What kind of legacy will we leave when we die? Much of our fear of dying is similar to Jacob’s, as described in this week’s Torah portion and further imagined in the midrash above. We worry that our ideals and our values will not survive among the next generation.

While these ancient texts attest to this legitimate concern, at least one contemporary scholar, the Jewish philosopher Simon Rawidowicz (1897–1957), has contended that our anxiety about the uncertain future in fact represents a hallmark of our heritage:

In the beginning, Israel’s message was that of a universal optimism—salvation, happiness, and perfection for all peoples . . . In more recent times, most Jewish ideologies and political movements were dualistic inasmuch as they saw the world divided, Israel and world torn apart—nay, still more: Israel itself was to them no more . . . Both made the fundamental mistake of dividing the people of Israel into two parts. It must always be considered one and indivisible: yisrael ehad. As long as one part lives in a hell, the other cannot live in paradise . . . what we need most at present is a dynamic Jewish realism that will . . . show us the real meaning of that fear of the end that is so inherent in us. A people dying for thousands of years means a living people. Our incessant dying means uninterrupted living, rising, standing up, beginning anew . . . if we are the last—let us be the last as our fathers and forefathers were. Let us prepare the ground for the last Jews who will come after us, and for the last Jews who will rise after them, and so on until the end of days. (Israel, The Ever-Dying People-and Other Essays, pp. 62–63)

How might we recover the optimism of our people’s origins, rather than succumbing to this recent paralysis of divided hearts and fractious pessimism? Jacob and his sons, in their call and response in the midrash above, exemplify the power of affirming God’s eternal presence and power. Perhaps if we listen more intently to the words of the Shema’, we may rediscover the purpose of our calling as Jews, which is to demonstrate God’s infinite unity through unending love for our nation, Torah, and Creation.

Who gets the credit for a job well done? The work of the Tabernacle was not a solo endeavor; indeed Exodus 31:6 tells us that Oholiab ben Ahisamach and “all who are skillful” were enlisted for the undertaking. The rabbis’ populist bent seeps through the midrash here and elsewhere as the work of the Tabernacle is discussed. Just a few sections after ours, the midrash points out that “Everything that Moses made was done through others, as it says ‘The Tabernacle of the Testimony, as they were rendered according to the commandment of Moses through the service of the hands of the Levites, by the hand of Itamar, the son of Aaron the priest’” (Exodus Rabbah 51:6). A job well done deserves praise, but the rabbis are concerned lest the “little guy” be left out, and his (or her) contribution ignored. They are bothered that Bezalel’s name is mentioned repeatedly while “all who are skillful” are left in anonymity.

The tension centers around leadership. Leadership is a difficult quality to define and here the rabbis equate it with the fact that Bezalel was נתן נפשו עליו ביותר, literally that he “gave the utmost of his soul” (translated above as “self-sacrificing devotion”). In religious terms, it seems obvious that this should be the most important trait to consider in God’s choosing and praising leaders of the community. In secular terms, too, loyalty and the self-sacrifice of hard work in tough times merit praise. But the tension that the rabbis note is everlasting, and we can all learn from the example that the rabbis put before us to remember that cooperation and the talents of many are part of any leader’s success.

There was a time
You would never have said, “Enough!”
A time when your passion
Burned
For me
Never consumed
Even when I was afraid
When I pleaded for release
You wanted
Me
Now I am old
I did my best
Do not cast me off in my old age ¹
As long as I am young, strong
Powerful
In office
Running things
People will listen to me
But what next?
When I am old
Retired
Broke
When I have stepped off the Board
And can’t hear anymore
When my hands tremble
And maybe I make a mess when I eat
Will anyone listen to me?
Passion, perhaps, is for young lovers
And yet I love you so in my old age too.
Promises that bloomed with youth
Lay shattered with the disappointment
Of time gone by
And time running out
Now that it’s his turn
The young one
Still strong, still handsome
With a whole world ahead of him
You burn for him
And cast me aside: Enough!
It’s not that I needed to actually enter the Land.
It’s that I needed to know
You still want me.

