Beha'alotecha

Dear Friends,

Numbers Chapter 11, from this week's portion is all about complaining! The Israelites kvetch (whine) that they miss the delicacies of Egypt -- "We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost--also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic" (Num. 11:5). Their complaining incenses Moses and God; it is a sign of shortsighted ingratitude.

My posting this week is a series of questions:

- How do our complaints get in the way of our gratitude?

- What do you most often kvetch about? How does it make you feel when you complain? How does it make others feel?

- If you could drop one complaint from your life, what would it be, and why? How are your complaints holding you back?

- When is a complaint useful?

Wishing you a kvetch-free Shabbat!

Shabbat Shalom,

Jonathan

Study Texts for Parashat Chukkat, Num. 19ff.

Dear Friends,

I hope you like the new look of our blog. Your feedback is most welcome.

I will be offering remarks from the bimah this Friday night, June 18, on Parashat Chukkat, which begins with one of the strangest passages in all of Torah, the laws describing the ritual of the Red Heifer. I direct your attention to the Parasha itself which you can find in any chumash (Torah Commentary) or online by following the links to the right ---> of this post.

Once you've read Numbers Chapter 19 in its entirety, I want you to consider the following question: To what extent, if any, does Judaism -- or does Religion in general -- require its faithful practitioners to "check their rational faculties at the door?" Are there any religious experiences or practices for which Reason is not required?

To assist you in your study, I am now providing the study texts that we will examine during Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday night. I look forward to seeing you there, and at Torah Study on Saturday morning.

Happy studying!

RJEB

Midrash Yalkut Shimoni 759

“This is the statute of the Torah.” R. Isaac opened [his interpretation] with the text, “All this I have tried (to fathom) by wisdom; I said, I will get wisdom; but it was far from me” (Ecclesiastes 7:23). Thus spoke Solomon: I succeeded in understanding the whole Torah, but as soon as I reached this chapter about the Red Heifer, I searched, probed and questioned, “I said I will get wisdom, but it was far from me” (As cited in Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Bamidbar (Numbers), p. 233).

Midrash Bemidbar Rabbah 19:8

A certain idolator once challenged Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai: “The rituals that you perform with the Red Heifer resemble witchcraft! You bring a cow, burn it up, grind it, and extract its ashes. Then, when one of you is defiled by a corpse, you sprinkle two or three drops on him and say to him, ‘You are purified!’”

He responded to him, “Haven’t you ever been possessed by a demon spirit?”

To which he replied, “No.”

He said, “Have you ever seen a person possessed by a demon spirit?”

To which he replied, “Yes.”

“And what do you do for him?” he asked. “We bring herbs and turn them into smoke beneath him, and throw water on him, upon which it [the demon spirit] vanishes,” he said.

He retorted, “Can your ears hear what is coming out of your mouth?! The demon spirit is the same as the spirit of ritual defilement!… We sprinkle purifying water on him, and it vanishes.”

Afterwards, Rabbi Yochanan’s disciples said to him, “Rabbeinu, you pushed him aside with a reed, but what can you say to us?”

He told them, “By your very lives, it is not that the dead can defile nor that the water can purify. Rather, the Holy One of Blessing has said: ‘I have enacted a statute; I have decreed a decree. You are not authorized to transgress my statute, as it is written, “This is the statute of the Torah.”’”

(translation: J. Blake)

Midrash Sifra, Kedoshim

“It is more praiseworthy to do something solely because God commands it than because our own logic or sense of morality leads us to the same conclusion” (As cited in Etz Hayim, p. 880).

Nehama Leibowitz (1905-1997)

“Let us not be among those who seek for rational explanation for those things, to which the laws of reason do not apply. May we be like the disciples of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai who accept the yoke of the statutes (hukkim), just as they do the yoke of the other commandments of the Torah” (Studies in Bamidbar, p. 235).

From the Pittsburgh Platform (Kaufmann Kohler, et al., 1885)

3. We recognize in the Mosaic legislation a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.

4. We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.

Joseph Bekhor Shor (Late 12th C., Orléans, Northern France), ad loc.

The rites pertaining to the Red Heifer were designed to discourage association with the dead, prompted by the bereaved’s love for the departed, and excessive grief…. Also on account of human respect, that people should not come to using human skin for coverings and human bones for articles of use just as we use the skin of animals; it is disrespectful of humanity…. The text likewise went to the strictest lengths in its requirements, demanding the ashes of a red heifer which are an expensive item (as cited in Leibowitz, Studies in Bamidbar, p. 234).

