Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

Bar mitzvah

Dylan Schnorr’s Dvar Torah

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Shabbat Shalom! My Torah portion is from the book of Numbers. At this point, the Israelites are wandering in the desert. Before this time, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. They were beaten and made to do harsh physical labor.  Moses then led the Israelites to freedom with the help of God, who rained plagues on Pharaoh which, in the end, forced him to release the Israelites. They fled into the desert and had to leave with their bread unleavened because they were in such a hurry. 

This is the Passover story, the one that most of us are familiar with. My Torah portion takes place after the Israelites have escaped from Egypt. While wandering in the desert, the Israelites eventually ran out of food. When they complained about how they would starve in the desert, God decided to give them Manna. The Torah says that Manna would collect on the ground like dew or frost, and would melt away when the sun heated up. The people would collect it and make bread, and they would have to eat this bread that same day because it would spoil by the next. This made them uncertain about when they would get food. But the Israelites now complained about the Manna, saying that they wanted meat. God then decided to teach them a lesson.  He rained quails on top of them. In the Torah it says that even the people who gathered the least had 10 homers of quail, which is equivalent to 475 pounds, or about 1900 birds. When the people who were complaining ate the meat, they were struck with a deadly plague that killed them. 

My speech today could be about their ingratitude: the Israelites were being ungrateful for the Manna that God gave them. They were getting food from heaven, but they were complaining about not having meat. But I noticed something else in the story about Manna that made me want to talk about a different topic.  This is what the Torah says (and I quote): “The Israelites felt a craving for real food. They wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat freely in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our throats are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but the manna to look to!” 

In my opinion their complaining wasn’t just an example of ingratitude. I think it was also because of nostalgia. They were thinking that maybe Egypt wasn’t all that bad.  When they were in Egypt, they would get small worthless fish that the fishermen would throw to them for helping with the nets. But they looked back on it, remembering only times when they got what they wanted, or when they were happy. Perhaps there were things to miss about their time in Egypt, like sometimes getting rewards for their labor, or being able to eat meat. But those times were few and far between, and those small benefits didn’t compare to freedom.  

I think the Israelites were experiencing powerful nostalgia about having left Egypt. In the Oxford dictionary, nostalgia is defined as a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past. Nostalgia can change your views of the past, especially when the present is so insecure.  I believe the reason that they were yearning for the past was because the present time they were in wasn’t easy, so it made the time before seem better than it was. Life in the desert was incredibly hard and, on top of that, they didn’t really know where they were going and when they would get there. Maybe they missed their small freedoms, like routine, or being in one place. It is possible that in this moment, they looked back and Egypt looked better.

I‘d like to talk today about  how nostalgia can affect us. I think that nostalgia has two sides, a good one and a bad one. On the good side, nostalgia can help in preserving older things, older ways of doing things, like a bar mitzvah, and keeping ways of life that are healthy for you. For example, running because you want the same physical body that you had when you were younger, or going on a diet for the same reason.  Nostalgia can also help you to remember people or events that are dear to you – things you can see in photographs or in memorials, and those memories can motivate you to do similar or better things yourself.

But nostalgia can also have a bad side. It can cause you to hurt yourself trying to do things you could do before, like trying to lift too much weight when working out.  In a broader sense, nostalgia can hurt other people when you try to restore something from the past that might not have been as good as you remember. 

We know that nostalgia can be very intense. It can distort your view of your current situation, or it might change how you look at the thing you’re feeling nostalgic for. Maybe you can even feel nostalgic for slavery, a time that you probably had a bad experience in because the time you are in now is unpredictable, with you uncertain about what will happen next.

I have experienced this type of nostalgia as well. When I was younger, I lived in Massachusetts. I really enjoyed my life there, but eventually we moved here in 2019. The first couple years were rough, I had to deal with COVID shortly after moving. I hadn’t adjusted completely to Michigan, so I missed Massachusetts so much more. I eventually got over it, but I still sometimes look back fondly. Now I’ll be going to a completely new high school next year. This may be challenging, but like the Israelites, I have to focus on the future, not just the past, and keep moving forward.

Something I gained from this Torah portion is that nostalgia can have a big impact, both good or bad, and your perspective on the past can change without you knowing it.  When you remember something, it isn’t always exactly as you thought it was. Human memories can easily be seen in a rosy light.  This is something that the Israelites had to struggle with in the desert.  One way for the Israelites to deal with this nostalgia was to try to remember their goals, and to focus on the future, not the past. Their lives in the desert might be very painful for them.  But, in the long run, it would bring freedom and a better life to their children and grandchildren.  Even when they were nostalgic about Egypt, most of the Israelites went on.  They didn’t get trapped by their memories.  Instead they kept going. This was a good decision, because if they had gone back or stayed in the desert, they would have made no progress. I guess what I’m trying to say is, the Israelites could progress only moving forward and not overly thinking about the past.

Can you think of any  time in your life where you have experienced nostalgia about something that you remember  more fondly than it really was? How might that have affected the way you moved into the future?  

So for me, that is a lesson that my Torah portion teaches.  We shouldn’t forget our past, but we should also look to the future. Thank you

Isaac Meadow’s Dvar Torah: Shmot

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Greetings, friends, family, and congregants. Thank you for coming, and Shabbat Shalom. I wish also to extend my thanks to Deb Kraus, Drake Meadow, Nancy Meadow, Rabbi Elliot and everyone here who supported me.

            Today’s parashah, or Torah portion, is Shmot, or “Names;” it consists of the first part of Exodus. Pharaoh was afraid of a Hebrew uprising, so he ordered all of the Hebrew boys dumped in the Nile. A Hebrew woman saved her child Moses, (remember him, he becomes important later); after floating down the Nile in a basket, he is rescued by an Egyptian princess. He grew up an Egyptian, though probably with some sense of Hebrew identity, as well. After killing an Egyptian to defend a Hebrew, he fled to the desert. At a well in the Sinai desert, he defended the daughters of a priest named Jethro from ruffians. Jethro married one of his daughters to Moses, and, as Jethro’s son-in-law, he tended the flocks.

One day, he saw something very strange – a bush that was burning but was not being consumed. God called “Moses, Moses,” from the bush. After explaining to Moses that he will bring the Hebrews out of Egypt, God then orders Moses to go back to Egypt as his messenger. Moses asks what name he should give, if the Hebrews ask for God’s name. Up to this point, God has been speaking rather strangely, repeating words, and speaking about seeing things. But now, He says something even stranger. His name, he says, is Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, meaning “I will be who I will be.’  This is often translated as, “I am who I am.” Which is the better translation? In biblical Hebrew, there are only two tenses, perfect tense and imperfect tense. The perfect tense means that the action is complete. The imperfect means that it is not yet complete. This does not mean that god is flawed, it means that he is ever-changing; like fire. Since humans are made in the image of God, we share in this fiery potentiality, and are drawn and fascinated by it. 

