Parshat Shelach-Lecha contains a justly famous description of the Land of Israel as a "land flowing with milk and honey." The riches of Eretz Yisrael have endowed our people with a sense of home and of promise from our earliest ages. But why should a contemporary Jew, at home in America and comfortable with English, care about Israel? What has Israel done for us lately?
Welcome to the world of medieval Jewish debate. The subject: the purpose of the 'mitzvot,' the commanded deeds of holiness that constitute Judaism. At the core of the discussion, to whom is religion directed? Should Judaism exist to meet the needs of human beings, or should it exist to meet the needs of God?
In the realm of biology and chemistry, interactions lead to further interactions, as the energy of one unit creates the response of the next, which in turn launches yet another process. Everything is connected, and everything is part of a series of responses and influences. What goes around comes around.
These are trying times for Jews and for Judaism. Feeling as though our abuse at the hands of hateful non-Jews will never end, there is an urge to take care of our own, to focus exclusively on Jewish interests and Jewish priorities.
Shavuot, the Festival celebrating God’s revelation of Torah, has become one of Judaism’s hidden jewels. Far more Jews observe Yom Kippur or the Seder than stay up late to learn at a Tikkun Leil Shavuot. What makes this relative obscurity all the more unfortunate is that the notion of God giving the Torah to the Jewish people is at the center of Judaism in every age, and remains so in every contemporary expression of Jewish religion.
Puritan and colonial America viewed themselves as the modern embodiment of ancient Israel. Like the Israelites, they saw themselves as fleeing from an oppressive Pharaoh, journeying into the wilderness in pursuit of freedom and the establishment of a religious and democratic society. No coincidence, then, that on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the Hebrew Bible proclaims its ancient ideal. "Proclaim liberty throughout the land, and to all the inhabitants thereof."
As modern people accustomed to worship through prayer, study and through the performance of loving deeds, we are repelled and shocked by the notion of serving God by killing animals. Yet, most people throughout the ancient world, and in many contemporary communities as well, worshipped by providing offerings of animal or human flesh, as though God would eat.
With today's Torah portion, Aharei Mot, we begin one of the distinct law collections of the Torah -- the Holiness Code. This progression of chapters in the Book of Leviticus (Chapters 17-26) explain how the members of the Jewish People are to attain a level of holiness and integrity which will allow us to reach our maximum potential as a covenanted people and as individuals in the service of God.
Eating is something we do, three, four, five times each day. Some of us are aficionados of three square meals, the meat-and-potatoes crowd. There aren’t as many as there used to be, perhaps due to their cholesterol levels, but that staple crowd is still to be found. And then there are the grazers, munching all day on a variety of green things that resemble nothing quite so much as the weeds we try to keep out of our lawns. They may live a long time, but where’s the beef?
Each year, we gather around our tables, surrounded by friends and family, to recount the tale of our ancestors' miraculous deliverance from Egyptian slavery. As we unpack our Haggadot and look to the classical words of the rabbis and sages of old, it is worth stopping for a moment to examine the very first passage of the Seder ritual.
