parsha

Sing Like a Levi and Help a Job Hunter

In this parsha we learn a lot about the Levi’im (Levites) and the roles they played in the mishkan. (Pop quiz: what did a Levi do between the ages of 25 – 30?) Curiously, however, the parsha does not mention the Levi’im singing. I asked my husband about this, and he said the singing Levi’im must be part of Torah sheBa’al Peh, the Oral Law. He thought there was a hint of it when the parsha says the Levi’im worked the burdensome work up to age 50, at which point they only did the less cumbersome tasks (and one assumes this would be singing – see Numbers 4:47). I did a search on the web and found this about sources of Levi’im singing in the Torah on the Darche Noam website. FYI, my boys and my husband are Levi’im.

On a somewhat related topic, Rabbi Abraham Twerski explains why the tribe of Dan was last. While the Levi’im were up in front carry their parts of the Mishkan, Dan was put at the back. Why? Rashi says their job was to pick up stragglers and lost objects. Here’s a story that Rabbi Twerski relates to explain:

A European Jew consulted his rabbi. His son, who had deviated from Torah observance, had emigrated to America. he became successful in business and was sending his father money. However, since the son was not shomer Shabbos (observant of Shabbos), the father was reluctant to take money which may have been earned on Shabbos.
The rabbi said, “It is unfortunate that your son has dropped observance of the mitzvos. The one mitzvah he is still observing is honoring his father. We may hope that observance of this great mitzvah may have an influence on him to observe other mitzvos. If you refuse the money, you will be depriving him of an important mitzvah.”

Rabbi Twerski explains that Dan was the weakest of the tribes, the one that still had idol worshippers and produced King Yeravam, who caused the secession of the ten tribes. So Dan is somewhat like the wayward son in America. Dan’s good role was in picking up objects and returning them to their owners, and perhaps by doing these mitzvot they would eventually return to being loyal to God. Sometimes doing a mitzvah for a fellow human being can bring one to be closer to God, as well.

•   •   •

Which brings me to my final topic: Jewish Side, who you can follow on Twitter @Jewish_Side, is looking for her first “real” job post college. She wrote her resume, and she asks, what next? If you have any job hunting tips, you are welcome to leave them in the comments or via Twitter (do @Jewish_Side and whatever you have to say).

Parsha on Twitter

I just tweeted my first #Torah tweet:

Want to see all the recent #Torah tweets? Go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type in #Torah. Enjoy! (and it’s even easier to access if you use TweetDeck and dedicate a search column to #Torah).

Want to read more about #Torah? Read Rabbi Shai’s post on the JPS site.

If you want to learn more about Judaism via Twitter, the best Twitterer to follow is JewishTweets. You will not be disappointed! If you look at all the folks following or being followed by JewishTweets, you can find many other Jewish twits I mean Tweeps.

Glass Houses

Rashi quotes the above phrase from Bava Metzia 59b in reference to Exodus 22:20 —

So I said to my husband: is this a bit like “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones”? And my husband responded, but even if you weren’t a stranger in Egypt, you shouldn’t abuse a stranger.

But I don’t think it’s a good idea for people who live in brick houses to throw stones, do you?

History of a Bat-Mitzvah

So I remember bits and pieces of it. There was a dog, and a son, and a father. The drawing on the map probably was not part of the speech, but might have been if I had written the speech. So I would have an excuse to draw charts and pictures. The red line represents the route B’nei Yisrael (the Israelites, Children of Israel) most probably did take, so they would have a long time between slavery and being a nation in a land. The blue line is the more direct route, the one they didn’t take, which seems to go close to what is now Gaza or what was then the nation of the Philistines, a war-like people. In any case, they did meet Amalek at the end of the parsha, so they got involved in a battle, anyway.

So what was the story about the dog, the son, the father? I had to look it up. It’s from a Rashi towards the end of the parsha. It seems the father and son were going on a journey, and the son wanted to be held. So the father picked him up. Then the son wanted this. The father gave it to him. The son wanted that. Again, the father generously gave to his son. Along came another man, and the son asked, Do you know where my father is? The father got angry and put the son down. Along came a dog (Amalek) and bit him.