Why does God name his essence as unfinished, as something still in process? Why does he appear to the eye as something insubstantial, and shapeless, as fire?

When Moses sees the burning bush, he experiences this basic instinctual attraction, but he also now experiences the intellectual attraction of curiosity – how can a human understand a fire that consumes no fuel?  I also see this as a small flex, showing Moses that he is powerful by burning something without consuming it. This is him showing supernatural powers.

Humans also literally burn without actually being consumed; in the process of using the sugar, glucose, the mitochondria take in food and burn it very slowly. We use the energy to live. 

We have had a sensory experience, an intellectual experience, but there is also a spiritual part of this. Does everyone think that fire is spiritually important? It’s important in other religions; In the New Testament, the holy spirit comes down at Pentecost as tongues of flame.

Zoroastrianism, an Iranian religion that has its most important texts in the “Avesta,” also has fire as an important part of their faith. Ahura Mazda, their god of light and goodness has an altar that eternally burns and is considered to be the visible presence of Ahura Mazda.

What can that mean for the spiritual practitioner now? 

1.     Savor the moment because life is always changing.

2.     Expect the unexpected.

3.     Understand that your essence is change, you are unfinished. Don’t get frozen in one place. As Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose last name was given to me as my middle name, said about the readiness to embrace change in yourself: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”  

Thank you all for listening.

Joey Ball’s Dvar Torah

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Welcome everyone. I have put this speech together in order to teach you about my
Torah portion and to help you learn something new. My Torah portion is called Naso. It
is in the Book of Numbers, and my haftorah is from the Book of Judges.

The Torah portion of Naso has several topics that don’t seem to fit together. It talks
about how the Levites were special, and their job was to set up the mishkan every night
when the Israelites found a camp. The mishkan was the tabernacle, the sanctuary for
God, like a portable synagogue. Naso also talks about how wives who have cheated on
their significant others have to be forced to drink water that has a scroll of this law
dissolved into it, and if the woman is innocent she will be ok, but if she is guilty, she will
die a painful and slow death. Another thing this parsha talks about is the Nazirites, who
take oaths to never cut their hair, never touch anything that comes from a grapevine or
drink wine, and never touch a human corpse. Finally, this parsha gives the priestly
blessings, which are still said today by parents over their children at Shabbat.

I’m actually not going to be talking about any of these topics today, though. I’m going to
be talking about Samson and Nachshon, who are both biblical heroes that are briefly
mentioned in my Torah and Haftorah portions. Samson appears at the end of my
haftorah, and Nachshon appears towards the end of my Torah portion.

Samson was born in ancient Israel in the tribe of Dan to Manoah and Zealophonis. An
angel predicted that Samson would be born and would be a savior of the Jews against
their enemies, the Philistines. Samson’s parents raised him with the blessing of the

Eternal, and a razorblade was to never touch his head. Samson was extremely strong.
When he was young, he was attacked by a lion and killed it with his bare hands. There
are many stories about him killing Philistines in different ways. But his downfall was that
even though he hated Philistine soldiers, he had a thing for Philistine women. He met
Delilah and married her, and she kept asking for the way to take away his strength.
When she finally wore him down, he told her that cutting his hair would make him weak.
She cut off his hair in the middle of the night while he was sleeping, and then Philistine
soldiers captured him, gouged his eyes out and tied him to a pillar. He asked God to
give him one last burst of strength, and then he tore down the pillars, killing thousands
of Philistines along with himself. Samson stood up for the Jewish people against the
Philistines, which was heroic, but he was obsessed with Philistine women and killed
thousands of Philistines, which in modern times would be horrible, but back then it was
considered heroic.
Nachshon ben Aminadav was the brother of Aaron’s wife in ancient Egypt. He was a
descendent of Judah. When Moses led the Jewish people out of Egypt, they came to
the sea, and God told Moses to raise his staff. But nothing happened. The people were
terrified, because Egyptian soldiers were coming for them, and they would be enslaved
again. So Nachshon came out of the crowd. His family and friends said, “What are you
doing?” but he started walking into the sea. First his knees, then chest, then nostrils,
and the second the water was above his head, the sea parted. The Israelites were able
to cross because the sea was now a pathway. Of course, now they had to wander the
desert for forty years. But Nachshon was a hero who saved the Israelites from getting

enslaved again. Nachshon showed the courage of his faith. He fully trusted God to
save the Israelites. He was a type of hero that not many people know about.

What makes someone a hero? A hero is sometimes a real person, but more often
they’re a character in a movie or a book who people look up to for their actions.
Sometimes a hero can be motivated by personal reasons, like wanting to save a family
member or friend from danger. Sometimes a hero can be motivated by a desire for
fame. A hero often performs a heroic action because there’s no one else to do it.
Sometimes, when a hero steps up, people look up to the hero and want to make the
hero their leader, but the hero doesn’t necessarily want the responsibility of being a
leader, and can run away from that responsibility.

What makes a leader different from a hero? A leader always has the people’s interests
at heart. A leader might give their people what they need to survive, like food or shelter,
or might protect people from a threat. A leader might not put themselves in harm’s way
in the same way that a hero does, because the leader is thinking about the needs of the
people, and the people might be stuck if they end up without a leader. Sometimes
leaders are hard to find, because leading takes a lot of work, and can be stressful. A
leader might sometimes do heroic acts, but it’s the people and their needs that are most
motivating to a leader.

So if I was going to apply these ideas to the heroic characters in my Torah and Haftarah
portions, we could say that Samson was both a hero and a leader. He was a leader in

the sense that when the Israelites needed someone to defend them, Samson stepped
up to fight for them. Although Samson was very strong, magically strong, he was also
vulnerable when he wasn’t being helped by God. Ultimately, his actions were probably
more heroic than leadership-focused, because he killed himself in order to get revenge,
which meant he wasn’t thinking about the Israelites’ long-term needs.

Samson spent his life doing heroic deeds, but Nachshon was a hero for one moment.
Nachson was a hero because he jumped into the ocean without thinking. He didn’t
really think about himself, he thought about the needs of his people. Because of his
actions, the Israelites were able to escape from slavery. Like Samson, Nachshon was
willing to sacrifice himself for his people, but he did it out of faith and trust in God and
because he saw that someone needed to step up and act.

