With the Book of Va-Yikra (Leviticus) we return to the heart of the Torah, to those remarkable passages that translate the lofty values of Sinai into the concrete practices of everyday life, that instruct how to infuse the most mundane and conventional of deeds with the glow of sanctity, that teach how to invest every moment of our day with the intimacy of God's presence.
One of the most terrifying aspects of getting married is the idea of making a commitment to one person for the rest of their life. One of the most daunting responsibilities of parenthood is knowing that another life is dependent on you forever. Even going to the pound to get a pet can intimidate because of the permanence of the commitment.
Upon his arrival at Paddan-Aram, having wrestled with the angel, pacified his brother, survived the trauma of his daughter's rape and his sons' revenge on the men of Shechem, and having built an altar to God at the ancestral home-base of Beit-El, Jacob receives a surprising message from God:
God appeared again to Jacob on his arrival from Paddan-Aram, and God blessed him. God said to him, "You whose name is Jacob, you shall be called Jacob no more, but 'Israel' shall be your name." Thus God named him Israel.
One of the unfortunate consequences of our obsession with youth is that we tend to consign growth, learning and challenge to the earliest phases of the human life cycle. In our flawed understanding, childhood and youth are the only appropriate times for exploring either world or self, for asking searching questions, for rebelling and for establishing identity.
The assumption that growth is only appropriate or common during youth is the equivalent to consigning most people to an early death, shelving them long before their time.
One of the sorry attributes of most adults is the routinization of the soul. We become complacent, taking for granted our daily routines, our closest relationships, and our familiar possessions. What we see, we frequently fail to notice - an odd form of blindness indeed. So it is that even residents of the most luxurious mansions fail to marvel when they wake up in the same magnificent bedroom they have used for the past two decades, just as we all fail to be truly moved by the miracle of having a bed at all.
Ours is a culture forever in search of heroes. We demand the constant creation of new images on which to project our highest ideals and expectations, looking to politicians, celebrities; millionaires or athletes to not only excel in the professional life, but to shine in their personal conduct as well. Small wonder that our hopes and dreams are so often shattered—to succeed professionally often requires such a tremendous focus on personal goals and glory that the qualities of true heroism (compassion, selflessness, vision) are snuffed out early on.
For 10 years I was the rabbi of a bustling congregation, and I often had the opportunity to counsel young people who were considering or planning a wedding. When I asked them why the wanted a Jewish wedding, they would often tell me that they were doing it because of an aged grandparent or some other relative, or because their family went through the Holocaust. As a way of honoring their relative or their history, a Jewish ceremony seemed the appropriate thing to do.
One of the most intriguing and troubling passages in Pirkei Avot, a comment of Rabbi Yaakov (some versions say “Rabbi Shimon), asserts that “one who is studying while strolling, and interrupts the learning to remark, ‘what a beautiful tree,’ or ‘what a lovely field,’ Scripture considers as having committed a capital offense.”
Every four years, with each new presidential election, Americans come face-to-face with the unpleasant reality that we don't trust each other.
It seems obvious that striking back at an enemy is a gratifying but lower response than forgiving the trespass in the first place. A person who is able to overlook having been wronged demonstrates a higher form of moral sensitivity, by setting priorities that preclude a need to get back at someone else. That line of reasoning was given its classical formulation in the Christian Scripture, with the mandate to "turn the other cheek." If someone slaps you on one side of the face, rather than slapping back, simply offer your other cheek to be slapped.
