This week's Torah portion, Tzav, describes in great detail the sacrificial offerings that God commanded the priests to make upon the altar. The rabbis wondered about these rituals and considered whether God actually needed human beings to perform them. Could God have asked the angels to do them instead if God really needed them? Why depend on imperfect and unreliable human beings?

In a classical midrash, the rabbis ask just this question: "The Holy Blessed One said: If I wanted a sacrifice, would I not ask the angel Michael, who is always with Me, to make the offering? Yet, whom did I ask? The people of Israel." (Tanchuma Tzav)

So, why does God make this choice? Why risk it?

The great Chasidic master, Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kotzk (1787-1859), imagines God answering the question: "If I had wanted just the deed itself, indeed, I would have commanded Michael to do it, since his acts are more pure than any human could ever perform. However, I asked human beings to do it because I do not want the deed. Rather, it is the intention and the preparations that I want. In this respect, the deeds of humanity are more pleasant to Me than the act of any angel." (Ohel Torah, Tzav)

In Jewish tradition, angels are pure beings of light who exceed human beings in every respect except for one. They have no free will. It is their very perfection that makes them incapable of doing anything that God does not wish them to do. On the other hand, we imperfect humans are capable of disappointing God by falling short (sometimes falling very far short) of what God wants from us.

Yet, it is our imperfection that God craves. God delights in the fact that, when we do what is right, we do it because we choose it. And that is why God chooses us.

God does not care about the ancient sacrificial offerings themselves. God does not care about the lighting of the candles, the food we eat or don't eat, the work we abstain from, or the performance of any ritual deed at all. The performance is not the point. The point is only that we set our intentions on something beyond ourselves and strive toward the pure holiness that is beyond our grasp.

So, the next time you think about performing any ritual and you catch yourself thinking – "Will God hate me if I don't do this the right way?" – try to reframe the question. God does not care how you do it, only that you engage in an intention toward holiness. If you can engage deeply and meaningfully in the contemplation of the exact right moment to light the candles, or the precisely correct way of reading a sacred text, good for you. Do it with delight and joy beaming from your soul.

On the other hand, if you worry that you have fallen short of what is "exact" and "precise," then comfort yourself with the knowledge that it is your inexactitude and your imprecision that God finds most delightful and wondrous about you. If it weren't for that, God just would have asked Michael to do it instead. But God did not do that. God chose you.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Bo: Pharaoh's Free Will
​Naso: Blessing with Purpose and Intention

I had never taught a class at a sewage plant before, but I did this past week. Much to my surprise, it was an experience that changed the way that I think about this week's Torah portion.

The class was the final meeting of a course I taught with Professor Arthur Urbano of Providence College and William Patenaude, Principal Engineer with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. Our three-part course, "Conversations with the Earth," investigated the Catholic Church's teachings on the environment, traditional Jewish understanding of our relationship to the natural world, and contemporary public policy approaches to environmental protection.

It is a topic that has attracted increasing attention in the last year. In May of 2015, Pope Francis published his second encyclical, Laudato Si', which calls on the world for "swift and unified global action" to address environmental degradation, a destructive culture of consumerism and global warming. In the Jewish world also, there have been increasing calls for environmental justice.

In the first two meetings of the course we studied the opening chapters of Genesis. We saw how, in both Catholic and Jewish interpretation, this text looms large in our understanding of our relationship to the natural world.

In the first chapter of Genesis, God says that human beings shall "rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the cattle, the whole earth, and all the creeping things that creep on earth" (Genesis 1:26, emphasis added). The second chapter says that God "took the human being and placed him in the garden of Eden to till it and tend it" (Genesis 2:15, emphasis added). The Torah offers two different visions of the relationship between human beings and nature: We are here to rule the earth, and we are here to care for the earth. So, what are we? Rulers or caretakers?

We are both. That is the wisdom of Catholic tradition and Jewish tradition. That is also the wisdom of the Warwick Wastewater Treatment Facility on the banks of the Pawtuxet River.

The facility exists because modern cities and towns require massive amounts of water to sustain their large populations. The plant treats millions of gallons of water each day to keep the population of the west side of Narragansett Bay from drowning in its own waste. There is no question that, to meet our needs and desires, we have diverted resources and exerted strong control over natural processes. We rule over nature. 

However, we also give back to nature and care for it. Over the centuries, we have learned that, if we only take from nature, we ultimately will destroy ourselves. The entire point of a modern wastewater treatment plant is to make sure that the clean water that we take from nature is returned the same way we got it. That is our obligation as caretakers charged with the task to "till and tend" the earth.

Do we always do as good a job as we should to take care of the earth? Of course not. Our society is still grappling to understand and redress the harm we have done to our oceans, our rivers, the air, the land, and the climate. Balancing our roles as both "rulers" and "caretakers" of nature is, in part, the duty of engineers and lawmakers. They have the job of making sure that we reverse the harm we have done and to protect the earth in the future.

And religion also has a duty to transform our relationship with the natural world. We need to heal, not just the planet, but also ourselves. We need to forgive ourselves for ruling unwisely and we need to rediscover the joy of living in balance with the natural world. We need to remember that this world was given to us as a gift to celebrate, not to destroy. Even when our role is to "rule," we must not forget that we, too, have a Ruler whom we must serve.

This week's Torah portion, Vayikra, describes the sacrificial offerings that the ancient Israelites brought to the Tabernacle (and, later, the Temple) to worship God. As modern people, we often think of animal sacrifices as a primitive and superstitious practice that we are better off without today. Perhaps we are. However, we also should be mindful of how the ancient sacrificial offerings symbolized and reinforced a belief that we must practice balance in our relationship with nature – a belief that is sorely missing from the world today.

