Is it really so terrible to eat a cheeseburger?  The Torah tell us no fewer than three different times – first, in this week’s Torah portion – of its prohibition, “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” (Exodus 23:19).  What is the ultimate purpose of this commandment, which has spun off a myriad of other kosher practices, including the complete separation of milk and meat, a system of keeping separate dishes, and a waiting period between eating milk and meat.  Why has our tradition paid so much attention to all this business?  And, what does Reform Judaism tell us about whether we need to keep kosher?
   

Reform Judaism has always encouraged Jews to make our own “informed choices” about our ritual practices.  For some Reform Jews, keeping kosher will not be a meaningful practice, and they may choose not to observe many of the dietary laws.  At the same time, in recent years, more Reform Jews have found spiritual meaning in these ancient practices, and “opted in” to different aspects of kashrut as increasing their spiritual awareness.  Some say that not boiling a kid in its mother’s milk is about sensitizing ourselves about cruelty to animals.  Jewish feminist writer Ellen Frankel teaches that this particular law in the Torah is meant to “keep life and death apart, to a ritual separation between the dead flesh of the goat and the milk produced by a living animal.”   And another opinion is that it is “to teach us to discipline our eating to make it a more conscious, holy act” (Five Books of Miriam, p. 127).  Whatever our eating practices, Reform Judaism permits us to make our own educated choices as we strive for a life of holiness, goodness and meaning.
 - Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of January 20-26, 2008
Parashat Yitro (Exodus 18:1-20:26)
Reflections on the Torah Portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel

When Jews hear the Ten Commandments read from the Torah, we stand up in our places, as if we were re-enacting that moment at Mount Sinai.   Our congregation will observe this practice this Friday night when we hear those first words of the Ten Commandments: “God spoke all these words, saying...” (Exod. 20:1).  We stand up for good reason!  The defining moment of the history of Jewish people, which is re-told in this week’s Torah portion, is the Giving of the Torah, when the Ten Commandments were pronounced by God in the presence of the entire people, and we, God’s people accepted the Covenant.  And yet.... what does it mean to us today?  The Ten Commandments are just a small part of what Jewish tradition demands of us.  So what does it mean for us today that each of us stood at Mount Sinai?  What is the Jewish Covenant with God about for us today? 
   

Midrash Song of Songs Rabbah imagines that an angel described the implications of accepting the Torah to each Israelite at Mount Sinai, and that each individual Jew responded “Yes! Yes!” to indicate his or her assent.  That individual response – the ability of each of us to say, in our own ways, “Yes!  Yes!” to the covenant – reminds us that taking on our obligations as Jews is an individual matter, and that each of us will respond unique ways.  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his book God in Search of Man that the Covenant is about awakening our ability to respond to God.  Our task in life is to respond to God – however we understand or wrestle with God – each of us in our own way.
 - Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of January 13-19, 2008
Parashat B’Shallach (Exodus 13:17-17:16)
Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel

The holiday of Tu B’Shevat (the 15th of Shevat), which is observed next Monday to Tuesday, has a wide variety of rich observances.  Originally, this “New Year’s day for trees” served to delineate the beginning of a new accounting period for the fruit harvest.  Specifying a “new year” for trees helped Jews calculate how to offer one-tenth of their fruits each year to the Cohanim (priests).  Through the centuries, Jews in different countries have observed a variety of customs and traditions on Tu B’Shevat.  In ancient Israel, during the period of the Second Temple, it was customary to plant a tree when a child was born – and to use the branches of those trees years later for the huppah (wedding canopy) at his or her wedding.  The Jews of Salonica, Greece, used to have a Tu B’Shevat show dressing up in costumes and singing songs about trees.  In our own time at Tu B’Shevat, we renew our commitment to protect the environment, remembering the Torah’s commandment, “Lo tash’chit,” that we “not waste” (see Deuteronomy 20:19), whether by destroying trees or wasting other natural resources.  And, we continue to plant trees in Israel, to strengthen the State of Israel and its natural environs.  Happy Tu B’Shevat!
 - Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of January 6-12, 2008
Parashat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:15)
Reflections on the Torah Portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel
The Jewish calendar can be very confusing, and this week’s portion seems to make it even more complex.  It tells us that the month of Nisan, when the Jews left Egypt, should be “the first month for you” (Exodus 12:2)  We might expect that the first month is Tishrei, the month that begins with Rosh Hashanah, is the first month, but the Torah lists it as the seventh month.  How can the Exodus occur in the “first month,” as God commands Moses, that we should begin numbering the months with Nisan, when the Jews leave Egypt?
   An answer may lie in a 2nd century text from the Mishnah, which tells us that there are four “new years” every year:  one for planting trees (in Shevat), one for counting the ages of animals (in Elul), one for counting Sabbatical years (in Tishrei), and one for numbering the reigns of kings (Nisan); each new year marks something different.  With Nisan, God redeems the Jewish people from slavery, inviting us to re-enter the realm of history in that month – and thus God asks us to re-order time.  Perhaps, just as we recline in luxury at the Passover seder like free people, we are likened to kings – who have freedom and autonomy – by re-ordering our calendar to begin in Nisan.  We remember through the calendar, the privileges of freedom and the luxuries of having free will and free choices in our lives.
 - Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of January 5, 2008
Parashat Va’era  (Exodus 6:2-9:35)
Reflections on the Torah Portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel

“Rabbi, I don’t believe in God,” are words that begin a conversation I have repeatedly with many Temple Sinai members.  But in more conversations than not, after I hear the attributes of the God whose existence is doubted – usually a supernatural God, or a God with a long beard who judges humankind from the heavens above – I am able to say that I don’t believe in that God either.  But I do believe in God.  The question is:  what type of God are we able to accept?  And, with what words can we conceptualize that God?
   

This week’s Torah portion goes out of its way to specify that different names of God imply different ways of understanding our relationship with God.  God says to Moses that “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as ‘El Shaddai,’ but I did not make Myself known to them by My name, spelled Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh” (Exodus 6:3).  Moses, the Torah implies, will by definition have a different relationship with God, and therefore needs different language to express that relationship.  Dr. Arthur Green, who was our Cohon Lecturer and Scholar-in-Residence this November, teaches that the four letter-name of God refers not to the white bearded transcendent God in the sky, but rather to a God understood as the Oneness of All Being (yud-heh-vav-heh is an irregular form of the verb “to be.”), the totality of being in the universe that pulses through all living things and helps us see ourselves as part of a larger whole.   Like Moses, we may have a different understanding of God than our ancestors, and that requires that we find new language to talk about what we feel to be true for us in our lives.
 - Rabbi Andy Vogel