When I think of Passover, I don’t think of it as a time for going to shul… at least not until the last couple of days when we say Yiskor. The seder is the ultimate Jewish experience because it happens in the home, lending credence to the thought that Judaism is away of life, not just a religion.

One reading at the beginning of the seder says, “All who are hungry, let them come and eat.” This serves as both an encouragement to help feed those who are hungry in our communities and an invitation to fill your seder table with guests. Friends and relatives of all backgrounds and religions are welcome at seder tables.

I’m here today, however, because I am saying Kaddish for two people who were very important to me when I was growing up—my father’s Stepmother, Gertie and my great Aunt Dora.

My father’s mother passed when he was 16. In fact, I was named after her and I have always appreciated the fact that my father (z’’l) created the name Elisa and didn’t name me ‘Ethel.’ My grandfather remarried after she passed and I always considered Gertie to be my grandmother and she treated my brother and I as her grandchildren.

My great aunt was very special to me. She was my grandfather’s older sister (in fact both of my grandparents on my mother’s side had sisters named Dora). She spoke with a strong Polish accent, had boundless energy and lived in New York. She had married several times, yet never had any children.

So what is the connection between these women and Pesach? According to Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “It is no accident that Parshat Bo, the section that deals with the culminating plagues and the exodus, should turn three times to the subject of children and the duty of parents to educate them. As Jews we believe that to defend a country you need an army, but to defend a civilization you need education. Freedom is lost when it is taken for granted. Unless parents hand on their memories and ideals to the next generation – the story of how they won their freedom and the battles they had to fight along the way – the long journey falters and we lose our way.“

Both my aunt and grandmother encouraged us to ask questions, to explore, to wonder. They shared their stories and asked many questions of us as we were growing up.

Both had strong senses of education and they encouraged me to continue to pursue formal as well as informal education. Having such strong, encouraging women in my life impacted me in ways I didn’t always appreciate until I was older.

During the seder we talk about the four children: one wise, one wicked or rebellious, one simple and “one who does not know how to ask.” Reading them together the Sages came to the conclusion that

If leaders are to bring out the best in those they lead, they must give them the chance to show they are capable of great things, and then they must celebrate their achievements. That is what happens at a key moment toward the end of our parsha, one that brings the book of Exodus to a sublime conclusion after all the strife that has gone before.

The Israelites have finally completed the work of building the Tabernacle. We then read:

So all the work on the Tabernacle, the Tent of Meeting, was completed. The Israelites did everything just as the Lord commanded Moses … Moses inspected the work and saw that they had done it just as the Lord had commanded. So Moses blessed them.

Ex. 39:32, 43

The passage sounds simple enough, but to the practiced ear it recalls another biblical text, from the end of the Creation narrative in Genesis:

The heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. On the seventh day God finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.

Gen. 2:1-3

Three key words appear in both passages: “work,” “completed” and “blessed.” These verbal echoes are not accidental. They are how the Torah signals intertextuality, hinting that one law or story is to be read in the context of another. In this case, the Torah is emphasizing that Exodus ends as Genesis began, with a work of creation. Note the difference as well as the similarity. Genesis began with an act of Divine creation. Exodus ends with an act of human creation.

These words were shared by Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (z’il) from a D’var a few years ago. I loved the idea of celebrating an accomplishment, bringing the community together with joy.

But what happens when we fail? For many of us, we are afraid of failure. We don’t want to let down our friends, family, colleagues, by not achieving what we have set out to do. Unfortunately, this is particularly an adult preoccupation.

When we are children, we sing with great abandon, even when we sing off-key. We draw and paint, and our parents post our creations on the family refrigerator, even if they aren’t exactly works of fine art. We dance and twirl until we are dizzy and fall down… and then we get back up and do it again.

As adults, we’d never sing off-key outside of a shower and we’d probably not turn cartwheels in the yard, just to make ourselves happy.

What is this transformation from our childish experiments where we tested the waters of our thinking? Where does that spirit of experimentation go? Why does it leave? Some would say it is because we grow up, we learn judgment, we have a stronger sense of right and wrong, good and bad.

I’d like to propose a different kind of celebration—not just for the achievement, but for the effort and what it teaches us. We’ve probably heard the aphorism: Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment’ and I’d like to propose something radical: a failure cake.

