Drash: Tetzaveh

By Brian Schachter-Brooks

One of the great failures of the religious traditions is that in attempting to forge a vision of unity, they tend to reduce the richness of our multi-faceted experience into only one type of experience. An example of this can be seen in the different approaches to the duality of “personal” vs. “impersonal.”

Some teachings claim that everything that happens is totally personal. In this way of thinking, it is not merely our human relationships that are personal, but the meetings we have with nature, the seemingly random events that happen to us daily, and even the positions of the stars are totally personal. To embrace this kind of approach is to see meaning everywhere and to have a personal relationship with all of existence.

Other teachings claim that reality is essentially impersonal. In this approach, one is encouraged to see even human relationships as impersonal. The same impersonal laws of nature which govern the cosmos are also unfolding in how we interact with one another. We are encouraged to “take nothing personally” and to not project our own sense of meaning on the world. To embrace this kind of approach is to not be caught in the web of judgment and accept things as they are, without personal attachment.

Both of these views are born of an attempt to reconcile the confusion of our dualistic, complex experience. But the fact is, we experience reality as both impersonal and personal, and this is unsettling. We long for clarity, for a universe that makes sense, for a view that will give us a unified way of approaching life. And so we gravitate toward beliefs that are reductionist, that elevate part of our experience as real and label the other part as unreal.

But these reductionist approaches, whether they be the personal, faith-based leaning of Western religions or the impersonal, non-attachment leaning of Eastern religions, ultimately do not work- not just because they are not true, but because they fail to reach the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is not the complexity of our experience, but the complexity of the “I” that is experiencing it. If we want to find real unity, we won’t find it by pretending that reality is simple when it’s not. Rather, we need to discover the aspect of ourselves that is unity; we need to find the root of our experience which is the deep source of thought, the totally simple and radiant root of our own being, which is also called Hokhmat HaLev- Wisdom of the Heart.


This parashah begins with the mitzvah of pressing olives for olive oil that is to be used to light the ner tamid- the constantly burning lamp in the portable sanctuary called the mishkan, and later in the Jerusalem temple. “V’atah t’tzaveh et b’nai Yisra’el- and you (Moses) shall command the children of Israel- v’yik’hu eilekha shemen zayit- they shall take for you olive oil- zakh, katit lama’or- pure, pressed for illumination- l’ha’alot ner tamid- to kindle a lamp continuously.”

When you press olives for oil, you are taking something that is complex- the olive fruit, with its skin, flesh and pit, and you are extracting from it something that is simple- the continuous, flowing substance of the oil. Then, when you burn the oil, it becomes the fuel for producing heat and light. This process is a precise metaphor for the inner work. First you must take that which is complex- your own infinitely branching tendrils of thought, and “press” it into its essence, which is a pure simplicity. How is this done? “L’ha’alot ner tamid- to kindle a lamp continuously.” The “kindling” of the “lamp” is a metaphor for awareness; just as you need light in the physical world to see, so you need awareness in your inner world to perceive. So to the degree that you can keep your inner lamp continuously burning, your ever branching streams of thought return to their root, which is awareness itself.

In this way, rather than pacifying the anxiety of living in a reality that is one moment intimately personal and the next moment vastly impersonal, we open to the all embracing unity which is our own attention. Because in the field of our attention, all opposites can coexist without tension; our awareness receives everything as it is, with all its contradiction.

There is a mystical idea in the Kabbalah and in Hassidism that God is the true reality, and that the phenomenal world we see around us is like a covering, hiding the reality of God. But the truth is actually the exact opposite. When we look around, we often don’t connect with the world, because there is the barrier of our own minds in the way. We feel disconnected, and we long for unity, so we invent the mental idea of “God” which is the true reality, as a Being separate from the world. But what we really need to do is find the world hidden in the word “God.” Because “God” is ultimately not something different from Reality Itself; if we want to find God, we need only to pay attention to reality around us in this moment.

This is also the message implied in the holiday of Purim which is coming in this month of Adar. On Purim we read the Megillat Ester- the Scroll of Esther- in which God is not even mentioned once. The idea is that God is the story itself; the synchronistic events in this redemptive story are the unfolding of God as reality; God and the world are not two separate things. Similarly, this parashat T’tzaveh is the only parashah in the book of Sh’mot in which Moses’ name is not mentioned, implying that the Torah, the Teaching, is not limited by the man Moses, but is the unfolding the story itself. And the “story” is happening Now; it is reality unfolding in this moment. From this we can begin to understand the Talmudic saying that “God, Israel and the Torah are One.”

