D’var Earth for Shabbat Hagadol before Passover
by Joel Davidson
The haftarah recited the Sabbath before the beginning of Passover, the Festival that celebrates the beginning of the new year of spring and also of our liberation from Egyptian bondage, comes from the prophet Malachi. In this passage from Malachi, which bears a resemblance to the ten plagues which the Lord visited upon Egypt and thus to the story of Passover, we see signs the plagues here are abating because the Almighty will cause them to abate. “And I will rebuke the devourer for your good, And he shall not destroy the fruits of your land; Neither shall your vine cast its fruit before the time in the field.” (Malachi III, v. 11) For G-d says that he will not destroy the good things that come from the earth. That is important, for we must have food to eat if we are to survive; we cannot easily survive a famine. Later on in the haftarah, Malachi talks about another plague - the destruction of the plants of the earth by fire. Malachi seems to be unable to make up his mind whether he will save the children of men by preserving the harvest or whether he will destroy the earth such that it will “leave them neither root nor branch.” (Malachi III, v. 19) And yet G-d seems to say here that the wicked “shall be ashes under the soles of your feet.” Malachi, III, v. 21.
If the earth does not function properly for us as it should, then many bad things can happen to us. The plagues of locusts devoured the food in Egypt’s Nile River delta and brought famine in its wake. Forest fires and raging fires out West and in California can imperil people’s lives, forcing them to abandon their homes in times of distress. The earth is so important to us and serves as our mother from which we sprang. Without proper food or sustenance we cannot survive nor can we survive when food or shelter are destroyed by fires.
T.S. Eliot once said that he didn’t know if the world would end with a bang or a whimper (T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets) and Robert Frost said, “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. From what I‘ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To know that for destruction ice is also great and would suffice.” (Robert Frost, Miscellaneous Poems, Fire and Ice) The passage in Malachi refers to the destruction of the earth by fire. What about destruction of the earth by ice, such as with another ice age or by flooding? Wouldn’t that be a terrible catastrophe for us all as well? Look at the recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile - they are another kind of destruction.
This Haftarah on Shabbat Hagadol before Pesach is a reminder of the terrible discomforts that the Egyptians endured when the Almighty visited plagues upon them. The devourer in the Passover story must surely be the locusts that descended upon the land of Egypt and ate everything in sight. And yet this passage in Malachi also seems to be saying that the Lord will punish the wicked by destroying them root and branch and that he will not bring a plague or plagues onto the world such as he did when the Egyptians refused to grant the Israelites their freedom.
As we approach the season of the greening of the Earth, we would do well to remember that we are dependent on Mother Earth for our sustenance and that we must not do anything to upset the balance of nature. Easier said than done, with the coming catastrophe of global warming with its concomitant freakish storms and precipitation of rain and snow in unexpected places. If it’s not too late to repent, perhaps we can fix the Earth in a way that allows us to continue to thrive on the fragile outer shell of our planet. However, with polar icecaps melting, threatening the habitat of the polar bears and with prospect of flooding and freakish weather, how can we longer survive in an environment which we are slowly poisoning, thus sealing our own doom?
Spring is a wonderful time of year. May the Almighty give us many more pleasant springs and summer and gladden our lives with the abundance which comes from the Earth and may we never know a time when Earth turns against us and refuses to allow us to survive on its soil.
Boruch Hashem Amen and Selah.
© Joel Davidson, March 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Shabbat Parashat Vayakheil-Pekudei and Shabbat HaHodesh
27 Adar 5770 / March 13, 2010 - Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath
Torah Reading:
Exodus 35:1 - 40:38
Shabbat HaHodesh Maftir Reading:
Exodus 12:1-20
Shabbat HaHodesh Haftarah Reading:
Ezekiel 45:16-25 (many read through 46:15 or 46:18)
Related Texts:
1 Kings 7:51 - 8:30, 1 Chronicles 29:1-19
We find ourselves this week concluding the reading of the Book of Exodus and what a conclusion it is. The complaining, backsliding, worshipping of the golden calf Israelites can only be faulted this week for being too generous!