I’m part of a group of wonderful facilitators who work with all kinds of teams at my company. These insightful folks created the concept of the failure cake: a cake meant to celebrate not the failure itself, but what we have learned from that failure. The idea is to get a cake big enough to share with the entire team or project. Serve the cake in an informal setting where everyone can discuss what the team learned in the process.

Celebrating failure changes the way we work and gets us to better and more innovative solutions, as it encourages us to experiment. It is the path to continuous learning. Even after the cake is gone, we remember.

In today’s Torah portion, after the construction of the Mishkan (the Tabernacle) has been completed, we are told that Moses “took the Tablets and placed it in the Ark.” The Rabbis of the Talmud note that the word for Tablets, “Edut,” is in the plural.

Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson wrote, imagine their interest (and our surprise) to read elsewhere in the Bible, after the dedication of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, that “there was nothing inside the Ark but the two tablets.” If the word “tablet” is already plural, then two of them must mean that Moses placed in two additional tablets beyond the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments! What else could Moses have dared to place beside the two tablets of the Commandments?

According to the Torah the answer is that “both the whole tablets and the fragments of the tablets were placed together in the Ark.” remember when Moses returned to the children of Israel, carrying the first tablets with the Ten Commandments? He was so outraged by the idolatry of the Golden Calf, that he shattered the tablets on the ground. After the people had repented of their sin, Moses returned to the peak of the Mountain, where God presented a second pair of tablets.

That is precisely our relationship to those first tablets. Moses saved them both, the shattered and the whole, to remind us that even when we make mistakes (and the Golden Calf certainly qualifies) that we can learn and move forward, perhaps humbled by our errors, but hopefully wiser.

The next time you or your team tries something that doesn’t work, celebrate the effort. Share the learning. However the failure occurred, the team should accept the failure together and everyone should share in the responsibility of growing a little bit wiser. It might be worth a cake.

Shabbat Shalom.

References:
Artson, Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit (not dated) If it’s broken, why keep it?
My Jewish learning https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/if-its-broken-why-keep-it/

ITK Team, Failure Cake blog posts, https://itk.mitre.org/?s=failure+cake

Sacks, Lord Rabbi Jonathan (5781), Celebrate https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/pekudei/celebrate/

What dreams may come

Have your dreams gotten stranger since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic? According to Dr. Deirdre Barrett, psychologist and dream researcher at Harvard, “any crisis tends to stir up our dream lives.”

In her interview on Science Friday on NPR, Dr. Barrett “That’s been ongoing since the start of the pandemic. But most crises make us lose sleep, if anything. And especially at the start of the pandemic, when so many people were furloughed or sent home from school, people were actually catching up on sleep somewhat. So at the very start of the pandemic I heard lots of people saying that they just had lots more dream recall than usual. And more bizarre dreams and more vivid dreams. Dream life just blipped way up at the very start.”

She explained that: “I look at dreams as basically just thinking in a different brain state. Different electrical activity, different biochemicals. But we’re still concerned with all of our usual fears, hopes, dreams, work stuff, personal stuff. But our brain is in a state where our visual areas are much more active than even when we’re awake.

Our emotional areas are a little more active. And areas that are associated with logical linear reasoning are damped down a lot. So we’re thinking in this very imagery laden emotional state with less verbal thought, but we’re still focused on the same things that we are by day.”

So why is this relevant to today’s parasha? Vaytze tells the events in the life of Jacob who runs away to his uncle in Haran, encounters angels and God in a dream, falls in love with Rachel, works for 20 years for his uncle, marries Rachel and Leah, fathers the children who will become the leaders of the 12 tribes, and grows his sheep flocks by the hundreds before returning to the land of Canaan.

Imagine the fear that gripped Jacob’s heart as he began his lonely flight from his family and from his home to far-away Haran.  Running away from the wrath of his brother, Esau, and from his native environment, Jacob suddenly runs out of strength. He arrives by nightfall.  Lying down on the ground, using a stone for a pillow, Jacob falls asleep and, while he was asleep, he has an amazing dream.

Given that Jacob was terrified of his brother’s wrath, what kind of dream do you think he would dream? One of revenge? One of monsters chasing him in the night?

