moses

Rachael’s Thoughts on Shabbat Shira

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This Shabbat is special in that we read of leaving Egypt, crossing the Reed Sea, and singing our first song.  Because we sing the Song at the Sea, the entire Shabbat is named ‘The Shabbat of Song’, Shabbat Shira. 

We are born as a people when we emerge on the other side of the sea.  We inhale and take our first breath as free people; we are transformed from a clan to a nation.  The first thing any newborn must do is breath, and that first breath results in a sudden burst of crying.  Each parent waits for that first cry, the proof of life and breath.  But, in this moment of national birth, as Israel emerges from the sea, we inhale our first breath and sing.  As a newborn bonds to its parent, we bonded to God through breath and song. 

Our sages debated how Israel sang the lyrics to a song they didn’t know, since Moses is composing it on the spot.  One answer is that Israel was not singing the words, the people kept repeating the first word: “Ashira”, “I will sing”.  Every time Moses completed a sentence, the people sang their commitment to covenant and life: “I will sing”.  

In fact, the Torah refers to itself as ‘this song’, and when we chant Torah to each other we sing the traditional notes.  We have shaped the ritual of passage into Jewish adulthood, a Bnei Mitzvah, as calling a young person to the Torah to hear them sing it. We have learned the importance of song, and the importance of committing to it. 

A newborn baby does not consciously experience its birth.  The baby suddenly finds itself in a room of light when it had only known darkness; cold when it had only known warmth; aloneness when it had only known connection – of course a newborn will inhale and cry.  On this Shabbat we read of our conscious transformation, our feelings of freedom and safety, enveloped by God, whose Divine Presence is palpable– of course we would inhale and sing. 

It is traditional to stand in the service when the Song at the Sea is being read from the Torah.  We stand to remember that first instant we stood together, that moment of absolute completion.  We do not deny that life presents challenges, but on this Shabbat we recommit ourselves to sing. 

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate. 

  

Shabbat shalom, 

Rachael 

Rachael’s Thoughts on Parshat Vayishlach

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In this week’s Torah reading, Vayishlach, we see Jacob wrestling with an angel all night until daybreak.  It results in an injury – the angel grabs Jacob’s thigh, injuring his nerve and causing him to limp for the rest of his life.  The severity of that injury has significance both in how it speaks to us in our Jewish identity, as well as how it remains silent. 

Before Jacob is injured, he demands that the angel bless him, and the angel tells Jacob his name will be changed to Israel.  According to the angel, the name means Jacob will struggle with people and with God but will be enabled to meet those challenges.  In the same moment of such a strong blessing we also hear of such a grave injury.  The two extremes sitting side by side teach Jews that Covenant conveys blessings but it is not a shield against injury or pain.  Jewish identity will always contain both the blessings and the pain. 

On a personal level, the injury remains silent.  The Torah tells us Jacob will now limp but Jacob himself never refers to it.  We do not hear him speak to his family of ever being in pain or ever feeling limited because of his limp. 

After Jacob, the Torah introduces us to our next leader, Moses.  Like Jacob, Moses also has a handicap which we learn of when he speaks with God at the burning bush.  Moses tells God he has a speech impediment.  Interestingly, God does not view it as a handicap and nowhere in Torah do we ever see anyone asking Moses to repeat himself because they can’t understand him.  Moses is the only one who sees his limitation and he feels insecure because of it. 

Two leaders stand side by side, both have physical limitations, but Jacob does not define himself by it while Moses does.  It challenges us to ask how much of how we perceive ourselves is based on self-imposed limitations.  Among the many things we learn from Jacob is this subtle detail of personal empowerment: choose the blessings over the pain, and question ourselves about our perceived limitations. 

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.  

Shabbat shalom,  

Rachael  

Rachael’s Thoughts on Shabbat Bereishit

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This is Shabbat Bereishit, the Shabbat when we start reading the Torah from Genesis, the Shabbat of beginning.

We finished the book of Deuteronomy as we learned of Moses’ death.  The Torah describes Moses’ last instant of life as an exhale.  Moses and God, two best friends, are alone in this human moment as Moses exhales his final breath and God inhales it. 

