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It’s been a devastating week. I feel like I’m still trying to shake myself out of the shock of what happened and I know others feel similarly. The more that’s reported from the deepening investigations into the tragic collapse of the Key Bridge, the more we feel the ripples of devastation and uncertainty.
A ripple: The fear, in those first few hours on Tuesday morning, that the ship’s impact was not simply a horrible accident, but an act of terror. A ripple: Quick action by the harbor pilots and ship’s crew helped prevent a much greater tragedy and substantially more loss of life. A small point of light and gratitude in an otherwise dark story. A ripple: We’re beginning to learn more about the lives of those who are still missing and those whose bodies have been recovered, about their families and their personal stories. A ripple: The closure of the port will disrupt our supply chain, impacting both the economy and individual lives. A ripple: The bridge will take years to rebuild, making traffic into and around Baltimore far more congested for the foreseeable future. These ripples form concentric circles radiating from the initial impact, the bridge’s collapse and the disappearance of the workers who were still on the road. We try to contend with each ripple as we meet it, aware that more ripples will continue to form. As you know, I try to use this space as a lens through which to refract some Torah. This Shabbat, we read the third of four special passages that guide us toward Pesaḥ - Parashat Parah (Numbers 19:1-22). On a straightforward level, this section of text is focused on technical ritual - the ritual of the red heifer whose ashes purify one from contact with the dead. More deeply, however, this passage speaks to the ripples that radiate out from being close to someone who dies. Put simply, one who comes in contact with a dead body, either by touch or by proximity, becomes ritually impure. The way to resolve this impurity is to be sprinkled with a mixture made from fresh water and the ashes of the red heifer, which are prepared with great attention to detail. An often-noted irony of this procedure is that every person involved in it becomes ritually impure by virtue of their actions. The one who slaughters the heifer, the one who sprinkles the mixture on a person seeking re-purification - and everyone in between - they all acquire a form of ritual impurity as the result of their involvement. The ripples of ritual impurity touch them, changing their status, and making it so that they too need to be purified. This idea feels especially powerful this week, as the ongoing aftermath of the bridge collapse and the deaths of the road workers continues to impact us. The ripples of this tragedy touch us, and impart to us a measure of fear, frustration, uncertainty, and sorrow. It would be so easy to have a magic potion to help alleviate the heaviness that comes from these ripples. But the ritual of the red heifer is no longer part of our practice. In the millennia that have passed since these kinds of rituals were part of our tradition, we have learned to find different and perhaps deeper ways to walk through difficult times and find a path of healing. So instead of the red heifer’s water of purification, we sit in this moment and offer our prayers, our acts of ḥesed, and our presence. May the bereaved find comfort, may our city find renewed strength, and may we all have a Shabbat shalom.
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מִשֶּׁנִּכְנַס אֲדָר מַרְבִּין בְּשִׂמְחָה - “When Adar comes in, we increase our rejoicing”3/20/2024 This phrase, which originates in the Talmud (BT Ta’anit 29a), is usually the tone setter for our Purim celebrations and the general fun and frivolity that permeate the entire month. We sing it and adopt its melody as a reminder of this season. We use it as a tagline when planning community events and as an excuse to have some extra fun at this time of year. This year, like all leap years, we get to connect with this idea for an extra month, with two months of Adar to celebrate.
I’ve been thinking a lot about our extra dose of Adar rejoicing this year, when neither month of Adar - just like the 5 months that came before - feels especially joyous. 167 days of hostages still held in captivity, with little hope on the horizon. Thousands upon thousands of lives lost and unimaginable suffering. Too much political posturing and not enough listening. Even the words of our sacred texts feel too close for comfort, with the Megillah’s description of the war with the Persians and Parashat Zakhor’s account of Amalek targeting the innocent and vulnerable. This year, the Talmud’s prescription for Adar is more complicated, harder to take in and harder to make happen. It might seem ironic that we experience this loop of joyless rejoicing for two months instead of one, but I think there’s something more in it, something that can help buoy us and prepare us to engage more fully with the joy of Purim this week: the idea of practice. I wrote last week about working with my 7th graders on their Purim shpiels. As we’re starting to rehearse on stage, with all the bells and whistles, I find myself reminding my students that what they practice is what they will perform. If they want their performance later this week to be great, then they need to put that energy and focus into their rehearsals. Stated slightly differently, the more you do something, the more you do something. Our double dose of Adar this year has given us just this opportunity. We’ve had lots of time to stretch our rejoicing muscles, to remember what it feels like to celebrate and even be a little bit silly. Now, as Purim is just a few short days away, we’re closer to being ready to bring our joy more sincerely, with more energy behind it. With that in mind, I want to encourage and invite you to find all the joy you can over this week of Purim. Join us for services on Saturday night - we’ll end Shabbat together and have our own shpiel before reading the Megillah. Join us again on Sunday evening and 5:00 for a potluck Purim Seudah. Bring a joke, a funny story, and prepare to have a great time with our Chevrei Tzedek community. Sign up here! Whether you’re rounding out your second month of increased joy or are just getting started, the more we find causes to celebrate together, the more we’ll be able to celebrate together. I wish all of us a Purim Sameaḥ and hope to see you at shul this weekend. Shabbat shalom! It’s a busy time for rabbis right now, with Purim on the horizon and Pesaḥ coming up right behind. And in my other role at Krieger Schechter, it’s absolutely my most packed time of the year. Among the flurry of special programs and projects that mark this time of year is guiding our 7th graders to write funny (and moderately appropriate) Purim shpiels.
