From wilderness to mountaintop / Parshat B'midbar and Shavuot

People who know how everyone else should live their lives astound me.  I find it’s a full-time occupation figuring out my own life. Maybe there’s a computer for this? The supercomputer “Deep Thought” in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is constructed by a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings. Its purpose is to provide the “ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.” Good deal. Too bad it’s fiction.

This week we open the Torah to Sefer B’midbar, the Book of Numbers, which largely recounts the Israelites’ 40-year trek through the Wilderness in pursuit of answers to the questions put to Deep Thought. In addition, as we bid goodbye to shabbat, we usher in Shavuot, which celebrates Matan Torah (the Giving of the Torah) at Mt. Sinai. From the Wilderness to the mountaintop -- shall we say from questions to answers?

Ah, but it’s not that simple. Torah is not the Jewish version of “Deep Thought,” generating answers to any question posed. Torah is actually more than “Deep Thought.”

It’s curious that Torah takes us from the creation of the cosmos just up to the border of Eretz Yisrael. In all of Torah, with the exception of the ill-fated episode of the spies reconnoitering the Land, no one sets a toe in the Land of Israel. Perhaps that is because we’re always in the Wilderness -- always asking questions, always searching for answers: To what purpose our lives? Where should we invest our energies? What is the meaning of our experience? How do we make ethical decisions? And even when we think we’ve found some answers, we realize that they only generate more questions.

 

We might hope that Psalm 107:4-8 encapsulates our life experience:

Some lost their way in the wilderness, in the wasteland;

they found no settled place.

Hungry and thirsty, their spirit failed.

In their adversity they cried to the Lord,

And he rescued them from their troubles.

He showed them a direct way to reach a settled place.

Let them praise the Lord for his steadfast love,

His wondrous deeds for humanity;

For he has satisfied the thirsty,

filled the hungry with all good thing.

The seemingly simplistic mechanism described in the psalm is not how the world works. God doesn’t swoop down and solve our dilemmas. Torah doesn’t churn out answers to every question. But perhaps that’s not how we are to understand the poet’s verses.

Let’s start with our parashah. B’midbar devotes three chapters to a census taken in the Wilderness:

Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. (Numbers 1:2)

 The people are counted, tribe by tribe, clan by clan, and detailed tribal enrollment numbers are recorded. Why? Because, I would suggest, life is with people: living in family and community, forging relationships, and working them out. It is in the context of relationships that we find purpose and make our lives meaningful. It is in the context of relationships that we face the most challenging ethical conundrums and questions about meaning. We need to take a census of the people in our lives, the relationships that constitute our world.

But whence the answers? We might hope to find them in Torah. From the Wilderness to the mountaintop where one can see everything -- it’s a nice image but Torah is not “Deep Thought” for anyone who thinks deeply.

Zohar, the seminal work in Jewish mysticism, teaches that Torah will lead us to answers, but it’s not a simple computerized process.

R. Shimon said: “Woe to the human being who says that Torah presents mere stories and ordinary words! If so, we could compose a Torah right now with ordinary words, and better than all of them. To present matters of the world? Even rulers of the world possess words more sublime. If so, let us follow them and make a Torah out of them. Ah, but all the words of Torah are sublime words, sublime secrets!... Woe to the wicked who say that Torah is merely a story! They look at this garment and no further. Happy are the righteous who look at Torah properly! As wine must sit in a jar, so Torah must sit in this garment. So look only at what is under the garment. All those words and all those stories are garments.  (Zohar 3:152a)

For the mystics, Torah holds answers, but they are secrets encoded in its words and available only through meditation and interpretation. For those of us who are not mystics, we can take this meaning from the Zohar: Torah is not a book of quick, easy answers. Its words must flow through us, enabling us to ask the right questions and find our own truths.

Parshat B’midbar affirms this. B’midbar concludes (chapter 4) with instructions on breaking camp. The levitical Kohathite clan is charged with porterage. The Tabernacle’s sacred objects are to be covered with blue, crimson, and purple cloths, and dolphin skins. The objects sit in garments, as the Zohar tells us Torah does. Coverings are tantalizing. They invite us to rip them off to find what is concealed beneath.

