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When I was in rabbinical school, we were expected to gather every morning to pray the shacharit service. Most days it started at 8 am but on Mondays and Thursdays when we would read Torah, it began at 7:45. However, most days one of my teachers could be found there as early as 7 am tidying the space and pushing an antiquated non-electric vacuum (apparently called a sweep broom) across the carpet floor. Initially we teased him, as he paced the room Mr. Miagi style picking up paper scraps and pencil shavings. Then naturally he invited us to join him. As someone who tends to run 10 minutes late, it was a revelation that one could arrive early to prepare the space.
It says in the mishnah that the pious ones would arrive an hour before the morning service to meditate and prepare to pray. But it had never occurred to me to come early to clean. As it turns out, this too is an ancient spiritual practice. This week’s parsha, Tzav, details the many sacrifices made by the priests on the ancient altar. Offerings of forgiveness and gratitude. First fruits and entire meals. But what happens when the sacrifices are done burning? Who tends to the altar to keep it tidy? In an essay entitled, The Removal of the Ashes:Between Necessity and Meaning, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z”l, wrote, "One of the daily services in the Temple was תְּרוּמַת הַדֶּשֶׁן, the removal of ashes from the altar. The altar represents the connection between God and Israel (Rashi, Ex. 20:21) and resting upon it is the ,נֵר תָּמִיד, the deeply symbolic “eternal flame,” which is never to be extinguished (Lev. 6:6). The ashes are removed to ensure that it continues to burn well." I am picturing the priests with their little sweep brooms, maybe made of olive branches and palm fronds, daily removing the sacred ashes to keep the sacred fire bright. When we think of Leviticus, we likely think more about the sacrifices and less about cleaning the ashes. What stands out to me this year is that both are actually forms of terumah - both are sacred offerings. I am someone who finds great joy in both tending a fire and cleaning a house. I love cleaning the insides of a dishwasher and a refrigerator, the sacred appliances that keep my kitchen humming. (Early plug for Passover cleaning!) In drafting next year’s budget, we are considering how often our new building should be professionally cleaned. And I am also dreaming of the new ways we will be able to take care of the space together. As we prepare for our final shabbat at Calvary and our move on Monday, I am hoping in our new space there will be more joy in taking care of our sanctuary together. This has not been possible or even necessarily safe at Calvary. Vacuuming and doing dishes, resetting chairs and reshelving library books, maybe even sweep brooming! I am excited for the domestic labor that accompanies our spiritual practices to be more shared and seen, as it is in Torah. Maybe we even start a new Terumat HaDeshen: Dusting committee!? May the work of tending to our new perpetual altar live in the space between necessity and meaning, and may we feel more to encounter it as holy. In a powerful essay called Facing Amalek, which was published today in Jewish Currents, Maya Rosen begins, “IN A TELEVISED PRESS CONFERENCE on October 28th, as Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel’s “one supreme goal: To destroy the murderous enemy.” Israeli soldiers, he boasted, “are longing to recompense the murderers . . . They are committed to eradicating this evil from the world.” Then he quoted Devarim 25:17: “Remember what Amalek did to you.”