Nachshon and Samson are both examples of long-ago heroes. Their stories are
interesting and even exciting, but in today’s world, I think we need more leaders than
heroes. Heroes do helpful things in the moment, but leaders are thinking more long-
term about the needs of the people. Some of the issues that our world needs more
leadership around is conflict, like Russia’s war on Ukraine. If Putin was a better leader,
and was actually thinking about the needs of his people, he wouldn’t have invaded
Ukraine. Another issue that it would be helpful to have better leadership around is
COVID. And not just one leader to keep us as healthy as possible – we probably need
multiple leaders working together, both within the United States and across the world.

In general, we need leaders who are able to work well with groups and listen to the
needs of the people. They need to be flexible, and not assume that they have the right
answers themselves. They need to be able to collaborate. They need to be able to
come together to see people’s shared needs, and come up with plans to meet those
needs.

Miles Hall’s Dvar Torah: Emor

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Miles Hall at his Zoom Bimah

Shabbat shalom, and hello everyone. The Torah portion that we’re reading from this week is Emor, which is in the book of Leviticus. 

Emor primarily gives laws for priests serving in the traveling tent of God in the wilderness, known as the Mishkan. Emor also tells the Israelites which people are not allowed to serve as priests, such as people with physical disabilities. The Torah portion also recounts how to observe Holy Days such as Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Sukkot. It gives instructions on holy items for use in the Mishkan as well as animal sacrifices. Emor also is the place in the Torah where we learn that we are not allowed to say the most sacred name of God out loud, and what happens if we do. Finally, Emor teaches us about the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

My aliyah, the part of the Torah that I chanted, was from the last portion of Emor, and I will be discussing one part of it in depth. In this part God is telling Moses how to respond to a man who blasphemed, meaning he pronounced the name of God in vain. It says:

And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
Take the blasphemer outside the camp; and let all who were within hearing lay their hands upon his head, and let the whole community stone him.
And to the Israelite people speak thus: Anyone who blasphemes his God shall bear his guilt;
if he also pronounces the name LORD, he shall be put to death. The whole community shall stone him; stranger or citizen, if he has thus pronounced the Name, he shall be put to death.
If anyone kills any human being, he shall be put to death.
If anyone maims his fellow, as he has done so shall it be done to him:
fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The injury he inflicted on another shall be inflicted on him.
You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike: for I the LORD am your God.
Moses spoke thus to the Israelites. And they took the blasphemer outside the camp and pelted him with stones. The Israelites did as the LORD had commanded Moses.

My aliyah presents two laws that on the surface seem to contradict each other. First, it says how if you speak the name of God in vain – that is, blaspheme – then everyone in the camp is commanded to stone you to death. It’s not just that a blasphemer is punished with death, but that everyone has to participate in his killing, like a ceremony — which to me sounds very gruesome and like overkill. 

But then, in the very next sentence, it says that if you kill a human, you shall be put to death. 

If we take both laws literally as they’re stated in the Torah and try to follow them both, then it seems like it would mean that everyone should be put to death, because everyone would have been responsible for stoning to death the person who blasphemed.

Maybe that’s too literal a reading of what’s going on here. Maybe whoever wrote this part of the Torah thought that it would be obvious that the rule of ‘a life for a life’ doesn’t apply if you’ve been commanded to carry out divine punishment. And that of course humans need to question and interpret these laws to make sense of them.

But it sometimes feels like the Torah doesn’t really set us up to interpret it non-literally, because many times the Torah teaches a law but then doesn’t give a reason for the law. 

I get frustrated that we don’t get an explanation for why a law exists. Basically, it seems like the question of ‘why do we do this’ is answered with ‘because God says so.’

As Jews, the Torah is our ‘primary source.’ It’s the basic text that we engage with. But what if it says things that we don’t agree with now?

Throughout Jewish history, many Jews have wrestled with these questions. The rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud spent all their time questioning what God was actually wanting us to do, rather than what was written in the commandments.

Nowadays, Reconstructionism is both a denomination and an approach to Judaism that is similar to what these ancient rabbis did. Reconstructionism allows us to wrestle with our received traditions and commandments and not throw them out altogether. This allows us to still cling to the cultural, philosophical, and moral aspects of Judaism. 

Why would we want to do that? Because it allows us to stay connected to the past and to the practices of our ancestors. And it seems like it would be wrong to discard our most basic text just because we happen to not believe in all parts of it right now. It’s comforting to have what seems like the best of both worlds, in which we can hold onto ancient beliefs and still believe in our contemporary morality.

Personally, I think that you can be Jewish and believe that the Torah is a collection of myths, rather than the literal word of God. It’s okay as a Jew to think of the Torah as a bunch of stories that people wrote, and it’s okay as a Jew to not believe that we need to follow the Torah literally. It’s okay to believe that the Torah is simply an important text that generates a lot of information and questions on how our ancestors perceived God and how we see God now.

We’re now going to discuss the three discussion questions included in the program. Please unmute yourself and respond to one or more of them:

a. Why do people feel the need to make the Torah metaphorical rather than just disagreeing with it outright?

b. The version of God in my Torah portion is a God with personality and feelings. But for many contemporary Jews, we think of God as a force. What do we do if the version of God in our received religious tradition isn’t the God that we believe in today? How do we reconcile these different versions of God? 

c. In my Torah portion it says: “You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike: for I the LORD am your God.” Why should we treat people the same because “God is God?” Why can’t it just be for ethical or rational reasons?

I’m glad that I could share my questions with you so that you question them too. Thank you for the great discussion.

To conclude, I want to say thank you to everybody that is here today to help me celebrate and everybody that helped me get here. I want to say thank my Hebrew tutor Deb, who helped me master my aliya and haftarah. And I want to thank Rabbi Ora, who helped me understand my parsha and answered my questions. I want to thank my parents who supported me through this process, and my family who is online today to help me celebrate. And finally to my friends, community, and the congregation for supporting me on the way. Thank you! And Shabbat shalom. 

Eli Revzen’s Bar Mitzvah Dvar: Bamidbar

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Eli and his friend Otto, shown working on their mitzvah project in the Shelly Volk Memorial Garden

Shabbat shalom. Today I just read from chapter one of the book of Bamidbar, and my parasha is also called Bamidbar. A parasha is like a few chapters smushed together by topic in the torah.

