Parasha BeHar -- Getting Second Chances

            Last Saturday night, as we left the synagogue following Havdalah, we were greeted by a Full Moon rising above the treetops in the East. To the right of the moon shone the planet Mars, with even its reddish tint visible to the naked eye. Looking up, I was reminded that at the last Full Moon we sat down to our first night Seder. This Full Moon marks the onset of yet another holiday that is mentioned in the Torah. This second Full Moon marks a biblical holiday called Peshach Sheni – the Second Passover.  The Torah relates that on the very first Passover in the Wilderness of Sinai, some men came to Moses and told him that they did not celebrate the Passover. It wasn’t because they did not want to, they explained. It was because they were ritually unclean. Being ritually unclean, they could not eat of the Passover sacrifice. What should they do, they asked Moses?  Moses then inquired of God, and God told him to have the men celebrate Passover a month later. This is the only place in the Torah where, if one misses celebrating a holiday, one gets a second chance a month later!  

            We no longer celebrate this holiday, the Pesach Sheni, or second Passover. Since the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed and the sacrificial mode of worship ceased, we no longer partake of the Passover sacrifice on Passover. Therefore, this Second Passover, this “do-over” Passover, has become an obsolete holiday. The date is still noted on Jewish calendars, and some very observant people have a custom of eating some matzah at a meal on this day, but otherwise there is no observance at all.

            One could say that the Torah portion we read this week, Behar, is a portion about second chances. When the Israelites entered the land of Canaan, the land was divided up according to tribe and according to family. Each family started out on an equal footing. As time goes on, however, some families are bound to prosper and others to decline economically. Perhaps due to bad weather, poor farming techniques, poor decisions, laziness, greed, illness, or just bad luck, some people fall into debt and have to sell the family holding. If you lose your land, not only are you destined to work for someone else for the rest of your life, but your descendents are likely to work for others as well.  Having lost your family inheritance once, you have lost your only access to the means of production forever.

             The institution of the Jubilee year is put forth in this week’s Torah portion to give people, and families, a second chance.  In the Jubilee year, every person or family who lost their land in previous years is allowed to return to it and to reclaim it as their own. This is part of the Torah’s vision of what an ideal society looks at. An ideal society gives people a second chance at prosperity. An ideal society protects its most vulnerable members – the poor, the widow and the orphan – from sinking into hopeless poverty.

            It is not clear whether the Jubilee Year, as prescribed by the Torah, was ever put into practice in the Land of Israel. Did families actually get to return to their land? We do not know. There would certainly be challenges to any society that would try this. It reminds me of a story I heard of the rabbi who returned home excited to tell his wife that he had made a great deal of progress in solving the problem of poverty in his town. That’s so wonderful, said his proud wife. “Yes, I’ve solved half the problem already,” he said. “The poor are ready and willing to take,” he told his wife. “All that’s left to do is to convince the rich that they should be willing to give.”

            The idea of the Jubilee year, which gave families a second chance at owning land, had a practical purpose as well as a spiritual message. The practical purpose was that there should be no permanent underclass in Israelite society. There would not be one group of people that had all of the advantages and could build on them, and another group of disadvantaged people who had no hope of ever prospering. Such a society provides fertile ground for envy and is profoundly unfair. The spiritual message of the Jubilee year is to remind us that, as it says in the Psalms, “G-d owns the earth and all it contains, the world and all who live in it.” Nothing that we own, nothing that we achieve, is really ours.  Everything, ultimately, belongs to God.  This being so, our lives ought to be dedicated to fulfilling G-d’s will on earth. It follows, then, that we all have an obligation to work toward the vision of the ideal society that the Torah lays out. 

