Dr. Bill Sutker, Author at Kehillat Chaverim

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Pinchas 5778 – Challenging the Status Quo

In today’s parsha, sandwiched between Pinchas getting rewarded for killing the Simeonite Prince and the Midianite Princess and Moses empowering Joshua to succeed him and lead the people to the land of Israel, is a brief section which is easy to overlook. It deals with how Moses is instructed to divide the Promised Land amongst the tribes. It was assumed that only males could inherit land because the clan was perpetuated through the male line. Here we meet the five daughters of Zelophehad. This is historically very significant. While some of the men were calling for mutiny, abandoning Israel and preparing to turn back to Egypt, the daughters of Zelophehad had their own ideas. They challenged the tradition and asked for their own portion of land.

The story of Zelophehad’s five daughters encapsulates the challenges that women faced and what they had to do in order to affirm their rights with dignity. We might expect that women who were put under a law that frequently favored men, might react by keeping silent, by accepting as natural the rule decreed for them to follow. We might expect women in those days to stay close to their tents, remain out of sight, and not go far from their families. So how and why did Zelophehad’s daughters write a new chapter in history?

They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the chieftains, and the whole assembly at the entrance of the tent of meeting. Imposing as this may have been, the five sisters decided to claim their rights. Together, they go out of their tents, without being called by anyone, to the place where only high-ranking men congregate, to the place where the tablets from Sinai rest in the ark, to a place of holiness, to a place where women did not have authority. The men must have been overwhelmed when they saw this surprising situation. But this is not all the five sisters do. They not only come forward, but they speak with determination about how their father died in the wilderness and that he left no son. They said:” let not our father’s name be lost to his clan just because he had no son. Give us a holding among our father’s kinsmen.”

Let us analyze what this text reflects about these women. First, note that these women know their law and history. They know that the continuity of family name depends on inheritance of the land; and they realize that the current law is not adequate, for it does not take into account the unusual circumstances of a man without sons. They possess the acumen to recognize this omission in God’s law. They show no hesitation in pointing out the unfair nature of the present situation with complete confidence and supporting their claim with compelling arguments. How does Moses react? Moses discloses his inability to assess the claims of the sisters. He takes the case to God, who responds by quickly supporting the sisters’ demand by creating a new and permanent law to secure inheritance for any daughters in such circumstances.

A author named Eturuvie Erebor(AKA Gabriella) wrote in an essay stating that in confronting Moses on this issue, the daughters set a new precedent. These women were empowered women, these women were leaders. Leadership lessons that can be learned from the lives of these great women are as follows: great women are liberators; they do not sit around waiting for others to liberate them of the challenges life throws at them. Rather, they confront the challenges that face them and liberate not only themselves but others with them. Great women challenge the status quo, they never accept it. Great women are not afraid to go where no one has gone before. Great women are pathfinders and trailblazers. Great women fight for a cause bigger than themselves. For these women, it wasn’t about an inheritance, it was more than that. It was about ensuring that their father’s name did not die. They spoke for their father when he was not there to speak for himself. Great women are change agents. These women brought change not only for themselves but for women that would be born many generations later. No more would a woman be unable to inherit her father’s possession. No more would a man’s name die off because he had no sons. Great women are bold. These women were bold; they stood before Moses and the entire congregation and stated their case without fear and trembling. They asked a question which had never been asked by a woman:” why should his name be lost because he has son?” Then they boldly declared what they wanted. The daughters of Zelophehad did not back down when encountering resistance. Moses said” no” at least three times before he conceded the logic of their position. Moses is a greatest profit who ever lived, and yet the daughters of Zelophehad saw something he did not see. Notice that these women did not say to Moses,” will you give us? Is it possible?” No, they place a demand on Moses. They said” give us.” And Moses and God gave. Great women are inspiration to other women. Yes, their story sends this short but powerful message to all women,” you can too, because you’re a woman.”

The Bible seems to define society as being composed of men only. On at least three occasions, a census of only men with taken. The women and children were never counted. In ritual areas, men predominated. Women, however, did take part in organized religious life.

From the time of our patriarchs onward, and throughout Jewish history, there have been selected individual women who displayed spiritual qualities that their husbands, who were themselves great men and leaders of Israel, could not attain.

In the generation of the Israelites wandering in the desert, the women repaired what the men broke down.

