dvar Torah

Parshat Mattot-Masei for Temple Ahavat Achim

(Delivered August 3, 2024)

Are we there yet?

This is an age-old question. It comes up, of course, on car trips with children, on a fairly regular basis, almost like clockwork. It also came up for me a lot as I was studying our Torah portion this week. We are winding down Sefer Bamidbar—the Book of Numbers—and with it, the narrative substance of the Torah. Yes, of course, there is another book in the Five Books of Moses, but Sefer Dvarim—Deuteronomy—is a retelling of the first four books, punctuated by Moses’s long goodbye. So for all intents and purposes, this week finds us at a major moment of transition. Here at the end of Mattot-Masei, the Israelites are poised to enter the Promised Land, seemingly about to fulfill the beautiful dream that Avraham had back in Parshat Lech L’cha. This is the longed-for culmination of forty years of wandering and bickering and searching and giving up and starting again. This is the fulfillment of a vision, the anticipation of which spurred the harrowing journey out of enslavement. Here we are, witnessing the Israelites, our ancestors, ready at last, to attain what they have been yearning for, what their parents toiled for, what their grandparents could only dream about. 

Are we there yet?

But in this seeming moment of triumph, this double portion of Torah finds Moses and the Israelites not looking back with a sense of satisfaction and contentment. Rather, they come to the unpleasant realization that getting there is significantly less than half the fun, and by the way, there’s no there there. In Parshat Mattot-Masei, Moses has meltdown after meltdown, becoming increasingly unhinged just when the story should cloak him in triumph. In the first part of the parsha, which we don’t read this year, he becomes furious that in conquering the Midianites, the fighters allowed the women to live rather than slaughtering them. This is not the righteous, moral Moses we have come to admire as our teacher and leader. His twisted rationale is that the seductiveness of the Midianite women had caused the plague that had decimated the Israelite camp until Pinchas’s act of vigilantism. Even if this had been the case with every single Midianite woman, and even if it didn’t take two to tango, is this a reason for such wild destruction?

Then, in the part we do read today, Moses goes ballistic on the Gadites and Reubenites, assuming that their apparently sensible request to remain in Moav with their cattle and not cross the Jordan into the Holy Land was evidence of treachery that would lead to a repeat of the incident with the scouts—and perhaps an additional forty years of wandering as yet another generation might prove unworthy to enter the Land. Again, his logic makes a certain amount of sense on paper, but the way he handles himself …really doesn’t look good. It seems all this conquest does not bring out the best in the Israelites, nor in their leadership. 

Just as they seem to be about to enter the land and fulfill the desire they have held in their hearts for nearly half a century, they decompensate in spectacular fashion. It makes me wonder. 

Maybe, Are we there yet? is the wrong question.

I have a dear friend, a brilliant writer and composer, more extravagantly talented than most of us could ever hope to be. When he was in his early thirties, he wrote a show that was produced on Broadway, starring people you and I have heard of. It was nominated for a Tony Award. It was a big deal. He and I didn’t meet and become friends until some years later, and when we were reflecting together about that early success, he said something to me that I’ve never forgotten: “Don’t climb the mountain too soon. Because you think that when you climb the mountain everything is going to be perfect. But actually, what you find at the top is a bigger, gnarlier, higher mountain.”

Likewise, those of us blessed with children in our lives experience this phenomenon over and over. When they are in utero, we imagine life will be perfect when they are finally born. When they are infants, we imagine life will be perfect when they sleep through the night. When they are toddlers, we imagine life will be perfect when they go to school. You get the idea. And then, when they set out on their own, we imagine life will be perfect when they come back to visit. Each phase brings something delicious and something more to want. And much as we long to see their children and their children’s children, it is in the nature of being human to leave question marks and ellipses in our wake. The promised future is always out of reach.

I think also of 1948. When the modern state of Israel was established, I imagine many Jews felt that finally we’re coming home. Finally, we can be safe. Finally, we can occupy the high moral ground we envision for ourselves. The truth, as we agonizingly know, is much more complicated than that. Yes, we are home. But safety and high moral ground are much more thorny than we allowed ourselves to imagine for all those generations when we didn’t have a Jewish homeland. October 7 taught us—again—how unsafe we truly are, even in our own country. And the incident at Sde Teiman this past week—in which the arrest of a handful of IDF soldiers who brutalized a Palestinian prisoner sparked rioting by settlers in protest of their being punished—has shown us that although Am Yisrael is one people, we are not all speaking the same moral language or holding ourselves to the same standards. In 1948, when our beloved Israel was founded, I doubt we could have imagined that such depravity and pain would still be ours. 

And as we navigate these weeks leading up to Tish’ah b’Av, the weight of our historical trauma feels awfully heavy indeed, and the pasuk from our haftarah this week,

לָכֵן עֹד אָרִיב אִתְּכֶם נְאֻם־יי      וְאֶת־בְּנֵי בְנֵיכֶם אָרִיב׃

Oh, I will keep rebuking you, says Adonai,
and your children’s children I will rebuke.

curdles in our ears. Over and over, as our history unspools, our highest aspirations become muddier as they draw closer. The Torah seems to be telling us—over and over, because we are human and need to keep hearing it—that dreams take work, that the ideals we picture have a cost we can’t always recognize until it comes due. 

