hallel (H.L. Ginsberg). And yet, according to Maimonides, the supreme mitzvah of the day is not feasting or sending gifts to friends but giving to the poor, “for there is no greater of more splendid joy than uplifting the hearts of poor people, orphans, widows and strangers. Indeed, to do that is to resemble God.” Nor is there any indication that Maimonides restricts such generosity of spirit to Jews only.

The weekly Torah portion should also have tempered Goldstein’s feverish mind. If Purim held the foreground, the building of the tabernacle hovered steadily in the background. Like us, the Torah stays with what it deems to be important, no less than five weeks on the sanctuary. With this week’s parasha we finally bring the construction to an end. God’s presence, as symbolized by a cloud during daylight and a fire at night, transforms the Tabernacle into sacred space. Moses enters its Tent of Meeting only when called and Aaron, but once a year on Yom Kippur. Strangers who encroach pay with their lives, while suppliants generally gain asylum.

And so it has always been with places rendered holy by an awareness of God’s presence. A sanctuary, whether pagan or Israelite, Muslim or Jewish, is protected by the ancient norms of refuge and sacrilege. No matter how many exceptions history may show, civilized men respect the inviolability of sacred space. According to Josephus, the Roman general Titus struggled to spare the temple in Jerusalem during his siege of the city in the year 70 C.E. Similarly when the Vandals under Gaiseric sacked Rome in 455, they stopped short of plundering the churches. And when their modern namesakes despoil a house of worship, Americans of all stripes react with chagrin.

As if mass murder were not reprehensible enough, Goldstein carried it out in the midst of a mosque. Fanaticism brooks no constraints. Almost ten years ago Israeli courts convicted a cluster of Orthodox Jewish terrorists for conspiring to blow up the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest shrines. By affronting tenets of faith such incendiary acts kindle passions that burn without end.

How quickly are the dark lessons of recent Jewish history expunged from memory. The Holocaust began with the destruction of nearly 300 synagogues in Germany on the single night of November 9, 1938. The event revealed to all who cared to see the deadly extremism of the Nazi revolution. A political system ready to torch synagogues would be undeterred by genocide. The desecration of sacred space was but a prelude to decimating human life.

To violate the sanctuaries of German Jewry gave notice to the world that morality would never inhibit the Nazis in their fanatical quest to cleanse their land of Jews. That night the fire brigades stood by only to prevent the flames from incinerating nearby Aryan property while the police patrolled to ensure a semblance of order. But Jews and their synagogues were free game. The unbridled sovereignty of the modern state had turned to madness and the international community gawked in silence. In the words of the British historian Ian Kershaw: “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.”

The Talmud records the well-known story of a curious gentile who offered to convert to Judaism if Hillel could teach him the entire Torah while he listened on one foot. In an instant born of much reflection, Hillel responded: “What is hateful to you do not do unto your neighbor.” Among the casualties in the Hebron massacre was that still unsurpassed moral principle. The purpose of Torah is to distinguish us from our enemies, to tame the beast within us, not unleash it.

Shabbat shalom u-mevorach,

Ismar Schorsch

The pageantry reminds us of the singularity of the scroll. When the codex (the bound book) came to replace the scroll as the preferred form of the book in the fifth century, the synagogue, unlike the church, refused to adopt the advance for the public liturgical reading of its Scriptures. I have always deemed the rejection to be an enhancement of the ritual. The archaic format amplifies the sacredness of the Torah. I love the physicality of being called to the Torah (not to speak of reading from it): kissing the black unvocalized letters, taking hold of the two wooden staves, feeling the raw durability of the parchment and admiring the ordered beauty of the columns of script. I always leave the scroll open as I recite the first berakhah so that my eyes might feast on the primitive authenticity of the letters. Only when the reading is finished and the moment has come to say the second berakhah, do I reluctantly close the scroll. The antiquity of a handwritten manuscript on parchment in scroll form reinforces my reverence for the uniqueness of the Torah.