God's desire to relocate from atop Mt. Sinai in order to be a continual presence among the people causes God to command (Ex 25:8) "Let them (the Israelite people) make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them." Having given Moses the plans for this sanctuary in earlier Torah portions, the work of its building comes to fruition in this week's reading.
Commanding that only freely-given offerings towards the building of the sanctuary be given (Ex 35:5), the people continue to bring donations until more than is needed has been brought. The artisans ask Moses for some relief. Moses pronounces, "let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary." The donations cease and the work continues.
Contributing too much? Why? Perhaps the people sought to curry favor with their gifts as they might have observed in Egypt, their recent home and long-time cultural experience. Perhaps their hearts overflowed with gratitude that God hadn't abandoned them after the grievous sin of the golden calf. Or, perhaps, having begun, they just didn't know when to stop, and someone, here the artisans, had to say, "enough!"
Let's take the standard three-R's of environmental action - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - and consider Reduce as our link to this week's Torah portion. As we do so we need to visit a related biblical text from another, though, closely related event. Listen to the words of King Solomon at the completion of God's sanctuary in Jerusalem:
"Who am I and who are my people that we should have the means to make such a freewill offering: but all is from You and it is Your gift that we have given to You. For we are sojourners with You, mere transients like our fathers; our days on earth are like a shadow, with nothing in prospect. O Lord our God, all this great mass that we have laid aside to build You a house for Your holy is from You, and it is all Yours." (1 Chronicles 29:14-16)
Gifts given with willing hearts are not a transfer of our own possessions but an awareness and a recognition that from the vast store of God's creation entrusted to us we set aside this portion consciously for that which is needed for the task - in our Torah portion's case - for the building of God's sanctuary. Even for such a sacred task, we are to set aside just enough, and no more. All the more so must we consciously set aside "just enough and no more" for the ordinary building carried out in our lives.
Reuse and Recycle are the steps to take when you can Reduce no further, when you must deal with what's next for what you used in the first place and it can no longer serve its original purpose.
Reduce comes first. Rabbi Lawrence Troster in his "Ten Jewish Teachings on Judaism and Environmentalism" (on www.coejl.org and other places online) reminds us that Judaism prohibits the wasteful consumption of anything.
In our lives the locus of much wasteful consumption can occur in the building and decorating of our homes. We rightfully worry about the impact on God's creation. Perhaps we might more rightfully worry about the impact on ourselves, a core aspect of God's creation. Hear Kahlil Gibran from "Houses" in The Prophet speak to this very concern:
What have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
Our ancestors overdid it. We overdo it. Can we be the artisans who say "enough"? Can we be the Moses who pronounces "give no further"? Can we be like the prophet Isaiah who responded "Here I am, send me" to the "voice of the Lord" in the courts of God's sanctuary which asked "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8).
Can we find, develop and nurture a willingness that will not pass "beyond enough"? Can we focus much more on Reduce such that we can reduce the need to Reuse and Recycle? If not now, when?
Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath, the spiritual leader (since 2003) of Congregation Agudath Achim and the Jewish Community House, a 100-year old progressive, independent congregation in the heart of Taunton, MA, received rabbinic ordination from The Academy for Jewish Religion (NY) and is a member of the Association of Rabbis and Cantors, the American Conference of Cantors, the Cantors Assembly, and both the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Boards of Rabbis.
©Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath
27 Adar 5770 / March 13, 2010 - Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath
Torah Reading:
Exodus 35:1 - 40:38
Shabbat HaHodesh Maftir Reading:
Exodus 12:1-20
Shabbat HaHodesh Haftarah Reading:
Ezekiel 45:16-25 (many read through 46:15 or 46:18)
Related Texts:
1 Kings 7:51 - 8:30, 1 Chronicles 29:1-19
We find ourselves this week concluding the reading of the Book of Exodus and what a conclusion it is. The complaining, backsliding, worshipping of the golden calf Israelites can only be faulted this week for being too generous!
God's desire to relocate from atop Mt. Sinai in order to be a continual presence among the people causes God to command (Ex 25:8) "Let them (the Israelite people) make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them." Having given Moses the plans for this sanctuary in earlier Torah portions, the work of its building comes to fruition in this week's reading.