B’midbar ends with these words:

The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying: Do not let the group of Kohathite clans be cut off from the Levites. Do this with them, that they may live and not die when they approach the most sacred objects: let Aaron and his sons go in and assign each of them to his duties and to his porterage. But let not [the Kohathites] go inside and witness [inside the sanctuary] lest they die. (Numbers 4:17-20)

We never see or know it all. We’re always “outside” to some degree. But did you expect all the answers before you die?

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, after 7.5 million years of continuous computation, Deep Thought returns the ultimate answer: 42. But the Ultimate Question remains a mystery! Perhaps Douglas Adams provides genuine Torah here: we may think we have the answers, but did we really ask the right questions? So too the Psalmist provides great wisdom. God provides food and drink, not in the conventional, simplistic way the Zohar warns against, but in a far deeper way: Torah, our mayim chaim (“life-giving waters”) helps us shape our questions, as well as find answers that generate more questions, sending us searching for more truths. We climb higher up Sinai, deeper into God. Perhaps that’s the whole point. The Jewish approach to truth is to cherish your questions even more than your answers.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

You are what you eat / Behar-Bechukkotai

Jews have a thing about food, but every ethnic group thinks it has a thing about food. For us, however, food and eating are integral to Jewish religious observance and moral values.

French lawyer, politician, and gourmet, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, published Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante two months before his death in 1826. It has never been out of print in the past 186 years. There you will find this quote: "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es." Translation: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Ronald Reagan was quoted in the Observer (March, 1981) as saying, "You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans."

“You are what you eat” suggests that there is a direct connection between the food we consume, and our physical health and state of mind. Torah would add that the food we eat both affects and reflects our spirituality; hence the extensive laws of kashrut we read a few weeks ago in Parshat Shemini. In this week’s parashah, Behar, Torah broadens the connection to an interactive triangle of land, food, and spirituality.

Torah speaks of the shemittah (sabbatical year), a year of complete rest for the land. Every seventh year the land lies fallow to regenerate itself.

Six years you may sow your field and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, a Sabbath of the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your untrimmed vines; it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. (Leviticus 25:3-4)

What is more, after counting off seven sabbatical cycles, the fiftieth year that follows is the Yovel (Jubilee year). Then, too, the land is allowed to rest.

You shall observe My laws and faithfully keep My rules, that you may live upon the land in security; the land shall yield its fruit and you shall eat your fill, and you shall live upon it in security. (Leviticus 25:18-19)

Long ago our ancestors understood the fundamental connection between the eco-system, the food we consume, and our spiritual lives. Torah affirms that human behavior -- especially unethical behavior -- pollutes the very land. For far too long, we have lost that connection, that sense of the land as a living, pulsing, vibrant part of our lives. We live in hermetically sealed homes, travel through the world in climate-controlled cars, and acquire food in cardboard and plastic containers, far from the fields in which it was grown. Our technological abilities -- which have brought so much good to our lives -- have another side. We have seen the dust bowl. We have seen the results of air pollution and water pollution.  We have seen the despoliation of rain forests. We have presided over the extinction of hundreds of species. We have also seen Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Auschwitz, and the Killing Fields.

Yet we have also seen the extraordinary view of our precious Blue Marble from the perspective of space and have come to see that we are not separate from the earth (or the universe, for that matter). We are integral to it, and dependent upon it. We have come to understand the imperative to take responsibility for the technology we build and unleash. Parshat Behar reminds us to keep land, food, and spirituality inseparably linked.

Thanks to many dedicated souls in the Jewish community, today we are reclaiming the crucial connection between the environment, kashrut, and the Jewish premium on social justice. “Eco Kashrut” and “Magen Tzedek” are leading the way.

Eco-kashrut, led by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and championed by the Renewal Movement, has for several decades advocated expanding our understanding of kashrut to include ecological concerns. For ancient shepherds and farmers, God provided rain so that the earth could support their flocks and herds, and yield fruits, vegetables, and grains. For us, however, coal, oil, electric power, and insecticides are part of our food production. Our food is delivered in plastics and papers -- rarely produced from recycled materials -- that draw on fossil fuels and forests, and most often end up in landfills.

Much has been written on the environmental impact of food production. Try this and this and this.

