Parashat Bamidbar "Torah for Everyone"

Before the Sinai Desert was returned to Egypt in the Peace treaty of 1978,  it was possible to take a bus directly from Tel Aviv to the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, Sharm el Sheik.  I boarded that bus alone  on my Spring Break of 1972 when I spent a year in Israel.  I intended to camp out on the beach and snorkel on the reefs of the Red Sea off Sharm El Sheik. At that time Sharm El Sheik had some of the best snorkeling in the world. There were only a few of us on that bus, including a Bedouin man. We traveled for hours through seemingly interminable and vast expanses of wilderness. When we think of “wilderness” in North America, we imagine tracts of virgin forests with wild rivers flowing through them untouched by human hands. We think of nature “untamed” by humankind. The “wilderness of Sinai”, however, is anything but green.  Through the window of my bus I saw immense rugged landscapes of reds and browns, with hills, mountains, canyons and plains passing by.  Suddenly, the Bedouin man traveling with us pulled the cord above the window of the bus, requesting a stop. I looked out the window for a bus stop sign or a bus shelter. The bus pulled over to the shoulder of the road, and the Bedouin got off --- IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE!  There was nobody to pick him up, not in a jeep, not on a camel. He descended from the bus and simply took off on foot to heaven knows where.

That is where our Torah portion for the week picks up this Shabbat – BaMidbar – in the wilderness. Elsewhere, the Torah describes the wilderness of Sinai as a “howling wasteland, a land not sown; a land of deserts and pits, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no human being dwells.”  Which raises a question – Why would G-d choose such an inhospitable, barren and forbidding place to give the Jewish people the Torah? Although we sing in our Torah service – Ki Mitzion Tetze Torah – The Torah “goes out” to the world from Jerusalem, G-d decided to give the Torah to the Jewish people in this wilderness. Would it not have been better to wait until they reached the Holy Land in order to bestow the Holy Torah upon the Holy People?

A number of reasons have been put forth for the giving of the Torah in the wilderness. If the Torah had been given in Jerusalem, some say, the Jewish people might have thought that it was relevant only when we were living in the Holy Land or the Holy City. By giving the Torah in the wilderness it was made clear that it was to be followed wherever a Jewish person lived.

Rabbi Tanchuma gives another reason that the Torah was given in the wilderness. He points out that just as nobody owns the wilderness, so no people have exclusive right to the Torah. We can own the Torah, but we are not its owners. It is free and is open to all. A beautiful example of that maxim in action  in our own congregation is the upcoming Adult Bar and Bat Mitzvah service on June 10. Seven people who chose to embrace the Torah as adults will be called to the Torah for aliyahs and will lead the Afternoon Service.

However, one does not have to be Jewish in order to learn from or be inspired by the Torah.  This counts as a third reason why the Torah was given in the wilderness. Were it given in Jerusalem, some say, the Jewish people, and the world, might think it was only for Jews. We might think that only Jews could have a genuine connection to G-d. G-d gave us the Torah in the Wilderness of Sinai to teach us that there is much to learn from Torah for everybody, Jews and non-Jews alike. That is one of the reasons that it means a lot to me as your Rabbi that we often have students and guests during services from different schools and different religious backgrounds. In the process of learning more about Jewish prayer and ritual, they also learn a little Torah.  I also love it that that non-Jewish members of our community at-large come to study with us on Thursday and Shabbat mornings. Some come a few times, and some come regularly for years to study Torah with us. I also know that people from many different religious backgrounds read the sermons that I post on line through our website or my sermon blog.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Hannina Bar Papa gives a sermon where he envisions G-d appearing on the Day of Judgement with a Torah in his arms. God declares, “Whoever occupied him or herself with the study of Torah, come and receive your reward.” This statement is addressed not only to the Jewish people, but to all of the religions and all the nations of the world. This leads Rabbi Meir to comment that “even an idol worshipper who is engaged in the study of Torah is like a Kohen Gadol – a High Priest”. That is, the idolater deserves to be treated with the same degree of respect as the most important leader in Jewish religious life. If any person comes to study Torah out of a search for truth, or to deepen his or her relationship to G-d, then they should be encouraged to explore the wisdom that Judaism has to offer. The Torah, as it states in the Book of Deuteronomy, is a “Morasha Kehillat Ya-akov” – “A precious inheritance of the Jewish People”. It is an inheritance worth sharing with the rest of humanity.

Shabbat Shalom

Charge to our Beth Shalom Confirmation Class 5777

This week we complete the reading of the Book of Leviticus in our synagogues around the world. It is a difficult book for us to read, because it deals mostly with subjects – animal sacrifice and ritual impurity – that are far removed from contemporary concerns. Traditionally this was the book with which young children began their Torah studies. According to the Midrash, children begin their studies with the Book of Leviticus because children are pure and sacrifices are pure, therefore the pure begin their studies with the study of purity.