And yet we journey. 

The second part of our double-portion of Torah today, Parshat Masei, goes to great lengths to look back and name each and every stop along the way of those forty years of wandering. 

From the departure that caps the Pesach story, as the Egyptians are burying their dead, the Israelites journey. They journey to Sukkot, and Eisam, and Pi haChirot, and Migdol. To Marah and Eilim and Dofkah. And on and on. 

Always journeying. 

The sages wonder: why name all these places? Rashi takes comfort in knowing that as forty-two places are named to describe a period of forty years’ wandering, it must mean that the Israelites had moments when they settled in and stayed. Moments to pause for breath and reflection. The Midrash Tanchuma offers a parable: the articulation of place name after place name is like a King who is traveling with an ill child and as he recounts the story many years later, he lovingly names the places where they paused: here is where we slept, here is where we were cold, here is where you had a headache. Even though there was this terrible divine decree that there would be four decades of uncertainty for the Israelites, God was still paying attention. God kept an eye out.

But if we look closely at the verse that introduces this travelogue, there’s something else too. Chapter 33 verse 2 reads: 

וַיִּכְתֹּב מֹשֶׁה אֶת־מוֹצָאֵיהֶם לְמַסְעֵיהֶם עַל־פִּי יי וְאֵלֶּה מַסְעֵיהֶם לְמוֹצָאֵיהֶם׃

And Moses wrote down their departures for their journeys at the command of Adonai;
these were their departures and their goings out. 

The verse emphasizes the going, not the arrival. In other words: not comings and goings, but goings and goings. Our Torah tells us that setting out, looking forward, holding aspiration is essential. That even in the hardest of times, we set our sights on the horizon and keep moving. There will always be a tension between present and future, between what we have and what we think we need. The lesson is to remember and respect the past, see the imperfect present for what it is, and keep striving, even knowing that when we get there, we’ll set out again.

There is, perhaps, something to be said for unrealized dreams, for having something more to hope for and work toward. 

So. Are we there yet?

No. But we’re still journeying.

Shabbat shalom!

Parshat Va’etchanan: God will Provide

A phrase I heard frequently in my household growing up was, “God will provide.” My sweet father used to say it a lot. Still does, at age 90. He is not a very religious man, but he is gentle and optimistic, which is almost the same thing. His faith is not often articulated at all—much less in fancy words—but more times than I can count, when we asked him how something we had doubts about was going to work out, he would say, “God will provide.”

He was usually right.

Our Torah reading this week, Parshat Vaetchanan, begins with Moshe pleading with God for a bit of grace: the opportunity to enter the Land of Israel despite God’s determination that he wouldn’t be permitted to do so. The word vaetchanan is rooted in the letters chet-nun-nun, and depending on the conjugation, can mean either to be gracious or to seek grace. Rashi suggests that the word could also be interpreted as being from the root letters chet-nun-mem, (as in sinat chinam, baseless hatred) to mean something unearned—so in this case, according to Rashi’s reading, Moshe might be asking for an unearned gift.

The two meanings pair nicely, and the parsha supports both. In chapter 6, verse 10, we read Moshe’s prediction that the Israelites, upon entering the Land, will find waiting for them: cities they didn’t build, houses full of things they didn’t fill them with, cisterns and vineyards and olive groves…  וְאָכַלְתָּ וְשָׂבָעְתָּ and you will eat, and you will be satisfied. The promise of the Promised Land here is that the Israelites will have their needs fulfilled, without having to work for it. They will have a head start in life, seemingly offered unconditionally from God. This seems to me the very definition of grace, and very much unearned. 

So Moshe goes on to warn the Israelites not to get so caught up in their bounty that they imagine their success to be to their own credit. Usually the so-called self-made man has a whole lot of unacknowledged help. We all do.

Vaetchanan reminds us that there is still a covenant in place. As Moses steps back from his leadership role, he reiterates this foundational teaching: 

הִשָּׁמְרוּ לָכֶם פֶּן־תִּשְׁכְּחוּ אֶת־בְּרִית יי אֱלֹהֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר כָּרַת עִמָּכֶם
Watch yourselves so you don’t forget the covenant
that Adonai your God sealed with you. (Deuteronomy 4:23)

That is, the unearned goodies are actually part of a spiritual ecosystem and we have a role to play. Our role comes from words so familiar that their meaning may have dissolved in our minds; these words, too, come in our parsha this week.

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכׇל־מְאֹדֶךָ
You shall love Adonai your God, with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your being. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

You could recite it all by memory, no doubt, but let’s linger over it for a moment and make a point of not taking it for granted. What is it to love God with all the fullness of our selves?

It’s complicated: we don’t even really know Who or What God is, so that makes love hard to define or fathom. And how can we be commanded to love; aren’t feelings out of our conscious control? The Israeli Torah scholar Nechama Leibowitz offers two possibilities for approaching the question of how to love God: she suggests it can mean either to love the world that God created with undistracted passion, or to sever our connections to the world in order to focus solely on God. 

I am typically wary of answers that come in black and white. After all, if we drop everything and focus only on God, we risk isolation and myopia. And if we are locked in undiscerning gratitude, we risk squandering chances to improve the world through acts of kindness and righteousness. I would rather look for a way to unbind the Leibowitz binary and find a flexible approach that allows for a little of both. 

