Torat Moishe - Moishe's Torah

Shabbat Toldot

29 Cheshvan 5771 / Oct. 5 - 6, 2010
Bereshit 25:19-28:9

Blogging the Bibleby Ariel Raz, MH San Francisco

This week's parasha follows the story of Yitzhak, headstrong wife Rivkah and their offspring. The portion presents an opportunity for God to renew and reiterate his vow to Abraham, a vow of longevity and prosperity to his offspring. One of the centerpieces to our portion is the strength of the covenant, the enduring hold of a promise and its ramifications.

A curious element to this story, which follows Abraham's Yitzhak, is how incidental a character our patriarch is. Whereas his father must endure unfathomable hardship to enjoy the common pleasures of life, like having his beloved wife bear his children, Yitzhak is a wholly passive character, his main personality trait being a sort of blind devotion to God and the covenant. Twice--once amid descriptions of his wife's lineage and once after Rivkah’s dialogue with God about how to manage the prophetic truth of bearing twins who are to lead their lives at war, we are bluntly reminded of Yizthak's age. It's as if there is nothing else to say about him.

So this section has a, what one could call, a gender reversal: Rivkah is the active character; Yitzhak, the passive. Pretty subversive for biblical text.

Later, when Ya'akov, with Rivkah's encouragement, commits an act of deathbed deception, Yitzhak is powerless to overturn it. This too speaks to Yitzhak's passivity, but also to our own powerlessness when facing a covenant, or a promise that we have made. One lesson is that we should not take a promise lightly, even if the outcome is undesirable or unfair.

That lesson has powerful resonance. It teaches us to be careful of what we promise and relentless about seeing them through, even when they are unfair. But this should give us pause. It's unsettling how Ya'akov's diabolical lie goes unpunished, especially considering he uses the lord's name to take credit for the speediness with which he, disguised as his brother Esav, was able to fashion his father's favorite meal. And it's downright unfair that Esav, the more able brother, is outwitted by a cunning brother and a conniving mother.

But the greater point here is that a bond with God is unyielding. That we must take the utmost care to ensure that it's sanctity is in tact. Because that which is holy can easily be corrupted, and the burden is on us to maintain a pure covenant.

Parashat Chayei Sarah
15 Cheshvan 5771 / Oct. 29 – 30, 2010
Bereishit 23:1 – 25:18

“I Saw the Sign!”
by Zvi Bellin, MHHQ

Eliezer, Avraham’s servant, is sent back to Avraham’s home town to find a wife for Isaac. Avraham wants this bride to be from his very own family. Eliezer arrives at the town’s well and thinks,

“Gee! How am I going to find a woman from Avraham’s family? This is tough! I know, I will ask for a sign.”

Which he indeed does. The woman who will be for Isaac will be one who draws water for Eliezer and for all his camels. This lady with exceptional kindness will be perfect for Isaac (who often represents restriction). Just as Eliezer finishes asking for this sign, Rebecca comes down to draw water. Eliezer runs to her and asks for water. Rebecca quickly gives him to drink and then says the magic words, “I will even get water for your camels to drink.” SCORE!

And what did Eliezer do – he waited and watched with astonishment as Rebecca finished quenching the camels’ thirst. (Chapter 24, verse 21). He did not jump into action immediately after she made the offer; rather he paused and took in the complete fulfillment of his requested prophecy.

The mentioning of Eliezer’s pause caught my attention this week. It reminded me of the countless times that I receive a sign from the universe that things will work out the way I want them to. I get very excited and then when things turn sour, I experience disappointment or hopelessness. Maybe we can learn from Eliezer that when we are witnessing a sign we can pause and consider alternatives as to what it might mean. We can give a little time to pass to see if the sign is actually hinting at what we think, or perhaps not at all. Said simply, I can learn not to rush into narrow interpretations of events.

And also, like Eliezer, after pausing and witnessing, it is okay to make decisions based on a carefully interpreted sign. After the camels completed to drink, he presented Rebecca with gifts and discovered that he indeed found Avraham’s kin and the perfect wife for Isaac.

Parashat VaYeirah
15 Cheshvan 5771 / Oct. 22 - 23, 2010
Bereishit 18:1 - 22:24

I think there are actually two overarching themes in this parsha; one is brutal lawlessness and the other is brutal love between parent and child.

