Chaired by Dr. Ellier Russ with Rabbi Gaber. This committee coordinates programs and classes to engage members in lifelong learning. Events include our yearly Scholar in Residence program, Talmud Study, and more. Guest speakers, online webinars and Shabbat morning discussions additionally provide congregants with opportunities to expand their knowledge of Judaism and living a Jewish life.

TORAH PORTION: METZORA

April 20, 2024     12 Nissan  5784
Torah   Leviticus 14:1-15:33 Triennial  Leviticus 14:1-32
   Haftorah:  Malachi 3:4-24

We believe that in times of great strife, words of Torah can provide stability and comfort in our lives.
We know that you join us in praying for the safety of our soldiers and citizens, and that together we mourn the terrible losses already suffered.
We stand together for a strong and secure Israel.

D'VAR TORAH
    

 Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
 Parashah
 Freedom

The ritual by which a person with skin disease is permitted to return home involves wild birds. One is slaughtered outside of the camp and the other is dipped in its blood before being sent away, flying far far away. The text does not specify what type of birds these were. In a description overflowing with detail, the lack of naming for these birds is noteworthy. Usually, when we talk about sacrifices in Leviticus, the birds being sacrificed are doves or pigeons. But these birds are not being sacrificed. This ritual happens outside of camp, far from the realms of holiness and purity. 

Scholar Jacob Milgrom argues that these birds are sparrows. They are wild and undomesticated. They come from outside of camp and have no desire to get into the camp. In being sent away, they are being sent home, because their home is the wild, the face of the field, the horizon. 

The word for sparrow is דרור, a word that also means freedom. In the Talmud, b. Beitzah 24a and b. Shabbat 106b, we find an explanation of this double meaning: “We are dealing with a free bird, a sparrow, because it does not accept authority… Why is it called a free bird [tzippor dror]? Because it dwells [dara] in a house as it does in a field.” The sparrow is free because it is wild, because it is not bound by home, by community, by tradition. 

Meanwhile, the person with skin disease just had a taste of this sort of freedom. They too were sent out of the camp. They were removed from home, from community, from tradition. Their very bodies became foreign to them, something from which they needed to be liberated. It was as if their souls were trying to escape the forms that held them, to burst out. 

Until the skin disease subsides, that person remains in this sort of freedom, outside of the community. They could choose to fly away, to leave, to refuse to accept authority and find their home in the wild, open field. But they don’t. Rather than looking out at the horizon, the person with skin disease looks back at the camp from which they have been removed. They submit gratefully to the authority of the kohen who comes to check if they are ready to return to camp. Living in freedom, the person with skin disease wants to return to order. 

Milgrom writes: “The entire purification process is nothing but a ritual, a rite of passage, marking the transition from death to life. As the celebrant moves from the realm of impurity outside the camp, restored first to his community, then to his home, and finally to his sanctuary, he has passed from impurity to holiness, from death to life, is reinstated with his family, and is reconciled with his God.”

There is in each of us the potential to have skin disease. There is something that wants wild freedom. To wander, restless, over the next horizon while drenched in the blood of our fellow. But, push comes to shove, we do not want wild freedom. It terrifies us. 

On the holiday we call hag haHeirut, the holiday of freedom, we impose on ourselves order. We turn to the rules and the rules about the rules so that we do not lose ourselves. We step into freedom just as the person with skin disease steps outside of camp - bringing the roadmap with us to a return to community, counting the days to Shavuot.