And then we immediately begin the book of Genesis, the description of God creating the first human beings.  Once the body has been formed, God breathes life into the person –God exhales and the human being inhales that breath.  By connecting the end of Torah to the beginning of Torah, we understand that we exist on the shared breath of God and humanity.  As Moses exhales, God inhales, and as God exhales, we inhale.

Breathing is so natural to us, so involuntary, we don’t think of the holiness of each breath.  The cycle of reading Torah, and connecting the end to the beginning, has many meanings.  It is not just the philosophical statement that there is no end and no start to the layers of Torah, it is also the realization that the end informs the beginning.  It is a statement that everything is truly connected.

In a world governed more and more by social media and online communications, it’s easy to become passive and disconnected from each other.  Genesis reminds us that the vision of creation is a world of relationships and connection, the shared breath, the spiritual empowerment.  We do not read Torah again, we read Torah anew.

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.

Shabbat shalom,

Rachael

Rachael’s Thoughts on Parshat Ha’azinu

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This week’s Torah portion, Ha’azinu, is the song Moses composes and delivers to Israel. He worries about Israel’s welfare, and the nation’s struggle with God. Moses repeatedly warns Israel never to underestimate their inclination to deny God, nor God’s response. 

At the same time, we are at the threshold of the holiday of Sukkot, the time we celebrate following God in the wilderness and learning of Divine Love and Divine Protection. It is the time we built our relationship with God. 

These two messages sit side by side this Shabbat. As Jews, we always struggle with understanding God, and the demands of our Judaism. At the same time, we celebrate that same relationship, those same challenges and demands.  

Moses’ worry is that we won’t keep the values of Torah close to our hearts. He refers to it as ‘this song’. He worries we will not teach our children to sing the song of Torah. Of all our leaders, Moses saw firsthand that if the generational chain is not well established, it can begin to disappear – Moses witnessed this in Egypt as slavery took its toll. 

Interestingly, another name for the holiday of Sukkot is ‘Zman Simchateinu’, the Time of Our Joy’. The name itself speaks directly of the message Moses is expressing. His warnings are dire, and the picture he paints is stark, but he always stresses how Torah must be inherited, taught, sung, and enjoyed. 

Through the prophets, God stated how sweet the memory is of our time together in the wilderness, when we followed God with complete trust – when we expressed ‘chesed’ to God in our youth, when we dwelled in our Sukkot.  

Moses worried we wouldn’t understand how important Torah is in our lives. When we sit in a Sukkah, we assure him we won’t ever forget. 

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate. 

Shabbat shalom and Chag Sukkot Sameach, 

Rachael 

Rachael’s Thoughts on Parshat Nitzavim

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This week, we read the Torah portion of Nitzavim – Moses’ words to Israel as he knows his hours are few.  This week, we enter Shabbat, preparing for Rosh Hashanah, as we pray for what only God can give us: time.  

Moses immediately tells Israel that we are all standing together right now.  Whether we are leaders, followers, women, men, elderly, or infants, we meet in this moment, at the threshold of covenant with God.  We all stand equally.  But, Moses is not standing equally with anyone because he knows the day he will die, and he knows his prayers won’t be answered.  He stands alone inside our greatest human fears.  Yet, as always, he has so much to teach us.

Moses reminds us that at the core of everything Jewish will be God, Torah, and each other.  We will house our spiritual expressions in the teachings of Torah, and we will argue with each other about what it means.  Then Moses specifically warns us not to think Torah is a treasure buried somewhere out in the world.  It is not a search for external truth.  Moses tells us the Torah is close to us, it is in our hearts, and when in doubt, we should always look inward.

Soon, we will stand together on Rosh Hashanah, as we enter the holiest time of our year, and we will ask God for time.  We offer God our honest, internal reflections from the past year, as we experience what Moses tried to tell us.  We have a voice in our destinies, a tremendous gift, and as we gather to pray on Rosh Hashanah, we will make our voices heard.  Sometimes prayer is a whisper and sometimes prayer is thunder.  

Jews everywhere will whisper our fears to God, as we raise our voices to create the thunder of ‘Avinu Malkeinu’.  In the end, across millennia of years, we indeed stand where Moses said we would: Nitzavim hayom, “Today we stand together.”