The Torah tells us of entire groups of women who rose above the fray and refrained from participating in the two major sins which befell the Jewish men during the journey in the desert. During the episode of the golden calf, the midrash tells us that women absolutely refused to give their jewelry. During the sin of the spies, it was only the men who despaired, not the women. And, in our parshah, when the men had been unwilling to enter the land, the daughters of Zelophehad petition to receive an inheritance. These women saw beyond the surface, to the reality of divine assistance, and the vision of a future where God’s grand plan would be carried through.

When it comes to the women’s lack of participation in these major mistakes of Jewish history, however, something is missing in the Midrashic and textual references. No direct credit is given to these women for their insight and patience. Only through roundabout textual review can we even realize that they were not among the sinners.

The Jewish women, as a whole, were credited for continuing to bring children into the world during the harsh Egyptian slavery. So why not likewise credit all the Jewish women for standing firm and avoiding the two well-known sins of the calf and the spies

Women have held positions of respect in Judaism since biblical times. The matriarchs, as well as other female characters in the Bible, exhibited independence of thought and action, and critically influenced the course of history, although differently from men.

Scores of women who appear throughout the Bible show that women, despite socio-legal limitations, could act resolutely to shape the future according to their vision.

According to traditional Judaism, women are endowed with a greater degree of “binah” (intuition, understanding, intelligence) than men. It has been said that the matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah) were superior to the patriarchs in prophecy. Miriam is considered one of the liberators of the people of Israel, along with her brothers Moses and Aaron. One of the judges, Deborah, was a woman. Seven of the 55 profits of the Bible were women.

In this lies the truth power of Jewish women: first, to possess the innate feminine qualities of insight, long-term vision, and seeing beyond the surface to a deeper reality. And second, to have the wisdom and courage to act upon it. In this way, each and every Jewish woman, in large and small ways, can truly change Jewish destiny.

The achievement of Zelophehad’s daughters was a landmark in women’s rights regarding the inheritance of land, from those days up to now. In addition, however, the story of these five women offers a compelling lesson for all those who believe their destiny is fixed or that divine justice has abandoned them. It encourages us to think differently. It provides a message of hope for all those faced with obstacles.

After all, nothing is more sacred than life, itself, in the fight for what we believe is worthy. Thus, this parshah inspires us to discover that we, too, have the ability to know what is right for ourselves and the power to challenge the status quo.

Emor 5778 – Jewish Conscience

Parshah Emor covers laws regulating the lives and sacrifices of the Kohanim. The set times in the Jewish calendar are named and described for Shabbat and the holidays of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. God commands the Israelites to bring clean olive oil for the lighting of the menorah. This parshah ends with laws dealing with profanity, murder, the maiming of others, and blasphemy.

Also embedded in this week’s parshah are two of the most fundamental commands of Judaism – commands that touch on very nature of Jewish identity. The two commands, respectively, are the prohibition against desecrating God’s name, Chillul Hashem, and the positive corollary, Kiddush Hashem, where we are commanded to sanctify God’s name.

When people associate religiosity with integrity, decency, humility and compassion, God’s name is sanctified.

When we behave in such a way as to evoke admiration for Judaism as a faith and a way of life, that is also a kiddush Hashem. When we do the opposite – when Jews behave badly, unethically, unjustly and people say, I cannot respect a religion or God that inspires people to behave in such a way– that is a chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name.

The logic of kiddush Hashem and chillul Hashem is that the faith of God’s name in the world is dependent on us and how we behave. No nation has ever been given a greater or more faithful responsibility.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: “We are all, like it or not, ambassadors of the Jewish people and how we live, behave and treat others reflects not only on us as individuals but on Jewry as a whole, and thus on Judaism and the God of Israel.”

Judaism offers the world religions and world nations a distinctive voice that underlies our faith, our ethics, our law and our relationship with each other. A single word that encapsulates the soul of Judaism is” conscience.”

Conscience is the authentic awareness of the self that makes decisions with regard to values. Its chief concerns are good and evil. It represents the totality of the human’s cognitive and judging faculties. It is generally thought of in a negative sense: it is the faculty that reminds us, by stimulating feelings of guilt and shame, that we are doing wrong.

Martin Buber described conscience in these words:” conscience is that court within our soul which concerns itself with the distinction between right and wrong, and proceeds against that which has been determined to be wrong.”

