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Topics in this digest: Rosh
Chodesh Shevat 5764
For today’s maftir we read the Rosh Chodesh (New Month)
Bar-B-Que menu. “And in the beginnings of your months you shall
offer a burnt offering to the Lord; two young bulls, and one ram, seven
lambs of the first year without spot.” At the beginning of every
month on the Hebrew calendar, we read this passage from the Torah, from
the book of Numbers, which reminds us of the animals that our ancestors
sacrificed in the Temple. If we can’t sacrifice animals because
there is no Temple, we at least read about it.
You might be wondering “why?” Why do we want to be
reminded that years ago killing animals at a sacred site was central to
our religion?
Many of us are uncomfortable with animal sacrifice as a way
to worship God. In fact, this is one of the areas where our siddur
is different than an Orthodox siddur. If you open your Siddur Sim
Shalom to page 435, the Hebrew says “There our ancestors performed before
You their required offerings.” In an Orthodox siddur it says “There
WE will perform before You the rite of OUR required offerings.”
Why do we need this reminder of what seems to us a
primitive ritual? Couldn’t the rabbis have found something more
uplifting to read about when we celebrate the New Month? In fact,
for every holiday, what we read about in the Maftir is the sacrifices.
The rabbis clearly thought this was very important.
To understand why it was important, we have to go back
1,934 years. To the destruction of the Temple. The destruction
of the Temple in the year 70 was a major catastrophe for the Jewish
people. What I didn’t realize until earlier this week, is that it
was also a major catastrophe for Christians.
Earlier this week I participated in a meeting with a group
of rabbis, priests, and ministers, hosted by the Canadian Jewish Congress.
The topic for the meeting was the role of Israel in each of our
traditions. One of my Christian colleagues said something that got
me off guard. He said that the destruction of the Temple was a major
crisis for the early Christians.
The early Christians, the ones in the generation right
after Jesus, the majority of the ones who lived prior to the destruction
of the Temple, were truly “Jews for Jesus.” They were Jews, they
observed the commandments, they went to synagogue—but they believed that
Jesus was the Messiah. Just as many Lubavitchers today believe that
their rebbe is the Messiah. The Temple was as important to the early
Christians as it was to the Jews who did NOT believe that Jesus was the
Messiah. Just as the Jews had to make a huge adaptation when the
Temple was destroyed, the Christians had to make a huge adaptation.
Needless to say, we adapted in very different ways.
The Christian reaction was to spiritualize everything. The Temple
was destroyed—OK, it’s gone, and it’s never coming back. In the
post-destruction book of Revelation, when the author has a vision of a
heavenly Jerusalem, there is no temple in the city…”for its temple is the
Lord God the Almighty…” From the destruction on, the Christians more
or less turned their back on giving any theological significance to the
physical place of Jerusalem. The future Jerusalem is a spiritual
place, not a physical place. My interpretation is that it’s like the
physical place of Jerusalem became the dead body, while the spiritual
Jerusalem was the soul, and it’s only the soul that’s important in
Christian doctrine.
The Jewish reaction was very different. Instead of
spiritualizing Jerusalem, the rabbis emphasized “never forget!”
Psalm 137 was written after the destruction of the First Temple, in the
mid 6th century BCE, but its sentiments were emphasized after
the destruction of the Second Temple 600 years later: “If I forget you, O
Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not
remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I do not
set Jerusalem above my highest joy.”
Instead of saying “forget the Temple, move on,” the rabbis said “never
forget Jerusalem and the Temple!” They structured our prayer service
around the service in the Temple. They turned our Shabbat table into
the altar with numerous reminders of the service in the Temple, from the
salt to the number of braids on the challah. They decreed that at
our most joyous happy moment—at a wedding—we should break a glass and
remind ourselves that Jerusalem is in ruins and we do not have a Temple.
And they decreed that we should read about the sacrifices offered at the
Temple every holiday, including the relatively minor ones like today, Rosh
Chodesh.
A thousand years after the destruction of the Temple, the
great rabbi Maimonides codified a belief in the restoration of the Jews to
Israel as fundamental to being a Jew. In the Mishneh Torah (Hilchot
Melachim XI-XII) Rambam wrote: “The King Messiah will in some future time
come, restore the kingdom of David to its former power, build the Temple,
bring together the scattered of Israel, and all the ancient laws will
again be in force. Sacrifices will be offered, and years of release and
Jubilees will be kept as prescribed in the Torah.”
