Ta Shma

What is Judaism ultimately about? What vision of the good life does it offer us, and why might that vision be especially crucial during these dark times? This discussion of Rabbi Shai Held's new book, Judaism is About Love, was held at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York City on March 26, 2024, with Rep. Jamie Raskin, facilitated by Sandee Brawarsky.

Parashat Naso is thematically structured in the form of two “exterior” chapters and two “interior” chapters.  A careful study of this design can provide insight into the larger significance of “מחנה ישראל - the Camp of Israel.”

While I love learning Torah, I have a very poor memory for it.  More often than not, when I re-encounter a piece of Torah that I have surely learned before, it’s as if it’s for the first time.  Given on the one hand, my love for Torah and a genuine desire to learn Talmud and Midrash, Hasidut and Musar, and on the other, the inevitability that I will forget all of this Torah I learn, I find myself wondering on this Shavuot, what is the point?  What is the point of staying up late all night long learning Torah that I know at worst by next year’s time I will have already forgotten and, at best, will just become a shady shift-shaping memory of something I once learned?  Often I have the experience of feeling the shadows of Torah I once learned shimmering on the peripheries of my brain, so close and so far, unable to be recalled into concrete existence.

The five books of the Torah—like the 54 parshiyyot—are by tradition each named after their first significant word or phrase.  In the case of the fourth book, the name is taken from half of a semikhut (construct) phrase: “בְּמִדְבַּר סִינַי - in the Sinai Desert” (bemidbar Sinai).  The custom has developed to use just the first of the two words: bemidbar, meaning just: “in the Desert.”  That leaves us with a particularly evocative title, one that casts us out into a vast unknown, and vaguely suggests impending danger.

I am blessed to have three kids, aged 9, 6, and 2—this means a lot of first days of daycare and school.  These first days are always exciting for us and for them.  We know that they will make new friends, have new experiences, grow and learn in unimaginable ways.  Yet they are also days filled with trepidation; they set off for new and unknown experiences for which we can’t accompany them.  On each of these days, we tuck a family photo in their backpack in a safe place.  With this gesture, we are trying to say:  “Take this with you.  We will be with you whenever you need us.  We hope that that photo can be a source of love and strength and comfort throughout the day.”According to the Zohar, the rainbow from the story of the Flood tried to look after Moshe in the same manner that we try to look after our children.

One of Rashi’s comments in this week’s parashah highlights the rabbinic tradition of interpreting a feature of Hebrew script known as “אותיות חסירות ויתרות” (otiot haseirot v’yeteirot), “missing and extra letters.”  The Hebrew alphabet has no vowel letters, and in most Hebrew writing, the vowel notations (nekudot) are not included; we know how to pronounce words based on context and tradition.  But certain vowels are sometimes “carried” by a silent letter, either a vav (ו) or a yod (י).  In writing words with those vowels, common practice dictates whether they are written with the silent letter or not.  When the writing deviates from common practice, we get the phenomenon of “missing and extra letters,” known in Latin as “defective” and “plene scriptum.”  For our Rabbis, who presumed every letter in sacred scripture to have been carefully and intentionally selected, an extra or a missing letter was understood to be an encoded message, waiting to be deciphered.

When my dad died in my early 20s, I remember being wowed by the ways in which grief came in waves.  One minute, I was crying and couldn’t imagine ever moving through my sadness and several hours later, I was surprised to find myself laughing—actually able to laugh—within the first days of my dad’s death.  With confidence, I realized, this was the way it was going to be.  Each time that I cried and each time that I laughed, I knew it wouldn’t be the last time.  The grief and the joy—they would keep coming in turns, like waves rolling in and out in their own time.

One of the hallmark Rabbinic interpretive techniques is the identification of parallel wording in two different sections of the Torah. In legal interpretation, this is the foundation for the second of R. Yishmael’s “13 principles by which the Torah is interpreted”: the gezeirah shavah, or “the rule of equivalence.” This principle, first quoted in the name of Hillel the Elder, posits that if the same word or phrase appears in two distinct legal cases in the Torah, that is an indication that we can apply the parameters of one law to the other. The original and paradigmatic form of the gezeirah shavah was one in which the word in question appears only twice in the entire Torah.  When there is only one other location that a linking word takes us to, then the inference from one context to the other becomes especially strong.

I am lucky to live a life with no food sensitivities.  I can eat what I want and I’m happy to be an “easy guest,” quick to assure hosts that I have no special food needs.  However, several years ago, in an attempt to identify the cause of my migraines, I found myself a person suddenly with many food sensitivities I was told to avoid.  I went from being a person who could eat everything to a person who approached each meal with anxiety, wondering what food I would find to fill myself up. I was no longer the easygoing guest able to eat whatever was served to me.  Rather, in people’s homes, at conferences, in restaurants, if I was going to eat, I needed to advocate for myself.  I needed to speak up and ask for what I needed.  I found this experience very challenging: I felt uncomfortable identifying my list of food sensitivities; I felt awkward being on the receiving end of special accommodations.  “I would make do,” I thought, “I would manage.”  What happened to being the “easy guest” I pride myself on being?  This experience gave me a small window into so many other people’s lived experiences who are forced to advocate for their needs on a daily basis.

Every year, by good calendrical fortune, we read in Parashat Emor the commandment of Sefirat ha-Omer, the “Counting of the Omer,” during the period in which we actually count the Omer.  This moment of sync between reading and ritual presents us with an opportunity to recognize our contemporary practice as continuous from the words of the Torah.  Yet when we begin to read through those words, we quickly see that our counting ritual today looks very different from the original mitzvah.