Author: Rabbi Schell

At the conclusion of our parashah, Moshe descends from Mount Sinai with a new set of hewn tablets in hand. The Torah narrates, “Moses was not aware that the skin of his face was radiant [karan or], since he had spoken with God. Aaron and all the Israelites saw that the skin of Moses’ face was radiant; and they shrank from coming near to him” (Exodus 34:29–30). How can we understand this divine light? And to what extent may our faces today radiate that same sacred light? Rashi, the prolific Torah commentator, explains, “From where did Moshe merit these lights of glory? Our rabbis teach, ‘from the light that God’s hand transmitted to Moshe’s face, as it is said, ‘and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by’“. For Rashi, Moshe’s radiance is derived explicitly from the “touch” of God.  Alternatively, one is presented with a different understanding by B’midbar Rabbah, a compilation of midrashim on the book of Numbers. Sparked by Proverbs 6, “a mitzvah is a candle and Torah is light,” the midrash queries, “Why is Torah called light? For Torah illuminates and guides a human since Torah teaches one how to behave according to the will of God. Therefore, the reward of Torah is great” (BR 14:10).  For this midrash, the learning of Torah imparts illumination. The Torah’s light blazes a path through the complexities of the modern world. And more than that, the Torah truly has the capacity to impart a radiant spiritual light on those who invest the time to learn. In the last month, we celebrated two outstanding B’nei Mitzvah, Shayne and Samara, and I am sure we all could see the light of Torah in their faces. I can only imagine that this radiance is the very same light that illuminated the countenance of Moshe. And perhaps, even more powerfully, our parashah comes to teach us a lesson on Torah teaching. We are told that when the Israelites saw Moshe’s radiance, “they shrank from coming near to him.” Perhaps, by virtue of Moshe’s great learning, the people were intimidated by Moshe’s presence. But what did Moshe do in response to the people’s fear? “Moshe called to them… and Moshe spoke to them.” To Moshe’s credit, he realised his own intimidation factor; and to bring people near, he called to them, spoke to them, and even veiled his own face so as to diminish his radiance. Moshe’s actions speak to his unique humility and profound sensitivity. May each of us, both in the role of teacher and student, learn from Moshe’s brilliant example. Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Adrian M Schell(Source: Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz) 

In Hamlet, the character Polonius proclaims, “Apparel oft proclaims the man” – the only thing to add is that apparel no less proclaims the woman. Indeed, our clothing says a lot about all of us. At times, we wear clothes to be noticed, at other times to blend in. Our clothing indicates our status, the groups with whom we identify, and the delicate balance between belonging and individual uniqueness. In short, through our apparel, we engage in an ongoing game of hide-and-seek.Purim on the other hand, reminds us that clothing does not only reveal something about us; clothing also covers up and conceals. On Purim, we pretend to be someone we are not. It reminds us that we often hide behind what we show to the world. The flip side of Purim is in fully revealing who we are; a task difficult and fraught with risk.The day most traditionally associated with standing spiritually “naked,” our truest self, revealed, is Yom Kippur. There is more than a passing connection between these two holidays. “Yom Kippurim? Yom Ke-Purim! The Day of Atonement is a day [in Hebrew, yom] like [ke] Purim”.At first glance, this seems an odd comparison. Could two Jewish observances be any more different? Yom Kippur is a day of self-denial. We refrain from bodily pleasures. On Purim we indulge ourselves—eating and drinking almost in excess. One is a day for introspection, meditation, and repentance; the other is a time for clowning and having a good time. What conceivably could these two days share?The answer is that both holidays focus on the masks we wear. On Purim we don masks, a reflection of Esther who hides her true self and Jewish identity. On Yom Kippur, we are unmasked, facing ourselves as we really are, without pretense. We can fool those at work, we can hide who we are from our children, we can lie to our lovers and spouses, but on Yom Kippur our true self is revealed.Clothing does matter, and what we wear hints to the questions we play hide-and-seek with every day of our lives: What really matters? How do I see the worth of every soul? Am I willing to bear the burdens of others? What do I think I can hide?Our apparel does proclaim us. The question is–what is it that we wish to have others see?Happy Purim – Rabbi Adrian M Schell (Source: Rabbi I.A. Zeplowitz)

Torah ReadingShabbat Zachor – Parashat Tetzaveh Exodus 27:20-30:10 – Deuteronomy 25:17-19Reading: Ex 29:1-21(Plaut p.567; Hertz p.344)Haftarah: Esther 7:1-10, 8:15-17  (Plaut p.1453) In our weekly Torah portion

• The children of Israel are commanded to bring pure olive oil for the ner tamid “a constantly burning light,” above the sanctuary.

