The Key To Youth and the Aleinu – Parshat V’zot Ha’brachah – Torah From the Holy Land

The Key To Youth – V’zot Ha’brachah

וּמשֶׁ֗ה בֶּן־מֵאָ֧ה וְעֶשְׂרִ֛ים שָׁנָ֖ה בְּמֹת֑וֹ לֹא־כָֽהֲתָ֥ה עֵינ֖וֹ וְלֹא־נָ֥ס לֵחֹֽה: (דברים לד:ז)

Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were undimmed and his natural force unabated. (Deuteronomy 34:7)

My personal motto is to “find your passion, whatever it may be, and don’t lose it, even for one second. You never know whose life you could have changed during that time”. Passion drives every major change in society, and is a must have for any leader. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks about the above pasuk, “What then was the secret of the undiminished energy of his last years?… I used to think that “his eyes were undimmed” and “his natural force unabated” were simply two descriptions, until it dawned on me that the first was an explanation of the second. Why was his energy unabated? Because his eyes were undimmed. He never lost the vision and high ideals of his youth. He was as passionate at the end as he was at the beginning… The moral is clear: If you want to stay young, never compromise your ideals.” In the last year, what ideals have you given up on or compromised? What dreams have you abandoned? This new year, commit to renewing those old passions and embrace your inner youth.

You can read the entire drash by Rav Sacks here.

Tefillah: Aleinu – The Final Call

Just as V’zot Ha’brachah ends the cycle of the Torah, so too does Aleinu end our daily tefillot. And just as V’zot Ha’brachah caps a climatic and moving recap of the journey of the Israelites, reiterating the importance of worshiping the one and only Almighty, so too does Aleinu remind us of the majesty of the Crown. Rabbi Yoel Sirkes (1561-1640) in his book Bayit Chadash, a commentary on the Tur, explains: “The reason [for reciting Aleinu at the end of the service] is to ingrain in our hearts, before we leave for our houses, the unity of the kingdom of God. Thus, our faith will be strengthened, in order that we ‘remove the foreign gods from the land.’’ How many ‘foreign gods’ do we still have today? Power, money, success, acclaim, lust, and all the desires of the ego to dominate the other are still very strong temptations in our society. Aleinu gives us one last moment to refocus before going out into the world. It allows us to get our priorities in order, and helps us cultivate a sense of awe and wonder of the miraculousness of the world and life itself. So before you rush off to fold up your tallit, take a deep breath and focus one more moment on the grandeur of the Divine.

Let’s Talk About Israel – Parshat Toldot

Torah: Let’s Talk About Israel

A few weeks ago, we toured Masada, the impressive Herodian fortress made famous as the last stand of the Jews in the Jewish-Roman War. At this site, we discussed three different narratives of Masada: the narrative of the rebels as told by Josephus, the story the archeology tells, and the story of how Masada became a symbol for the modern State of Israel. This later story, which served as a rallying cry for early Zionism (“Shenit M’zadah lo tipol” – The second Masada shall not fall, using Masada as a metaphor for Israel), has begun to go out of fashion as Israel has settled into statehood. This vision of Israel hanging on by a thread, however, is still very prevalent in American Jewish circles. The idea that due to Israel’s fragility we cannot criticize it or hope for a better future for all inhabitants of the land has created a relationship with Israel for many young Jews that is impossible to sustain. To truly have a deep relationship, we must be able to sit down and talk with each other when there are problems.

Rav Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin (1816-1893), also known as the Netziv, comments on the difference in the relationship of Isaac and Rebecca from the rest of our ancestors. Rebecca’s “relationship with Isaac was not the same as that between Sarah and Abraham or Rachel and Jacob. When they had a problem they were not afraid to speak about it. Not so with Rebecca” (Commentary to Gen. 24: 65). This lack of communication had dire results for the family. Isaac was incensed at Jacob’s betrayal. Esau resolved to kill Jacob after his father’s death. Rebecca, in fear, had to send her favorite child away for dozens of years. The family was torn apart in a way that would never be repaired.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks comments that “such is us the human price we pay for a failure to communicate. The Torah is exceptionally candid about such matters, which is what makes it so powerful a guide to life: real life, among real people with real problems. Communication matters. In the beginning God created the natural world with words: ‘And God said: Let there be.’ We create the social world with words. The Targum translated the phrase in Genesis 2, ‘And man became a living soul’ as ‘and man became a speaking soul.’ For us, speech is life. Life is relationship. And human relationships only exist because we can speak. We can tell other people our hopes, our fears, our feelings and thoughts.” (Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)

The same is true when it comes to our relationship with Israel. In order for the Israeli project to be sustainable for generations, we must learn how to express our hopes and our fears. We must have a conversation about the values with which we approach our relationship to Israel, and we each must put forth a vision for the society that we wish the Jewish State to be. And no matter where we may be, we must work to make that vision a reality. But it only begins when we can have a candid conversation with each other, listening, pushing, and critiquing, out of a deep love and desire for our State to be the best it can be. The warning in our texts is clear: If we are afraid to speak about our problems, the consequences could be far worse.

