From the Rabbi

Tonight marks the most significant moment in history when G-d showed up for a meeting with the Children of Israel, who, just seven weeks earlier, had been a people enslaved in Egypt, unsure of whether freedom would ever be theirs.

Mount Sinai was the stage for “matan Torah – the Giving of Torah”, but it was the encampment around the mountain that was the stage for “kabbalat Torah – the Receiving and Acceptance of Torah. Our commentators tell us that there, at the foot of the mountain, the Israelites achieved something amazing and unprecedented. Rashi explains that they were there “k’ish echad b’lev echad – as one person with one heart.”

Rashi seems to be saying that there was an unprecedented unity among the Israelites. From my perspective, that unity allowed not only the giving, but more importantly, the receiving, of Torah.

Unity is something that seems more difficult to achieve that ever. We are woefully divided – and like the Jews in Persia during the Purim saga, more than a little confused. Shavuot, standing once again at Sinai, might afford us some clarity. Imagine what our Jewish world would be like if we could recapture that elusive unity of eons ago at Sinai.

Let’s make that the goal of Shavuot this year. We certainly need it, and we would all benefit in so many ways.

I’ll see you in shul!

Chag sameach and early Shabbat shalom!

Rabbi Chaitovsky

Following her personal reading of this week’s Torah portion, Bechukotai, a congregant emailed me and asked if this week’s Torah portion contains the secret to understanding all that is going wrong in the Jewish world right now – antisemitism, Israel’s low approval rating in the world, college campus encampments, and more. The congregant noticed a word that occurs seven times in this parasha but does not appear anywhere is in Tanach.  Her take on the word made her think about the world…and the Jews who live in it.

The Torah reading contains a series of blessings that will be bestowed upon us as the reward for observing the mitzvot and “keeping the Torah.” But it does not stop with the blessings. The portion continues to describe curses, or execrations, that will befall us as punishment for non-compliance and for non-observance. The list of curses is much longer than the list of blessings. They are difficult to read and horrifying to think about. The word that dots the passages of the curses is keri, pronounced kerry. In context the word seems to convey the idea that if you behave towards me with keri, I will be keri with you. But what does keri  mean?

The various translations include rebelliousness, obstinacy, indifference,
hard-heartedness and reluctance. Maimonides, however, relates it to the word mikreh, meaning “by chance.” The overall message is: if you behave as if history were mere chance, and not the product of Divine Providence, then, says God, I will leave you to chance. The result will be that Israel – a small nation set in a highly hostile neighborhood, then and now – will eventually be defeated, devastated, and come close to destruction.

In the thinking of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, this points to a distinction that we sometimes forget: between Divine punishment on the one hand, and the withdrawal of Divine Providence on the other – what the Torah calls “the hiding of the face” of God. When God punishes, He punishes the guilty. When God withdraws, the innocent are punished, as well. The Torah says that we will be left blowing in the wind, we will be navigating the waters but totally rudderless.

I like to translate keri as casual. My congregant may have been right. The Torah is telling us that our relationship with God should not be a casual one. There must be commitment and consistency, for without them, God’s relationship with each of us…and all of us…could likewise be casual and occasional. Nobody really wants that. Strengthening our Jewish commitment and consistency will prevent that from happening.

Let’s not wait!

Shabbat shalom…and see you in shul.

What a Hebrew calendar year this has been. It’s funny how every year, we comment on “Wow!, Rosh Hashanah is so early this year,” or as we will say this coming High Holidays, “so late this year.” In fact, Rosh Hashanah begins on October 2nd 2024, only 3 days from the absolute latest it can be in the 365 day Solar year.

The Jewish people have intercalated the Solar and Lunar calendar for thousands of years now by making 7 out of every 19 years, a Hebrew leap year where we add an entire extra month known as Adar II or Sheri. This is to ensure that Pesach-Passover actually occurs in the Springtime, the time of our redemption.