Love, of course, is both a feeling and an action. In any deep and sustaining relationship there are times when the feeling comes to the fore, and times when the feeling might seem dormant but action carries us through. Think of it this way: When your toddler suddenly grasps a concept they have been reaching for, or mixes up their words to say something adorably wrong, or covers you with hugs and kisses, the feeling of love is the most obvious thing in the world. When your toddler dumps baby powder on the carpet five minutes before guests arrive, or falls into a lightning-storm of wild emotion because you served the Ovaltine in the wrong sippy-cup, or rips several pages out of your favorite book, the feeling of love might go quiet for a while, but the action of love will keep you steady. 

So it is with God. At different moments, we have different experiences of our love for God: sometimes all-consuming, sometimes making the long way round through deep appreciation of the world’s many blessings. Sometimes, it’s easy to feel God’s presence and love as an emotion suffuses us; sometimes not so much, and our covenantal responsibility is to love anyway, as commanded. 

Sometimes it is easy to see what God has provided; sometimes God provides us with a challenge or a question. Our task is to love through feeling—through noticing and attending to the world in all its complicated glory, and through action—in the form of mitzvot, the things we do simply because the Beloved asks.

Parshat Dvarim: Crisis of Faith

This week, we begin reading the last book of the Torah: the book of Dvarim. Not a lot that’s new happens in the Book of Deuteronomy; rather it’s an extended moment of retelling the tale of the past several generations of the Israelites’ history as they—we—stand at a crossroads. Moshe, the leader who has been so instrumental in our formation as a people, is close to his end, and we are poised to enter the Promised Land. Before we take this momentous step, there is a pause as we transition from living the story to telling the story. Moshe, as always, takes the lead, sifting through the tumultuous events of the forty years of wandering and turning it into narrative. He enacts the universal human impulse to make meaning by telling what happened, shaping it into a story. As he does so, themes and threads emerge.

I was struck in particular by two contrasting ways he talks about the Israelites’ relationship with God. In chapter 1 verse 27 he scolds them saying:

וַתֵּרָגְנוּ בְאׇהֳלֵיכֶם וַתֹּאמְרוּ בְּשִׂנְאַת יי אֹתָנוּ הוֹצִיאָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם 

לָתֵת אֹתָנוּ בְּיַד הָאֱמֹרִי לְהַשְׁמִידֵנוּ

You sulked in your tents and said, “Because of God’s hate for us, God brought us out of the Land of Egypt to give us over to be destroyed by the Amorites.”

This phrase sin’at Adonai (God’s hate) is shocking, almost lacerating. We see it only once in the whole Tanach; clearly it’s a strong indicator of the level of Moshe’s disdain. Yet taken literally, he’s probably not wrong in his description of the Israelites’ experience. After all, in moments of particular crisis, they do tend to think that God hates them, that the whole thing is a mistake, that somehow they would be better off back in Egypt, taking up the yoke of slavery once more. 

The journey out was not as easy as they wanted it to be; exhausted from forced labor, they no doubt wanted everything to fall into place the minute they crossed the Sea of Reeds. Surely we’ve suffered enough, and a waiting world will soften the path for us. The fact that achieving that first goal had not immediately perfected the world must have been a great disappointment. Maybe God really does hate us.

But in just the next chapter, Moses turns this on its head: 

זֶה  אַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ עִמָּךְ לֹא חָסַרְתָּ דָּבָר

These forty years, God has been with you, you have lacked for nothing.

So…on the one hand, God hates us, and on the other, that same God has steadily accompanied us, providing for everything we needed. This also has the ring of truth to it; think of the manna that daily descended from heaven, arriving each morning like clockwork in just the right amount, tasting of whatever we most needed to taste. Think of the water that Miriam always managed to locate when the Israelites were thirsty. Think of God’s constant guidance, in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

How do we reconcile these contrasting but agonizingly plausible descriptions of our relationship with the Divine? The God that hates us and makes progress so hard and the God that stays alongside us and makes sure our needs are met.

Of course different times feel different ways, and our response to our surroundings is so often an echo of our inner state and the emotional churn that makes each day distinct from the others. When we feel that God hates us, it may have as much to do with us as with God. The funhouse mirror of our own emotions (truthfully not that much fun) can trick our minds. The Midrash Sifrei Dvarim says: אפשר שהקב”ה שונא את ישראל? Is it possible that the Holy Blessed One hates Israel? Is it not written in Malachi 1:2 “I have loved you, said Hashem”? Rather, they are the ones who hate the Holy Blessed One (as per the folk saying: “As you are disposed toward another, you think them disposed toward you.”)

The Midrash summons both a biblical text and a contemporary saying to illuminate our human capacity for thinking the worst of others by imagining they think the worst of us. This recalls the incident of the scouts in Parshat Shelach L’cha a couple weeks back, the matter that catastrophically derailed the Israelites’ progress toward the Promised Land and lengthened the journey to get there by 39 years. Like the Israelites thinking God hated them, the scouts convinced themselves that entering and conquering the land would be too hard for them, that the people who were already there were too huge and powerful for them to overcome…even with divine reassurance that this was indeed their destiny and purpose. 

