Mirrors & Midrash: Reflections on Parashat Vayakhel 5771

“Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who’s the fairest of them all?”

So it was asked every day by the Wicked Queen of “Snow White.” And so, it turns out, it was asked by the women of ancient Israel. These women possessed mirrors of highly polished copper, and they would look into them when they made themselves up. We know this from a rabbinic tradition about this week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel. Because fresh resources are scarce in the wilderness, the Tabernacle was constructed primarily out of recycled goods: its precious stones and metals from jewelry, its curtains from fabrics already owned by the people of Israel. So generous were the people, the Torah reports, that Moses had to command them to stop bringing their goods. The artisans used mirrors donated by the women to construct the washstand of burnished copper that stood before the priest in the center of the sanctuary.

A midrash relates that when Moses saw these mirrors, he did not want to accept them. He said, “This is something that helps the Evil Inclination (that basest part of human nature, often linked to lust). These women make themselves up and then the men are led to sin! They may not be used for a holy purpose.” But God said to Moses, “Accept them. These mirrors are more precious to Me than anything else that was brought.”

To understand why is to understand our amazing power to transform the profane into the sacred. A mirror is, in fact, a fine reflection of just this point. We can use this simple tool to accomplish good or ill. We can use it to harm or to help. A mirror can be used in such a way that justifies Moses’ worst fear: as an instrument of vanity. Remember the myth of Narcissus, who stares at his own reflection forever as his body wastes away. In the words of Ovid: he “fell in love with that unbodied hope, and found a substance in what was only shadow.” Mirrors can be used to deflect and deceive: “house of mirrors,” “smoke and mirrors.” Some mirrors distort reality and convince us we are fatter, thinner, taller or shorter than we are. Mirrors can fool you into thinking a room is twice its real size. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. But mirrors can serve beautiful, helpful, and holy purposes as well: in kaleidoscopes, telescopes, and periscopes; in cameras, solar power generators, and lasers; in flashlights and headlights. Mirrors are essential to safe driving, safe shaving, and safe dentistry. When used to catch the sun to signal for help, mirrors can save lives. You see, there’s nothing inherent about the mirror that makes it good or bad: it’s how we use it.

That’s what God recognized in demanding that Moses accept the mirrors from the women. In the next few moments, I’d like to share with you some midrash that relates a few different sacred ends toward which these mirrors were used. All of these traditions are compiled and recorded by the Me’am Lo’ez, a monumental early eighteenth-century Ladino commentary on the Torah begun by Rabbi Ya'akov Culi of Constantinople.

“These mirrors are more precious to Me than anything else that was brought.” Why? Midrash offers four reasons. (1) The mirrors were used to increase harmony in the household and build up the people of Israel. (2) The mirrors were used to help the women concentrate on the study of Torah. (3) The mirrors were used to bring reverence and decorum into the ancient house of worship. And (4) The mirrors were used to not for vanity, but for modesty and self-reflection.

The first midrash goes back to the time of enslavement in Egypt. While their husbands were out working with mortar and bricks, these women would bring them food. Each one would look at herself along with her husband. This would arouse their desire. Well, one thing would lead to another, and nine months later, the women would give birth. “You see,” God told Moses, “these women did a holy deed through these mirrors. They wanted to fulfill the mitzvah of having children, causing many Israelites to come into the world.” As a result, the righteous women in Egypt had many children and thereby caused a critical mass of faithful Israelites to arise and leave during the Exodus! Even the Torah’s word for mirrors, mar’ot ha-tzova’ot, is linked to the word tzeva’ot, which means “troops,” referring to the ranks of Israelites who went free.

A second midrash concludes that these mirrors were not used for the women to make themselves up. A disclaimer: at first, this tradition appears to apologize for the gender-bias present in classical Judaism; but if you listen closely, you’ll notice that the midrash is actually an early feminist notion. The story goes that the women felt uncomfortable coming to the Tabernacle to pray or to hear words of Torah because they were concerned that the men would be ogling them, distracting the women from the service. To prevent the men from staring, they made these mirrors and reflected the sunlight into the men’s eyes. When the washstand was built out of these mirrors, it reflected everything that was done in the Tabernacle, so that even the women who, according to custom, were seated in the rear gallery, could nevertheless pray and observe the reading of Torah.

A different midrash relates that the mirrors were made for the priest who would come to wash their hands and feet from the washstand. They would look in the mirrors to see if they had any spots or stains on their sacred garments. This enabled them to look their best before they performed any Divine service. From this midrash, Jewish tradition taught that one should look his or her best before coming to services. The Me’am Lo’ez observes: “Some people have a habit of coming to synagogue without an outer garment and without shoes on their feet in summer. This is not proper. Sometimes they place a towel over their shoulders and think that this is as good as wearing an outer garment and shoes. This is obviously not correct…. Some people come to synagogue just as they get out of bed. This shows a lack of respect for God. They do not realize before whom they are going to pray. They do not stop to think that they are going to be standing before the King of kings, the Holy One, Blessed be He.”

