Chukat 5774 - June 26, 2014

Chukat 5774

(By Rabbi Dardik - published in this week's issue of "J")

While I have known that this moment would come one day, I cannot say that I have looked forward to it.   I have been waiting for twenty years (one could say two thousand years) to the life that will come after, but not to this particular instant. 

You see, it is time for me to say farewell.  After thirteen years in the Bay Area and just shy of four decades in the US, I am moving home to Israel this summer, to a home that has never been my home.  I love my Oakland shul-community family and my Bay Area life, and in any conventional sense Israel is a foreign country to me.  I was born and raised an American, to American parents.  I grew up here, went to school here, made my dearest friends here, married here and raised my family here.  It doesn’t stem from a desire to leave, but rather a yearning of the soul to be there.  To ascend on Aliyah.  I may not be Israeli, but I guess I am one of the Children of Israel.

My heart has long broken for Moshe in this week's Torah portion.  Something goes wrong, and he is told that “You will not lead this people into the land that I have given them” (20:12).  Moshe pleads with Hashem to allow him to fulfill the mitzvah of living in Israel or even just to step into it for a moment, but he is rebuffed and only allowed to stand on a mountaintop and peer into the land.  Just like that, Moshe’s dream was crushed.

But what happened?  The narrative does not make it clear.  Rashi surmises from discrepancies in the text that Moshe did not follow directions properly, and hit the rock from which water flowed instead of speaking to it.  Rambam notes that the wording (20:10) indicates that Moshe got angry at the people, and his anger was his undoing.

There is another explanation (Midrash Rabbah Devarim 2:8) that caught my eye.  Moshe, carrying Joseph’s bones through the desert in order to bury those remains in Israel, tries to convince Hashem to let him into Israel.  “Master of the Universe, the bones of Joseph are entering the Land.  Am I not to enter the Land?”  Hashem responds that “He who acknowledged his native land is to be buried in that land but he who did not acknowledge his native land does not merit to be buried in his land.”  The Midrash then points out the verses in the Torah where Joseph identified himself publicly as a Jew (Bereishit 39:14 and 40:15).  In contrast, Moshe allowed himself to be identified as an Egyptian man (Shemot 2:19) and as a result did not make it to the homeland that he had never lived in. 

But why does Moshe's classification as an Egyptian have any impact on his ability to enter the land?  Perhaps because as Jews we connect not only horizontally in the present with our people across the world today, but also vertically back through the millennia.  Human beings are not born in a vacuum, and much as we like to consider ourselves to be self-made we are also impacted by our pasts.  An integral part of being a Jew is identifying with our history.  We spent thousands of years trying to build a model society in Israel, at the crossroads of three continents.  And it is the epicenter of our present and future attempts to do so.  Moshe was connecting to the Jewish present, but had forgotten to reach back into the past to the roots of his identity.

Every so often, I look in the mirror and ask myself, “Am I crazy?  My Beth Jacob and Bay Area Rabbi life journey has been amazing.  Incredible opportunities to learn and teach and share with spectacular people, phenomenal education and environment for my children, and the natural beauty doesn't hurt, either. What in the world am I doing?" 

But it doesn't take long to answer: The ultimate human purpose is to live a meaningful life.  Life here has indeed been deeply meaningful, and has readied me to immerse myself and my family once and for all into the Jewish past, present and future.  After nearly twenty centuries, I could become the last immigrant in my family tree.  I can live out my most cherished values in a place where I experience a heightened sense of Hashem’s presence.  Moshe was denied this dream, but it has never been easier than it is in 2014.  It's time.  Thank you all for years of reading and allowing me to share; this fall I will be teaching Torah in the old city of Jerusalem (with a beautiful view of the Western Wall) and would love to run into you there one day. 

Parsha Shelach - June 14, 2014

Parsha: Shelach

Date: June 14,2014

By: Dan Cohen

A very mini-drash in honor of the OHDS Graduates 

(and each of you)

With apologies to those who heard this at the OHDS graduation earlier this week, please indulge a quick thought and prayer for each of you and for all of our community’s graduates.

This week’s parsha, Shelach, highlights one of the early moments in which the Jewish people’s doubts about G-d delivering us into Israel leads to disastrous outcomes.  In the parsha, Moses is convinced to send scouts into the land of Israel.  The cycle of deceit, despair, and slow destruction of an entire generation of Jews that follows is well-documented.