In other words, while God is with us and providing for our needs, we still find a way to psych ourselves out and assume that things will go badly. (Sound familiar?) And when we play that mental trick on ourselves we do it so well that we cover our own tracks. Thus in Dvarim, this whole head trip somehow gets pinned on God. It’s because God hates us, not because we’re scared and tired and demoralized. 

Of course the verses we’re looking at, the two statements that are in so much tension, both come from Moses. Each one is in its own way his rebuke against the Israelites, either scolding them for thinking God hates them or scolding them for taking for granted the many acts of hessed with which God accompanies them during those four decades in the desert. As our season of rebuke reaches its peak this week leading up to Tishaa b’Av, even Moshe’s voice joins the chorus of admonition in this parsha that is always read the Shabbat before Tishaa b’Av. It is seasonally appropriate to take in this notion that questioning God and undermining ourselves actually spring from the same source: a lack of faith. And that when we act like there’s a conspiracy against us when in fact we’re luckier than most, it is an insult to God and to our tradition. This understandable human tendency—to lean into fear and insufficiency—narrows our pathway to the divine. So as we pause in Parshat Dvarim, tending our story and winnowing through its many lessons, let one of them be this: as we read in the last line of Adon Olam, יי לי ולא אירה. When God is with me, I have no fear.

Counting the Days

Shabbat Shalom! 

לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה׃

Teach us to number our days truly, so that we may develop a heart of wisdom.

The confluence of our doubled parsha today, Tazria-Metzora, and this liminal stretch between Pesach and Shavuot, has me thinking a lot about counting days. As you know we are in the period of Omer counting. As of the night of the second seder, those who take on this practice have been observing the mitzvah to count, forty-nine days, seven weeks of days, in anticipation of Shavuot. Bless and count, bless and count, bless and count. Meanwhile, in the parsha this week, we learn of all sorts of occasions for counting days: days of seclusion following childbirth, days of isolation following illness, days of vigil following the discovery of mold or other damage to one’s home.

What does all this counting mean, and are there connections between the days we count in Tazria-Metzora, and the days we count in the Omer? 

What are we doing when we count the days?

To me, noting each day as it passes is a way of holding steady in a sense of purpose. It helps us to see ourselves as part of a larger pattern. Counting the Omer and knowing that Jews all over the world are engaged in the same ritual—that in each of our individual houses, we are saying the same words each night—gives us a sense of scope and connection. We are less alone—even in our individual houses—because Jews in our neighborhoods and around the world are on the same wavelength. Counting gives us a felt sense of a larger project; in counting we feel more like we count.

There is also a quality of attention that counting lends us. Back in my undergraduate days, I took an acting class with a wonderful, eccentric, charismatic teacher, Professor Schweibert. One day, Professor Schweibert called for a few brave volunteers and had us stand at the front of the room, facing the rest of the class. It was incredibly awkward! After a minute that felt more like an hour or two, he put us out of our misery and broke the silence. He huddled us “few brave volunteers” and told us a secret and then—again!—positioned us in front of the class. Totally different experience! 

What was the secret? He told us to count the chairs. Suddenly we were purposeful and calm, and had no difficulty standing in front of our classmates in silence. The chatter in our minds that had made us so uncomfortable in the previous iteration settled, and we could just be. The teaching my professor shared on that unforgettable day was that when you have something to do to focus your energy, it connects you. Counting the chairs was a simple task; in fact, counting out loud is one of the first things a toddler learns to do. Yet the act of counting evoked a profound sense of steadiness whose lesson has stayed with me through many years.

Whether counting chairs or counting days, the practice brings serenity, resoluteness and stability. Almost like a long-form meditation that plays out over a larger span of time, counting the Omer or counting days in response to divine commandment fills us up and generates its own meaning. There is great spiritual potential here, something even more than the steadiness and rootedness of counting. 

We return to the verse from Psalm 90.

לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה׃

Teach us to number our days truly, so that we may develop a heart of wisdom.

What is this heart of wisdom? What is the wisdom that comes into our hearts through having a clear-eyed perception of the numbered-ness of our days?

In numbering our days truly, we cannot help noticing that we don’t know how many of them we get. Our sense of mortality, of the preciousness and fragility of life becomes more attuned. This, of course, is a lesson that most of us have a complicated relationship with: we want to embrace the importance of our days, to pull the marrow out of each and every experience, and yet we constantly get distracted from what matters most in a thousand different ways, and shy away from the awareness of our own mortality. Truly counting our days can be terrifying; when we allow ourselves to think what it all means, we also get a glimpse of what it could mean to lose it. And yet, if we don’t slow down and pay attention to our lives, if we don’t count the days and treasure each one, what is the point of life? There is existential dread either way, so we might as well embrace life in its entirety!

The reward is even deeper than that, and in articulating it, we can see a subtle connection between the parsha and the Omer. In Parshat Tazria-Metzora, all that counting is in the service of ritual purity. When a woman gives birth she counts off a certain number of days before she can return to full participation in the world of the Temple service. When finally she reaches readiness, she brings an offering to the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, and is welcomed back into communal life. Likewise, when a person is afflicted with one of the many skin diseases described in the parsha, they are obliged to enter into quarantine until the tzara’at has cleared. At that point, they, too, are welcomed into full participation in the central institution of the time: the Temple rite. And so it goes for the various cases of counting. Those transitional periods represent times of disconnection; the counting holds the counter steady until they can return to community.

