Shabbat comes in at 5.35pm & goes out at 8.38pm

This week’s Kiddush has been designated “Foodbank Kiddush”.  By providing only wine & challah, the funds saved will be donated to the Harrow Foodbank.

”When the people saw that Moses was so long coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, Come make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.”  (Exodus 32:1)

 A mob  “gathered” — in Hebrew, “vayakhel” — themselves to challenge Aaron to build a golden calf.  In next week’s portion we have the same verb in a different form – vayakhel.  “Moses gathered the whole community of Israel together and said to them  …”  (Exodus 35:1)  Moses first gives instructions on the laws of the Sabbath.  He then commands them to build a tabernacle, a portable tent which they will carry through the desert.  We have the same verb but an altogether different mood.  This time they are gathering for a holy purpose.

So we have two stories in the Torah, one right after the other.  Both use the same verb in different form.  The people gather themselves (the passive verb is used) together to build a Golden Calf, creating a false God.  Then the people are actively gathered together to build a holy tabernacle, fulfilling God’s will.  The fact that the same verb is used in both examples is no coincidence.  Good people coming together do not necessarily ensure good results.  The people needed the leadership of Moses to guide them to engage in worthwhile projects.   The children of Israel had to be gathered with a sense of “good” purpose and direction.

Shabbat comes in at 5.22pm and & goes out Saturday at 6.25pm

Modern self-help gurus talk about taking care of your body and taking care of your mind.  Which is more important, the body or the soul?   The rabbis examined this question long ago in Midrash Tadshe:

Shabbat comes in at 5.09pm & goes out Saturday 6.13pm

Liz and Richard Specterman invite the community to join them for the baby blessing of their daughter, Hannah.  Mazal Tov to the family.  This will be at 39 Bessborough Road, Harrow.

Chanan Shuall is sponsoring a kiddush for the occasion of his 70th birthday at Hatch End Masorti Synagogue at the Girl Guide Headquarters in Hatch End.

In Parshat Terumah, the Torah describes the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) for the Israelites in the desert.  It also describes a table upon which twelve loaves of bread, or, “lehem hapanim” were to be placed.   While the usual translation is “showbreads,” it also has been translated as bread of the Presence, or more literally as bread of the faces.

The Hassidic Rebbe Avraham Mordechai of Gur liked the “bread of the faces” translation and explained that each person who looked at the bread could see an image of his or her own face.  A pious, kind and faithful person would see the bread as being fresh and warm. A cynical, mean and skeptical person would see the bread as being stale and cold. The “lehem hapanim” reflected the face—and the inner being—of the observer.  The experience of the bread varied according to the personality of the person who observed it.

This idea is also found in a teaching of the Kotsker Rebbe who commented on the verse in Exodus: “And when they [Israelites] came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they [i.e. the waters] were bitter.”   The plain meaning of the text is that the Israelites couldn’t drink the water because it was too bitter.  The Kotsker Rebbe, though, interpreted the verse as follows: “And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they—the Israelites—were bitter.”   They were in such a foul and bitter mood, everything seemed wrong, even the water tasted bitter.

It’s one of my favourite lessons, even as I struggle to employ it — a positive world view allows us to experience life in a positive way.   The bread we eat, the water we drink, our lives…are dependent upon our interpretation.

Shabbat comes in at 4.57pm & goes out Saturday 6.01pm

Parashat Mishpatim has a long list of commandments that is referred to as the “Holiness Code.”   Many of these mitzvot are based on inter-personal relationships — how we should treat one another.  And if we don’t obey them?   God does not discuss very many consequences for failure to obey these commandments. There is one exception. God commands (Ex. 22:21-22):

“You shall not mistreat [oppress] any widow or orphan. If you indeed mistreat them, when they cry out to Me I will certainly heed their cries. And My anger will flare up, and I will kill you by the sword; your wives will become widows and your children orphans.”

Rabbi Yose said, Why does God love orphans and widows? It is because their eyes are fixed only on God, as it is written, “A father to orphans; a defender of widows” [Ps. 68:5]. Therefore all who rob them – it is as if they robbed the Holy One of Blessing, for God is their father in heaven, and God becomes angry for their sake, as it is written, “And My anger will flare up, and I will kill you,” etc….