But is the concept of conscience found Judaism? If so, what are its parameters and implications in Jewish law and ethics? There are those who claim that conscience is irrelevant because all that matters is what the Torah requires and what Jewish law demands of Jews. But there are others who insist that the ideal and goal of Jewish law is to nurture and develop in humans a sense of conscience.

The Hebrew term for” conscience”, matzpun, is a relative newcomer to Jewish literature. There is no expression for conscience in the Biblical and Rabbinic text. Matzpun occurs in the medieval philosophical literature, but with vague meaning. Serious discussions of conscience have really come into their own only the post-Enlightenment period in the 18^th century.

Many commentators understand” fear of God” as referring to an inner drive to right ethical action, similar to conscience. Examples in the Torah of this include Joseph’s refusal to sleep with Potiphar’s wife, the midwives who resist Pharaoh’s orders to kill male Jewish babies, and the Amalekites who attacked the Israelites because they did not fear God. Such texts suggest that, even for biblical writers, the ethical impulse we call conscience(and that they sometimes referred to as” fear of God”) was conceived to work independently of Torah. Even more, that it should exist in non-Jews as well as Jews.

Conscience is the human ability to make moral decisions based on reason. As a result, it is available to all persons, a function of our individual autonomy. It is part of our nature as human beings, hardwired into our personalities, so to speak. It is universal, not restricted to any particular group within society. By contrast, Torah is a book of laws and norms revealed specifically to the Jewish people as a whole. It does not take into account individual preferences, impulses or will. It represents for the Jewish people our reliance not on our own practical reasoning but on an external, revealed set of rules to govern our behavior.

Accepting this dichotomy, some Jewish views play up conscience at the expense of Torah; others elevate Torah at the expense of conscience. As an example of the latter is the view that presents conscience starkly as a general urge to” do good, not evil”. Without an objective, external measure of what is right and wrong, however, the conscience is at the whim of any humanly constructed ideology that might manipulate our definition of right and wrong. An example is the ability of the Nazis to murder Jews and others whose ideology they defined as subhuman, and then to sleep soundly at night, without a peep from their conscience to condemn them. According to this view, the Torah is necessary to define right and wrong according to absolute standards.

This is an extreme representation of the gap between conscience and Torah. In reality, there are other less provocative ways to understand the relationship between them. For example, one might argue that conscience, though it seems to speak from within a person, is not really innate or instinctive. Rather, it is the product of subtle education throughout childhood, the internalization of cultural values received from other people like parents and teachers. If those values are themselves derived from Jewish tradition, it is possible to understand conscience as” Torah-trained”, that is, as a conscience that is informed by Torah values to education and upbringing.

Who has said the Jewish people are the moral conscience of the world? It is not a great Jewish prophet, or a righteous non-Jew who admired the Jewish people. These words are ascribed to none other than Adolf Hitler. In Hitler’s words,” conscience is a Jewish invention; it is a blemish like circumcision.” He also said: “ I want to raise a generation of young people who are devoid of conscience, imperious, relentless, and cruel. To Hitler, having a moral conscience was repugnant and despicable; scruples could deprive an individual from realizing his self-gratifying goals. Hitler understood that every Jewish soul inherently has such ethical spirit.

In a speech he gave, Harold Schulweis noted that millions of human beings were executed in the past century during more than 50 genocides. He spoke not about the dictators, but their followers. These innocent victims were executed by whom? Executed by the people, the ordinary citizens and soldiers, businessmen, bureaucrats. The people who packed frightened men and women in suffocating boxcars. Those who showered frightened trembling souls with Zyklon B lethal gases. Those who stoked furnaces with human bodies of every age, race and creed. Good people, the compliant collaborators. They are good citizens, good soldiers, good judges, good lawyers, good doctors, good pastors, good priests. How could they do it, these ordinary, good people with a history of culture and Church? Their explanation was simple:” We followed orders.” How do these atrocities happen? They happen because we are raised in cultures of authoritarianism, with in institutions – religious, industry, military, home – that teach good people to submit to authoritarian power.

C.P. Snow, a historian and social critic summed it up:” when you think of all the long and gloomy history of man, you will find that more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than ever have been committed in the name of rebellion.”

As the psalmist put it,” eyes they have, but they will not see; ears they have but they will not hear; noses they have that they will not smell” the human carnage. Moral amnesia, aphasia, paralysis, afflicted the world.

