| April 2010
Sinai Update – Week of April 18-24, 2010 Parshiyot Acharei Mot-K’doshim (Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27) Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel Jews around the world celebrated Israel’s 62nd birthday yesterday, Tuesday, April 20, also known on the Jewish calendar as the 5th of the Hebrew month of Iyar. In Israel, Yom Ha’atzma’ut (Israeli Independence Day) is always an opportunity to take stock, to reflect on the “state of the State,” on Israel’s achievements and challenges in X-many years from her birth under tumultuous circumstances in 1948. Sixty-two years later, the atmosphere remains tumultuous, testifying to the symbolic power that Israel holds for her citizens and supporters and her detractors and enemies alike. Within Israel and among Israelis, the debate rages about whose vision for Israel will provide her with the peace and calm that her founders dreamt of. Yesterday’s New York Times published an article that provides excellent insight into that debate on the occasion of Israel’s 62nd birthday, and I urge you to read it. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/world/middleeast/20israel.html?ref=world .
Personally, I am still inspired by the words of those founders who signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence on the 5th of Iyar in Tel Aviv sixty-two years ago: “The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations…. [We affirm] the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.” At Temple Sinai, we will celebrate Israel’s birthday this Erev Shabbat, April 23, with singing and a guest speaker on new spiritual discovery in Israel (see below), and I hope you will join us. May all our dreams for Israel be realized, soon and in our day! I wish you a happy Yom Ha’atzma’ut!
Sinai Update – Week of April 11-17, 2010
Leprosy, menstrual blood, body fluids, ritual impurity after birth, expulsion from the camp – you might ask, “Why does the Torah care so much to devote a double Torah portion to these yucky things?!?” Myraids of bar and bat Mitzvah students through history have asked the exact same question (and cursed their birthdates when given one of these Torah portions to read for their simcha). But when the Torah addresses these topics, it is using its own ancient language to help express its ultimate concerns, namely, the boundary between life and death. Many observers and students of the Bible have noted that what underlies the ritual categories of tum’ah (impurity) and t’harah (purity) expressed in this week’s double Torah portion is not a value judgment of sinfulness, but rather, to the contrary, the Torah’s affirmation of life and the potential for life. A mother who has given birth becomes ritually impure (tamei), according to this view, because for nine months she has carried a baby (new life) and upon sending it forth from her womb, that potential has ended (albeit by reaching its fulfillment and happy conclusion). One who touches a corpse becomes temporarily ritually impure (also, tamei) for a similar reason: s/he has come into direct contact with the ending of life and its potential. The same reasoning about the categories of ritual purity and impurity is found all throughout the double reading this week. Judaism affirms the natural course of life, including the natural conclusion of the potential for new life, through these categories. They help us understand life and its normal, natural and holy cycles.
Sinai Update – Week of April 4-10, 2010
Yes, it’s true: The stork is listed among the birds that are ruled out by the Torah as non-kosher, not permitted to eat. It has nothing to do with the fantasy that storks drop bundles of babies on the doorsteps of expectant parents (see “In our lives…” this week!). But Jewish attention is given to the prohibition against eating stork, in part, because it is called, in Hebrew, hasidah, which translates to “righteous one.” Why? Nachmanides, the 12th century rabbi, noted that all the cruel birds have been ruled out as kosher; many of the non-kosher animals listed in this week’s Torah portion as forbidden to Jews for eating (Leviticus chapter 11) are considered predators. But the stork, said Nachmanides, deals kindly with its fellow creatures.
But why is the stork, who is called “righteous” forbidden, then? It would seem that it would be permitted! What disqualified the hasidah as a kosher bird? Rabbi Isaac Meir Alter (Poland, 1798-1866) observed that it was voted off the island by God as a kosher animal “because the stork is kind only to others of its own species, but will never give food to a creature not of its own kind.” We learn from the stork that when taking care of other human beings, Jewish tradition urges us to reach out to all, not just to Jews, but to all of God’s creatures. |