The Torah’s statement applies to all orphans and widows, no matter their station in society because, as Ramban (Nahmanides, Spain 13th C.) points out, anyone suffering such a loss becomes vulnerable; “their souls become lowly” (to Ex. 22:21).   Rashi adds that in reality, the Torah means every vulnerable person, and merely singles out widows and orphans because these are particularly vulnerable “and are commonly mistreated” (to Ex. 22:21). We probably all know of, or at least have heard of, cases in which the elderly, mentally ill or others without the means or strength to defend themselves become victims, whether of theft, intimidation or violence.

It has often been said that a society is judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable members. God commands Israel in the Holiness Code to protect its vulnerable members, setting the example for all nations.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Paul Arberman

Shabbat comes in this week (6 February) at 4.44pm & goes out Saturday 5.49pm

Each of the commandments given at Sinai is a launching point for a much longer discussion by the rabbis. So for example, the third commandment prohibits swearing in vain. This is defined by our sages as a prohibition of (1) swearing to the truth of something that is obviously true and well known, e.g. that the sun is hot; (2) swearing in denial of an obvious truth, e.g. that the moon is made of cheese; (3) swearing to violate the Torah, e.g. that one will eat pork; (4) swearing to do something that is impossible, e.g. to stay awake for a full week.

The common denominator of these types of vain oaths is that they all “cheapen” the use of God’s name. Words have value and their misuse threatens the smooth functioning of society which sometimes must rely on the seriousness of a real oath.
Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Paul Arberman

God tells the Jewish nation that they are soon to leave Egypt, where they have been enslaved for over two hundred years, and He gives a curious instruction. The soon-to-be-free slaves are to approach their Egyptian neighbors—their masters—who will give them valuable gifts of gold and silver. I’ve always thought of this as payment for all the work the Israelites did.

However, bible scholar (and Rabbi) Benno Jacob (1862-1945) sees it very differently. According to him, the gold and silver the Egyptians gave were “farewell gifts,” given out of a genuine sense of affection for the Israelites. “This new mood was surprising, but even some of Pharaoh’s loyal courtiers [had begun] to see matters differently and respected Moses.” The gifts given by the Egyptians were thus “a clear public protest against the policies of the royal tyrant. They demonstrated a renewal of public conscience…[and] it showed a moral change; the receptive heart of the Egyptian people was now contrasted to the hard heart of Pharaoh.”

As Rabbi Jacob understands it, God’s primary concern during the Israelites’ final hours in Egypt was “peace between the two peoples.” Seeking to ensure that the mandate to love rather than hate would be the lesson Israel learned from its time in Egypt, God commanded in no uncertain terms: “You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land” (Deuteronomy 23:8).

Is Rabbi Jacob’s interpretation convincing as the plain sense meaning (peshat) of the text? I have my doubts. But there is something important about his interpretation. In a world filled with bigotry and hostility, a world in which people of faith often use sacred texts to legitimate acts of cruelty and to extol hatred as a virtue, there is great power in being reminded: Religion should be about the attempt to soften, and open, one’s heart, to God and to one-another. If even the Egyptians and the Israelites can be (successfully!) called to appreciate one-another, then perhaps, even in the darkest of times, there is hope available to us.

Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Paul Arberman

When Moses was coming down the mountain, carrying the two tablets on which were inscribed the Ten Commandments  that he had received from God, he saw the people dancing around the golden calf.  And when he saw this, Moses took these two tablets, these holy objects, and he smashed them.

There are many different commentaries in the midrash on why he smashed them. One says that because of the sin of the golden calf — the letters flew off the tablets, and that, when there were no letters on the tablets, they became too heavy to bear — Moses could not sustain his strength when the tablets lost their purpose!   So he did not smash them — he dropped them.

Another midrash says that when Moses saw the people worshipping an idol, directly violating the second of the ten commandments, he broke the tablets, because he figured — you cannot be held liable for violating a law that you did not yet know about— that had not yet been established.  By breaking the tablets instead of telling the people what was written on them, Moses was protecting the people from being found guilty.

Another great midrash asks a very simple question:  What happened to these broken pieces of tablet?  Were they simply swept up by some janitor and thrown away? Were they picked up and put in a trash can?