Now, if I could choose a topic now for my bat-mitzvah, I would have chosen Shirat HaYam, the song of the sea. Maybe next year I will study the beautiful poetry in this week’s parsha. Last year I wrote about Devorah. One thing I will have to say: even if I didn’t write the words to my bat-mitzvah speech, it was this speech that was my introduction to writing and giving divrei Torah, words of Torah. I enjoy it! So, thanks Dad (I actually used to call him Daddy, but now we call him Saba, grandfather) for helping me along this path.

    

The photo on the left shows me conducting some kind of game at my bat-mitzvah. The photo on the right is from my brother’s bar-mitzvah one year earlier; I am sitting in the same location that I stood one year later to give my bat-mitzvah speech.

Symbol of the Moon in Judaism

I learned this week that the Chinese calendar is like the Jewish calendar, as it follows the moon, but it has a correction, a leap year of some sort so the holidays stay in the right seasons. So some bloggers this week were wishing me Happy Chinese New Year while others were wishing me a good month (it was the beginning of the Hebrew month of Shevat). It occurred on the same day because of the moon.

In this week’s parsha, the moon first becomes a symbol of hope and renewal for the Jewish people. There are many Jewish laws (halachot) regarding the sighting of a new moon. In the days of old, witnesses who saw the new moon would set fires on a string of hilltops to let neighboring and far communities know of the new month. Now we follow a calendar.

In his book Ancient Secrets: Using the Stories of the Bible to Improve Our Everyday Lives Rabbi Levi Meier talks about the moon:

Note that God’s symbols, as presented in the Bible, are generally elements of nature: a tree, a rainbow, a rock. The Bible imbues these natural elements with meaning, and each symbol is intended to give us strength to face the challenges that arise.

So when the pharaoh’s rage is unleashed as he is threatened with the last of the ten plagues—the death of all firstborn Egyptian males—the Israelites are told to look to the new moon.

It does seem strange, that amidst these plagues, the concept of Rosh Chodesh, the new month, is introduced.

Rabbi Meier continues:

The new moon silently speaks to them of renewal, of a new beginning. The moon returns each night to light the darkness, changing its shape, waxing and waning, only to rise afresh after a cycle of twenty-eight days. It speaks to them of the cyclical nature of life.

Just as the Israelites are getting ready to leave Egypt, they are given not only a symbol of hope but also a reminder that life is like the moon. It, too, moves in cycles. In the worst of times, it is important to remember that there will always be renewal.

The cycles of waxing and waning, of trust and mistrust, of intimacy and distance, of joy and despair, are all normal. A great deal of unhappiness in this world comes from our refusing to acknowledge this simple fact. When things are going well, we want to hold on to those feelings of happiness and bliss. But happiness gives way to sadness, as it surely must. And we suffer needlessly, agonizing over the realization that happiness, once achieved, cannot last forever. In the midst of our disappointment, we forget the moon will rise again, bringing joy once more.

The great figures of the Bible understood that we need “down” cycles in order to have “up” cycles. Thus, even in the worst of times, they were never immobilized by despair. They used the dark moments to change, to grow, and to move forward.

What do you think of when you see the moon?

Parsha Questions

On Friday, I asked:

• Why mention Elisheva’s brother? (and who is Elisheva…)
• Why the Nile? Why was the first plague on the Nile?

1) Elisheva, who married Aaron the brother of Moses, was the brother of Nachshon Ben Aminadav. Why mention her brother? Because when you get married, you should check out your future wife’s brother (according to Rashi). So my husband said to my sons, he checked out my brother before marrying me, that’s how he knew he would have sons who love computer games. To which my middle son said, “And chess, too!”

2) Nile:
Raizy came up with a good answer:

Why was the first plague on the Nile? It was mida k’neged mida (direct retribution). The Egyptians threw newborn Jewish boys into the Nile, so now the Nile is being used to punish them in return.

Her second answer is similar to the one Rashi gives in 7:17 — the Egyptians worshiped the Nile, as the Egyptians were dependent on the rise of the Nile to water the land, as rain did not fall in Egypt. So God struck their deity.