Invoking Amalek was a spiritual red flag, a way for him to communicate his ethnic cleansing goals garbed in religious language. It was scary at the time. And it has haunted me for the past 146 days. Every year, on the shabbat before Purim, Jewish communities read a special maftir/additional Torah reading from the book of Deuteronomy 25:17-19. It concludes with a paradoxical spiritual instruction, to “blot out the memory of Amalek from under the sky; you shall not forget.” This instruction references an earlier moment in Torah back in Exodus 17, when Amalek fought the Israelites and won, supposedly by attacking the most vulnerable. It is held up as an example of immoral warfare and irredeemable evil. Yet little attention is paid to the morally troubling idea that a people can be blotted out. Maya Rosen continues, “While a divine directive to obliterate an entire people is always troubling, it is particularly distressing to read this commandment to commit genocide in the midst of a genocide. As I sit in synagogue this year, it will be impossible not to wonder how those around me are understanding the verse, or to avoid imagining it being chanted by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.” Purim is always a risky holiday. It is a practice flirting with a world flipped upside down, where boundaries are blurry. Every year this makes me more anxious than excited. And every year it feels worth it. But this year, it feels dangerous. Originally there were four mitzvot associated with Purim as described in the megillah itself. They are reading the megillah, having a festive feast, exchanging gifts with your neighbors and redistributing money to folks who need it. But some one thousand years later, the Talmud added a fifth mitzvah: Megillah 7b reads, “Rava said: One is obligated to become inebriated [with wine] on Purim until they cannot tell the difference between cursed be Haman and blessed be Mordecai.” When experienced in the same 12 hour period, as we will tomorrow, the relationship between Shabbat Zachor and Purim itself is complicated. We are at once blotting out evil and also identifying with it. We are remembering to forget our worst fears and we are flirting with becoming them. In 2009, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat wrote a poem about this conundrum, At every opportunity they remembered Amalek who attacked from the rear without warning. They had been famished, weary, and then the screams in the night… As God was their witness they would never be victims again. They put their trust in rebar and concrete, distributed machine guns for teenagers to fondle. Taking action felt so good. Was this what God meant? This fierce attachment the opposite of forgetting. No one knows how to blot out without holding on. This Shabbat Zachor, may we find a way to forgive the past without forcing ourselves to forget. And may it bring us closer to an understanding of Jewish safety that is not forged in fear and revenge. 13, 11, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, and 10.
It reads like a secret code or the gematria for tying tzitzit. When in fact, it is the number of inches between each of the 10 bookshelves that will hold the prayer books in our new sanctuary. One of my very specific construction tasks this week was to figure out the optimal spacing of the shelves in our new sanctuary to accommodate our shabbat siddurim, machzorim, chumashim and a few tikkunim. I measured each book an embarrassing number of times and assessed the spacing of all of our various existing bookshelves. I tried to determine how many books would fit on each shelf. I even called a friend to ask about the potential size of a future chumash we might want to buy, lest we need to resize the shelves in 5 years when it is published. Needless to say, I updated the markings on the bare drywall three times. I cannot tell you how many times in the last year someone has joked, “They probably didn’t to teach you this in rabbinical school!” Commercial lease negotiations, HVAC specifications, permit fitout drawings, soundproofing materials, and the list goes on. I affectionately refer to these details as the parallel parsha. These days you are more likely to find me reviewing MEP drawings than studying Talmud. This year as we complete the book of Exodus, the minutia of the Mishkan does not feel abstract or even metaphorical. Even the redundancy makes sense. It is in fact true that you must first design every detail and then build it. Just this morning I revisited an email in December where we decided on the precise handle to be installed on the sanctuary doors. Now it is time to actually purchase it. Every detail has been designed discussed and budgeted for at least twice, if not more. I will not tell you how many times we have reviewed which windows need to be frosted and which tinted, the soundproofing materials, the lighting specifications, the locations of microphones and cameras. When this process started, I imagined delegating most of these decisions and staying in my lane as ritual leader. But I quickly learned that every detail was relevant to ritual leadership. How will we orient the room? Where will the prayground go? Will the chairs have a place to store prayer books and will the chumashim fit? (Yes, they will!) No detail was too small to impact the ritual experience of the room. Accessibility was considered for every outlet, every texture, every doorway – both for the varied needs of our community, but also for the Divine. What will most allow us