Eco-kashrut encourages us to expand our observance of kashrut by eating organic produce and purchasing from local growers for the sake of the environment on which we depend.

The Magen Tzekek certification program grew out of the Conservative Movement’s commitment to enlarge kashrut to encompass social justice concerns about workers and animals.  Here is how they describe their mission:

 

The Magen Tzedek Commission… combines the rabbinic tradition of Torah with Jewish values of social justice, assuring consumers and retailers that kosher food products have been produced in keeping with exemplary Jewish ethics in the area of labor concerns, animal welfare, environmental impact, consumer issues and corporate integrity.

The cornerstone of the program is the Magen Tzedek Standard, a proprietary set of standards that meet or exceed industry best practices for treatment of workers, animals, and the Earth; and delineates the criteria a food manufacturer must meet to achieve certification. Upon successful certification, the Magen Tzedek Commission will award its Shield of Justice seal which can be displayed on food packaging.

The Magen Tzedek seal is available only for products that currently carry a traditional Hekhsher seal from an authorized kosher certification agency. It is not intended as a replacement, but rather a complementary enhancement to a brand’s reputation.

 

It is past time to return to the wisdom of the Torah that understands that land, food, and spirit are interwoven.

“Upon creating the first human beings, God guided them around the Garden of Eden, saying, ‘Look at My creations! See how beautiful and praiseworthy they are! I created everything for you. Make sure you don’t ruin or destroy My world. If you do, there will be no one after you to repair it.’” (Kohelet Rabbah 7:13)

Our ancestors knew it. We have to relearn it.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

Defective or whole? / Parshat Emor

Everybody’s life is circumscribed in some way or another. None of us can do whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want… except in our dreams. Certainly, physics and biology impose limitations on us -- both conspire to prevent me from flying -- but so too my relationships with other people.  And just as our relationships impose limits and obligations on us, so too do we impose limits and obligation on others.

The priests, as described in parshat Emor are bound by a strict set of regulations: they may not come in contact with a corpse, with the exception of a close relative; they may not engage in some of the signs of mourning, specifically those related to the body; they may not marry a divorcee; they may neither go around bare-headed nor rend their priestly vestments. Then we get to a very troubling regulation concerning their physical qualifications to offer sacrifices in the Mishkan (Tabernacle):

No one at all who has a defect (kol ish asher bo mum) shall be qualified: no man who is blind, or lame, or has a limb too short or too long; no man who has a broken leg or a broken arm; or who is a hunchback, or a dwarf, or who has a growth in his eye, or who has a boil-scar, or scurvy, or crushed testes. No man among the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the Lord’s offering by fire; having a defect, he shall not be qualified to offer the food of his God. (Leviticus 21:18-20)

I cringe when I read these verses, not because of the physical deformities and impairments described, but because of the use of the phrase kol ish asher bo mum / every man who has a defect. One who has a defect is by definition “defective.” What makes me cringe is the very notion that a human being can be thought of as “defective”: damaged, deficient, incomplete.

Human perfection does not exist. If any of is “defective,” all of us are defective. Indeed, the very concept of human perfection is insidious because it suggests we all hopelessly miss the mark. (For that reason, I believe the Jewish notion of teshuvah/repentance is far superior. On the High Holy Days, I do not strive for perfection, which is impossible, but rather self-improvement, which is within my power.)

The notion of defect, which in turn implies the possibility of human perfection, generates a sense of inadequacy among many people. Whether it a physical matter or an emotional challenge, it makes them feel insufficient, less than, even intolerable. Imagine how much pain such thinking engenders. Every human being seeks shleimut/wholeness, a sense of completeness that brings in its wake serenity and equanimity (at least for short intervals). To describe a human being as asher bo mum / that he has a defect suggests that wholeness is beyond that person’s reach precisely because of how he or she deviates from “the norm.”

The concept of “defective” is dangerous and deadly when applied to a group of people, be it a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, or a tribe. To call a group “defective” -- just like labeling them a “virus” or a “cancer” -- is to brand them sub-human and therefore expendable. History has shown us far too often that such thinking leads to genocide.

