Achrei Mot Janusz Korczak – something for the Shabbat after Holocaust Memorial Day

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

When my students “stretch my limits”, I think of Janusz Korczak (pronounced – Yanush Kor’chak).
Up until I was in my teens or so, Korczak was just a small street, not too far from my home in the Haifa neighborhood of my childhood, running between Einstein (also a street) and Horev (another street; commemorating one of mount Sinai’s names, and for some reason, we knew that).
Janusz Korczak, born Henryk Goldszmit in the late 1870’s was a Polish-Jewish children’s author, writer (Korczak was his pen name), pediatrician and even had a radio talk show, but he was first and foremost, an educator. His life story is fascinating. Perhaps what he is most famous for his work with orphans, especially the orphanage he established in Warsaw in 1911-1912 where he formed a kind-of-a-republic for children with its own small parliament, court, and a newspaper. He traveled to then Palestine a number of times, and learned from the early kibbutzim.

When the Germans created the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, his orphanage was forced to move to the Ghetto, and Korczak moved in with them. While in the Ghetto, he decided the children should put on a play by Rabindranath Tagore. Some of his quotes include: “Children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with tenderness and respect, as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be – The unknown person inside each of them is the hope for the future… there are no bad children, but children who feel bad”…

On 5 or 6 August 1942, German soldiers came to collect the almost 200 orphans and about one dozen staff members, to transport them to Treblinka extermination camp. Korczak had been offered sanctuary on the “Aryan side” but turned it down repeatedly, saying that he could not abandon his children. On 5 August he again refused offers of sanctuary. He stayed with the children until the end.
On that day, the children were dressed in their best clothes, and each carried a blue knapsack and a favorite book or toy. Eye witnesses describe:

Janusz Korczak was marching, his head bent forward, holding the hand of a child, without a hat, a leather belt around his waist, and wearing high boots. A few nurses were followed by two hundred children, dressed in clean and meticulously cared for clothes, as they were being carried to the altar.
— Ghetto eyewitness, Joshua Perle[18]

He told the orphans they were going out in to the country, so they ought to be cheerful. At last they would be able to exchange the horrible suffocating city walls for meadows of flowers, streams where they could bathe, woods full of berries and mushrooms. He told them to wear their best clothes, and so they came out into the yard, two by two, nicely dressed and in a happy mood. The little column was led by an SS man…
— Władysław Szpilman, The Pianist [19]

The Holocaust is a huge thing, so big that it is impossible to comprehend or contain. No matter how many stories I’ll hear, there will always be one to top it over. During Holocaust Memorial Day, observed earlier this week, one doesn’t know where to start, how to hold the personal, national and global pain at what happened; and at the same time, how to properly appreciate, honor and admire those who survived, and those who risked their lives for others to survive. And yet, that huge thing was not made all at once. It was created from a combination of a lot of tiny little dots, sort of like an impressionist painting, where each one of these dots didn’t really matter that much – try zooming into one of these Monet paintings and you’re left with a blur. But zoom out, and you see, how each dots placement is precise in order to make the whole. At the end of the day, even the holocaust is about one open – or closed – door that makes all the difference in the world; one extra blanket, one piece of bread, one hand, one name.

So fitting, this week’s Torah reading, Acharei Mot, harshly named – ‘after the death of’… focuses on the worship of the High Priest on the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur. Once again, it is filled with lots of tiny little dots, the what, where, who, when, and how of the day, each step critical, all designed to bring us closer to the Divine. Interestingly, Yom Kippur comes after Rosh Hashana, also known as “Yom Hazikaron”, which in modernity would be called – Memorial Day, as if to remind us that remembrance alone is not enough; after the remembrance, it’s time for doing.
When I lose one of the passwords for the —- time, I’m tempted to choose one that is something like – 123 I don’t care – all caps, 5 exclamation marks, but I can’t. I come from a tradition that thinks ‘I don’t care’ is worse than evil itself; a tradition that believes in me as a little but never insignificant dot on that huge drawing; a tradition that believes it matters, that demands that it would matter to me too. Maybe my next password should be 123Yanush.