Well, clearly this is an issue for the Me’am Lo’ez; and though I have yet to conduct a religious service in the presence of barefoot towel-wearers, I must register no small measure of discomfort when I see students, adolescent girls in particular, wearing all-too immodest dresses, sitting in the sanctuary of WRT at B'nei Mitzvah services, or adolescent boys wearing sweatpants and baseball caps to Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday nights.

One final midrash. Some say that the mirrors belonged to women who had actually stopped worrying about make-up, appearances, and self-ornamentation. In other words, they donated the mirrors to holy service because they simply did not have a use for them at home anymore.

They gave up their instruments of self-reflection to concentrate on true self-reflection: an evaluation of what mattered most to them and their community. This message we see reflected as well in the Jewish custom of covering mirrors in a house of shiva, so that mourners not face the continual distraction and temptation to stand vainly before our own image when honoring the life of a departed loved one. And so the mirrors left the homes of these noble Israelite women and instead adorned the holiest space in the community, a place, Torah tells us, graced with God’s Presence.

For that is the amazing power we possess: to transform the profane into the sacred. When we progress from vanity to genuine self-evaluation and self-improvement, we transform the profane into the sacred. When we cease using our tools of communication to spread gossip, sleaze, commercialism and instead communicate respect, knowledge, and love, we transform the profane into the sacred. Let today’s grim headlines instill anew the primeval lesson: when we use fire not to power weapons or for reckless entertainment, but to cook food and warm homes, we transform the profane into the sacred.

So may we become mirrors to reflect the Divine Presence that inhabits every sacred space and every sacred moment.

Shabbat Shalom and happy REFLECTING!

Terumah 5771 - Spiritual Authenticity and the Ark of the Covenant

Shabbat Shalom, faithful followers!

What can a little architectural detail of the Tabernacle teach us about spiritual authenticity? Watch, study, and comment below!

PS - And yes, I apologize for the error in the video: this week's portion is TERUMAH, not Mishpatim. Sorry for any confusion! -JEB

BESHALLACH - SHIRAH - REMEMBRANCES OF DEBBIE FRIEDMAN

This aria of mine will wind its music around you, like the fond arms of love.

This song of mine will touch your forehead like a kiss of blessing.

When you are alone, it will sit by your side and whisper in your ear.

When you are in the crowd, it will give you security.

My song will be like a pair of wings to your dreams.

It will be like the faithful star overhead when the dark night is over your road.

My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes, and will carry your sight into the heart of things.

And when my voice is silent in death, my song will speak in your living heart.

- R. Tagore

The old masters asked, “What is life like?” “Life,” said they, “is like a musical instrument. God plays upon the instrument. The time may come when the instrument that had felt the touch of the hand of God and had responded to its caressing, may crumble and fall into dust. But they who have heard the melody will have its notes ring in their ears to the last day.”

Debbie Friedman (1951 - 2011) was a musical instrument in the hands of God. With creativity and singularity of purpose, she answered with the melody of her life to the touch of God’s hands. We all feel terribly bereft to say farewell to the voice of a Jewish generation but greater than our grief is our gratitude because we have heard the melody.

In my opinion, Debbie was the most influential composer of Jewish music of the last fifty years.

Her contribution to the Jewish liturgical arts, as you will surely read elsewhere this week, came not without controversy. Critics of her music, chief among them the stalwart defenders of the heritage of European Cantorial tradition, or of the particular genius that the giants of 19th- and 20th-century composition brought from their classical training to Jewish choral settings and liturgical art-songs, or of the under-explored tonalities and melodies that ethno-musicologically inclined composers were beginning to rediscover in music from the Sephardic world and elsewhere, all worried that Debbie's populist folk ditties would debase what they considered more "elevated" forms of Jewish musical expression.

Her critics were not totally off-base in their concerns. In my experience, the music heard in Reform temples today can fall into two broad categories: "pre-Debbie" and "post-Debbie." Pre-Debbie music variously conveys majesty, sublimity, Old-World "tradition," reaching hearts and minds in ways that Debbie Friedman's music does not and cannot.

But Debbie's music has the advantage of accessibility. It is eminently singable. It is uniquely American-sounding. Much post-Debbie music bears her stylistic imprimatur (and though there are many imitators, few reach the heights of her gift).