to open our hearts to the holiness in each other? This has been my guiding question. These days all of this work is not a parallel parsha. It’s in the parsha after all! Blue, purple, and crimson yarns. Hammered out sheets of gold. Tanned ram skins and dolphin skins. Many hundreds of cubits of fine twisted linen with their exact number of posts and sockets. The parsha begins, אֵלֶּה פְקוּדֵי הַמִּשְׁכָּן These are the records of the Tabernacle… They brought the Tabernacle to Moses, with the Tent and all its furnishings: its clasps, its planks, its bars, its posts, and its sockets; the lampstand, the gold altar, and the copper bowl for washing. The book of Exodus ends this week when the Israelites complete the Mishkan and Moses blesses them. One midrash (Bemidbar Rabah 12:9) asks, “Well what was Moses’ blessing?” To which the rabbis respond with the words of Psalm 90, verse 17: וִיהִי נֹעַם אֲדֹנָי אֱלֹהֵינוּ עָלֵינוּ וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ כּוֹנְנָה עָלֵינוּ וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ כּוֹנְנֵהוּ׃ May the sweetness of the Shechinah be upon us, May the work of our hands endure, O flourish the work of our hands! I am so grateful to everyone in our community who has and will participate in the building of our mishkan. May we merit to experience נֹעַם אֲדֹנָי אֱלֹהֵינוּ עָלֵינוּ - the sweetness of the Holy One in our midst. In the words of Exodus 25, עָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם. Make for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in your midst. It is with great anticipation that we will be moving into our new sanctuary on April 1. Everyone is invited to mark this moment and make this transition on Sunday March 31 from 3-6 pm. We will begin at Calvary with a Tisch, to say L’chaim to Calvary, our spiritual home for the last 19 years. And then we will parade with the Torahs and the Simcha Band to 5300 Whitby to prepare the sanctuary for our first shabbat. The first parsha we read will be parashat Shimini. The same week B’nei Yisrael inaugurates their mishkan we will initiate ours. May our new sanctuary bring refuge, connection, joy and resilience to all who encounter it. Charlotte's Web is one of my all time favorite books. I only recently learned that E.B. White was a writer beyond the world of Zuckerman’s Farm.
In 1969, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, “”If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world, This makes it hard to plan the day.” These days, I feel this tension deeply. In fact, it is this tension that animates my spiritual life. In religious terms this is the tension between the verses, Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof - justice, justice, you shall pursue and the words I recite before Kiddush every Friday night, וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וְהִנֵּה־טוֹב מְאֹד “God looked at everything that happened, and called it very good.” Each week, we find something good in our week to be grateful for without denying the aching for things to be different. Judaism has a very specific way it reconciles E.B. White’s very human conflict – Shabbat! Shabbat is a weekly opportunity to do what my gym coach calls “deloading.” Whether building muscle or social movements, is it necessary to deload to build strength and power. In the words of last week’s parsha (Exodus 34:21), שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲבֹד Six days a week you should labor… Six days a week we rise with the purpose of improving the world. וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי תִּשְׁבֹּת On the seventh day, you should cease…enjoy and savor the world. , It is of course not so easy to compartmentalize our lives into neat structures, nor the false binary of saving and savoring the world. But the rabbis also know that given the work and pain of the world, it can feel nearly impossible to actually cease and savor. So they are sure to repeat themselves. This week’s parsha, Vayakhel, also begins with another instruction to observe shabbat: שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תֵּעָשֶׂה מְלָאכָה Six days a week we work… וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי יִהְיֶה לָכֶם קֹדֶשׁ שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן לַיהֹוָה And the seventh day should be reserved for holiness, for savoring… Except here in Exodus 35, unlike in Exodus 34, the verse continues and add a rather intense consequence, כׇּל־הָעֹשֶׂה בוֹ מְלָאכָה יוּמָת Anyone who does work, will die. The rest of the parsha goes on to detail the intricate beauty of the mishkan, colors and textures in total abundance. As a result, the rabbis craft a shabbat practice that stands in contrast to the building of the mishkan. Mountains of rules hanging by the thread of three verses. Don’t weave or cut or thrash or sort. What’s crucial is that shabbat be distinct from the rest of your week. But what about the week’s when it’s not? Need it really come with the threat of death? Here is what I do know - the weeks when I am lenient in my shabbat practice, I enter the new week less refreshed; my ability to fully greet the week to come is diminished. I often feel more irritable, less connected to my family and my body, not fully myself. This is not the same thing as death, but it does add it up and it does motivate me to sink into shabbat more fully each week. As we round the corner on the second half of this year, I want to invite you to pause and consider, how is my shabbat practice going? Where is my