Serious Jewish moral conscience means that as a child of God I will not be an instrument for carrying out another person’s order and thereby surrender my moral responsibility. Jewish conscience means no body and no book is exempt from being asked,” Is this command right? Is this mitzvah moral? Is this edict fair?” No text and no person are immune from criticism. No one is invulnerable to the question of conscience.

During the March of the Living, Helen, Sue and I saw horrifying effects of following orders recently when we visited the death camps, the gas chambers, the mass graves, the mounds of human ashes from the crematoria. Seeing the evidence of the Holocaust first hand had a much more profound effect than just reading about it or seeing a movie.

One of the most poignant of all collective responses on the part of the Jewish people was to categorize all the victims of the Holocaust as” those who died al kiddush Hashem:” for the sake of sanctifying God’s name. This was not a foregone conclusion. Martyrdom in the past meant choosing to die for the sake of God. One of the demonic aspects of the Nazi genocide was that the Jews were not given the choice. By retrospectively calling them martyrs, Jews gave the victims the dignity in death of which they were so brutally robbed in life.

Civilization depends on conscience. Conscience is the mark of a free people.

Conscience is cultivated from one generation to generation, from parents to their progeny. Conscience starts in the playpen, around the family table, and the stories we hear in the sermons we preach.

God gave the Jewish people the obligation of “being a light unto nations.” It is a job description that not only is arduous but has caused genuine envy as well as the deepest and most vile hatred. Most of humanity would rather yield to the prevailing status quo social pressure, rather than deviate.

Our greatest haters realize that this was our fate. They also realized that this desire to make our world a home for God is inherently embedded within our Jewish soul.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: “God trusted us enough to make us his ambassadors to an often faithless, brutal world. The choice is ours. Will our lives be a kiddush Hashem, or God forbid, the opposite?”

Parashat Tetzaveh / Shabat Zachor 5778 – Remember…to Forget

Parshah Tetzaveh covers in detail the priestly garments to be worn by the kohanim while serving the sanctuary. It also includes God’s detailed instructions for the seven-day initiation of Aaron and his four sons as kohanim. Tetzaveh is the only parshah in the Torah since Moses’ birth in which Moses’name does not appear. The reason for this is that when the people of Israel sinned with the golden calf, Moses said to God:” If you do not forgive them, erase me from the book that you have written.” The effect of those words was that somewhere in the Torah his name would be erased. While Moses’name does not appear in the today’s parshah, Moses is still very much present: in fact, the entire parshah consists God’s words to Moses. The first word of the pashah is ve’attah, meaning” and you” – the you being Moses. Why does this occur in Tetzaveh? It is because 7th of Adar is felt to be Moses’ birthday and the date of his death and always falls in proximity to the week in which this parshah is read.

Perhaps more importantly, this parsha this also read on Shabbat Zachor and is supplemented with the Zachor reading from Deuteronomy in which we are commanded to remember the evil of Amalek and to eradicate it from the face of the earth. The sages have prescribed the public reading of this passage on the Shabbat which precedes Purim so that the wiping out of Amalek might be connected to the wiping out of Haman who was a descendent of Amalek.

”Remember what Amalek did to you on the road, on your way out of Egypt.
That he encountered you on the way and cut off those lagging in in your rear, when you were tired and exhausted. He did not fear God. And it shall come to pass, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance to possess it, then you shall obliterate the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. Do not forget.”

Amalek was an ancient Middle Eastern nation that had an inborn hatred towards Israel. It was an intrinsic pathologic need to destroy God’s people. Such hatred cannot be combatted through diplomacy. Their hatred was not taught – it was ingrained. As long as an Amalekite walked the earth, no Jew was safe. It was a clear case of kill or be killed. Blotting out the memory of Amalek was no mere psychologic activity. The Israelites were expected to kill every Amalekite man, woman and child. But was this just a theoretical imperative or was it meant to be carried out?

It was approximately 400 years later that the Lord gave the order to destroy Amalek through the prophet Samuel. It occurred during the reign of King Saul.
It was time to bring the retribution of the Lord upon the Amalekites.
However, King Saul failed to execute God’s command as he was orderd He saved King Agag and some of the best animals..
ordered. He spared King Agag and some of the animals. God and Samuel harshly criticized Saul for not following God’s orders.

Amalek embodies the principle of the lack of fear of God, and therefore, represents the power of darkness and incorrigible evil in the world.