• Aaron and his sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, are chosen to serve as priests.

• God instructs Moses to make special clothes for the priests.

• Aaron and his sons are ordained in a seven-day ceremony.

• Aaron is commanded to burn incense on an acacia altar every morning and evening.

At the beginning of our parashah we read the following request from God to Moses: “Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts (t’rumah); you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved. V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham. Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.”But, wait a minute, does God need a sanctuary in order to dwell among the people? After all, does the God who created the universe and split the sea need a human-made dwelling place?Pinchas H. Peli – a contemporary Torah commentator – offered the following idea: “Besides the immediate purpose of the campaign, to collect materials for the building of a sanctuary, it also serves an educational purpose: to convert the people from passive participants in their relationship with the Lord, as constant recipients of His gifts, into active partners”. In other words, what God is saying with his request is that some human effort is required if the people want God to be among them. The in-dwelling of God among the people cannot take place as long as the people are passive and do nothing to help bring the sacred into the world. As magnificent as some of our sanctuaries are, and as inspiring as our places of worship are– and our new Synagogue will be both of those— we still understand that it is not the place where we find God. The physical space is but one tool, one means of reaching the sacred.Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) taught that “Judaism is not a religion of space. To put it sharply,” he wrote, “it is better to have prayer without a synagogue – than a synagogue without prayer.” The real Mishkan (tabernacle) is the inner chambers of the praying heart. If we are truly engaged in offering our innermost selves to God, only then God will dwell “among us.” Meir Leibush ben Yechiel Michel, a 19th Century rabbi comes to the same conclusion. He chose to read v’shachanti b’tocham, “I will dwell among them” as “I will dwell within them.” He wrote: “. . . in them, the people, not in it, the sanctuary. We are each to build a Tabernacle in our own heart for God to dwell in.”We understand that we must be active participants in our relationship with God; that we must do something, bring something, in order for God to dwell in our midst. We know that ultimately the most sacred dwelling place for God is within our own hearts. We offer, from our hearts, to bring God into our hearts. These are the gifts . . . from us and from God.Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Adrian M Schell (Source: reformjudaism.org)

Torah ReadingShabbat Terumah: Exodus 25:1-27:19 (Ex 25:13-39)Haftarah: I Kings 5:26-6:13In our Torah Portion:  • God asks the Children of Israel to donate gifts (t’rumah) for the building of the Tabernacle so that God may “dwell among them.” • Moses receives Instructions for the construction of the Ark, table, and menorah are provided.  • And Moses receives Detailed directions on how to build theTabernacle, the first sanctuary.

Last week’s parashah contained a magnificent description of the revelation at Mount Sinai. God revealed Godself and gave the Decalogue. The “Ten Commandments” represent the first laws of the mutual covenant between God and Israel, and this week’s parashah contains more of these laws. Our sages pointed out that our parashah starts with the Hebrew word for “and”: “ve’eleh hamishpatim” (and these are the rules), indicating a direct connection between the Decalogue and the laws following this week.What is remarkable about this collection of laws in the covenant is the combination of criminal, civil, and ethical law entwined together. Thus, amid laws dealing with safekeeping of property, seduction, sorcery, bestiality, idolatry, and blasphemy are humanitarian laws dealing with the protection of the ger (stranger), the widow, the orphan, and the poor. These four groups constitute the classic biblical categories of disadvantaged people: those without power and without legal protectors, who must depend on the good will of society to help them. Of all the laws concerning the disadvantaged, there is one that is constantly repeated in many parts of the Torah: the law enjoining the Israelites not to oppress the stranger. It is an astonishing fact that the Bible has more laws dealing with the protection of the stranger than with any other law, including honouring God, observing Shabbat, festivals, etc. Obviously, for the biblical legislator, concern for the stranger was considered a religious value of supreme importance.The reason given for not wronging the stranger is only an ethical one: the Israelites were once strangers in a foreign land and so can empathise with the experience of foreigners in their own land.But not all of our sages were convinced that mere empathy with the stranger’s plight would be sufficient protection. They were quite familiar with cases of former downtrodden people, now in power, becoming worse oppressors. The Israelites should not think that they could oppress strangers with impunity as if they had no source of help. They do have a source of help: God. Just as the Israelites had the help of God when they were strangers in Egypt, so will divine assistance, ultimately, help the stranger in Israel.For two thousand years Jews have been strangers and religious minorities in foreign lands. We have suffered discrimination and persecution solely for being religious strangers. Now that we life in a time were we have religious freedom and the right to express ourselves, we must constantly remember that not long ago we were strangers in many Egypts.We must ensure that all present-day strangers around us will not be subject to discrimination or coercion, and that the sensibilities of all minorities will be respected.Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Adrian M Schell  (Source: Prof. David Marcus)