I’d like to wish everyone a Shabbat shalom, and a sweet, healthy, and happy year to come.

May we use our time of Shabbat rest to gather our resources for the holiness of Rosh Hashanah.

Rachael

Rachael’s Thoughts on Parshat Shoftim

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In this week’s Torah reading, Shoftim, Moses discusses impartial justice. For example, don’t play favourites in judicial proceedings, and don’t take bribes. In one of the warnings, the Torah says: ‘don’t recognize faces’, an interesting phrase with a latitude of meaning.

Within the context of a court proceeding, not recognizing faces is clearly saying not to favour someone you know. In other words, look only at the issue and not the person standing there. But, as we are in the month of Elul, a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah, the layered meaning of this phrase becomes relevant. In Elul, we are to assess our past actions, then ask and offer forgiveness to those we have wronged or who have wronged us. The problem is that when we are hurt by someone, we don’t only think of this time, we think of all times in our past when we felt wronged by that person. It’s difficult to think of our pain without thinking of a history of pain.

Given that we accumulate these hurt feelings, it’s now hard to forgive someone without being cynical and thinking it will happen again because of who they are. Now our forgiveness includes our judgments.

The Torah challenges us to approach these moments without ‘recognizing faces’. The focus shifts to the hurt and the attempt to validate and acknowledge what was done through a sincere apology. We are all creatures of habit, and we will continue to hurt others as a natural course of being human. The question is not whether we will do it again –of course we will. The question is whether other people are building biographies of pain around us that activate when they see us. The greater task is to forgive without recognizing faces.

Apologies and forgiveness stand together in a moment in time. The Talmud tells us that true forgiveness means I have let it go, I will not mention it again nor think of it. True forgiveness is a slate wiped clean ready to be written on again. It’s a level few of us achieve, but every year we are invited to do it a bit better than we did before.

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.

Shabbat shalom,
Rachael

Rachael’s Thoughts on Parshat Eikev

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As we continue to hear Moses’ thoughts in parshat Eikev, our Torah reading this week, Moses says something that confuses us.  Moses tells Israel not to forget the past 40 years and the hardships we endured since this was God wanting to know what was in our hearts.  The confusing part is that God is omniscient, all-knowing, wouldn’t God already know what’s in our hearts, and then we could be spared all the hardship and suffering? 

It raises the tension between God knowing everything yet granting us free will.  They seem to be opposing truths that cannot coexist.  While there is no clear resolution, generally our Sages understood that God chooses not to know what we will choose, granting us the space to exercise our free will.   

The greatest gift God bestowed on us is the gift of choosing.  It is an ultimate statement of trust because I could choose to keep myself from God, to exclude God from my life, to deny.  The gift of free will is the act of trust that I will find my own unique way to God and genuinely desire that partnership. 

But why through hardship? When there are simchas in our lives, we open all the doors, as we open our hearts, to celebrate together.  When there are challenges in our lives, we narrow the scope, guard our hearts and trust only those we have chosen as our inner circle.  Moses has told Israel that God desires a presence in our inner circle.   

The strength of free will is immeasurable.  It is how we choose to shape the world around us, to form our families, to create a life journey, and to include God.  Moses has reminded us that our relationships with God are tremendously empowering, often fragile, but ultimately of our own choosing. 

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate. 

Shabbat shalom, 

Rachael 

Rachael’s Thoughts on Parshat Vaetchanan

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This week’s Torah portion, Vaetchanan, has many verses we recognize from within our Siddur.  One of the things we immediately notice is the statement of Shema Yisrael, a core statement of Jewish unity and declaration of monotheism.

​Interestingly, the statement is most often translated as: Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is One.  But the word shema’, in Biblical Hebrew, doesn’t mean ‘hear’ as much as it means ‘understand’.  We are not telling each other to listen up, we are telling each other to try and understand this all important statement.

​Once we reframe the meaning in our minds, we start to notice how many times the word shema appears in this parshah -suddenly it’s everywhere.  Moses tells Israel that God is not ‘listening’ to his need to enter the land; Moses repeatedly tells Israel they must ‘listen’ to the commandments; Moses declares to Israel they must ‘listen’ to each other.

