Looking Back Moving Forward (Bamidbar 5774)

This is a season filled with looking back -- at all we have experienced or accomplished or learned during the school year -- and moving forward -- toward summer and the year ahead.  There is an unusual passage in this week's Torah portion, Bamidbar, that echoes this dynamic as it describes the wilderness journey:  

"The community will make camp with each individual encamped by his troop and each by his own flag." (Numbers 1:52).  At first blush this camping posture seems impossible.  How can one camp in two places at one time - by her troop and by her individual flag?  It seems impossible.

But if we consider our posture at this season -- with one foot, so to speak, set on the path we have taken to arrive at this moment and the other foot on the path of the journey ahead - then we well can imagine standing in two spots at the same time.  

That is looking back and moving forward.

Givers, Takers, and the Impact of Motivation (Bechukotai 5774)

Minneapolis Park Old Fashioned Teeter Totter

In a motivation study of the medical staff at a hospital, Adam Grant put up two versions of a sign to encourage handwashing.  

One sign reminded doctors and nurses that their patients could catch diseases if medical staff was lax about handwashing.  The other sign focused on how doctors or nurses could catch diseases themselves if they were lax about handwashing.  Which sign do you think had the most impact?

I’ll come back to that study soon. First a connection to the Torah portion this week as we wrap-up the book of Leviticus with a parsha that is itself a study in motivation.  The Torah portion, Bechukotai, puts up a similar range of "signs" during the wilderness journey of the ancient Israelites seeking to motivate them.

Loving Your Neighbor: The Rabbi's Gift to a Monastery (Kedoshim 5774)

This week's Torah portion includes one of the most stirring and yet difficult to enact mitzvah in all of Torah:  "You shall love your friend/neighbor as yourself."  (Leviticus 19:18)  I doubt that the Torah focus here is on mere feelings of affection.  Still it is difficult to imagine how one might enact this mitzvah in daily life?  How much more difficult it is if we do not already love and value ourselves.   

The 19th century Haktav v'Hakabbalah (Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi ben Gamliel) offers a list of daily life ways to enact this mitzvah.  He goes beyond treasured friends to include all others with whom we interact.  His list includes: 

• Affection for others should be real not feigned
• Always treat others with respect
• Always seek the best for others
• Give others the benefit of the doubt
• Do not consider yourself better than others

(cited in Artscroll "The Chumash" (Nosson Scherman, ed) p 662.)

He seems to be teaching that the essence of this mitzvah is framing our consideration of others in terms of respect, care, and generosity, then acting on that framework.  That lesson resonates with the popular story called "The Rabbi's Gift."  The setting and tone of this story belie the fact that its earliest source was (only) 1979. There are a number of versions; here is my adaptation based on Francis Dorff's original.  

Connecting Four Dots for Pesach (Acharei Mot 5774)

Preparing for Pesach, which begins next week, the pattern of fours is on many minds -- the Four Questions, the Four Children, the Four Cups of Wine.  The festival even has four different names.  Here's a different list of four -- think a moment about what links them:  

1. Walt Disney
2. A 9 year old from northern California
3. The week's Torah portion
4. Pesach

LisaKristine.com photo that inspired Vivienne

A few words about each of these four dots before we connect them:  

• Walt Disney said, “If you dream it, you can do it.”

• The 9-year old is Vivienne Harr who raised more than $100,000 for a worthy cause selling lemonade.

• The Torah portion identifies a long list of prohibited relationships -- intimate associations we should avoid.  Some are on the list because they are icky or wrong. One prohibition -- against associating with idol worshipers (Leviticus 18:21) -- seems to make the list because Torah fears we might become just like those with whom we hang out.  

• Pesach is a celebration of the struggle for freedom at once ancient and immediate.

Vivienne Harr actually starts to connect the dots for us.  She is the girl who raised more than $100,000 toward ending child slavery.  

The Call to One Boat (Vayakhel 5774)

At the start of each week at school we gather the entire community together for time we call "Hakhel."  It is time to share the empowering nature of our community. The word "hakhel" echoes from the word that begins this week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel -- as it begins "vayakhel Moshe (lit. Moses assembled or called together)" the entire community of Israel. (Ex. 35:1)

"Hakhel” also becomes the penultimate mitzvah in Torah; a once-every-seven-years convening of the entire community for hearing and learning through a reading of the entire Torah. Everyone was to be at that reading. Torah calls out for gathering even strangers who live in the neighborhood and children (Deut. 31:10-15)  The rabbis later interpret this calling together to include scholars steeped in Torah to listen with great concentration (Maimonides, Hilchot Chagigah 3:6) because even they could learn something new in the context of this communal listening.

In other words, “hakhel” is for listening and learning in community. There are even some who link the Hebrew root for assembling a community (קהל - kuph/hey/lamed) with the Hebrew root the human voice (קול - kuph/vav/lamed). We even hear hints of that link in English where "call" as in “calling a community together” is linked to the Hebrew word "kol" or voice. 

So a story to demonstrate the link between the power of community to hear the voice of others.  

Once upon a time, there was a wise man who thought he had grown so wise there was no need for him to listen to others anymore. He would wake early each day and go immediately to his library to continue reading and the learning

Learning From Others: My Father and "Jesús" (Ki Tissa 5774)

My father died at this season 16 years ago. I am so grateful for the many lessons he taught me and the smile and optimism he encouraged in me. Among the many wonderful memories that have 'stuck' one especially comes to mind because of the Torah portion this week, Ki Tissa (lit. ‘when you raise up’). It is a memory that lifts me nearly daily. The memory is about the power of learning from hard work, from experiences that are not anticipated, and from others who are no different from me.

The parsha includes a reiteration and an elaboration on the mitzvah of Shabbat -- of marking each week sacred time set apart for rest/renewal. But beyond the elaboration on Shabbat as sacred -- set apart -- time, there is another mitzvah (or divine exhortation) in the text

It is the mitzvah of work: "For six days shall work be be done." (Ex. 30:15) This echoes to the phrase embedded in the Ten Commandments about Shabbat “for six days you are to work and do all of your labor." (Ex. 20:9) Why are we commanded to work? If Shabbat is so wonderful, why not organize this world so that everyday is a day of rest and renewal?

Integrity: Inside Matching Outside; Aligning Our Ideals and Our Actions (Terumah 5774)

Imagine being in high school and your teacher asks for help solving an ethical problem. The teacher bought a desk from a complete stranger for $150 on Craigslist. He picked up the desk and took it home in his mini-van. A friend helped carry it into the house. Unfortunately the desk was a little too big to get through the door of the room where the teacher wanted to put the desk. 

They tried taking the door off its hinges but still the desk didn’t fit through the doorway. Then they started to take the desk apart, figuring they could move it in pieces better than whole. 

After taking off the top of the desk the teacher noticed a plastic bag stuck behind the desk's file drawers. Inside the bag were some $100 bills. Lots of them. By the time he finished counting all the money in the bag stuck behind drawers in the desk he bought for $150, the teacher had counted up $98.000. Now the teacher asks his students for advice: Should he invest the $98,000 for his four children’s education or give the money to a charity or to his school, or return the money to the woman who sold him the desk?