Commanding that only freely-given offerings towards the building of the sanctuary be given (Ex 35:5), the people continue to bring donations until more than is needed has been brought. The artisans ask Moses for some relief. Moses pronounces, "let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary." The donations cease and the work continues.
Contributing too much? Why? Perhaps the people sought to curry favor with their gifts as they might have observed in Egypt, their recent home and long-time cultural experience. Perhaps their hearts overflowed with gratitude that God hadn't abandoned them after the grievous sin of the golden calf. Or, perhaps, having begun, they just didn't know when to stop, and someone, here the artisans, had to say, "enough!"
Let's take the standard three-R's of environmental action - Reduce, Reuse, Recycle - and consider Reduce as our link to this week's Torah portion. As we do so we need to visit a related biblical text from another, though, closely related event. Listen to the words of King Solomon at the completion of God's sanctuary in Jerusalem:
"Who am I and who are my people that we should have the means to make such a freewill offering: but all is from You and it is Your gift that we have given to You. For we are sojourners with You, mere transients like our fathers; our days on earth are like a shadow, with nothing in prospect. O Lord our God, all this great mass that we have laid aside to build You a house for Your holy is from You, and it is all Yours." (1 Chronicles 29:14-16)
Gifts given with willing hearts are not a transfer of our own possessions but an awareness and a recognition that from the vast store of God's creation entrusted to us we set aside this portion consciously for that which is needed for the task - in our Torah portion's case - for the building of God's sanctuary. Even for such a sacred task, we are to set aside just enough, and no more. All the more so must we consciously set aside "just enough and no more" for the ordinary building carried out in our lives.
Reuse and Recycle are the steps to take when you can Reduce no further, when you must deal with what's next for what you used in the first place and it can no longer serve its original purpose.
Reduce comes first. Rabbi Lawrence Troster in his "Ten Jewish Teachings on Judaism and Environmentalism" (on www.coejl.org and other places online) reminds us that Judaism prohibits the wasteful consumption of anything.
In our lives the locus of much wasteful consumption can occur in the building and decorating of our homes. We rightfully worry about the impact on God's creation. Perhaps we might more rightfully worry about the impact on ourselves, a core aspect of God's creation. Hear Kahlil Gibran from "Houses" in The Prophet speak to this very concern:
What have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you remembrances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountain?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and becomes a host, and then a master?
Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires.
Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron.
It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels.
Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.
Our ancestors overdid it. We overdo it. Can we be the artisans who say "enough"? Can we be the Moses who pronounces "give no further"? Can we be like the prophet Isaiah who responded "Here I am, send me" to the "voice of the Lord" in the courts of God's sanctuary which asked "Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?" (Isaiah 6:8).
Can we find, develop and nurture a willingness that will not pass "beyond enough"? Can we focus much more on Reduce such that we can reduce the need to Reuse and Recycle? If not now, when?
Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath, the spiritual leader (since 2003) of Congregation Agudath Achim and the Jewish Community House, a 100-year old progressive, independent congregation in the heart of Taunton, MA, received rabbinic ordination from The Academy for Jewish Religion (NY) and is a member of the Association of Rabbis and Cantors, the American Conference of Cantors, the Cantors Assembly, and both the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Boards of Rabbis.
©Rabbi/Cantor Anne Heath
Friday, March 5, 2010
how radiant the longed for water
by Lisa Greber
‘When the people saw that Moses was so long in 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."’ (Ex. 32.1)
What has happened to Moses? say the people. Where is this God he has promised us? Where is this God we are seeking, that we so desperately long to have with us? We long for God so much we will build God here ourselves, at some personal cost, out of our own gold. This, we learn later, is a sin. What is a sin? The Buddhists say: a sin is a source of suffering. We have been taught to call this particular sort of suffering idolatry: the confusion of an aspect of the divine with the Divine itself.
The Israelites are wandering in the desert, out of the old place and not yet in the new. Who among us has not been there? It is a shaky time, when you are between gods. This is when I myself like to fall in love with the wrong people, who perhaps embody for me something of the old and something of the new. Idolatry here means to see only a person’s true divine perfection, and not their co-existing humanity: their love of moussaka and red wine; their diligence with spreadsheets perhaps or embroidery; their inexplicable absences; their sudden rage; the frailty of their hands early in the morning when their joints are stiff from sleep.
