TorahParsha

What can we offer mourners?

 

for Parshat Chukat

 

i

God tells Moses:

Take a pure, red cow

that has never borne a yoke.

Slaughter it,

burn it to ash,

set the ash in water.

When a man touches a corpse

or a grave,

the priest should sprinkle the man with the ash-water,

making him pure again.

 

ii

This ceremony is unlike sacrifices,

Which are pleasing aromas to God,

smoke rising upward.

Here is a ceremony of ash,

char on the earth.

*

And what of the color red?

The color of blood,

that is the soul—

life coursing in the body;

the color of the hair

of Esau the hunter,

the man of strength.

*

Cattle are creatures of strength,

meant to bear the yoke.

A cow yet to bear the yoke

is strength- in- waiting.

Cows,

mothers of cattle,

are strength-in-waiting.

*

So this is a ceremony of the strength of life.

That is the ceremony we bring to death.

 

iii

A man who encounters death

could become consumed by it.

We touch him with this ash-water,

we tell him: come back to this world,

to the strength of the living earth,

to the strength of this red cow.

 

____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

If you don’t already receive my weekly thoughts on the Tower of Babel, I'd be delighted to add you to the list. 

Please pray for the infant  Lianne bat Neriah 

Why a fractured community is tragic

for Parshat Korach

 

i

Korach took a company of men into revolt.

Korach and these men say: Moses should not rule.

They say: Aaron should not be the high priest. That role is unnecessary.

All the people are holy.

*

There have been uprisings before.

There has been the sin of the Spies, and the Golden Calf.

But Korach took a company of men.

Here is the first group to splinter off.

 

ii

Moses says to this group: If HaShem will create a new creation, and the earth opens its mouth and will swallow you—then you shall know that God has sent me.

And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed… every man of that group.

*

Creating Man, God fashioned… Man of dust from the earth.

He blew the spirit of life into Man’s nostrils.

Now He creates a mouth for the earth to swallow every man.

*
Korach splinters the community.

This inverts Creation.

 

iii

Perhaps this is the meaning.

God’s role in the world is creating Man.

Our role is creating a cohesive people.

That is the partnership of Creation.

If we reject our role, it is no less terrible than if God—Heaven forbid!—would reject His.

 

 

 

_______

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

________

I do not remember where I heard / read the observation about Korach’s group being the first splinter group.

________

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You're Invited: Tower of Babel and Religious Technology

Thinking religiously today inevitably involves asking how technology, human interaction, and Torah intersect—and how they stand at odds.

I’ve gotten a lot of opportunity to think through these tensions over the last 8 years, sharing poetry on the Parsha each week as I built a career in advertising technology.

It’s that background that led me to decide to embark on a new series exploring the passage in Tanakh that deals with these issues most: the Tower of Babel.

Now, I’ll be sharing a short email regularly that explores the passage in Genesis itself, and the Midrashic, Talmudic, and other Jewish sources surrounding it. This week’s thought on the Tower of Babel below.

If you’d like to sign up for my Tower Babel emails, let me know here.

And if you don’t already receive my weekly Parsha thoughts, I’d be delighted to add you to the list.

Shabbat Shalom, and looking forward to the exchange of ideas.

Abe

 

 

Disruption

 

i

The people in Babel

build a tower to heaven

to make a name for themselves

 

using bricks liveinim as stone avanim,

tar cheimer as mortar chomer:

engineering from wordplay.

 

In such a world of innovation,

anything can be whatever we define it to be.

If we like,

we can transform rocks and clay

and take earth to the sky.

 

ii

Except God  separates the nations into languages.

As if to say:

Even in words,

there are always distinctions.

There is always an order.

You can only disrupt so much.

 

iii

Now consider Shabbat.

On Shabbat, you and your worker and your animal

all must rest as one.

The sharp lines of hierarchy fall away.

The order is broken down.

And this is what God wants.

 

iv

We can disrupt

for the sake of making a new name for ourselves

as the people of Babel disrupted the world.

 

We can disrupt

for the sake of something higher

as our Shabbat rest disrupts.

 

How will you disrupt?

 

 

 

If you’d like to sign up for my Tower Babel emails, let me know here.

 

 

When life frightens you

 

for Parshat Shelach

 

i

God tells Moses:

send spies into the Land.

Moses tells them:

Be strong

be brave

take from the Land’s fruits.

This, in the time

of the year’s first grapes.

*

When the spies report back

holding up the Land’s fruit,

fear overtakes them.

They sow panic.

They are not strong

or brave:

they forget

that God is their strength.

 

ii

Later, God says:

In the Land,

on your farms,

take from the first fruits of your field,

bring that fruit to the Temple,

declare how God has taken you

from Egypt

to this Land,

to your crop.

*

Recognizing God’s Hand like this,

each farmer reverses the work of the spies

who feared to truly possess

the first fruits they held.

 

iii

Of course this equates the spies

terrified at a strange new place

with a farmer tending his own soil

every year.

*

Perhaps to say this:

There is the fear of what is new

and there is the fear of the life you know.

In either fear,

all is possible

with God’s help.

 

_______

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

_______

Numbers 13-14:10; Deuteronomy 26:1-12

www.TorahParsha.com

What world do you build in?

For this Shabbat, I've decided to share a thought on the Tower of Babel.

  

There is another City of Babel—one aside from the city of the people who build a tower. There is also the city of Nineveh: the city which Nimrod, ruler of the Kingdom of Babel, builds himself.

God does not let the City of Babel progress. But Nineveh goes on to become the great city.

The people of the City of Babel speak of bricks and of a tower; they speak of making a name for themselves. They do not speak of animals. And they do not speak of God. But Nimrod is a mighty hunter before the Lord­. And in the time of Jonah, when the people of Nineveh repent, they dress their animals in sackcloth alongside themselves. For the people of Babel, man is alone with his technology. For the people of Nineveh, man and beast are together in God’s world.

For the people of Nineveh, we are only one part of God’s universe.

The people of Babel build a city. The king of Nineveh builds a city.

It is only Nineveh that God lets flourish.

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

I have read Genesis 10:11, an ambiguous verse, as saying that Nimrod built Nineveh. 

Genesis 10:8-11, 11:1-9; Jonah 1:2, 3:8

www.TorahParsha.com