Dr. Barrett, who has authored a book called Pandemic Dreams, talks about the differences in the dreams of the frontline doctors and nurses in Italy working in the early days of the pandemic. They were having horrible traumatic dreams about trying to get a tube down someone’s throat whose breathing was so constricted that they couldn’t get the tube in place. As the pandemic really started hitting the US, she started seeing more trauma dreams, which tend to be more realistic with a bit of dreamlike distortion.

In her interview with Kathleen Davis on Science Friday, Dr. Barrett provided some examples of dreams people have reported to her via an ongoing survey of pandemic dreams. An example from one person: I have had a number of dreams where I am in a social setting or someone’s home, or something like that, and suddenly realize that no one is wearing masks and they’re not maintaining social distance. I wake up feeling very anxious and unsettled after that.

Jacob, on the other hand, does not have a trauma dream. He dreams of a ladder planted firmly on the ground with the rungs stretching all the way to the heavens. The odd thing about this is that the angels are seen to be olim v’yordim (ascending and descending) the rungs of the ladder. According to Rabbi Gilah Dror of Rodef Shalom Temple, the Sages note that angels seem to ascend first…don’t heavenly angels come from heaven? What kind of angels are these that seem to originate from Earth?

Rabbi Dror explains:

“Perhaps, the answer to this question lies in Jacob’s state of mind as he falls asleep.

Remember that Jacob is running for his life. He is isolated and alone and living in fear. He is exhausted. His strength is sapped not only by the journey, but also by his extremely strong emotions. And, in that state of mind, Jacob lies down to sleep and has this amazing dream. And, in his dream, Jacob uncovers an important message.

The message is that there are different kinds of angels. There are heavenly angels and there are earthly angels. And, when we are confronting our fears, the first thing we must do is to muster our earthly angels, our own spiritual strength, our own human determination, to meet the fears that afflict us. Only then, will the heavenly angels be revealed to us. Only then will we be able to see the heavenly angels that descend to strengthen our efforts as we strive to overcome our fears and to meet our challenges.”

Dreams can serve as a source of direction in our lives providing a bigger picture which keeps us steady and tells us the meaning of our lives, according to Rabbi Stacey Blank (World Union for Progressive Judaism).  G-d spoke to the prophets oftentimes in a dream. And we hear the voices that give us inspiration to do great things, to do impossible things – to make the desert bloom, to send men and women to the moon, to continue to be engaged in the seemingly endless struggle for righteousness and loving-kindness in the world.

Jacob’s amazing dream didn’t change his life situation. It did, however, give him renewed energy and courage and set him on the course to be the Father of Israel.

If you are having exceptionally strange or vivid dreams influenced by the pandemic, perhaps you can look for  inspiration to get through these traumatic times. For those who just feel like they’re having more anxiety dreams and those are making their daytime anxiety worse, the best technique is simply to think of what you would like to dream about.

Maybe there’s a person you’re not getting to be with. Maybe there’s a favorite place that you’d like to visit in your dream tonight. So you want to fall asleep saying, tonight I want to dream about x, tonight I want to dream about x. And form a simple visual image in your mind’s eye of the person’s face or the place or something about the dream you want to have. Dr. Barrett says that it doesn’t work all the time, but it does frequently.

As you go to sleep tonight think of all the things you are grateful for this Thanksgiving weekend. While you may not dream of an amazing ladder to heaven, perhaps your dreams will give you renewed energy and inspire you to do some good in the world. Tikun Olam

Shabbat Shalom.

References:

Transcript of Science Friday: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/covid-dreams/

Rabbi Gilah Dror https://www.rodefsholomtemple.org/shabbat-parashat-vayetze-earthly-angels/

Rabbi Stacey Blank https://wupj.org/library/uncategorized/17028/dreaming-in-the-state-of-israel-parashat-vayetze/

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-is-giving-people-vivid-unusual-dreams-here-is-why/

Joseph Frankel (4-1-20) on Medium: https://gen.medium.com/this-is-your-brain-on-coronavirus-dreams-356ff36c01b7

Deidre Barrett (2020) Pandemic Dreams https://www.amazon.com/Pandemic-Dreams-Deirdre-Barrett/dp/0982869533/ref=sr_1_2crid=1VDFX9NGMXHQ2&dchild=1&keywords=pandemic+dreams&qid=1606510533&sprefix=pandemic+dreams%2Caps%2C188&sr=8-2

Have you had your Covid-19 vaccine yet? Are you planning on getting the series yourself? What kind of messages have you heard about the vaccines? Are you skeptical? Do you trust the person who is giving you the information about the vaccine?

