Two-minute Torah: Sanctuaries (Parashat T'rumah)

I frequently talk about the way North American Jews often mistranslate the word "mitzvah" as "good deed" when in fact it really means "commandment." Traditional Judaism is a religion of obligation. The ten commandments are ten commandments not ten suggestions.  Whether we follow them or not is a different matter, but in general the Torah phrases itself in “thou shalt” and “thou shalt not,” not “if you feel like it.” 
The beginning of this week’s Parasha is most unusual in that regard. Last week we read the special Maftir for Shabbat Shekalim about the half-shekel temple tax which was due from every individual before Pesach. The reading was quite clear -- the rich were not to give more, nor the poor to give less. Every individual was to give precisely one half-shekel. But this week we read that the offerings for the building of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, had to be voluntary. “You shall accept gifts from every person whose heart so moves him.” 
Then a little bit later the Torah says: “v’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham.” "They shall build me a tabernacle that I may dwell among them."  If you know Hebrew, the phrase is a little bit odd. One would expect the text to say “ v'shachanti b’tocho” – "they shall build me a tabernacle that I may dwell in it.” 
The point is that God does not need a house. God dwells everywhere – the building of the Tabernacle is not necessary so that God can have someplace to live. The building of the Tabernacle is a concrete gesture of love for God so that God dwells among the people. This is why it has to be voluntary. 
Other ancient peoples really did believe that their gods lived in the sanctuaries that they built for them. But our God dwells everywhere and has no need of a specific place to live -- although sometimes we might wish that God would just stay in the sanctuary and leave us free to run things elsewhere as we see fit.
Do the sanctuaries we build today really symbolize our love of God? Or are they monuments to our own selves?

Two-minute Torah, Mishpatim: Bible Translation and the Abortion Debate

Dear Friends:


Those of you who attend Shabbat morning services regularly hear me make the same point over and over: many of the translations we use are really mistranslations and that to be a truly knowledgeable Jew, a person needs to know Hebrew. Our values as Jews are rooted in Jewish texts, but in order to interpret these texts properly we need to understand them correctly.

I'd look to look at a few verses from this week's Parasha, Mihspatim:
Exodus, Chapter 21 (Revised Standard Version)  
22: "When men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no harm follows, the one who hurt her shall be fined, according as the woman's husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. 
23: If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, 
24: eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 
25: burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.  
What does it mean in verse 22 that "no harm follows" (in Hebrew, lo yihyeh ason)? The Jewish tradition understands this to mean that if someone causes a pregnant woman to miscarry, he is fined; but if the woman herself dies, that is murder and subject to the death penalty. The corollary to this is that a fetus is not considered a full human person, since unlike the Code of Hammurabi, the Bible does not contemplate fining someone for the commission of murder. If the fetus were equal to the mother, the punishment for causing a miscarriage would be death, not a fine. This is the source of Judaism's fairly lenient approach to abortion (certainly as compared to the approach of Catholicism or most Evangelicals.)

And yet, they too have rooting in the text. The word which we read as "harm", ason, is understood in the Septuagint, the authoritative Greek translation, as "form."  In other words, if the fetus has “no form” then causing a miscarriage incurs just a fine, but if the fetus has “form” then it is life for life, etc. This difference between the Hebrew and Greek texts worked its way into Christian understanding as the Church became a Gentile movement and the normative text was not the Hebrew Tanach but the Greek Septuagint. So in Judaism the fetus does not achieve personhood until birth but in Catholic and evangelical Christian thought, the fetus achieves personhood at the point at which it has a recognizable form. I know that sometimes the concerns over the accuracy of translations can seem pedantic and picayune, but since the Bible still has a lot to say about the issues which concern us, this is an example where differences of translation have significant consequences.

Laws of Mourning -- Theory and Practice

 When I began my rabbinical studies, I had a good background in Hebrew (from having spent a college year in Israel) and in both Bible and philosophy (from my college studies at Georgetown) but I didn't really know that much about traditional Jewish practice. One of our first year courses was designed to make us familiar with some of the more common rules and concepts that as rabbis-in-training, we might be expected to know -- since as early as our second year, we would be sent out to serve as student rabbis in small congregations.

