While I was away on retreat as part of the Clergy Leadership Program with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, an email came into my inbox asking why, as a Reform community, we would postpone tashlich (the ritual of throwing bread into a body of water as we pray for help releasing our mis-steps) until the second day of Rosh Hashanah. After the retreat I wrote back and said: that’s my next newsletter column!
This week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, is about judges and justice. Every town needs justices and magistrates who must judge the people with equitable justice. This is also the Torah portion where we find “Justice, justice shall you pursue!” Just as Torah spent a lot of time in Leviticus telling us to be holy as YHVH our God is holy, now we’re reminded that we also must act justly because YHVH our God is just.
This week we’re in parashat Matot-Masei, the last parsha in the book of Numbers. We begin with instructions about vows and oaths: who can make them, and who can make them but might be overruled. We don’t use the term “vow” often in modern life. But the promises we make to one another and to God matter.
It happens like clockwork. As soon as we make it through the doorway of Shavuot, even when it’s still the month of May and school is still in session and summer is still merely a dream on the horizon, my mind starts singing me high holiday songs. This is the nature of the rabbinate, at least for someone who loves music as much as I do: the songs of the next season are always calling me, reminding me of the emotional and spiritual journey that they invite.
My son is working on a musical composition that draws on one of the major and most familiar high holiday melodies. The other night he said something like, “it feels like the whole year leads up to the high holidays – it’s new beginnings, and it’s also the time when we look back on our mistakes and try to make teshuvah.” My first reaction was: I love the fact that we have conversations like this. I feel so lucky. My second reaction was: yes – the Days of Awe are an annual chance for introspection.
I’ve been studying this parsha for months with one of our teenagers who became bat mitzvah last weekend, and I can tell you that the first thing she noticed was that this census does not count any women. Or anyone who is nonbinary, or under the age of 20, or ill, or for some other reason unable to fight. This census is about counting “able-bodied men,” and that is not synonymous with “our whole community.”
There’s a song we learned in the choir earlier this spring – written for the festival of Shavuot when we celebrate the revelation of Torah at Sinai – that’s been in my head in recent weeks.
“…Ritual and structure can help us stay upright when our steps feel shaky… just as being deliberate and deliberative can help us stay ethically upright when the world feels shaky. This is the deep Torah of this parsha for me this year. When the world is too much, we can take refuge in silence, and in taking small, careful steps on tradition’s ethical path…”
Passover was early this year on the secular calendar. I was a bit worried that I would miss one of my favorite seasonal experiences of the spring: opening the door for Elijah the Prophet at our second night community seder, and being serenaded by spring peepers. But even though the holiday was early, the little frogs obliged and sang to us.
“…I thought I’d try something new this year: giving us a way to remember loved ones with a short Yizkor remembrance at home. Although traditionally Yizkor is communal, this communal ritual clearly isn’t speaking to our community as we are now. But maybe a ‘DIY’ version to do at home might speak to some of us….”