Parasha Vaera opens with Moses talking to G-d, who has just told him that he will indeed bring the Israelites to freedom outside of Egypt. Moses responds by telling G-d that “they didn’t listen to me, because their spirit was broken and the labor was harsh” or put another  way—from another translation—The people of Israel would not listen to Moses from shortness of breath and cruel bondage (Ex. Ch6, v 9).

Adina Roth asks “what prevents people from receiving comfort? The cruelty of slavery is that individual liberties are removed and harsh bondage is imposed. There is little agency when large forces of power control the parameters of one’s life.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said “the people didn’t listen to Moses because he had brought them messages from G-d before and they had done nothing to improve their situation… They had no reason to think he would do so in the future.”

When Moses met G-d at the burning bush, he kept refusing to lead the Israelites because “he was not a man of words. He was slow of speech and tongue. He lacked eloquence. He could not sway crowds. He was not an inspirational leader.”

It turns out that Moses with both right and wrong, according to Rabbi Sacks. “It has nothing to do with his failures as a leader or public speaker. In fact it had nothing to do with Moses at all. They didn’t listen because their spirit was broken and the labor was harsh.”

Mainmonides  is quoted by Rabbi Sacks (from the Guide for the perplexed) The Torah has two aims: the well-being of the soul and the well-being of the body…spiritual achievement is higher than material achievement, but we need to ensure the latter first, because a person suffering from great hunger, thirst, heat or cold, cannot grasp as idea even if it is communicated by others, much less arrive at it by his own reasoning.”

The minute I read those words, I was reminded of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You all have probably seen the pyramid graphic where the base represents out physiological needs: food, shelter and other basics needed to survive. Next come of the safety needs—protection against harm done to us by others. Third is the need for love and belonging, followed by our desire for recognition and esteem. At the top of the pyramid is what Maslow called self-actualization—fulfilling our potential—become the person we feel we could and should be.

Over the years, Maslow’s hierarchy has been revised. The original model states that a level must be completely satisfied and fulfilled before moving into a higher pursuit. According to Wikipedia, today’s scholars prefer to think of the levels as continuously overlapping each other—knowing that lower levels may take precedence over the others at any time.

We can see this in the what has happened during the pandemic. Individuals may feel belonging and love with a family and friends, yet have the rug pulled out from under them as they have lost jobs and possibly homes with little relief. Will these people listen to the messages about getting a Covid-19 vaccine if they are worried about where their next meal is going to come from? Will they even hear the messages about the vaccine?

As we know, Moses and Aaron went to Pharoh and pleaded for the freedom of the Israelites.  Each time they went to see Pharoh, those visits were followed by G-d’s signs and wonders. Through Aaron, G-d orchestrated the first three plagues; through Moses the next six. It was only after the 10^th, the slaying of the firstborn, did Pharoh grant the Israelites their freedom (in next week’s Parasha).

Like the Israelies, we find ourselves caught in the powerful currents of history, political power-plays, pandemics, and other  circumstances over which we have no control. Adina Roth put it this way, ”during the pandemic, many of us are trapped in a waiting game; we are waiting for this awful time to  end so that we can resume the task of living again.”

So where does this leave us? For those who can, help those who can’t. Work towards alleviating poverty, curing disease, respecting human rights. In the Jewish tradition, these are spiritual tasks no less than prayer and Torah study. Rabbi Sacks closes, “to be sure the latter are higher, but the former are prior. People can not hear G-d’s or the doctor’s messages if their spirit is broken and their labor harsh.