The Impossible Mitzvah -- A Belated Sermon for Mother's Day

Legend has it that Ernest Hemingway was bet that he could not write a novel in just six words. He wrote, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”  Larry Smith, a journalist, published a book called, OY, Only Six? Why not More? Six Word Memoirs on Jewish Life.”  In that book, which contains 360 personal takes on Jewish life, no subject is more popular than Mom. Here are five six word statements that describe the Jewish mother: —

Olivia Bercow, age 21, Miami Beach, about her mother Julie Bercow                                        

You met a boy? Jewish , right?

 Bob Wolf,  age 62, Chappaqua, N.Y., about his mother Annette Wolf

She’s older. Now I’m the worrier.

Edgar Weinstock,  age 71, Brooklyn, about his mother Libby Weinstock

You shtopt my soul with character.

Karyn Gershon, 51, Wilmette, Ill., about her mother Gloria Grossman

Unconditional love but hates my outfit.

 Ari VanderWalde, age  35, Los Angeles, about his mother Joan VanderWalde

Strong, independent rethinker of tuna casserole.

Last Sunday was Mother’s Day. Of course, every day should be "Mother’s Day". As we know, the Fifth Commandment states that we should “Honor our Father and our Mother”. This commandment is also found in this week’s Torah portion, as part of what is called the “Holiness Code”. Here it states that we should “revere” our Mother and Father. The Talmud takes up the question of the meaning of honoring and revering one’s mother.  As we know meanings are often up to interpretations. For example, Rabbi Tarfon, who lived in the period just following the destruction of the Second Temple, thought he was an exemplary son.  Whenever his mother wished to get into her bed, Rabbi Tarfon would get on his hands and knees and allow his mother to step onto his back to climb into bed. Just imagine! Whenever she wished to get out of bed, he would get on his hands and knees and let her use his back as a step down. Rabbi Tarfon boasted to his colleagues at the House of Study about the way he honored his mother. His fellows were not impressed. "You have not yet reached the honor due her," they said. "Has she thrown her money into the sea without your getting angry at her?" Others said to him, "If you had done a thousand times more for her, you still would not have done half the honor due her that the Torah prescribes."

In other words, fulfilling this commandment to honor ones mother is a very tall order and maybe even impossible to do. Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States in 2000, writes about the time in his life when he was quite certain he had accomplished the impossible in this poem, “The Lanyard”.  One day, writes the poet, he comes by accident across a word in the dictionary – “Lanyard” --

.......... No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-clothes on my forehead,
and then led me out into the air light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift - not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Billy Collins is saying that, it is a cliché that you can never repay your mother, a “worn truth” as he calls it. As we say in “Jewish”, there’s no “chiddush” there, no new insight or thought. Your mother gave birth to you, fed you, cleaned up after you, took care of you when you were sick, protected you, clothed you, educated you. Of course you can never repay her! Yet, when, as a boy he gave his mother the arts and crafts project he made at camp, he was as certain that he had, in fact, accomplished the impossible task, fulfilled the awesome mitzvah, of honoring his mother. Only as an adult, looking back, could he understand the naiveté and innocence of his thinking. That insight is his small gift to his mother.

We all, like the sages teach, fall short of fulfilling the Biblical commandment to honor our mothers. Yet Maimonides warns that parents should not be overly demanding of their children in this respect.  A mother, he writes, should just shut her eyes and hold her peace if her child fails to honor her adequately.

It comes to a matter of balance. Children have the duty to be respectful to their parents and honor them each and every day, in whatever way they are able. Parents, in turn, should temper their disappointment should what they consider the proper show of love and respect not materialize. The most important thing is to strive for harmonious relations between a mother and her children.

Shabbat Shalom

Parasha Tazria -- Getting Along with Your Brother or Sister

[The following sermon was written with our third graders, who participated in our Friday night services, in mind.] 