The answer of the midrash is that Moses went back up to the top of Mount Sinai, and stayed there with God for another forty days and nights, and came back with a second set of tablets. And these tablets were put into the Holy Ark.  And then it says:  “Luchot, vishivrey luchot munachim ba’aron”. Both sets of tablets, the second set and the fragments of the first set were put into the Ark.

Why did the Israelites do that?  If you had a perfect set, why would you need to keep the broken set as well? And why would you put it in the Ark, right next to the second, new, shiny set?

The answer of the midrash is:  “In order to teach you that broken people, that people who once knew the Torah but who have lost their memories and no longer know anything, are to be treated with respect, even in their broken state.”  People,  who are holy, remain holy, even when they have Dementia, or Alzheimer’s — even when they no longer know who you are, even when they no longer know who THEY are.

A friend of mine had a different take on the broken tablets.   He said that the broken tablets are like the glass that we break at a wedding.   The Jewish people were about to begin their intense relationship with God — which many rabbis have likened to a marriage — but just as we are reminded at a regular Jewish wedding that a relationship is fragile—that bad things happen and even on our happiest day we remember the destruction of the Temple — so too on the day when we agreed on a relationship with God — we were reminded how easy it is to let the relationship break.

I was especially moved by these thoughts because after 50 years of marriage, my parents are having a difficult time deciding if they want to continue being married.   It may just be weariness, or it may be the beginning of slight dementia on my mother’s part.   I’m doing my best to just be there for both of them — and not to listen too much about their complaints about the other one.  They seem to have lost the sense of the other being broken — but still holy.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day,  and I am reminded of the fact that we often hear talk about people having found their soul mate.  I read an article by a colleague of mine, Rabi Irwin Kula who argues that we don’t find our soul mate – we co-create our soul mate. Soul mate is a verb hiding out as a noun, and over the course of our relationship we engage in soul-mating.

It turns out that the initial reasons we fall in love are not the reasons we stay in love, as the first phase of love is about self-affirmation – narcissism. But soon enough we discover each other’s differences, flaws and weaknesses and that’s when our love becomes intentional, intimacy begins, and we start to “soul mate”.

Only at the end of our relationship, after we have successfully helped each other to seek the truth about ourselves and to become the best people we can be,   do we actually know whether we have found our soul mate.

When we say, “we found our soul mate,” or our perfect match, we are not expressing a fact but an aspiration – a yearning – because the truth about love is its uncertainty, vulnerability, and fragility.

Rabbi Kula says — and it’s worth saying slowly — that the paradox of love, is that the fantasy of permanence we imagine, and try to create,  erodes the security of the very passion and romance for which we yearn.

It is precisely the impermanence and uncertainty of love that generates our longing and desire for greater intimacy.   When a glass is shattered under the chuppa (the marriage canopy), we are inviting fragility and vulnerability right into the moment we make our “unbreakable” commitment.   We feel most attracted and in love, and passionate, when we know it might not last.

Intimacy, passion, romance – soul mating – is learning the risky dance between closeness and distance, happiness and disappointment, gratitude and resentment, loyalty and betrayal, control and surrender, spontaneity and boredom, trust and doubt, tenderness and aggression.

If we want Valentine’s Day to really work we have to do more than give our loved ones roses.  We have to hold the thorns: the insecurity of love. We need to embrace the sacred messiness of love.

Let me finish with a story. A friend of mine says that he overheard this conversation in a doctor’s waiting room.  A man came up to the window, and said to the secretary that he knew that the doctor was falling behind, but could she do something to help him get his appointment on time.

The man explained why he was in a hurry. He said to her, “My wife has Alzheimer’s, and she is in Assisted Living, and I have to get there by noon so that I can feed her her lunch.”

The secretary said she would try her best to get him in as soon as she could, but she said to him, “Why do you have to rush to get there on time? If she has Alzheimer’s, she probably doesn’t even know who you are?”

To which the man answered,  “That’s true, but I know who I am, and I know who she is,  and therefore I have to get there on time.”

I wish my parents great strength and wisdom as they struggle to discover and re-discover who they are — and us as well, in our relationships to each other and to God.

Shabbat Shalom.  Rabbi Paul Arberman