    My teacher and later dear friend Rabbi Ben Hollander (who passed away about four years ago) was teaching us about the concept of aninut and the status of being an onen. An onen (a person in aninut) is someone who has lost a parent, spouse, child or sibling but has not yet buried them. During this period, Rabbi Hollander explained, one is "exempt from all the mitzvot." So in all innocence I responded "then that would be a good time to run out and get a cheeseburger." After recovering from his shock, Rabbi Hollander said "let me amend what I said. An onen is exempt from all the positive mitzvot," meaning, that he or she is not obligated to perform the "thou shalts"(tefillin, prayer at fixed times. etc.) but still has to follow the "thou shalt nots" (keeping kosher, refraining from work on Shabbat.)

    Many years later when I was the rabbi in York, Pa., a congregant passed away and his two brothers came to minyan that evening, before the funeral. It was our practice there to wait for a minyan and phone people who lived near the shul if we were one or two short  in the evening (on the assumption that in the evening people are in less of a hurry to get to work than they are in the morning). Someone said to me "Rabbi, we have a minyan, let's start" and I responded that we did not have a minyan, that Dave and Lew don't count. Everyone looked at me in astonishment, because they, too, had not been taught about the concept of aninut.

    In Judaism, rights and obligations go hand-in-hand. Why does a child under the age of 13 not count in a minyan? Because they are not obligated to pray. This is also the reason we do not count Gentiles for a minyan, or why Orthodox congregations do not count women. While arguably children, women and non-Jews are obligated to pray to God, they are not obligated to say the formal liturgy at a set time. If you are not obligated, you aren't part of the minyan. And since an onen isn't obligated to pray (since their one and only obligation is to prepare for the burial), should they nevertheless show up for services, they cannot be counted towards the minyan.

    I have found that many Jews who are in general not particularly observant, nevertheless seek to follow the laws of mourning fairly closely. I am not sure why this is. It may be a realization that there is great wisdom to be found in these practices. Or perhaps, it is a sense of loyalty to our deceased relatives, a desire to be a link in the chain of tradition. However, I've found that as much as there is a desire to follow these laws, there is also widespread misunderstanding of them.

    This is not the time or place to give an exhaustive overview, but I want to highlight a couple of areas where I've noticed a divergence between what many in our community do and what Jewish law prescribes.

    I've already mentioned aninut. Besides the fact that an onen is exempt from the requirement to pray and does not count in a minyan, the halacha also prescribes that we not greet or attempt to console the mourners until after the funeral.  It is perhaps a natural desire to greet the mourners at the earliest opportunity, particularly in this day and age when all of us have family and friends who live all over the world and whom we don't see that often. But prior to the funeral, the mourner is busy dealing with burial arrangements and concentrating on dealing with his or her loss, and should be left alone. The proper time and place for consoling the mourner is during the seven days of shiva. It is not proper to go into the room where the mourners are gathered prior to the funeral even if you consider yourself a close friend. Be certain to attend either the Meal of Consolation right after the burial, or visit the family and participate in the minyan during the shiva, and express your condolences at that time.

    Another area where there is some confusion is how long to say the Mourner's Kaddish. I have noticed that it is increasingly common for people to say Kaddish for eleven months after the death of any relative, but in fact, the practice of saying Kaddish for that length of time strictly speaking applies only to the death of a parent.

    Why is this so? The Torah commands us (several times) to honor our mother and father, and the sages understood that part of honoring a parent was to mourn for them for a full year. For other relatives, we engage in formal mourning only for thirty days (though of course emotionally, we grieve for much longer.) Eventually the period of saying Kaddish was standardized at eleven months, because the Talmud says that saying Kaddish helps the souls of the wicked ascend to heaven, and the most wicked souls have to wait as long as a year. Since no one wanted to imply that they thought their parents were wicked, it became customary to say Kaddish for eleven months rather than a full year.

    Why don't we mourn the full year for other relatives? I suspect that there is a sociological/historical factor at work here. Remember that until very recently, families were much larger, infant mortality was higher, and so on. A typical person might have eight or ten siblings and eight or ten children. As general mortality rates were higher and widows or widowers tended to remarry, a person might well have two or three spouses during their lifetime. If formal mourning continued for a full year for every sibling, spouse, or child, a person might well spend their entire life in formal mourning. And so, the tradition limits the requirements of formal mourning to thirty days for all but a parent.

