TorahParsha

How do you come back to a family?

 (for Parshat Bamidbar)

i

Eleven of Jacob’s sons

carry Jacob

and their children

and their wives

on the journey

from the Land

to Egypt.

*

Joseph is not a part of this:

Joseph, whom Jacob had thought was dead

(but who has been found living).

 

ii

The tribe of Levi must carry

the Tent of God

at the center of the People,

journeying to the Land.

*

The only geneology given

in the section of the Torah

describing this formation

is the genealogy

of Moses and Aaron,

leaders from the tribe of Levi.

*

That geneology speaks

of how two of Aaron’s sons

die before God.

*

So the tribe bearing the family’s geneology

is the tribe of dead sons.

 

iii

Having been dead from the family,

Joseph cannot return to it.

But Levi succeeds

where Joseph does not;

he returns to family

from death.

*

But Levi shapes the people

from a family

to a nation with God at its center.

And God is stronger than death.

So a nation with God at its center

can bring even those dead from the family

back to the world of family,

to the world of life.

 

 

____

Shabbat shalom v’chag sameach,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

 

How should we use our senses?

for Behar - BeChukotai

i

I see the world from my own vantage-point.

But I hear your voice

from wherever I face;

sound calls me to you.

*

Consider:

Eve finds the Fruit

a pleasure to the eyes;

but she and Adam hear

the voice of God in the Garden,  

and they know they have wronged Him.

Eyes are a gateway to your pleasure;

sound startles you

from yourself

toward another.

 

ii

We count out forty-nine years.

On the fiftieth

we blow the shofar,

the trumpet.

Debts are forgiven,

land reverts to ancestral families,

land goes fallow;

slaves go free.

To say:

your borrower

land

slave

have their own existence

entirely apart from you.

*

We come to this understanding

through the trumpet:

through listening.

 

iii

Of the slave who shall go free

in the fiftieth year,

God says:

he is owed freedom,

you shall not see him worked brutally 

before your eyes.

To say:

train your eyes

to find brutality

to root it out.

*

For forty-nine years

you ready yourself to hear the shofar:

to listen,

to hear around you.

Learning to listen,

you learn to use your eyes.

Learning to listen,

you learn to see.

 

 

 

____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com 

What should religion teach us?

for Parshat Emor 

 

i

God lists the year’s holidays.

He begins with Passover,

the holiday of the first month

of the Bible’s year

(not like today,

our calendar beginning

at Rosh HaShanah).

He ends with Sukkot

and Shemini Atzeret:

joint holidays

in the seventh month,

the month when the holidays end.

 

ii

God speaks of the Exodus in this list.

But not in the context of Passover,

when you would expect.

He mentions the Exodus

with regard to Sukkot.

He says:

Dwell in sukkot—huts;

remember how I made the Children of Israel

dwell in huts

as I took them out

from the Land of Egypt.

*

Not: How I struck Egypt with Plagues.

Not: How I split the Sea.

Simply:

How I made them dwell.

 

iii

At the culmination of all holidays,

we do not come

to a revolutionary understanding

of the single moment

when God changed the world.

We come to know

the day after:

how the miracle must suffuse

the ways we are,

how we act,

where we wander.

How from that miracle

we are to make homes to live in,

lives to lead.

Sukkot in which we dwell.

 

 

 

______

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

 

 

What if our approach to God is wrong?

for Parshat Acharei Mot / Kedoshim

 

i

It was after the death of Aaron’s two sons

that God introduced Yom Kippur:

the day the High Priest enters the holiest room

in the Temple of God,

the day each year God forgives us.

*

Aaron’s two sons

are the sons who brought a strange fire

that was not commanded them

before God;

God burned them in fire.

 

ii

Our yearly day of forgiveness

is not a response to all-out sin,

to an utter departure from God.

It is a response to approaching God

in the way that was not commanded,

in the way we please.

This is the wrong way to approach.

*

But God asks us back,

He invites us in

to His holiest place.

*

This process of failure

of being invited back

is enmeshed within the warp and woof of the closeness

between us and God:

it is part of our calendar.

 

iii

Not that God wants us to seek the wrong channels

the wrong path

the wrong door

but after He shows us

how the wrong door is closed to us

God says:

Come again,

still come to reach Me.

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

Is there space for emotion in religion?

 

for Parshat Tazria / Mezora

i

In the midst of the rapture

of the inaguration of God’s Tent

Aaron’s two sons

bring a strange fire that was not commanded

before God.

God burns them in fire.