My parasha describes the events that took place a little over a year after the Israelites left Egypt. While the Israelites were wandering in the desert, God told Moses to count the Israelites. Every Israelite man capable of bearing arms was counted.

There ended up being 603,550 men total counted in the census. However, God told Moses not to include the Levites in the census, nor have them dwelling among and counted with the rest of Israelites.

The Levites’ duty was serving the Tabernacle, and when the Israelites travelled, the Levites were to dismantle the Tabernacle and reassemble it in the new encampment. If any outsider came near the Tabernacle, they were to be put to death.

Finally, the Israelite tribes were commanded to camp each under their own standard. The children of Israel were good this time and actually listened to Moses’s decree in the name of God, so they were counted and there was no divine wrath.

What was the point of a census being taken at this time? Because the census counted only the men who could bear arms, it seems like what was happening was the Israelites were building an army.

Why was God thinking about building an army at this point in time? Well, it makes sense after what happened at Rephidim, which I’ll tell you about later. God probably wanted to have the chosen people safe so god told Moses to count them to create an army.


The question for me, the big question in this parasha is if Moses was counted in the census. The question seems small, but the implications are big. If Moses was counted, it would mean that he was one of the people, thus equal in value to the average Israelite man. If Moses was not counted it might hint that he was above the people, because he was closer to God.
Did Moses count himself in the census?


If he was counted then he was going to be an active participant in a militia, and in this case he’d be sharing the risks with the Israelites when going to war. If he wasn’t counted then he would have had others risking themselves for him.

Since the point of the census was to build an army, I think that Moses probably wouldn’t have been a part of the census. Since Moses was the leader, if he were to die in battle the proverbial snake would be headless. Also, we can assume he was fairly old at the time, thus probably not fit to bear arms.

Another Speculation
We can speculate about the answer to this question based on an earlier story in the Torah, the story of Rephidim, and yes I’ll tell you about it very soon, but right now I’m procrastinating. In the Book of Exodus, Moses and the Israelites fight the Amalekites at Rephidim; during the battle Moses gives power to the warriors fighting in the battle.

Rephidim
Since I said I’ll tell you about what happened at Rephidim: The Israelites were attacked by the people of Amalek two months after they left Egypt. So Moses had a rag-tag team go and do battle with the Amalekites. During the battle, when Moses raised his hands, the Israelites prevailed, and when he lowered his hands the Amalekites prevailed. The Israelites were winning for a time, but Moses’ hands grew heavy. Why, is it because that standing for hours on end with your hands up isn’t everyone’s favorite pastime? So Moses then sat on a rock while Aaron and Hur held his hands up for him. And like this his hands were up till sunset. Then it says Joshua (who was probably in charge of the rag-tag team) overwhelmed the Amalekites by the sword.

The story of the battle at Rephidim is an example of what Moses once did to aid the soldiers of Israel. In the battle of Rephidim the soldiers were obviously in jeopardy. But the question is, was Moses? Did he put himself in jeopardy by raising his hands? If not, was it ethical for him to put others’ lives in danger without sharing the risk with them?

Contemporary example
A good contemporary example of different risk levels between a person in charge and the common man is modern industry. A manager of a steel plant is almost never at risk of getting burned, yet the workers are. In this case the manager is like Moses and probably not at risk, but the workers are. The question is is it ethical for a manager to not endanger themself in same way as the common worker. Sometimes this is the only way, if the job involves skills that the manager doesn’t have for example, using heavy machinery and the like.

This topic is very complex and each situation has its own answer so it’s impossible to give a yes this is okay or no don’t do that answer. As consumers of products made by such an industry we are part of this chain. While inside a system it’s very hard to pass a judgment on the ethics of that system. One of the reasons this is very hard is because when you are passing that judgment you’re also judging yourself which makes it difficult not to be biased.

To end my dvar torah I will ask you the Cahal a question, and I’ll love to hear your answers.

Is it okay to have someone do something for you that involves risk without you sharing the risk with them?

Y’all have raised many good points but now it is coming closer to candy throwing time so I must wrap-up.
Conclusion:
This dvar torah raises many more questions than answers, but that is how life is there are almost always more questions that come up the deeper you look.


Thank yous:
This enriching experience of having a bar mitzvah wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing support of many even more amazing people. First I have to thank my parents who made this all possible. Without their love and support this would never have happened. I’d also want to thank my relatives who traveled great distances to be here to support me. Next I have to thank Rabbi Ora, my tutor Lisa, and Deb Kraus who all taught me the skills necessary to be part of this truly enjoyable event. Last but not least I have to thank you all for being such a cooperative Cahal and as a thanks to all of you, my family and I have made a feast for all of you to enjoy. Shabbat shalom and have a great shabbat with your friends and family.

Jacob Resnick’s Bar Mitzvah Dvar: K’doshim

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Shabbat Shalom and good morning. Today, I’ll be teaching you about my Torah portion K’doshim, which is in the book of Leviticus.

K’doshim means holy in hebrew. In my Torah portion, God gives Moses many commandments to give to the Israelites, the first one being, “You shall be holy.” Some of the commandments are basic rules that most of us still try to follow today like “You shall not steal” or “your shall not defraud your fellow”.


Others are more dated like “You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruits of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.” This commandment is dated because most of us don’t have vineyards now, but as Jewish people we like to take principles from the Torah and see how we can apply them to today’s world. With the law about leaving fallen fruit for strangers, I think this ancient law can teach us to not be greedy and save some of our wealth to give to people who don’t have much.

Another similarly dated commandment in my Torah portion is, “ If anyone insults either their mother or father he shall be put to death.” Instead of killing disrespectful children, today we have other less extreme punishments like getting grounded, but the principle of respecting your parents is still applied today.

The commandment or law from my Torah portion that I want to focus on today is a prohibition against worshipping Molech, where God tells Moses,

”Say further to the Israelite people: Anyone among the Israelites, or among the strangers residing in Israel, who gives any of his offspring to Molech, shall be put to death; the people of the land shall pelt him with stones. And I will set My face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he gave of his offspring to Molech and so defiled My sanctuary and profaned My holy name.”

If you didn’t know, Moloch is the name of a biblical Canaanite god. Moloch is usually depicted as a statue of a person with a bull’s head, and a furnace in its belly. Biblical historians believe the Canaanites worshipped Molech by offering it their children to be burned as sacrifices.

The Canaanites were an ancient people who lived in the land of Canaan, an area which most likely included parts of modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. The Canaanites were neighbors to the ancient Israelites once the Israelites entered the Land of Israel. So clearly, it was a concern that the Israelites might start to take on Canaanite traditions, including child sacrifice.