Raizy adds: “So turning the holy water of the Nile into blood demonstrated that the God of Israel is more powerful than the gods and sacred places of Egypt. It was meant to instill fear and awe.”

Another answer is found in the Rashi of 8:17 with an aggadic story: God came against the Egyptians following the tactics of the wars of kings, in the order of measures a kingdom takes to when it lays siege to a city. At first it ruins the city’s springs of water (bloody Nile, as shown in the watercolor above). Afterwards the besieging forces sound and blow shofars at the inhabitants of the besieged city to scare them and confuse them. By the same token, the frogs croak and make noise, etc., as it says in Midrash Rabbi Tanchuma. The shofar blasts are followed by hails of arrows, comparable to lice. Then foreign mercenaries are sent in, like the mixture of wild beasts. The pestilence corresponds to a mass seizure of captives. This is followed by an attempt to burn the enemy out — the boils. The hail is like a bombardment of catapult stones. Next comes an attack by a large army (locusts). If the enemy does not surrender, they are held in prison (darkness). If the enemy is still not vanquished, its leaders are executed — the killing of the firstborn.

• • •

Here’s one more quicky that I learned from my son: how can you remember how many plagues are in Parshat Vaera and how many are in Bo? (hint: if you know gematria, that helps. Gematria is adding Hebrew letters as if they are numbers. So aleph is one, beit is two, and so on).

A reminder: just as we empty drops of wine on Passover because we are not allowed to rejoice over the death of the Egyptians in the sea, we are not allowed to enjoy the suffering of our enemies, even if they have created pain for us.

Parshat Vaera

I was away with my family since Monday, but I did have time to read over the parsha questions I receive in email each week. Maybe you can guess some answers for these two:

• Why the Nile? Why was the first plague on the Nile?
• Why mention Elisheva’s brother? (and who is Elisheva…)

If you know any of the answers, feel free to comment. If you don’t, take a guess! I’ll post Rashi’s answers early next week.

Last year’s post: the froggy song

Click on the frog to hear the children’s song that goes with this parsha.

Transition to Exodus

Robert Alter writes in his Translation with Commentary: The Five Books of Moses:

As the long historical narrative of the Five Books of Moses moves from the patriarchs to the Hebrew nation in Egypt, it switches gears. The narrative conventions deployed, from type-scenes and thematic keywords to the treatment of dialogue, remain the same, but the angle from which events are seen and the handling of the characters are notably different. Genesis ended with death, and the distinctly Egyptian mummification, of Joseph. Exodus begins with a listing of the sons of Jacob who came down to Egypt, thus establishing a formal link with the concluding chapters of Genesis in which a more detailed list of the emigrants from Canaan is provided…Instead of the sharply etched individuals who constituted a family in all its explosive dynamics in Genesis, we now have teeming multitudes of Israelites whose spectacular prolificness introduces to the story the perspective of the whole wide world of creation announced at the beginning of Genesis: “And the sons of Israel were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied and grew very vast, and the land [הָאָרֶץ same word as in Genesis] was filled with them” (Exodus 1:7).

Nahum Sarna in Exploring Exodus explains the title:

It is called in English “Exodus,” a title derived originally from the Septuagint, the Greek translation made for the Jewish community of ancient Alexandria in Egypt. It is abbreviated from a fuller title “The Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt,” which in turn reflects a Hebrew title current among the communities of the Land of Israel. The most widely used Hebrew name is Sefer Sh’mot (“The Book: Names”), taken from the opening Hebrew words of the book, “These are the names of the sons of Israel.”

Here’s how Sarna connects Exodus to its predecessor Genesis:

The narratives in Genesis focus upon individuals and the fortunes of a single family; they center upon the divine promises of peoplehood and national territory that are vouchsafed to them. In the Book of Exodus, the process of fulfilling those promises is set in motion…God’s commissioning of Moses at the scene of the Burning Bush directs him: “Go and assemble the elders of Israel and say to them: the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, has appeared to me and said “I have taken note of you [Heb. paqod paqad’ti] and of what is being done to you in Egypt…'” This is a studied echo of Joseph’s dying words “God will surely take notice of you [Heb. paqod yiphqod] and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

In the previous parshiot, the ones of Breishit, we got to know the characters well. In Shmot, we still can learn from the people presented in the parsha, such as the daughter of Pharoah, but I feel more distance. Perhaps we can see the upcoming parshiot as a bridge from character portrayal to nation-building and the giving of the Torah in the middle of the Book of Shmot.

