Kiddoshim -- 5774

“Kdoshim tihiyu ki kadosh Ani Adonai elohechem.  You shall be holy for I, your God, am holy.”

To whom is God speaking?  Not to any specific person, but to the entire people.  Both “kdoshim” and “tihiyu” are in the plural; “kadosh” and “ani” are singular.

How does a group of people become holy?  Together.

Parshat Kdoshim outlines rules of interpersonal ethics and sexual morality.  It describes ways we are meant to treat each other and be with each other, even though we don’t agree with or conform to all of them today.  When we connect with each other respectfully and thoughtfully, we become greater than our own, isolated selves.  When individuals connect in service of the good, we become holy.

Holiness can be found in the flow of the many into one, from the plural to the singular.  Just as God has many names that describe a Single entity, just as light is comprised of many colors that merge into pure white, so too can disparate people become a unified community.  We do this through mundane acts like breaking bread and extraordinary acts like honoring survivors and liberators.  We become a K’hillah Kdoshah – a holy community - by supporting each other and celebrating with each other.

Our Temple Emanuel community gathers together this weekend at a series of special events.  We’ll break bread, eat dessert, sing songs, drink, laugh, and cry together.  Strangers will meet, kids will lead a service for very the first time, and babies will toddle on the grass.  We’ll laugh a lot, and cry a bit.  We’ll let our hair down.  None of these is particularly noteworthy on its own.  Together, however, they are holy.  Together we become holy.

Pesach 5774: From Yachatz (“Split”) to Afikomen (“Dessert”)

At our Seders on Monday night, we will hold up the middle of three matzot and proclaim: “This the bread of affliction, which our ancestors ate in the Land of Egypt.”  Then we will break it in two.

When we break the matzah, we remind ourselves that our world, too, is broken.  This sphere is one of misunderstandings, shortcomings, disappointments, and failures.  Our dreams come to naught.  We say things we don’t mean.  We hurt others, both on purpose and unintentionally.  There is poverty and pain.  Not only is the world broken, but we are broken, too.  Life, like a piece of matzah, is bumpy, uneven, and brittle. 

But all is not lost.

When we’ve told the story and our stomachs are full, we remember that lost piece of matzah.  We’ll realize that our meal is incomplete without it.  The broken bit has become the afikoman, the dessert.  What appeared worthless is actually perfect just as it is.  What was once hopeless has been redeemed.  This world is simultaneously imperfect AND marvelous, as is each one of us.

A Seder is a telling of the Exodus story through food.  Each bite, each idea, each song is a piece of a jigsaw puzzle of understandings.  By reliving our slavery and our liberation, we declare our supreme identities:  free people capable of empathy.  Through the telling of the story, the fragments become the whole.

Metzorah 5774

Metzorah, this week’s parshah, describes the skin condition of tzora’at.  Previously, tzora’at was mistakenly identified as leprosy (Hansen’s Disease).  The parshah describes the ritual for spiritual purification of the sufferer.

Rabbis are regularly asked, “Why me?” when someone gets sick.  It’s a powerful question, full of anguish.  I have asked it myself, in times of loss and confusion.  The question expresses a belief, found in the Torah, that illness can be a moral statement rather than a medical one.  It can sometimes feel as if suffering were a moral judgment, a punishment doled out by a disapproving God like a bitter headmaster with his wooden ruler.  Painful as that idea is, some find it more soothing than grappling with the idea that the universe is incomprehensible to us, that neither success nor failure are moral indications.  Pain doesn’t make sense.

Jewish tradition does not believe that suffering is redemptive.  It does not come to punish us, nor to teach us a lesson.  I do not believe that we are given pain in order to help us grow. 

That said, we may indeed learn and grow from our suffering.  This is a subtle, but very important difference.  I have certainly learned from my pain, but I do not believe that the pain was “sent to me” in order that I might learn those lessons.  The pain is just pain, no more nor less.  The meaning I make of it is up to me.