    The end of formal mourning practices like saying Kaddish doesn't meant that one's sense of loss or grief is over, it is merely a signal that it is time to begin to pick up the pieces and try as best as one can to go on with the rest of life. Beyond that, I recognize the fact that for most Jews, Jewish law no longer carries the authority it once did. If you feel called upon to say Kaddish beyond 30 days, for example, no one is going to stop you, but you should not feel obligated to do so either.

    At times of loss, we often come to realize the inherent wisdom of our tradition and the power it has to bring us comfort. If you have questions about anything I've written or need guidance in terms of these laws and practices, I am always ready to be of assistance.

    May we always meet at joyous occasions.

It's A Small World -- And Getting Smaller

Here’s an interesting statistic for you to ponder: in 1994, half of the world’s population had never made a telephone call. Fifteen years later, in 2009, there were 3.3. billion mobile phone subscribers out of a total world population of five billion.

The impact of new communications technologies has been enormous. The Internet certainly shaped my life, since as many of you may know, my wife Keleigh and I met through jdate.com, the leading Internet dating service for Jewish people. At the time we met, Keleigh was living in Atlanta and I in Baltimore. Though we knew a few people in common, it would not have occurred to any of them to introduce us because we were “geographically undesirable” for each other. But when I began organizing a conference to be held in Atlanta and realized I would be travelling there frequently, I changed my Jdate search to Atlanta rather than Baltimore, and the rest is history!

Some technological changes happen invisibly. The widespread usage of fax machines is such an example. When they first came into use, you might ask someone if they had a fax number, but at a certain point the question was no longer “do you have a fax machine?” but rather “what is your fax number?” Our assumptions had changed almost imperceptibly. My first fax machine purchase came in 1989 when I was the director of the Hillel Foundation at the University of Virginia. Some months later, the Hillel national office required every Hillel Foundation to have a fax machine.

Other technological devices have also achieved almost full market saturation. When is the last time you called someone and got neither a live person nor an answering machine or voice mail system? If it happens, as it sometimes does, we get annoyed. We expect that the person or office we are calling will have voice mail. Similarly, it is rare to ask an adult if they have a cell phone or an e-mail address. It is simply assumed that everyone has both.

This technology can be a blessing, but there are downsides as well. The proliferation of ways to be in touch creates an expectation of instant access, and we can be frustrated if we want to reach someone and can’t. A friend of mine, also a pulpit rabbi, reported that a congregant left him a voice mail at his synagogue on Thanksgiving day and was very annoyed that he did not return the call until late the next morning. While this was clearly an extreme example, I noticed last year at a meeting of the Rabbis Without Borders Fellows that all but one of the 22 rabbis present had a “smartphone” as opposed to a regular cell phone. This meant that all of us were able to receive not only phone calls but e-mails, text messages, Facebook postings, and Twitter tweets while we were studying together. It was nice to know that I could be reached easily in case of an emergency -- and a couple did arise -- but it also meant that I could never fully clear my head and enter completely into the discussions that we were having.

So are these new technologies good or bad?

I would maintain that, in fact, they are neither. My understanding of the Jewish attitude towards technology is that in general it is morally neutral. Virtually any technology ever invented can be used for good or for bad, but the ultimate use of technology depends on the human beings who control it. The Internet can be used for good purposes -- such as helping people to meet and form families, or raising money to help those in need. Or it can be used for bad purposes -- such as scamming people out of their money or helping pedophiles prey on young people.

Technology has changed certain of our expectations -- that we can reach anyone easily and instantly, that I can buy virtually anything and have it delivered the next day, that I can browse a restaurant’s menu online before deciding to go there. But it did not change human nature. My meeting Keleigh was facilitated by the Internet, but both of us met a lot of other people before we met each other, and we still fell in love the same way people have been falling in love for thousands of years -- through human contact.

The new technologies have in a way made the world a smaller place. You can set up a Google feed to notify you any time your name appears anywhere on the Internet. I have such a feed, so if my name appears in a newspaper, magazine, blog, or any other type of website I will know about it in very short order.

As a result of such a feed, a rabbi I know discovered recently that another rabbi had given a sermon which was highly critical of her and the organization which she runs. Because the rabbi who had made the criticisms posts all of her sermons on-line, the other rabbi’s Google feed found it and she knew about the sermon two days after it was delivered.