I see, says the Lord, viewing the dancing around the golden calf, that this is a stiffnecked people. […] let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation." (Ex. 32.9-10) Moses, in his own stubbornness for righteousness, pleads for his people’s lives, and the Lord renounces the punishment. But Moses, on returning to camp, does not renounce his own. He forces the Israelites to drink the ground powder of the golden calf. "Whoever is for the Lord, come here!" he then calls; he insists those who gather slay brother, neighbor, and kin who have not rallied to him. (Ex. 32.26-27)
Three thousand people fall, on the sand, between the old place and the new.
This falling may be the bloody cost of a civil war for control of the new Israelite nation. But I am reading it here metaphorically, remembering the times when I have murdered the internal parts of me dancing in front of a golden calf, in anger that they were not following the rules I had carved into my stone tablet, instead of listening to their longing and gently offering them a perhaps more skillful route to God.
Moses, too, is longing for God, even in the midst of their conversation: "Oh, let me behold Your Presence!" (Ex. 33.13) But no one can see God’s face and live. God shelters Moses in a cleft in a rock, shields him with God’s hand till God has passed by so Moses can see God’s back. Moses will reflect even this glimpse of radiance with his own, though unawares. Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with Him. (Ex. 34.29)
Idolatry for me then arises in the midst of paradox – of our longing for a lived connection with the divine, here in the finite, which we must not mistake for the whole, lest we cause harm, and of the impossibility of viewing the Divine in God’s entirety, lest we die. It becomes more of a koan for me than a sin, more an ongoing effort for balance. Balancing my love for my particular beach – the resident great blue heron, the bent grasses of the winter salt marsh, the muddy boardwalk – with the knowledge its water comes also from the larger bay, which in turn reaches out to the sea beyond. Balancing my love for any particular person - the thinness of their arms, even if sinewy, their dislike of sweets, their ferocious vulnerability – with the needs of their work and my own, with the needs of the larger community, with the sacredness of a stranger’s face. Balancing my love for a particular tradition, with the knowledge that others are equally gifts to those who love and practice them.
Idolatry holds another paradox for those of us who are environmentalists. In my work with people from various traditions, I am sometimes asked: is love for the earth itself idolatrous? This view can cut us from the sacred that is in fact present in our finite lives. The heron has grey feathers running to black, a fluff of eyelashes, the thinnest possible legs. Maroon anemones, smaller than my fingernail, embed themselves in the packed mud in the center of the salt marsh. Sanderlings make a net of the incoming tide, herd minnows into the shallows for easy feeding. The tide can be counted on to follow the moon. The divine is here, in the salt water seeping through my jeans when I pray on the sand, in the bite of snow, in the ever present hope of green. On the sand I remember God saw that it was good, perhaps permission or suggestion that we may do likewise. (Gen. 1.12)
Aaron and all the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses' face was radiant; and they shrank from coming near him. (Ex. 34.35) If the radiance of God means to fear punishment for our little loves, the times we have danced around a golden calf and forgotten the calf’s connection to the larger world of soil, grass, sunlight, and its mother’s milk, it is no wonder we would shrink from Moses’ face. If it means we must deny our natural gratitude for gravity or the taste of rain, it prevents us from honoring the small sacredness of our human lives. But perhaps instead we might think of Moses’ radiance descending the mountain as a reminder to bring as much of the presence of the divine as we can bear to our finite dancing selves who so long for it. We are not alone, we can remind ourselves, even in the desert there is the radiance of longed for water and of each and every grain of sand.
‘When the people saw that Moses was so long in 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."’ (Ex. 32.1)
What has happened to Moses? say the people. Where is this God he has promised us? Where is this God we are seeking, that we so desperately long to have with us? We long for God so much we will build God here ourselves, at some personal cost, out of our own gold. This, we learn later, is a sin. What is a sin? The Buddhists say: a sin is a source of suffering. We have been taught to call this particular sort of suffering idolatry: the confusion of an aspect of the divine with the Divine itself.
