In the wilderness God speaks. Torah is teaching us that it is in places of uncertainty, challenge, and temptation that we find God. The uncertainty we’re facing today can become the source of new understanding and nearness to God.
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Our parasha starts off by explaining the year of the yovel, sometimes translated as Jubilee, but I like the way Everett Fox renders it: Homebringing. God’s realm is holy and good, and Shabbat, Yom Kippur, the Jubilee, the Tabernacle, the Messiah, these are all part of his plan for the holy realm to intercept the earth, as it was in Eden.
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In the past most of “civilized” society dealt with others’ handicaps by turning a blind eye. At best, the disabled were treated with dismissive sympathies and self-congratulatory charity; at worst they were often blamed for their disabilities and pushed to the margins of society. Only recently has the conversation turned toward treating those with disabilities as fully enfranchised members of society.
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There are few lines of Scripture more uncompromising than the opening verses of K’doshim: “You are to be holy as I the Lord your God am holy” (19:2). Is this truly possible? Most of us would probably settle for “faithful,” or perhaps, “devout.” But holy?
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As we are all still shut in or locked down for an unknown amount of time, I cannot help but think about some of our ancestors who experienced a type of “shut-in” experience, and learn from their example.
It is not a pleasant example.
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A change in circumstances necessarily brings with it a change in perception. This year I’ve found the story of God’s liberation of our people from bondage resonating more deeply and fully, now that my own freedom of movement has been temporarily removed. Even matzah has been difficult to come by this year—we’ve had to ration ours to make it last.
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Sefirat ha-Omer, counting the Omer, is based on the Torah (Leviticus 23) and has always been part of Jewish life, but often neglected. In the UMJC family, we’ve made it part of our tradition for years now—and we can keep it going this year.
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Passover is above all a story, an appeal to the imagination and to memory. We don’t just think and talk about Passover, but we picture and reenact and memorialize it. Ironically, one of the advantages of our current COVID shutdown is that he helps us imagine the “night of watching” in Egypt.
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Yitzchak, already a young man, understood what was happening, even though he never heard the initial command: “Take now your son, your only son, the beloved one, Isaac, and go for yourself (Lech Lecha) to the land of Moriah, and offer up the gift that goes up there, on one of the mountains that I will show you” (Gen 22:2).
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Many years ago, when I was a much younger man, I was earnestly seeking God’s will for my vocation. I agonized in prayer for weeks. I can remember praying about this as I was driving to my mother’s house one Sunday and God said to me, undeniably, “Do what you want!”
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