Shabbat Shalom

References

Lam, Rabbi Label for Torah.org (2010) Communication https://torah.org/torah-portion/dvartorah-5770-vaera/

Roth, Adina (2021) Parshat Vaera Room to Breathe: Seeking Agency in Narrow Places https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/parshat-vaera-room-to-breathe-seeking-agency-in-narrow-places/

Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan (2016) Spirits in a Material World https://rabbisacks.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/CC-5776-Spirits-in-a-Material-World-Vaera.pdf

Summary of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs –including criticism, evolution of the model and the sources for some of the ideas from the Blackfoot Nation  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow’s_hierarchy_of_needs

This week’s Torah portion, Shoftim (Hebrew for “judges”), contains a series of laws directing the nascent Israelite community on how to establish a just society. The issues it covers include many that we still struggle with in our society today: setting up a fair and impartial legal system, making distinctions between murder and manslaughter, establishing the level of testimony necessary to convict someone in a capital crime, laying forth the principles for conducting a just war. Through laws pertaining to each one of these systems, the Torah shapes a unique rulership that had not been heard of before or since. This uniqueness is not merely symbolic. It is practical. The laws are meant to create a different consciousness for both the private individual and the public.

Moses continues his last speech to the Israelites before he dies saying: “Judges shall be appointed to judge the people with justice. When you come to the land that God is giving you, and dwell in it, you will want a king. You shall then set a king over yourself whom God will choose. This king shall not be a foreigner but one of your brethren.” Several of the commentaries note the ambivalence about having a king.  For more information on this ambivalence, check out the commentary from Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks at his website: https://rabbisacks.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/CC-5778-To-Lead-is-to-Serve-Shoftim-1.pdf

These varied concepts, from appointing judges, selecting kings and prophets to the system of justice, are all tied together through one guiding principle found at the beginning of the portion:

Deuteronomy 16:18-20

You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that the Lord your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eye of the discerning and upset the plea of the just. Justice, justice, shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

This parasha is  the classic source of the three types of leadership in Judaism, called by the sages the “three crowns” of priesthood, kingship and Torah. This is the first statement in history of the principle, described later in the eighteenth century by Montesquieu in L’Esprit des Lois, and later made fundamental to the American constitution, of “the separation of powers.”

Here is a striking contrast in the parasha between two central ruling systems: kings and judges. The command regarding the appointment of judges is resolute and unequivocal: “You shall set up judges and law enforcement officials for yourself in all your cities… and they shall judge the people

 I don’t usually fret much when writing a d’var. A portion of the reading stands out to me and I work with it, researching, reading and contemplating the topics. Parasha Shemot- while being a rather short Parasha, left me feeling alternately upset and disturbed and then later uplifted. This is not an easy reading to deconstruct.

The first part of the reading introduced the new Pharoh and in spite of the Parasha’s title of Shemot translated to “Names”—the Pharoh is in fact not named. He comes in with no knowledge of the contributions of Joseph and how he saved the country from ruin. In fact he was so out of touch that the first thing he did was enact strict rules and laws against the people in groups that he does not understand.

I had a similarly upsetting experience when my old company was taken over by another that did not understand that much that made our old company pretty great was the flexibility extended to the workers, the supportive culture and the collaboration we exhibited. Suddenly we were told that there was no more working from home, that our IT and other operations support was being outsourced and that we were basically to put up and shut up. The Jews in Egypt didn’t have much choice, at least I was able to leave.

One of Pharoh’s rules impacted the Jewish people immediately: any male child born to the Hebrews was to be put to death (typically thought of us drowning them in the Nile). The midwives who attended Jewish women (it is not clear whether they were Jewish or not) in what has been called one of the first acts of Civil Disobedience—disobeyed the order given by the most powerful man in the most powerful empire of the ancient world simply because it was immoral, unethical and inhuman.

These midwives – named Shifra and Puah not only saved Jewish babies at the time, they became the inspiration many, many years later for a new legal concept—that of the crime against humanity which gave legal substance to the Nuremberg principle that there are orders that should not be obeyed because they are immoral.

The third theme is that great leaders—the example here being Moses—discover that their sense of justice is not reserved for their people alone. There are several examples of Moses witnessing injustices. In one, Moses sees several Medianite shepherds using ‘brute force’ against the daughters of Jethro, preventing them from drawing water for their families. Moses intervenes. He has nothing to do with the conflict and his sense of justice is blind. He feels that justice must be done even if it does nothing to further his personal interests.

According to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the “Torah wants to teach that when humanity is being tested, people must stand up for justice and not be swept along in the tides of hatred. People with a conscience can and must be found living under the thumb of the darkest regimes.