In my Torah portion alone the prohibition against Molech is mentioned four times.

Rabbi Ora taught me that it is not common in the Torah for words or ideas to be repeated without a reason. So the question I had is – Why is this law against worshipping Molech and child sacrifice repeated by God so many times?

I feel like God mentions this law so many times because it’s such a sensitive moral issue. We know that the Ten Commandments outlaw killing in general. The killing of anyone is wrong, but it is especially difficult to read of parents killing their children, because the child doesn’t have a choice and the child has no possible hope of a future.

I think God repeated the prohibition against Molech so many times because God needed to let the Israelites know that sacrificing your child is an unforgivable crime.

As someone who is adopted, and thinking more about this commandment, I see some connections between ancient children not having a choice on whether they got sacrificed, and me not having a choice on whether I was adopted. Obviously being adopted is not the same thing as being sacrificed, but there are some similarities.

One big similarity is that being adopted means being picked up and moved, not having a say on what’s going on. Being adopted means leaving this whole other life behind that you don’t even get a chance to try. Looking more into this law it was like looking into my life, and questions came up: Questions like not knowing why I was being given up, which was probably similar to the biblical kids not knowing why they were being sacrificed.

So, some of the challenges of being adopted are not having a choice, not knowing why you were being given up, and leaving a whole other life behind. Those are all the hard aspects of adoption, but there are more good ones. If I wasn’t adopted then I wouldn’t have met all the people in this room today, my friends, family, and this congregation. I probably wouldn’t have the great education and privileges I have today. I also wouldn’t be able to embrace being Jewish which I’m proud to be.

To me there’s nothing wrong with being adopted because I’m probably having a better life than if I wasn’t adopted.

Despite this, when I introduce myself as being adopted to other people, I notice people often seem to feel some discomfort in talking about it. Sometimes I get the response of, “Oh I’m so sorry for you.” I sometimes think that in that moment people are imagining themselves in my position and thinking about what would be different for them if they had been adopted. This could make them feel sad so then they say they are sorry for me. Or maybe they just feel uncomfortable with something that’s unfamiliar and don’t know what to say.

I’m speaking about my adoption today — the things that are hard about being adopted and the things that are good — and how I feel about it because I would like people to not get uncomfortable when talking to me about it. I want to let everyone know that I am comfortable having conversations about being adopted. I’m not necessarily saying that I want to talk about my adoption all the time but I am saying that when the topic does come up naturally I want both sides to feel comfortable when talking about it.

In our congregation, we have a custom of asking the community a question to generate discussion towards the end of a dvar Torah. I have 2 questions for you today.

The first question I have is, are there other contemporary issues where children don’t have control over what happens to them and they are penalized because of it?

The second one is, are there any topics that you feel are hard to talk about that shouldn’t be that hard to talk about?

Thank you all for your answers and a good discussion.

To conclude, I would like to thank Caroline, my mom, and Paul, my dad, for being there for me, and the rest of my family for coming today. Our great Rabbi Ora for helping me prepare my dvar Torah and having good conversations with me about my Torah portion. Deb who has helped me learn my Torah portion, my Haftorah, and the blessings that go with them. All my friends for supporting me and making me laugh. Martha our exchange student who puts up with me when I’m crazy. Lyndon who helps me practice my bass and Derek who is the best bass teacher in the world. My congregation who has been welcoming since the time I joined it. And finally thank you all for coming, Shabbat Shalom!

Zander McLane Bar Mitzvah dvar: Shelach

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Shabbat shalom! My Torah portion is Shelach. At the beginning of Shelach, all the Israelites are in the desert near Canaan when God tells Moses to send twelve spies, one from each of the twelve tribes, to go check out Canaan. Moses sends the spies to the hill country so that they can come back and tell the people what kind of land it is, and he also tells them to bring back ripe grapes to show what kinds of fruits grow in Canaan.

When the spies get there, they look around the country and eventually find grapes so big that they need two people and a frame of wood to carry the grapes.

After forty days in Canaan, the twelve spies come back to the Israelites and report their findings. Ten of the spies end up telling the community that the people of Canaan are giants, and will kill everybody. Thus the community goes into terror. The whole community shouts and cries, saying that that they would rather go back to Egypt and be slaves again because it is better to be a slave than to fall to the sword.

When God hears this, God gets mad. God says to Moses that God is going to strike the Israelites down because they don’t have faith in God, and will make a nation more numerous than the Israelites to replace them.

Moses begs God not to destroy the Israelites and, while God and Moses are talking, the people sneak away. (Just kidding!) What actually happens is that Moses begs for God’s mercy for the Israelites and, because of Moses, God changes their punishment. Rather than being killed, God decides that the unfaithful Israelites will wander the wilderness for forty years, one year for each day the spies scouted the land, and their children will wander until the last of their carcasses drop.

And then there’s some boring and important stuff about offerings… But who cares about that! Moving on.

As I was reading through my Torah portion, the question I was most curious about was why there were twelve spies, exactly. In my Haftorah portion, forty years after the events I just described, Joshua sends two new spies (these ones do a slightly better job) to Jericho, the city they want to conquer. In the first few minutes of being in Jericho they get caught, and hide in a woman’s house. The woman is named Rahab and she is awesome, because when the king’s men see the spies go into her house she lies to the king’s men and says they’re not there. This allows the spies to escape out her window. In return for this great deed the spies tie a red cord on her window so when the Israelite army comes back to attack the city, they make sure not to kill anyone in her house.

As you can see, in my Haftorah, there are only two spies; but in my Torah portion, there are twelve. Why this discrepancy in numbers, when in both cases there are spies being sent to check out the land they want to conquer? How did they decide who to send as spies, and how many?

Now, I’m gonna pull a Rashi here. Rashi was a medieval French rabbi and you could say he had the catchphrase, “what’s bugging Rashi?” because he would be bugged by practical details of what was happening in Torah stories and interpret them. So instead of what’s bugging Rashi, “what’s bugging Zander?” When I came up with this joke, I thought it was funny that my and Rashi’s Hebrew names are both Shlomo.

So what’s bugging me is this question: why was it important to send exactly these twelve people in Shelach to scout out the Land of Israel?

To get some things straight, these people were not the best spies of the Israelites. These people were the sons of the chiefs of the twelve tribes. So why send these people, and not, like, actual trained spies?

My answer to this is, maybe these sons of the chiefs were seen to be trustworthy people by all the tribes, and when they would report back to their own tribe, their tribe would trust their report. Also, maybe, the thought process was that the more people you send, the harder it is for lies to get through. Just see how that went down! Because in factuality ten lied and two didn’t (Joshua and Caleb, the people who called out the liars).