There is another saying- “Misheh nikhnas Adar marbim simkha- when Adar enters, joy increases.” What greater joy could there be than realizing that the God we seek has been here all along and it could never be otherwise! As we approach the celebration of Purim with its concealing costumes and masks, may we remove the mask of our own judgmental minds, so that we may behold the Divine which is nothing but Reality Itself.

Read the rest

Parsha: Tetsavveh & Ti Kissa: Hearing God’s Word

By Zelig Golden

In this week’s parsha, Tetsavveh, Moses stands alone on the Holy Mount Sinai – for forty days and forty nights – downloading from God the rituals that will become the roots of Jewish priestly practice. Moses’ solo journey on Mount Sinai continues into next week’s parasha, Ki Tissa, where Moses receives the Pact between God and the people carved into two tablets “by the finger of God.” (Exodus 31:18). Of course, we never know the contents of the first Pact, because Moses smashes them upon his return to the people, where he is enraged by the sight of the Golden Calf and the lack of faith it represents. (32:19).

Moses later returns to the Holy Mountain to once again receive the pact with God. But this time, God tells Moses to carve them himself (34:1). Ultimately, then, the commandments from God come to us through the conduit of Moses. From this story, I burn to know what it means to hear God’s instruction. How do we know what is truly God’s word?

In a rare Torah moment, we get some insight when Moses turns to God and asks God to show itself, to prove its existence to Moses. (33:12-13). God agrees, with the caveat that Moses cannot see God’s face, “for people may not see Me and live.” (Ex. 33:20). So, God places Moses in a cleft of rock, where he shields his face until God has passed so that Moses can get a glimpse of God passing. (33: 22-23).

In this passage, I am encouraged to embrace the mystery of life. To see God’s face, to see the complete truth of the universe, would mean the end of the mystery that drives our lives. As the people Israel – “God Wrestlers” – we are here to struggle, to yearn, and to live in awe of the vast beauty of God’s creation.

Even Moses, our greatest prophet, could not see the whole. The Jerusalem Talmud teaches that when Moses asked God to teach him the truth of Jewish law, God responded, “That is impossible, because the Torah requires us to interpret her many faces … for there are forty-nine way of interpreting the Torah.” (Sanhedrin 4:2).

To live is to embrace the mystery of life, and accept that there is no one truth. As individual sparks of the divine, our journey in finding God is to learn to hear the word of God with our own ears and our own hearts, and to interpret the faces of Torah from the place of our own faith; and ultimately, to share our insights with our unique voice. Then, in conversation with each other, we may come to more fully understand the whole of creation.

Read the rest

Parsha: Mishpatim

By Kerrick Lucker

This is a shortened version of an essay I wrote for Jewish Mosaic's Torah Queeries. I included the shortened version in the Shabbat supplement on Friday, February 1, and reprint it here by request.

Revolution is the Easy Part

It's one thing to break down barriers of oppression. It’s quite another to build a community of shared liberation. This is what Moses and the People of Israel learn in this week's Torah portion, parashat Mishpatim.

A shared sense of community sometimes arises naturally out of shared oppression, but when liberation happens—and we start to experience the brisk wind of real freedom—that sense of community often quickly dissolves. Freedom is hard work. Self-governance is hardest of all.

Once you’re out in the desert and having to find your own food and make your own laws and mediate your own conflicts, there can be a strange yearning for the old days in mitzrayim, the narrow place.

At Chochmat HaLev, we engage with Jewish practice in many ways. There is room for different interpretations of Jewish law and tradition by those among us. Some of us observe Jewish laws very closely; still others don’t consider themselves Jewish at all. The standards to which we hold ourselves in our covenant with G-d are very different. So how much more important it is to create and keep common agreements about how we treat each other!

What does it mean to you to treat others justly? Much of Mishpatim deals with how one treats one’s neighbors. What does Mishpatim say about how we compensate each other for the hurts we cause? How do we, as members of one community, hurt each other? To whom do we owe recompense, and how much?