Shabbat Shalom.

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Four Shorts and a Fifth for Passover

Posted on April 22, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

(1) The Passover Haggada is a big on “four”: four cups, four questions, four sons. And yet, each one of these fours, has a hidden, less obvious fifth. The most obvious one is that there is a fifth cup on the table, Elijah’s cup. What do we do with it? Drink it? Save it? Share it? Shake the table with it?? The original four emanate from the four verbs used to describe the process of going to freedom in the Book of Exodus 6:6-8, bolded below:

ו לָכֵן אֱמֹר לִבְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, אֲנִי ה’, וְהוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלֹת מִצְרַיִם, וְהִצַּלְתִּי אֶתְכֶם מֵעֲבֹדָתָם;
וְגָאַלְתִּי אֶתְכֶם בִּזְרוֹעַ נְטוּיָה
וּבִשְׁפָטִים גְּדֹלִים. 6 Wherefore say unto the children of Israel: I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments;
ז וְלָקַחְתִּי אֶתְכֶם לִי לְעָם, וְהָיִיתִי לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים;
וִידַעְתֶּם, כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, הַמּוֹצִיא אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלוֹת מִצְרָיִם. 7 and I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
ח וְהֵבֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם, אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר נָשָׂאתִי אֶת-יָדִי,
לָתֵת אֹתָהּ לְאַבְרָהָם לְיִצְחָק וּלְיַעֲקֹב; וְנָתַתִּי אֹתָהּ לָכֶם מוֹרָשָׁה, אֲנִי יְהוָה. 8 And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning which I lifted up My hand to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for a heritage: I am the LORD.’

Did you count? Yes, there are actually five. The fifth one is not yet fulfilled. Thus the seder continues to remind us that while everything is proscribed – how to sit, how much to drink, what to eat and when — stay tuned, for while we think we know the whole story, there is a piece that is completely open.

(2) The Haggada is an amazing book: not only does it contain the story itself, but along with “the curriculum”, it includes the instructions how to teach it. And so it tells us: The Torah speaks of Four Sons, introducing us to the idea that there are different learners and those must be addressed differently. The sages took those “four sons” from four verses in the Torah. And yet, how many verses are there which include instructions on how to teach our children? You guessed it: five. Who is the fifth child? Could it be the next generation? Could it be a relevant, untold aspect in those around us? Within ourselves? Our own questions this evening? Yes. Once again, a little subtle reminder: along with telling us everything, the Haggada has a little inside joke, as if saying, you think you know it all? think again.

(3) Slavery is a big one: “once we were slaves in Egypt”. What is the emphasis here? Of course, the favorite is – once we were slaves, now we are free, but then again, are we?? At school we do an exercise: draw a circle, representing a clock, and mark on it how many hours each day do you spend doing things other people /things tell you to do… Think about it and it’s easy to see that there are lots of ways to be a slave.
So maybe a slightly different read: once we were slaves in Egypt – emphasizing the latter, as if to say: Egypt – mitzrayim, which comes from the Hebrew word “narrow” – is the wrong place to be a slave in; that is not a good slavery, but there are times and places to do what another asks or even demands of us. Maybe freedom is mostly, not about any specific labor but about the ability to choose which labor and even more so, which Master to follow.
Here it is in the words of 11th century Yehuda Halevi:

עבדי זמן, עבדי עבדים הם
עבד ה’ לבדו חופשי
על כן בבקש כל אנוש חלקו
חלקי עם ה’ אמרה נפשי
Here is my translation:
Time-bound servants – are slaves of other slaves
The servant of G-d, he alone is free
Therefore, when each human asked for their lot
I am with Hashem, said my soul to me.

