My favorite student sweater this week said “Happy Llamakka,” and of course featured a picture of a Jewish llama. I don’t recall any llamas in the Talmud’s discussion of the festival of lights, but there is a camel that lights the city on fire.

Here’s the scene: a camel laden high with straw is led through the narrow streets of a city. Some of the straw pokes into a window, where there’s a lamp, the straw catches fire, and the camel carries it down the street, torching everything in its path. This is the Jewish answer to Godzilla—or perhaps to Joe Camel, the infamous cartoon character used to entice kids to start smoking. Who is responsible for the damage done by this dangerous camel? Continue reading →

The most primal ritual of grief in our tradition is the rending of garments. The word “rending” is too pretty for the violent tearing of fabric with its distinctive sound and sensation. And the timid substitution of ripping a centimeter of black ribbon is far from the original concept. If you want to know what is intended by kriah, the tearing of one’s garments, just look at Genesis 37: 29-35.

When Reuben realizes that Joseph is gone, he tears his garments and says something incoherent to his brothers, literally, “the child is not, and I, where am I going”? A few verses later it is Jacob who receives the terrible news about his beloved son and immediately tears his garments, putting on a sack, and mourning Joseph “for many days.” In truth, he will never stop.

After the calamity and their dramatic responses of tearing clothes, Reuben and Jacob are never again quite the same. Reuben has lost his leadership, and the one time he tries to advise his father (42:37), his idea is foolish and is ignored by his father. Jacob will be bitter until the end.

The tearing of garments is not only  a symbol of grief. It indicates something much deeper, like a wound, a gaping hole in the soul. Indeed, when the Talmud seeks to define mental illness, using the category of shoteh, the sages offer three symptoms—a person who wanders alone at night, who sleeps in a cemetery, and who tears their garments. When a mourner tears garments in response to the death of a relative, it is as if to say, “I am crazy with grief, don’t try to talk with me, because I am not me without them.” Halakhah stipulates that a mourner must tear a least a hand-breadth of cloth in their garment—front and center, starting from the throat and down to the heart—as a way of acting out their grief. Continue reading →

How much do you have? That question is never purely objective nor purely subjective. Whether discussing physical assets like money and possessions or social assets such as honor and power, our sense of wealth depends both on personal need and comparison to the possessions of others. Do we answer the question in reference to our immediate wants, or according to our relative position within the circles of family and friends? This question arises as Americans gather each year for the festival of Thanksgiving. If we have a place to gather, people with whom to share, and ample food to eat, then we know we own a great deal—much more than many people. We don’t need to look overseas, but to parts of this very country which have been devastated by hurricanes and fires in recent weeks, to know that we are extremely fortunate to have anything at all. Yet we cannot but help thinking of others who possess even more, and this makes it difficult to feel true thanksgiving. The comparative instinct is ignoble—we shouldn’t regard the penury of some as occasion to exalt ourselves, or at the stupendous wealth of others as reducing the value of our own good fortune.

And yet we do, and so it has always been. Take for example the estranged brothers, Esau and Jacob, marching toward each other for a long delayed reunion. Wealth is apparently the first metric for their presentation of self. Jacob, true to form, is clever and complex. In verse 32:6 he instructs his representative to tell Esau, “I have ox and donkey.” In Hebrew the singular of these nouns can be read as plural—indicative of great quantities that defy easy counting. Or, it could mean literally, “I have an ox and a donkey.” The Midrash chooses the second reading and takes Jacob’s modesty as proof of his righteousness. Of course, this modesty is belied by his subsequent staggering tribute sent to Esau. Jacob’s idea is to lower Esau’s expectations only to wow him by the end. Continue reading →

Could it be that Rabbi Nachman got it wrong when he said, the world is a narrow bridge, and the key is not to be afraid at all? How many times have we sung these words, rocking to and fro, slow and then fast, soft and then loud, calling out encouragement never to be afraid? It feels so right and true, yet did you ever stop to wonder why the “ikar” or most important thing is not to be afraid? After all, “fear of heaven” (or as we prefer to translate, “reverence”) is a cornerstone of Jewish spirituality, a sobering realization of one’s limitations before the Eternal one, a necessary posture of humility before love can flower in the heart.