W. Gunther Plaut (b. 1912)

The need to be ritually purified after touching a corpse reflects an ancient and universal fear of the dead, whose spirits were believed capable of injuring the community. While the ritual of the red cow is doubtlessly based on pre-biblical practices--an old Canaanite epic tells of the death of the underworld god of fertility, who went to the underworld and there copulated with a heifer--the Torah here appears to reinterpret old practices in accordance with its own religious views. At the core of these stands the idea that Israel is a holy people and that holiness demands a state of physical and spiritual purity” (The Torah: A Modern Commentary (Revised Edition), p. 1035).

Beha'alotecha 5770

Dear Friends,

I am writing to you from my College Reunion where I am enjoying a quick overnight before returning to Scarsdale for Shabbat. By the time many of you read this, I'll already be back in town!

Ben Bag Bag, that improbably named Sage, was right to teach of the Torah, "Turn it, and turn it again, for everything is in it" (Pirkei Avot 5:26). Rare, even impossible, is the encounter with Torah that does not reveal some new insight, some new detail waiting to be discovered, turned over, explored, interpreted.

So it is this week in my discovery of a detail from the Torah portion called Beha'alotecha, the passage we read this week from the Book of Numbers. In Chapter 10 the Torah relates the marching order of the Israelite Tribes and their respective chieftains. With the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant traveling, piecemeal, up front, under the porterage of three Levitical clans, the The Torah depicts the tribes marching in a fixed formation and fixed order each time the Israelites would break camp, marching until they reached their next station in the wilderness, each encampment and departure prompted by God's atmospheric signals: a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night.

Here, then, is the detail that caught my attention this week. For all of the tribes a simple formula is used to describe the marching: "Then the banner of the camp of [tribe name] set out, according to its ranks...." The formula deviates only once, when we get to the final tribe in the formation, the tribe of Dan.

"Then the banner of the camp of Dan set out, the collector for the other camps, according to its ranks..." (Num. 10:25, emphasis mine). What are we to make of the inserted phrase, "the collector for the other camps?"

RaSHI explains by way of the Talmud Yerushalmi: "The collector for all the other camps: The Jerusalem Talmud [states]: Because the tribe of Dan was numerous they traveled last, and if anyone had lost anything, they would [find it and] return it to him." (RaSHI ad loc.)

It's a touching and significant image: the Tribe of Dan, the final tribe in the Israelite formation, shouldering the responsibility to collect or gather up anything left behind by the tribes ahead of them.

It's an image, I believe, that offers wisdom to us Jews today, particularly us Reform Jews. Each of us marches behind the generations of forbears who have bequeathed to us Jewish wisdom, Jewish practices, the ethics of Jewish generations gone by. In most cases our forbears, our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, and countless departed generations we never could meet, carried their Jewish banners with pride and commitment, leading the way from Sinai to all their lands of Promise, the Jewish tradition safe and intact under their care.

But every now and then our forbears let drop into the desert sands of time a teaching, a tradition, a custom, practice, or ritual--at times inadvertently and at times eagerly. Perhaps some of our forbears, all too eager to shed particular signifiers of Jewishness like ritual dress, restricted diet, Old World language and traditional synagogue melodies let drop their kippot and tallitot, their kosher food and their Yiddish words, their niggunim and their nusach into the sand.

And we who march last in formation, we who come of late trailing their footsteps in the sands of time, perhaps have spotted those little tribal treasures scattered here and there on our own Jewish journeys, and perhaps we have deemed them worthy enough to examine, blow off the accumulated dust of time and travel, and try them on for size again. The Tribe of Dan, collector for the all tribes who marched before them, thus played an important part in the life of the People of Israel and so do we who march only latest: gathering up the lost fragments of Jewish life, seeing how they might make sense today, and cherishing those treasures that enrich and deepen the Judaism that we shall leave for those who march after us.

As always, I encourage and welcome your comments below.

Happy Studying!