(4) Father of the Bride (yes, Steve Martin’s 1991 comedy [please forgive the inaccuracies – paraphrasing from memory]): ‘first, we have to get all these chairs out of here’, says the wedding planner. ‘What?’, cries the alarmed Father of the Bride, ‘What will people sit on?’ ‘Oh, don’t worry about that’ is the planner’s answer, ‘we bring in our own chairs!’
On Pesach too, we get everything out to put everything anew back in, this time, to choose what we bring inside, what we keep out. Pesach, intentionally or unintentionally, becomes a variation on “spring cleaning”, old clothing, books and other accumulated household “junk” gets piled near the door. I spend part of the time cleaning up my computer too, and yes, I know, emails are not halachik (legal) chametz, but then again…? and then, I wish for a solvent to clean up our cognitive, emotional, spiritual hard-drive too.

(5) The four Passover unspoken “competition”: how crazy did you go cleaning; how much did you cook; how many people did you have over; how late did you stay. And my fifth: how late did you write, and still make this holiday somehow come together for you and your family? As with the other ”fifth”, this one too, is still- unknown. And with that, best wishes for a chag (”hug”) same’ach & shabbat shalom.

My mom's childhood Haggada, Germany, 1933

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A Number Greater than 100?

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

Once upon a time, as all stories go, there was a poor thief who came across an exquisite coat, weaved with gold and silver threads. Desperate to get his next meal, he rushed to sell it in the market for 100 coins. Upon hearing this, his friends laughed at him: “that’s all you got for it??” at which the man replied, “You mean, there is a number greater than 100?”

I find this story in a book tossed on a stone-wall in my neighborhood, its fate hanging between treasure and garbage, and even that is perhaps symbolic.

How can we begin to know that which we don’t know?

I am almost haunted by this week’s reading, focused on the strange tzara’at, its symptoms and cure. It’s easy to avoid talking about it: it’s Shabbat Hagadol (the “Great Shabbat”, a name given for the Shabbat before Pesach), and Passover is coming. There is so much to say about cleaning, freedom (though right now they seem mutually exclusive!) and more…

What does tzara’at mean? What is its cause? Most of what we know about it is conjecture. Erroneously used for modern leprosy and thus translated as such, it’s easily dismissed as ancient and outdated. It’s peculiar how one gets it, and if it’s contagious, especially since the priest who comes in contact with the afflicted person, doesn’t get it. The struggle to make sense, speaks even louder to the lack of understanding. And just when think we built some theory around it (the most common one – tzara’at comes from “motzi shem ra”, instructing us not to gossip and speak badly about others), Leviticus 14-15 comes to tell us that clothing and houses can be afflicted with it. Do clothes and houses gossip too?

Before giving up, let’s try zooming out and taking a broader look at this difficult book.

We started Leviticus with the inauguration of the Mishkan, the mobile Temple, and went on to learn what sacrifices are brought there for what reason. Then, on that most festive day when the Tabernacle finally opened for business, a terrible tragedy: Nadav and Avihu, the future leaders as Aaron’s -the high priest’s – sons – were stricken to death, bringing a “strange fire” (10:1). Then we read the laws of keeping kosher, a woman giving birth, and tzara’at, our strange affliction. Just as we get completely lost in pretty gory details, chapter 16 opens with “and it came to pass after the death of Nadav and Avihu” (16:1), taking us back to the story line. I’d like to suggest that Nadav and Avihu here serve as, for lack of a better word, brackets in the flow of the story, and on this Shabbat, we’re inside of the brackets.

Why did Nadav and Avihu die? There are numerous commentaries whether they did something wrong, and if so, what was it (drinking, being disrespectful to their elders etc), or whether they just got too close to the “light” and, like paper approaching fire, were consumed by it. Either way, it’s almost as if the Torah uses this to say something like, ‘wait, while we’re on this subject, let’s look into all the other ways by which one can draw near or be pushed away from holiness. Please pay attention to what you eat, how you treat your wife, how you raise your children, how you speak, dress, and care for your home – for it’s all part of getting close or being pushed away. You think it’s the big stuff, the once in a life time something or other? Yes, sure, that too, but even more so, it’s the tiny, little choices, attentions and intentions, prioritizing one seemingly small thing over another, like a drawing made of million dots that end up being a picture, and each makes a difference in how the picture will end up looking’.