Perhaps symbolically, we start off with Abraham serving angels calf and milk. Abraham, one of the holiest men in Judaism (and of course also Christianity and Islam), is serving one of the most unkosher meals ever and to angels!!! Perhaps even more amazing is the fact that the angels eat it and their next action is to reward him and Sarah with news of a son. Ok fine, this meal was prepared before the laws of kashrut were handed down, but I think that there was a reason why it was calf and milk. It could have been calf and potatoes or milk and vegetables but it was specifically calf and milk. Calf and milk is treif because it represents the mixing of the mother and child---killing a child and mixing with the mother---it is an unholy mixture. Immediately we have both themes of the parsha intertwined - lawlessness and parent:child.

Sarah responds to the good news of a new child by laughing - perhaps literally, perhaps metaphorically - in G-d's face.

We've barely begun the parsha and we already have Abraham cooking one of the most treif meals possible and Sarah laughing in G-d's face.

Lawlessness!

After some incredibly monotonous arithmetic swordplay between G-d and Abraham (50, 45, …, 15, 10) we transition to what happens when the angels actually get to Lot's house in the horrible city of Sodom and Gomorrah. Immediately every man in town --the entire town--surrounds Lot's house and demands that Lot lets them in so that they can Sodom-ize his guests. Lot responds by begging the townspeople to, instead, take his virgin daughters and to "do to them as you please".

Now we're dealing with lawlessness riding piggy-back on even greater lawlessness - notably, always within the context of parents and their children.

The angels are kind enough to absolve Lot from having to deal with this situation any further by blinding the townspeople, and then they immediately tell Lot to get the hell out of town and to take his family with him, because they're going to destroy the city. In perhaps one of the most famous scenes in Genesis, although the fleeing family (minus the sons who mocked Lot's warnings and stayed behind) was instructed not to look, his wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. Why salt? Salt was actually precious, almost worth its weight in gold and is also a wonderful preservative. Is Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt a condemnation or an adulation?

We've just heard about Lot offering his daughters in exchange for peace to the angels/men (whether he knew they were angels was unclear). Lot's wife may or may not have feared G-d but her love for her children was so great that as the city was being destroyed she had to look back. It is all too common to read this story as a reflection of the weakness of woman, but I wonder if this story is more about the strength of a woman's love for her children.

So we have Abraham cooking up some treif, Sarah laughing in G-d's face, Lot offering his daughters up for gang-rape, and we have Lot's wife looking back. But apparently, that's not enough lawlessness…nor is it enough about parent:child relations...

We now cut to a scene where Lot is in a cave, with his two daughters - the same two daughters Lot offered to the townspeople. The daughters are convinced that they must either seduce their father by getting him drunk, or they will never reproduce. Obviously, they whipped out the wine opener, and drunken incest-rape ensues. Note that they were both successful in becoming pregnant, and that this is where King David's lineage comes from, and that King David's lineage is of course the ancestry of the Messiah. SO, the next time you mock or judge these women, realize that you are mocking and judging the great great great…..great great great grandmother of the Messiah. If you were convinced that you were the last human on earth would you sleep with your father for the sake of humankind? If not, does that make you a greater or lesser person than these women?

Either way, this parsha has just dished out another delicious combo of lawlessness and parent:child love for us. Oy ve.

The next part is so weird and contorted, it gives me chills.

While Abraham is journeying in Gerar, Abraham tells everyone that Sarah is his sister so that they don't kill him in order to be able to take her as their wife. The king of Gerar, Abimelech, had Sarah "brought to him". In a dream G-d tells Abimelech that he's going to die, for he has "taken" a married woman. Abimelech realizes that he has done something horribly wrong, but pleads to G-d that he did it unknowingly since he thought Sarah was just Abraham's sister. Interestingly, it is never clearly articulated whether Abimelech slept with Sarah or not, but in the very next scene, Sarah is pregnant. We are not told how much time has elapsed.

Given the behaviors of the time and the persistent theme of lawlessness, the wandering mind may dare ask the question: Was Abimelech, Isaac's birth father? Probably, not, but either way we can definitely be sure that Abraham was at the very least concealing part of the truth when claiming Sarah as his sister.