Rabbi Jonathan Blake

D'var Torah by Susan Wiener

D’VAR TORAH: PARASHAT BEMIDBAR 5770 / May 14, 2010

MEN’S CLUB SHABBAT

by SUSAN WIENER, recipient, The WRT Brotherhood Award 2010

I can still remember the day……it was Friday 11:45 pick up at from the 3’s program at the ECC. We gathered in the hallway, waiting for the door to open. Nervous moms, we all waited…..all of us still new to the ECC. Out comes my oldest, Tracey, hand-in-hand with her new friend. This new friend turns to her mom and then to Tracey and asks, “Are you coming tonight?”

I had no clue and I am thinking, “Coming to what?”

Tracey asks, “Are we?”

The new friend turns out to be Rena Singer and her mom turns out to be Rabbi Beth Singer, who explains that tonight is family Shabbat services….. at 7:30…….and we all know you don’t say no to the Rabbi.

That was my beginning at WRT……As soon as I walked into the sanctuary that night, I felt that sense of community, the sense of belonging…that my family counted.

Tonight’s Torah portion is Bamidbar. In the desert of Sinai, on the first of the month of Iyar, one year and two weeks after the Exodus from Egypt, G-d speaks to Moses. The leader of Israel is instructed to conduct a census of his people. Indeed this Book of the Torah is called “Numbers” in English because of its preoccupation with censuses and counting in general.

According to the Chassidic Masters, a census expresses two paradoxical truths. On the one hand, it implies that each individual is significant. On the other hand, a head-count is the ultimate equalizer: each member of the community, from the greatest to the lowliest, counts for no less and no more than "one." G-d repeatedly commands Moses to count the Jewish people to emphasize both their individual worth--the fact that no single person's contribution is dispensable--as well as their inherent equality.

Over the years, I have had the opportunity and privilege to participate in many activities and to be a member of, and chair of, various committees at WRT. It is here that I have learned what the words “process” and “patience” really mean…. and more specifically, what it means to be a part of a “thoughtful process.” Participating in these thoughtful processes came to mean that, in this congregation, everyone counts; everyone has an opportunity to have a voice.

But still I worry about how we reach out to the members of our community who may not feel “counted”--who many not feel they can participate--because of some disability.

This past March, I had the opportunity to attend the first Westchester Interfaith Network on Developmental Disabilities. The keynote speaker was William Gaventa, Director of Community and Congregational Support at the Elizabeth Boggs Center. Bill reminded us that by removing disabled people from the mainstream, we disempower the mainstream community and its leaders by robbing them of the opportunity for meaningful interaction with the disabled, who by definition as human beings have something to offer.

Here at WRT, our clergy make sure that each of one of us counts. They model inclusion. It is the fabric of who they are, of what WRT stands for. But still, many with disabilities, or family members of those with disabilities, don’t always feel like they can participate--even in a congregation that celebrates inclusion. For a culture change to occur, our clergy can not do it alone. It needs to be a partnership.

Many of us have no prior experience with interacting with people with different kinds of disabilities. Attitudinal barriers are the hardest to change... but they can be changed. We are often uncomfortable when we see someone in a wheelchair. Some of us are uncomfortable reaching out to a fellow congregant who may feel excluded because of his or her disability.

And these feelings of isolation don’t always occur because of a disability at all. It may be someone who may have just experienced the loss of a family member or a new cancer diagnosis….someone who doesn’t know where to turn… and who may not feel fully embraced anywhere.

How do we as a congregation ensure that ALL are given a place in our community? It is important to recognize and accept that we all have differences and to make an extra effort to include all members of our community in all facets of synagogue life, worship, community and education.

Just a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of ushering at the Bat Mitzvah Rebecca Siegel. It was probably one of the most meaningful B’nei Mitzvah services I have ever attended. Rebecca struggles with epilepsy. Rebecca’s uncontrollable seizures have caused lifelong learning deficits and developmental delays. But this did not deter her parents from wanting a Bat Mitzvah for Becca. Randy and Lisa partnered with the clergy and educational team at WRT. Together they crafted a plan. Becca began her Bat Mitzvah lesson with one of our tutors, Nancy Abraham. On Saturdays she attended the Sharing Shabbat Service. Becca loved the music and prayers in song. When Becca came to this February’s Inclusion Shabbat, I saw firsthand her love of music reflected in her eyes. I know it brought a smile to those sitting around her. A service was crafted with an emphasis on music. The day of the service the room was filled. As the music began Becca’s face beamed. The joy she felt was contagious. Each time the music stopped, she responded with, “More, please!”