​​In other words, we often tell people they’re not listening to us when we actually mean they’re not understanding us.  Rather than putting the focus on the other person and their listening skills, perhaps the focus should be self-directed by asking if we are expressing ourselves in order to be understood.  If not, we should change our communication, not assume the other person has to change how they listen.

Moses has named the relationships in our lives that are key for understanding each other: God, the society we are building together, and our personal community.  Even as Moses faces his final days, he continues to lead and inspire.

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate. 

  

Shabbat shalom, 

Rachael 

Rachael’s Thoughts on Parshat Devarim

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This week, we begin reading the last book of the Torah, the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy in English).  Devarim recants things we’ve already read, but now it’s told from Moses’ point of view.  We’ve been waiting since the book of Exodus to hear what Moses thinks about his life, and we finally get a glimpse.  He is not a happy man. 

He starts his memory from the time they left Sinai, when he noticed God had fulfilled a covenantal promise by making Israel into a great nation.  ‘So great,’ says Moses, ‘that I told you then I wouldn’t be able to carry all of you with all your problems.’  From that point onward, we hear Moses own responsibility for some things, and blame Israel for others.  It’s a very sobering version.   

We hear the honesty of Moses’ voice as he struggles with what he knows are his final days.  When he finishes his address to Israel, he knows he will die, and so there is nothing to be gained or lost, there is only the opportunity to be heard.   

But that is everything. 

When Moses first meets God, at the burning bush, Moses says he is not a man of words, he will not be listened to or believed.  This self-perception of inadequacy haunts him throughout his leadership.  Aaron is there to support him, as is Miriam, because he always feels he is not good enough to be heard or believed. 

While we are feeling the heaviness of Moses’ fate, the pain of not entering the land of Israel, we should not lose sight of this tremendous gift he is granted in these last days.  Moses is speaking from his heart, and he is listened to, and he is believed.  In fact, several millennia later, we are still reading his book, listening to him, and believing every word. 

We could not imagine our Torah without this last book, the words of Moses, deemed as holy as every other book of Torah. Every year, we read it, we hear him, we understand his human moments, and we give our greatest leader what he deserves –our appreciation and ongoing respect.  The book of Devarim may not give us new information, but it gives us the unfiltered voice of Moses, and his deserved last word on the matter. 

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate. 

  

Shabbat shalom, 

Rachael 

Rachael’s Thoughts on Parshat Matot/Masei

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This week, we read a double portion from the Torah, the chapters of Matot/Masei.  Included in these chapters is a request from two tribes to live outside of Israel.  It raises the ongoing question of whether Jews must live in Israel or can we choose to live elsewhere.

The tribes of Reuven and Gad argue that their livelihoods are better suited to the land they saw before entering Israel.  Just as the daughters of Zelophehad previously argued to change the laws of inheritance so they could acquire land in Israel, these tribes now argue to change the law, so they do not have to acquire land in Israel.  Right from the start, Israel presents a challenge to us where some of us will do anything to be there while others would not.

In the end, Moses strikes a deal with the tribes. They may live outside of Israel if they help acquire the land and ensure that the rest of the nation can live there safely.  Once that is accomplished, they may return to their homes outside of Israel.  Everyone agrees, and it seems to work well until we are told, a generation later, that there are now challenges of common identity when it comes to everyone’s children.

These ancient questions never resolve.  The relationships we all have with Israel are always complex.  They include understandings of identity, politics, ethics, religion, family, and peoplehood.  Everything we’re taught not to discuss at work or at parties.  The strength of the portion in the Torah is the honesty with which everything is raised, discussed and agreed, while showing us that resolutions will be momentary –each generation will face its own Israel challenge.

The last few years we’ve all had our plates full of health concerns, financial changes, and new societal norms.  We’re still in the midst of understanding much of what the world looks like now.  Through it all, Israel, and our relationship with it, may have faded into the background of our lives.  This week the Torah reminds us that even if we do not live there, the commitment, the oneness of nation, and the responsibility to its welfare must never fade.

I’d like to wish everyone a sweet and peaceful Shabbat –our Jewish time to regroup, rest, and reinvigorate.

Shabbat shalom,

Rachael