The Israelites are wandering in the desert, out of the old place and not yet in the new. Who among us has not been there? It is a shaky time, when you are between gods. This is when I myself like to fall in love with the wrong people, who perhaps embody for me something of the old and something of the new. Idolatry here means to see only a person’s true divine perfection, and not their co-existing humanity: their love of moussaka and red wine; their diligence with spreadsheets perhaps or embroidery; their inexplicable absences; their sudden rage; the frailty of their hands early in the morning when their joints are stiff from sleep.
I see, says the Lord, viewing the dancing around the golden calf, that this is a stiffnecked people. […] let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation." (Ex. 32.9-10) Moses, in his own stubbornness for righteousness, pleads for his people’s lives, and the Lord renounces the punishment. But Moses, on returning to camp, does not renounce his own. He forces the Israelites to drink the ground powder of the golden calf. "Whoever is for the Lord, come here!" he then calls; he insists those who gather slay brother, neighbor, and kin who have not rallied to him. (Ex. 32.26-27)
Three thousand people fall, on the sand, between the old place and the new.
This falling may be the bloody cost of a civil war for control of the new Israelite nation. But I am reading it here metaphorically, remembering the times when I have murdered the internal parts of me dancing in front of a golden calf, in anger that they were not following the rules I had carved into my stone tablet, instead of listening to their longing and gently offering them a perhaps more skillful route to God.
Moses, too, is longing for God, even in the midst of their conversation: "Oh, let me behold Your Presence!" (Ex. 33.13) But no one can see God’s face and live. God shelters Moses in a cleft in a rock, shields him with God’s hand till God has passed by so Moses can see God’s back. Moses will reflect even this glimpse of radiance with his own, though unawares. Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant, since he had spoken with Him. (Ex. 34.29)
Idolatry for me then arises in the midst of paradox – of our longing for a lived connection with the divine, here in the finite, which we must not mistake for the whole, lest we cause harm, and of the impossibility of viewing the Divine in God’s entirety, lest we die. It becomes more of a koan for me than a sin, more an ongoing effort for balance. Balancing my love for my particular beach – the resident great blue heron, the bent grasses of the winter salt marsh, the muddy boardwalk – with the knowledge its water comes also from the larger bay, which in turn reaches out to the sea beyond. Balancing my love for any particular person - the thinness of their arms, even if sinewy, their dislike of sweets, their ferocious vulnerability – with the needs of their work and my own, with the needs of the larger community, with the sacredness of a stranger’s face. Balancing my love for a particular tradition, with the knowledge that others are equally gifts to those who love and practice them.
Idolatry holds another paradox for those of us who are environmentalists. In my work with people from various traditions, I am sometimes asked: is love for the earth itself idolatrous? This view can cut us from the sacred that is in fact present in our finite lives. The heron has grey feathers running to black, a fluff of eyelashes, the thinnest possible legs. Maroon anemones, smaller than my fingernail, embed themselves in the packed mud in the center of the salt marsh. Sanderlings make a net of the incoming tide, herd minnows into the shallows for easy feeding. The tide can be counted on to follow the moon. The divine is here, in the salt water seeping through my jeans when I pray on the sand, in the bite of snow, in the ever present hope of green. On the sand I remember God saw that it was good, perhaps permission or suggestion that we may do likewise. (Gen. 1.12)
Aaron and all the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses' face was radiant; and they shrank from coming near him. (Ex. 34.35) If the radiance of God means to fear punishment for our little loves, the times we have danced around a golden calf and forgotten the calf’s connection to the larger world of soil, grass, sunlight, and its mother’s milk, it is no wonder we would shrink from Moses’ face. If it means we must deny our natural gratitude for gravity or the taste of rain, it prevents us from honoring the small sacredness of our human lives. But perhaps instead we might think of Moses’ radiance descending the mountain as a reminder to bring as much of the presence of the divine as we can bear to our finite dancing selves who so long for it. We are not alone, we can remind ourselves, even in the desert there is the radiance of longed for water and of each and every grain of sand.
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