Speech: Pleasure or Plague Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein Insights from Hassidut PRESS THE LINK THAT IS UNDERLINED-WATCH ON YOUTUBE   Rabbi Daniel Silverstein teaches Hassidut at the CY and directs Applied Jewish Spirituality (www.appliedjewishspirituality.org). In these weekly videos, he shares Hassidic insights on the parashah or calendar.   THE HALAKHAH ESSAYS ON PESACH      Pesach is Never Really Over Rabbi Joshua Kulp   The Torah is extraordinarily stringent when it comes to the prohibition of hametz (leavened bread) and se’or (the leavening agent) on Pesah. Any Jew who eats hametz on Pesah is liable for the penalty of “being cut off (karet)” from Israel (Exodus 12:15). But it is not just eating hametz that is prohibited. Leaven may not be found in one’s home throughout the festival (v. 19). Exodus 13:7 prohibits one from even seeing hametz or se’or “in all of your territory.” The Torah forbids the consumption of many substances, some of which—such as blood and forbidden fat—are punishable by karet. But hametz is the only food that a Jew must remove from her home. It is so forbidden that it may not even be seen or found in one’s possession. And yet, the day after Pesah, hametz returns to being completely permitted. Just as no other food is treated as stringently as hametz, no other prohibited food has a time limit to its prohibition. Obviously hametz can be eaten during the rest of the year; it is prohibited only on Pesah itself. But does hametz automatically change its status from prohibited to permitted once Pesah is over? Is there a difference if the hametz was owned by a Jew or a non-Jew during the holiday? If it was owned by a Jew who did not observe the biblical commandment to remove the hametz from her home, does such hametz go from being prohibited on Pesah to being fully permitted after? Or, once prohibited, does it remain prohibited forever? The earliest mention of this is found in Mishnah Pesahim 2:2: Hametz which belongs to a non-Jew over which Pesach has passed is permitted for benefit;  But that of an Israelite is forbidden for benefit, as it is said, “No leavened bread shall be found with you.” If the hametz was owned by a non-Jew, then it may be consumed after Pesah. However, if it was owned by a Jew, then it is prohibited to derive any benefit from it even after Pesah is over. The midrash at the end of this mishnah is likely a search for some notion in the Torah that the prohibition remains. The easiest way to understand it is as follows. The Torah prohibits possession of leaven over Pesah. If a Jew transgressed this prohibition, and maintained ownership of the hametz, then she is penalized, and may not consume this hametz even after Pesah (for more on this see my book, Reconstructing the Talmud, v. 2).  In the Babylonian Talmud Pesahim 28, Rabbi Shimon argues that hametz owned by a Jew on Pesah is not prohibited by the Torah after Pesah. And on page 30a, Rava rules in accordance with this position–hametz after Pesah is permitted, in accordance with Rabbi Shimon. However, the Talmud immediately notes that Rava also explained that Rabbi Shimon penalized one who transgressed the biblical prohibition of owning hametz on Pesah. To square these two seemingly contradictory views, the Talmud resolves that pure hametz owned by a Jew on Pesah is prohibited by the rabbis after Pesah, but hametz in a mixture that was owned by a Jew on Pesah may be eaten after Pesah. The Shulkan Arukh, Orah Hayyim 448:3 rules that this is so even if the Jew maintained possession of the hametz on Pesah unwittingly. The prohibition relates to the object–it was owned by a Jew on Pesah and therefore cannot become permitted after Pesah. It is not just a penalty for the Jew who possessed it. Indeed, the hametz is prohibited to all Jews, not just to the Jew who owned it. For much of Jewish history, this halakhah was not that hard to observe. The Jew would get rid of her hametz before Pesah and even if a little hametz was found after Pesah, such hametz was not valuable and could just be thrown away. However, in the 17th century Jews in Eastern Europe became heavily involved in the business of production and sale of liquor, particularly hard alcohol. It would have been impossible for such a business owner to physically remove all of his hametz before Pesah, and if he did not do so, he would not be able to sell it after. The earliest sage to design a solution for this was R. Joel Sirkis, known as the Bach. The Bach was the inventor of “selling hametz” without actually removing it from one’s house. The practice has changed a lot since then (for a helpful summary see here) but the essentials are the same. By selling the hametz, the Jew avoids transgressing owning hametz during Pesah and avoids the consequences of that hametz being prohibited after Pesah. Where does this leave us today practically speaking? A Jew who sells her hametz before Pesah is completely permitted to derive benefit from that hametz after she buys it back after Pesah, a process that today occurs automatically when Pesah is over. This is not a difficult problem. The problem is that a Jew cannot derive benefit from any hametz owned by any Jew over Pesah. This creates a problem for an observant Jew, one who wishes to avoid eating hametz that was owned by a Jew on Pesah, who lives in a community of mixed levels of religious observance. What about a vegan restaurant (where a kosher Jew might eat) owned by a Jew? What about a grocery store? Indeed, in some ways this might be the most difficult of rules for a Jew in our day, living in the type of community that is reading this column, to follow. I do not have easy ways around this rule beyond hoping that more Jews will practice selling hametz before Pesah and my encouragement to rabbis in the field to make sure that the Jews in their communities practice selling hametz. But the laws of Pesah are, as we know, not easy.  This is my last column writing about the laws of removing hametz before Pesah. There’s a lot more halakhah to be learned. So I look forward to going through this journey with you all again in about a year. Until then, enjoy your cleaning, your bittul, your bedikah, your biur, your mekhirah and most of all, I hope you celebrate Pesah with the people you love, your family and friends, and that next year we all celebrate together in true freedom.