When I spoke with Lisa after the Bat Mitzvah she confessed to not having felt sure about this Bat Mitzvah in the beginning of their journey. But Lisa’s and Randy’s willingness and openness to partner with the clergy allowed the amazing day to happen. Lisa recently spoke with another parent of a special needs child who was contemplating having a Bat Mitzvah…. Would her child know the difference? Lisa’s response was, “How many of us give our ‘typical’ children an option?”

Each child at WRT is treated as an individual. Each child counts. Rabbi Jacobs uses the example of the "bullseye." The child is the bullseye and we, the clergy and educational team, paint the circles around them. All children can have a Bar or Bat Mitzvah.

This is just one example of how our doors at WRT are wide open. We need to raise awareness so that everyone can feel included…so that everyone feels they can be counted the way the Torah this week demands that each one must be counted.

I challenge each of us to open our eyes, open our hearts, and open our mouths. I challenge each of us to step out of our comfort zones and reach out to all the members of our community: those in mourning, those with disabilities, those who just lost a job… those who are sitting alone at services , those who may be standing alone at the oneg , those who are afraid to come in the front door. Those who want to be—and who should be—counted.

Speaking of counting: we are in the last days of counting the Omer. The Book of Leviticus describes this ritual, instructing us to count every day for the full seven-week period between Pesach and Shavuot. Long ago, when our ancestors were farmers in the land of Israel, they counted the days from the first planting of the growing season until the first harvest, the springtime harvest. Each night we count the day out loud. This period of counting helps to make us aware of each day.

We can also use the Omer period as a time to reflect on the “seeds we are sowing” in our own lives. May we reflect on our lives each day and remember that seeds planted today become tomorrow’s harvest. We may not even see the changes right away, but like seeds planted in the earth, each act of making another person feel counted, feel deeply valued, will surely yield a harvest of goodwill, a harvest of a fruitful community, blessed by God for its inclusiveness. Simply saying “Shabbat Shalom” to someone you don’t know may, in fact, allow you to answer a person’s unspoken prayer, an innermost wish to feel acknowledged, to know that “I am not alone.” To know that none of us is alone, and that each of us counts. Shabbat Shalom!

Morality and War, Then and Now - Thoughts for MATOT-MAS'EI

Shalom, Internet!

This is a first: I am posting this week's blog commentary from a couple hundred miles north of Albuquerque, 36,000 feet in the air. (See photo to the right, which I took with my laptop camera.) I spru

ng for the WiFi on Virgin Atlantic ($12.99/flight) so I ought to at least get some work done, you know, for tax deduction purposes. Or something.

This is a vacation week for me, so in lieu of a new video I am posting a link to a commentary written last year for Parashat Matot, the first of the double-portion (Matot-Mas'ei) read this week. The "D'var Acher" commentary by URJ Chairman Peter Weidhorn is also worth reading and I'm sure that somewhere in these words we'll find ourselves prompted to engage in a vigorous discussion. As always, your comments are most welcome.

Let me add, upon the conclusion of the Book of Numbers: Chazak, Chazak, v'Nitchazeik! Be strong, be strong, and let us give strength to one another.

Shalom to all of you from above -- way above!

Rabbi Jonathan Blake

Here is the article. The originally posted link to the URJ website seems to be under construction.

D'VAR TORAH

Morality in War, Then

and Now (Originally published in "Reform Voices of Torah,"

2008)
Jonathan E. Blake

Photo Credit: Jordana H.

We begin our parashah in the fortieth, and thus, final year of Israel's desert trek toward the Promised Land. The people are encamped on the eastern side of the Jordan River, opposite Jericho. The Israelites are preparing to enter Eretz Yisrael as a trained fighting force, ready to dispossess the native Canaanites and take possession of the land promised on oath by God.

Moses initiates a war against the Midianites (Numbers 31:3–4), purportedly to avenge the people for the sin of the Midianites. Recall that a Midianite woman, Cozbi, used sex to lure an Israelite named Zimri into illicit carnal relations—a deed abruptly ended by the spear of Pinchas, which dispatched both participants at once (Numbers 25:6–8, 25:15). Presumably her transgression spurred the men to acts of idolatry. (Some confusion lingers over this passage, because we learn that Moabite women, not Midianites, used sex as a lure and then "invited the [Israelite] menfolk to the sacrifices for their god") (Numbers 25:2).

