Purim 5779 - at Hadassah Mt. Scopus

Purim this year was spent partly at the hospital, and partly at my old neighborhood.
The more meaningful part for me was, of course, at the hospital, even though it was NOT easy, I must admit. It started when Thursday day time, which was Purim all over Israel except in Jerusalem, I took my little recorder and went to visit a few patients who already know me. I played some soothing music without any other players with me, and was surprised how much they liked it. In one of the rooms, I visited an older woman, who used to be a tough bus driver. Her bed was hidden by a curtain, but she welcomed me in happily. We talked for a long while, and then I took my recorder and played. At that moment, a woman in the nearby bed asked who is playing, and asked for permission to open the curtain, to be part of this too. We opened the curtain, and she listened with a smile on her face. I didn't know if this had any meaningful effect or not, but when I finished the first song, she showered me with good words and told me that it lifted her up. I suggested that she "order" songs, if there are any songs she likes. She asked me to play Eli Eli by Hannah Senesh. When I did, she closed her eyes, and when I finished, she told me that it was like a prayer for her. She is secular, so hearing these words from her had an added meaning for me. I then played my favorite Jerusalem song: "From the top of Mt. Scopus, Shalom to you, Jerusalem". It is doubly moving to play it and for the patients to hear it, from the Mt. Scopus hospital.
I bought a few "Mishlochei Manot" (bags with candies that we give each other on Purim) and gave it to some of them. I was sorry that I didn't have more, because there was a nurse who wanted one too. It was so cute. I'll go and give her next week. I stayed at the hospital until night, and brought certain patients to the hospital synagogue, to hear the reading of the Book of Esther. It was good - but emotionally tough. After I finished the day, I felt that I needed a break from visiting the hospital for at least one week, to regain my emotional strength, but Saturday night I felt an urge to go again, to visit one specific patient who is in the hospice.
A hospice, for those of you who do not know, is the place to which patients are sent to end their lives peacefully. It is the most beautiful part of the hospital, but also the toughest of them all. Terminally ill patients, who have no hope of recovering (according to the doctors), are sent there to spend the last days of their lives there. Very ironically, it is situated right in front of the delivery rooms - so in one end of the corridor people are being born, and on the other end of it, people die. Very symbolic - a closing of a circle.
A few weeks ago I met a middle-aged woman there, who suffers from cancer. Her belly is very big, and not because of fat... It is very hard to see, and when I visit her, I try hard not to see it. She is constantly crying and feeling sorry for herself, and it is not easy to be around her. Saturday night I felt that I had to go visit her. When I arrived, after she stopped crying, she told me that she felt so alone and prayed to G-d to send someone to visit her, and very shortly after that, I arrived. I did feel as if G-d sent me. I didn't plan to go to the hospital for another week, but something inside urged me to go, specifically to see her. I spent three hours with her, and it calmed her down, but I know that it's not much, because it won't have a lasting effect on her. Soon she will start crying again and feeling sorry for herself again.
I told her that there are no mistakes in G-d's plans, and that if this is the experience that He gives her now, then it means she has a mission to accomplish in this specific situation. First and foremost, when her secular family hears her talking about G-d even though she is in such a situation, it gives more validity to her faith in G-d. It is very easy to talk about G-d when everything is good. But when you do that when things are not good and there is no medical hope, it gives your faith in G-d more value in the eyes of others. At that moment, I told myself that it's probably very easy to say, and very hard to do, but my answer to myself was that G-d forbid, if I'm ever in that situation, I will truly think this way and try to accomplish this mission rather than feel sorry for myself. The question should always be What can I give rather than Why don't I get what I want. Second, her family comes to visit her sometimes for parts of the Shabbat. Not every week. But when her sister comes, for example, both of them go down to have a festive Shabbat meal with other patients and their family members. Her sister told me that she hasn't experienced a real Shabbat meal in her life and that she so enjoys it, so this is her chance of experiencing some Jewish life, hear words of Torah on the table and sing Shabbat songs.
There is a generous donor who gives a lot of money every Shabbat to allow big, festive Shabbat meals, with salads, fish, meat, desserts - what not. Every week. He does this anonymously, no one knows who he is, but it allows patients and their families to enjoy Shabbat together. It is so amazing. The hospital gives a special hall for this purpose, and there are volunteers who serve the food. Those patients who cannot go down to the hall and eat there, can enjoy packed Shabbat food in their beds. Their family members can go down and take a nice Shabbat meal and give them. It is so nice. I have never seen anything like this anywhere in the world except here. Very moving. The first time I saw it, I couldn't believe it. It was so nice and generous and the atmosphere was so good and festive. I don't eat there (I did it twice when I spent a whole Shabbat at the hospital for bed-ridden patients who needed someone to be with them). But just knowing that something like this happens here - warms my heart.
In short, I'm grateful for having moved here and that now I can walk to the hospital and give something to the patients, give them strength and alleviate their suffering a bit. Baruch HaShem.