Half of all of the laws of the Torah are found in the Book of Leviticus. Therefore, it is appropriate that the book would conclude with blessings and warnings. The Torah tells us that if we follow the Laws of Leviticus, we will be blessed. If we fail to follow the laws, bad things will happen to us. The section concludes, “These are the laws, statues and instructions the G-d gave between Him and the Children of Israel on Mt. Sinai through Moses.” It is a fitting culmination to the Book of Leviticus. Except that it is not the end of the Book of Leviticus. There is another chapter after this that deals with laws pertaining to the monetary evaluation of people and of property dedicated to G-d. Some have called this chapter an “appendix” to the Book of Leviticus. They see it as material that perhaps didn’t fit in anywhere else in Leviticus, but it had to go somewhere, so, it was thrown in at the end of the book.

Rabbi Menachem Liebtag teaches says that this conclusion of the Book of Leviticus wasn’t inserted there willy-nilly. It was placed there purposefully to form a bookend with the beginning of Leviticus. He notes that the very beginning of the Book of Leviticus deals with voluntary offerings and obligatory offerings of the individual. This very end of the Book of Leviticus also deals with voluntary offerings and obligatory offerings of the individual. Between these bookends the Book of Leviticus focuses on the holiness of the Jewish nation as a whole and the rigid detail of sacrifice and purity. This might lead one to think that it is solely the holiness of Jewish people as a whole that G-d is concerned with, and that the individual is of little importance on the greater scheme of things.  It also might lead one to believe that there is little room for self-expression or creativity in developing a relationship with G-d, as the way of relating to G-d seems to already be laid before us within an inflexible ritual.

According to Rabbi Liebtag, the strategic position of the texts at the beginning and end of Leviticus stresses two important features of worshiping G-d. The first is that despite the centrality of the community in Jewish life, the individual must never forget how important each one of us is to the whole. Secondly, although ritual can be stringent, and at time uncompromising, we should never allow it to stifle our ability to be creative in developing our own relationship to G-d. 

This is a message that I would like to with leave you, our Confirmation class, as you complete this phase of your Jewish education. Never forget how important each one of you is to the integrity of the Jewish people as a whole. If we should lose your active participation in Jewish life, we will all be diminished. Second, I hope you will use Jewish ritual, not as an end to itself, but as a jumping off point, as a solid foundation, from which you can develop your own special relationship to G-d, a relationship that will energize each of you, and motivate each you, to reach for and develop your full potential as a human being.

The Cantor and I will now give you a blessing. We ask the congregation to rise and respond “Kein Yehi Ratzon” “Thus may it be your will” after each phrase that the Cantor chants. 

Parasha Emor -- What it Means to be a Jew

I am going to give you a quiz tonight. Are you ready? Which one of the following common Jewish surnames does not belong in the group:  Katz; Rappaport; Kahan; Kagan; Kornfeld. ……….  The answer: Kornfeld does not belong with the others.  The rest are all surnames that are associated with being from the priestly class of the Jewish people. If your surname is “Cohen”, for example, it may be that you are descended from the Ko-hens addressed by Moses in this week’s Torah portion –The High Priest Aaron and his sons. The surname “Katz” is an acronym of Kohen Tzedek, or righteous Kohen. The surname Kaplan is an acronym for “Kohen Plony” – or “Ordinary Kohen”. The surname “Kagan” is the Russian version of Kohen with the “g” replacing the “h”, since there is no “h” sound in Russian. If your family surname is “Rapoport” you may be descended from a well-known family of priests, the Rapas or Porto, Italy. “Barkans” are “bar-kohens”, literally, sons of Kohens. The surname “Mazar” is an acronym of “Me-zerah Aharon” – from the seed of Aaron.

Of course, having one of these surnames does not automatically make one a Kohen. Moreover, you may be a Kohen without having one of these surnames! The only way a person usually knows that they are a Kohen is that their fathers or mothers have told them they are kohens. This information has presumably been passed down through the generations, one family at a time. Another way of discovering if you are a Kohen is by visiting your ancestors at a Jewish cemetery. If, engraved on the monument you find a pair of raised hands, thumbs touching and fingers spread, it means that the person buried there is a Kohen. If that is your paternal grandfather, and you are a male, that makes you a Kohen too.

Although the actor Leonard Nimoy was not a Kohen, he was raised an Orthodox Jew and recalled attending services as a child with his father where the Kohanim blessed the congregation. The Kohanim would get on the bima, cover their heads with their prayer-shawls, and reach out toward the congregation with their fingers splayed as they would intone the Priestly Blessing. Nimoy drew on this gesture when his character, Spock, would give the “Vulcan” greeting “Live long and prosper”.