The Torah gives us three Commandments in regards to Amalek. First, we must wage war against the seed of Amalek – we must do everything in our power to destroy them. Second, we must not forget what Amalek has done to us. And third, we are commanded to remember.
It would appear that the second and third are virtually the same.Why would the Torah command us both to remember and not to forget?
The Torah is telling us that, on the one hand, we must never forget the suffering that we endured, never forget what Amalek has done – and can do – to us.

This is important, so that we never lessen our efforts to do everything in our power to fight them. But that alone is not enough. We must also remember – actively focus our minds on the source of our power to defeat Amalek. We must remember that we survived. We must remember that we were not destroyed. We must remember that we lived and continued to flourish.

There seems to be a paradox here since how can the memory be blotted out when we are asked to recall it every year? Remember… To forget! If God wanted the Amalekites to be forgotten, then why mention their name? Think about it: If we fulfill this commandment do we not fail to fulfill it?

This reading for Shabbat Zachor is very troubling for many Jews. Many find this commandment troubling because, in order for us to” blot out the remembrance of Amalek,” it appears to advocate genocide. Shabbat Zachor’s corresponding haftorah, as mentioned, in the book of Samuel is even more explicit on this point, ordering Saul to kill the men, women, children and cattle of Amalek.

The moral argument against genocide is certainly compelling, especially for a nation who heard the commandment” thou shall not murder” from the mouth of God at Sinai. There may, however, be a more direct approach to this paradox. Killing Amalek may ultimately have little to do with race. Rav Chaim has explained that Amalek is a conceptual category, not merely a historical reality. One who behaves as an Amalekite can achieve the status of Amalek. Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik applied this teaching to the Nazis who adopted an Amalakian worldview, unfortunately with more success than the historical Amalekites.

In the Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides explains further that the command to wipe out Amalek isn’t based on hatred, but on removing Amalek like behavior from the world. For Maimonides, then, the commandment is not necessarily fulfilled through killing; it can be fulfilled through moral influence and education. The sages have long understood the commandment is a command to blot out the type of people that Amalek represents: those that prey upon the weak, those who do not believe in justice, those who hate without reason. It is these evil people that we are commanded to destroy, not any specific ethnic group. The sages say if an Amalekite were to accept the basic principles of morality, he would cease to be an Amalekite and would not be someone whose memory we are commanded to blot out.

Throughout history, there have been those who have sought to destroy humanity. There have been those who have killed for the sake of killing, whose goal has been to eradicate freedom, peace and harmony. These enemies may span the religious spectrum. They may span the cultural and geographical racial spectrum. But ultimately they are one and the same. They are terrorists. When a terrorist attack strikes our country, our community, our home, fear sets in. Why? What is the source of this unique fear that terrorists have put in our hearts? Terrorists have managed to erode our sense of security, our hope, and our faith.
Althoughthe negative force of terror has been with us since the dawn of human history, the names and faces and national identities of terrorists change from place to place and from era to era, but the primordial force that drives them has a single name. It is Amalek. The Torah teaches us that God is at war with Amalek for all generations. Our sages say:” in every generation, Amalek rises to destroy us, and each time he clothes himself in a different nation.

Some might argue that Iran might be the modern-day equivalent of Amalek. Its leaders have unleashed a storm of anti-Semitic, genocidal rhetoric threatening Israel’s eradication. The Iranian regime denies that millions of Jews were slaughtered during the Holocaust, and spews vicious and hateful vitriol against Israel.

Sara Esther Crispe notes that Amalek’s danger is not their ability to kill. Actually, cars kill more people every year. Amalek doesn’t just kill – Amalek makes us doubt. Cars do not seek to destroy us. Amalek plans and plots and aims to hurt us, to maim us and to murder us. And every time they do, they make us doubt more. They make us doubt if we are safe, if we are secure, if we are taking care of. We continue but with a little less courage, a little less security, a little less faith.
They try to paralyze us and make us think twice before continuing on with our daily lives. They make us doubt the very reality of ourselves, our lives, our God.

The elimination of Amalek remains a command. It is no longer directed at a particular tribe, but rather against incorrigible evil in general.

The primary lesson of parshah Zachor is that true reconciliation comes through repentance and remembrance. Repentance is the key to overcoming the evils of the past. Remembrance is the key to preventing recurrence. Naïve people claimed that Amalek is long since gone. Only primitive people are so cruel, only madmen would do such terrible things. The commandment of Zachor is a stern reminder that Amalek lives and must be fought.