Also, wouldn’t having one spy from each of the different tribes potentially lead to conflict? At the very least, if each spy was from a different tribe, they’d probably have different customs, and each do things differently. This might cause a lot of disagreement within the group.

On the other hand, there would be a couple advantages to sending spies from different tribes; they probably wouldn’t know each other that well, so they wouldn’t have any dirt on each other, and wouldn’t be able to manipulate each other. Another advantage of sending one spy from each Israelite tribe is that they would be a very diverse group, with a diverse skill set. They could each weigh in to get the best possible solution to any problem that could come up as they were traveling.

As you can see there could have been advantages and disadvantages to sending these twelve spies. But what actually happened was that their spying was a complete disaster — ten lied and two told the truth, and the Israelites were almost destroyed!

So: Whose idea was it to send out twelve spies in the first place then? If we look back at my Torah portion, it says in Numbers chapter 13, verse 1: “And God spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Send men to scout the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelite people; send one man from each of their ancestral tribes, each one a chieftain among them.’”

So it seems as though God told Moses to send one spy from each tribe. But Ibn Ezra (who was a Spanish Rabbi dude, which is interesting that the two rabbis I have talked about were both from the middle ages, and were from countries that were rivals at certain points in history) — Ibn Ezra says that when it’s written in the Torah “Send forth,” that what actually happened was first God said to the Israelites “Go and conquer.” Then the Israelites said to themselves: “Let’s send people first.” And only after this, God said: “Send forth men.”

According to Ibn Ezra, then, the Israelites were the ones who wanted the reassurance of spies — it wasn’t something that God thought should happen in the first place. It was more like God was saying, “fine, you can have that” — like God was bitter.

All in all, I have to say, that sending twelve spies wasn’t the best idea that the Israelites had. It made God mad, plus it seems like the Israelites were not the sharpest knives in the drawer, because they chose such bad spies! And because those ancient Israelites were so gullible, if Joshua and Caleb had not called out the ten spies that lied, we’d all be Egyptian. So thank goodness that the liars got called out.

A couple lessons I think we can draw from this story is that there’s not always strength in numbers. Also that liars never prosper, meaning that people who lie always can and will be found out eventually.

So kids (and maybe parents too), this is why you don’t lie. There is always some negative unintended effects from lying, cheating, and other non-truthful behaviour, like loss of trust and punishment. As the prophet Jeremiah eloquently states, “The Lord God is truth.” Also, in the Talmud, Pesachim 113b, it is written, “The Holy One, blessed be God, hates a person who says one thing with his mouth and another in his heart.” I know I sounded like a book there, but the point is, Judaism teaches us: don’t lie.

Levi Kopald Bar Mitzvah drash: Sh’mini

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Shabbat shalom. My parsha, or Torah portion, is Sh’mini, which is in the book of Leviticus. Most of Sh’mini is about dietary laws which is what you can and cannot eat in Jewish law. Some things you cannot eat are animals that do not have true hooves or do not chew their cud. Also, you may not eat birds of prey, and most insects and shellfish.

But what I think is the most interesting part of my parsha is the story of Nadav and Avihu. Two sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, put fire and incense in a fire-pan, and then offered to God some sort of unholy, bad, or alien fire. And then for some reason God killed them; fire shot out and they died! Then Moses said to Aaron: “This is what God meant when God said: ‘This is how I will make myself holy – through those near to me I will show myself to be holy.’” And Aaron remained silent.

I had a lot of questions about what happened to Nadav and Avihu. Why did Nadav and Avihu make this offering in the first place? What made the fire they offered unholy? When God said “This is how I will make myself holy” – how did God killing Nadav and Avihu make God holier?

Many commentators have had similar questions about what happened. One explanation for what happened to Nadav and Avihu is that they were being punished because they were drunk.

Rashi, born in Northern France in 1040 and one of the most widely read commentators of the Torah, quotes an ancient rabbi named Rabbi Ishmael, who said: “[They died because] they had entered the sanctuary after having drunk wine. The proof is that after their death, God told Aaron and his remaining sons that they may not enter the sanctuary after having drunk wine. . . .”

Rashi offers another possible reason for why Nadav and Avihu were put to death: they were  punished because they were being disrespectful. In fact, Rashi mentions two ways that Nadav and Avihu could have been disrespectful. Rashi quotes another ancient rabbi, Rabbi Eliezer, who said: “Aaron’s sons died only because they rendered halachic decisions in the presence of Moses, their teacher.” In other words, Nadav and Avihu decided for themselves what the law meant.  They were being disrespectful to Moses, and therefore they were punished by God.

A second possibility comes from a midrash that says the Israelites were journeying through the desert with Moses and Aaron at the front, and all of Israel came after them. As they traveled along, Nadav said to Avihu, ‘Shortly, these two old men will die and we will lead the congregation.’ The way that they refer to Moses and Aaron, as old men – it could be realistic, saying that they’re going to die soon because it’s true, but it’s also very  disrespectful, and they clearly wanted power for themselves. On a deeper level, Nadav and Avihu were doubting Moses and Aaron’s abilities to teach them anymore, or to lead the nation.

So far, I’ve looked at the deaths of Nadav and Avihu as a punishment from God, either because they were drunk or because they were being disrespectful. But another, very different interpretation of what happened is that Nadav and Avihu just wanted to be close to God. What do I mean by this? Back in the book of Exodus, there’s a story of Moses, Aaron, Nadav, and Avihu going part of the way up Mt. Sinai to prostrate themselves before God. Quoting from Exodus Chapter 24, it says: “Moses and Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, and the seventy elders arose. They saw the God Of Israel and beneath God’s feet, a brickwork of sapphire … They viewed the Lord, they ate and drank.”

What’s happening here?  Nadav and Avihu went up Mount Sinai, and saw God! What was this experience like for them? It was probably incredible – and pretty unimaginable. So maybe they had such a transcendent experience that they wanted to repeat it, and that’s why they ran to bring God a fire-offering, not thinking about or even caring about what might happen to them. Or, maybe they just made a mistake based on this past experience. Maybe they assumed that because they’d gone partway up Mount Sinai in the past, with Moses, to see God, they would also be able to offer sacrifices however they wanted in the future – because they were so dear to God.

Up until now, we’ve looked at Nadav and Avihu’s actions and motivations. But what about God’s?