Michael J. Perry, professor of law at Emory University, writes:

Some people have thought that to be black is to be, not merely different, but defective, it is to be a defective human being -- less than fully human -- because being white is normative… Some people have thought that to be female is to be a defective human being, because being male is normative. And some people have thought -- and think-- that to be homosexual, to have a homosexual orientation, is to be a defective human being, because being heterosexual (“straight”) is normative. Judge [Richard A.] Posner has observed that “[homosexuals,] like Jews, are despised more for who they are than for what they do…” (The Constitution in the Courts: Law or Politics? p. 176)

Our language and our thoughts are indistinguishable. Saying, “Well, that’s not really what I meant” doesn’t wash when what is on the line is the very humanity of a human being or a group of people. The Oxford English Dictionary has well over 250,000 entries; there are probably more words in the English language than in any other. There are ways to say what we truly mean. We must presume that people mean what they say. But before speaking, we would all do well to consider what we believe. It would behoove each of us to take a long, hard look in the mirror and ask ourselves how we see those whose bodies and minds do not function in a way we are inclined to consider as “normal.” It may be that we need to challenge our own beliefs, however deeply imbedded in our psyches and backgrounds. It may help a bit to remember that if another is “defective,” so are we.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

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The lie about “lying with a man” / Acharei Mot - Kedoshim

I am sick and tired of hearing people pontificate on how same sex marriage will degrade the institution of marriage. How could two men or two women who want to enter into a long-term, committed relationship degrade marriage? Sounds like a confirmation of marriage to me. I am also disgusted by the way certain political elements in this country work assiduously to make opposition to same-sex marriage the dominant domestic issue in political discourse, thereby distracting us from discussing what is truly important: poverty and economic justice, housing and homelessness, education, reproductive rights, biomedical ethics, crime and violence, campaign finance reform, health care, and any of a number of issues that affect the quality of life for millions of Americans.

I might as well jump in with two feet.  This week’s Torah portion includes the infamous verse Leviticus 18:22:  Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman (mishk’vei ishah); it is an abhorrence (to’evah). This verse, perhaps more than any other, has been misinterpreted and used to justify abuse of, and discrimination against, homosexuals. The presumed biblical prohibition against homosexuality has taken on a life of its own; its history is sordid and ignominious. You hardly need me to recount case after case of people beaten and killed because of their sexual orientation. The Torah is not to blame for all this abuse; human beings who misinterpret it and condone violence most certainly are.

What exactly does Torah prohibit? The honest answer is that no one is entirely certain. First a few questions:

• If homosexuality is an “abomination,” why does Torah say nothing about lesbian erotic relationships?
• Verse 22 is phrased differently than most of the other verses in chapter 18, which begin: Do not uncover the nakedness of… -- why is that? Verse 22 has an unusual phrase: Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman. Why is it included with these other prohibitions?
• What is a to-evah (often translated “abhorrence” or “abomination”)?

 
Leviticus in the Septuagint, an early Greek translation

Taking these questions in reverse order:

“Abomination” and “abhorrence” are strong words; the English terms evoke strong emotions. But what is a to’evah? Generally, a to’evah is an act that is learned and volitional. Deuteronomy 14:3 says: lo tokhal kol to’evah, generally translated “You shall not eat anything abhorrent.” But it is not the animals we are not permitted to eat that are abhorrent. They are part of God’s creation. It is the act of eating them that is abhorrent. Similarly, Deuteronomy 7:25, 26 speaks of idolatrous images that threaten to ensnare the hearts and minds of the Israelites: to’a’vat Adonai Elohekha hu (“it is abhorrent to the Lord your God”). It is clear that what is abhorrent to God is the activity of worshiping other gods. Torah dismisses the idols and images of the people of Canaan as meaningless objects; it is their worship that offends God. Proverbs 6:16-19 tells us: Six things the Lord hates; seven are an abomination (to’evah) to him: a haughty bearing, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a mind that hatches evil plots, feet quick to run to evil, a false witness testifying lies, and one who incites brothers to quarrel. Each of these is learned and volitional -- either immoral acts in themselves or leading to immoral acts.