MeTZORA 5784: Birth of a nation

Shabbat Shalom Weekly

by Rabbi Yitzchak Zweig

April 19, 2024
METZORA, Leviticus (14:1-15:33)

GOOD MORNING! This upcoming Shabbat, which is the one immediately preceding the holiday of Passover, is known as “Shabbat Hagadol – The Great Shabbat.” You will probably not be shocked to hear that there are many reasons cited as to why this is. In fact, there are no less than ten reasons given for this designation – keeping in line with the well-known aphorism, “two Jews, three opinions.”

The question of origin has been raised as far back as the 12th century. The Machzor Vitry – a work attributed to Rabbi Simcha of Vitry (a city that today is considered a suburb of Paris) – simply states that “People have the custom to call the Shabbat before Passover Shabbat Hagadol and they do not know why.” I am torn between finding it disconcerting or comforting that even some nine hundred years ago people did things without fully understanding the reasons for it. 

The Da’at Zekeinim, also of the school of Rashi and his students, says that the reason for the “Great Shabbat” designation can be attributed to the verse in the Torah, “Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘In the tenth day of this month they shall take every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house’” (Exodus 12:3).

The midrash says that when the Israelites took the lamb for the Passover sacrifice on the 10th of the Hebrew month Nissan it was a Shabbat. When the Egyptians saw that they had taken the lamb to slaughter, they gathered against the Israelites in order to attack them, for they worshipped sheep as one of their gods (Exodus 8:22). Thereupon God performed a miracle, and they were saved “and therefore it is called Shabbat Hagadol because of the greatness (gadol) of the miracle.”

According to the Talmud (Moed Kattan 5a), it seems that the Shabbat before each of the festivals and Rosh Hashanah were known as Shabbat D’rigla, and they were a time when the entire community came to the synagogue to study about the upcoming holiday. Some of the commentators on this passage state that all of these Shabbats (before the holidays) were given the title Shabbat Hagadol. 

It is quite possible that the term stuck specifically to the Shabbat before Passover because of the special haftarah (the passage emanating from the Scriptures that is read after the weekly Torah portion) of the Shabbat before Passover. The selection from Malachi 3:4-24 discusses the prophecy of the arrival of the Messiah and refers to the day of his appearance as the “Great Day of God.” Thus, the Shabbat before Passover is called Shabbat Hagadol.

This upcoming Monday evening (April 22nd), Jews all over the world will begin to celebrate the holiday of Passover. This holiday doesn’t just memorialize the miracles that God performed in Egypt for the Jewish people; it commemorates the birth of the Jewish nation – when we transitioned from a clan of familial relationships to a society with a national identity.

Interestingly enough, the very first antisemite, the one who classified an emerging Jewish nation as a “problem,” was none other than Pharaoh. He was also the first person in the Torah to note the transition from familial interconnectivity to nationhood and viewed this new entity as a threat to the Egyptians: “And he said to his people: Behold, the nation of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we” (Exodus 1:9). Pharaoh’s “Jewish problem” and the question of what to do about it culminated with the Nazi’s attempt at formulating a “Final Solution,” which they did their very best to implement.

This ongoing existential threat, and the continuous attack on the legitimacy of the Jewish nation to simply exist, should particularly resonate this year. Much like the rats and other vermin that emerge at night, the horrors and darkness of October 7th brought out all the vile Jew-haters from the shadows, which has led to a notorious rise in worldwide antisemitism.

This terrible situation has caused many unaffiliated Jews to do some soul-searching regarding what it means to be a Jew. It is more important than ever to learn about the roots of Judaism and its relevance to our lives in the 21st century. Given the fact that Passover celebrates the birth of the Jewish nation, it should not be surprising to learn that the Passover Seder is a key Jewish “life cycle” observance.

According to the Pew Research Center, almost 8 out of 10 people who identify as Jews participate in a Seder. Of this same group, only about half fast (at least partially) on Yom Kippur and only about 20% light Shabbat candles regularly. Surprisingly, more than 40% of Jews without any religious affiliation whatsoever (defined as those who acknowledge some Jewish parentage but identify as atheists or agnostics) also participated in a Seder.

What is a Passover Seder? The Hebrew word seder (pronounced “say-dehr”) translates to “order” in English. This refers to the fifteen rituals that are performed in a very specific order during the Passover holiday meal. The order of the Seder is presented in the Haggadah, which is the special Passover booklet containing the liturgy and instructions for the night’s many rituals.