Likewise, when we count the Omer, we count our way toward Sinai, toward the revelation of Torah recounted (!) in Parshat Yitro. Exactly fifty days after Pesach begins, we find ourselves at the foot of the mountain, assembled all together to receive the wisdom that will form the backbone of our tradition in perpetuity. Counting the days through that interstitial period represents joyous anticipation as well as earnest preparation. One by one, we make ourselves into the people we need to be in order to truly receive Torah. 

And then, the moment of revelation—as we stand trembling at Sinai—becomes a deeply communal one. Twice the Israelites accept the obligation of the mitzvot. In Shmot 19, Verse 8 they say: 

כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר יְהֹוָה נַעֲשֶׂה

All that God says, we will do

And then a short time later, in chapter 24, verse 7, they say: 

כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר יְהֹוָה נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע׃

All that God says, we will do and we will understand

There’s incredible faith inherent in these statements, and incredible unity. While those seven days of weeks were experienced individually, they led Bnei Yisrael to a moment of transformative communal connection. In the moment of accepting God’s gift of Torah, they spoke in a unified voice. 

We are told in Dvarim 29:13-14, looking back on that moment of revelation, that God makes the covenant not just with the individuals standing there on that very day, but with those who are not there yet but who will come after. 

Similar to the obligation we articulate at the seder—to see ourselves as personally being brought forth from Mitzrayim—counting the Omer in our own time links us to that experience of a shared covenant, a shared destiny.

לִמְנוֹת יָמֵינוּ כֵּן הוֹדַע וְנָבִא לְבַב חָכְמָה׃

Teach us to number our days truly, so that we may develop a heart of wisdom.

Numbering our days brings us to a heart of wisdom by connecting us to ourselves, to one another, and to God. And so I close with this blessing: during the Omer and beyond, may you number your days in ways that bring you meaning, depth, and companionship, both human and divine.

Shabbat shalom!

Meditations on Manna

Part I: Manna is the taste of in between. 

It came into being at twilight, moments before the first Shabbat. In the breath between chapter one and chapter two of Breishit, something magical occurs. Ten things are created, things of great consequence and mystery. God had already said וְהִנֵּה־טוֹב מְאֹד – Look! This is so good! – but there were finishing touches yet to be made, wonders and oddities that would only be revealed later, of which one is the manna. 

This mysterious substance, likened to clouds and heavenly dust and coriander and your mother’s honey cake, is how God sustained Bnei Yisrael in the wilderness. Forty years our people wandered, liminal in space and purpose. We were neither who nor where we were destined to end up; rather we were fully in between. Throughout that in-between time, there was manna, a provision which eludes concrete description to this day. It appeared for collection each morning, like frost. It evaporated in the heat of the day, and was the first example of planned obsolescence: any amount that wasn’t eaten on the day it was collected became rancid overnight. The exception was every seventh day, for which twice as much appeared, in order to obviate the need of collecting any on the day of rest, which both had and hadn’t been invented.

In the interstices between enslavement and freedom, between Egypt and the Promised Land, there was manna. The manna descended day upon day for forty years, no matter where Bnei Yisrael wandered. It remained with them up to the border of the Promised Land. Upon their arrival, the story goes, they were no longer in between.

Part II: Manna is the taste of Shabbat

Manna is associated with the first Shabbat, twice. Recall that when God rests for the first time after having created the world, manna is among the ten magical afterthoughts. The first human Shabbat comes later, in Beshallach. (Long before the Torah comes, incidentally.) Moshe introduces the idea of Shabbat, instructing the people to plan their cooking ahead of time and making the allowance to leave it overnight in this circumstance. The culture of Shabbat develops in part from what we tell ourselves about manna. The double portion of manna becomes the source for having two challot on Shabbat. And the Mechilte d’Rabbi Ishmael teaches us to stay close to family on Shabbat, not go more than 2000 cubits from home, and to have three meals corresponding to the three hayoms in

 וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אִכְלֻהוּ הַיּוֹם כִּי־שַׁבָּת הַיּוֹם לַיי הַיּוֹם לֹא תִמְצָאֻהוּ בַּשָּׂדֶה׃

And Moshe said: Eat it today, for today is a Shabbat to God; 
today you will not find it [manna] in the field.

Although the Torah has yet to be given at this point in the story, one of its central principles is introduced here in connection with manna. Manna and Shabbat become linked in the Jewish imagination. Like Shabbat, manna comes without our effort and without our merit. It is an inheritance that God grants us despite our shortcomings, no matter how little we deserve it. 

Part III: Manna is the taste of hope  

Manna shows up for the Israelites at a moment of prolonged uncertainty. As the gut churns with questions of what we are doing, where we are going, and whether we are on the right path; as the people wander, err, dissolve and resolve, manna is a constant presence. Manna adapts itself to meet needs both known and unknown: when a person collects too much or not enough, somehow, through some divine alchemy, the amount is made right. 

We learn that Moshe instructed Bnei Yisrael to gather an extra omer of manna, to protect as an inheritance for future generations. This was to be held as an eternal reminder of how we were sustained through those years of wandering, so that future generations can see the heavenly bread God fed us as we were being taken out of Egypt. 