What then is the to’evah in Leviticus 18:22? It has only recently (in the span of human history) been widely acknowledged that homosexuals are homosexual from birth. It is not a “choice” to become homosexual any more than it is a choice to become heterosexual. Leviticus 18:22 does not condemn homosexuality as an innate component of one’s biology. If it did, we would expect to find a similar prohibition against lesbian eroticism, but there is none in Hebrew Scripture. Yet Leviticus 18:22 does condemn a particular act. What is that act?

Many interpreters have offered the opinion that Leviticus 18:22 prohibits anal intercourse between men. (See, for example the commentary in The Torah: A Women’s Commentary, p. 692, edited by Eskenazi and Weiss, and the responsum authored by Dorff, Nevins, and Reisner for the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee for Jewish Law and Standards.) I am inclined to accept this interpretation and add that as I read it, the prohibition is limited to one sexual act, and one sexual act alone: penetration. But I am not comfortable stopping there, because the Torah describes it most particularly as mishk’vei isha - as one lies with a woman. The entirety of Chapter 18 is addressed to men and all the sexual partners they might take. The problem with taking a male sexual partner is not homosexuality, but rather that a man puts another man in the position of being a woman: the weaker, inferior partner who lacks male prerogatives in a patriarchal society. I note that Leviticus 20:13 condemns both to death. Why would this be? The man who receives, and the man who penetrates, both participate in emasculating the receiver, in confusing the separation between male and female that is so strongly emphasized in Genesis chapter 1 and throughout Torah, which is often occupied with classifying and categorizing plant and animal species, and which time and again expresses concern over the blurring or crossing of these boundaries.

Now, in the 21^st century, we should ask: Does a homosexual relationship demean one partner? Clearly the answer is no. Am I dancing out on the edge of a limb with this approach? Consider this: Many congregations still prohibited women from receiving aliyot and reading Torah because of this teaching in the Babylonian Talmud:

Our rabbis taught: All may be numbered among the seven [who are called to the Torah on Shabbat for aliyot] -- even a minor and even a woman. But the Sages said: A woman may not read from the Torah on account of k’vod ha-tzibbur (the dignity of the congregation). (Megillah 23a)

Women should be permitted to bless and read the Torah in public, but k’vod ha-tzibbur, the dignity of the community mitigates against it; in other words, women may not have aliyot or read Torah lest men be embarrassed that a woman can read Torah while they cannot. That is a social situation that no longer pertains. In a world where men are taught by female professors in college, and use female doctors, lawyers, and consultants, we need not worry that their dignity will be impinged upon by a woman blessing or reading Torah. In the same way, the Torah’s apparent concern about a man being put in the “position of a woman” no longer pertains either.

I will not dignify the claim that homosexuality is “unnatural” with a response, but there is one objection that is worth considering, and it is found in the Babylonian Talmud (Nedarim 51a). Ben Kappara drashes to’evah as to'eh atah vah (“you stray thereby”), an interpretation based entirely on the sounds in the word. Rashi and Tosafot explain that a man who devotes all his energy and attention to a sexual relationship with another man may abandon his wife and family. This would have dire consequences for the family and the community. Here, too, there is no problem because homosexual couples can, if they choose, establish households and raise families, participating in the life of the community and blessing it with their presence.

My personal view is that the government should get out of the business of marriage altogether. Government should do no more than register civil unions. Let religious and other groups define marriage in any way they like, and confer whatever status and ceremony they choose on the couple. Meanwhile, let us welcome families -- whether homosexual or heterosexual -- into our communities and support them all in their endeavor to enjoy the blessing of marriage, raise the next generation, and contribute to society.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

 

Samaritan version of Leviticus

Interpretation: "truth" and consequences / Tazria-Metzora

Among those who didn’t need to be attentive in physics class because they know how the universe really works:

• Pat Robertson blamed the devastating tsunami that rocked Japan on homosexuals.
• Numerous Christian clergy found it necessary to tell us that Hurricane Katrina was “God’s judgment” against an “evil city.” Ovadia Yosef, former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, pronounced Hurricane Katrina, ”God's punishment for President Bush's support of the August 2005 withdrawal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip.” Numerous Christian clergy in the United States agreed.
• And it’s not just natural disasters: Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and considered a scholar of Islam, pronounced, “Throughout history, Allah has sent people to the Jews to punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was orchestrated by Adolf Hitler."