Ultimately, the benevolent will go down in the annals of history, not only as people who produced change and brought more good into the world, but also to those who give hope to all, even if their deeds do not come to light until many years after they were gone. Among them we remember the Midwives Shifra and Puah; the righteous gentiles who helped many Jews—especially children—escape from the Nazi efforts to eliminate them; the recent volunteers who went to our borders to try to help with children who were separated from their parents and put into refugee camps—crying for their parents; and the newest members of this group, the lawyers who have gone into Mexico to help those escaping the horrors of Central America only to be trapped in Mexico because our President will not allow them into the country before their scheduled asylum hearings.

The moral of the Parash of Shemot is that when there are tyrants (political, business and otherwise) we can look to those who speak out against their inhumanity and declare enough is enough. We may never know their names, but their righteous deeds–regardless of the identity of the victim—will be immortalized as ‘symbols of the struggle to bring out the hidden good within us.” May we remember them, may we honor them, may we share their stories; may we be them.

This D’var was inspired by the words and writings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Eve Posen, Rabbi David Stav, and Rabbi Yael Ridberg

Shabbat Shalom

My grandfather (may he rest in peace) was named Simcha Natan in Hebrew. Simcha, meaning joy is the word I most associate with this time of year.  Each day of Sukkot in a traditional synagogue, you will see the hakafot, where the congregants dance around the building with the lulav and etrog in hand; seven times we march around the with the joy associated with the fall Harvest. And it doesn’t end there… The last day of Sukkot is designated as Simchat Torah, the day of celebrating the joy of Torah, where we dance and sing and celebrate the end of the reading of the Torah, only to begin again.

So why now? Why Sukkoth? According to Rabi Irving Greenberg, “Sukkot comes just four days after Yom Kippur, the most ascetic, self-denying, guilt-ridden, awesome holy day of the Jewish year… only those who know the fragility of life can truly appreciate the full preciousness of every moment. The release from Yom Kippur leads to the extraordinary outburst of life that is Sukkot. On this holiday, Jews are commanded to eat, drink, be happy, dance, and relish life to the fullest in celebrating the harvest and personal wealth.

But making joy holy means being selective in the enjoyment of God’s gifts, not worshiping those gifts or those who own them. The first and foremost expression of this insight is to share the bounty and the joy. Gifts from the harvest were given to the poor: “You shall rejoice before the Lord. You, your son and daughter, manservant and maid, the Levite… the stranger, the orphan, the widow in your midst” (Deuteronomy 16:11).”

In a wonderful video https://schechter.edu/popular-holiday-soviet-union/  Rabbi Dr. David Frankel, senior lecturer in Bible at Schechter, describes a fascinating piece of Soviet Jewish history and how Simchat Torah became the holiday selected by the Soviet Jews to express their Jewishness. He gives five reasons why:

1. Simchat Torah is a holiday of joy (it’s right there in the name) and the Jews wanted to express their joy of being Jewish
2. Simchat Torah celebrates Jewish knowledge and learning and they Jews of the Soviet Union wanted to express their right to study Jewish books and learn Torah.
3. Simchat Torah expresses eternity, by ending the Torah and beginning again, it creates a never-ending cycle from the point of entering Eretz Yisroel and starting again in the Garden of Eden.
4. Simchat Torah is not a biblical holiday. It was not created by the authorities or by those who codified the law. It was created for the people, by the people.
5. On Simchat Torah, Every Jew gets called to the Torah, expressing the egalitarian spirit, regardless of level of observance or knowledge. This holiday is about Jewish peoplehood. Thus, the Jews of the Soviet Union took the Torahs into the street in defiance of the Soviet Regime.

There is something unique about the relationship of the Jews and Torah, the way we stand in its presence as if it were a king and dance with it as if it were a bride, listen to it telling our story and study it for the length of our days.

On these days of Sukkoth and Simchat Torah, I love to revel in the dichotomy of how Judaism appreciates both the old and the new. We celebrate the ancient traditions of eating in the Sukkah, dancing with branches and fruits, dancing in a circle with the Torah. On the other hand, we read and study the annual cycles of the Torah portions and how their lessons can be applied to our daily lives.