Weekly Torah Portion - VaYikra (Leviticus 1:1 - 5:26)

This coming Shabbat, Jews all over the world will read in synagogue the VaYikra Torah portion (Leviticus 1:1-5:26). This is the first portion of the book of Leviticus - the third book out of the five books of Moses, and a book with a lot of technical details about the service of the Jewish Priests (Levites: people from the tribe of Levy; and Kohanites: Aaron and his children). But in the Torah, even in the most technical portions, there are always deep ethical, philosophical and psychological lessons and messages for all of humanity to learn and for all generations. Let's try to delve in. If you have any ideas of your own that you would like to share with me, I would love to hear them. Knut - thank you for commenting, it's nice to know you're reading this! Comments from other people are welcome as well! 

Our portion starts with the Hebrew word VaYikra (ויקרא), meaning: "and (G-d) called..." G-d calls Moses, and only then He speaks to him. G-d calls man and seeks him out actively. He doesn't just let us be or speaks vaguely in the hope that we will hear Him. He calls to us and seeks us out actively, and we in return have to try to heed the call, each of us with our own calling, and engage in a life sustaining dialogue with G-d.

If you look closely at the Hebrew text, the word ויקרא is spelled with a smaller "Aleph" (א), as follows: ויקרא. Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, and also the first letter in G-d's name: אלקים. Our sages teach that in His calling to us, humans, G-d has somewhat shrunk Himself, so to speak, made Himself smaller, in order to "make room" for us to act, to manifest our talents and gifts, to utilize our G-d given gifts (which each of us is endowed with) to benefit our fellow men and the entire world. In G-d's calling to Moses (and to all of us), G-d is asking that we act to the best of our ability using whatever we have to benefit the world and beautify it, to make it a better, more goodly place to live in - each of us to the best of our abilities, in our own small corner of the world.
To be happy people we have to believe that we have an intrinsic value, that we didn't come to the world for nothing - that we have something that is uniquely ours to do here, to give to the world, and only we can find out what it is and do it. If we lose this sense of self worth, we won't do anything and we will sink into melancholy and depression. The way to prevent it (and to spring out of it if we had already sunk in it) is to realize what we can do for others, and to actually do it. Some of us are gifted artistically, some of us have charisma and magnetic power, some of us are gifted musically or linguistically - each of us should take whatever talent we have, and make use of it to make the world a better place.  

This week's portion deals with five kinds of offerings that people can bring to atone for their sins: burnt offering, cereal offering, peace offering, purification offering, reparation offering. Each offering has its own set of rules and instructions for bringing it. Reading about such offerings in our day and age, when the Tabernacle and the Temple are no longer in place and haven't been for more than 2000 years now, makes us, modern readers, feel alienated: what value is there for us in such teachings? What can we learn from them? And why did people in ancient times have to sacrifice those poor animals? Does G-d really want such offerings? 

First, let's consider the Hebrew word for offering: Korban (קורבן). This word has an additional meaning: sacrifice. When we look at its root letters,  ק.ר.ב, we can see that these are the same root letters of the Hebrew word Karov (קרוב), which means "close" (as in closeness). So there is a semantic connection between the words offering/sacrifice and the word for closeness. The idea in bringing offerings is to give up something big in order to get closer to G-d. In ancient time, people's wealth was measured in terms of how much cattle they had, how many cows, sheep, goats, and how many fields and produce they had. A bull was a very expensive piece of property, perhaps like a Mercedes in our time. Giving up a bull, bringing it to the priests and seeing this expensive property being burnt on the altar and then eaten, was not an easy thing to do. People did it usually in order to show how deeply sorry they felt about certain sins that they have committed. By giving up a very expensive piece of property (and seeing it killed and burnt in front of one's very eyes), the sinner tried to ask for G-d's forgiveness and in the process become closer to G-d after feeling alienated from Him because of sin. A poor person, who did not own bulls, could bring a vegetarian offering or a pigeon instead. The important thing is that the offering would be something that is very expensive for that person's means.