work in the world? And where is my delight? How can I savor more, so that I can labor more effectively in the week to come? E.B. White got it right - it’s not an either/or. We are called to save and to savor, however incomplete our ability to do either may feel. I know the fuller I savor shabbat, the more restored I am for the challenges of the week ahead. As the sun sinks, I am grateful that we are wisely instructed to savor one day a week. To imagine it whole so that our nervous systems can reset and we can return to the work of saving this broken, beautiful world. However, if you are reading this, the work of the week is not over. The horrible war is raging on as the people of Gaza prepare for Ramadan. Before or after Shabbat, I invite you to either read or watch the testimony of Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian writer who just spent two weeks in Gaza. (Content warning: Her testimony is graphic.) May we have the courage to savor this seventh day and make it holy. And may we emerge refreshed with a sense of vitality and purpose. A few years ago, on a sunny Fall morning in the midst of the pandemic, we gathered in the empty lot on 50th Street for a B’nei Mitzvah in the KT Sukkah. It was on that auspicious day that one of my greatest fears came true. At the end of the Torah service, the B’nei Mitzvah kid placed the Torah back in the ark and stepped away. I turned to face the kahal and had not noticed it was not fully secure. The Torah tipped forward and in seemingly slow motion fell to the ground and the wooden handles shattered. Everyone joining on Zoom had a close up shot of the Torah lying broken on the cement ground. My jaw dropped and I froze. A member gently approached and invited me to pick up the Torah. Which we did. We then invited the community to a collective 30 day fast, in which 30 of us each fasted for a day, as is the custom when the Torah touches the ground.
First let me say, it was completely my fault. It is entirely my responsibility to spot a B’nei Mitzvah and ensure the Torah is put away properly. I do it every week and this is their first rodeo. It was a very intense, memorable and hopefully not too traumatic experience. For the past few years I have been living with the broken Torah in a portable ark in my office and using it for educational purposes. It has come with me to Torah School and protests in Washington D.C. I even carried this Torah for an entire day on the Pilgrimage for Peace. Recently I reached out to a Torah scribe to inquire about repairing this Torah. With a shameful tone I explained what had happened. To my surprise she responded rather light-heartedly, assuring me this happens all the time! Why else would we have a set of customs for how to respond and repair it?! Yesterday, a package arrived at the office. It was a new set of eitzim, wooden Torah rollers. We are preparing this spring to replace the broken eitzim with this new set. After years of planning, measuring and shopping for just the right replacement, how fitting that the second set of rollers would arrive this week, when we read Parasha Ki Tisa. The week in which we read about the two sets of tablets Moses brings down from Sinai. Infamously smashing the first set, only to journey back up the mountain for a second, whole set. A beloved midrash explains that the broken tablets journeyed in the mishkan along with the whole tablets. How else could it be? The first set was broken but it still had the teachings of the Holy Blessed One engraved upon them. They couldn’t be left behind. Even in our most ancient text, ritual objects are smashed to pieces, and the pieces are gathered up and carried forward. Apparently it happens all the time. Ki Tisa is not a story about what happened. It is a story about what always happens. In the words of Roger Kamenetz, “The broken tablets were also carried in the ark. Insofar as they represented everything shattered, everything lost, they were the law of broken things…” As I contemplate the process of unstitching the parchment from the broken eitzim and rethreading the parchment to the new (very beautiful) eitzim, I am struck by how long it has taken me to do this. Healing and repair take time. It took us years to get the new eitzim, and in the meantime, we honored and continued to care for and use the broken ones (though not during services!). I am also so grateful for the scribe’s reminder that things breaking are not a mistake or a problem. We need not fear it. It's inevitable. Our spiritual practices and sacred stories are meant to cultivate in us an ability to bear rupture and be with that which is broken. If it’s true for the Torah and the tablets, our tradition’s most sacred objects, then certainly it’s true for just about every aspect of our lives. We are broken and whole all at once. The truth is that I should have known this. Every time something breaks, my father is the first to shout, Mazal Tov! And my mother-in-law is always looking to make beautiful mosaics out of broken plates. But somehow it is this specific Torah that has taught me this lesson fully. For which I am so grateful to my B’nei Mitzvah student. Lest you hold this story with shame, know that you have been my teacher as much as my student. I hope we as a community will continue to carry the broken parts along with the whole in our ark, and our hearts. |
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General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143
General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143