A very binary system is set in place here – there is only “off” and “on” – busy with “splitting hairs”, all in order to get to the bottom of it while being fully aware that there is no bottom and nowhere to get to.

Hebrew has a little “fun” with it too, introducing a set of words that change their meaning by rearranging its letters, by “prioritizing” one over the other.

Take for example, the word nega – plague or affliction. It comes from the same root as touch – lingo’a. Rearrange the letters, and you can make “oneg”, pleasure (like oneg Shabbat – Shabbat delight).

Another insight from the language comes with the word Tzara’at itself. Per Rav Hirsch its core meaning is to erupt, and is therefore related to zera, a seed (consider last week’s reading of “Tazri’a”-). By contrast, the Aramaic translation calls is “sagiru”, which is the Hebrew root for closed! So – “to erupt” and “to close” actually flow in some figure eight”: Tzara’at is intended through “closing” to open things up: the person is removed from the camp, but that time away is meant to help him reconsider his action and come back. The Tzara’at of the homes is considered by commentators as a blessing, for it is a sign that there are treasures hidden in the walls, which only through opening / destroying the walls, can be discovered, pretty much like the hidden treasures within us.

This reading is at the heart of Leviticus. Some say that the whole book follows the order of creation: first we deal with inanimate objects, then animals, then humans. If so, it’s no wonder the sages looked at speech as a connector (or disconnector), since our ability to express ourselves in words is a great part of how our humanity is defined (for example, being made in G-d’s image, who created the world through speech, like we can “create” and “destroy” worlds with words; check Onkelos on Genesis 2:7), and it’s no wonder we examine our actions, not just visa vie our own narrow existence but also against our outer environment, hence our clothing and homes matter.

Last but not least, there is much we don’t know, and some of it better left this way: what exactly is Tzara’at? We don’t really know, and that should be ok. We might not be able to know what number is greater than 100, but we should know there is one.

Shabbat Shalom.

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Most misunderstood Torah portion award goes to…

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

Tazria must win the ‘most misunderstood Torah portion’ prize. The word itself is untranslatable, and it follows by laws of “purity” and “impurity”, two more concepts we don’t understand. Then…

Source: Most misunderstood Torah portion award goes to…

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The middle letter of the Torah is….

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

The middle letter in the Torah is in this week’s reading, and is a Vav. It appears in the word gachon (belly) in Leviticus 11:42.
A Torah scroll writer is called a sofer”, which literally means ‘someone who counts’. I think of mother duck who “counts” her eggs. Anything we really care about, we treat with utmost attention. Counting the Torah letters was no different. A Torah scroll contains 304,805 letters, so this Vav should be the 152,403rd letter (with 152,403 letters on either side). However, a careful count (which I admit, I didn’t do but accept the findings of those who did), shows that this Vav is actually the 157,237th letter. The middle letter accordingly would be in Leviticus 8:28, and is an Alef of the word הוא, hu (pronounced like who), which stands for He, and that’s another long story.
But most still teach that it’s the Vav. There are ways to rearrange the count; say we’re counting “long” letters, “unusual” letters, with or without spaces; how are we counting “double words” (“Abraham, Abraham” in Genesis 25:19) and others. One way or another, we teach that it’s the Vav.
Vav, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, literally means a “hook” and is used as “and” in the Hebrew language. For example Abraham and Sarah is “Avraham veSarah”. Extra meaning is added by the fact that “and” in Hebrew is not a separate word but only one letter that “hooks” to the next word and becomes one with it.
I often say that the commentary teaches more about the commentator than about the issue. I believe this is a critical rule in learning. In this case, even though we count the letter carefully over and over again, the message is stronger than the objective count. Vav, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, literally means a “hook” and is used as “and” in the Hebrew language. For example Abraham and Sarah is “Avraham veSarah”. Extra meaningful is added by the fact that “and” in Hebrew is not a separate word but only one letter that “hooks” to the next word and becomes one with it.
We want to be mindful that this whole book is all about making a meaningful connection, between people, and between us and G-d.
And while we’re on letters:
The three most frequently occurring letters in Hebrew are yod, heh and vav. These are also the letters that make G-d’s name. According to some, these are the hints for G-d’s presence in the world; according to others, this is how the world was made – it was all one “G-d block”, which was broken into smaller chunks that we can comprehend and that will be meaningful to us.
Shabbat Shalom.

