TorahParsha

How can we achieve?

 

for Parshat Mishpatim

i

Moses tells the people of God’s Laws.

The people say we will do

all that God wants of us.

Moses writes God’s Laws down.

*

Then the people say

we will do and we will listen

to God’s Law:

adding the word

listen

to what has already been said.

*

And God inscribes the Laws

into tablets of stone

for Moses to take down

to the people at the mountain base.

 

ii

What you do

is a matter of yourself.

You do not need anyone else

to simply do.

It is like writing thoughts on paper:

you formalize what is in your mind,

you achieve little in the world.

*

Listening,

you bring what is outside

within you.

Listening to God,

you bring God’s words

God’s voice

within you.

*

Listening to God,

you can make what you do on your own

what you do from yourself

an act that is filled up with God:

an act of holiness.

 

iii

And doing and listening

you make your deeds whole,

you make your deeds concrete:

like solid stone.

 

 

____

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for Neshama Emuna bat Batya

 

How does my small life matter?

 

(for Parshat Yitro)

 

i

God says:

Remember the Sabbath day. Work for six days and on the seventh you shall rest

because God worked for six days and on the seventh He rested.

*

But it is unclear what we must remember:

if we must remember God’s rest,

or we must simply recall that we must rest each week

with God’s long-ago rest only as background

for what we do now.

 

ii

This lack of clarity

this permeable line between your week and God’s

points to how your week is part of God’s week:

how within the long coursing endless history

of all of God’s work, since the beginning of Time,

your week is there.

 

iii

And to delve deeply into your week

to become deeply aware of your week

to remember your week

is to know this,

is to remember this:

that all along your weeks have been holy,

that all along your life has been holy,

that all that you’ve lived,

day in and day out

week in and week out

has been tied to God.

 

 

_____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

 

For Parshat B'Shalach

 

What do we take from God?

 

i

The people gather manna,

grain from God,

all through their years in the Desert,

gathering one omer for each person.

*

An omer is one-tenth of an efah

is the last phrase

of the story of manna.

 

ii

Moses tells Israel:

bake what you will bake of the manna;

and the word for bake is ofeh,

like efah.

So say an efah

is a measure of baking.

*

Later Moses says

bring an omer of your harvest

before God.

So say an omer

is a measure of gathering.

 

iii

Then an omer is one-tenth of an efah

is a translation of what we gather from God

into what we make from it.

*

Then to know we can translate

from omer to efah

is to know that from God’s works

we make our own forms.

 

iv

This knowing is the final gift

that God’s gift leaves for us.

 

_____
Sparked by an idea of my friend Yossi Kra

 

_____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

 

For Parshat Bo

 

What does loneliness offer?

 

i

There was famine in Canaan and there was no bread

but in Egypt there was bread

so Jacob’s sons came to Egypt

and came to stay.

In Egypt,

where their grandchildren become enslaved.

*

Israel rose from Egypt

baking matzoh:

bread that would not rise,

bread that is not bread.

*

And Manna was the bread from God

that Israel ate in the Desert.

 

ii

Israel eats the bread of Egypt,

and then of God.

Israel belongs to Egypt,

and then to God.

You belong to the one

who gives you bread.

 

iii

But what of matzoh—

no-man’s-land,

bread and not bread,

not of Egypt, not from God?

Matzo is the bread of growing up.

*

When you grow up

you come to someone

not as a child

not as a slave

but as a partner,

a groom,

a bride.

*

Before this

you must learn two things:

that you can bake your own bread;

that the bread you feed yourself

is no bread at all.

*

So you need a time alone,

in-between.

You need matzoh.

 

iv

(This is a lesson for those who seek others,

and for a nation coming to God.)

 

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, Esther Chaya bat Yael Miriam, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

For Parshat VaEirah

 

What do miracles show us?

 

i

God said

I will make many

My signs and My wonders

in the Land of Egypt

and this was the start of the Plagues.

God fought for the Children of Israel

through ten symbols.

 

ii

Symbols are an invitation

to depart from the meanings we give to this world,

to see the world as holding the meaning

someone else has laid down for us.

 

iii

At the end of the Plagues

Egypt captured the meaning of the Plagues

acceded to the will of God

accepted God’s view of the world.

Viewing the world through God’s eyes,

Egypt had no choice

but to choose to set others free.

 

 

(based on the Ramban)

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, Esther Chaya bat Yael Miriam, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

What do we do if God is missing?

 

i

The time of slavery in Egypt

before God heard the cries of His people

and before He remembered His covenant with their fathers

and before He sent Moses to save them

was,

we could say,

a time when we felt God’s absence.

*

It was wholly unlike

the time in the Garden

when Adam hid

and God sought Adam out—

asking:

Ayekah

Where are you?

 

ii

And during the time

when we felt God’s absence,

Moses saves Yitro’s daughters

from the harassment of shepherds.

Yitro asks his daughters:

V’ayo

And where is he—

this man who helped you

whom we must thank?

 

iii

Moses marries Yitro’s daughter

and serves as his shepherd

and bears him grandsons

and it is while Moses lives with Yitro

that God heard Israel’s moaning

and God comes to Moses

in a burning bush

and God says:

Now I will rescue My people.