---

¹Psalms 71:9

Might this midrash be intentionally ironic? Surely, the anonymous Sage who imagines this divine monologue would have acknowledged Abraham’s chutzpah in questioning God’s plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Even if that encounter only amounts to an implicit critique of God’s ways, it sets the stage for one of the most important acts of Moses’s career.

After the Golden Calf episode, the Israelites’ most famous act as an ever-complaining, “stiff-necked people,” Moses challenges God’s stated intention to destroy the nascent nation. The prophet demands that God “forgive their sin; but if not, erase me from the record which you have written!” (Exod. 32:32). While that kind of spiritual leadership, in the words of this midrash, “is gone and cannot be replaced,” let us never lose the passionately critical voice of one who walks with God and speaks truth to power.

What does “a broken spirit,” let alone the return of animal sacrifice, have to do with preparing for Purim, the wildest holiday in our tradition?

As Esther 9:1 teaches us, “Ve-Nahafoch Hu,” the opposite happened. In most years, we read this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Tzav, on Shabbat HaGadol, which precedes Passover. Because this is a leap year, this Torah portion about sacrifices and priestly worship coincides with Shabbat Zahor, which precedes Purim. Our ancient Sages crafted our calendar with both contingencies in mind, and each generation since has sought to glean new meaning from this convergence of our holiday and liturgical cycles.

One playful yet serious interpretation notes the overlap in sound and in spirit between Purim and Yom Kippur, which is often called in classic sources Yom Ha-Kippurim. Rather than translating the longer title as “the Day of Atonement Sacrifices,” a play on words results in calling Yom Kippur “the day that is like Purim.” This upends our solemn notion of Yom Kippur as the holiest day of the year, instead pointing to the jubilant carnival atmosphere of Purim as potentially an even deeper religious experience.

In order to grasp the cognitive leap in this reading, we must expand our understanding of teshuvah from repentance for particular transgressions to a general turn inwards for spiritual repair and renewal. While we focus during the High Holy Days on our shortcomings in great detail, on Purim we transform the somber end of winter into joyous anticipation of rebirth in spring. Likewise, we commemorate the painful historical and psychological experience of our people’s exile and celebrate with absurdity our Diaspora community. In fact, this is the only biblical Jewish holiday based on a narrative set entirely outside the Land of Israel and without connection to Temple worship.

This Purim, let us turn inward to embrace our broken spirits and to make our crushed hearts whole again. Through spiritual and material contributions in response to this winter’s political and geological upheavals, may we bring ourselves nearer to God and to righteousness.

Many centuries before the advent of modern medicine in general and care for mental health in particular, our Sages developed the symbolic language of angels’ tears to explain the hidden wounds impressed upon Isaac’s psyche in the aftermath of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. Today, one finds myriad psychological interpretations of his near-death experience at the hands of his father, Abraham. In fact, a trend has emerged in Israeli poetry over the last few decades: reexamining the Akedah as a paradigm for understanding the role of trauma and fear in contemporary Jewish life.

Israel Prize-winning poet Hayim Gouri famously revisited the Akedah and its repercussions in his poem “Heritage” (Yerushah):

The old man raised his head. / Seeing that it was no dream / and the angel stood there / —the knife slipped from his hand.
The boy, released from his bonds, / saw his father’s back.
Isaac, as the story goes, was not sacrificed. / He lived many days more, / saw (life’s) goodness, until his eyesight dimmed.
But he bequeathed that hour to his descendants. / They are born / with a knife in their hearts.

Gouri’s final verse connects the event that caused Isaac’s blindness to a life-threatening injury that all Jews, as his descendants, have inherited. Just as the midrash imagines Isaac’s dimmed eyesight as a delayed reaction to the angels’ tears, we experience as “a knife in (our) hearts” a fear that the darkest moments in our history might be repeated. Indeed, many scholars have described this poem and others like it as literary attempts to recover from and make sense of the Shoah and of violence in Israeli life.

