Shabbat Zachor; T'tzaveh

Exodus 27:20−30:10

D'var Torah By Rabbi Peter S. Knobel for ReformJudaism.org

Finding Satisfaction in Others’ Success

Parashat T'tzaveh opens with the following words. "You shall further instruct (V'atah t'tzaveh) the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps regularly" (Exodus 27:20). Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, in her commentary, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, points out the unusual use of the pronoun V'atah, which she translates as, "And as for you," as we read in this excerpt:

With unusual emphasis, God turns to Moses: Ve-atta tetzaveh – "And as for you, you shall instruct . . . " The redundant pronoun in ve-atta, "and as for you," substitutes for the more usual imperative form, tzav – "Instruct . . ." or the simple future form, tetzaveh – "You shall instruct . . . " Such an insistent, abrupt focus on Moses has aroused much discussion among the traditional commentators on the Torah. . . . What shift in focus requires the sudden use of ve-atta, in a context where Moses is everywhere the subject of God's address?1

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Terumah

Exodus 25:1−27:19

D'var Torah By Rabbi Peter S. Knobel for ReformJudaism.org

Sacred Space Is Where God Dwells and Hearts Are Moved

Parashat T'rumah begins, "The Eternal One spoke to Moses, saying: Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved. . . . And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them" (Exodus 25:1-8). And eleven chapters later we read, " 'The people are bringing more than is needed for the tasks entailed in the work that the Eternal has commanded to be done.' Moses thereupon had this proclamation made throughout the camp: 'Let no man or woman make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary!' So the people stopped bringing: their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done" (36:5-7). The standard joke is that this was the first and last Jewish building project that was oversubscribed.

Two themes are central to this Torah portion:

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Shabbat Shekalim, Mishpatim

Exodus 21:1−24:18

D'var Torah By Rabbi Peter S. Knobel for ReformJudaism.org

Halachah and Aggadah: The Interplay between Law and Narrative to Determine God’s Will for Us

In Parashat Yitro, we are overwhelmed by the power of the encounter of God and the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. The people respond to God's Presence saying, "All that the Eternal has spoken we will do!" (Exodus 19:8). The thunder, lightning, smoke, and horn blasts that accompany the giving of Aseret HaDib'rot, the Ten Commandments, are the most perceptible aspects of that moment. It is likely that few people who were there remembered anything but the smoking mountain and the Divine Presence. This week's parashah, Mishpatim (meaning "rules"), translates the experience into concrete legislation. In The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut divides this portion into three parts: laws on worship, serfdom, and injuries (21:1-36); laws on property and moral behavior (21:37-23:9); and cultic ordinances and affirmation of the covenant (23:10-24:18).1

This law (halachah) is embedded in the story (aggadah) that the Israelites experienced. As the modern Jewish literary figure Haim Nahman Bialik wrote in his famous essay Halachah and Aggadah, "Halachah is the crystallization the ultimate and inevitable quintessence of Aggadah; Aggadah is the content of Halachah."2 Robert Cover, a twentieth century Yale Law School professor, furthered this idea in his groundbreaking essay "Nomos and Narrative," where he wrote, "No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning."3

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Yitro

Exodus 18:1–20:23

D'var Torah By Rabbi Peter S. Knobel for ReformJudaism.org

On Rosh HaShanah night we read the following in Gates of Repentance:

    Remember
    The words You spoke in stone and thunder
    The mountain smoked
    And the dismayed multitude
    Stood off, hearing the first time
    The words they could not refuse,
    Fearing the burden and the God that set
    Them in history.
    And there are mountains still. We are the Jews.
    We cannot forget

In my mind's eye I picture the scene at Mount Sinai. I imagine that I am standing at the bottom of the smoking mountain with more than six hundred thousand former slaves hearing the blast of the shofar and experiencing the Presence of God and responding, Naaseh v'nishma, "All that the Eternal has spoken we will faithfully do!" (Exodus 24:7; see also 19:8, 24:3). In the midst of my reverie, I look out at the congregation and I wonder: What is my congregation thinking? Do they feel the awesome power of the moment? Does the ancient experience draw them into the covenantal promise?

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Shabbat Shira; B'Shalach

Exodus 13:17−17:16

D'var Torah By Rabbi Peter S. Knobel for ReformJudaism.org

Experiencing God’s Miracles: Being Ready to Act

Each year, when we reach Parashat B'shalach, I try to imagine how frightening it must have been for our ancestors to reach the Red Sea and to know that the Egyptian army was closing in on them. Was freedom only an illusion? They must have thought it was a mistake to believe that they could escape from the great Egyptian military power. How foolish they had been to believe Moses who spoke for an invisible God!

We read in Exodus 14:10-12:

As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites caught sight of the Egyptians advancing upon them. Greatly frightened the Israelites cried out to the Eternal. And they said to Moses, "Was it for the want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing that we told you in Egypt, saying, 'Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians, than to die in the wilderness?'

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Bo

Exodus 10:1−13:16

Learning and Acting on the Lessons of the Exodus

D'var Torah By Rabbi Peter S. Knobel for ReformJudaism.org

In this portion the plagues come to a devastating end. The final plague is the death of the first males born of humans and animals: only the Israelites are spared.

 Moses said: "Thus says the Eternal: Toward midnight I will go forth among the Egyptians, and every [male] first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the slave girl who is behind the millstones; and all the first-born of the cattle." (Exodus 11:4-5)

The plague of the death of the firstborn is deeply disturbing. The loss of human and animal life appears to be extremely cruel. At the time, it seems to have been the necessary condition for the liberation of our ancestors from Egyptian slavery. The stark irony is that the liberation of human beings from slavery almost never comes without the loss of life. Rarely are oppressors willing to relinquish their power peacefully. They seem hell-bent on inflicting death and devastation not only on those they oppress, but also on the whole population under their control. In this portion we can envision God as having warned Pharaoh and his courtiers nine times with increasingly severe consequences. But it is only after God destroys all the firstborn males that Pharaoh gets the message.

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Va'era

Exodus 6:2 - 9:35

D'var Torah By Rabbi Peter S. Knobel for ReformJudaism.org

God Does Not Act Alone

Parashat Va-eira is an epic and escalating battle between God and Pharaoh. God, having finally decided to rescue the Israelites from cruel servitude, sends the reluctant Moses and his spokesman Aaron to confront Pharaoh with a demand that he allow the Israelites to journey out into the desert to worship God. Moses not only has to convince Pharaoh to accede to what would be a seemingly foolhardy request, but also to convince the Israelites that their servitude is coming to an end.

The clash of wills between God and Pharaoh, who was considered a god by Egyptians, plays itself out in Pharaoh's unwillingness to the let the Israelites leave. Ten times in the text we learn that God intends to harden Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8, 17) depriving him of the ability to assent to God's demand to free his Israelite slaves and ten times Pharaoh demonstrates his own stubbornness (7:13, 14, 22; 8:11, 15, 28; 9:7, 34, 35; 13:15) by refusing to let the Israelites depart in spite of the suffering it is causing the Egyptians. The question seems to be, who will prevail? Will it be the God who demands liberation for his people and sets in motion the idea that all human beings – the citizen and the stranger both – should be treated with respect and dignity? Or will it be the xenophobic god-king Pharaoh for whom the stranger is detestable?

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