Perhaps forty years of coriander would grow tiresome; according to Ramban, the manna tasted like whatever the person eating it desired. If that isn’t the taste of hope, I can’t imagine what is.

Part IV: Manna is the taste of the divine

There is a Name for what happens when our needs are met. There is a Name for unknowable things that spring from the generations of light. Manna is the very dust of heaven pouring through the open doors, the grain of shamayim raining down as angel bread. If it happened once, it would be miraculous. That it happened day by day for forty years is beyond miraculous. 

Its very daily-ness was a blessing. The Netivot Shalom writes that the manna was a pipeline to the Divine, a way for Bnei Yisrael to remain in close daily contact with God by entrusting their needs to Hashem. In Parshat Breishit, when God exiles Adam and Eve and the serpent from Eden, the humans are cursed to toil for their daily bread, while the snake is cursed to eat dust. The Slonimer Rebbe teaches that the abundance of the earth-dust that the snake eats means that it never looks up, never takes note of a higher presence. On the other hand, the Jews’ awareness of their own human needs turns out to be a blessing, for in this awareness, we seek the presence of God. The manna, as the bread of heaven, is representative of the Holy One’s constant presence; the daily posture of seeking allows us to connect with God.

The Sfat Emet expounds on the omer they were permitted to keep as an inheritance for future generations. He teaches that this rem[a]inder is that which is seen through the eye of wisdom: that true freedom comes when the soul is not entangled in the body. The capacity to transcend our physical needs, and to open our eyes instead to the spiritual, is what we learned anew each and every day in the wilderness, and what we pass along to our children today. The manna offered our ancestors a taste of God’s constant presence; its remainder is still with us.   

Searching for Joseph

(Dvar Torah on Vayigash for Congregation Beth Israel in Ann Arbor, Michigan)

Shabbat shalom! It’s good to be back! Thank you, Rav Nadav, for the honor of giving a few words of Torah this morning. 

These past few parshiot, we have been deeply engaged with Joseph, that maddening, inspiring, outsized personality whose story looms large over both Sefer Breishit and Sefer Shmot and yet who remains nameless in our liturgy. That in itself is curious, that he gets four parshiot (maybe four and a half) and yet not a word in our daily prayers. I’ll say more about that in a bit. First the inspiration for what we’ll explore today.

When I rolled into town last Sunday, after the hugs and the reunions (shades of Vayigash), I was greeted with a question from my favorite Joseph: my father, Joseph Gurt. In his inimitable way, Dad said, “I’m gonna ask you a question. The Rabbi talked about Joseph yesterday, and I kept wondering. Why is Joseph so important?” 

Good question, Dad. Let’s get into it.

At the simplest level, Joseph is an interesting dude. He has a rich and complicated emotional life and a unique temperament. As a younger man, he tends toward arrogance; who am I kidding, many readers find the Joseph of Parshat Vayeshev insufferable, between his telling tales to Jacob about his big brothers, and his self-centered dreams, and of course, his preening around in his special coat from his father. Like a classic favorite child, he believes his own publicity a little too much and assumes, both awake and asleep, that the world revolves around him. I’m not recommending throwing your annoying siblings into a pit or selling them into servitude, but you can kinda see where the brothers are coming from.

Yet the narcissism is not the only aspect of Joseph’s character. His is a complex temperament with many facets. Even after he becomes a powerful figure in Egypt he continues to seek his father’s approval, as when, after revealing himself to his brothers, he sends them to bring Jacob from Eretz Canaan to Egypt and instructs them to tell him all about his high status in the land of Egypt. His insecurity, despite having been the golden child, is fascinating—and probably a good lesson for us parents about holding boundaries for our children even as we love them unconditionally. 

In Breishit 45:28, just after Jacob receives the news that Joseph is still alive and has reached a position of prominence in Egypt, we read: 

וַיֹּאמֶר יִשְׂרָאֵל רַב עוֹד־יוֹסֵף בְּנִי חָי אֵלְכָה וְאֶרְאֶנּוּ בְּטֶרֶם אָמוּת׃ 

It is plenty! My son Joseph is still alive. Let me go and see him before I die.

The 13th century French commentator Chizkuni notes about the words

רַב עוֹד־יוֹסֵף בְּנִי חָי

“Yaakov meant that when the brothers told him that Joseph was alive, and that he was a ruler in Egypt, the second part of the sentence was unnecessary. As long as he knew that Joseph was alive, he was totally unconcerned with Joseph’s standing politically.” 

It seems that despite all the advantages that his brothers resent him for, Joseph remains heart-wrenchingly human in his insecurity and need to please his father. 

Joseph is also a person of great determination and resourcefulness. Despite the abuses he experiences as a young man, and despite the longing for family, despite the enslavement and the wrongful imprisonment, he becomes a role model in many ways. This is a person who overcomes his hard times and cleverly uses his skills to better himself and improve his position. Joseph, despite everything that has happened to him, never gives up. Even when he’s in jail, his charisma enables him to rise to a position of importance, and he uses his skill at dream interpretation to make himself indispensable. When opportunity strikes, he is Joseph-on-the-spot to take what advantage he can, and to plant the seeds with Pharaoh’s cup-bearer that will eventually lead to his release. 