 

iv

When we cannot hear God seeking us

then we must seek each other.

And then God will hear us.

And then God will come.

*

That is the lesson

that Yitro offers.

 

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, Esther Chaya bat Yael Miriam, andfor NeshamaEmunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

Does Judaism believe in nostalgia?

for Parshat VaYechi

i

Jacob flees home, fleeing his brother.

He asks God to return him to his father's house—

someday,

when the danger is gone,

when it will be safe.

Then he lifted up his feet

and he set off.

*

Decades later

he returns to his father’s land

only to leave

living seventeen years in Egypt

dying in Egypt

one-hundred forty seven years old

blessing his twelve sons.

And he gathered his feet

and was gathered to his nation. 

 

ii

Jacob asks God

for his father’s house,

for his childhood.

God gives him something else.

God gathers Jacob to his nation,

not to his father’s home.

God makes him an old patriarch

giving blessing,

years past being a child.

*

It is almost a return

but not a return.

 

iii

God sets us out on a journey

not for us to come back to the same spot

but also not to depart utterly.

We are to lift up our feet

and walk far,

to widen the story:

to make a nation

from a father’s home,

fatherhood from childhood,

our time of dependency

into a blessing for others.

*

That is the journey

of a good life.

 

 

_____
Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, Esther Chaya bat Yael Miriam, and for NeshamaEmunah bat Batya

www.TorahParsha.com / @TorahParsha

 

Why the Torah is a story

for Parshat VaYigash

i

Telling

brings the listener

and the person told about

into one story—

across divides

across lands

across hearts.

*

Here is one example:

 

ii

Joseph rules Egypt.

He disguises himself from his brothers—

who have hated him,

who have tossed him from home,

from his father.

They come to him now

down from Canaan

to seek bread during famine.

*

But Joseph demands

that they leave their youngest brother,

Benjamin,

in Egypt.

Then the brother Judah

describes the whole story

of the brothers coming to him

from far away

and going back to Canaan

and seeing their father

and returning to Egypt

only for Joseph to demand

that Benjamin stay.

And Judah tells Joseph:

our father’s heart will break

there in Canaan

if Benjamin stays

here in Egypt.

*

Then Joseph says: I am Joseph.

And Joseph reconciles with his brothers

and Joseph reunites with his father.

 

iii

Another example

of uniting through story

is the Torah itself.

Because  sometimes God seems far from us.

But hearing the Torah,

studying Torah,

we are reunited with God

into one story,

into one telling

into one book

from across a great distance.

 

____

With special thanks to my wife Kathi, as always.

_____

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

 

www.TorahParsha.com

 

What living through many lives teaches us

for Parshat Mikeitz

 

i

Pharoah dreams

of cows eating cows

and he wakes up

and he goes to sleep

and then he dreams

of corn eating corn.

*
Joseph tells him:

the cows eating cows

and the corn eating corn

all represent

one continuum of years.

Though you woke in between,

your two dreams really are one.

*

Through these dreams

Joseph shows how

to join seven years of plenty

with seven years of famine.

Through these dreams

Joseph’s many brothers

estranged twenty years

come to meet him now,

the leader in Egypt

far from home.

Through these dreams

Joseph’s brothers say finally

we are guilty

for the cruelty they had shown him

when they were young

in that past life.

 

ii

Life is full of lives

that do not seem to connect.

Some are unworkable

and some seem meaningless

and only in a different part of life

can we say at last:

Here is what it means.

 

iii

A people of history,

our lives bear the task

of weaving moments

from past to present

from present to future

of saying It is one dream,

a single story

a single life

that God unfolds.

 

____

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Urim Sameach, 

 Abe

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya

 

 

What do Dreams Mean?

for Parshat VaYeishev

 

i

Joseph is his father’s favorite son

and his father gives him a special coat.

Joseph lives a charmed life.

*

At night Joseph dreams  

and his dreams imply that his brothers will bow to him.

But Joseph is taken into slavery

and from slavery to prison.

 

ii

In prison Joseph meets a cupbearer and a baker.

The cupbearer dreams

and Joseph says: your dream means that you will be a cupbearer again.

The baker dreams

and Joseph says: your dream means that you will be hanged.

*

And Joseph says: dream-interpretations are from God.

*
These predictions come true.

 

Pharaoh hears of Joseph’s dream-interpretation

and makes Joseph ruler over Egypt

and Joseph’s brothers do bow to him.

 

iii

In security Joseph thinks that dreams are promises,

But the promise never takes hold. 

 

Then Joseph sees  

that dreams are the signs of changing fortune:

—for good (a return to cupbearing), or for suffering (a hanging);

only God will say which.

 

Then dreams speak Truth through Joseph

and his dreams come true.

 

Because he has learned the heart of dreams, the core of Truth:

that life is changeable,

that God is the only Master of this tenuousness.

 

 

Inspired largely by Rabbi Alex Israel’s reading of Joseph, and other sources.

Originally shared last year for this week's Parsha.

____

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

 

Please pray for for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and for Neshama Emunah bat Batya