Torah Bites for Your Table: Parshat Aharei Mot/Kedoshim

Shabbat Shalom Friends

In this week's parasha, we encounter one of the most famous statements of the Torah, "You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy" (Levitcus 19:3). Most people consider this verse a commandment, yet none of the rabbis who attempt to name all 613 commandments of the Torah (and yes, some rabbis actually tried to list all 613!) identify this verse as an actual commandment.

So the question becomes, what does it mean for God to say that "You shall be holy." Maimonides, one of our most famous Jewish legalists and philosophers, wrote in his Sefer Ha-Mitzvot (Book of Commandments) that,

"Now in the Torah there are certain imperatives and words of admonition which are not said in regard of any specific thing, rather they subsume all of the commandments in their entirety. It is as if to say, “Do all that I have commanded you, and take care to avoid all that I have warned you against.”

In other words, Maimonides assert that the statement "You shall be holy" is not a command, but a principle. Everyone action which we engage as Jews must be for the purpose of advancing holiness in this world. This applies not only what rituals we perform, but how we treat one another, and how we live out God's message for humanity.

As we enter this Shabbat, may live out the principle that ultimately lies every facet of our Jewish tradition, so that we shall be holy. Shabbat Shalom!

Shabbat Shalom,
Josh

1. Parents: How do you teach your children to bring holiness into their lives? How can you make your family life holy?
   
2. Children: What is an example of something that is holy? What makes it holy?
   
3. Seekers: How do you bring holiness in the world? To what extent to think that your Judaism helps or hinders your pursuit of holiness?
   

Torah Bites for Your Table: Parshat Tazria-Metzora

Shalom Friends

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful week. This week's double-parasha of Tazria-Metzora provides one of the well-known commandments of Jewish tradition, namely the covenant of circumcision. The Torah tells us that "On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised," establishing the biblical roots of circumcision as a Jewish obligation (Leviticus 13:2).

The challenge of finding continued relevance in this commandment is significant, yet it is important to think about the mitzvah's purpose as ideally conceived by the Torah and the rabbis. On this question, the The Sefer Ha-Hinukh (The Book of Education) writes the following:

"The Lord, blessed be He, wished that the people whom He had chosen to be called by His name have a fixed sign on their bodies, setting them apart from the other peoples by the form of their bodies, just as they are set apart by the form of their souls... and the difference was set in the reproductive organ since it is the cause of the existence of the species, aside from perfecting the form of the body... And the chosen people – the Lord, blessed be He, wished to perfect their attributes and desired that the act of perfecting be done by human beings. Therefore humans were not created perfect from birth, to hint to them that just as the perfection of the form of their bodies is dependent on them, so too the perfection of their souls is in their hands, in making their actions proper" (Sefer Ha-Hinukh, Parshat Lekh Lekha).

In this text, we are reminded that circumcision is intended to be a synthesis of holiness of body and holiness of soul. The mark that a Jewish boy receives is not simply meant to be a physical blemish, but a reminder about how we act with our bodies indicates the seriousness with which we take God's charge to be holy of body and soul. Of course, this is no easy task, but it is a task most certainly worth attempting to achieve. Shabbat Shalom!

-Josh

1. Parents: What do you think are the ways in which you can allow a holy soul to become a holy body? How does this relate to the way we eat, sleep, exercise and take care of ourselves?
   
2. Children: What is holy about your body? How should you try and treat it?
   
3. Seekers: What does it mean to be "holy of body"? What are some of the ways in which you are making this a reality?
   

Class THIS SUNDAY: Jewish Justice- A World As It Is Versus A World As It Should Be

Come this Sunday at 10 am for the next class on Jewish Justice with Josh Rabin, "The Blue Line Rabbi." This week's class is entitled Seeing the Other: Needs and Wants in a World of Justice. The class will discuss some of the work of Emmanuel Levinas, a Jewish philosopher from the twenty-first century, who saw "The Other" as a category of person that should inform our personal ethics and our Jewish practice. We will connect the work of Levinas to Jewish texts and the challenges of social justice in the modern-day.

Everyone is welcome. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to Josh at bluelinerabbi@gmail.com or visit him at http://bluelinerabbi.blogspot.com

Knockbox Café is located at 1001 North California Ave. (at California and Augusta), http://www.knockboxcafe.com.

Torah Bites for Your Table: Parshat Shemini

Hi Friends

I hope that everyone is having an enjoyable festival of Pesah, and that everyone's Sedarim were meaningful and insightful. I will hopefully be sending Pesah Bites this Sunday, but today I will write about this week's parasha of Shemini, which also happens to be my Bar Mitzvah Parasha.

One of the things that I love about Parshat Shemini are the laws of kashrut, the traditional Jewish dietary system. While many of us are familiar with some of the basic permissions and prohibitions of this system, we oftentimes forget that the rabbis attempted to endow this system with some type of spiritual meaning in order that we might "chew by choice" (I had to throw a corny joke in there...my apologies).

My favorite example of this is the Torah's specific prohibition against eating the hasidah, which is identified as the stork. The name of the stork in Hebrew means "the kind one," and the Talmud comments that the stork is called "the kind one" in Hebrew because it always helps out its friends (BT Hullin 63a). However, if the stork is known as "the kind one," why does it happen to be a prohibited animal?

In commenting on this question, Rabbi Yizhak Meir Alter (the Hidushei Ha-Rim), who is considered one of the first Hasidic masters of the early modern period, comments that a stork is not considered kosher because it only helps out its friends, limiting their kindness to their fellow birds. Given this reality, the stork cannot be considered kosher, because it does not recognize the fundamental truth that goodness and kindness is meaningless if it is only limited to ourselves, but rather must be extended to the many circles of influence in our lives.

Whether or not we agree with Rabbi Alter's commentary (after all, it's hard to know if a rabbi could really understand a bird's helping patterns), this commentary teaches us something profound about why we ought to observe mitzvot, in the first place. It is far too easy to assume that we ought to observe mitzvot for advancing our own place, when, in reality, we have the obligation to observe mitzvot for advancing everyone's place. Our task is to see a life of mitzvot as one that brings goodness not only to ourselves, but to the entire world. May we each have the merit of creating that type of life in our families and communities for generations to come.

Shabbat Shalom,
Josh

1. Parents: What are you doing to help your children think about seeing outside themselves, and understanding the needs of other people?
2. Children: What was a time when you did something for another person's sake, and not only for your own? How did you feel about doing it?
3. Seekers: What do you think about Rabbi Alter's prohibition against eating the stork? Do you think his reason seems genuine, or that he is attempting to justify an obscure prohibition?