Today, when the Temple is no longer in place (its giant stones can be seen scattered around the place where the Temple used to stand, next to the Western Wall), and no one knows where the Holy Ark is (probably buried somewhere below the Al-Aqsa mosque in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem), we don't have the custom to bring offerings. Our modern day sensibilities makes most of us shudder to the thought of slaughtering animals and dealing with their blood. This job is spared today to people who work in slaughter houses. The rest of us buy clean, nicely packed meat in the supermarket and don't have to deal with blood. How can we understand the relevance of sacrificing to our own lives today?

The great rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook of blessed memory said that when the Temple will be (peacefully) rebuilt in the future, all the offerings will be vegetarian, for the consumption of the Kohanites. 

So, does G-d really need our offerings? In contrast to idol-worshiping cultures, in which their idols are believed to be "eating" the offerings, in Judaism the sacrifice is meant as an act with a psychological impact on the individual, something that helps man attain forgiveness by showing one's true sorrow for one's sins and by showing one's readiness to pay heavily for one's sins. G-d does not need our offerings. We need our offerings to be and feel clean of sin and therefore worthy of being close to G-d. 

What do we do now, when there are no offerings instituted? We can still implement the same principle and translate it to our world view. We can give something expensive that we own (doesn't have to be our Mercedes) in favor of a cause that serves to make up for our sins. It can come in the form of a generous donation to a cause we believe in and want to strengthen, or giving some money to a less fortunate individual who can really use some extra funds. It can come in the form of investing a portion of our time and energy in acting to promote a cause we believe in or in helping an individual in need, any kind of need. We can give of our time to the needy - visiting lonely elderly people at their homes or visiting the sick at hospital, giving of our time to help young mothers who have many kids, anything that would benefit someone else and would make this world a better place.The important thing is that once we sacrifice something of our own, it has to be something big enough for us to feel it's meaningful. 

The leaders of the nation - the president of each tribe - are also to bring their own offerings to G-d, to show their submission to the one Leader that is above the rest of us. If sacrifices were instituted today, we would have expected to see PM Netanyahu walking the relatively short walk from his official residence to the Temple and sacrificing his own offerings.

This Shabbat is called Shabbat Zachor (the Shabbat just before Purim). So we will also read the Zachor portion ("remember what Amalek did to you..."; Deuteronomy 25:17-19). Halacha (Jewish Law) requires each Jew to hear the reading of that portion. Amalek symbolizes the world view in which there is no G-d, and everything that happens in the world is just the result of coincidence. Judaism stands in total opposition to this world view. In Jewish thought and belief, everything is meaningful, and nothing is left to chance, because G-d is one, an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent G-d. To attest for this, there is a special meaning in reading and hearing the Zachor portion. Amalek attacked us in the desert just when we started losing faith. To eradicate Amalek and the amalekite world view, all we have to do is strengthen our faith in G-d.

Shabbat Shalom to you all! 

With love from Jerusalem,

Revital

Weekly Torah Portion - Pkudei (EXODUS 38:21 - 40:38)

Today is the first day of the Hebrew month of Adar. It is the month in which, according to our tradition, Moses was born and died. It is the month in which we celebrate the holiday of Purim to celebrate the salvation that we have attained from the Persian Hitler Haman many hundreds of years ago (see the Book of Esther for details, and I'll try to write a special post about it). Unlike the international calendar, in which you get a 29th day of February every few years, in the Hebrew calendar we have something different: every few years we get another month! We call a year with an extra month a "pregnant year". So this year is a "pregnant" year. The first Adar has ended, and yesterday started the second month of Adar.
Jews all over the world will read tomorrow, Shabbat, in synagogue the "Pkudei" Torah Portion (Exodus  38:21 - 40:38). This is the last portion in the book of Exodus, and starting next week we will read the Portions from the book of Leviticus. The book of Exodus tells the story of the slavery and exodus from Egypt and the first few months in the desert. It ends with a few Portions concerning the Mishkan (tabernacle; sanctuary; portable Temple), in which the instructions to build the Mishkan are given in detail.
The word Mishkan (משכן) shares the same root as the word Shkhina (holy spirit; שכינה). So the Mishkan is the focus point of G-d's holy spirit. Why do we need a physical place for the Shkhina to dwell in? If we read back, we realize that G-d commanded us to build the Mishkan only after we sinned by making for ourselves a golden calf, a foreign idol, to worship. It could be that G-d wanted to channel our need for a physical item to focus our spiritual energies on in a proper way. Instead of worshiping golden calves, we will have a sanctuary to commune with G-d.
The Mishkan is a place of sanctity. The Shabbat day is a time of sanctity. Since the commandment to observe Shabbat appears twice during the episodes of the Mishkan, we understand that the Shabbat's importance is much greater than that of the Mishkan. On Shabbat we are commanded to stop from making any kind of work, even from building the Mishkan.