I wonder here if "pre-Debbie" music may be a dying breed, as I observe that Friedman's output has already eclipsed, in terms of its popular appeal and impact, the work of other supremely talented composers of Jewish liturgical music like Bonia Shur, Ben Steinberg, Stephen Richards, Michael Isaacson, all of whom, though living, are as much as a full generation older than Debbie was when she died this Sunday, too young, at age 59.

The "pre-Debbie"/"post-Debbie" dichotomy acknowledges that her contributions to Jewish music came with so many contrasts to every kind of cantorial music that preceded her, quite thoroughly upending how one prays in a Reform synagogue:

- Her musical template was American folk-pop music of the 1960's, sharing DNA with Joan Baez, early (pre-"Blue") Joni Mitchell, Peter, Paul, & Mary, Simon & Garfunkel.... Most of it is set in bright major keys, alien territory for much "traditional" Jewish music. Outside the Sephardic world, the cantorial tradition relies heavily on modal and minor tonalities.

- She wanted her music to be singable, and so democratized the experience of synagogue music.

- She brought the guitar into the Reform synagogue where once the organ held sway. I will never forget the stunned look on some of our congregants' faces when Debbie emerged on the bimah of our synagogue, Westchester Reform Temple, offering only her voice and her fingerpicked acoustic guitar (with electric amplification),

on the eve of Rosh Ha-Shanah no less. Some saw it as sacrilege. Others, a breath of fresh air.

- She brought a strong feminist voice to Judaism, and a distinctively female outlook permeates her music and her lyrics: Lechi Lach, for instance, is the feminized Hebrew inversion of the Bible's Lech Lecha ("go forth").

- She brought Healing to the forefront of Jewish spirituality. Where once a "Mi Shebeirach" for people in need of healing was a kind of "discretionary prayer," an offering that the service leader might incorporate if so moved, Debbie's Mi Shebeirach has, in many Reform (and Conservative, Reconstructionist and even some Modern Orthodox) settings, taken on the status of statutory liturgy, something essential, not dispensable, as it responds to an essential human need.

- She was equally gifted in the idiom of children's music and thus contributed immeasurably to the field of Jewish education. Hers is the definitive setting of the alef bet, the Hebrew alphabet, assisting countless Hebrew School students in memorizing the building blocks of language and Jewish identity.

Not all of her music was equally inspired. She was prolific, and like many musicians who are prolific, the truly great often ended up on wax alongside the average. But I have been listening to Debbie a lot this week, giving me a chance to appraise again what made her gift so special. At her best, Debbie was a supremely gifted melodist with an ear for interesting chord changes. She understood (perhaps intuitively, or perhaps with much thoughtfulness) that for people to sing along in synagogue, the dense cadences of Rabbinic Hebrew would have to be condensed into catchy choruses, and so English was her lingua franca, dressed up by a Hebrew refrain, a memorable catchphrase: "Bless those in need of healing with refuah shleimah." "You shall be a blessing, Lechi Lach."

Now I want to speak more personally, because amid the printed and spoken encomia and superlatives that I have encountered this week, too many have presented an idealized image rather than a special human being. Debbie Friedman was a colorful character with a fiendish sense of humor--totally uncensored and often uproarious. She was silly: I once asked if she would sing an anthem after a sermon and she asked, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame?" True, she wrote Tefillat Ha-Derech, that blessing for the journey; but she also wrote "I Am A Latke," a narrative in the first-person voice of a fried potato pancake.

She was a cherished friend, and a spiritual mentor to me. I feel blessed to have worked closely with her for a year (2007-2008) and to have sustained a friendship until her death.

I love my memories of my time with Debbie Friedman. We inaugurated our partnership in preparation for a tribute service to Rabbi Jacobs who was being honored at WRT for 25 years in the rabbinate. We enlisted Debbie to compose an entire service of original music for Rick, and she helped to direct a volunteer choir of congregants who surprised our rabbi with this musical tribute. Let me tell you: she knocked it out of the park -- and the "Lecha Dodi" she wrote just for him--just for WRT--is now part of our regular Friday night repertoire.

When our cantor of blessed memory, Stephen H. Merkel, died after long illness in February 2007, Rabbi Rick Jacobs of our temple approached Debbie to consider joining our clergy staff the next fall as a yearlong artist-in-residence to ease the pain of Cantor Merkel's death and to see our congregation safely through the Valley of the Shadow.

Debbie leapt with her heart before leading with her head, and her emotional radar was often acutely empathic. When Cantor Merkel finally died, she sent me an e-mail that said, in part:

Dear J,

I opened my e-mail about 1/2 hr. ago and found the e-mail.... I wish it weren't so late. It would be nice to talk to someone.