Our Torah portion includes the “10 commandments”. While most of us recall the commandments not to murder or to honour our parents, many forget one of the 10 statements is to observe the Shabbat day. According to our tradition, this law is as important as any others. But why?Why do we observe Shabbat rest? The most common response to this question is learned from this week’s Torah portion: we rest on Shabbat, because God rested on Shabbat. Thus, Shabbat becomes a “remembrance of Creation.” Our reading highlights the connection between Shabbat and Creation: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do any work… For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and sea, … and He rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:9–11).This powerful motivation for sanctifying the seventh day is certainly sufficient. Yet, we learn another rationale for resting on Shabbat from next week’s parashah. In Parashat Mishpatim, which is primarily concerned with civil and moral laws, the Torah teaches: “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labour, in order that your ox and your ass may rest, and that your bondman and the stranger may be refreshed” (Exodus 23:12).This verse is strikingly different from the presentation of Shabbat in the Decalogue. Here, Shabbat observance is part of ethical and humanitarian living. In the verses preceding this discussion of Shabbat, the Torah warns against subverting the rights of the needy and oppressing the stranger . This idea of social justice and freedom is also linked with Shabbat in Moses’ reiteration of the Decalogue in the Book of Deuteronomy: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord; you shall not do any work – you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave… or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female slave may rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day” (Deut. 5:13–15). In this beautiful passage, Shabbat rest becomes a taste of the redemption from slavery in Egypt. Just as God saved us from the unrelenting toil of Egyptian servitude, we must create a society in which our servants and animals find rest from their labours.So why do we rest on Shabbat? The Torah portions of this and next week illustrate the multifaceted nature of Jewish ritual. Shabbat observance evokes two important themes in Jewish theology: God’s Creation and God’s Salvation. In both cases, God’s actions serve as a model for our own. By refraining from work on Shabbat, we express our faith in God as Creator. Six days a week, we engage in partnership with God as builders of the world around us.  On Shabbat we rest and reflect on God’s ultimate role as Architect of the Cosmos. By refraining from work on Shabbat, we also express our heritage as redeemed slaves. The experience of liberation from work and weekday burdens reminds us the importance of overcoming oppression in the world.May our Shabbat rest this week resonate with the echoes of Creation and Liberation. May we fashion our lives in the light of God’s ways, creating a world enriched with holiness, justice and freedom.Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Adrian M Schell (Source: MATTHEW BERKOWITZ)