If we look back at Leviticus chapter 10, verse 3, it says: “Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what God spoke, [when God said], ‘I will be sanctified through those near to Me, and before all the people I will be glorified.’”

Some commentators have suggested that this verse is related to what happened to Nadav and Avihu. What could this mean, that in killing Nadav and Avihu, God was glorified? Perhaps God wanted the people of Israel to see God again, because God had already been seen at Mount Sinai. So God demonstrated God’s glory to the Israelites by consuming Nadav and Avihu.  In other words, God wanted an audience. And I can relate to this – for example, I want people I’m close to to see me at my basketball games or baseball games–it’s understandable to want to be seen, especially when you’re good at something.

In this interpretation, God acts without caring about Nadav and Avihu. But there’s also another possible interpretation: that  God actually helped Nadav and Avihu by killing them.  In this interpretation, their death is not a punishment, but actually a reward from God–a way of being one with God, which they desperately wanted. It’s even possible that the strange fire they offered was such a wonderful, spontaneous offering that God instinctively drew them in and consumed them.

This interpretation is supported by a passage from  Torat Kohanim, which says that when Nadav and Avihu died, “Two thread-like [sparks] of fire entered their nostrils thereby destroying their souls along with all their internal organs, but leaving their external body structures intact.” It’s possible that this is proof that their being consumed by fire was a favor or blessing from God because their souls simply joined God and their bodies were left unharmed.

So. What kind of God is this? How does this relate to our lives?

The first time you hear this story, you might think Aaron’s sons died for no reason. Yet after many weeks of study and comparing the commentators’ interpretations, I think this story teaches us that there’s more than one way to be close to God. Everyone doesn’t have to have the same practices. However, the repercussions of trying to get close to God can be very dangerous.

Another possible moral of this story is that it’s hard to get close to God. It takes a lot of work, and we don’t necessarily know how to do it. There’s a lot of mystery there–not knowing what will happen. But above all, it’s important to be respectful–not just respectful to God, but also respectful to those around you, because they are extensions of God.

We don’t actually know what God is like, or what will happen when we try to get close to what is holy. This is all a mystery. However, what we’re left with is something that’s less mysterious, but almost as challenging: We know that what we can do to be close to God is to be respectful of other people.

With this in mind, Rabbi Ora asked me to come up with a new set of Ten Commandments on how to be respectful, and I’m going to teach them to you now: 

  1. Don’t say hateful things – don’t swear, don’t say hurtful things, don’t be mean, don’t insult people.
  2. Don’t talk bad about people behind their backs. In Hebrew, the phrase for this is lashon hara.
  3. Give compliments to people – truthful ones, in order to make them feel good. In order to do this, first you have to think about the person and think about their positive qualities. Like my sister Ahava – she helps with my math homework, and then I thanked her for it.
  4. Say thank you to people. Showing manners is important by thanking people, and showing gratitude and appreciation for people.
  5. Show respect to parents, teachers, principals, rabbis, adults in position of authority – to people who can teach you things. Listen to instruction. Don’t argue with someone in authority.
  6. Greet people – show people that you care that they’re there. I could do that here at services – saying hello to a new kid, a new family.
  7. Listen – honor when someone else is speaking and don’t interrupt.
  8. Always keep promises that you make.
  9. Be respectful of places – of other people’s property, and don’t litter.Take care of nature, don’t pollute.
  10. Show that you care about people through your actions – let them know you’re thinking about their feelings.

In conclusion, I have learned many things throughout this process like the many ways to respect other people and God. But I have also learned what is disrespectful. Most of the things I have learned from reading my torah portion is from Nadav and Avihu. What do you think about Nadav and Avihu? Do you think it is just as simple as God killed them because they were drunk or do you think there is some higher meaning involved such as that God did Nadav and Avihu a favor?  What do you think?

Finally, I would like to thank my mom and dad for helping me in the entire process with making sure I practiced, taking me to different appointments, my dad helping me write this speech and  my mom planning the party and helping me study my Torah portion. Also, I would like to thank my Zede Newman for helping me embrace Jewish culture and become my Jewish self. I would also like to thank my Bubbe for teaching me about Judaism and about life in general. I would also like to thank my sisters Ahava and Clara for helping me study my Torah portion and helping me throughout this entire process. I would also like to thank Scott for helping make sure I practiced and also taking me to appointments. I would also like to thank Kathy for making my invitations and decorating the baseballs for my party. I would also like to thank Deb Kraus for helping me learn my Torah portion my haftorah and how this whole service is run. I would like to thank Rabbi Ora for helping me write this speech and teaching me about my torah portion and more about Judaism. Last but not least I would like to thank this whole congregation for supporting me throughout this entire process. Shabbat shalom.

Peter Cohn’s Bar Mitzvah Dvar: B’midbar, Who is included?

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Shabbat Shalom! Welcome to the final bar mitzvah in this generation of Cohns! Interestingly enough, we will be talking about Kohanim, our tribe, as it were, in a moment.

But first, I’d like to give you a summary of my portion. A little explanation on that: each week is associated with a portion of the Torah, and it takes one year to read the whole thing. And our tradition at AARC is for me to ask you a question, and I’ll do that later on–so pay attention.

My portion is in the first part of B’midbar, or the book of Numbers. In the portion, God orders Moses to take a census of all the Israelites. Well, not all the Israelites. But I’ll get to that later.

Moses is taking the census, and it’s kind of funny to think about him with a clipboard and pen in hand, walking from tent to tent. (Of course, that’s not quite what it was like.) Anyway, the Torah spends some time talking about the numbers of people in the different tribes and where they are camped, and then the focus moves to Aaron and his sons.

Aaron had four sons, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar. Eleazar and Ithamar were still alive, but Nadab and Abihu were not. They had perished when they were not taking their ritual responsibilities seriously enough while they were at something called the “tent of meeting.” This tent of meeting, the ohel moed, is another focus of my portion. I find this appropriate, since my last name is Cohn, and the portion repeatedly brings up the Kohanim, the priests–Kohein, in Hebrew, means priest.

But let’s focus on the census Moses is taking. Here’s what I found interesting about it: the census that Moses is taking doesn’t include a lot of people. For example, the census excludes the Levites. The census excludes women. The census excludes men under 20. Put it all together, and you’ve left out more than half of the Israelites.

You are taking a census of all the Israelites, except you’re not; you’re picking and choosing who gets to count in the census. It’s kind of ironic that, after being treated so horribly for so long when they were in Egypt, because of their identity, some of the Israelites were now marginalizing some people within their own midst.

