TorahParsha

Whose religion is it?

for Parshat B'HaAlotcha

 

i

When we leave Egypt,

God declares

that only the circumcised may join

the Passover sacrifice.

The uncircumcised

must be circumcised

to participate.

*

The next year

at the Passover in the Desert

there are men who are impure

having come into contact with the dead.

They ask Moses:

Why should we not bring God’s offering

in the midst of the Children of Israel?

God says:

Let there be a second Passover

for they who could not sacrifice in the first.

 

ii

When we leave Egypt,

God decides

who participates

and who does not

and how to cross the divide.

In the Desert,

the people say:

We have been locked out,

let us back in.

God listens.

 

iii

Between leaving Egypt

and that Passover in the Desert,

God gives us Torah

and sets His Tent in our midst    

and assembles our tribes

with God’s Tent at the center:

He makes His religion

into ours.

 

iv

When it was God’s religion

we looked to Him

to join in.

If it is ours now

then it is we who must find our way,

knocking at God’s door

until He opens up

even if the gates are shut.

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

___

Exodus 12:43-50; Numbers 9:1-14

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Why separating sacred from secular is dangerous

for Parshat B'Haalotcha

i

On the anniversary of leaving Egypt,

God says:

Perform the Passover service

of families eating lamb.

*

But some men are impure

and cannot perform the service.

They say that they, too,

want to offer God’s sacrifice.

So God gives them 

a second Passover.

 

ii

God sends the people from Mount Sinai,

toward the Land.

On the journey

the people repeatedly turn from God.

They want meat, not Manna.

Though God is with them,

they fear the strength of the people of the Land

that produces incredibly healthy fruit.

 

iii

Notice it is the men, not God

who introduce the word sacrifice

to describe the Passover meal.

They understand sacrifice

but not the joint feast

of God and man.

*

Notice that the people understand meat

but not Manna;

that they connect

strong crops with strong people,

but they do not see God

giving strength to both.

 

iv

Here is the failure:

they know God’s world

and their own world

but do not see

that both are arenas

for Godliness.

They do not see

that when God sends them

from His mountain

and into their lives,

it is all one journey.

 

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

 

 

How do you learn to look at the world?

for Parshat BeHaalotcha

i

Yitro,

Moses’ father-in-law,

has traveled from his home country

to the Desert,

to the Camp of Israel.

*

Moses says to him:

journey with us to the Land—

because you know how we encamp in the Desert

and you will become our eyes.

*

Not:

you know  the way through the Desert,

coming from afar.

But:

you know how we encamp—

encircling the Tent of God,

a people with God at it’s center.

 

ii

Now compare this

with what God says later:

Do not stray after your heart

and after your eyes,

your exploration

flowing from your heart

flowing from your eyes

out to the world,

out to sin.

 

iii

There is good to find

in the world outside,

beyond the Desert,

beyond yourself.

There is a Promised Land.

To find it,

first you must learn to look

toward the center of things.

Yitro has done this,

leaving the wide world

to seek the people

with God at its heart.

*

Yitro has done this,

and now Yitro can become looking itself.

Yitro can become like eyes.

 

 

_____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

Notes: 1) In the text here, Moses’ father-in-law is referred to as Chovev the son of Reu’el, not Yitro. 2) earlier in the Torah, when Moses’ father-in-law (there called Yitro) joins the People, the Camp is not yet organized. Still, I think my point is valid. 

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Is the past more important than the present?

 

for Parshat B'HaAlotcha

 

i

At the start of Israel’s freedom, God says: 

conduct the ceremony of the Passover lamb

now and this time every year

to recall how God freed you from Egypt.

*

The next year

at the same time

God mobilizes the people

from Mount Sinai

and into the Desert

and toward the Land.

God says:

conduct the ceremonies of the Passover lamb.

But He makes no mention of Egypt at all.

*

So the Passover lamb is tied to the past,

and the Passover lamb is tied to the new journey.

 

ii

History is what has happened,

but what is unfolding now is also our history.

*

Both call for ritual,

both call for tying history back to God.

 

 

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

www.TorahParsha.com

 

Please pray for Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, a one-year-old who needs a bone marrow transplant, and get your cheek swabbed today.

For Parshat B'HaAlotcha

What is Light?

 

i

In the Beginning, God said: Let there be Light.

And there was Light.

And God separated the Light from the Darkness.

He separated the waters above from the waters below.

He gathered the waters to one place, so dry land would appear.

He saw that what He had made was very good.

*

Having made Light, God separates light from darkness, above from below, dry land from water.

And Light sheds light, clarifying differences.

In this clarification God creates.

 

ii

God commands how the High Priest will light the Menorah—the candelabra—in the Temple.

Then God says: you must separate the Levites from among the Children of Israel.

The Levites will serve in the Temple.

And the Levites will stand in place of the firstborn—whom God had sanctified to Himself, in Egypt, as He struck the firstborn of Egypt down but passed over the firstborn of Israel.

*
Here is light.

Here, too, is separation: firstborn from other children, Israel from Egypt, Levites from the rest of Israel.

*

God illuminates distinctions in the universe, creating a universe.

God says to us: you, too, will illuminate.

You must illuminate distinctions—uniqueness—amongst peoples, creating humanity.

 

 

___________

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

 

___________

See Gen 1:1 – 2:3; Num. 8:1-22

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Please continue to pray for Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah, and for Rachel Tovah bat Yehudit Esther

Trumpets

i
When the Cloud of God lifts up from upon the Tent, the people are to continue on with their journey.

You would think that the people would need no other sign to wander on, other than this.

*
And yet Moses is to make two Trumpets; and the priests shall blow on these trumpets to announce the time for the journeying of the camps, when God wants the people to move.

*
We must explain why there is a need for these Trumpets, this other signal.

ii
To follow God’s moving Cloud is to follow a vision of God.

There is a difference between following a vision of God, and internalizing God’s will—to make God's will into your own want, your own wish: so much so that you move in God’s path of your own accord, of your own pronouncement, to the sound of the trumpet-blast that you, yourself, have sounded.

*
This second way is the way of a mature faith.

It is to this mature faith that God wants us to come, that the Trumpets which He has commanded allow us to come.