Do Pat Robertson, Ovadia Yosef, and Yusaf Al-Qaradawi have a pipeline to God? Do messages from God arrive in their inbox? Where does such an arrogant, self-righteous theology come from? It derives from the dark pits of their own souls, not from holy texts. All holy texts must be interpreted -- indeed there is no text that is not interpreted -- and interpretation means there are options. Every interpretation is a choice and those who promulgate them need to consider the ramifications of their interpretations, indeed every religious idea they put forth. The claim to unassailable and irrefutable "divine truth" -- closed to rational and ethical scrutiny -- is no longer morally acceptable. This week’s Torah portions provide a fine example.

We read the combined parshiot of Tazria and Metzora in Leviticus this week.

When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration, and it develops into a scale affection on the skin of his body, it shall be reported to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests. (Leviticus 13:2)

This is the dreaded “leprosy" Torah portion. Please don’t dread it -- I’m hoping you won’t by the end of this drash. It’s worth mentioning that it’s not about leprosy at all. It’s about tzara’at, and that’s not the same thing. Tzara’at includes any of a number of skin conditions, visible and therefore easy to spot.

There are two Jewish paths of interpretation that we’ll examine here. The first is awful and the second is wonderful.

The first finds expression in tractate Arakhin (15, 16) of the Babylonian Talmud:

Rabbi Yossi Ben Zimra said: Whoever speaks gossip - tzara'at infections come upon him… Reish Lakish said [quoting Torah]: This shall be the ritual for a metzora [person afflicted with tzara’at] - this shall be the ritual for the motzi shem ra (gossiper).

The Rabbis here make a connection between the metzora (the afflicted person) and motzi shem ra (one who gossips) -- purely because they sound similar. In other words, tzara’at is a punishment for engaging in gossip, a variation of “you’re being punished for your sins.” The mysterious tzara’at -- which has no discernable cause, and comes and goes in an equally mysterious fashion -- is taken to be a physical manifestation of a spiritual malady.
This idea is expressed elsewhere. On the communal level, Deuteronomy is filled with this theology: God punishes the people if they violate the Covenant, and rewards them if they adhere to it. On the individual level, Job’s friend Eliphaz the Temanite, witnessing Job’s suffering and knowing all the disasters that befell him, says, Think now, what innocent man ever perished? Where have the upright been destroyed? As I have seen, those who plow evil and sow mischief reap them (Job 4:7-8).

As important as it is to condemn gossip, this is an unfortunate way to do it because it also condemns every person who suffers as a sinner punished by the hand of God. It is a cruel and judgmental theology. It is human concerns about “fairness” and punishment projected onto God.

A second and far more honest and compassionate option, derives from Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:5 (46a). The context for this mishnah is important: the discussion concerns how to deal with the executed body of a criminal. Here’s someone whose moral behavior actually did bring on his suffering. Rabbi Meir, reflecting on this human suffering and degradation, tells us,

When a person is in pain, what does the Shechinah [God’s divine presence] say? “It is My own head that aches; it is My own arm that hurts." If God is grieved over the blood of the wicked that is shed, how much more so over the blood of the righteous.” (Sanhedrin 46a)

Rabbi Meir is saying that God is not responsible for human suffering. In fact, God suffers right along with us.

This is how I understand the discussion of the metzora. Human suffering requires a human response. What should that be? For an answer, we turn back to our parashah and two find two pearls of wisdom.

The first pearl: Torah does not recognize a sharp line between what is religious and what is medical; they are intertwined and inform one another. Modern science has come to realize this truth: mind and body are not separate entities at all.

The second pearl: Torah describes in detail how a priest comes to investigate a report of tzara’at. If the person is found to have tzar’at, he or she is isolated from the community for seven days (no doubt out of fear it is contagious). After seven days, a priest makes another examination. Throughout the person’s ordeal, a priest comes to him regularly. The priest, who is the most esteemed and authoritative person in the community, ministers personally to the sufferer. The priest’s presence may well have been healing. Presence is a powerful healer. With Rabbi Meir’s radical insight into God’s experience of human suffering, consider this: Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin (Nefesh Ha-Hayyim 2:11) said that healing happens when we realized that God suffers with us. It is not only the priest who visits the afflicted; God is there too.

