Pekudei 5774

How Trustworthy was Moses?

Who is the most trustworthy person in the Torah?

This was the question I asked to a group at morning Minyan this past week. The answers, as you might imagine, were varied: Sarah, Abraham, Joseph. Each person who answered gave a cogent reason for their selection.  The Torah itself appears to have weighed in on the question a few weeks ago when we read Parshat Vayakel.  After all, God entrusted the Tablets, God's revelation to our people, to Moses. Even after Moses broke the tablets in a fit of anger God was willing to entrust Moses with a second set. In this weeks portion of Pikudei we are shown why Moses was so deserving of God's and the people's trust.

Moses was a man who understood the importance of public trust when it comes to leaders.

The final portion of Exodus focuses on the completion of the Mishkan, the portable Tabernacle that the Israelites carried through their wanderings and ultimately into the land of Israel. Portion after portion has concerned itself with each and every detail of this holiest of building enterprises. The Mishkan was built from precious materials that the people had donated for the purpose of creating an indwelling place for God. 

The people had given "Yidevenu Libo" from their very hearts to build the Mishkan. How could they know if their contributions were used properly?  But who could doubt Moses, their beloved leader. Who would dare ask for an accounting of the man who had stood before Pharaoh and demanded that he release the Israelites, or demanded mercy for the people after the incident of the Golden Calf? It turns out that it was Moses himself who called for the accounting.

21 These are the records of the Tabernacle, the Tabernacle of the Pact, which were drawn up at Moses' bidding (Exodus 38:21)

It would appear that Moses himself had determined that any leader who has the public trust must not only act with integrity but be willing to show that they are above reproach. Note that God did not request the audit, nor did the people, rather, it was Moses himself who made the records public. From this, our tradition created a series of safeguards to always ensure the public trust. A person collecting Tzedakah was never allowed to go alone so as to not raise suspicion. In addition, those who collected funds for the community were not allowed to have pockets in their clothing. Those who made incense for the Temple were not allowed to wear perfume lest anyone think that they got from that which was to be used in the Temple. It was Moses who set the precedent: people who have the public trust must earn it each day.

Would not that this lesson be learned in our own age. This past week a revolution took place in the Ukraine.  It was a popular revolt against an overly aggressive and punitive Russian regime that has taken punitive economic measures to keep the Ukraine as a satellite. It is also a revolt against a government that seems powerless to turn a moribund economy around. After the President fled the country the people had a chance to see how their leader was living. He had created a palace whose garish opulence has shocked people around the globe. A private restaurant in the shape of a pirate ship said it all to this people who have suffered so many economic hardships. The pained look on the people's faces as they walk through the Presidential palace made it abundantly clear how betrayed they felt by their leader.

Public trust must never be assumed by a public official, it must be earned each day. While I am quite sure that there were many who wondered why Moses was so diligent about an accounting, after all, who would doubt someone of Moses' stature? Moses set an example of leadership that all those who serve others would do well to remember. As President Reagan once said: "Trust but verify". If we want to create spaces worthy of God's presence transparency on the part of our leaders is a good place to start.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Michael Siegel
Senior Rabbi

Ki Tisa 5774

Light of my Life

In the summer of 1992, the Summer Olympic Games were celebrated in Barcelona, Spain, for the first year without boycotts since 1972. In an exciting opening ceremony, Paralympics’ archer Antonio Rebollo lit the Olympic flame cauldron by shooting a flaming arrow into it. This ceremony was moving both in who lit the flame and considering that this ceremony, which we observed last week, has its origins in ancient Greece, where they also had a flame ignited throughout the ancient Olympiad. Yet the idea of a radiating light isn't exclusively Green; it exists in many ancient and modern societies, and is incredibly prevalent in the Torah.

At the conclusion of this week’s parasha, Ki Tisa, we read a peculiar narrative. Moses descends from Sinai - this time not throwing a fastball aimed at the Golden Calf – and as he brings down the unbroken, solid tablets, his face is קָרַן עוֹר, it is radiating light! The Torah continues to describe how Moses would meet with God, that God would imbue Moses with this קָרַן עוֹר, this radiating quality, and then Moses would communicate God’s will to the Israelites, transmitting both the literal words of God’s message along with the shining radiance of God’s presence.