I don’t know how many of our students in the third grade know who Sonia Sotomayor is. Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic Judge appointed to the United States Supreme Court. She was appointed in 2009 by President Obama. As you know the Supreme Court of our nation consists of nine judges, all of whom are extremely important to our country.  Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor grew up in a large Puerto Rican family in New York City. In fact I am reading a book about her life that she wrote in 2013 titled My Beloved World. In her book, she writes about her relationship with her brother, who is three years younger than she is. He is a doctor now, but when they were growing up, like a lot of brothers and sisters they fought a lot. Like a lot of big sisters, she thought that her little brother, who she calls “Junior”, was somewhat of a pest. He followed her around the house, imitated her every gesture, and interfered in every conversation. Once, when he was about two, she led him out of their apartment into the hallway and shut the door. Much later her mother found him sitting where she had left him, sucking his thumb. Was her mom mad!!!!

But that was at home. At school, however she watched out for her little brother. If someone would pick on him, that person would have to deal with his older sister!  She writes, “If I got beat up on Junior’s account, I would settle things with him later, but no one was going to lay a hand upon him except me!”

I am sure that I don’t have to tell you that --- even though they love each other deep down, sometimes brothers and sisters don’t get along -- or brothers and brothers or sisters and sisters, for that matter. Sometimes they fight. Many a bar and bat mitzvah student have thanked their brother or sister in their speech with a “left handed compliment”. A “left handed compliment” is a way of praising someone while at the same time “dissing” them. For example – “I want to thank my little brother for being only a little annoying’ when I was studying for my bat mitzvah”. That is a “left handed compliment”.

The Torah is full of stories of brothers who do not get along. The first story about brothers not getting along is the story of Cain and Abel.  Sarah doesn’t like how Ishmael and Isaac are playing together. Jacob and Esau do not get along at all. Joseph’s brothers wanted to get rid of him so badly they didn’t just lead him into the hallway and shut the door. The sell him into slavery!  It is not until we get to the Book of Exodus, and the story of Moses, that we find brothers and sisters who get along and help each other. Moses’ older sister Miriam saves his life by putting him in a basket in the Nile River. Moses’ brother, Aaron, helps him confront Pharaoh and speaks to the Israelites on his behalf. The brothers and sisters all seem to get along in that family.

Even brothers and sisters, regardless of their ages, who get along sometimes have their disagreements. Later on in the Torah, Aaron and Miriam grow jealous of Moses and they criticize him. Moses is too humble to defend himself. However, G-d gets angry and speaks to them, saying, “How dare you speak against my servant Moses?” G-d punishes Miriam by giving her “tsaraat”, a disease that turns her skin all white. We read about Tsaraat in the Torah for the first time this week.

As soon as Moses sees Miriam suffering from Tsaraat, he prays to G-d to heal her. He doesn’t hold a grudge and he does not hesitate. “El nah, re-fah nah lah” – please G-d, heal her please, he prays. I imagine Moses felt a lot like Sonia Sotomayor felt with her brother – nobody is going to lay a hand on her but me!

I conclude with a note of consolation for all the parents and grandparents who worry about brothers and sisters fighting. According to University of Illinois psychologist Laurie Kramer, there is nothing better for children than to learn about fighting by doing so with someone who is still going to be your brother or sister the next day.  Why is that?  Because, often these are safe relationships where children experiment and develop skills and even try out some things that may not be acceptable in other types of relationships. In this way children develop social and emotional competencies that they will use in managing other relationships in their lives, both in the present and as they grow older. I am sure those skills have been put to good use by Sonia Sotomayor as she goes about her work as a Justice in an often contentious Supreme Court of the United States.

  Shabbat Shalom

Parasha Shemini -- Traditions Lost and Found

I’m pretty certain that the sages who are responsible for the text of the Torah scroll knew nothing about April Fools’ Day. But every once in a while, a person reading the Torah has to stop and wonder. For example, in the Book of Numbers there is an upside down pair of the Hebrew letter “nun” that frames the verses of the Priestly Blessing. Nobody knows why these letters are written upside down, but they have been faithfully copied from one Torah scroll to another from time immemorial. Is this an ancient scribal prank? One might also find small dots, called diacritical marks above certain letters in the Torah scroll. Although scholars can hazard some guesses about these strange demarcations, we don’t know for certain what they signify. They are simply part of Jewish scribal arts, faithfully copied from one scroll to the next freighted with the weight of tradition.

