TorahParsha

Plenty

for Parshat Emor

 

God says: Count out seven weeks in the season of harvesting grain. At the end of seven weeks, on Shavuot, sacrifice bread.

And God says: As you harvest your crop, leave grain aside for the poor.

 

Counting the days of your harvest, you realize the plenty that you have.

And you realize, too, that this plenty is not yours.

 

___

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

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Where we live

for Parshat Emor

 

i

At the end of our holidays

our months of service to God

we live in sukkot:

the special tents

through which we recreate

the sukkot God made us dwell in

in the Desert.

*

Elsewhere,

our Desert tents

are simply called ohalim,

tents.

God is not mentioned

in connection with them.

God has His own Tent,

His Mishkan,

that we come to seek.

Now,

at the conclusion of the holidays,

our tents become sukkot from God.

 

ii

Our months of holidays

overlap with our months of work:

spring to fall

planting to harvest.

Our calendar

is God’s calendar.

*

In the midst of God’s discussion of holidays

God says: when you gather your crops in the Land

leave aside food for the poor.

So that we do not work for ourselves;

we work for all of us.

 

iii

In the Desert we each had our own lives

our own tents

apart from each other

separate from God.

*

But now

our time and God’s

our work and God’s service,

the food we grow

and the food others need

are intertwined.

It is with this intertwining

that our tents,

our years,

our lives

become homes for God.

 

___

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

__

Leviticus Chapter 23

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Why innovation can be pious

for Parshat Emor

 

i

God creates Light

and separates it from Darkness

and creates nights and days

for Darkness and for Light.

And there was evening

and there was morning

one day.

 

ii

God says:

let the people take olive oil

pressed for lamp- lighting

and light the Menorah in the Temple;

let the Menorah be lit

from evening to morning

before HaShem

continually.

 

iii

God makes Light

and takes this Light

and creates the Time

which frames our world.

*

We make lighting oil

and take this oil

and mark the time

of God.

 

iv

So:

God makes a world for us

filled with things.

We take these things

and make a world for God.

 

____

Based partially on a thought of Martin Buber

_____

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

 

 

Thought for Sukkot

 

What do we do with the past?

Leviticus Chapter 23

 

i

On Sukkot you live in huts:

so your generations may know that God made you dwell in huts, when He took you from Egypt.

And on Sukkot you take four plants of the Land of Israel:

a citron, a palm-branch, a willow, a myrtle

—and you rejoice before your God.

*
Sukkot comes at the harvest-time, when you have gathered in the fruit of the Land. 

 

ii
On Sukkot you live in the past and the present, at once.

You remember how God took you from Egypt—into the Desert, toward the Land.

You celebrate the Land, the harvest, God has brought you to.

*

Here is the lesson:

Each moment—the past, the present—offers its unique relationship with God.

We do not let go of these relationships.

We gather them together.

We do not stand reinvented before God.

We stand enriched by the past with God.

 

iii
In the Torah’s calendar, Sukkot comes at the close of the holidays (Passover begins the holidays).

A year’s holidays are ending.

At the end of all this time, we are ready for Sukkot’s lesson.

 

 

Chag sameach,

- Abe


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

 

 

Why a life of work cannot be secular (for Parshat Emor)

i

The first month and the seventh month are the only two months of the year with holiday-dates in them.

These seven months are like Passover: which starts with a day of holy gathering, and ends with a holy gathering on the seventh day.

These many months start in holiday, and end in holiday seven months later.

They are like a long festival.

*

These seven months are the time when the farmers in Israel tend their crops.

So if these seven months are a festival, they are a festival of field work.

ii

There is another long festival.

Because for the final seven months of the year, God sends rain.

And the rain begins in the seventh month—the month of holiday—and ends in the first month of the new year—the other month of holiday, seven months later.

These seven months are also like a long festival.

They are a festival of rain.

iii

Our long festival is a festival of growing crops.

God’s long festival is a festival of rain.

Our long festival is a festival of work.

God’s long festival is a festival that makes the fruit of our work possible.

*

From these two festivals together, the earth blooms.

 

_________

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

__________

Verses cited: Lev. 23:5,7,24

I have taken a strict reading of “holiday-dates”—please note that in actuality, Shavuot comes seven weeks after Passover (but has no set date on the calendar; see Lev. 23:15-22, and the Ramban). Additionally, I only refer here to holidays mandated within the Torah—and not to Purim or the Rabbinic holidays.

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

Where Will the Past Go?

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.