Lawlessness wins again.

Isaac is born and everything is happy and wonderful for Sarah who revels in her laughter, when almost immediately we are thrust into more intertwinements of lawlessness + parent:child relations: Sarah demands Abraham to send Hagar and Ishmael , the son Hagar had borne to Abraham, into the wilderness (so that Isaac doesn't have to share the inheritance - again we're witnessing a mother's love for her own children overriding other considerations). Abraham complies, having been assured by G-d that his son will survive. Hagar wanders in the wilderness, and after running out of water in the wilderness (a classic symbol of lawlessness) Ishmael almost dies before G-d rescues her and Ishmael with more water. The close call between Ishmael and death can mean many things, but I just want to point out that Abraham almost killed Ishmael by agreeing to send him and Hagar into the wilderness.

After reading these stories I have a sense of "Oh my G-d we really need laws - without structure the world would be such a horrible place!". I find myself wondering if I only think all these behaviors (e.g. Sodomites raping visitors) are so bad because the laws against these abominable behaviors have already existed all my life - am I brainwashed? Was Lot brainwashed from being surrounded by such extreme abomination?

Maybe a lesson needs to be learned from the chronological positioning of these stories? This parsha obviously came before Moses gave us the groundwork upon which all modern civilization is based, and in these stories you can see the way the world was before Moses.

The truth is that the scientific community would argue that many of these stories are likely to be at least true in principle - rape, sacrifice, and incest were all regular occurrences in that day and age. So maybe these stories are here to simply to instill a sense of awe in us, and a newfound appreciation for how far we've come as a society, and as a people?

We may never know the answers to these questions, but one thing that is apparent from both scientific and spiritual grounds is that we humans have been selected to have a sense of morality, and that those who lack that sense are usually removed from the face of the Earth rather quickly. Whether by epic floods, sulphuric fire from the heavens, or by an inability to cooperate well enough to survive together in more difficult times, we would clearly all perish without the divine sense of love and care for each other, and for our children.

G-d in All Things

Shabbat Lech-Lecha
8 Cheshvan 5771 / Oct. 15 – 16, 2010
Bereshit 12:1 – 17:27

What grabbed my attention in this week’s portion is the use of the word נפש (NEFESH) in three different places. Let me list the verses and then talk about the meaning of the word נפש .

In Chapter 12, verse 5, we read that Abram took all his belongings, including his kinsmen, with him when he left his father’s house. The verse lists that he took his wife, Sarai, his nephew, Lot, all of their stuff, and the נפש that they all made. The word נפש here is generally interpreted as slaves and/or people that signed on to the Monotheistic way of life.

Later in the chapter, verse 13, Abram and Sarai are on their way to Egypt to escape a disastrous famine in the Canaan. Abram instructs Sarai to tell the Egyptians that she is Abram’s sister in order that, “it will go well with me, and my נפש will be saved for your sake.” Abram assumed that if the Egyptians knew Sarai was his wife, he would be killed so that Pharaoh can have this rare beauty. In this context, נפש, refers to Abram’s life.

The last use of נפש that I wish to call attention to is in Chapter 14, verse 21 in which Abram and his warriors vanquished the army of an alliance of kings who were living in Canaan. These kings were warring against another set of kings. The vanquished kings made the mistake of taking Lot, Abram’s nephew, captive – and nobody messes with Abram’s family. Thus, Abram helped the one set of kings (who among them was the King of Sodom) defeat the other group of kings. After all the fighting, the spoils of war belonged to Abram – after all, he lead the charge of victory. The King of Sodom approached Abram and asked him for his נפש back. This is traditionally interpreted as wanting back his people that were originally captured by the enemy. Abram obliges and declares that he will not take anything that originally belonged to the King of Sodom.

Though נפש is used here as meaning people or life, there is another mystical meaning. In Jewish thought there are at least 5 levels of soul. The “lowest” of which is called נפש . This level of soul refers to the base physical desires that are present in all living beings – for example, the need for sex and hunger. I believe that the use of the word נפש in this part of Abraham’s journey is teaching us about the unique revelation that he lived his life disseminating – that even the most base, physical experiences of the human being stem from the highest spiritual connection. In my understanding of Judaism, believing in one G-d means that there can be as much holiness in going to the bathroom as there is in fasting on Yom Kippur!