Pesach is known as “Chag Heh-Aviv” the Festival of Spring, a time of renewal and rebirth. There is another time of major renewal in Judaism that is directly connected to the land of Israel. It is called Shmitah-The Sabbatical year. In ancient Israel even until this day, our farmlands were to remain fallow, un-planted or harvested by Jews residing in the land for that entire year. We know from modern agriculture, that this was to preserve the nutrients of the soil and give the land itself a Shabbat to recover. What is so fascinating is that it is decreed that in the 50th year of the 7 year cycle, just as Shavuot occurs on the 50th day after Peach,  a Jubilee or “Yuval” was to be proclaimed throughout the land, were all Hebrew indentured servants, basically slaves, were to be released from their servitude.

            More amazing, was that all ancestral land that had been sold because of poverty, had to be returned by deed back to the original tribal owners. Can you imagine, 35 years after you’ve been living in your home, that someone would come banging on the door with the original deed of ownership and said, “Sorry dude, it’s the 50th year since my family left here and you must move and give it back to us. What is going on. Believe it or not, this was maybe the earliest example of a welfare system whereby the native population could not be perpetually poor and at the mercy of society. The current owners of the land knew that in the 50th year, they would have to leave.

The point of all this is The Haftahrah for this Shabbat. We rarely read “Behar” by itself. The calendar has to work out just right. In this story from the Book of Jeremiah, The 1st Temple in Jerusalem is about to be destroyed and the people taken into exile in Babylonia. The land will be empty for over 70 years before Cyrus the Emperor of Persia will allow us to go back and yet, Jeremiah fulfills the mitzvah of redeeming his families land right before he himself is either killed or taken away. I believe in light of what is going on in Eretz Yisrael right now, we must fight for our land. The land is just a manifestation of an idea, that the Jewish people have a homeland. We make it holy, the land does not make us special.

Shabbat Shalom.

In this weeks Pasha, “Emor-Say unto the Cohaneem,” we learn how special it was to be a spiritual leader amongst the Children of Israel. The interesting thing is, that today’s leaders, whether Rabbi’s and Cantor’s or Political leadership like Netanyahu are chosen by the people, or the person themselves. The Priests or Cohaneem were there by virtue of being born to a father who is a Cohen descended from only one person Aaron the older brother of Moses.

            In other words, it wasn’t how much you studied to become a Rabbi, or how astute you were to become a leader of people. It was strictly a matter of birth. Now this doesn’t mean that a Cohen in ancient times didn’t learn and study in order to perform their duties. Quite the contrary. A Cohen had to be a Shochet, a bit of a doctor to diagnose certain diseases, a chemist who could mix the Ketoret of holy incense and many more jobs. The Torah portion enumerates several other restrictions that are laid on the Cohen even mentioning who he could marry.

            In our Haftorah, Ezekiel, the incredible prophet who speaks to the Jewish people in Babylonian exile, speaks to the Cohaneem and Levites who survived the destruction of the first temple. Ezekiel was among a thousand of the Jerusalem Elite who were taken to Babylonia 10 years before the destruction. He had visions of the next Temple or Beit Hamikdash not knowing that it would be only 70 years before the Jewish people returned to Israel. The Book of Chronicles reports that only 4,000-5000 people first returned, most stayed in Babylonia soon to become the Persian Empire.

            Mostly, Ezekiel's message is that the Cohaneem should maintain their physical and spiritual piety and comport themselves properly. If the people could see and experience the purity and specialness of an entire group of Jews, it would give them the strength and motivation to re-build the Holy Land. We need more Ezekiels in our time, to give us strength of purpose and to withstand the barrage of Anti-Jewish hate and propaganda that surrounds us. We are a strong people who have seen pretty much everything over the years. Now, with mass media, tik-tok etc, that have spread falsehoods and outright lies, we all need to be Ezekiels with a vision of a brighter future.

Why do the Jews NEED a Land, anyway? This question was posed to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zt”l by an Imam from the Middle East with whom Rabbi Sacks was in dialogue for a time. Click HERE to listen to his answer based on a verse from this week’s Torah portion, Acharei Mot.