Rambam
continues, “Whoever does not believe in him, or does not hope for his
coming, shows a lack of faith not only in the prophets, but also in the
Torah. For the Torah testifies concerning him in the words: 'And the L-rd
your God will again bring back your captivity, and show mercy unto you,
and again gather you from all the nations...If your outcasts be at the
ends of the heavens, from there will the L-rd gather you...and the L-rd
will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed...'(Deut.
30:3-5)”
A belief in
the eventual return to Israel has been a great source of comfort to our
people in difficult times. In the Talmud (Sanhedrin 97a) it says “R.
Johanan said: When you see a generation ever dwindling, hope for him [the
Messiah], as it is written, “And you will save the afflicted people.” R.
Johanan said: When you see a generation overwhelmed by many troubles as by
a river, await him, as it is written, when the enemy shall come in like a
flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him; which
is followed by, And the Redeemer shall come to Zion.” When times got
really miserable, the Talmud told us to take it as a sign that our return
to Israel is right around the corner.
The different approaches that Judaism and Christianity took
to the destruction of the Temple reflects the stronger Greek influence on
the early Christians. In Greek philosophy, the soul is king.
The soul is what’s important. The body is a like a garage for the
soul, of no real consequence. Death is not so significant because
the important part, the soul, continues.
In the Jewish tradition, the body has greater importance.
The essential YOU is not JUST the soul. It’s the combination of the
soul AND the body. The soul without a body is not YOU anymore than
the body without a soul is YOU. In Jewish belief, even though the
soul survives, something special and precious is lost when the soul is
separated from the body. This reverence is reflected in our mourning
rituals and the special care we take of deceased persons.
The physical has always been more important in Judaism than
in Christianity. Judaism focuses on this world—do the mitzvot, obey
the commandments, enjoy the permitted pleasures. Christianity is
more focused on the next world, on heaven, and on getting to heaven
through a spiritual path, through believing certain things. Which
makes the history of Israel for the last few thousand years filled with
more than a little irony.
How do we understand the Crusades in the light of
Christianity’s “spiritualization” of Jerusalem? One of my Christian
colleagues said that the Crusades need to be understood as a political
act, not a theological one. Jerusalem needed to be recaptured from
the infidels not because there was theological importance to Jerusalem
being under Christian rule, but rather as part of an ongoing struggle
against Islam as a political power. Given the political decision to
fight Islam, recapturing the “Holy Land” becomes a task with great
symbolic value—but no real theological significance.
So Christians, ostensibly focused on the spiritual, for
whom the physical place was not terribly important, engaged in a massive
effort to wield political control in Israel. All the while Jews, for
whom the physical place was VERY important, made no efforts to get
physical control of Israel, and visited strictly for spiritual reasons.
But eventually, the Jews did seek physical control of
Israel. The strategy of the rabbis was remarkably effective.
After nearly 2000 years of exile, the longing for a return to Jerusalem
was still so firmly planted in the Jewish soul that it was able to
galvanize our people to fight for the creation of the modern State of
Israel. When Uganda was proposed as a safe haven for Jews, a place
to flee from anti-Semitism, it was rejected out of hand. Thanks to
the rabbis’ insistence that we never forget Jerusalem, we insisted that
the only possible homeland for the Jews must be Israel.
Our success in securing a state for the Jews in Israel now
presents us with a new theological crisis—although, admittedly it’s a
crisis that Jews hoped and prayed for for nearly two thousand years.
Now that the state of Israel is a reality, what does it mean for us?
Every Passover we conclude our seder by saying “b’shana ha’ba’ah
birushalayim,” “Next Year in Jerusalem!” What do we do with that
statement when Jerusalem is an ElAl ticket away?
The answer to that question is a topic for another time.
In a few weeks, on Thursday, February 5, Professor Matitiahu Mayzel of Tel
Aviv University will be speaking here at Beth Tikvah on exactly this
topic—the problem of Israel and the Diaspora. Zionism, and our
prayer book, assumes that the place for all Jews is in Israel. Do we
agree? What’s the role of religion in the State of Israel—should it
be a state for Jews, or the Jewish State? I hope you’ll join us.
Shabbat
Shalom
______________________________________________________________
It is a great
mitzah to serve God with great joy, always...R. Nachman of Breslav
Rabbi Barry
Leff
It is a great mitzvah to serve God with
great joy, always...R. Nachman of Breslov
Rabbi Barry Leff
Beth Tikvah Congregation
9711 Geal Road
Richmond, BC V7E 1R4
phone: (604) 271-6262
fax: (604) 271-6270
web: www.btikvah.ca
email: rebbarry@yeladim.org
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