Dvar Torah Parshat Tzav/HaGadol

One year, our congregation hired a new rabbi with fire in her heart. She aimed to change our worlds. She worked tirelessly, burning the candle at both ends as she sought to single-handedly reinvigorate not only our slowly dying synagogue but all of Judaism. But, no one came to the mind-blowing classes that offered and the soulful services she lead didn’t lift the souls that weren’t there. Slowly, her enthusiasm for Judaism and Jewish leadership dimmed and that fire in her heart burned out. Eventually, she had to leave our synagogue, and I haven’t heard of her or her visions since.
But, if we had heeded one of the most important lessons from this week’s Torah reading, maybe things would have turned out differently for our rabbi. In the days when we still offered sacrifices, the priests knew how to keep a fire burning on the altar day and night, as it says: וְאֵשׁ הַמִּזְבֵּחַ תּוּקַד בּֽוֹ, “while the fire on the altar is kept going on it.” (Leviticus 6:2) Literally, however, the last word of the verse, בּֽוֹ, means “in it,” not “on it.” The Etz Chayim commentary suggests that the use of this ambiguous preposition comes to teach that “the fire on the altar must be paralleled by a fire in the heart of the officiating priest.” The priest, after all, as the one who performed the actual sacrifice for the person, was instrumental in affecting the way that any given sacrifice was received by G-d. The Cohen, therefore, should ideally be someone “whose enthusiasm for the sacred nature of the work must never be lost” lest it come to negatively impact on the very people he was supposed to be helping.
Today, we don’t need priests to perform our sacrifices for us. When the Sages proclaimed that prayer would serve as a substitute for sacrifice, they gave the Jewish people the gift of offerings that each person can deliver to G-d without the need for any intermediaries at all. And yet, even the most learned and most spiritually gifted among us depend upon rabbis and other leaders of the Jewish community for guidance and, sometimes, even intersession with G-d. It is these leaders of our communities whose fire and enthusiasm sustain us both as individuals and as a community.
But, fire that is left untended, like that of the rabbi in our story, will eventually go out. It was only through the hard work of the priests that the fires on the altar burned day and night, allowing the people’s offerings to be consumed. Only by adding wood to fire at regular intervals can it be sustained. The same is true of the internal fires of the leaders of our communities. Only when congregations work together with their leaders to constantly feed their vision and fuel their fires will Jews be capable of continually offering meaningful sacrifices to G-d.

Miracles

In this season of miracles, from the hidden ones in the Purim story to the splashy ones in the Passover story, we want to thank all of you for your support of our efforts to expand our family and your belief in modern medicine. As our efforts to reproduce using fertility treatment failed, many of you tried to encourage us with stories of miraculous conceptions, which we downplayed and dismissed as we embarked on our journey toward adoption. But, as a rabbinical student, I should have known better. Miracles happen all the time. And G-d clearly has a plan. So, while we have learned a lot from the process of trying to adopt, we are thrilled to be one of those families to be granted a different miracle instead. Suzanne is pregnant, and is due in early October, right around Sukkot and Meital's birthday!

With love and blessings,
Suzanne, Marcus, and Meital

p.s.We're thrilled that Meital already likes giving the baby kisses and hope that continues!

Purim

How many Snow Whites?

Octopus?

As we were walking home the other day, Meital, out of the blue, announced, "if we get an octopus, I'll call him Joey."

Some funny quotes amidst a day of being aggravating

"Well of course I want to go to Munchies [a sweet store], but I have to finish this game first" (said with a wave of her hand)

"Abba, what is your favorite way to do your hair?"

Synagogue Design

If I were designing a new synagogue today, I would want it to be a place where people felt a little bit calmer and more uplifted just by walking in. I know that it can be really hard to avoid having an industrialized feel to a communal space, but I would do my best to make the physical space itself as inviting as possible. I would want to create a space where everyone felt welcome. I would love to have a small study room like the one in the new Wellesley multifaith space. And there would be some type of garden, with comfortable benches and tables and quiet spots to sit and think or have lunch. There would be playrooms, with age-appropriate toys, and a space with couches and cushions for people to hold formal or informal meetings. There would be a multipurpose room with warm inviting colors that could have tables set up for a meal or chairs for a lecture, and in this room there would be cubbies where people could put their tallis bags when they are sitting down to eat. I would want a building where the whole community felt at home, where people gathered both formally and informally to live their lives as Jews together.

The problem with this vision, aside from money to build it etc., is how to keep that warm vibrant feeling there even as the rooms and the furnishings age. A faded carpet is rarely as inviting as a new one. Grubby cushions or stuffed animals don't call out to be smooshed and hued like new ones do. Even dreams get dusty and dried up. It's easier to have enthusiasm for a new project than an old one.

But, the only way to move on to a new project is to be willing to put down the old one. And maybe when we do that, we see how the old has become the new, and we find new sparks inside ourselves that we can pass on to others.

Guide to the Halakhah of Infertility Treatments

One of the many papers and projects that I wrote for classes last semester was a Guide to the Halakhah of Infertility Treatments. It's a bit too long for me to post here in its entirety, but if you would like a pre-publication copy, I would be happy to email it to you.