Do you find transitions hard? How do you see the change from the Book of Breishit (Genesis) to the Book of Shmot (Exodus)?

Last year: Best Parsha in the Universe (includes link to a song)

A Sweet Angel Song

A re-post from last year

A beautiful song is in this week’s parsha of Vayechi. The scene is Yaacov on his deathbed, blessing his grandsons Ephraim and Menashe. Part of the blessing has become a pretty song that parents often sing to children at bedtime.

Translation in English:
“May the angel who redeemed me from all harm bless the youths, and may they be called by my name and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, and may they grow into a multitude in the midst of the land.”

Transliteration:
Hamalach hagoel oti,
Hamalach hagoel oti mikol ra
yivarech et hana’arim v’yikaray bahem sh’mi.
V’shem avotai, V’shem avotai Avraham v’Yitzchak,
v’yidgu larov, v’yidgu larov b’kerev ha’aretz.

Click on the little girl to see the same little girl with Play and Pause buttons. Click on Play to hear my daughter (and me) singing the song. Or click here for song. (I couldn’t get the Flash to embed directly in this post; one still needs a plugin for this.)

Rashi states that “the youths” refer to Ephraim and Menashe. But I like to think of the youths as any kids that are in the room at the time the song is being sung.

Hope you will find this relaxing and a calming way to get through the rest of the week!

A Woman Named Serah

First, a link to what I wrote last year about Parshat Vayigash (yippee! first time I can do that, link to an old parsha post):
Why Didn’t Yosef Send a Letter to Yaakov

From this parsha onward, there are not a lot of women in the Torah. We have Moshe’s female relatives (mom Yocheved, sister Miriam, wife Tzipora). And there is a woman who is mentioned only three times in the Torah: Serah Bat Asher. Actually, in this week’s parsha her name is affiliated with her brothers, not her father:

Commentators suggest that perhaps she is the adopted daughter of Asher, and her mother is his wife but she is from a different father.

When I was younger and I heard a midrash, they would sound silly or fake to me. The text would make sense, but then why the fantastic midrash? Midrashim came about because of questions in the text, and now as an adult I have more appreciation for them. Indeed, all we know in detail about Serah is because of midrashim, and because a big question regarding Serah in the text is: why mention her at all? She must be there for a reason.

In Torah of the Mothers (see previous posts about Devorah and Daughters of Tzelafchad), Rachel Adelman writes a whole essay about Serah Bat Asher. In this post I will just quote one midrash, the one where we learn how she brings “life” back into Jacob as she tells him his son Yosef is alive:

[The brothers said:] If we tell him right away, “Joseph is alive!” perhaps he will have a stroke [lit., his soul will fly away]. What did they do? They said to Serah, daughter of Asher, “Tell our father Jacob that Joseph is alive and he is Egypt.” What did she do? She waited till he was standing in prayer and then said in a tone of wonder, “Joseph is in Egypt/ There have been born on his knees/ Menasseh and Ephraim” [three rhyming lines: Yosef beMizrayim/Yuldu lo al birkayim/ Menasheh ve’Ephrayim]. His heart failed, while he was standing in prayer. When he finished his prayer, he saw the wagons: immediately the spirit of Jacob came back to life.

(This quote is from Midrash HaGadol 45:26, translated by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg in Genesis: The Beginning of Desire).

This paragraph does not say anything about a harp, although my daughter, who is sitting next to me as I write this post, clearly told me she learned that Serah plays a harp as she gently gives the good news to Jacob. With midrashim there is frequently more than one version. However it was that she broke the news to Jacob, with a musical harp or poetry or both, we can learn from her about how to relate shocking news to an older person, with gentleness and caring.

Ilana-Davita wrote about the careful use of speech in the parsha