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Holy Trash

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

The whole idea of “sacrifices”… I can make sense of it etymologically, finding some meaning in the fact that “korban” (sacrifice) comes from k.r.v., “coming close”, and I do believe that the two are related; that becoming “close” can be directly related to how much we’re willing to do for, to give-up, to “sacrifice”. The classical example is parenting, especially when the child is very young, and yet, the more the parents “give”, “give-up”, and “sacrifice”, the more they look at their child with love and feel a special bond. This can be true for any relationship.
And still, in the background loom the “real” sacrifices, including detailed descriptions of body parts, what to burn where etc.
Most of my family lives on different meat-avoiding diets, from vegan to vegetarian to Rav Cook’s diet (fish or chicken for Shabbat and holiday, and veggie during the week). The whole thing seems ancient, outdated, irrelevant. Who cares? This is what they did long ago and we’re now “modern” and “progressive”!

Well, first, we might wonder if shopping for a piece of animal in the store – not to mention the treatment it goes through before it got there – makes us really more “progressive”, but I’ll leave that for now.
Because what’s worse, is that in the process of the discussion about meat, we miss much of what else going on. For example, in this week’s reading, the first thing the priest does every morning is – take out yesterday’s trash. In order to do so, he wears special clothing, and I think just that – is amazing.

Trash gets special care and attention. Trash is important. Trash has a special place to be put bamakom tahor , in a holy spot (Leviticus 6:4).
Again, withy modern eyes, this might sound very environmental to us, and environmentalism is indeed not absent from Torah life, but sages of different cultures saw more in taking out trash.

One of my favorite Yoga stories is about a young student who goes to his master asking him to teach him the ways of the Light. The master knows the student was not ready but rather than tell him so, decides to convey it in a lesson. The next morning, the master goes to the student with his own (the master’s) dirty food bowl, and asked the student to put some fresh food in it. The bowl looks disgusting and the student refuses: ‘sorry master but you need to clean out your old dirt first; then I can put fresh food in it for you’. The master
(as they often do in these stories), smiles and says, ‘indeed. You need to do the same with your mind. Before I can teach you anything new, you need to empty out the old stuff’.
And yet, cleaning out trash is just the first step. What next? The “trash” or ashes and remnants of the sacrifices, were initially carefully placed by the altar, and even when taken out of the camp, placed in a “holy place”. Why? Because they were not “stam” (nothing, unimportant) trash; they were the left-overs of our greatest dedication, commitment and love. And so, even when they have burned out and are seemingly no longer useful, they still hold some of that original intent; they can therefore teach us about who we are, where we come from, what things worked and what things didn’t work, and from there, perhaps where we should go next. We’re told that the Maggid of Mezerich was once asked how one can sustain love and passion. He was talking about G-d but this might apply anywhere. He said: “He who needs fire should look in the ashes.” (Cited in Degel Machane Ephraim, Tzav, “And the Lord spoke”) “מי שצריך לאש מחפש באפר.” .(דגל מחנה אפרים, פרשת צו, ד”ה וידבר The potential of new fire is within its old ashes, right near by.

Shabbat Shalom.