But hold on to that thought–and now zoom ahead a few thousand years. See, excluding people is a pretty common theme in history, and that includes the history of this country. Think about Philadelphia, in 1776, during the writing of the Declaration of Independence. Famously, it says that “all men are created equal.” It doesn’t say anything about women. And just a few years later, those same Founding Fathers wrote the U.S. constitution, which–just as famously–included the three fifths compromise, in which a slave counted as three fifths of a person. This is literally deciding who counts and who doesn’t.

My own family history touches on the way groups have been excluded in more recent times. For example, my grandmother Mimi is Irish; genealogically, I am one fourth Irish. I learned that when Irish immigrants first arrived in the U.S. in the mid 1850’s, they were the first huge wave of immigrants to ever come en masse. The U.S. wasn’t ready for it. They reacted badly and considered the Irish as the new “lowest rung” in society. In fact, at a time when being “white” meant being accepted, the Irish were considered non-white–which is pretty funny if you just look at my complexion — do you know how much sunscreen my relatives and I go through?

The same thing happened to my Jewish ancestors; when they first arrived, they faced discrimination and exclusion. And of course they came here in so many cases because they were fleeing persecution from abroad as well. Sometimes, being from a marginalized group makes you more aware of others facing similar problems. Many Jews were involved in efforts to fight discrimination and I’ve heard the story many times about how my great grandmother, Nana, was pushed in a baby carriage during suffrage marches. And my grandmother helped to integrate the New Orleans schools. But one of the things that struck me as interesting was that German Jews who immigrated to the United States around the same time as the Irish considered the later arriving Russian Jews as not Jewish — much less white. They settled in different places, had different trades and formed different branches of Judaism.

And actually after the Irish settled here, sometimes they acted in ways that marginalized other people–if not other Irish, than other groups of new Americans.

So when we talk about who counts and who doesn’t, sometimes the people who don’t count will turn around and exclude other groups–or even people within their own midst. It’s a little like that census Moses took thousands of years ago that excluded half of the Israelites. It makes you wonder, why anybody ever gets excluded in the first place. Or to be more direct, what really makes one person count less than another.

Think about another example from American history–relatively recent American history. When segregation was legal in the United States, there was a so-called “one drop rule.” It said that if any of your ancestors were African American, so were you. In other words, if one of your grandparents were African American, but the other three weren’t, you still were considered African American. That makes no sense!

The funny thing is, scientifically speaking, humanity originated from one place: Africa. In that sense, all of us have at least a little African blood in us. The whole idea of race, as we know it, is something that humanity constructed as a way to sort and categorize people. Of course, many people take great pride in their ethnic or racial backgrounds, and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging diversity. But all too frequently, we have defined groups in order to treat some worse than others. And all too frequently, even those of us in historically marginalized groups have not paid enough attention to others facing the same kind of treatment.

What groups would you like to recognize that haven’t been mentioned today or historically?

As it happens, I had a lot of chance to think about that with my mitzvah project. For those of you who aren’t familiar, part of the bar mitzvah process is picking a mitzvah, or act of goodness, to perform–and it has be from a list of 613 mitzvot to choose from, which are found in the Old Testament.

The mitzvah I chose was “To love the stranger.” When I chose this before November, I had no idea how important it would become,which is to say, I had no idea how the political environment would change. I didn’t know that we would be in a country where so many people had reason to be nervous they didn’t count anymore.

Today, I feel, it is more important than ever to “love the stranger.” On January 21, I participated in a women’s’ march in Ann Arbor, and I attended a protest of the immigration ban at the Detroit airport. This is the poster I carried, by the way. It says…

My family and I donated to the rebuilding effort for the Ypsilanti Mosque when it burned down in March. And in December, I went with my mom to her church’s feast day of service to make baskets of cleaning supplies and other necessities for Syrian refugee families. For the main part of my mitzvah project, I sort of replicated that with a twist; it was boxes geared towards kids, containing books, art supplies and welcome notes. My brother Tommy drove me to Jewish Family Services (the same organization my mom’s church coordinated with) to drop them off.

This is the idea of “loving the stranger,” caring about what happens to people you don’t know as fellow people and citizens of the world.

You’ll also find this theme in my haftarah–although you’ll have to read between the lines a little bit. It’s the famous story about King Solomon and the two women who claim to be the mother of the same baby. Solomon has asked God for wisdom and this is the first instance of how he uses that wisdom.

(This is not the traditional portion assigned to my Torah portion, but the one that is assigned, which is about the prophet Hosea’s wife, has more mature content than I was comfortable with. So I followed the lead of a fellow congregation member, Jacob Schneyer. He chose this portion five years ago at his bar mitzvah to go with the parsha because he was talking about how the Levites were excluded from the count, and raised the general question about what does God want, which, as you will hear, is the question that Solomon wants to know: give me the wisdom to know what you want. And wisdom in general.)

At this time in our history, as we are still as a nation grappling with issues of inclusion and exclusion, we really need to think wisely about how and why we make those distinctions. We need to bring our wisdom to the table and realize or insist that no one should be excluded because everyone has been excluded at some point. And that’s always looked ridiculous afterwards or retrospectively.

We all want to be on the right side of history. And we need wisdom for that.

 

Dan Gutenberg’s Bar Mitzvah dvar on Ve’era

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Good morning and Shabbat shalom!

My parsha is Va’era, Exodus 6.2-9:35. It tells the story of the first seven plagues; blood in the nile, frogs, lice, flies, diseased livestock, boils, and hail. I’m reading the part that most interested me, which was the first time in my portion when God said God would harden Pharaoh’s heart. Another part that caught my attention was Pharaoh’s stubbornness or arrogant attitude towards the Israelites throughout the portion. And as we will find out, even before my portion.

So in some ways Pharaoh already had a hard heart and in other ways, God hardened it some more. In a sense those are related, but I was more interested in the differences.

When do we first see that Pharaoh might have an arrogant or stubborn or some other kind of bad attitude towards the Israelites? It’s back at Exodus 1:8: “A new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph.” He enslaved them out of fear that they would become too numerous and join Egypt’s enemies. This is not the Pharaoh that loved Joseph so much in Genesis. It’s a new guy. The old Pharaoh loved Joseph for his ability to interpret dreams which resulted in averting a potential catastrophe from the famine. Joseph becomes his right-hand man, the second in command, overseeing wheat being both distributed to the people and saved for the lean years, the famine. Egypt would not have survived without Joseph. [Read more…] about Dan Gutenberg’s Bar Mitzvah dvar on Ve’era