And after Moses completed transmitting God’s word, when Moses finished acting as an intermediary, what would he do? We could imagine Moses walking around the camp on a sleepless night, when all of a sudden he wakes up the entire neighborhood from his shining face! No, the Torah relates that when Moses finished communicating God’s will, he placed a veil on his face. So it seems like Moses had some type of schedule: he began by meeting with God, then relayed God’s message and God’s light to the Israelites, and then he placed a veil over his face until his next meeting with God.

A nineteenth century Polish rabbi, the Netziv, comments: והיה שמחה לנפש, וטוב לעינים לראות את פניו  - it was joyful to the soul, and good for one’s eyes, to see Moses’ radiating face^[1]. The Netziv mentions the joy, the warmth, the uplifting nature of Moses’ radiance.

The most prolific example of our amazement with shining light is our ritual use of candles. We learn in the Shulchan Aruch, a sixteenth century code of Jewish law, that the reason that we light Shabbat candles is in order to have shalom bayit, or peace in the home. Shabbat candles are meant to brighten our dining rooms, to brighten our homes, to brighten our lives. In this very tangible way, we accept God’s commandment of Shabbat, shape God’s word in the practice of lighting candles, and then we witness the radiant light of the candles, as if they are the lights of Moses’ face that reflect back on us, and inspire us to enter Shabbat in a peaceful manner.

It is my hope and prayer that as we do anything from the mundane like watching the Olympics, or the sacred like observing Shabbat, that we will be able to shine brightly, to ourselves and others, spreading joy and goodness.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi David Russo

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[1]    העמק דבר, שמות ל"ד:ל"ה דיבור המתחיל "כי קרן עור פני משה"

Tetzaveh 5774

Do the Clothes Make the Man?

Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), the Nobel Prize-winning American physicist, would often recall the lessons he learned from his father, Mel, as a young boy:

One of the things that my father taught me besides physics – whether it’s correct or not – was a disrespect for certain kinds of things… One time we were looking at a picture of the pope and everybody bowing in front of him. My father said, “Now, look at those humans. Here’s one human standing here, and all these others are bowing in front of him. Now what’s the difference? … this difference is the hat he’s wearing.” (If it was a general, it was the epaulets. It was always the costume, the uniform, the position.) “But,” he said, “this man has the same problems as everybody else…” [Richard P. Feynman, What Do What Do You Care What Other People Think?, 18]

This week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, which describes in minute detail the various garments worn by the Kohanim (Priests) during their service, would seem to raise this very question. Indeed, contemporary readers can easily find themselves asking Mel Feybman’s question: why all the fancy clothes? Who would be fooled into thinking there was something special about these Kohanim just because they wear a special outfit?

That question resonates in large part because of our celebrity culture – think about the upcoming Academy Awards and all of the attention that will be paid to the “red carpet” and the stars’ outfits. But for the ancient Israelites, things were quite different. Even as God designates the Levites and Kohanim to serve in the Mishkan, we are just weeks out of Egypt; the same people who now take on an important leadership role were, not too long ago, toiling in the sun along with everyone else. By what right do they now separate themselves from the rest of the Israelites, living by a higher standard of purity and religious devotion?

Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin of Volozhin (Russia, 1817-1893) answers this question with a powerful insight into human behavior: the way we dress and the way we act are closely related to one another. If the Kohanim – until recently, ordinary Israelites just like everyone else – were to start holding themselves to a different measure of religious practice, they could easily appear arrogant to the other tribes. Only by donning the uniform, an external signifier of the role they were to play, could they take on their special practices while maintaining the respect of their peers.

Of course, the inverse is true as well – and herein lies the importance of what Mel Feynman taught young Richard: in order to merit that respect, people who wear a uniform, be it military, civil, or religious, must live in a way that earns the honor the clothes are meant to confer. While the conventional wisdom suggests that “the clothes make the man,” both Mel Feynman and Rabbi Berlin remind us that, perhaps even more so, the man or woman – through his or her actions – make the clothes.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Abe Friedman