The general consensus among today’s Jewish communities seems to be that our energies can and must be used to stop the perpetuation of genocidal activity occurring throughout the world, to become agents for peace, and to dismiss any contemporary comparisons to the biblical paradigm. But clearly there are difficult texts and teachings that remain in our tradition that must be remembered and reckoned with.

We cannot change what has happened. But we can help change what will happen. Amalek is what brings doubt to our minds. When we lose our faith, we lose everything. It is then that Amalek is able to attack us. Yet we have something infinitely more powerful than doubt: the power of memory. So we must remember. We must remember that no matter how hard it was, Amalek did not win. They did not succeed. We survived. Fearing Amalek will not help. Running away from Amalek will not help. Rather, we must not forget that they are our enemy. We must face them and deal with them. We have the ability and power to do so. We must Zachor, remember.

Parashat Vayakhel-Pekudei 5777

In today’s parshah, Moses addresses the whole Israelite community for the first time since his dramatic return from Mount Sinai. Moses gathers the people of Israel and repeats to them all the things God has told him in the previous three parshahs. In this parshah, first, there is the commandment to keep Sabbath. Second, is God’s command to donate materials for the construction of the Mishkan. As soon as Moses finished talking, the people want to bring things to donate to the Mishkan. The people brought their gifts at dawn’s first light, so no one could see them, to emphasize that they were contributing out of love for God, with no wish to be recognized for it. We read that both men and women donated for the construction of the Mishkan. Everyone participated in its construction. It didn’t matter if they were rich or poor. It didn’t matter which tribe they were from. Everyone gave according to their ability, and each participated with the talents God gave them. There were actually too many donations, and for the first and probably only time in fundraising history, the Jewish people are told to refrain from bringing additional contributions. I don’t remember Federation calling me to say: “Thanks, Bill for your generous pledge but we don’t need your money right now.”

There is only the one brief mention of Shabbat during Moses’speech. According to Rashi, Moses prefaces his speech about the Mishkan with a warning about Shabbat in order to remind the Israelites that the Mishkan does not supersede Shabbat. The construction of the Mishkan has traditionally been regarded as an illustration of what we should not do on Shabbat. Indeed, the rabbis derive the 39 prohibited actions on Shabbat directly from the 39 acts of labor involved in the creation of the Mishkan.

The Mishkan was built to serve as the focal point of religious life for the Jewish nation. The Mishkan is the means by which God becomes present in the very center of the Israelite community and in the hearts of the Israelites.

Parshahs Vayakhel and Pekudei, are combined this year. What seems paradocial is that Vayakhel means “community”, but content of this Parshah is the value of individuality. Pekudei means” individuality” but its content is the advantage in union and integration, that is, community.
Moses’ act in Vayakhel is what the Kabbalists called tikkun: a restoration, and making good again, the redemption of a past misdemeanor. Moses orchestrates the people for good, as they had once been assembled for bad.
At a deeper level, though, the opening verse of the Sedra alerts us to the nature of community Judaism. In classical Hebrew, there are three different words for community: edah, tzibbur, and kehillah; and they signify different kinds of association.
The people who constitute an edah have a strong sense of collective identity. They have witnessed the same things. They share the same purpose. It can be bad as well as good. An edah is a community of like-minded people. The word emphasizes strong identity. It is a group whose members have much in common.
By contrast, the word tzibbur is a different kind of community. To understand the concept of tzibbur, think of a group of people praying at the Kotel. They may not know each other. They may never meet again. But for the moment, they happen to be ten people in the same place at the same time, and thus constitute a minyan for prayer. A tzibbur is a community in the minimalist sense, a mere aggregate, formed by numbers rather than any sense of identity. A tzibbur is a group whose members have nothing in common except that at a certain point they find themselves together, and thus constitute” public” for prayer or any other command which requires a minyan.
A kehillah is different from the other two kinds of community. Its members are different from one another. In that sense, it is like a tzibbur. But they are orchestrated together for a collective undertaking – one that involves itself in making a distinctive contribution. The beauty of a kehillah is that when it is driven by constructive purpose, it gathers together the distinct and separate contributions of many individuals, so each can say, “I helped to make this.” That is why, by assembling the people on this occasion, Moses emphasizes that each has something different to give.
Moses was able to turn the kehillah, with all its diversity, into an edah, with its singleness of purpose, while preserving the diversity of the gifts they brought to God.