Most of my sermons are not posted on-line, and it would be hard for me to post them, since except for the High Holidays I speak from notes rather than a prepared text. But I do send out a “Two-minute Torah” e-mail almost every week, I have this blog, and Beth Jacob’s Voice is also put on our website every month. I know that what I write can potentially be read by anyone anywhere on the globe who has access to the Internet.

Anything posted on the Internet has two audiences; the intended one, and everyone else in the world. A d’var torah I gave on Shabbat morning is heard by a handful of people. But a bulletin article, a two-minute Torah or a blog post can be read by anyone, and I have in fact received e-mails from people all over the world who have read our online bulletin, been forwarded one of my Torah discussions, or read my blog, and wanted to share their questions or reactions to them.

As we become more aware of the fact that anything posted on-line is accessible to anyone and takes on a life of its own, I wonder if we will become more sensitive to each other.

About fifteen years ago I spent a year as a Scholar-in-Residence at a Trappist monastery in Northern California. The one really uncomfortable moment was the Easter Vigil.  The liturgy of the Easter Vigil struck me as very supersessionist, positing that the whole story of the People of Israel was merely a prelude to the birth of Jesus. I got so uncomfortable that I got up and left. And the next day, a number of monks sought me out. One of them said that he, too, became uncomfortable listening to the readings. "I said to myself, how must Rabbi Charles be hearing this?"

The anonymity of the Internet has in many ways coarsened our discourse. If you read the comment sections of our local newspapers, you will be distressed at how the most innocuous news story -- say the opening of a restaurant or a store -- can bring out vitriolic, hate-filled comments. But in the last few weeks the Norwich Bulletin has changed its comments policy. Users now must register and provide their physical mailing address to the Bulletin before being allowed to post comments. Their name and address are not made public, but the Bulletin verifies the person’s identity before they are able to post. The number of comments has gone way down, but the level of discourse is much less crude and angry than before.

Interfaith and inter-ethnic dialogue programs work on the principle that if you know members of a group personally, you are less likely to hate the group as a whole. The important new book on American religion, American Grace by Robert Putnam and David Campbell makes this point quite well. They say -- and they have the statistics to back them up -- that Americans are being increasingly divided between fundamentalists on the one hand and secular, atheist, or “spiritual but not religious” types on the other. The broad center is rapidly disappearing. And yet, despite the fact that many Americans adhere to religions which, at least on paper, are quite intolerant, even fundamentalist Americans in general tend to be quite tolerant. I may belong to a church which teaches that everyone else is going to hell, but I also have friends and relatives who are of a different faith or none at all, and I know they are good people and going to heaven. It's one thing to hate or attack an abstraction, it's another thing when you actually know the person.

As the spread of new technologies helps us to “know” more people from all walks of life, will our discourse become kinder? Will we have more empathy and understanding for those who are not like us? It remains to be seen. The technologies available to us have changed, but the human being remains the same.

Two-minute Torah: Captive Mentality

In a recent discussion on Ravnet, the e-mail group for Conservative rabbis, one of my colleagues shared a question that was asked him by a young religious school student. Why was the tenth plague (death of the firstborn) necessary? Why didn't the Israelites just leave during the ninth plague (darkness)? After all, no one would see them go!

In some ways it's definitely a child's question. If you want to take it at face value, I suppose you could say that if it was too dark for the Egyptians to see the Hebrews sneak out of Egypt, it was also too dark for them to find their way out of the country. But another colleague writing into Ravnet said that our ancestors' failure to sneak out under cover of darkness was an example of slave mentality. They could not just leave, they had to have permission. And until Pharaoh told them they could go, they had to stay put. It was a rule.

But Pharaoh had the same sort of captive mentality. Already by the seventh plague, his advisors are urging him to capitulate and let the Hebrews go. Speaking of Moses, they say: How long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the Lord their God. Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?"

But Pharaoh cannot let the people go. Not because God has hardened his heart. But because he cannot do so. Let the slaves go free, and what happens next? The entire edifice of royal power will collapse. It is the same reasoning that prevented the British from letting the American colonies go free; and when the British finally did surrender, their military band played "The World Turned Upside Down."

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes: "Pharaoh remains an enduring symbol of a failure to listen to his own advisors. He could not see that the world had changed, that he was facing something new, that his enslavement of a people was no longer tolerable, that the old magic no longer worked, that the empire over which he presiding was growing old, and that the more obstinate he became the closer he was bringing his people to tragedy.

