Parashat B’Shallach (Exodus 13:17 – 17:16)

Tu B’Shevat begins Friday, January 29

Reflections on the Jewish Calendar – Rabbi Andy Vogel

The holiday of Tu B’Shevat has grown and developed in every generation.  First observed in the rabbinic period as an accounting date by which farmers could be appropriately taxed on the fruit they grew in a given year, Tu B’Shevat (the 15th of the month of Shevat) has inspired generations of Jews in later centuries to reflect on our relationships to the earth, nature and our environment, to the Land of Israel and the meaning of Zionism, to mystical understandings of God, and to the spirituality of human nutrition and diet.  All these interpretations of the holiday carry meaning for us.

As a child, I remember that Tu B’Shevat was the holiday when I dropped my tzedakah coins into the “blue box” of the Jewish National Fund at Hebrew School to plant trees in Israel.  A beautiful tree certificate would arrive in the mail for a donation of a certain amount, and which I would proudly display, knowing that I had planted a tree in my people’s homeland on this holiday.  Today, Israelis boast that they are the only country in the world that has planted more trees than it has uprooted, while deforestation wreaks havoc in other parts of the globe.  Last month on our congregational trip to Israel, we witnessed the beauty of Israel’s forests, all man-made, as we took jeep rides through the Galil region in the north.  Planting trees on Tu B’Shevat is still a meaningful way to celebrate the holiday and deepen our connection with the State of Israel, one of the many levels of meaning of this joyous minor holiday in our tradition.

-           Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of January 10-16, 2010

Parashat Va’era (Exodus 6:2 – 9:35)

Reflections on the Torah Portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel

Every year, the weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day coincides with the story of the Jewish struggle to achieve liberation from the clutches of Pharoah’s oppressive state.  As Jews, how can we fail to see the essential connections between about our own particular Exodus from Egypt and our tradition’s obligations upon us to work for a more just society, even now, 3000 years later?

Pharaoh insists that he does not acknowledge God as an authority upon him:  “Who is this Adonai that I should hearken unto His voice to let Israel go? I know not Adonai, and moreover I will not let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2).  Pharoah is obstinate in his refusal to recognize the Oneness of God, and, by extension, the oneness of humanity, which, he believes, allows him to oppress an entire people.  For this, according to the Torah, God must step in to teach him – and all humanity – a lesson about the core humanitarian values Judaism: equality.  In his comments in 1963 at a conference on religion and race, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that “a propet is a person who holds God and humanity in one thought at one time, at all times.  Our tragedy begins with the segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and the sacred… We must never be oblivious of the equality of the divine dignity of all people.” He also pointed to our obligations:  “Equality as a religious commandment goes beyond the principle of equality before the law.  Equality as a religious commandment means personal involvement, fellowship, mutual reverence and concern.”  “It means,” Rabbi Heschel said, “my being hurt” when another is oppressed, and “that I am bereaved” when another “is disenfranchised.”  Thus, we repeat the words of Moses at MLK Day for all who are oppressed: “Let my people go!”

-       Rabbi Andy Vogel

Sinai Update – Week of January 3-9, 2010

Parashat Shemot (Exodus 1:1 – 6:1)

Reflections on the Torah Portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel

Political scholar Michael Walzer says that the book of Exodus gave us an “idea of great presence and power in Western thought, the idea of deliverance from suffering and oppression.”  The narrative in Exodus gave rise to a critical concept in our civilization, one which is central to the Jewish religion:  that we can find redemption and liberation in this world.

A key moment is reached in this week’s Torah portion leading to that idea.  The narrator of the Torah tells us after the descriptions of the sufferings of the Israelites that “God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.  God saw the children of Israel; God knew.” (Exod. 2:24-25)  This last phrase is vague: What did God know?  Using the language of Jewish mysticism, the 12th century rabbi Nachmanides wrote that this mysterious divine “knowing” (da’at) is symbolic of the divine attribute of love and understanding (chesed and binah), the source of all redemption.  Previously in the narrative, God seemed to be absent, writes Nachmanides, but all that changes in Exodus chapter 2.  In other words, redemption can dawn when the knowledge of suffering begins, when God and we become present, not absent, to hear the cries and sufferings of others.  That “knowing,” that knowledge, is the beginning of liberation.

       - Rabbi Andy Vogel