This week's portion starts with a list of all the expensive materials that were used to build the Mishkan. Our rabbis teach that a person's true richness and assets are only those things that he gave to others. If you have $1,000,000 in your physical bank account but gave very little to others, you are considered poor, poor in the only currency that matters: poor in good deeds. If you have very little money in your bank account, but you gave a lot to people in real need, then you are considered rich: rich in good deeds. Good deeds are the only currency that matters - in this world and in the next. People don't take their material riches with them to the grave or to the next world. But their good deeds will always have a ripple effect.

Readers who read the portion superficially might think that it is just a technical description of architecture and items of service. But the Torah ALWAYS conveys a deeper meaning. Beyond the surface level there are always deeper levels of meaning that can teach us moral, psychological and philosophical lessons that we can learn from in our day and age as well.

The description of the Mishkan and all the vessels in it is repeated again and again for about 15 chapters! First, the details appear in G-d's instructions to Moses, then they appear in Moses' instructions to the people, then they appear again in the performance of the job, then they appear in the conclusion of the job, and then they appear again when G-d instructs Moses what to do with those items. Why all the repetition? Why all the technicalities? When someone repeats the same details again and again in speech or writing, we know that those details are important to him. When someone says the same things again and again, it shows that he wants the listeners to really hear and internalize what he is saying and not take it lightly. In fact, there are people, Torah scholars, who sit and study these details of the Mishkan and its vessels in depth in order to construct the exact same vessels to be used in the Holy Temple, when it will be peacefully built in the future.

One more repetition that calls our attention is the fact that every time that an instruction was performed in our portion, the phrase: "...as G-d commanded Moses" appears. Again and again. If you count these repetitions, you find that this phrase appears 18 times in the story of the Mishkan. Eighteen is a number with a special meaning in Judaism. If we convert its digits to letters, we get the word חי (chai, or: alive) in Hebrew. So the number 18 symbolizes life. For example, when Jews give money to charity, they like to give money in multiples of 18 (180 sheqels, 360 dollars, 540 euros, etc). And hence the important lesson: if we really want a life that is good and meaningful, we have to do things as G-d commanded Moses... The Torah is our guide book to life. In it you can find values and morals that are eternal and good. If you read a verse in it and it looks outdated and irrelevant for us today, it is because you stay on the surface level. A good advice would be to read deep commentaries about it by our Sages, explaining how things are truly eternal and meaningful for all ages.
Each of us should build a Mishkan, a tabernacle, within our hearts. We should do it by adhering to divine morality, by thinking of G-d's commandments and follow them even when it's hard. Especially when it's hard. Wherever there is hardship, there is also a tremendous gift to glean from it. Hardships are what makes us close to G-d, because it's usually when we are down that we look up and seek Him, and in the process we become much better people.

The person in charge of the construction of the Mishkan was Bezalel. In Hebrew, his name means: "in the shade of the Lord". Bezalel is the prototype of an especially gifted artist. It is no coincidence that his name means "in the shade of the Lord". Every true and honest artist (unlike many so-called artists today) is truly in the shade of the Lord, receiving inspiration from the master of the universe, Who is truly the greatest artist of all.

The book of Exodus ends with this verse: "... the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys". I like this verse a lot, because it shows how even when everything in our lives is clouded and dark and we see no way out, the fire of G-d is bound to appear and show us the way to our promised land. If we only open our eyes and see it.

Shabbat Shalom!
Revital