God does not cause suffering. God is not in the suffering. God is in the healing. God is in the power invested in each of us to mitigate the suffering of another.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

Too many trees here - where's the forest? / Shemini

What do Mickey Mantle, John Elway, Kevin Johnson, and Phil Esposito have in common? It’s not their sport. It’s the number on their jerseys: 7. The number seven pops up everywhere. If you’re a mathematician, 7 is a double Mersenne prime. If you’re a historian, the Seven Hills of Rome or the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World may come to mind. Literature lovers: Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man. James Bond is agent 007 (shaken, not stirred). And perhaps most importantly, in the seven Harry Potter books, students study for seven years at Hogwarts; there are seven secret passages leading out of Hogwarts, and Harry Potter sports a 7 on his Quidditch jersey. In Jewish tradition, seven is the number of creation because the world was created in seven days, rest being an integral part of creating (workaholics take note).

The Israelites have just spent seven days celebrating the inauguration of Aaron and his sons as priests. These seven days brought the Tabernacle -- nexus of heaven and earth -- into operation.

Now it is the eighth day. We speak far less often about eight. In Genesis, the eighth day is the first day of a completed creation. A boy is circumcised on his eighth day; bringing him into the Covenant on the eighth day completes him. Eight is the number of completion.

Parshat Shemini begins:

On the eighth day Moses called Aaron and his sons, and the elders of Israel… (Leviticus 9:1).

What happens on the first day of the completed Tabernacle?

Aaron lifted his hands toward the people and blessed them; and he stepped down from making the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the offering of wellbeing. (Leviticus 9:22)

Aaron blesses the people, and after that offers the sacrifices

The Rabbis, however, pick up on an ambiguity in the Hebrew. They suggest (in b.Megillah 18a) that we can read Leviticus 9:22 to say: Aaron blesses the people, having stepped down from the altar where he made the sacrifices; which is to say that Aaron makes the sacrifices first, and only afterward blesses the people.

Does it matter which Aaron does first: bless the people, or offer the sacrifices? I think it does. It’s a matter of setting thoughtful and intentional priorities. Aaron’s orientation is toward the people. He performs the sacrifices on their behalf and for their welfare. The people come first; ritual comes second in service of the people.

Judaism is action and ritual oriented. We do Jewish. Sociologist Steven M. Cohen has studied the American Jewish community for more than four decades. He recently wrote that the term “Jewish identity” is outmoded and freighted with baggage. Cohen prefers “Jewish engagement” or “Jewish involvement.” Engagement and involvement are about doing.

Prioritizing doing above meaning carries the danger that doing can become an end in itself, a higher priority than the religious meaning of the ritual.

Parshat Shemini also includes the laws of kashrut (Jewish dietary laws). They are clearly spelled out. The Rabbis expanded them, innovating the complete separation of milk and meat that includes plates, flatware, and cooking utensils. But it didn’t stop there. Over the generations, more and more restrictions have been added until we reached a level so absurd it is almost laughable -- almost. When tiny crustaceans called copepods, which are largely invisible to the naked eye, were discovered in New York City tap water in 2004, several rabbis from Brooklyn declared water from the faucet treife. Families were scrambling to install water filters costing upwards of $1500, or purchasing pricy bottled water. Did they really believe that keeping God’s covenant requires this? Is this the purpose of kashrut, to foster an endless raging river of restrictions? The rules have taken on a life of their own. Can’t see the forest for the trees.
For me, the purpose of kashrut is to provide a distinctly Jewish means of reminding myself that everything -- even the seemingly mundane and animalistic activity of eating -- can be sanctified. Kashrut is also a means to identify with Jews through time and space.