Then I just listened to my voice messages on my cell phone. I don't always get the messages on time....

How are you? are you okay? You must be so raw. I know how exquisitely sensitive you are.

I am sorry for this huge loss. I am sorry for all of us. He was so colorful. He was so many things, but it is very sad. I know that must be especially painful for you.

My thoughts are with you, my heart is with you and my love is with you. That's all there is to offer in these times.

Debbie had just moved to New York to join the faculty of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, the training ground for Reform Rabbis, Cantors, Educators, and Jewish Professionals, and was close with Rabbi Jacobs, so the shiddach, the partnership, was natural, although she had never before undertaken a sustained residency like the one she did at WRT (and never would again).

Debbie, who could draw crowds of thousands at gatherings of the Reform Movement, or at regular weekend "gigs" in synagogues across the world, would be on our bimah every other Friday night, from the High Holidays through Shavuot! Thus did I befriend a person I had admired since childhood.

After all, Debbie was not only the voice of a generation; she was the voice of my generation. My first memory of music class in Mrs. Ziontz's first-grade religious school class at Congregation Keneseth Israel in Allentown, PA is of learning Im Tirtzu, Debbie's setting of Herzl's immortal words, the rallying cry of Zionism: "If you will it, it is no dream." I played nonchalant when I learned that I'd be sharing a bimah with Debbie twice a month. But inside I felt excited. And a bit nervous. I am a singer and I didn't know if Debbie would like singing with me.

Most of the time, she did. She even once told me. In writing -- and I will always hold on to that message.

But one time, she thought I was harmonizing a bit too... aggressively. Too loudly. After services, she confronted me and did not mince words. I was taken aback.

But, you know what? That's how Debbie was. She would blurt out exactly what was on her mind, usually with no filter. I came to embrace this quality in my friend as an endearing one--once we had the chance to clear the air and share a hug of reconciliation.

When I told Debbie I wanted to poke fun at her artistry for Purim, she bested me and wrote her own lyrics for my proposed parody of "Lechi Lach." I gave her the title and she ran with it. Like so:

LET'S EAT LOX
To the tune of “Lechi Lach”

Let's eat lox,
With a slice of ripe tomato
Let's eat lox,
On a bagel sliced in two
Let's eat lox,
All the whitefish will be jealous.
You shall be a-fressing,
You'll spend the whole day grepsing
Because of indigestion
Let's eat lox.

Let's eat lox.
To the queen it is smoked salmon
Let's eat lox.
It's not herring, it's not sable
Let's eat lox,
Such a texture such a color
The fragrance, how it lingers,
On your face and all your fingers
In the streets and in the markets we say:
Let's eat lox.

She could be totally spontaneous, totally in touch with the energy in the room. While leading services, she would change on a dime if she felt a certain selection in the cue list didn't fit the feeling she wanted to capture. About these spur-of-the-moment decisions she was almost always right. Unfortunately for those singing with her, leading the service with her, accompanying her at the piano, her sudden hairpin turns in the course of service leading could prove maddening. Too infrequently did she inform our accompanist in what key she'd like to play, and some interesting experiments in tonal clusters surely emerged from such misfires in communication. She just wanted to do it all by feel. And so she did.

I have a piece of paper from Debbie in which she edited a cue sheet we had prepared for a service. It is part of our keva, our fixed custom of praying, to introduce the Friday night candle lighting with Debbie's song, "Light These Lights." As often happens, our way of singing it has taken on its own idiosyncrasies over the years. In a marginal note next to "Light These Lights" she wrote:

"

I know I do it wrong, but it is the only way I know it so we do it my way"

I don't know what else to tell you here that you can't read in one of the other, more thoroughly researched, more comprehensively fact-checked obituaries and biographies that are already flooding the newspapers and the blogosphere. She loved off-color jokes and we shared more than a few. She loved her dog Farfel and even took out a personal e-mail address paying tribute to her faithful companion. She was clever and smart and liked puns. In an e-mail that still makes me laugh, she called herself a "wondering menstrual." I will miss her.

I know that somewhere Einstein is echoing one of his favorite phrases: "Coincidence is when God chooses to remain anonymous." What else could account for Debbie's death coming in poetic symmetry with the weekly Torah portion, Beshallach, the Song at the Sea, sung the Jewish world over this Shabbat, which is named Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song?

Parashat Ki Tisa 5770: Carrying the Tablets and Allowing the Tablets to Carry Us

Dear friends,

My new video about the weekly Torah portion asks the question: Is your faith something that burdens you or lifts you up? Please take a few minutes to view and comment these reflections on the story of Moses and the Golden Calf.

Warm good wishes,

RJEB