It is no coincidence that Sukkot has a deep connection with universal humanity. We invite the stranger (Ushpizin) into our Sukkah and share our food with our neighbors and our friends (if you haven’t seen the movie by this name, find it and watch it—it’s a gem).  Acts of Gimilut Chasidim (loving-kindness) are the foundations of the world because they are fundamental expressions of human solidarity and human contact in a largely impersonal world.

There is then the significance of the dance on Simchat Torah, where the hierarchies of our differences are transcended and we all dance in a circle around the Torah, representing the Divine center.

According to Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “what non-Jews (and sometimes Jews) fail to appreciate is how, in Judaism, Torah represents law as love and love as law. Torah is not just ‘revealed legislation’ it represents G-d’s faith in our ancestors that He entrusted them with the creation of a society that would become a home for His presence no matter where we are, and an example to the world.”

On this Shabbat between Sukkoth and Simchat Torah, I hope that we can continue to express the joy that led King David to ‘leap and dance’ when the ark was brought into Jerusalem and that as we experience these days of Sukkot, Hashanah Rabbah and Simchat Torah renew our love of the Torah as we begin again.

Shabbat Shalom

(1993) Rabbi Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, Touchstone
(2014)  Rabbi Tracy Nathan, Dancing in circles from Sukkot to Simchat Torah, https://www.stljewishlight.com/opinion/dvar_torah/dancing-in-circles-from-sukkot-to-simchat-torah/article_51ba9e78-4f11-11e4-bb84-4718d0937faa.html
(2015) Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Law as Love http://rabbisacks.org/law-as-love-bemidbar-5775/
(2017) Rabbi Dr. David Frankel, The Most Popular Holiday in the Soviet Union? https://schechter.edu/popular-holiday-soviet-union/

How do you like your Matzah? Butter? Cream cheese and jelly? As a matzah pizza or lasagna? Scrambled in eggs as Matzah brei? However you like it, breakfast, meal, snack or dessert, I am sure that by today, the eighth day, you are probably tired of being matzah-creative! Like me, you might be suffering from Matzah belly… That uncomfortable feeling you get when you know you’ve had too many matzah balls and or too much farfel-based granola.

So my question to you today is why are we still celebrating an eighth day of Passover in the diaspora? Why not end on the seventh like they do in Israel? Or as the reform or reconstructionists do here in the US? Is it cognitive dissonance that comes from the idea of changing strong-held family traditions? Would your grandparents be upset if you ended ‘early’?

This may be the fifth question we could ask at the Seder: how many days is Pesach?

The beauty of Passover it the traditions associated with the holiday and they are as varied as there are families. Most of us grew up with the Maxwell House or the Red / Yellow Hagaddahs that proliferated in the 60s and 70s. This year at our table, we shared passages from the Hogwarts Unoffical Hagaddah, the Mrs. Maisel Hagaddah along with several different editions of the Red/Yellow (copyright dates in the 1960s and 1990s).  We also had two different types of Haroseth, the traditional Ashkenazi one my mom makes, with apples, nuts and wine—just like my grandfather used to make. And we also have the Sephardic one with dried fruits made by a friend of the family.

Do you use green onions or celery for the greens we dip in the salt water? Do you still use bones to represent the Pascal lamb, or do you do as some of my vegetarian friends, who use a Pascal Yam?

My father, may he rest in peace, used to say that Pesach was his favorite holiday. Not all of the cooking that my mother did, not all the cleaning and moving of things around the house, but because it was a holiday centered around the home and family. He loved to hide the afikomen in places no one would ever dream of looking (including in his sock one year). He reveled in the fact that everyone had a responsibility and role to play in our family seder. We use food and dialogue, song and readings to make the seders truly ours. Like ours, I am sure that yours have evolved over time. We don’t read as much Hebrew, we don’t sing as many of the songs, be we continue to include the parts that have meaning.

Whether we are use traditions from our ancestors or creative interpretations to keep the next generation engaged (including stuff toy plagues), we constantly renew and revive our faith, ensuring it is as meaningful now as it was when we first started celebrating our Judaism, whenever that may have been. And what feels sacred and right to one of us may be totally foreign and new to another, yet there is room for everyone and every custom. Whether you ended Pesach last night or will do so tonight, I hope that this holiday celebration has brought meaning and joy to you and yours.