We have recently celebrated Pesach, and that provides yet another example. We clean away the chametz. Of course it’s impossible to find every crumb, so tradition provides a formula to recite the evening before Pesach begins, that declares any inadvertently remaining chametz to be as dust. The Rabbis knew that it is impossible to remove every speck. Reasonable and sensible. There needs to be a limit. Yet there are people who not only change over all their pots and dishes, but actually swap out their kitchen counters and take an acetylene torch to their ovens! By the time you have cleaned to this degree -- and there’s still the shopping and cooking to do! -- how can you have the time or spiritual energy to contemplate the meaning of Pesach in your life? Short of swapping out kitchen counters and lighting acetylene torches, there are people who refuse a cup of tea at a friend’s or matza brei until the eighth day. Ironically, prioritizing ritual over meaning makes us slaves to ritual for a festival that celebrates our redemption from slavery. So consumed with trees, it’s possible to miss the forest.

Ritual serves a purpose. It’s an expression of meaning, a means to bringing people together, a way to sanctify the mundane. But it was never an end in itself.

It’s all about priorities. What’s most important? Aaron has it right: blessing the people comes first, because the sacrifices are for their sake. Ritual that serves people is wonderful; ritual that enslaves them is not.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman

Asking the right questions makes all the difference / Pesach

Have you ever had an MRI? If so, you have Isador Rabi, Nobel laureate in physics, to thank. Rabi, the son of poor immigrants, reported that his mother made him a scientist. Every day when he returned home from school, rather than ask (as most mothers did), “What did you learn today?” Rabi’s mother asked, “Izzy, did you ask any good questions?”
At Passover family gatherings around the globe this week, the youngest child stood -- often on a chair -- and recited the Four Questions. Adults applauded approvingly, and the Passover seder proceeded for hours discussing, debating, and answering those questions and others generated along the way as we relive Redemption in an effort to bring it about. As a youngster, I wondered why asking the Four Questions -- written in the haggadah, learned by rote, and repeated verbatim every year -- figured so prominently in the seder service. As an adult, the reason is clear: Asking questions is as vitally important for Redemption as it is to science. Questioning is the beginning of wisdom.

Knowledge, progress and redemption depend upon our having the wisdom to ask the right questions.

The Catholic Church has announced that providing health insurance that covers the cost of contraceptives is a violation of its religious beliefs, since Catholic doctrine opposes the use of birth control. The religious beliefs and commitments of the people who happen to work at Catholic institutions (schools and hospitals, for example) is immaterial to them. The right of their employees to make personal health care decisions privately according to their own consciences and religious commitments -- a right afforded by the Constitution -- is similarly irrelevant to them. This is a hot button topic in the news as the country debates the Affordable Care Act. Here are questions to ask: Where in all this debate is discussion about health insurance providing vasectomies? Why is male birth control not being discussed? And if it’s not, then the issue is not really birth control.

Many conservatives have voiced vociferous opposition to abortion. The rhetoric has gotten pretty nasty. We’ve seen demonstrations, accusations, even attacks on clinics and physicians. Here are questions to ask: Have you seen any of those so vehemently opposed to abortion campaigning for safe, effective, and available contraception? Have you seen any of them lining up to adopt unwanted babies? If not, then the issue is not really abortion.

So here’s my question: What is the real agenda of those who would deny women their constitutional rights to contraception and abortion services? It’s not about when life begins, or the rights of a fetus, or what “be fertile and increase” means. It’s about a full-throttle regressive effort in America at the beginning of the 21st century to return to a time when men, and not women, had command of women’s bodies and procreation.
Clearly, both men and women are affected by the availability of safe contraception and abortion, but certainly not equally. Birth control and abortion have empowered women to make choices that have enabled them to move into the public sphere, wielding influence and power.

The spectacle of an all-male clergy panel appearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on the contraceptive coverage rule is not merely shocking; it’s alarming and shameful.
Have we stepped into a perverse time machine and returned to an age in which male clerics -- some of whom were celibate! -- made life decisions about women’s bodies? From all appearances, that is the direction many would like to move. We’ll need to rewrite the lyrics for the Weather Girls’ 1982 hit, “It’s Raining Men.” The new version will be entitled, “It’s Reigning Men.”

Redemption is the singularly most important message of Passover. We re-enact our ancestors' redemption to remind ourselves that however bad things get redemption is possible. It is possible to rise from a place of vulnerability, weakness, and suffering, to a place of strength and healing. The Egyptians controlled the bodies and productivity of the Israelite slaves. It is time -- alas, still -- to redeem women’s rights over their own bodies and reproduction.

© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman