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I want to draw your attention to one passage in Parsha Tzav, the portion assigned to this coming Shabbat.
It’s verse 21. It’s not even the entire verse. Moses has just slaughtered a ram for the sacrifice, and has washed the entrails and is creating a burnt offering. The next line in verse 21 reads: “THAT WAS A BURNT OFFERING FOR A PLEASING ODOR, A GIFT TO THE LORD—AS THE LORD HAD COMMANDED MOSES.” OK. I’m sure the smells at the Holy Temple were pretty powerful. All the sacrifices of all the animals. The oils and the incense and the blood. An earlier pasuk in Tzav even mentions DUNG. So maybe it was a mix of smells. Or perhaps the smells varied, depending on what animal was being slaughtered. We all know that cooked brisket smells a lot different from roasted chicken. But what kind of smell is "pleasing to the Lord"? There is much in the Torah that endows God with senses, right? God SEES what we do. God HEARS our prayers. But here we are told that God is also SMELLING our sacrifices. We don’t usually think of God as a God who smells odors, pleasing or not. And when we endow God with those senses, does that mean that we are dangerously close to ANTHROPOMORPHIZING God? Everyone knows what that mouthful means? To anthropomorphize means to attribute human qualities to God. But the Torah does that all the time. God allows Moshe to see his BACK, for example.
We may never have the answers to any of these questions, but it’s the questions that truly matter.
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If I were to ask you: what are the important concepts we are to learn from the imminent festival of Pesach, you might respond, “The importance of freedom and liberty, the equality of mankind”, “human rights”, “social justice”, and “compassion.”
And yes, the holiday message has a bit of all that and more. But listen to these words from my teacher, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik: “The essence of the Seder and hence that of telling the story of the exodus from Egypt, is the expression of gratitude to the Almighty on the great liberation and miracles that He brought for us in Egypt". As the Rambam - Maimonides - states in his Book of Commandments, “We are commanded to tell the story at the beginning of the 15th of Nisan and we are commanded to thank Him for all the goodness He has bestowed upon us.” We can concentrate on these two words - THANK YOU - because there is nothing more important to talk about on Pesach, especially as we move through the end of Pesach. The theme of Thanksgiving is a central, perhaps THE CENTRAL, part of Pesach. On the Seder night, at the climax of Maggid, we say: "Therefore we are obligated to thank and praise … exalt and revere Him who performed all those miracles and for us.” The fact is, in countless ways, our sages read the story of our Egyptian experience as containing lessons in Thanksgiving. For example... What was Moshe’s name? You say Moses, or Moshe in Hebrew. Not really! That name was given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter. As a child, to escape the Egyptian persecution he was placed in a basket, floated down the river and discovered by the daughter of Pharaoh and was called Moshe – “Ki min ha-mayim mshisuhu” – because I drew him out of the water. But what was the name given to him at birth by his parents? It’s not clearly stated in the Torah … he is always called by this name “Moshe,” given to him by Pharaoh’s daughter. Why? Say our sages: “Mikan attah lomaid s’choron shel gomlei chasidim” – “from here we see the reward given to the righteous.” Because Pharaoh’s daughter was good enough to save his life, as an act of gratitude and appreciation, we and God himself, only referred to Moshe by the name given to him by the daughter of Pharaoh. In Hebrew we call this “hakorat hatov – recognition of the good.” In English it is the two words: THANK YOU. Another example... God appears to Moshe in the burning bush, appoints him as a leader of the Jewish people and tells him to return to Egypt. Does Moshe comply? Not right away! First, he goes back to Yitro – his father-in-law. The Midrash points out that Moshe said to God, “Yitro took me in when nobody else would. I can’t just walk out on him … I first have to go and ask his permission and say thank you for all he has done.” That’s gratitude. Still later Moshe helps bring the plagues on Egypt, but not the first two. Those are brought by his brother, Aaron. Why? Because the first two, blood and frogs, came from water … the very same water that had once saved Moshe’s life. Think about that. It would have been the height of ingratitude for him to bring plagues from the very same water that had helped save his life. Even the water deserves a debt of gratitude. Moshe Rabbeinu – Moshe our teacher. Indeed, his name, Moshe, teaches us to say THANK YOU. May we all recognize the gifts that are ours this Pesach and express gratitude for them all. Our parsha Pekudei tells us...