*

Then God offers

a series of Laws

and God teaches Aaron

how to approach His holy place

and not die:

how to approach Him

where his sons could not.

 

ii

One of the Laws

of this interim series

is the Law of circumcising sons.

It is couched in the Laws of a woman after childbirth:

the first Law of masculine life

made womanly.

 

iii

Men live with rules

but women know feelings

beyond what is commanded.

God commands Adam away from the Fruit

but Eve sees in it

a pleasure to the eyes.

*

Not unlike the worldview

of Aaron’s sons,

approaching from rapture,

bringing a strange fire that was not commanded.

 

iv

This worldview can be tragic

(we saw this with the Fruit,

with Aaron’s sons)

but enveloping the Law,

made a framework for the Law,

it can change Law from mere rules

to a bridge

that runs straight from the heart to God.

 

____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

To my friends in Israel: my apologies for writing about the parsha in chutz laaretz this week and last.

www.TorahParsha.com

Could a religious life gain from a secular world?

 

for Parshat Shemini

i

Moses commands Aaron and Aaron’s sons

to inaugurate God’s Tent of Meeting.

They conduct each step

as Moses had commanded

and God’s Presence comes.

*

Then two of Aaron’s sons

offer up a strange fire

which Moses did not command them.

And God burns them in fire.

 

ii

From the start of this entire ceremony

the place of this ceremony

is called the Tent of Meeting.

Only after the sons bring their fire

and only after they are burned

is this place called mikdash,

holy place.

 

iii

Perhaps a holy place

needs even what is not holy

even what is not commanded 

within it.

*

Perhaps holiness is not a pristine thing

but a variety of many kinds of things

commanded

not commanded

all brought together

all brought before God.

 

 

____

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com
@TorahParsha

Booklet for Passover, 2012

As I have in the past several years, I've gathered my thoughts on Passover and the Exodus that I've shared over the years.

I hope they can help your Passover become more meaningful in some small way, and please feel free to share them at your seders.

>> Download TorahParsha Thoughts for Passover 2012<<

Chag Kosher v'sameach,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

What is storytelling?

 

for the Seder night

 

i

There were Ten Plagues and then God smote Egypt at the Sea.

Describing the Plague of Lice, Pharaoh’s servants say: Here is the finger of God.

At the Sea, Israel sees the hand of God.

 

ii

Rabbi Yosi of Galil says: a single Plague is God’s finger.

God’s hand at the Sea, all five fingers,

was five times Ten Plagues:

like fifty Plagues.

*

But this is strange math.

If one plague is the finger of God,

one hand should not be fifty Plagues,

but five.

 

iii

Each moment in a story

is a window to the whole tale.

*

Each strike of God’s finger

is a window to all ten finger-strikes,

all Ten Plagues:

and a hand of five Plagues

is fifty.

*

Just as the moment when God redeemed us

is a window into the immortal story

of God redeeming us

over and over.

*

Just as each seder night

the moment of one evening

is the span of all of our generations

telling the story,

re-entering the story,

being redeemed by God again.

 

 

Based on a theory of Walter Benjamin

 

 

Chag kosher v'sameach,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

Changing

(for Parshat Tzav)

 

i
The priest who brings an offering upon the Altar, in the Temple, shall put on his priestly linen garment.

He shall remove his garments when he leaves the Temple.

He shall put other garments on.

ii
The priest puts his garments on, and he takes them off again.

He serves in the Temple, and he goes away.

He comes and he goes.

iii
Such a man must know that his life is in flux.

He must know that his life can change.

*
Perhaps it is precisely such a man who is called to serve in God’s Temple, at God’s Altar.

 

____

Originally shared in 2009

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

Please join me for a lecture at Columbia / Barnard Hillel

I'll be speaking at Columbia / Barnard Hillel (in Manhattan) this Tuesday (the 27th) at 7PM. Information below--free feel to share, and I hope you can make it. Location is 606 West 115th street (off Broadway), room 401.

Kol tuv,

Abe

 

People of Text in a Visual World

 In a world driven by pictures and design, where do the People of the Book find a home? In a talk spanning Sinai to neuromarketing, a Jewish poet and advertising professional takes a hard look at how we read, see, and speak—to offer a new kind of Jewish communication for our era.

About the speaker: Abe Mezrich is the creator of TorahParsha.com, a weekly series of poetry on the Torah. He is also Director of Communications at Mediaocean, one of the most heavily-used advertising technologies in the world. He is a graduate of Yale and YeshivatHar Etzion.