Knowing how to listen to advice, how to respond to change and when to admit you’ve got it wrong, remain three of the most difficult tasks of leadership. Rejecting advice, refusing to change, and refusing to admit you’re wrong, may look like strength to some. But usually they are the beginning of yet another march of folly."

Our contemporary society could take a lesson from Rabbi Sacks' words. Politicians and officials dare not change their mind in the face of new circumstances or new information, lest they be accused of "flip-flopping" or of weakness. And thus, the march of folly continues.

Two-minute Torah: The Groaning of the People and Haitian Relief Efforts

The Sefat Emet, a Chasidic commentator who lived about 100 years ago, teaches us that the reason the generation of the Exodus merited redemption is because of a verse in this week's Parasha, VaEra. In Exodus 6:5, God says to Moses "I have heard the groaning of the Israelites." The Sefat Emet says that this "groaning" was the Israelites call to God for deliverance, which is a necessary condition for redemption. In order to gain freedom, one has to believe that freedom is possible.

I came to understand this very strongly when I visited Haiti in 1993. I was part of a group of ten rabbis sent there on a fact-finding mission to meet with Catholic and Protestant religious leaders who were trying to restore democracy after the coup which had overthrown the democratically-elected President Aristide in 1991. We learned that the Haitian people identified very strongly with the story of the biblical Israelites. They are a deeply religious people and we saw an "Israel Clinic," a "Jerusalem Art Center" (where I bought a couple of paintings which now hang in my study, a number of bakeries called "El Shaddai" and even a taxicab called "L'Adonai."

We learned that the movement towards democracy in Haiti began in particular with Catholic priests and nuns who started literacy projects among the poor and the rural farmers. Throughout the era of "Papa Doc" Duvalier from the 1950s through the 1980s, the majority of Haitian people had become accustomed to their oppression. But when they began to learn to read and to think of themselves as human beings, beloved of God no less than those who ruled them, they began to long for freedom and a better life.

Last week marked the two-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake which destroyed much of Haiti’s capital city, Port-au-Prince, and killed 220,000 people. Two years after this horrible disaster, relief efforts are still underway.

I want to point you in the directions of some ways you can help. The Jewish Federations of North America have a link to donate funds for Haitian relief at  https://www.jdc.org/donation/donate.aspx . You can also donate through American Jewish World Service at https://secure.ajws.org/site/Donation2?df_id=3460&3460.donation=form1. The Haitian Health Foundation is located here in Norwich and run by my friend Dr. Jeremiah Lowney and his family. You can make a donation to this worthy organization at https://www.givedirect.org/give/givefrm.asp?CID=11299.

Shabbat Shalom!

Two-minute Torah: Moses Slays the Egyptian

You are probably familiar with the story of Moses killing the Egyptian overseer who was beating a Hebrew slave, which appears in Exodus 2:12. This act, of course, lead to Moses fleeing Egypt which then lead to his encountering God in the Burning Bush and his return to lead our ancestors out of bondage. But Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin, who lived in the early part of the last century, read this incident as an allegory of something far deeper: “And he looked this way, and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and buried him in the sand.”  Rabbi Shapiro writes: " Moses learned about the oppressiveness of Egyptian culture when he went out among his brethren and saw their suffering. He understood the nature of Egyptian culture. “He looked this way and that way”: he turned to the Left and to the Right, to all the different parties and classes, seeking help from them; “and saw that there was no man”: and there was not a single individual willing to stand by the weak; “and he slew the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.” It was then that he killed the Egyptian within his heart, divorcing himself totally from Egyptian culture. " In other words, according to R. Shapira, the “slaying” of the Egyptian was not literal but a battle within the soul of Moses. Rabbi Shapira of course lived in the early part of the 20th century but after the Communist takeover of Russia. He understood that whatever differences might exist between the left and the right in Eastern Europe they were not very different in their attitudes vis-à-vis Jews and Judaism. He also understood that a society is judged on how it treats the weakest and most vulnerable members. Moses needed to slay the “Egyptian in his heart” to embrace his destiny and his role. The hardest struggles are not external but internal. All of us have an "Egyptian" in our heart whom we constantly need to struggle against and kill off.