Zoe admiring an environmental statue made of trash at a converted landfill near Berkeley CA

 

 

 

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These Days of Purim: 3 shorts on a holiday that doesn’t make much sense

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

There is a word missing from Esther 5:1. It says, “and Esther wore royalties’ – ותלבש אסתר מלכות. Shouldn’t it have said, that she wore royal garments? But rather, she wore royalty itself. According to the Malbim (European commentator of the early 1800’s), her outward appearance was royal because she embodied these qualities, and her clothes were secondary. Do we make our clothes or do they make us? A is often the case, the answer is – yes. The Hebrew for “beged” – one of the words for clothing – shares its root with “bgida’ – betrayal; a covering can at times become false covering (and in English – covering for someone-). What about our outside is real and what is false? Life is a constant stretch to match the two. Perhaps Esther was able to approach the king (or King -) only when the two were the same.

* * * * * * *

Why did Haman want to “lose” all the Jews (לאבדם – originally ‘to lose valuable possession’ but also to kill, completely get rid of)? Prejudice and hatred are often attributed to “stupidity” and being “misinformed”. Someone once told me that the holocaust happened because the Jews lived in ghettos and were too isolated. ‘If only the non-Jews in Europe knew the Jews’… Sorry, wrong. The Jews of Germany were as integrated as anyone; my family would have not been saved had they not had close, caring non-Jewish friends. Not to mention, that there is a huge space between not knowing all of certain People and between wishing them all dead.
Luckily, Haman was not shy, and told us his reasoning: “There is one People, scattered and dispersed among the nations… and their laws are different… (which means) they do not execute the laws of the king, and it is not worth it for the king to keep them” (Esther 3:8). It’s an amazing passage, so logical! this is how we go from labeling someone as “different” to (therefore) not being law abiding to (therefore) being not worthwhile for us to have among us. Wait, “we”? Aren’t we talking about Haman? That evil dude? Who’s “we”?
But I never believe there is anyone but “we”, and we – have not changed that much, or else who cares about an isolated incident in Persia of 2500 years ago. At times, I’m sorry we drown Haman’s name during megila reading in noise-makers, though now I wonder if maybe, it’s more of an alert: watch out, there goes Haman! again! right here and now! do something, now, before it’s too late!

* * * * * *

It’s late in the evening. The house smells like baking as an assembly line of mishlochei manot piles up ahead. “Sending gifts (of food) to each other” is one of the mitzvot of Purim, but I can’t help wonder, what are we doing? We’re making these little, hopefully cute, baskets with “stuff”, which we’ll deliver to friends around, only to find at the end of the day, that some of the same friends and others will be leaving us similar baskets at our door. Wouldn’t it be better for each of us to just make our own thing for ourselves?? The exchange seems superfluous and unnecessary.
There are two seas in the Land of Israel: the Sea of Galilee and the Salty – or Dead Sea, both fed by the Jordan River, both running through the Jordan Valley as the Syrian-African Rift crosses Israel. The first one is sweet and fun. Lots of beautiful settlements lay all around it, fishermen enjoy its bounty and for decades, it has been the water source for the rest of the Israel. The latter – is dry, hot and almost inhabitable for anything. The first one has a river that flows in and out of it; the second – has the same river only flowing in but not out. The first – gives and takes, thus remaining sweet; the latter – only takes, thus becoming salty, dead and not suitable for living.
These lakes – that is just the way they are, but they have also served been used as a metaphor. Contrary to what we might think, taking is stifling, while giving and taking, participating in the flow of life, is what is essential to being alive.
This mitzvah of mishloach manot is not seemingly “useful”: each one of us on this holiday can bake their own little cookie, eat it by ourselves and call it a day. But what kind of day shall we call it then??
Purim comes towards the end of the ancient Jewish year, which started with Pesach. It is a reminder that while we might have miracles in our past, those are not what make us survive the day to day and go on tomorrow. It’s not the big thunder and lightening, splitting of the sea and a burning bush but the small acts like making special baskets of goodies for each other that make ours and the life of those around us a little sweeter.
Happy Purim!