But here our text targets Midianites. The Israelite warriors slaughter all their males and especially their kings (Numbers 31:7–8), as well as "every woman who has known a man carnally" (Numbers 31:17), sparing only the virgin females (Numbers 31:18).

After the slaughter, Moses instructs that "every one among you or among your captives who has slain a person or touched a corpse shall purify himself . . ." (Numbers 31:19).

W. Gunther Plaut regards this "ritual atonement" as "a unique provision in any human code" (The Torah: A Modern Commentary, rev. ed. [New York: URJ Press, 2005], p. 1,111), one that "introduces certain meliorating rules" (like tithes on the spoils claimed in battle). Parenthetically, Plaut continues:

(These may be compared to the various Geneva conventions of modern times applying themselves not to war as such but to the treatment of prisoners and civilians whose fate is to be bettered in conflicts still to occur.) . . . The realities have not changed greatly to this day, except that in many ways modern war may have increased the cruelties practiced in ancient, more "primitive" times. (Ibid.,emphasis added)

How sad, and true, is this last remark.

Many of us who read this section of our Torah portion understandably shudder at the religiously commanded slaughter, especially when Moses remarks in disgust, "You have spared every female!" (Numbers 31:15) before ordering their deaths, too.

But we should approach cautiously in contrasting our twenty-first-century sensibilities against biblical views of warfare. A compelling case could in fact be made that the wars of the last century and this century display humankind at our most brutal since the dawn of time. Certainly the cumulative wartime death toll since 1900 lends evidence to this claim.

Our increasingly sophisticated technologies of warfare have enabled us to wreak unprecedented destruction from an unprecedented remove—a remove both geographical and emotional. Increasingly commonplace "shock and awe" tactics of aerial bombardment do present less of a risk to military personnel than does a ground assault, but at the cost of death and injury to how many civilians?

Furthermore, we have seen in our most recent conflict in Iraq evidence that protracted war may erode basic morality. The crimes at Abu Ghraib alone should cause us sufficient discomfort in alleging any moral superiority of present-day wars over biblical wars.

The War on Terror has also been exploited by our government to justify the torture of detainees. The current [read, "former," i.e., Bush - ed. 07.2009] administration's morally dubious defense of torture (on the grounds that the practice is warranted by the threats posed by "enemy combatants") further tarnishes any disparaging claims we might make about the "primitive" wartime practices of our biblical forebears.

In 2005, the Reform Movement passed "a Resolution on Torture that affirms the validity of international treaties to which the U.S. is a party and the legal definitions of torture present in international law, and demands that the U.S. enforce and uphold domestic laws and Supreme Court rulings that make torture illegal" (as cited on the Web site of the Religious Action Center,www.rac.org). Thoughtful, influential leaders from across the political spectrum—both Republicans and Democrats—endorse this position.

That URJ resolution cites a case presented before the Supreme Court of Israel. The contours of the argument go like this: "On the one hand, the prisoner is a human being, created b'tzelem Elohim (in the image of God), and as such is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect. On the other hand, there may exist a clear and present danger to the lives of innocent persons, whose death and injury might be prevented by information that the suspect can provide" ("Resolution on Torture," submitted by the Union for Reform Judaism Board of Trustees to the 68th Union for Reform Judaism General Assembly, passed—Houston, November 2005, as cited on www.rac.org).

It turns out that "the Court held that even in a ‘ticking bomb' scenario, torture or physical coercion is banned without exception. Experience has taught that there are more effective and moral ways of extracting information from detainees that do not reach beyond the bounds of law" (ibid.). "Israeli Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak stated in an article after the Court's decision: ‘The war against terrorism also requires the interrogation of terrorists, which must be conducted according to the ordinary rules of interrogation. Physical force must not be used in these interrogations; specifically, the persons being interrogated must not be tortured'" (ibid.).

This Israeli ruling highlights the complexity of legislating moral conduct during warfare. Yet instead of despairing of our capacity to compel moral behavior in wartime, it insists all the more that ethical standards must be applied and enforced— especially in war.

War has always been a brutalizing, dehumanizing affair, both for combatants and civilians. Our Torah portion this week makes this fact abundantly clear.

But have we really come so far?

