Friday Shabbat Shalom

This week’s Parsha Kedoshim, which focuses on moral and ethical behavior, came exactly at the right time as we embark into this post-October 7th world. Kedoshim, often referred to as the “Holiness Code,” highlights the central importance of holiness and ethical living in Jewish tradition. It emphasizes that holiness is not confined to ritual observance but extends to all aspects of life, including interpersonal relationships, business dealings, and moral conduct.

This week’s Torah portion is Acharei Mot, which describes the process of placing the sins of the community on a goat that gets sent into the wilderness on Yom Kippur. This goat was later known in English as a “scapegoat.” Anyone watching the student protests happening on college campuses around the county (among many other protests outside of campuses) can see that Zionists and the State of Israel are being scapegoated for the entire Middle East conflict and for many other perceived evils in the world.

The time from Passover to Shavuot is like another ‘High Holy Days’ Season. One reason is the sheer number of holidays that parallels the Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Shemeni Atzeret/Simchat Torah ‘deluge’ of September/October. We have Pesach, Yom HaShoah, Yom HaAtzma’ut, Lag BaOmer and Shavuot all in a seven-week period. The spring holidays are of tremendous historical meaning and very intense (the ridding of chametz/leavened products), the Seder, Holocaust memorials and the intense emotion of Israeli Independence Day, while ending with the quiet and calm of study on Shavuot.

The Exodus is mentioned in the weekly celebration of Shabbat in the words of the Kiddush, in the daily ritual of prayer in the siddur following the Shema/V’ahavta (in the Geula prayer when we sing Mi Chamocha), in the reasons for the custom of wearing tefillin and tallit, as well as in the ethical mandate not to oppress the stranger, remembering that we were once strangers in the land of Egypt, which is mentioned over 36 times in the Torah.

I went into a ladies’ room last fall and saw a ghost. I had just arrived at a synagogue in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to give a lecture on All Other Nights, my novel about Jewish spies during the Civil War. As I hurried to the restroom before greeting my hosts, I opened the door and stopped short. In the mirror, next to my 21st-century reflection, was a woman wearing a 19th-century corset and petticoats, struggling to pull a calico dress over her hoop skirts.

This week's Parashat Shemini contains a long exposition of the laws of kashrut, a practice I did not grow up observing. Though my father (z”l) loved tradition in general, he was the first one in his family to have a non-kosher home, saying: "We're American! What is this craziness? We should eat like Americans!" Family lore has it that when my great-grandmother (his grandmother) came to visit my parent’s new home in the suburbs, she was so horrified to find that the kitchen wasn’t kosher, she would only eat a piece of cold lettuce, on the back porch, on a paper plate, in the middle of a Boston winter!

Let’s face it, on Purim we Jews look pathetic... Think about it: on Passover, we confront the mighty Pharaoh and gain our freedom with bravery and portents; on Hanukkah, we defeat a Hellenist empire with a gutsy resistance, and on Purim… we win by trickery, seduction, and dumb luck. Jews seem to be at the mercy of the whims of a frivolous king and an evil viceroy… OK, now that I’ve ruined Purim for you, let me share what I consider to be its most redeeming quality: Purim is, probably, our most Zionist holiday.

I’m having a difficult time getting my joy on for Adar and for Purim, because I don’t recall a time that both the state of the Jews (the Jewish people) and the State of the Jews (Israel / Medinat Yisrael) were in such bad shape… But then… I realized that our sages and our wise tradition have already shown us the way of living in an unsettling and painful reality… They taught us rituals that help us recognize sadness in the midst of our joy, and conversely, perceive joy in the midst of our sadness. We humans aren’t well designed to live solely in joy, nor should we dwell solely in sadness. Life is about finding balance, ‘the golden mean’ or ‘the middle path,’ as the rabbis put it.