Not surprisingly, a Torah scroll is the holiest object in Judaism’s religious repertoire. Every Jew is enjoined during the course of his or her lifetime to write (or have written) a sefer Torah, not only as an expression of its supreme value, but also to increase the number of sifrei Torah in the world. The equivalent of the mitzvah for us today is to produce our own commentary to the Torah, testimony to our struggle to relate the Torah to our personal lives. Hence, these weekly comments on the parasha. Your interest and encouragement, for which I am grateful, help me fulfill a critical mitzvah by joining the longest ongoing dialogue in history.

The sanctity of a Torah scroll is marked by the fact that it may be sold for only two reasons-to marry and to study Torah. Neither hunger nor homelessness is deemed sufficient reason for a person to sell a Torah scroll in his or her possession. The exception made for marriage and study, I believe, is because both activities will most likely lead to the continuity of Torah. Our fondest hope at the birth of a new child is that it will find joy and fulfillment in a life of “Torah, marriage and good deeds,” a formula that encompasses Judaism’s central values.

Remarkably, our demeanor toward a scroll of the Torah resembles the way we relate to our children. We clothe it in garments, we carry it caressingly at our bosom and express our love through a kiss. It is the apple of our eye and the center of our attention. On Simhat Torah we dance and sing with the Torah in our arms as we do with our small children. And reciprocally, we seek to bring our children to the study of Torah at the earliest age possible.

The Talmud preserves a Jewish version of Plato’s intriguing myth that all learning is remembering. It is not the entire corpus of human knowledge that the fetus acquires in the womb, but rather the whole Torah. At birth an angel administers a slap and all is forgotten. The deeper meaning of that midrash is that the human spirit is a tiny fragment of the divine spirit. Birth is also separation from God. What we once knew as part of the whole is lost, except for the slightest of predispositions. Study of Torah, the religious quest, our spiritual sensibility, and human consciousness are dim vestiges of whence we came. Death is not the end, but a form of restoration, reuniting what was severed at birth. We live our lives discomforted by a spark of eternity that bestirs us to recall that what we see is not all that exists. The most convincing proof of God, to my mind, is the eternal human hunger for God’s presence.

Our parasha opens with the laws and procedures surrounding the impurity caused by child-birth. The loss of blood evokes a sense of death and renders the mother unfit to enter the Tabernacle or Temple. But not so with regard to the Torah; its sanctity is beyond contamination. It may be desecrated by malice but not defiled by what is unclean. No one in a state of physical impurity is excluded for even a moment from touching a Torah or engaging in its study.

If Judaism expects each of us to enrich this world with one more sefer Torah (or one more commentary to it), what is expected of us in terms of children? How many ought we to raise to satisfy the commandment of “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and master it (Genesis 1:28).” On this critical issue Jewish law is marked by sober restraint. While the commandment to marry and procreate is overriding, a couple need not have more than one child of each sex, a distribution that replicates God’s original creation of humankind. An alternate view would set the norm at two sons in accord with the example of Moses and Zipporah, but is rejected. It is noteworthy that Jewish law opted for the more common pattern and thus settled for a minimum number of children that was astonishingly low. Given the Torah’s inordinate concern for the proliferation of Abraham’s seed, clearly a higher minimum would have been in order.

I suspect the modesty of the norm reflects a respect for the high infant mortality rate before the advent of modern medicine. It may also conceal a muted preference for quality over quantity. Above all, for today it implies a birth rate that is compatible with the welfare of the planet.

As parents and teachers, our task is to intermingle these two supreme Jewish values of Torah and children. That is the authentic meaning of the ceremony of becoming a bar- or bat-mitzvah. By reading the parasha(and not merely the haftarah) from a sefer Torah, our children give public evidence of their intention to love the Torah as much as we have loved them, with a love laced with Torah.

Shabbat shalom u-mevorach,

Ismar Schorsch