Sh'lach 5773

In this week’s parsha, Sh'lach Lecha, we read the story of the 12 spies. After the devastating report of 10 of the spies, Calev ben Yefuneh stands up in front of the entire people (Numbers 13:30):

“And Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it.”

Calev creates a dream, a goal for the Israelite nation; one that the other spies believe is simply unattainable. The other spies have no hope, no desire to enter the Land that they had thought about for so long; they have no dream for the future of their people.

We see another example of problematic visioning later in the parshah. After the people see that those who spoke badly about attempting to enter the Land of  Canaan die, some of them seek to remedy the mistake. They wake up early in the morning, and tell Moshe that they want to enter the Land, that they want to fight the current inhabitants of the Land. But Moshe says to them, No, now is not the time. They do not listen to him, and they go and fight, and they get killed. These people have a concrete action in mind; but they do not have a clear vision for the future of the Israelites.

The great Jewish thinker Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes in a similar vein about prayer:

“Prayer is no substitute for action. It is, rather, like a beam thrown from a flashlight before us into the darkness. It is in this light that we who grope, stumble, and climb discover where we stand, what surrounds us, and the course which we should choose.” (Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, pg. 342)

Heschel advises us, as the parsha does, to combine dreams and actions, to determine a vision, and then follow it through with action. What are your dreams? For this summer? For the next school/fiscal year? What do you want to accomplish?

I wish all of us a summer full of big dreams, hopes, and goals, and the ability to follow it up with appropriate action.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi David Russo

Beha'alotcha 5773

A Lamp of The Lord is the Soul of Man

This week’s Torah portion, Beha’alotcha, opens with God’s instructions to Aaron about how to light the lamps of the menorah in the Mishkan – which raises a difficult question: why does Aaron light the menorah only here, more than halfway through the Torah, instead of earlier – in parashat Pekudei, when the Mishkan was set up, or in parashat Shmini, when it was dedicated?

We are familiar with the use of light as a metaphor for spiritual experience; the book of Proverbs tells us, For the mitzvah is a lamp, and the Torah is light (6:23). And light, as we know, has special qualities. Only light can travel vast distances, literally across the universe, without ever slowing down or weakening.  And only light – specifically, candle light – can spread without diminishing the original light.  If you take a cup of water and divide it into two cups, you have half as much water in each cup; but take a candle and light a second candle, and you have twice as much light as before.

The menorah is lit now, after the census of the Israelites at the beginning of the book of Numbers, to remind us – again, in the language of Proverbs – that A lamp of the Lord is the soul of man (20:27).  Aaron is only able to light the lamps in the Mishkan after each and every Israelite has been accounted for, because each person is God’s lamp, bringing divine light into the world.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Abe Friedman

Pesach 5773

The View from the Other Side

As we approach the final days of Pesach, I’m always struck that we put so much emphasis on the beginning of Pesach and the seder and the telling of the story of the plagues and the Exodus – and rightfully so, since so much of the emphasis of the holiday is around those moments of the seder and the meal.

But we also should pay attention to the conclusion of Pesach and the significance of these final days. It’s no accident that we read the story of the splitting of the Red Sea and the Israelites’ crossing over on the seventh day of Pesach. When we really understand the story of the Exodus, we see that there are actually two different kinds of redemption that are told in this story: There is the story we know from the Haggadah from the seder, the story of the bad things that happen to us, and how they stopped; and in life there is that kind of redemption, the end of difficult times in our life. But the end of hard times is not a complete redemption, and so we have also the story of the splitting of the Red Sea, the triumphant escape of the Jewish people, and the moment at which they leave the boundaries of Egypt. They cross through the sea, they merge on the other side, and they are in the wilderness, as their own people, a free people. And that’s the path of liberation that takes us not just out of hard times, but into the promise of good things, the ability to be a free nation with our own destiny, on our way to our own land.

As we, this year, approach the final days of Pesach, it’s a good time to think about ourselves: now that we’re through the seder, now that we’ve considered the hard times and we’ve moved through, what are the good redemptions that we are looking forward to?  What are the new opportunities? What are the hopes that we have for this time, a time that is not only a physical springtime but a spiritual springtime as well?

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,
Rabbi Abe Friedman