In the first verse, when Abram takes his נפש with him, it can be a reference to him “taking” the understanding of how intimately the physical and spiritual are connected. After he goes to Egypt, in Hebrew מצרים (Mitrayim), the Land of Constriction. Here Abram needs help to hold on to his insight and it is Sarai who saves the unique revelation of oneness. And in the third verse, the King of Sodom, asks for his נפש to be returned. Perhaps he is not ready for that level of Divine integration. It is a scary thought to believe that God is in our shit. Abram does not resist King Sodom’s request to return his נפש, because Abram does not need others to think like him in order to feel justified.

To sum things up, I think this is what we can learn from our Grand Papa Abraham:

1. 1. As Lauryn Hill said, “Everything is Everything!” Or, everything in this reality is a gateway to spiritual connectedness, even the un-pleasantries that we rather deny.

2. 2. We do not have to push ourselves to believe in anything new. We do have to live in a way that protects our revelations and perspectives, though.

3. 3. Differing beliefs and understandings do not mean that you are wrong. There are multiple levels and comforts when thinking about G-d in the world.

Wishing you a beautiful week!

Zvi Bellin, MHHQ

Parshat Noach
1 Cheshvan 5771 / Oct. 8-9,2010
Bereshit 6:9 - 11:32

Lessons from Noah
by Rae Gross, Moishe House Orange County

This week’s Torah portion made me think about a recent experience of mine. I just started taking a painting class. My very first project assigned was to paint clouds, I sat in class for a moment, bewildered as to what to do and then decided the only way to learn was to dive in and start mixing colors. I have to say, my first attempt wasn’t bad, but I knew I could do better. So I took my first painting of clouds, I painted over the canvas in grey (but not before taking a picture to document my first ever painting) and made my second attempt.

The second painting was a lot better; I took what I learned from my first painting and incorporated that with a clearer vision of what I wanted to create the second time around.

When I thought about this week’s Torah portion, I saw G-d for the first time as an artist, he/she had created something that wasn’t bad, but it could be improved on. When I was younger I used to think that G-d was incredibly cruel for flooding the World and making Noah start all over again with just his family. But now, I see this as G-d’s way of graying over the canvas and starting again.

Another thing that has always stood out to me was Noah’s obedience. Plenty of people balk at doing things, even small tasks because they are not convenient. What G-d asked Noah to do was not easy, but he did it because he was supposed to. How often do we neglect doing small things for ourselves, things that might otherwise save us from our own internal flood because it is just not convenient?

Simchat Torah
Parashat V’Zot Habracha
by Josh Weinstein, MH Palo Alto

It was a month ago, late at night, when I received a call from my father. Josh, he said, almost whispering, Zayde has passed away. My reaction was total incomprehension; something I later heard was not unique to me. Why would he do that? Who killed him? The notion that my grandfather, Eddie Weinstein, could expire by any natural means seemed utterly impossible. Only a few years earlier he was still running the same sweater factory in Queens he had built from scratch decades ago. I for one could not understand how a man who had insisted just six weeks beforehand on stopping for beer after dark on highway E30 en route to Warsaw could have any less than ten years left. This was a man who gushed about his children and grandchildren while communicating his life experiences before schools in the Bronx and by video-conference with schools in Australia, exuding infinite resolve. And yet one August 12, he quietly left us in his sleep.

Arriving in New York the following day and looking out onto the five hundred attendees at his funeral, I felt dazed. This crowd had gathered for what was to me a very personal loss. Eddie was the grandfather who took me to Met games, who listened patiently to me when I was seven as I explained to him what I had learned about the week’s parsha at day school, and who had given me a summer job on his factory floor when I was nine, measuring and marking zippers. And yet Eddie was also a man who had remained alive within the gates of the man-made hell known as Treblinka II for 17 days, witnessing the darkest depths of inhumanity in the fiery pits that consumed more than eight hundred thousand Jewish men, women, and children, his mother and brother among them. A man who, with an untreated bullet wound to his right lung, smuggled himself out of the camp in a train car filled with the belongings of slain innocents. A man who made it back to his town’s ghetto to warn the remaining inmates, who hid in the dyke of a fish pond for a year and a half, and who finally, escaped capture when turned into the German authorities by local Polish villagers. A man who joined the Polish Second Army, marched on Saxony, and proudly participated in Germany’s defeat.