In this week’s reading of the Torah, which deals with kosher laws, we come across another example of one such scribal tradition. The Hebrew letter “vav” is written large in the word “Gachon”, which means belly. The entire verse reads, “You may not eat any creature that crawls upon its belly, for they are an abomination.” Yet, here we do know why the letter “vav” is writ large. According to tradition, this letter is the mid-point of all of the letters of the 600,000 letters in the Five Books of Moses. It is part of the scribal tradition to point this out by making the letter stand out from the letters around it.

As the most holy text in the Jewish tradition, the Torah has been passionately pored over by countless generations of scholars and rabbis. Each letter, each crown on each letter, is considered sacred. The early sages not only counted all the letters of the Torah, they also counted all of the words of the Torah, as well as all of the verses of the Torah. They discovered that the half way point with regard to words in the Torah occurs in Leviticus 10:16 with the word, darash, or “inquire”. The half way point in verses of the Torah is Leviticus 13:33, if you care to check it out. 

The Talmud tells us that Rav Yosef had a question about this. Is the letter “vav” the last letter of the first half of the Torah or the first letter in the last half of the Torah? Inquiring minds want to know! His fellow sages say, “Let’s bring a Torah scroll and let’s get counting!” Rav Yosef demurs. He and his fellow sages do not possess a reliable tradition of the exact spelling of all of the words of the Torah, he claims. Without knowledge of that tradition they could not be certain that the Torah scroll before them has exactly the same number of letters in it that the earliest sages had used in their reckoning of the mid letter of the Torah. The same is true when they want to find out whether the traditional middle verse of the Torah was the last verse of the first half or the first verse of the last half – or perhaps it was the verse that stood at the very mid-point of the Torah. The tradition as to how the earliest sages divided up the verses of the Torah has been lost.

When a Jewish tradition is lost, it is almost impossible to recover. Who knows how many Jewish traditions have been forgotten or lost over time? Like with any loss there is   a sense of sadness and sorrow for what is gone.  However, there is one ancient Jewish tradition that has been recovered in our own time.  This is the tradition of the blue thread, or the petil techelet. The Torah instructs us that we should attach a blue thread to the fringes on each corner of our prayer shawl, our tallit. However, the tradition identifying the species of sea creature from which the blue dye was extracted had been lost for 2000 years. Josie Glausiuz, writing in The Forward, tells the story of its rediscovery, which in turn led to an amazing discovery of her own.

Josie Glausiuz grew up in London the daughter of strictly-Orthodox parents. Her father, Gershon Glausiusz, was a member of a small shul led by Rabbi Yissochar Finkelstein, who emigrated from Poland in 1937. Rabbi Finkelstein brought with him a tradition from his own teacher, the Radziner Rebbe.  In 1887 The Radziner Rebbe set out from his small Polish town for Italy in search of the source of the dye used in ancient times to make the blue thread for the tallit. The Radziner Rebbe was convinced that he had discovered the source of the dye in the common cuttlefish. Certain that he had located the origin of this ancient color, he and his chassidim began wearing their tallit with the fringes of blue as commanded in the Torah. 

Definitive proof of the source of the blue dye was yet to be provided, however. In 2013, Dr. Na'ama Sukenik of the Israel Antiquities Authority presented her research on a 2,000 year old fabric that was found in the Murabba'at caves in the Judean desert.  She concluded that the blue dye on the fabric came from the Murex trunculus, a marine mollusk with a gland that secretes blue-tinted substance. The mystery of the source of the blue dye – the techelet -- had been definitively solved.