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To Remember & Forget

Posted on March 19, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

I step out of my neighbor’s house and something about the evening air, angle of dim streetlights, and the general silence around, reminds me of the last time I was on the same stone steps. Back then, this past fall, I was talking to another friend about someone else. So now, in an instance, this third person, who has never been in this spot and whom I haven’t seen for some time, is right here with me.
Memory is such an amazing and at times strange thing. How do things travel in the brain? This Shabbat, the Shabbat before Purim is known as Shabbat Zachor – Shabbat of Remember! – because of a special passage that is added to the regular reading which begins with this word. The passage, dealing with ‘Amalek’ and challenging on many levels, invites commentators to expand on it. But this morning (soon to be afternoon-), I am just interested in the fact the Torah thinks it can command us to “remember’, and to “not forget”. How is this possible, to command someone to remember?
There is a famous incident in Joseph’s life. Sitting in jail, he had an opportunity to explain dreams to his two cellmates, the baker and the butler. When the butler is promptly released, Joseph asks him: “within three days, Pharaoh will restore you to your office… remember me (zchartani) when it will be well with you, and do this kindness with me, and mention me (hizkiratani) unto Pharaoh…” (Genesis 40:14). Twice he asked; However, not only did the butler not remember Joseph, he also forgot him (40:23), which teaches that to remember and to not forget are not the same.
The issue of remembering things is so strong that there are “6 Zchirot” – 6 things to remember mentioned in the prayer book, like Shabbat, as it is said in the Ten Commandments: “Remember the Shabbat day to keep it holy…” (Exodus 20:7). What makes us remember and forget? And if we can control this, why do we lose our keys, forget our shopping list, miss a birthday etc?
It’s been said, “out of sight out of mind”, but is seeing something or somebody the only guarantee to remember them? Then we must wonder, how did the Jewish people continue to pray for Israel, a land they mostly have not lived on – and the majority never saw – for almost two thousand years?
In English “re-member” is to consciously make something a part of something else; In Hebrew too, per 19th century Rav Hirsch, z.ch.r means to “store (in memory)”. Also in Hebrew, zachar (literally “he remembered”) is the word for male, and again per Hirsch, “bearer of tradition”, someone who carries the seed from the past to the future, for while memory looks backwards, it also inevitably, looks forward.
Alternatively, sh.kh.ch – the root for forget, is related sh.k.h. which means to give someone drinks or to saturate. Therefore, forgetting means letting go through being taken up by other matters; mentally to be so full of something that there is no room for anything else.
If so, maybe what the Torah asks us is to be aware of what we put in our mind; to sort and clear out the unnecessary stuff and make sure we have room to keep that which is most important.

Shabbat Shalom!

 

 

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On Clothing and more

Posted on March 12, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

“Write down 5 of your identities”, asked the speaker, “the first 5 that come to mind”.
What shall I write? What makes me who I am?
I scribble one, then two, then think. 5 is surely not enough to describe who I am, rebels the student in me, contemplating to be creative. What about 6 or 7? He probably expects us to write nationality, religion, race, socioeconomic background but what about profession or hobby or… As I’m debating with myself, I hear the speaker instructing the group to erase 2 of the 5. Then erase another 2. What’s left??
I am one of more than 300 educators in a regional in-service day and can easily hide, but the question remains with me: is identity a prism or is there a core? What is superficial and what is critical about who we are?
The new moon of these days welcomes the month of Adar (Adar II, for this is a leap year in the Jewish calendar too), and in two weeks, it’s going to be Purim. The simple story – stupid king, pretty queen, smart uncle, evil minister – gets more and more complicated the more one reads it. Almost nothing makes sense, and nothing is quite the way it seems.
It’s no wonder then, that one of the customs of this holiday is to dress-up. It is us exprloing different layers of who we are, playing with an opportunity to take on a new identity, if only for the day.
What to be??