A number of years ago Dr. Karl Skorecki of the University of Toronto and the Rambam Medical center was in synagogue in Toronto when a visitor was called to the Torah for the first Aliyah. The visitor was identified as a Kohen – a dark skinned Jew from a Sephardi background. Dr. Skorecki, who is a fair skinned Jew of Ashkenazi descent, noted that this man looked quite different from himself. Yet, according to Jewish tradition, both Dr. Skorecki and the visitor were descended from the same man, Aaron the High Priest. Dr. Skorecki, who was involved in the field of molecular genetics, thought that if they were indeed descended from Aaron the Priest, they ought to share a set of genetic markers. He set out to discover if there were indeed genetic markers that Kohanim shared that other Jews did not.  The results of the first study, published in Nature magazine in 1997, revealed that 98% of self-identified Kohens shared a genetic marker on the Y chromosome. This genetic marker is not found among other Jews, or in non-Jewish populations. Further studies and date calculations based on the variation of mutations in the genes of Kohens today revealed that these men shared a common ancestor from 3,300 years ago – the precise time we believe that the Exodus from Egypt occurred, and Aaron would have lived!

In 1999, this research was used to corroborate a tradition of the Lemba Tribe of South Africa and Zimbabwe that they are descendants of Jews from the Middle East. The Lemba are an African tribe whose customs include a ban on pork, male circumcision and ritual slaughter of animals. They also rest one day of the week. There are many African tribes have oral traditions that they are descendants of Biblical Israelites, but the Lemba are the only ones who have the genetic marker on the Y chromosome to support the claim. The genetic signature of priests is particularly prevalent among the men of the senior of the 12 clans of the Lemba, known as the Babu.

Our Parasha for this week opens with G-d telling Moses to “Speak to the Kohanim, the sons of Aaron, and say to them……..”  In examining a text where every word is the word of G-d, and therefore each and every word has significance, the rabbis wondered, “Why does the Torah use the word “speak” and then “say”. Would it not be sufficient for G-d to tell Moses either to “Speak to the sons of Aaron” or “Say to the sons of Aaron”? From the apparently redundant use of “speak” and “say” we can learn a lesson. The word “speak” indicates that source of a Kohen’s holiness is in his genetic relationship to Aaron. The holiness of a Kohen is connected to his being a male descendant of Aaron. That is a necessary but not sufficient source of holiness. So the Torah adds the word “say” to teach that one cannot be satisfied only to be related to Aaron, one must achieve holiness through one’s own effort as well

Long before genetic markers on the Y chromosome could be used to identify a person’s lineage, the Talmud gave us three specific markers that could identify a Jew:  A Jew was a person who demonstrated compassion toward others, modesty, and loving-kindness in all aspects of their lives. Maimonides even writes that if a Jewish person is cruel, there is reason to suspect their lineage! He also writes, “One who has no compassion for his fellow creature cannot possibly be of the seed of Abraham and Sarah!”

Judaism is not passed down by assuming the last name of one’s father. Judaism is not simply carried on a chromosome. It cannot be genetically bequeathed from parent to child. It is an inheritance that cannot simply be passively accepted. Judaism must be actively taken up and embraced through cultivating qualities and values of kindness, modesty and compassion toward others. This is at the heart of what it means to be a Jew.

Shabbat Shalom

Three Strikes and You're a Winner -- Parasha Achare Mot

Dave and Mike, both in their 90s had played professional baseball together and, after they retired, they remained close friends. Dave suddenly fell deathly ill. Mike visited Dave on his deathbed. After they talked a while and it became obvious that Dave had only a few more minutes to live, Mike said, “Listen, old friend. After you die, try and get a message back to me. I want to know if there is baseball in heaven.

With his dying breath, Dave whispers, “If G-d permits, I’ll do my best to get you an answer.”

A few days after Dave died, Mike is sleeping when he hears Dave’s voice.

Dave says, “Mike, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that, yes, there IS baseball in heaven. The bad news is, you’re scheduled to pitch at the top of tomorrow’s double header.”(Aish.com)

Death is usually no laughing matter. Our parasha for this week opens with reminding us of the death of Aaron’s two sons, Nadav and Avihu. They perished on what was perhaps the greatest day of their young lives. The Tabernacle had been completed, and Aaron and his sons had been instructed on how to offer the sacrifices of the people. Seven days of consecration of the Tabernacle had been celebrated. Now, on the eight day, Aaron was to be ordained as the High Priest of Israel and his sons as priests who would serve underneath him. Everything was going according to plan, until two of his sons, Nadav and Avihu decided to offer what the Torah describes as “an alien fire” in the Tabernacle. A fire comes out from the Tabernacle and consumes them. What was to have been the happiest day of their and their parents lives ends in the bitterest of tragedies.