Considering these things—frustrating, but rewarding; political and complicated, but heartfelt if we do it right—is part of what it means to build a community. When we turn our attention from battering at the things that hold us back, we look forward, in trepidation and awe, at the task of moving into freedom. An essential part of that task is making community. Otherwise, there is no “we” to be free.

Read the rest

Drash: Parasha Mishpatim with Karen Erlichman

By Karen Erlichman, Director of the San Francisco Office of Jewish Mosaic

Good Shabbas.

This week’s Torah portion is Parasha Mishpatim, which translates as “rules” or laws, and delineates some of the most central sacred teachings and commandments of Jewish life and practice.

This list of rules and laws was mind-boggling to me as I read it. The text starts out with guidelines for how Jews will treat their Hebrew slaves, and then goes on like this:

• You must not carry false rumors;
• You shall not join hands with the guilty to act as a malicious witness;
• You shall not oppress the stranger;
• Let the needy among your people eat;
• On the 7th day you shall cease from labor, in order that your farm animals may rest and that even the stranger and the bondsman will rest/replenish their souls.
• Observe the pilgrimage festivals 3 times a year;
• Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.

There is so much in this parasha that it was overwhelming to sift through. Just to absorb the fact that Jews kept slaves, let alone enslaved other Jews was difficult enough. As I read on, I thought the psychology of slavery and the impact of slavery on us as a people. What has become our slave mentality as Jews? How do we experience ourselves as oppressors and oppressed? And what does that teach us about how to treat the ger, the different one among us?

The word ger, or gerim in the plural, is usually translated as "stranger," although Everett Fox translates it as “sojourner,” and my Hebrew-English Dictionary defines ger as a “proselyte,” a disciple or convert.

The commandment that instructs us not to oppress the stranger is repeated twice in this parasha, and appears 36 times in the Torah, more often than any other.

The text first says:

V’ger lo toneh v’lo til’chatz’nu, ki gerim ha’yitem b’eretz mitzrayim.
You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (22:20)

Then about 20 lines later, it is re-emphasized with an important added reminder:

V’ger lo tilchatz ve'atem yedatem et-nefesh ha’ger ki-gerim he’yi’tem be'eretz Mitzrayim.
Do not oppress a stranger, because you know the soul, the nefesh, of the stranger, because you were strangers yourselves in the land of Egypt. (23:9)

In our contemporary Jewish community, the word ger is most often used to describe the non-Jew who has entered into our community in some way, perhaps through marriage or partnership. However, I would like to suggest that we engage with this particular text by defining the ger as "the different one."

Perhaps the ger is the non-Jewish partner among us, or the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer person in our community, or the Jew-by-choice, or the Jew of color, or the non-Zionist Jew, or the Jew who grew up secular and is now exploring Jewish spiritual practices.

Take a moment, and if you’re comfortable, please close your eyes, and recall a time in which you were the Other in your own community and someone reached out to you. Picture a moment in time when you were the only one in some way, and someone genuinely saw you or reached out to you. Take a deep breath and connect to that feeling.

Where were you? How did you feel? What happened when you connected with that other person? How did you experience the presence of God in that moment of connecting soul to soul with the other person? Take another deep breath and open your eyes.

In her book Torah Journeys, Rabbi Shefa Gold says,
“When I encounter the stranger, I am commanded to know her soul, to step inside her skin, to see that his pain, his joy, is not different than my own.” (p. 82)

Remembering our own enslavement in Mitzrayim as we encounter the Other is a spiritual practice, and a practice of tikkun olam. For those of us who are also lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or genderqueer, we are simultaneously members of the tribe and gerim/the Other.

Personally I find tremendous comfort in the line of this parasha that says,

Hiney Anochi sholeyach mal’ach lifanecha lish’mar’cha ba’derech, v’la’ha’vi’acha el-hamakom asher ha’khino’ti.
I (God) am sending an angel before you (ahead of you) to guard you on your path, and to bring you to the place I have prepared for you.

Who are the angels that have been sent before you to guard you on your path? And what is the place that God has prepared for you?

May we be blessed in every moment to truly welcome every single person into our community, to know with compassion the soul of the stranger, and to remember our own experience of being enslaved in the land of Mitzrayim. May we remember to reach out to the Other, to become angels of compassion, and to see the face of God in every person.

Shabbat Shalom.


Read the rest