I take great pride in teaching about this collective literary and scholarly effort to heal ourselves through creative expression and compassionate critique. Reading poems like Gouri’s has sensitized me to the spiritual power of these texts as modern midrashim. They give us new language for coping with our recent past through empathy and imagination.

Let us embrace this life-affirming enterprise, too, as part of a heritage that balances our human emotions. Our Sages speak of a dual duty to love and to revere God. While “God-fearing” behavior relates to our need for discipline and protection, the devotional love of our Covenant with God both inspires and requires the courage and confidence to meet any test we may face.

May we rise to the challenge of the anxieties and uncertainties in our lives today, secure in the promise that Isaac receives from God early in this week’s Torah portion: “Fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless you and increase your offspring for the sake of My servant Abraham” (Gen. 26:24).

I recall first grasping the wise adage that “the clothes make the man” in a dressing room at the Kennedy Center between acts of the Washington Opera’s production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride. After performing as a peasant child in the chorus, I needed to change quickly into the opulent regal attire for my other role as Tsareyvitch — the tsar’s son. Exchanging my drab brown clothing for a multicolored outfit of silk, sequins, and rhinestones completely shifted my sense of self and purpose.

I share this anecdote in trying to imagine what Aaron’s transformation from freed slave to high priest must have entailed. In order to serve as Israel’s intermediary with God in worship, Aaron would regularly swap his ordinary clothing for the elaborate costume outlined in this week’s Torah portion. The midrash above depicts each part of that outfit as a symbolic parallel to the various human shortcomings that give rise to transgression and, therefore, the need for repentance and atonement. The Israelites depended on Aaron to dress and to act as prescribed in order to maintain their relationship with God.

My wardrobe as a rabbi, however, includes none of the ceremonial articles mentioned in this midrash, whose ancient authors likewise lacked these items. Their comparison of the priestly vestments and sacrifices in the aftermath of Temple-based Judaism asserts that those conventions still have much to teach us as Rabbinic Jews about our devotion to God through ethical behavior and spiritual integrity. Moreover, this midrash invites us to imbue with new meaning the ritual garb we have preserved through the centuries. I consciously don a kippah to identify myself publicly as an observant Jew, yet my tallit katan remains underneath my clothing, hidden from view, to remind me of the duties that result from our people’s covenant with God. Only I can perceive this sacred undergarment, just as I alone can discern my unique role in the ongoing drama of Creation.

In what font does the Torah need to be written?

A glance inside a Torah scroll reveals that the font is indeed different than what is printed in standard siddurim and other Hebrew texts. It is clearly a beautiful and highly stylized calligraphy, but as this midrash makes clear it is also part of the tradition handed down from generation to generation.

Which is not to say that the font was given to Moses at Sinai, which is what the opening line of the midrash implies. The midrash reveals that the early rabbis knew what archeologists have come to understand, that the Hebrew writing used in ancient Israel was different than the one born from Aramaic which we have inherited. If we don’t force a literal reading here, we see the rabbis’ basic question: why was there one font long ago—before Ezra (a not unimportant turning point in biblical transmission)—and another one now?

The answer Rabbi invents has a moral: our sins affect the very letters of the Torah tradition. When we are meushar (square, upright), so are the letters of our holiest text, and when we are not, neither are they. Rabbi Eleazar of Modim, on the other hand, insists on an unchanging tradition (and uses a verse from this week’s parashah to bolster his case). As Conservative Jews, we relish—along with Rabbi—the fact that our tradition has changed over time. But like Rabbi Eleazar of Modim, we also want to feel that our Judaism has an unbreakable link with the past. In continuing to read the words of Torah—in Ashurit from the Torah scroll as it is chanted in synagogue, and in a variety of fonts as we read from humashim and parashah commentaries—we ultimately manage to navigate the combined message of both. The final rabbinic lesson is that in learning from one generation to the next the teachings of those who have come before us, we retain a script and a community which is ����ܲ��󲹰�—solid, balanced, and upright.