Fear can be a crippling emotion, yet it plays a positive role at several key points in our portion. When Jacob awakens from his dream, “he was afraid and said,” but in this case, perhaps the better translation really is “he was awed.” At the end of the Torah portion Jacob twice uses a synonym, pahad, which certainly means fear, to describe his father Isaac’s relationship to God. In Chapter 31:42 Jacob says to Laban, “Had not the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac been with me….” A few verses later Jacob makes an oath, swearing “by the Fear of his father Isaac.” This word for fear, pahad, is the same one Rabbi Nahman tells us not to feel. Yet it worked for Isaac—how so? Continue reading →

The story line of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel has moved on to the second, and soon to the third generations, but our portion begins with a curious backwards facing reference that seems entirely redundant: “These are the generations of Isaac son of Abraham; Abraham fathered Isaac.” Interpreters have long puzzled over this seemingly pointless verse. We know! Already two weeks ago we got the good news. Even on the verse’s internal level, it is almost ridiculously obvious, like asking who is buried in Grant’s tomb. Isaac is the son of Abraham; Abraham fathered Isaac. Got it—can we move on? Apparently, not yet.

The rabbis discern a hint of anxiety in the Torah’s belaboring of the point. Why emphasize that Abraham was the father of Isaac? Ah yes, there is the matter of this aged and previously infertile couple suddenly having a son. Really? And then there is the suspicious fact pattern of Sarah having spent time with two other men, Pharaoh and Avimelekh. We understand why they want Isaac to be their son, but we also get why that claim might have been viewed with suspicion.

The rabbis felt that such suspicion was reasonable, and further imagined it eating away at Abraham himself, causing him to wonder if he really was the father. In Bavli Bava Metzia 87a, they imagine Isaac’s weaning party, and a thoroughly skeptical gathering of the neighbors—don’t tell me that Sarah was suddenly fertile, they laughed.  And so, a miracle—Sarah took every baby in town and nursed it. OK, so maybe Sarah is still fertile, but look at old Abe! Yes, the rabbis agree, look at Old Abe very closely. The emphatic verse must mean something, and so another miracle: Isaac suddenly became the spitting image of his father. Like father like son—everyone could see the resemblance, and thus were the skeptics shut down. Continue reading →

The first thing we saw upon landing in Pittsburgh today was the instantly iconic transformation of the Steelers’ logo to integrate a yellow Magen David and the phrase, “Stronger than Hate.” The three diamonds were originally part of the US Steel logo, with yellow for coal, orange for iron ore and blue for steel scrap—the three ingredients of steel—and they represented the great power of an alloy. What a wonderful metaphor for a community that draws strength from its diversity. And what a tikkun, or repair, for the yellow star as a symbol of Jewish otherness, the medieval mark that designated our people for abuse and extermination. The Jewish star, combined with other elements, becomes a symbol of power sufficient to stop even the most lethally armed haters (see interview with creator Tim Hindes for more).

Our JTS delegation came with our own treasured art—dozens of drawings made by the children of Corpus Christi on 121 ST sent as expressions of love and comfort to the Jews of Pittsburgh. These cards will be shared with Jewish day school children in Pittsburgh, creating a network of compassion, an alloy of affiliation, a generation of children taught to value each other in their difference. As one poster put it, “Love thy neighbor—no exceptions.”

This brings us to our portion, Chayei Sarah, and its extended motif of the vulnerabilities of newcomers to town. The theme is announced by Abraham, I am a stranger and a resident among you (גֵּר וְתוֹשָׁב אָנֹכִי עִמָּכֶם). With these words he describes the predicament that his descendants, and all immigrants, have frequently felt in the subsequent millennia. He is in an especially vulnerable state, weeping for his lost life-partner Sarah, and without title to a place for her (and his) dignified burial. With dignity he asserts the significance of residency—I live here, just like you do—and my family has the right to live and to be buried—in this place, just like you. Continue reading →

If you like dramatic stories, then Parashat Noah is for you. Between the ark and the tower, the flood and the dispersion, there is high drama. A teacher of mine once argued, however, that the most important element of the portion is the least dramatic one: the genealogical tables. Noah dies at the end of chapter nine, at the ripe age of 950, after which the Torah tells us about the families established by his three sons and their wives. Chapter ten consists of a remarkable document known to scholars as the Table of Nations, a 32-verse origin story of the nations of humanity. After the brief narrative about the Tower of Babel, we are back to genealogy, with another 22 verses regarding the nations of Shem, concluding with the focus on Terah and his family.

This narrative technique is like one of those movies that starts with a shot of planet earth, and then zooms in to a specific continent, country, city and street where we suddenly find a person and hear their story. Why do we need these genealogical introductions to the great tales about the ancestors of Israel? Continue reading →