The summer after I finished my first year of rabbinic school in Israel, I worked as a limousine driver taking people from the Philadelphia area to one of the New York airports, mostly JFK. Once at Kennedy, I would usually pick up arrivals to take back to Philadelphia. One morning at JFK I had a sole passenger who had returned from Bosnia. He was a friendly gentleman appearing to be in his 60’s. We had this conversation.
“Wow, Bosnia must have been interesting.”
“Yes it was.”
“Your first time?”
“No, actually this was my fifth time.”
“Really, what keeps bringing you back to Bosnia?”
“Well,” he replied, “Perhaps you’ve heard that the Virgin Mary has been appearing in Medjugorge, Bosnia. All of my trips have been pilgrimages to there.”
Yes, I had read an article about the general increase in the sightings of Virgin Mary. Thousands were flocking to Medjugorge at a time to witness this vision. It struck me this was the kind of “calling” so typical of the Christian experience, a divine communication to see a holy vision. So I had to ask him.
“Did you actually see the Virgin Mary?”
“No,” he said, “but I felt her presence within.”
This week’s Torah portion is the very first in the book of Leviticus. Here is the first verse.
וַיִּקְרָ֖א
אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיְדַבֵּ֤ר יְהוָה֙ אֵלָ֔יו מֵאֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד לֵאמֹֽר׃
Vayikra el Moshe vayedabeir Adonai elav m’ohel mo’ed leimor
“God called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting saying…”
It is a seemingly straightforward sentence. God is calling Moses to engage in the kind of encounter that to us Jews feels more Christian than Jewish. In what manner does God actually call to Moses, to me, to any of us? What would be the purpose of such a calling? Another question, why is God calling to Moses before speaking to him? In the overwhelming majority of the Torah God simply speaks a command and Moses listens. Why in this verse is the addition of “calling” before “speaking.”
Nachmanides points out that Moses is not called each time that God wants to speak with him. But in this instance God’s presence filled the ohel mo’ed, the Tent of Meeting, so intensely that Moses was afraid to enter. So God did a gentle calling of his name, “Moses, Moses,” to express God’s encouragement and affection. Moses needed the call to be aware he was supposed to enter the Tent of Meeting.
Rashbam teaches that this calling is connected to the very end of the book of Exodus, chapter 40 verses 34 and 35. The cloud of God’s presence settles on the Tent of Meeting and fills it so Moses is not able to enter. Yet God calls on Moses to enter just a few verses later, the very first one in Leviticus. What commentators do not say is how Moses could enter if God’s presence fills the tent so completely. God must have done an act of tzim tzum, contracting just enough so Moses could participate in their interaction within the Tent of Meeting. Perhaps the lessening of God’s self is an ultimate act of love for Moses and the people of Israel, as it contributes to Moses growing as a leader and a teacher while God contracts. The example of God self contracting to make room for someone else is a potential lesson for everyone.
In a kind of contrast to Nachmanides, Rashi comments that God spoke in a loud, thunderous voice. But the voice only reached Moses’s ears. The voice would cease and not go beyond the Tent of Meeting. This implies the call was for Moses only. Rashi says that the use of the word elav, “to him,” is proof of the privacy of the calling. But why the loud voice? Because moments in the Torah are not only horizontal in time, but vertical as well. Just as all future Jewish souls are to feel that they were at Sinai, so too are we to know that the words spoken to Moses reverberate throughout time. They are ours as well.
What are the words God shares with Moses? At first glance we would wonder why these words should be eternal. They are about the responsibilities of the priests, and about sacrifices. This appears to be a meaningless model for today’s world. However, the underlying theme of Leviticus is not the superficiality of just sacrifices, but the necessity to act in a way that invites God’s presence to increase in our community. In looking at the details of the next few verses, it is clear that responsibility does not just lie on the priesthood, but all members of the community. If someone brings a sacrifice, for example, they must lay their hands on it. The priest is not a proxy for them. In other words, all members of the community must work to increase God’s presence. That underlying lesson is “vertical” in time, i.e. eternal, not just meant for the Israelites in the Torah, but for every generation.
But we can get to an even deeper, more personal meaning. Somewhere in the depth of each of our souls is an ohel mo’ed, a Tent of Meeting in which we must face our hopes, our fears, our selves and our God. We might actually feel something beckoning us. Perhaps it is loving and gentle. Perhaps it feels loud and frightening. What we feel in the depth of our soul stops at the edge of our own ohel mo’ed. Rather than letting our fright prevent us from entering, we must enter. Upon entering we might sense not only God, but ourselves, not as we are but as we should be. We might sense the world, not as it is, but as it ought to be. At first it is frightening to confront our responsibilities, our shortcomings, our vanities, but after a while we can become aware of our abilities, our strengths, our caring for others. We can each grow.
Think of the passenger I had in the limousine. His experience, his sensing the presence of Mary, was in the midst of a community of thousands of fellow believers. His intensely private moment actually connected him to a much larger community, and not necessarily a physical one. His experience was within the context of a shared tradition.
