TorahParsha

What is your worth to the world?

for Parshat Bamidbar

 

i

God closes the book of Leviticus with the Law of how

you donate the value of a person to the Temple.

You say: I will donate the value of such-and-such-a person

or you say:

I will donate my own value  

and you donate the value of that person

to the Temple,

to God’s Temple.

*

God opens the next book, Numbers,

with the command to count out each man

according to his place in the armies

by which the people will march through Desert,

into the Land.

 

ii

So we find a person’s worth through the world of the Temple,

the world of God.

He finds his place in the world through his place in the armies—

where he stands among the people.

*

So you are given worth from God, but that is not enough: you must take up your place among people.

And you have your place to fill among people, but that is not enough: your worth comes only from God.

 

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

www.TorahParsha.com

Thought for the Brit of my son

 

How do you become a man?

i

God creates the first Man to work the Garden and to guard it.

But the Man sees that all creatures have a partner, except for him.

So God takes from Man’s side. God fashions this piece of man into Woman.

She will be Man’s help.

*

God calls Abraham to journey to the Land, to build a nation.

And Sarah, his wife, goes with him.

But it is only after Abraham removes his foreskin that Abraham and Sarah, together, give food to wandering strangers.

These strangers herald God’s promise of Isaac, patriarch to Abraham’s people, lone child to this childless couple.

 

ii

A man is meant to master the world:

- to work the Garden and to guard it,

- to nation-build.

*
But we are not meant to master the world alone.

Man must find his help.

Abraham must join Sarah.

Abraham and Sarah must turn to the stranger together.

*
So that you finally come to manhood through trimming manhood back—

through giving a part of your side, all of your foreskin away

and joining others, joining the world.

 

_________

In honor of the brit / circumcision of our son, Ezra Yehuda Mezrich

- Ezra, a name we find beautiful

- Yehuda, in loving memory of my rabbi and teacher, HaRav Yehuda Amital

 

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

 

Where Will the Past Go?

for Parshat Emor

i
Two men of Israel fight in the Desert.

One of the men is of Egyptian descent. He blasphemes the Name of God.

*
The People has carried its Egyptian past, its past among heathens, all the way with it into God’s Desert. Yet now Israel has become the People of God.

So the People bears great contradiction: Israelite, Egyptian, heathen, holy; it is no surprise that such contradiction will emerge in struggle.

ii
Rav Soloveitchik says: sometimes our past is so sinful that we must entirely reject it. But at other times a sinful past can be transformed--can be redeemed--into the building-blocks of a new life.

iii
God commands that the blasphemer be put to death.

But God also says, You shall have one system of Law for the foreigner and the citizen alike.

One system for those born as Israelites, and for those born as foreigners.

One system for those born as Israelites, and for those born as heathens.

One system for those born into the new life, and for the people who have lived the past.

*
So that the unholy past and the holy present may be subsumed, together, into God’s new kingdom.

________
originally posted 2009


Shabbat Shalom,
Abe