“And Moshe did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did. It came to pass in the first month, in the second year, on the first day of the month, that the Mishkan was set up.” And the Talmud tells us: “When (the month of) Adar enters we increase in joy!” So, there is clearly a connection between the building of the Mishkan, the moveable sanctuary, and the month of Adar, which includes the joyous holiday of Purim. What is so significant about building the Mishkan that it takes up so much space in the Torah? We have about 4½ chunky Torah portions packed with detailed descriptions of what was commanded and how it was executed with precision. And every year we revisit this account of what was essentially a singular event in history for the plan for a Temple that we’ll never replicate. And, throughout the rest of the year, we confront so many places in the Torah where the halachot are not clear, and the narratives of our ancestors are thin and full of missing details.
A Jewish comedian (is that redundant?) once went to the airport to pick up his mother in-law. On the way home, he asked her, “How long are you staying?” She replied, “As long as you want.” He responded in amazement: “You’re not even coming in for a cup of coffee!?” And here’s the other: When the Kotzker rebbe was a precocious child of three, his rabbi asked him, “Where can God be found?” The child answered: “Everywhere!” His Rebbe shook his head and made clear that that answer was incorrect. So, he asked the child again, only to get the same response. Finally, the Rabbi told him the RIGHT answer: “God can be found only where He is invited to enter.” Here we are at the end of Exodus, and after so many parshiyot devoted to details, it’s easy to miss the big picture, to confuse the forest and the trees. Here, at the end of Pekudei, we witness the completion of the Temple, and we see the manifestation of God’s presence in cloud and fire, a presence that it meant to protect us throughout the rest of our journey. But, even as we travel, and we need to travel, we have a building, a home, a sanctuary, a sacred space where we invite God into our lives. Where we became a true people. The name of the month ADAR in Hebrew is ALEPH-DALET-REISH! ALEPH stands for God, Adonai, Who is one. The first time ALEPH is used at the beginning of a word in Torah is ELOCHIM. DALET- REISH spells DAR, to reside. HASHEM finds residence with us in ADAR. It’s not just when we enter the time zone of Adar that we increase in joy but rather when ADAR enters and penetrates us, to that extent joy is multiplied. Purim is packed with eating and drinking with gusto. Yet, in just such a setting, we joyously welcome God into our very midst, in complete fulfillment of the destiny of the Jews. And we look forward to the Festival of Liberation, of Spring, Pesach! Strangely, this D'Var begins and ends with two parables that involve crying men.
In last week’s parsha we read of the building of the Temple, of the creation of the golden calf, and of the tablets that Moshe destroys in anger. In the midst of all this drama, we also see God’s insistence of the importance of Shabbat. “Six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord.” And Moshe is instructed that even the building of the Holy Temple must cease on Shabbat. Years ago, I attended a lecture that Rabbi Harold Kushner gave about the three world-changing contributions that the Jews gave to humanity. I don’t know what you might think they are, and we could certainly debate some of these points. But, for Kushner, they are: DIETARY RULES (kashrut); MONOTHEISM; and Shabbat, the holiness of a day of rest. A day that separates the mundane work week from the spiritual day that defines us as a people. There is something revolutionary about demanding a day of rest. However hard life must have been, however much the demands of the world call out to us, we are enjoined to observe/to keep the Sabbath. As God tells Moshe, it “shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel.”
A day or so later, a friend visited the man. They were reminiscing about their childhoods, and they began to remember their experiences of Shabbat. They talked about the food they loved, the prayers they chanted, the aromas that they savored as they entered their homes. They reminisced about the songs that they would sing on Shabbat, and they began to sing some of those prayers. The young man began to cry. His memories of Shabbat made him remember that he was a Jew, and how vital that was to his sense of his own identity. He did not abandon his Judaism. I don’t know if that story is true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is. I am sure that we all have different Shabbat rituals, and I would guess that we can’t always commit as fully as we might like to Shabbat observance. Some people, for example, have no choice but to work on Shabbat. And I have NO DOUBT that we all reject the mandate that God gives Moshe in Ki Tissa that we should be killed if we violate Shabbat. Even with all that, though, I do think that we all know - or, better, we all FEEL - the intense significance of this weekly day of rest. Of Shabbat. This was indeed a gift that the Jews gave to civilization, and it is a gift - a blessing - that we give to ourselves. |
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