The last Torah portion in the Book of Exodus also deals with clothing, and this time, it’s the beautiful priestly garments with their many rules and deep symbolism. There are other stories which center around clothing: Jacob, dressed like Esau trying to fool his father to get the blessing; Joseph, first with his multi-colored striped coat, then with his master wife ripping his shirt, then facing his brothers, all decked out like an Egyptian; Tamar, who dressed up to meet Judah; and of course, Esther, about whom the text explicitly says that she “wore her royal dress to go to the king” (5:1) and I wonder, why specify that? Was she usually hanging around the palace in her sweats and jeans?? And there are more.
In addition, clothing can have a mitzvah (putting on tzitzit, fringes on a four cornered garments) and be affected by tzara’at, a strange Biblical skin condition that erroneously is translated as leprosy but can touch houses and clothes.
A lot can be learned from the first time something appears in the Torah (and much more in Meir Shalev’s book “Resheet” / Beginnings). The first time we hear about clothing is in the Garden of Eden, when the first humans discovered their nakedness after disobeying G-d. Their first “suits” were made for them by G-d Himself. Ever since, dressing – and undressing – has become related to getting near and far from G-d.
If so, it may be no wonder that this is what the Torah chooses to close this book. The Book of Exodus is the story of creating a People, of building a congregation, and yet in the end, it’s what we do as individual makes the community we’re in. It ‘winks’ to our early beginnings and reminds us that where there is a break, or a “tear” if you will, that a seem-line can be stitched and that amends can be made.
The Hebrew word for clothing is begged, which is made of three consecutive letters (bet, gimel, dalet) and means “cover”, “outer appearance”. Thus, the same root is used to create the word for garment (beged), and also – traitor, being unfaithful (bodeg, bgida). The same thing can be one and its opposite. Are we our outside or inside, and are these two, the same?
The month of Adar usually corresponds to the zodiac Pisces sign: two fish, one of the top and one below, in two directions, that go opposite from each other, yet make one picture. This is maybe what Purim and this season is – sometimes almost forcefully we want things to make sense, but they don’t. Life is made of contradictions and opposites and impossible stretches. In the end, not only I wrote more than the “5” identities instructed, I didn’t erase any. There is just too much color to give up any.

Shabbat Shalom.

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Building a Mishkan- in time and space

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Michal Kohane מיכל כהנא

95% of couples get together due to a simple musical chairs game. You’re out there playing, dancing around and suddenly, the music stops, and this is it. You could have been fishing in Alaska, hiking in Nepal, diving near Bali, but you happen to be taking a class on Late Renaissance Philosophy in some college. The clock was ticking, the music stops and there he was.
Ok, the truth is, I have no idea if that’s how it is and what the percentage is. For one, if I try to look up anything about dating, I get advertisements, articles promoting “free relationships” and info about archaeology and carbon 14 “dating”.
So I made it up – in order to make a point.
This week’s Torah portion opens with Moses assembling all the people to build the Mishkan, the mobile Tabernacle. After lengthy instructions, it’s now time to actually start working. Everybody comes, tools in hand, materials ready for donation, talents willing to work. The excitement is contagious and the energy is high. Moses will reveal the instructions he received while being alone with G-d; maybe even bring a model of what to do, like G-d showed him a few things back on Mt. Sinai. Ready? Set? We begin! Then Moses tells everybody to keep Shabbat…
How can it be? I am about to build G-d’s house! Surely, that’s more important than anything!! But not so. No Temple will survive the turmoils of history, but Shabbat will. Shabbat takes precedence and yet, they are closely related.

As has been said elsewhere, the Mishkan, and later the Temple, is in the dimension of space, what Shabbat is in time: a place to enter and connect. If Genesis was the story of a family, the Book of Exodus, which we’re now ending, is about building a nation. What is needed in order to build such an entity, and by extension, a couple, a family, or an organization? We say we need a common past; we need a common future; we need a language and culture, but our history shows that all of those might be lost to us every so often. What we need to create and sustain a relationship are tools in the present – things to do together, places to be in, and times to meet.

This Shabbat is also one of special four Shabbatot in the spring around Purim and Pesach. I bring someone else’s voice for 3 minutes of wisdom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APPzt5V4jkU&feature=youtu.be

Shabbat Shalom.

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