In the meantime, Josie Glausiusz was busy forging new Jewish traditions for her family. She never dreamed that, having grown up in an Orthodox shul in London she -- a woman -- would ever wear a tallit in synagogue. Yet as an adult she moved to New York City, joined a Conservative synagogue, and began to wear a tallit at services. Nor had Josie ever imagined that she would ever chant from the Torah in her synagogue as her father did. Yet, she learned to leyn Torah, inspired by her father’s beautiful chanting.  Furthermore it had never crossed her mind that her Orthodox father would one day accept all of these new traditions. Yet one day Josie’s father took the bus to the town of Bnei B’rak in Israel, bought the threads, and several weeks later, sat down and quietly wove in the greenish-blue threads into the fringes of her tallit.

That is the story of how Josie Glausiusz, a modern feminist, inherited the lost tradition of the blue techelet, following a practice rediscovered in 19^th century Poland. It is true that with the passing of time, some traditions fade away and often disappear. It is also true that with the passing of time, new traditions are created and take on profound meanings.

Shabbat Shalom

Parasha Tzav: The Anointed One

Once again, the entire world looked on in horror this week as terrorist attacks struck the city of Brussels. This past year alone we have seen violence, destruction and an unspeakable disregard for innocent human beings seemingly everywhere – from the intractable conflicts in Iraq and Syria, to Libya and Africa, to Paris and San Bernadino, in our own nation, and now Belgium. We continue to see random stabbings in Israel. We ask ourselves – what is becoming of our world?  Throughout history, when things appear to be spinning out of control, people look for leaders who appear to offer hope and, at times, claim to have answers that will restore order to the chaos.

As a minority living among an often hostile majority, the Jewish people have seen more than our share of violence directed against us throughout history. In the year 1648-1649 alone, Jewish communities in Ukraine were terrorized by the followers of a Ukrainian nationalist named Bogdan Chmielnicki. He led a Cossack and peasant uprising that sought to end Polish rule in Ukraine. Chmielnicki was bent on eradicating the Jewish presence in Ukraine. Over the course of that one year tens or thousands of Jews perished in his terror campaign. One chronicle of the time estimated that 100,000 Jews were killed and 300 communities were destroyed. As we might imagine, the problem of refugees was severe.

Hope came to these devastated communities in the form of a man who declared himself to be the Messiah, or Mashiach, in Hebrew. His name was Shabbatai Zvi . He was born in 1626 in Smyrna, an ancient Greek city in Anatolia, then under Ottoman rule. He was well versed in Talmud and was ordained as a rabbi when he was 18.  His deeper interest was Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, and he soon attracted a small following. When he was 22 years old he declared himself the Messiah, but nobody paid him much attention. During his twenties and thirties he traveled through Asia and the Middle East. At times he was expelled from Jewish communities for his bizarre, peculiar and even blasphemous behavior. At other times he settled down and led a quiet life.

His life changed when he was forty years old. While in Jerusalem he sought out a well-known intellectual and mystic named Nathan of Gaza. He hoped that Nathan of Gaza would help him with the spiritual malaise he was experiencing at that time. Nathan of Gaza convinced Shabbatai Zvi that he was indeed the Messiah. With the help of Nathan of Gaza, messianic fervor spread throughout the Jewish communities of Europe, Asia, and Africa. It spread not only in places like Ukraine, which had been devastated by terror, but in cities and countries that had known no violence as well. People fasted, repented, and offered Messianic prayers written by Nathan of Gaza. Some sold all their belongings and made plans to travel to the Land of Israel.  Others slept in their clothing, expecting any time that that they would be miraculously transported to Israel in clouds. The entire Jewish world was aflame, divided between believers in this self-proclaimed Messiah and his opponents.

Ultimately, Shabbetai Zvi was brought before the Ottoman Sultan and given the choice of converting to Islam or being put to death. He chose to convert to Islam and was given a pension by the Sultan. From then on he outwardly professed the Muslim faith but secretly practiced Judaism until his death at age fifty.