​The ancient Israelites did not slaughter and burn animals on an altar because they did not appreciate the lives of the animals they raised. In fact, just the opposite is true. They made sacrificial offerings as a symbol of appreciation for the gifts that they had received from God and the earth. An animal sacrifice was a way of acknowledging to God that nature's bounty belongs to God. We are permitted to take a share to sustain our lives only if we complete the cycle by returning a portion back to God who is the source of all life.

This week's Torah portion also establishes a ritual for seeking forgiveness from God through animal sacrifices when we err. The Torah specifies, "When a person unwittingly incurs guilt in regard to and of the Adonai's commandments about things not to be done… the person shall bring the bull to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before Adonai and lay hands upon the head of the bull" (Leviticus 4:2,4). Affirming the cycles of the natural world – life and death – and acknowledging our indebtedness to God is a way of finding forgiveness. 

We need to feel forgiven for our sins against the natural world. In order to heal the earth, we first need to heal ourselves. We need to restore our balance with the natural world – the take and the give – in order to lift ourselves out of a cycle of guilt, despair and hopelessness about our relationship with the natural world.

If we allow ourselves to be convinced that we have plundered and desecrated the natural world beyond our ability to fix it, then we will do nothing to repair what we have done and the cycle of destruction will continue. If, on the other hand, we take the necessary steps to start giving back to the earth as much as we take, we can restore our sense of balance, our hope for a better future, and renew our role as the world's humble caretakers. 

We don't have to sacrifice bulls to do that. But we do have to listen to the wisdom of the wastewater treatment plant. We can do a much better job of closing the loop of our relationship with the natural world, just as the ancient Israelites did when they gave back to God some of what they had taken. Today, we do that by replacing the clean water we use – drop for drop. We do it by planting new trees when we cut others down to build our homes and cities. We can do that by reclaiming the carbon dioxide that we release into the atmosphere to slow and reduce climate change.

We need to stop convincing ourselves that there is nothing we can do and that the destruction of the earth by human beings is inevitable. It's not. We can restore what we have broken. We can heal ourselves and heal the world.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Tu BiShvat: The Tree and the Renewal of Creation
​Tzav: Transformation through Fire

Have you ever been part of a group effort that made you feel like you were part of a whole that was greater than the sum of the parts? Have you ever felt a connection to a group that made you feel that, together, you could do things beyond the imagination of any single member alone? Was it a sports team? A class? A military unit? A summer camp? The cast and crew of a play? A musical group? A business venture? An organization? 

We human beings, of course, are social animals. We thrive in groups. We often discover our greatest potential by being part of a group. But there is a power to groups that goes beyond the experience of social bonding, efficient division of labor, and economies of scale. When a group is really working right, we can experience the group itself as an organism that has an energy, a power and a soul all its own. Being part of such a group transforms and transports each individual member into a new way of being. It can bring us in touch with eternity.

This week's Torah portion, Vayakhel, can be read as a meditation on the experience of being part of such a group. The portion opens with Moses bringing the people together into a group: "Moses then convoked the whole Israelite community…" (Exodus 35:1). Moses repeats to the people the laws of Shabbat, which they had heard before: "On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Shabbat of complete rest, holy to Adonai" (Exodus 35:2). Moses then instructs them to bring voluntary gifts for the building of the Tabernacle, which they also had heard before: "Take from among you gifts to Adonai, everyone whose heart is so moved" (Exodus 35:5). 

There is a puzzle in this opening of the Torah portion. What is the connection between Shabbat and the building of the Tabernacle? Why does Moses put them together like this? Why are these instructions – which had been given in almost identical wording earlier in the book of Exodus – repeated here near the book's end?

The Izbitzer Rebbe (Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner, 1804-1854), wrote in his great work, Mei HaShiloach, that the connection has to do with the transcendent experience of being part of a group. Shabbat, he says, is the great Jewish experience of being part of something beyond yourself. He even claims that the very word "Shabbat" is synonymous with intention of living, not for your own sake, but for the sake of heaven. Shabbat, to the Izbitzer, is merging your life with the life of the universe and knowing yourself to be just a piece in the puzzle which is God.

And what of the building of the Tabernacle? The Izbitzer says that, "With the building of the Tabernacle, all the hearts of Israel were united. At first, everyone did his or her particular job on the Tabernacle, and felt good about what they had done. However, it was only when they saw how all the different parts of the Tabernacle fit together so perfectly that they saw that it was as if it all had been made by one hand."

The Izbitzer goes on to say, "If so much as one nail had been missing, God's presence would not have been able to rest on the Tabernacle. No one, therefore, could feel in any way superior to another. Even the person who made the Holy Ark could not feel superior to the person who made the tent pegs."

This is an experience of God that is familiar to anyone who has been part of a group that is greater than the sum of its parts. When we connect with others, discover our own best selves in the reflection of others, create something wonderful and beautiful with others, we can feel that we have touched the infinite and communed with the holy. We even may have the sense of losing our individuality and see each other – just as we truly are – as pieces of the same whole.

That is why the Torah portion begins by saying, "Moses then convoked the whole Israelite community." When we come together with an intention of holiness – even if it is to do something mundane that we have done a million times before – we are building a Tabernacle in our souls, a place to come close to God.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Bringing the People Together
​Vayakhel: Being Part of Something Bigger