Shabbat Shalom.

While doing some research for a session on listening skills, I ran across a quote from Steven Covey that “most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” I started to listen more carefully to conversations around me and realized that this had become unfortunately true in many situations. It made me sad, as part of my job is to listen to what my audience has to say… and that intense listening is one of the things that helps me be successful in my role in user experience research.

What I didn’t expect to find in my exploration of Parasha Yitro was the fact that the Chief Rabbi Eli Shebson identifies three different terms for listening in the Torah:

“The first appears at the very beginning of Parashat Yitro, “Vayishma Yitro – Yitro listened.” When we use the term ‘Shomeya’ it means that we take what we hear very seriously – what we hear becomes a call for action.”

Yitro really heard the details of the Exodus and all of the associated miracles. Because of this, he brought Moses’ wife and children to the wilderness where the Israelites had gathered, to see how they were faring.

At this point in the Torah, Yitro asks Moses to listen, in a say to take an action:

“What you are doing is not good. You and these people who come to you will wear yourselves out. The work is too heavy for you; you cannot handle it alone. Listen now to me and I will give you advice, and may God be with you… Select capable men from all the people-men who fear God, trustworthy men who hate dishonest gain-and appoint them as officials over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens. Have them serve as judges for the people at all times, but have them bring every difficult case to you; the simple cases they can decide themselves. That will make your load lighter, because they will share it with you. If you do this and God so commands, you will be able to stand the strain, and so too all these people will reach their place in peace.” (Exodus 18:17-23)

And Moses listened, and his action was to delegate and share the burden of leadership.

According to Rabbi Shebson, The second term is ‘Leha’azin’ – to hear. Sometimes a word can go into one ear and out through the other and that is what happens with ‘Maazin’. That is ‘hearing. This is what Steven Covey was talking about and he added: “The collective monologue is everyone talking and no one listening. This is what we complain about when we believe we are not being heard.”

“But there is a third, unexpected term,” adds Rabbi Shebson, “which is the most powerful form of listening. It comes immediately after the giving of the Ten Commandments. When in this week’s Parsha, the Torah tells us, “V’Chol Ha’am Ro’im Et Hakolot – and the entire nation saw the sounds.” Here we have a combination of senses, something quite extraordinary. Perhaps even close to supernatural, in which we were able to internalize the messages that reached us from G-d with our entire beings.”

According to Rabbi Marc D. Angel, “The Revelation at Mount Sinai was a national experience for all the people of Israel—but it also was very personal. Each Israelite heard the same words—but in different ways!

“The Midrash teaches (Shemot Rabba 29:1) that God spoke “bekoho shel kol ehad ve-ehad,” according to the individual abilities of each listener. The universal message of Torah was made direct and personal. The miracle at Mount Sinai was not only the Revelation of God to the nation of Israel, but the individualized Revelation to each and every Israelite man, woman and child.

“The message of this rabbinic teaching goes further. It does not merely refer to the receptivity and ability of Israelites at the moment of Revelation at Mount Sinai. It also recognizes that each individual’s koah—strength of understanding—is not stagnant. As we grow, deepen our knowledge, expand our sensitivities and open our minds and hearts—our koah evolves. In a sense, we receive the Revelation anew at each stage in life—actually, every day and every moment of life. This is the wonder and glory of Torah: it speaks to us directly and personally throughout our lives.”

Rabbi Shebson closes, “So powerful was that experience at Mount Sinai, that we believe all of our souls were there. We carry that experience with us even today and it gives us the imperative to carry out the expectations of that covenantal relationship established at Sinai.

So if ‘listening’ is a call for action, ‘Kal Vachomer’ – how much more so, when one sees the voices? As a result, all that transpired at Mount Sinai continues to be a very powerful and essential call to us through all ages, to live our lives according to the will of Hashem.

It is good when people are able to say ‘I hear what you have said’. It is even better when they’re able to say ‘I have listened’. But the best of all is when somebody can tell you ‘I feel what you said.”

I’d like to share a couple more quotes:

“So when you are listening to somebody completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it – Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

–Karl Menninger, American Psychologist.

Thanks so much for listening.

Shabbat Shalom.