 In our Torah reading for this week, we find the word for Messiah – Mashiach --  although it has nothing to do with being a savior of any sort. In our Torah reading this week “mashiach” or “Messiah” simply means “anointed one”, and it is used in conjunction with Aaron’s investiture as the High Priest. Moses inducts Aaron into the priesthood by dressing him in his priestly clothing and pouring consecrated oil over his head. Later on in the development of Judaism, this “anointed one” or Mashiach becomes the term used for a descendent of King David. This descendent of David, usually conceived as a military hero, will lead Israel to victory over all of her enemies. He will oversee a return of Zion’s exiles to the Land of Israel and will establish a Kingdom where the Jewish people can live in peace and tranquility. A King Messiah who is kind, wise, and righteous will rule the world justly. All people on earth will live securely, with plenty for everyone.

Although the concept of “Messiah” has been an important part of Jewish thought throughout the ages, Judaism has taken a patient and passive approach to these beliefs. However, in the 1990s, Messianic fervor gripped at least a segment of the Jewish world. As the last Lubavitcher Rebbe neared the end of his life, many Chabad Lubavitch followers began to believe that he was the Messiah. When he died in 1994, some of his followers held that he would come back to life and reveal himself as the Messiah. To this day they have not found a leader for the Lubavitch movement to replace their beloved Rebbe.

Our prayer book takes an entirely different approach to Messianic yearnings. The traditional Amidah contains language that prays for a “Redeemer” for the Children of Abraham – the Messiah in the form of a person. Our prayer book substitutes the hope for a redeemer with the hope for redemption. There is only a difference of one Hebrew letter, but that one letter makes a world of difference. By adding that letter, our prayer book rejects the idea of the Messiah as a heroic conqueror. Rather, for us, redemption is to be gained through working together to end oppression, to promote justice, to feed the hungry, to shelter the homeless, to relieve human suffering.

Messianic times are an ideal that we all should aspire to bring on, to struggle toward. May our yearning for Messianic times keep us from being complacent, from being satisfied with the way things are.  May we all work for a better world, a world, free of violence, free of suffering, free of terror --  In the words of the prophet Micah, a world where “every person shall sit under his vine and under his fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid”.

Shabbat Shalom

Vayikra -- Making Sacrifices

Years back I heard of a congregation that read only from the first book and a half of the Torah-- Genesis and half of Exodus, Shabbat morning.  As you know, traditionally, we read from all Five Books of the Torah in the course of our weekly Sabbath morning services. The reason this congregation read only through the first book and a half of the Torah was because that is where all of the exciting stories are. Once one gets beyond the Exodus from Egypt and the building of the Golden Calf, the narrative parts of the Torah get fewer and fewer. By the time one gets to the Book of Leviticus, where we are this week, the narrative grinds to a halt. There are but two brief stories in the Book of Leviticus. The rest of the Book of Leviticus is as filled with mitzvoth as a pomegranate with seeds.

Having read about the completion and erection of the Mishkan in last week’s final chapter of Exodus, the Book of Leviticus opens by outlining the five major types of sacrifices that can be offered there. The first type, the Olah, means “going up”. It was offered to atone for a person’s sinful thoughts or ideas, which “come up” in one’s mind.  Its purpose was to help the worshipper raise the state of his or her spiritual level. 

Whereas the olah is an animal offering, the second type of sacrifice, the mincha, is an offering of flour, oil, and frankincense.  It was inexpensive, probably for people who could not afford an animal offering.  The message was that spiritual elevation is available to all, regardless of their financial situation. 

The type of sacrifice known as zevach shlamim was brought by a person or a group of people. This offering was meant to express gratitude for G-d’s goodness and love of G-d.  This animal sacrifice was eaten at a communal feast.  Finally the Hatat and the Asham sacrifices were brought when one sinned and felt guilty. In bringing the Hatat or the Asham, one was asking forgiveness from G-d.

The Torah goes into great detail as to how these sacrifices were to be offered to G-d by the priests. It enumerates which parts of an animal were to be given to G0d, which parts were to be retained by the priests for their personal consumption, which were to be eaten by the person who brought the offering, and on and on. It is little wonder that some congregations would prefer to skip the whole thing.

Furthermore, it is irrelevant to our lives today.  As we all know, animal and grain sacrifices ceased when the Second Temple was destroyed. There is a poignant story about Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai and his student, Rabbi Joshua, as they looked upon the Temple ruins. Rabbi Joshua bemoans the fact that with the Temple destroyed, Jews no longer have a way to atone for their sins. Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai replies that he ought not despair. Atonement for sins, he says, can still be gained through acts of charity and justice. This story illustrates both the feelings of loss that Jews have experienced throughout our history, as well as the adaption to loss that has been the key to Jewish survival throughout the ages.

The Temple in Jerusalem, however, was more than just a place for worship – it was the central symbol of Jewish sovereignty and national identity. That is why the Romans destroyed it in the first place, and that is why they never allowed the Jewish people to rebuild it. Nevertheless, throughout the ages Jews yearned to rebuild the Temple. In fact the rabbis added an entire section of prayer to our Sabbath Worship service to express that longing. The traditional Musaf service, which is named after the musaf, or additional sacrifice that was offered at the Temple on Shabbat, contains within it prayers to G-d to restore the Temple and to resume animal sacrifices.

The Modern American Reform Movement eliminated the Musaf service in its first published prayer book in 1856. The thinking was that the very mention of animal sacrifices obstructs rather than enhances the cultivation of spirituality for the modern American Jew. Subsequent prayer books of the Reform Movement followed suit.

In 1945 the Conservative Movement made a break with tradition by changing the wording of some of the traditional prayers in the Musaf service. They kept the Musaf service, with its focus on the Temple and the sacrificial system, but adapted the language to conform to modern sensibilities. They recognized American Jews had no desire to return to animal sacrifice as a system of worship. The Conservative Movement therefore changed the wording of the prayers to express the hope that we modern worshippers be as devoted to our form of worship as our ancestors were to theirs. Thus they maintained the link to the past while recognizing and acknowledging that sacrificial offerings constituted a stage in the evolution of our religion that we had long left behind and to which we did not wish to return.

The Jewish Reconstructionist Foundation also published its first prayer book in 1945. It eliminated the Musaf service entirely, as well as references to Jews as the “chosen people”, resurrection of the dead, and the hope for a Messiah. These changes so enraged the Orthodox community that on June 12, 1945, two hundred Orthodox rabbis gathered for a ceremony in New York in which Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, the chief author of the prayer book, was excommunicated and his new prayer book burned.

Today the passions aroused by liturgical innovations have abated. The Reform Movement in Israel has added a prayer “in memory of the Musaf service” and the Reconstructionist Movement advises that those who want to add a musaf service be permitted to do so. Not all of our fellow Jews, however, have come to terms with the elimination of sacrifice as a form of worship. These religious nationalists see in the restoration of sovereignty of the State of Israel over Jerusalem the first divinely ordained step toward the building of a Third Temple and the re-instituting of the sacrificial cult of Biblical times. That is another sermon, for another time.
Shabbat Shalom

Parasha Pekudai -- Struggling With Our Evil Inclination

President Ronald Reagan famously exclaimed, “Trust, but verify”. The phrase is actually a saying from the Russian language.  Historians tell us that President Reagan used it often in his arms control negotiations with Michael Gorbachev in the 1980s.  “Trust, but verify could be the title of this week’s parasha. As you recall, Moses has been instructed to build a Mishkan, a place of G-d’s presence. The Israelites would take the Mishkan with them as they travel through the desert to the Land of Canaan, the land the G-d has promised them. There had been an outpouring of donations from the Israelites to construct the Mishkan – gold and silver, fabrics of all kinds, acacia wood and precious stones, animal skins and oils and spices. The Midrash tells us that some of the Israelites doubted that Moses had used all of the donations that he had gathered for the purpose for which they were intended. Therefore, our parasha begins by telling us that Moses gave an account of all of the donations that he received and how he used them, lest he be suspected of using some of those donations for his own, personal use.

You may think that it was a terrible thing to suspect Moshe Rabeinu – the great Moses our Teacher, who, the Torah tells us, spoke to G0d himself ‘face – to – face” – of embezzlement of funds. But there is in all human beings a Yetzer-Ha-rah – an inclination to behave badly.  In some ways ,we  might say that can’t blame those Israelites who wondered whether Moses was putting something aside for himself. It turned out Moses could account for every penny, so to speak.  There is a different story about a rabbi, closer to our times , who had to struggle against his yetzer ha-rah to do the right thing.

In Russia at the end of the 19^th century there existed one of the great schools of Jewish learning of all time – the Volozhin Yeshiva. Young men would come from all over Europe, even from the United States, for the chance to study with some of the best rabbis and most dedicated students in the world.

Like most Jewish institutions to this day, this Yeshiva had financial challenges. They were always short of money. In an effort to deal once again with another financial crisis, the head of the Yeshiva, Rabbi Chaim Solovietchik, set off for the city of Minsk to raise the money that would prevent the Yeshiva from closing. There were two rabbis in that big city that raised money for the yeshiva on a regular basis. These were Rabbi Duber Pines and Rabbi Baruch Zlotolwitz. Rabbi Soloveitchik went to the home of Rabbi Zlotowitz and asked him if he could raise the money to save the Yeshiva. “I will see what I can do,” said Rabbi Zlotowitz. Rabbi Soloveithcik stayed at Rabbi Zlotowitz’s home anxiously waiting for Rabbi Zlotowitz to raise the money.

After two weeks, Rabbi Soloveitchik asked Rabbi Zlotowitz how he was doing. “I have raised almost half the money you need,” said Rabbi Zlotowitz. After a full month had passed, Rabbi Soloveitchik asked him again. “I am happy to say I have raised the entire sum,” said Rabbi Zlotowitz. Rabbi Soloveitchik returned to Volozhin with the money and paid off the bills that the Yeshiva owed.       

A few days later two men appeared before the rabbinical court in Volozhin. The two men were none other than Rabbi Zlotowitz and Rabbi Pines, the two rabbis who lived in Minsk and raised money for the Yeshiva. Rabbi Pines had brought a complaint. “Rabbi Zlotowitz and I have always been equal partners in raising money for the Yeshiva. But when Rabbi Soloveitchik asked Rabbi Zlototwitz to raise money this time, he didn’t do it. Rabbi Zlotowitz gave the entire amount out of his own pocket! I insist that I be able give him half of the amount that he contributed to the yeshiva, and in return I will gain an equal share in this worthy enterprise.

When Rabbi Soloveitchik heard about this, he took Rabbi Zlotowitz aside. “If you gave me the money out of your own pocket,” he asked, “why did you make me wait at your home for a month until you gave it to me? Why didn’t you give it to me right away, and let me go?”

Rabbi Zlotowitz replied, “Do you think it’s easy to give such a large amount of money? I had to struggle long and hard with the greed in my heart just to give you half of the money. Then I had to wage another all-out battle in my heart to wrench out the other half from my pocket. I’m sorry, but it took me an entire month to convince myself to give you the entire amount!”

So it can be with us. Often we have to struggle with our own yetzer ha-rahs in order to do the right thing. Our yetzer ha-rahs say to us “I’ll do it later” or “I’ll wait to see what others give” or “They’ll never know the difference,” or “I’d rather sleep than study” or --- just fill in the blank! The sages understood our yetzer ha-rah to be a part of the human condition, for each morning upon awakening we pray, “Dear G-d, do not allow my yetzer ha-rah to rule over me.” May our yetzer- ha-tov, our good inclination always overcome our yetzer ha-rah and may we do Good all the days of our lives.       

Shabbat Shalom