DAVAR ACHER |

Challenge and Responsibility: Finding Modern Meaning in Biblical Text
Peter J. Weidhorn

As a Reform Jew and a layperson, I have always marveled at the ability of our rabbinical leaders to lead us to see ideas within the Bible that are not always apparent to us. At the same time, however, I have been taught by some of my teachers to be very careful lest we go overboard in reading into the text ideas and concepts that are not present. Such would be my conclusion relative to this parashah of Matot and the extension drawn from its words to the politics of our moment in history.

Like so many laypeople, I am concerned about the use of the biblical text to lead people to take particular political positions for or against specific personalities. What can be read into the text by one may not be read into the text by another. So for me, I am instructed by what we learn from our Reform commentary, The Torah: A Modern Commentary, rev. ed. (ed. W. Gunther Plaut [New York: URJ Press, 2005]).

Rabbi Plaut has been very specific in suggesting to us that Jews throughout history have been challenged by the moral questions of the requirement to slaughter combatants, women, and children, as occurs here in the text. Is Moses angry that the women were kept alive as a way of enhancing the amount of the spoils of war to be distributed? Or was he angry just because the women and some of the children were kept alive? Plaut points out that we should always keep in mind the time and place of biblical writing. These thoughts and acts were in keeping with the context of the time (ibid., pp. 1,110–1,111).

But even more, Plaut teaches us that this historical narrative was probably written long after the fact and is not meant to be taken literally. The numbers are much too large to be actual. Long after this event, Israel still encountered Midianites and so had not utterly destroyed them. Plaut writes, "The biblical account . . . represents a reconstruction of history as a statement of what should have happened rather than what actually happened. It doubtlessly came from an age when Israel had trouble with the native inhabitants of its conquered peoples . . ." (ibid., p. 1,111). I take from this a number of lessons concerning Reform Judaism and Torah.

First, Reform Jews read Torah differently than many other Jews. We are able to maintain its sanctity while challenging its literal words. Second, we can ask moral questions about the actions suggested in the text as to how they might or might not relate to our times. Surely, this section in Matot applies. What about other sections of biblical text? For example, how about the morality of Jacob's stealing the birthright? What about the notion of slavery?

Finally we must be very careful in how we might use the text. The third commandment ofAseret HaDib'rot ,which suggests we should not take the name of God in vain (old translation), might be understood in the following way: certain sacred things should be used very carefully and not taken lightly. Extracting political doctrine from the biblical text may be just such an example.

Peter J. Weidhorn is chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Union for Reform Judaism, the top lay leadership position in the Reform Movement.

Viral Culture, Then and Now: Musings on Parashat Shelach-Lecha (Num. 13:1 - 15:41)

Please note: Video link follows at the end of this written message.

Dear fellow students of Torah,

This week's commentary interweaves ideas from Bill Wasik's new book "And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture" (New York: Viking, 2009) with thoughts inspired by this week's Torah portion, Shelach-Lecha. The story told in this week's Torah portion comments intriguingly on the viral culture of our time. The way in which the spies are able to spread a "viral story" through a mass population in certain ways resembles the way in which Internet-driven phenomena can take hold of the public in our day with astonishing speed and effectiveness, which is the subject of Wasik's book. Is this where the similarity ends (or perhaps is there more)?

Given that we live in (and are the products of) a culture in which the latest "nanostory" (Wasik's neologism) is positioned to occupy the center of our attention, what can we do to create and hold onto narratives of more lasting meaning and value, stories that are not ephemeral but enduring?

I'd like to propose our ongoing study of Torah itself as one such source of an enduring narrative, a bulwark against the frenzy of nanostories bombarding us every day.

With shalom and wishes for meaningful study and reflection - Rabbi Jonathan Blake

I have posted the video here.

Sin, Guilt, and Confession: A Meaningful Passage in Parashat Naso

If you have a Bible nearby, check out Num. 5:5-7 as you take in this week's message.

May your week be one of blessing....

- Rabbi Jonathan Blake

The Spirituality of the Wilderness

Cultivating a "Spirituality of the Wilderness": A Gentle Challenge for the Week of Parashat Bemibar.

When was the last time you spent at least a half hour outdoors, without speaking to anyone? That's my "homework" for this week, the week of beginning the book of Numbers (Bemidbar). View this week's video message for an elaborate introduction to the "assignment."

L'Shalom,

Rabbi Jonathan Blake