Once released, he successfully interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and adds advice for how to manage the coming famine. Because his advice is sound, he quickly rises in the ranks and becomes second in command to Pharaoh himself. When opportunity knocks, Joseph opens the door wide. 

And when his brothers knock, he sees the opportunity to test their loyalty. Once satisfied that they have grown up too, he opens the door wide for them as well. In Parshat Vayigash he finally reunites with his family, and rather than holding a grudge against his brothers, he models forgiveness. In Breishit 45:5 he says:

וְעַתָּה  אַל־תֵּעָצְבוּ וְאַל־יִחַר בְּעֵינֵיכֶם כִּי־מְכַרְתֶּם אֹתִי הֵנָּה כִּי לְמִחְיָה שְׁלָחַנִי אֱלֹהִים לִפְנֵיכֶם׃ 

Now, don’t be distressed and don’t blame yourselves that you sold me here, for it was to save life that God sent me here before you. (Breishit 45:5)

Joseph’s ability to level up and take a higher perspective about what happened in the past makes for one of the most moving scenes in the Torah. 

It’s not only the strength of character to forgive. Joseph’s capacity to perceive that even the harshest mistreatment—and the misfortune that followed it—could be composted into a higher purpose is another aspect of his personality that makes him interesting and important in our tradition. His behavior in this scene contains a powerful teaching that echoes throughout our literature and throughout our history. It is not for nothing that one of the most persecuted peoples on earth, a tiny fraction of the world’s population, has produced some of the most important scientific, artistic, and philosophical work. Like Joseph, we don’t give up; thֿat ability to keep moving forward in impossible circumstances is one we can and do emulate.

These, then, are some of the reasons Joseph is so important at eye level. 

Yet he is also important at sky level. The Joseph story, even his brothers’ youthful betrayal, is part of the architecture of our tradition. His being sold (back in Vayeshev) to some passing Ishmaelim into a life of slavery set into motion one of the foundational narratives of our people. 

If Joseph hadn’t gone down to Egypt, Pharaoh wouldn’t have been prepared for the famine and there would have been widespread starvation and destruction; perhaps our tradition would have ended before it started. If he hadn’t been able to forgive his brothers and settle them in Goshen near him to ride out the long years of scarcity, the Israelites would not have gained a foothold in Egypt and grown numerous. If Joseph hadn’t had such a reputation, there would not have arisen eventually a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, and the entire tradition of liberation and redemption would not be ours.

In simple terms: no Joseph, no Mitzrayim. No Mitzrayim, no Yetziat Mitzrayim.

Indeed the foundations of this architecture are way back in Lech L’cha, when God tells then-childless Abraham in chapter 15 that his descendants will be enslaved in a land not their own for 400 years and that God will redeem them.

Which brings us back to the question of why Joseph isn’t in the siddur. I would argue that he actually is, just not by name. In Mishnah Brachot 1:5, the Sages discuss the commandment in Dvarim 16:3: 

לְמַעַן תִּזְכֹּר אֶת־יוֹם צֵאתְךָ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ

In order to remember the day of your departure from Egypt כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ (all the days of your life)

The Sages of the Mishnah wonder together about that phrase כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ and whether it implicates recalling Yetziat Mitzrayim in evening prayers, as we now do. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya notes Ben Zoma’s interpretation: that the כֹּל makes the difference. He says: 

יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ, הַיָּמִים. כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ, הַלֵּילוֹת. 

Yemei chayecha indicates the days. KOL yemei chayecha indicates also the nights.

וַחֲכָמִים אוֹמְרִים, יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ, הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה. כֹּל יְמֵי חַיֶּיךָ, לְהָבִיא לִימוֹת הַמָּשִׁיחַ: 

And the Sages continue: Yemei chayecha is this world. KOL yemei chayecha in order to bring the Days of Moshiach.

Not only does the story of enslavement and eventual triumph, which has Joseph’s fingerprints all over it, get mentioned in the siddur on a daily and nightly basis, the mitzvah of recalling it has the power to bring about ultimate redemption.

I would argue there is another, subtler way, that Joseph influences our liturgy. Joseph is a big cryer, probably the one with whom the shoresh letters bet chaf yud—to weep—are most associated. Joseph has big feelings, and when he reveals his true identity to his brothers—not as the powerful man in Egypt who holds their very lives in his hands but as their long-lost brother—the river of sadness and longing for family that he’s kept in check all this time overflows its banks וַיִּתֵּן אֶת־קֹלוֹ בִּבְכִי and he gives his voice to weeping. Contrary to 21st century American culture, which regards emotion with suspicion at best, our tradition valorizes it and regards it as a direct pathway to the Divine.

We learn on Baba Metzia 59a that from the moment the Temple was destroyed the gates of tefillah are locked. But, the Sages continue:

ואע”פ ששערי תפלה ננעלו, שערי דמעות לא ננעלו

Even though the gates of prayer are locked, the gates of tears are not locked.

With his resourcefulness, capacity to forgive, emotional openness, and ability to see the bigger canvas, the Joseph of the Bible—annoying Joseph, agonizingly human Joseph, overdramatic, spoiled Joseph—grows up and ends up being our teacher in so many ways, and his influence echoes subtly and profoundly down the generations. 