However, on the positive side, I was moved by an idea from Rabbi Ephy Greene. When Moses commanded the spies to explore the land, one of the things he tells them to look for is, “HaYesh Bah Etz Im Ayin”, “Is there a tree there…” (Numbers 13:20)

Rashi explains that this tree is a metaphor for a righteous person. But why? 

Rashi adds that just like a tree provides shade, so too this Tzaddik will protect the people of the land. In our own lives, we know that a truly righteous person can impact the lives of many and when we act in a righteous manner, there is no limit to the impact we can have on others.

However, the metaphor goes even deeper. Man’s potential, our potential, for growth and positive, productive activity is also comparable to the tree that the parsha cites. The Maharal writes that man is called Adam from the word Adamah or Earth.  And that from the earth we can grow and bear fruit. 

For our graduates (from OHDS and every institution), my prayer is that you have set strong roots, and that the fruit – the potential – is yet to come.   For each of you, the opportunity and challenge remains to continue to grow, to find moments (however brief) to be more like a Tzaddik, and to share the fruits of our positive impacts with as many people as we can.

Parsha Behaalotchah: June 7, 2014

Parsha: Behaalotchah

Date: June 7,2014

By: Michal Kohane

How can we understand the great spiritual opening of this parasha, the lighting of the Menorah, juxtaposed with beginning of the first “new” sins in the desert, the people complaining, the desire for meat, the words spoken against Moses? Is this parasha just a bunch of separate details that happen to go into the same reading, or does it actually make sense to put them together?

Exactly this week, one family in our shul marks an amazing “yahrzeit”: For Sophia and Boris Burshtyen it’s been 26 years since their own yetziat mitzrayim, their own family’s Exodus from Russia. Sophia, who was 26 at the time, says: “and starting tomorrow, I will be here longer than there… finally!”

What is it like to experience the Exodus in first person? Hearing this story can help us understand the journey of long ago:

“… back then, 26 years ago, we are getting ready for a big move to a faraway beautiful land of freedom and opportunities... So excited to leave the hateful place and start in a new and promising place! But also, frightened to leave a well-known, familiar place and move to the completely unknown, unfamiliar one.

Our family was not the only one on this Exodus. There were so many leaving, you could hear it everywhere: ‘where are you going? when? how long did you wait? 10 years? just few months? Wow’... The perfect time to apply, our “pharaoh” was forced to open the gate, and “let my People go”. 

Just like the Children of Israel of so long ago, we were told: ‘Can’t take many things with you, just few belongings, the rest must be left behind’ and not only things but also friends, traditions, customs, and places...  Luckily, our family was allowed to go together - a husband, a baby (oblivious to the grandiose move), parents, sister’s family and the grandmother of 84, the leader of the crew.

Finally, one day, we got on the plane and left but have not arrived yet... We had an extended waiting period in Europe where we would need to go through preparation and a long wait. There are many rules on how to leave the place but there are many more on how to enter a new one.  There are questions to answer, forms to fill out, tests to take, culture to learn… understand who we are and who we are not but most importantly, know when to blend in and when not to.

Some of us want to use this time to travel, be tourist. Look! We’re in Europe! Others prefer to wait and get ready. The preparation period is a must but how long can it last? How long the learning should continue? Soon, excitement and patience are running down, boredom is rising up. There is nothing to do, no certainty regarding the future, and soon no privacy. We’re crowded together, and while we know the place we left was not perfect, it was also known and familiar and definitely not boring.  Actually, the further we get, the better our memories of our old home. And remember, we had privacy back there! Everybody was not so aggravating, and aggravated!! Look at us now, there is no privacy here, people are everywhere, it’s crowded and we have to share rooms and bathrooms; there is nothing to talk about but repeat the same talks all the time; there is nowhere to go but take the same walks; and the food! Yes, we’re thankful. It is provided and good but oh, so different and so plain! When are we going to get there already”?!

We hear the echo of Bnai Israel in this story and the idea of “in every generation”. What about the lighting of the Menorah in the opening verses?

This parasha is called “Beha’alotcha”. Most English versions translate it into “when you light the Menorah”, but Beha’alotcha shares its root with al – up or on top, and aliya – going up and also being called to the Torah or immigrating to Israel. As we heard above, the complexities and challenges of such a journey are immense and should not be underestimated. In spite of the initial excitement, it is possible to lose the bigger picture. Our mind is easily manipulated, wandering elsewhere. We need something we can hold on to in front of us; something to inspire us along the way. Then as today, the lighting of the Menorah was not only a matter of bringing “light”, but a calling to keep the focus “up”.

Shabbat Shalom.