This Shabbat is known as Shabbat Shirah, “Shabbat of Song,” because on it we read/chant the epic poem, Shirat HaYam, “Song at the Sea,” contained in the Torah portion B’shalach. The musical/poetic nature of the reading is compounded with the haftarah portion that includes Shirat D’vorah, the “Song of Deborah” within the selected passage from the Book of Judges.Do you remember the matric dances? How everyone resembled a wall-clinging competition, as if the dance floor was a sea and the students—who obviously could not swim—stood back in fear for their lives? If so, then you can imagine how our ancestors felt as they faced their own sea with an inability to swim upon leaving Egypt.Moses said to the people, ‘Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which the Eternal will work for you today‘. Sh’mot Rabbah, a rabbinic teaching, draws for us to following picture: “The Israelites where starting to enter the sea, but it did not split. All the while they sang: “Mi chamochah . . . Who is like you, Eternal One!”. With water up to their ankles they sang, but nothing happened. Up to their knees they sang, but nothing happened. Up to their chests they sang, but still nothing happened. Finally, with the water so high they had to tilt their heads back to breathe the sea did a split.” Why? Because that moment God saw that the people discovered something vital for their future: courage, belief in themselves and their own power to initiate change instead of waiting upon God. God still may wish to take the lead, but, God wants active dance partners in all men, women, and children, too.According to our tradition, Tu Bi Sh’vat is the birthday of all trees. Why? Scholars believe that originally Tu Bi Sh’vat was an agricultural festival, marking the emergence of spring in Israel. Each year, the Israelites were expected to bring one-tenth of their fruits to the Temple, where they were offered to God and also helped sustain the priestly class and the poor. Since fruit from one year could not be used to tithe for another, they had to determine when a crop year would begin and end. They chose the month of Sh’vat as the cut-off date, for this is when, in Israel, the sap begins to run and the trees start to awaken from their winter slumber.Although the celebration of Tu Bi Sh’vat seems to be more practical and down-to-earth, the theme most commonly ascribed to the holiday today is the environment. It is considered a festival of nature, full of wonder, joy, and thankfulness for God’s creation. The holiday has become a tree-planting festival in Israel, in which Israelis and Jews around the world plant trees in honour or in memory of loved ones and friends. Doing that, we recall the sacred obligation to care for God’s world, and the responsibility to share the fruits of God’s earth with all, which connects it so wonderful to the idea of our Torah portion. God’s wonders and miracles need us humans not only to recognise them, but even more so they need our interaction.Therefore, may we all have the courage to step up, onto the dance floor of life, making our collective movements forward more vibrant, and celebrating God’s creation.

Our Jewish tradition speaks frequently about the gift of memory. The festival of Passover is the prime example of the importance that Judaism places on memory. Every holiday and Sabbath are to be observed as “a memorial of the Exodus from Egypt.” In this week’s Torah portion we read the words that “this day shall be to you one of remembrance.” But, what is it that we are supposed to remember?Passover is a call to our concern for all peoples to sound the cry for freedom for all those in bondage – spiritual bondage, the bondage of poverty, and the bondage of ignorance.In the Kiddush for the Shabbat, we reiterate that, “the Sabbath is a reminder of the Exodus from Egypt.” Perhaps the connection lies in the fact that Shabbat is the true day of freedom from the obligations that we must fulfil during the workday-week. And Passover is the festival during which we remember the liberation from slavery to freedom – Without the Exodus, we would have no freedom to enjoy a day of rest at all.It is remarkable that Jews have never expressed resentment against Egypt for the many years of slavery our ancestors spent there. Is it because that event happened so long ago?I don’t think so. It is part of our understanding of repairing the world – Tikkun Olam. In other words, it is our way to understand the concept of “dealing with the past”. By that, history is not understood to not repeat mistakes, or to be trapped in the past, but to use history as a “toolbox”. A way to understand which action can lead to which outcome. People did not die in the past for the purpose that we can learn from their death. But we can learn from what lead to their death, and hopefully we can change the pattern before it happens again. History reveals human action in different situations. And as the Torah reveals for us different ways to interact with one another, history does it to.The slaves in Mitzraim, the victims of the Holocaust in Germany, the many death and victims of the apartheid regime in South Africa are not forgotten, and it is good that we have our many ways to remember them, but we should not only remember them. Instead we need to remember what went wrong and how we can break the pattern that leads to destruction. Let the sentence “Never again” not become an empty phrase, but a true interpretation of the imperative the Torah commands us: “this day shall be to you one of remembrance”. Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Adrian M Schell (Source: Limmud.org) 