May all of us enter our own deep souled ohel mo’ed. May each of us connect to the Divine, and thus in a meaningful way to each other. Amen.
The Jewish Observer 
How Important Is Our Clothing?
Posted in Torah commentary, tagged priestly clothing on March 30, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Let’s begin with a story. A man goes to a tailor to try on a newly made custom suit. The first thing he notices are the sleeves being too long.
“No problem,” says the tailor. “Just bend them at the elbow and hold them out in front of you. See, now it’s fine.”
“But the collar is up around my ears!”
“It’s nothing. Just hunch your back up a little…like this.”
“But I’m stepping on my cuffs!” The man cried in desperation.
“Nu, bend your knees a little to take up the slack. Look in the mirror, the suit fits perfectly.”
Twisted up like a pretzel, the man limped out onto the street. Two women saw him go by.
“Oh, look at that poor man,” said one.
“Yes,” said the other, “but what a beautiful suit!”
Do the clothes make the person or does the person make the clothes? We make a lot of assumptions about people based on the way they dress. For example, when we see someone wearing a blue uniform, a gun and a badge we assume that person is a police officer. When we see someone wearing a white lab robe, we assume they are in the medical practice. In this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, Aaron and his sons are appointed to be the cohanim, the high priests, over Israel. From Leviticus 8:7 – 9, the priests’ clothing is described. They wear beautiful robes, a breastplate, and the urimand thumim– a decorative front piece that no one knows exactly how it looked. Did these clothes define the priesthood?
The question becomes very significant, because at a certain point, especially during the time of the second Temple, there were many official members of the priesthood no longer taking seriously the rites and duties, originally commanded to Aaron and his sons. The Talmudic book of Yoma describes numerous times priests, over hundreds of years, became more politicized by their desire to be a High Priest. Their concern was no longer the theological duty of doing rituals the Torah taught about helping to strengthen God’s presence. They focused on holding a corrupt high position. One of the reasons the Greek/Syrian emperor Antiochus intervened in the occupied Jewish state in the 2ndcentury BCE, was the fight between two Jewish men each claiming to be the High Priest of the Temple. This is part of the actual story told in the book of I Maccabees, leading to Chanukah. So again, were these men truly priests, or frauds?
The same question can be asked about other professions. If a police person shoots and kills an innocent African American, a frequent occurrence, are they still truly a policeman? If a doctor fails to respond to the needs of a patient, not making an error – that is human, but ignores a patient or treats them in a cold, nasty way, are they really a doctor? Here is a deeper question. How much do we judge a person, about their goodness and professionalism, through their appearance?
An interesting perspective was taught by Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Just like the tent of meeting, where the priests had an inner alter and an outer alter, so too do people have an inner alter and an outer alter. The outer is dressed up by the clothes we wear. It is the face we expose to the world. This is our surface personality. But inside, each of us has an “essential core.” Just as sometimes we judge other people by what is only on the outside; sometimes we try to make other people judge us only by what is on the outside. We hide what is inside of us behind the beautiful clothes. Sometimes it is better to keep what is inside hidden. But many times that results in a disservice to the people around us. It is wrong, Schneerson taught, to keep our inner selves as a private possession. Rather, it should be part of what the world sees, part of our “clothes.”
As mentioned in last week’s Torah commentary, the inner self is the place within us where God dwells. Each of us can potentially bring a bit of divine presence into the world, when we do a mitzvah: study, prayer, ritual, moral deeds, caring, loving acts, or work for justice. Unfortunately, today’s technology provides a way through which we might display what is on our inside ends up in a “twisted suit.” I am referring to social media.
Watching the posts, and even worse, the comments on Face Book, demonstrates the “twisted suits.” When people share their beliefs, whether in religion or politics, the discussion in the comments often takes an evil, nasty turn. The name calling and condemning of someone for expressing a particular view is just plain low class and wrong. It is totally fine to disagree, but the wording is so often terrible. The ugliness of social media is highly exemplified by political discussions. Part is the meanness, and a large part is also the sharing of falsehoods instead of true facts. All of this denigrates a media that has the potential to provide situations for communicating divine presence.
How can social media raise divine presence through what we share from our insides? Show how you care for others. Celebrate special occasions for love ones. Teach about your beliefs in a way that does NOT condemn others, but shows what is inside of your soul. The posts can be serious, entertaining, or humorous. If you care more about healing the world, you will not tear others down. Instead, openly explain how you have reached your belief. The superficial way people are judged and condemned in social media are the labels of “liberal” and “conservative.” True liberalism is acting with an open mind to listen to other perspectives and accepting a truth that might be opposite your opinion. Don’t necessarily agree with other opinions, but think about them. True conservatism is about respecting individual rights and knowing how and when it is best to limit government intervention. It is about preserving things of value and holiness with respect for authority. The Talmud teaches that there are multiple perspectives God considers worthy. God cares more about how we interact than a particular method to solve a problem.
In this difficult time we will increase God’s presence through caring, not condemning. We need to stop twisting our clothes. We need to open our souls to each other. That is how we will rebuild our world in a better way.
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