I’ve spent more than a few extra periods this week reading 7th grade shpiel scripts, offering feedback and guidance to the students as they create scenes to tell the story of the Megillah. While this is something I do each year, it never gets old and I always notice something new about the story or the process. This year, I’ve been noticing how eager the students are to be finished with creating their scenes and have been thinking about why this might be. The assignment is not a simple one. Students are put into small groups, with each group randomly selecting a section of the story to tell and a genre through which they have to tell it. Their job is to transform the book of Esther into, along with other genres, a sci-fi film, a children’s show, a documentary, a TikTok thread. And they’re supposed to make it funny, too. One can understand their desire just to be finished already. In an age of immediate gratification, Purim shpiels have not been that. By the end of the first day, about half the groups came to me saying that they were done and asked me to check their work. Some captured all the major parts of their sections of Esther, some had nailed their genres, some were funny - but none of them was remotely done. All of them needed to keep working and revising. Over the last week and a half, this has happened several more times: at every step along the way, each group had finished something, but there was always more to do. And the process continues - now that the scripts are in, it’s time to turn their attention to staging, memorizing lines, and gathering costumes and props. They’re still not finished. I couldn’t help but see a parallel this week as I was reading Parashat Pekudei. Over the past 4 weeks, we’ve laid out the steps for planning and constructing the Mishkan. Along the way, there have been several seeming endpoints. We’ve read the conclusion of the materials list and building instructions, the full ritual of consecrating Aharon and his sons as Kohanim, the completion of the labor, the creation of all of the Mishkan’s parts and pieces by Betzalel and his team of artisans. Pekudei gives us several more non-endings. After all of the pieces are assembled, we read: “וַתֵּכֶל כׇּל־עֲבֹדַת מִשְׁכַּן,” “Thus was completed all of the work of the Tabernacle” (Exodus 39:32), but then it has to be brought before Moshe and set up properly. We then read, “In the first month of the second year, on the first of the month, the Tabernacle was set up.” (Exodus 40:17) So now it’s finished, right? Except it’s not. After Moshe has set up the Mishkan according to God’s specifications, “The cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of the LORD filled the Tabernacle.” (40:34) This is the last moment in the entire book of Shemot, so clearly it must all be finished. Even here, the sense of completion is misleading. The Mishkan has yet to be prepared for use and inaugurated into service. We’ll have to wait until several chapters into Vayikra to get there. There is no “done.” There’s only “done for now.” As with my students and their Purim shpiels, there’s always something more to do. It’s the same approach we take to studying Torah, always going back for another look, reading and rereading and rereading again. This also holds in other contexts of our lives, from concrete projects to personal relationships to our connection with the Divine. We may feel that we reach stopping points, but those are often valuable moments to take stock and consider what we have accomplished and experienced. Then we keep going. There’s always something more just ahead. Shabbat Shalom. As a Torah reader, these last two weeks of the book of Shemot feel pretty repetitive. In many places, they are word for word and note for note the same as what we read in Terumah and Tetzaveh, just a few weeks ago. It’s easy to roll through them without paying close attention - and while the familiarity of the phrases might be helpful for learning a Torah reading, it’s not great for finding personal meaning. I’ve always been struck, though, with the differences between the instructions for building the Mishkan (Terumah and Tetzaveh) and the actual construction, which we begin reading about this week, in Parashat Vayakhel.
Instructions are theoretical, aspirational. What can begin as a grand vision can turn out, in reality, to be much more prosaic. But with the Mishkan, the execution surpasses the design plan. The people overwhelm the leaders with the generosity of their gifts, providing all of the materials necessary and then some. The artisans, led by Betzalel, craft with precision and skill. I imagine these artisans as both innately talented and extremely well trained. The text tells us several times that Betzalel is blessed with a heart of wisdom for this kind of work - those who worked under him must also have been singularly gifted. At first, the text seems to say just that: “And let all among you who are skilled come and make all that the Eternal has commanded.” (Exodus 35:10) And yet, the focus later on is not on the impressive skill of the makers, but rather on the willingness of their hearts and the generosity of their spirits. Noting this discrepancy, the Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, 1816-1893, Lithuania) writes in his commentary Ha’amek Davar, that God would guide those whose spirits moved them to participate in the building of the Mishkan, even if they had never before acquired the skills necessary to craft and create. Their generosity and willingness would invoke God’s presence and enable them to create the components of the Mishkan with artistry and grace. This piece of commentary reminds me of Chevrei Tzedek. We are a community of people whose spirits move us to build and create, to offer our individual gifts generously and with love. While many of our members bring tremendous skill and experience to their contributions to the life of our shul, having that kind of expertise is not a prerequisite for making a mark on our community. We welcome and, in fact, rely on the many different ways each of us contributes to our synagogue life. This past weekend’s installation festivities, which were a beautiful celebration of our community and hopefully the beginning of more wonderful things to come, were an example of the kind of magic that happens when so many people come forward to build and create together. This phenomenon extends beyond special events, though. It is what makes our services meaningful and engaging, what enables us to be there for each other in difficult times, even what keeps the lights on. To borrow from the Netziv’s teaching, something absolutely Divine happens when our volunteers come forward, moved by their generosity and love for the community to contribute. We become inspired artisans, working to build the sacred community that is Chevrei Tzedek. With gratitude for all that last weekend was - Shabbat Shalom. |
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