One of the reasons we break a glass at the conclusion of a Jewish wedding ceremony is related to this story. It was once widely believed that demons bent on mischief were particularly attracted to fortunate people – like brides and grooms. Therefore, to ward away bad luck, a glass is broken to scare away the demons. The story of Aaron’s sons reminds us that even at our happiest times, misfortune can come out of nowhere.

It is true, that sometimes life can throw you a curveball. Or, in the case of baseball player Adam Greenberg, it was a fastball. Adam was nervous and excited when he was called to the Big Leagues in July of 2005 by the Chicago Cubs. Not many Jewish kids make it to the Major Leagues. Only 1% of the players in the Major Leagues are Jewish. Since 2% of the population of the United States is Jewish, that makes us vastly underrepresented in Professional baseball. Of course, we are vastly over-represented in other areas – 22% of Nobel Prize Winners, for example, have been Jewish. On the other hand, who would you rather have batting in the bottom of the ninth inning of the World Series with the bases loaded and the tying run on third – Jewish Nobel prize winning quantum physicist Roy J. Glauber or Cubs catcher Kyle Schwarber?  Nobel Prize winning writer Bob Dylan or Cubs infielder Kris Bryant? You don’t have to be Joe Madden to figure that one out!

In any case, Adam Greenberg, Jewish kid from Connecticut, achieves his life ambition of making it to the major leagues.  The young man was a remarkable athlete. He lettered in baseball, basketball and soccer all four years of High School. He was captain of his baseball team for his junior and senior years, was a four-time All-Conference and All-Area, and was the first player in Connecticut history to be named to four All-State teams. He was team captain of his High School soccer team his Junior and Senior years in High School as well. In soccer he was a three-time All-Conference, All-Area, and All-State selection. He was a High School All-American selection in soccer in 1998. He went on to play college baseball for North Carolina. In his Junior year he batted .337, stole 35 bases, scored 80 runs, and homered 17 times. He was named to the All-Conference team and was selected by the Cubs in the 2002 baseball draft.

On July 9, 2005, Greenberg stepped into the batter’s box for his first “at bat” in the Major Leagues. It was the beginning of what he hoped would be a long career in baseball. It was one of the happiest days of Adam Greenberg’s life. His parents, his friends, his entire community back in Connecticut were so proud of him. He had achieved something special. On the mound was Marlins pitcher Valerio de Santos. The first pitch to Greenberg was a 92 mile an hour fastball. It hit him on the back of the head. As Greenberg lay sprawled at home plate the pitcher, de Santos feared that he had killed Greenberg. Greenberg was able to leave the game under his own power. For the next two years he suffered from symptoms of a concussion and vertigo. He felt, however, that he had to continue to fight through those symptoms if he were ever to get a chance to return to the Major Leagues.

Adam Greenberg continued to play baseball professionally but never made it back into the Majors. Then in 2012 he was signed to a one day contract with the Florida Marlins of the National League. Having been hit by a pitch on his only plate appearance, Greenberg had not been credited with an official “at bat” in the Majors. The Marlins would give him an opportunity to play in a game so that he might record an official “at bat”. So on October 2, 2012, Adam Greenberg once again stepped into the batter’s box at Florida’s Marlin Stadium. The atmosphere was electric. As Greenberg walked to the plate in the bottom of the sixth as a pinch hitter, the crowd gave him a standing ovation. Aerosmith’s “The Dream” played over the loudspeakers. His new teammates cheered him on. His parents and his friends were watching from box seats. He was facing the Mets knuckleballer R. A. Dickey. Dickey would go on to win the Cy Young Award for the best pitcher in the National League that year. Dickey wound up and threw the first pitch for a strike. The second pitch came in – a swing and a miss!  Greenberg was determined to swing at the next pitch wherever it was. He did not want to be called out on strikes. The pitch came. Greenberg swung for strike three. He would not get another chance to bat. He retired from baseball five months later.

Some people might have considered themselves a failure had they gone through what Adam Greenberg went through. Some people might have become bitter over their bad luck. Not Adam Greenberg. Greenberg said that he learned that it is not about accomplishing your goal that determines success or failure. It is about what you do in the process of accomplishing your goal that is important, the work you do to try to get there.

Adam Greenberg said that he drew upon the lessons of the Jewish people to help him deal with his misfortune. Jews, he said, have had to overcome many obstacles at every stage of our history. Jews have had to persevere. We see that in the story of Aaron and his surviving sons. Although their first day as priests was a tragic one, they too persevered and established a religious institution that would endure for thousands of years.

Shabbat Shalom