My visit with my grandfather to Treblinka in late June was my first and his last. He was the last able-bodied survivor of that death camp, and after lighting yarzeit candles and reciting kaddish, he walked away, my arm around his back. Standing before the hundreds who came to pay their respects in New York six weeks later, I found the realization of the significance of this event, in its seeming finality, overwhelming. It was as though my memory of him merged right then and there with the vast sea of collective Jewish memory and longing, of loved ones lost and families rebuilt, of a civilization destroyed and renewed.

Every year on Simchat Torah we read from parshat Vezot ha’Bracha and recall the passing of Moses, unable to enter the Promised Land: vayamat sham moshe eved hashem b’eretz moav. The Torah ends with an affirmation of Moses’ uniqueness in what he had done for and before the Children of Israel.

The generation that is passing from us now is one that, in protecting and rebuilding a people and civilization on the verge of annihilation, achieved something tangibly similar to what Moses did in taking the Israelites out of Egypt. In their brief interlude upon the earth, this generation brought us up from the deepest abyss and gave us a future of unimaginable opportunity to live our lives as Jews. They restored Jewish sovereignty in Israel, they unleashed creative genius in every field of science and literature, and those like Eddie became the embodiment of the American dream, building new lives, successful businesses, and loving Jewish families.

The two final readings on Simchat Torah, the first parts of The Book of Genesis and The Book of Joshua, remind us both of the chaos from which our world has come and of what is required of us in facing its uncertainties and challenges. As God reminds Joshua, rak hazak ve’amatz, only strength and courage. We must remember that while people die, legacies do not; that they are there to be built upon, and not to gather dust as relics of history. So may it be with our grandparents’, so may it be with our parents’, and so may it be with our own.

Josh Weinstein is a graduate student at Stanford University and a resident in Moishe House Palo Alto

Eddie Weinstein’s memoir, 17 Days in Treblinka, is published by Yad Vashem

The Big Beresheet BANG!

I want to share this very simple idea with you about the word Beresheet. It begins with the letter BEIT (ב) and is the first letter of the Torah. The letter is a bracket, or a container for all that is to come. And all that is to come is the creation of the world and the continual unfolding story of the entire universe, including your own story. That is quite a lot!

Inside the letter ב is a small little dot. The dot tells us that in order to pronounce the letter we have to squeeze are lips together and then create a small burst that makes a B sound. Try it! Make a B sound really slowly and experience that tiny explosion.

Think about all the potential that is squeezed into the beginning of the Torah cycle, the beginning of another yearly cycle in your personal life. I imagine that the dot in the ב is a reminder of the Big Bang, that tiny intense pregnant particular from which all matter exploded from. That is the moment of starting the Torah again, the whole year is compacted into the first sound and when we speak the first word we let loose the chain of events that will lead us into the New Year.

It is a time of year to bring intention to how you embark on new beginnings. What is your mindset going into the New Year? What are some of your first thoughts and words? What are the activities that you engage in? I invite you to act, think, and intend as if you knew it would impact your entire year to come.

Many blessings!

Zvi Bellin, MHHQ

The Spirit of Sukkot
Shabbat Sukkot
17 Tishrei 5771 / September 24 – 25, 2010

I would like to suggest that the same goes for the Sukkah. We create this structure that is bound in space and time as a container for this immense energy. It is a filtration system for Divine flow giving us the ability to connect authentically with the physical-spiritual world without becoming completely nullified. Thus, the mitzvah of the chag is simply to be in the Sukkah – to integrate your personal vessel into the larger container of the Sukkah. In other words, to find your unique place in the world. The lulav and etrog are the symbolic tools with which we draw in the unbounded energy into the Sukkah (and ourselves!), from the 6 directions into the center.

Lest we begin to confuse the container for the source of energy, the Sukkah is built to be flimsy and temporary. This is a reminder that while our models and perceptions of understanding the world around us are important, they are ultimately limited. Practically, this means that we become aware of our place in the world AND stay open to new insights and changes.

Chag Sameach and Many Blessings!
Zvi