T’fillah: And the Blessing One Spoke (Baruch She’amar)

As we saw above, communication, or rather lack of communication, plays a central role in this week’s parasha. It’s the words that we speak, or choose not to, that can have immense power, and we see this in the Beginning. The entire universe was created with “And God spoke: Let there be…”. All that is in this world, all the stuff that life is made up of, was created from these initial words. Baruch She’amar v’haya haolam, Blessing be the one who spoke and the world was. Every morning we begin the P’sukei D’zimra service with this awesome statement. Harkening back to those original words, it’s an important reminder that the words we’re about to offer in praise, in prayer and throughout the day, can both be blessings and curses. Each word that comes from our mouths has the potential to create and destroy worlds. When you come to this prayer in the morning t’fillot, consider using it as a natural stop and focus on your voice. Be cognisant of how it feels as the vocal chords vibrate, creating voice. And let the power give us pause, each word emanating intentionally from our mouth.

You can view a PDF of this d’var here.

Sam Blustin is an alumnus of the Conservative Yeshiva (2014-2015) and a current Rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary (Class of 2020). You can view more divrei Torah at www.samblustin.com or contact Sam directly at samblustin@gmail.com.

Parshat Va’era – A Hierarchy of Needs | The Essence of YHVH

Torah: A Hierarchy of Needs

In this week’s parasha, the people of Israel struggle under the weight of their oppression, which has been made worse after Moses’ challenging of the status quo. When Moses comes to tell them of YHVH’s words of hope, they could care less. “So Moses spoke accordingly to the Children of Israel; but they did not heed Moses, because of shortness of breath and hard work” (Ex. 6:9). The people were so exhausted trying to make ends meet that Moses’ words made no impact. They were all consumed by their own situation. As Maimonides notes in the Guide For the Perplexed, “a person suffering from great hunger, thirst, heat or cold, cannot grasp an idea even if it is communicated by others, much less can he arrive at it by his own reasoning.” What Maimonides points to is a fundamental truth: Before one can arrive to great spiritual heights, their basic needs must first be met. This led Rabbi Sacks to make what for me was a shocking realization in its simplicity. He says, “If you want to improve people’s spiritual situation, first improve their physical situation.”

To see the power of this approach, one need not look further than the beginnings of the state of Israel. While living in what was then Palestine was certainly no cakewalk, the early pioneers had their basic food and shelter needs met. They lived in relative peace and security for many years with their Arab neighbors. Each person had a role in kibbutz life, and no person was above the others. Orphans from across the world came together as sisters and brothers. And after years of work, the country began to bloom. Before their very eyes the land of milk and honey came to life from the work of their very hands, and they felt tangibly that they were sowing the seeds for the rebirth of the Jewish people. The very strength of Zionism stemmed from the intense sense of purpose which addressed all of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Each step built upon the last, raising the consciousness of the people higher and higher. However, with the establishment of the State of Israel, Israel was forced into a state of survival for which it has never fully been able to move past. To be sure, there was still idealism in certain areas, but so many people even today do not have the basic security that would allow them to turn their eyes to loftier ideals and goals. We see these gaps in the rights of Bedouin in the South, in the rights and poverty of immigrants of color, in the hurdles that Israeli Arabs still have to overcome to be accepted in Israeli society, and in the high costs of housing, to name a few issues. Without addressing these issues of basic needs and rights for all citizens, the conversation around loftier ideals and the spiritual nature of the State cannot even begin.

Reb Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev said: “Don’t worry about the state of someone else’s soul and the needs of your body. Worry about the needs of someone else’s body and the state of your own soul.” Instead of spending so much time judging others for how observant they may or may not be, let us put our energies into creating a more just and equal society for all people.

T’fillah: The Essence of YHVH

In the beginning of our parasha, God makes a huge revelation. “God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am YHVH. I appeared to Avraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but with my Name YHVH I did not make Myself known to them” (Ex. 6:2-4). While the name YHVH has been used by the narrator previously, it was only revealed in the world last week to Moses at the burning bush, not to our Patriarchs or Matriarchs. What does this name represent?

Ramban notes that each name of God represents the trait through which Godself is revealed in the world. So Moses is not asking God’s name, but through which aspect of the Divine will it reveal itself. God answers with YHVH, saying “I will be with you in mercy as you are redeemed from Egypt”.

Aryeh Kaplan provides an alternative explanation in “Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide”. He notes the dual nature of the name YHVH; while it’s written YHVH, its pronunciation is so holy we instead substitute a different name for God when we say it out loud: Adonai. To understand the name, we must know the essence of both names.

YHVH comes from the verb “to be”, a combination of the conjugations in the past, present, and future. Therefore, he says, when you see this name of God, think “that God ‘was, is, and will be’ – all at once. This indicates that God is utterly transcendental, higher even than the realm of time.” This represents the Divine as a principle, true everywhere, connecting everything, and would be expressed in language like “God is the loving force in the Universe”.

However, since YHVH represents the relationship of everything to everything else, we can’t actually be in a relationship with a principle itself, only a being. In order to be able to talk to the Divine, we substitute the name Adonai, my Lord, for YHVH, which represents the aspect of the Divine which is being. This God can be described not as a force, but actually the Creator of the universe.

When we see the name YHVH but pronounce it as Adonai, we address the Divine as “a Being-Principle. We see God as the Principle that gives existence to all things. Yet, at the same time, we see God as a Being, and furthermore, as a Being to whom we can relate. When we speak to God, it is as if we are communing with existence itself, but at the same time speaking to it as if it were a person.”

Which mode are you more oriented towards – treating God as a Being or Principle? What would it feel like to address God as the opposite? Or both? What situations might that theology be helpful in?