The greatness of the Mishkan was that it was a collective achievement – one in which not everyone did the same thing. Each gave a different thing. Each contribution was valued – and therefore, each participant felt valued. Vayakhel was Moses ability to forge out of the dissolution of the people, a new and genuine kehillah, and was one of his greatest achievements.

What Moses had to do after the Golden calf was turn the Israelites to a kehillah, a community.

Moses began by reminding people of the laws of Shabbat. Then he instructed them to build the Mishkan. Why these two commands rather than any others? Because Shabbat and Mishkan are the two most powerful ways of building a sense of community. The best way of turning a diverse, disconnected group into a team is to get them to build something together; hence, the Mishkan. The best way of strengthening relationships is to set aside dedicated time when we focus not on the pursuit of individual self-interest but on the things we share, by praying together, studying Torah together and celebrating together: in other words, Shabbat. Shabbat and the Mishkan were the two great community building experiences of the Israelites in the desert.
More than this, in Judaism, community is essential to the spiritual life. Our holiest prayers require a minyan. When we celebrate or mourn, we do so as a community. Even when we confess, we do so together.
Author and educator Ron Wolfson has said:” I’m worried about the Jewish future, and I’m really worried about the future of Jewish institutions.”
Wolfson wrote that, the foundational principles of Judaism are based on relationships.
We do not live our lives in isolation; we share our lives with one another, with family, friends, the Jewish world, the larger world, and ultimately with God.
Relational Judaism is not a new idea, but it is, perhaps, one that needed refreshing. It is a reminder that we should spend time with people, not just our Facebook friends – to have social lives, not just” social networks”, to engage with our neighbors and our fellow Jews as an investment in the survival of Judaism. Jewish families cannot live in isolation. To live a full Jewish life requires engagement with other Jews, a Jewish community.

Every one of us is necessary to ensure success. We are all different. We all have different abilities, different talents and different circumstances. We know we can do it, because we’ve done it once before when we built the Mishkan. The main thing is that we work together, that we do it right. Small details matter. As in every project, it is not complete until each person does his or her part, and until the finishing touches have been completed.
Each and every one of us, on some level, all want to change the world. But sometimes we feel that compared to others, our contributions are not as significant. But the exact opposite is true. This is because for in order for someone else to help, they almost always depend upon other people doing their part. We must all contribute in the way that God enabled and empowered us to do so. If we don’t, it literally prevents others from doing their part. Don’t make the mistake of thinking your contribution isn’t going to make a difference. Just like in the days of the Mishkan you have the responsibility to contribute in relation to your ability to strengthen the Jewish community and our own Kehillah

Shabbat Shalom
Beatles Parody
Hey Jude, don’t be afraid:
It seems like Yesterday that you all had a great Revolution. In My Life, I was never so angry. I went back to Mount Sinai and said to God: “ Help, I need somebody. God, too, was also very upset. As I addressed God, I felt like the Fool on the Hill, a real Nowhere Man. I said to him: “My Sweet Lord, please forgive them. We Can Work it Out. The Israelites and I Should Have Known Better.” God said: “ Tell Me Why” they did it but I was at a loss for an adequate explanation. But, Do You Want to Know a Secret? He forgave you because He/She Loves You, yeah, yeah, yeah and he said: “Ok, Let it Be.” So, now I Feel Fine and I hope you do as well. It is time to Get Back to our mission. So, Please, Please Me and believe in the Lord.

I Want to Tell You a message From Me to You. I Need You to Come Together right now. It will be A Long and Winding Road. Don’t Let Me Down. You cannot work Eight Days a Week. You must rest on Shabbat. God is Here, There and Everywhere. It is time to pray for forgiveness and tell God: “ I Got to Get You into My Life.” I was lost Till There Was You. I Need You.

When a new day dawns and Here Comes the Sun, it will be the time to get to work and build a great Mishkan. If we work together as a community and put in A Hard Day’s Night, Imagine what we can accomplish.

And while Tomorrow Never Knows, I’ve Got A Feeling we can accomplish great things With a Little Help From My Friends. All You Need is Love and cooperation, with each person doing his or her job, All I’ve Got to Do is to continue to lead you on this Magical Mystery Tour through the desert to the promised land.