Lifting our Eyes

(Dvar Torah on Vayeira)

Shabbat Shalom! Sometimes when I look back on my week, a clear theme emerges. Maybe it’s the same with you. 

For me, this week’s theme has been navigating spaces where disagreement is sharp and inevitable. It’s not only the election, although that has been heavy on my mind. It’s also many other situations I find myself in. For example, in one of my internships, I get to work with a small group whose members’ political views vary widely within the group and vary from my own views. And then there’s social media, and other modes of non-face-to-face communication. Sometimes it seems like the deck is stacked with opportunities to separate from one another, to say, “I can’t possibly be in relationship or in community with this person. We are too different.” And yet, this very response is self-perpetuating, leading to fewer and fewer of the connective threads that bind us together. 

The less we interact with each other, the less we see—really see—each other. And the less we see each other, the less we feel safe to interact. It’s a vicious cycle that threatens the stability of our society. The media environment contributes in terrible, cynical, and dishonorable ways. There is so much noise, so much static from overheated news sources that profit by making caricatures of political opponents, making them look more like monsters than actual humans created בצלם ,אלהים in the image of God. Today being Veteran’s Day reminds us of the awful human cost when we stop seeing one another’s humanity, and instead stoke the flames of conflict.

The Rabbis of the Talmud had a discussion on Brachot 9b about how much light there needs to be in order to say the morning Sh’ma, that ultimate prayer of unity. Some of the Sages say there needs to be enough light so we can tell the difference between blue and white; others say, between blue and green. Then they consider maybe the standard is being able to distinguish a dog from a wolf. Others say it’s when there’s enough light that you can recognize a neighbor from a short distance. Our Sages were telling us how important it is for us to really notice the people around us. You can’t love your neighbor if you can’t see your neighbor.

Our Torah portion this week offers a lesson in this kind of openness. The name of the parsha, and also its first word, Vayeira, means, “And Adonai appeared.” At the beginning of the parsha, God appears to Abraham as he rests at the opening of his tent, exhausted and in pain. Yet, when God draws his attention to the form of three approaching strangers, Abraham lifts his eyes וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו and takes in the sight of the three figures, who are typically interpreted to be three messengers from God. 

In this source text for traditional Jewish hospitality, Abraham welcomes the three as honored guests, washing their feet and offering the best food that he and Sarah have on hand. Rather than being suspicious of the new arrivals, he instead made every effort to make them at home. When he lifted his eyes, he truly saw them and welcomed them in.

What’s remarkable about this scene is that Abraham’s hospitality and welcome were unconditional. While he might have had reason to be suspicious or wary of people he didn’t know, he leaned instead into openness and curiosity, becoming a model for our people of how hospitality and human connection can look. 

Later in the parsha, Abraham is in an altogether different situation as he navigates God’s loyalty test for him: the binding of his son Isaac. In this moment, Abraham finds himself in a horrific, impossible situation, having seemingly been instructed by God to sacrifice his own child. Leaving aside the morality of this test—as far as I’m concerned, God has a lot to answer for in this parsha—what I want us to notice tonight is what gets Abraham out of this unthinkable situation. He is literally poised with a knife over his son’s throat when he hears a voice, another messenger from God, calling out his name. And again, וַיִּשָּׂא אַבְרָהָם אֶת־עֵינָיו Abraham lifts his eyes and sees a ram in the thicket, which he then substitutes for Isaac in the sacrifice. Lifting his eyes and seeing his surroundings more clearly prevents Abraham from making the mistake of a lifetime.

The first verse of Psalm 121 contains these words: אֶשָּׂא עֵינַי אֶל־הֶהָרִים מֵאַיִן יָבֹא עֶזְרִי I lift my eyes up to the hills, where my help comes from. There is something about looking and seeing that settles us and calls us into alignment. Perhaps this is why the Sages of the Talmud so insistently emphasize seeing as the condition under which we can call on one another to acknowledge God’s holy presence. In a clear enough light we can see the image of God in our neighbors, and in ourselves.

Which brings us back to the current climate of disagreement and distrust. It could be different! I read an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about a convent located near the campus of Neumann University that is dedicating part of its space as a dormitory for undergraduate students. What began as an unlikely but practical solution to a shortage of on-campus housing has turned into a very touching story of people meeting across differences of culture, background, belief and lifestyle. The nuns and the students are now sharing nature walks, knitting lessons, and occasional meals together. The nuns bake cookies for the students and the students order ice cream sandwiches for the nuns. Most of all, they spend time together learning to understand one another’s very different lives. They are breaking stereotypes and preconceptions by lifting their eyes and truly seeing each other. 

What would it be like if more of us lifted our eyes away from our stereotypes, from our habitual ways of seeing the world, from our doomscrolling and sought out God’s image in one another, even—or maybe especially—with people we disagree with, the so-called other side? I want to be clear that I don’t mean this as a solution for out-and-out hate, but rather for not allowing simmering distrust and misunderstanding to fester into hate in the first place. We can only enter into productive relationship that can withstand conflict when we truly see one another clearly. And we might learn something about the world and about ourselves by taking that risk, in curiosity and hope.

Shabbat shalom!