Bo – Never again

At the beginning of 2011, while protests were happening in Egypt against the regime of Hosni Mubarak, a joke did the rounds, which claimed that the Jews had warned the Egyptians that they would refuse to rebuild the pyramids if they got destroyed by the violent protests which swept through the country. This joke may be related back to this week’s Torah portion in which we read that as the Israelites became numerous Pharaoh began to persecute them, and ‘they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses’.This week we begin the book of Shemot, also known as Exodus, and the first of half of the Book as a whole focuses on the persecution of the Israelites by Pharaoh and the Egyptians, with their eventual escape from slavery to freedom. Pharaoh and the Egyptians are the bad guys at the start of this book. He worried that as the Israelites continued to multiply one day they could be a fifth column joining their enemies in a future war. And so he responded by making ‘their lives bitter with hard slavery, in mortar, and in brick, and in all kinds of service in the field; all their service, which they made them serve, was with rigor’.And yet at almost the very beginning of the book we get a short little story, which can challenge our assumptions about the Egyptians. Having failed to check the growth of the Israelites through hard labor, we read that ‘the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, and the name of one was Shifrah, and the name of the other Puah’. Pharaoh told them that when they were helping the Israelite women during their labor if they gave birth to ‘a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live’. The ultimate ruler of Egypt, a man considered to be a god, gave Shifrah and Puah a direct instruction and yet we then read: ‘the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive’. They even lied to Pharaoh to defend their actions.In studying this story, the commentators have been primarily concerned by the identity of Shifra and Puah; were they Israelites or were they Egyptians who served the Hebrew community. In reading the text it seems unlikely that they were members of the Israelite community. For one, it is hard to believe that Pharaoh expected Israelites to kill members of their own people. But in terms of the text the statement that ‘the midwives feared God’ seems superfluous if they were members of the Hebrew community, but highly relevant if they were Egyptians rebelling against their Pharaoh.Shifrah and Puah provide us with the first example of civil disobedience, but more importantly they demonstrate that not all of the Egyptians were necessarily evil and wicked. As we read the first half of the book of Shemot it is easy to negatively characterise all of the Egyptian people, but Shifrah and Puah show that this was not true of everyone, they call on us to be more nuanced in our view of the Egyptians. And they set a secondary example as the first righteous gentiles, risking their own lives to save others.Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Adrian M Schell(Source: Rabbi Danny Burkeman) 

This Shabbat, we conclude the Book of Genesis with Parashat Va-y’chi.  Whenever we finish reading a book, even a book of Torah, it is important to reflect on where we have been, what we have covered since the beginning of the book. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes that Genesis, like the Tanach as awhole, “is a story without an ending which looks forward to an open future rather than reaching closure“. Although the loose ends of this particular part of the story are neatly tied up, we know we are not at the end of the story, but only at its beginning.Indeed, throughout Genesis there has been a tension between the past and the future, between what was and what is yet to be. The covenant that God makes with Abraham serves to direct our attention toward the future. But, we also learn early on that this future will include being “strangers in a land not theirs” and being “enslaved and afflicted for four hundred years.” In fact, the Book of Genesis ends with the word Mitzrayim, “Egypt,” as if to point us ahead to the Book of Exodus, which we will begin reading next Shabbat.The tension between looking backward and ahead will continue throughout the Torah. When the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness, hopeful to reach the Promised Land, they occasionally pine for the good old days in Egypt as they face hardship along the way. But though going back to Egypt might appear attractive in theory, it is never a real possibility. The journey must always move forward, with bumps along the way and a few detours, but always focused on the future. As Rabbi Sacks points out, Judaism views time markedly differently from other cultures. We don’t see time as cyclical, characterised by endless repetition. Rather, Rabbi Sacks writes, Judaism believes in “covenantal time, the story of the human journey in response to the divine call, with all its backslidings and false turns, its regressions and failures, yet never doomed to tragic fate, always with the possibility of repentance and return, always sustained by the vision with which the story began, of the Promised Land…”Despite this seemingly pessimistic note on which Genesis ends, there is one clue to remind us to be hopeful. This portion is named Va-y’chi, “And [Jacob] lived.” Even when we reflect on his death, we are drawn to reflect on his life. Even as Genesis ends with death, we remember the vitality of the characters we have encountered, inspired by their lives. While one chapter of our people’s story ends, the covenant assures us that it is not the end of the story, but only the beginning.And so it is my wish and my hope for the new secular year 2017 that we are, despite all the negative experiences in 2016, looking with hope and an open mind into the future. That we continue to see the beauty in this world and the opportunites we have to contribute to a better world.Shabbat Shalom and “a Happy New Year”Rabbi Adrian M Schell (Source: Rabbi Bruce Kadden)