There are many, many details to a Passover Seder and, in general, to Passover itself. As an example, during the rest of year if a small piece of not kosher meat inadvertently falls into a big pot of soup (where the volume of the soup is sixty-times said piece of meat), in most cases, the soup is still considered kosher. However, on Passover we are much stricter: If a tiny piece of a kosher bread crouton falls into five gallons of soup, the entire soup is considered chometz, meaning not Kosher for Passover, and must be immediately discarded. Without getting into a litany of specifics, there are many other laws related to Passover that are incredibly detail oriented.

In general, those who follow a more orthodox approach are super careful to fulfill every law, detail, and stringency to the best of their ability. Because a Passover Seder is often shared with those who are less religiously inclined, the following question is often posed: “Does God really care if you fulfill every minutia of every law and every custom?”

This is a compelling question, and one that is often posed to Orthodox Jews – and not just on Passover.

There are two underlying premises to this question: 1) Why are the seemingly insignificant details of laws and customs so important to follow? 2) Does the fulfillment of them really make any difference to God?

I am reminded of the story of a software development team who were working on a new program for almost two years. As they went through the beta versions and debugging processes, which required some changes to the source code, the program suddenly crashed and no longer worked. There were tens of thousands of lines of coding to review, and for weeks the entire team labored furiously to find the problem. Try as they might, they couldn’t figure it out.

Finally, one of the developers discovered a teensy tiny mistake. He found that one of the “full stops” (otherwise known as a period) had been entered in the wrong font. That one tiny and inadvertent mistake crashed the entire source code, completely shutting down the program and rendering it inoperable.

Why should a tiny dot entered in the wrong font have such monumental importance? Honestly, I have no idea, and for the life of me I cannot understand why it would make any difference. But whether or not I understand it is not important. What is important is to understand that the details are there for a reason and that yes, they really do matter.

In regard to the Almighty, we perceive Him to care about such minutiae because the closeness of every relationship is determined by the details, not the big picture. For example, if there is a large-scale emergency situation, such as an accident with children trapped in a school bus on the side of the road, most caring people will quickly jump in to help. An emergency is a “big picture” event, and one does not necessarily require a personal relationship to intervene and offer assistance.

Now if that same school bus full of children pulled up to your house while you were working and banged on your door demanding ice cream you’d likely question the mental health of their teacher or driver. However, if your own child got off that bus crying, interrupted your work, and told you they had a bad day and really wanted some ice cream you’d probably ask if they’d also like sprinkles. Whether it’s inconvenient or reasonable is not the point, the closeness of a loving relationship demands that a person does what he can to show that he cares.

So too is our relationship with the Almighty. Anybody can (and should) obey the big picture commandments of don’t kill, don’t steal, etc. But it’s the fulfillment of the minutiae that is the ultimate indicator of our closeness to the Almighty. The smaller and seemingly more insignificant the request, the more significant an indication it is of the closeness of the relationship.

Thus, the tiniest and seemingly insignificant details of the laws and customs of the Torah are actually a personal affirmation on the closeness one feels to the Almighty. It is through the fulfillment of these minute details that we express the depth of our love and commitment to God. So of course, when seen in this light, it is going to make a difference to God, because the ultimate purpose of creation is the achievement of a closeness with the Almighty. Thus, the details are indeed very important!

Speaking of details, Passover prohibits all foods that are “chometz – fermented.” This refers to any food that contains grain (made from wheat, barely, oat, etc.) whereby the leavening process begins when water is added to it. This includes virtually any food or beverage (such as beer) that has a grain ingredient; they are all prohibited on Passover unless they have a reliable Kosher for Passover certification.

Jews aren’t even allowed to own chometz during Passover. Herein lies the source for one of the greatest “workarounds” in Judaism: Any product containing chometz is sold to a non-Jew for the duration of the holiday. After the holiday, the chometz is purchased back. This is a legally binding sale, both in Jewish law and in civil law. This process is very easy in the twenty-first century, and you can now sell your chometz online. If you would like to sell your chometz, you can do so here. This service is free of charge, though you can make a small donation if you desire.

Rabbi Gaber lead several Adult Education programs using ZOOM  "You don’t have to leave the warmth and comfort of your home to hear a discussion on confronting Antisemitism and Hate or the Human Genome or to discuss how to bring Judaism into the 21st century. 

See the CBOI On-line Learning page in Learn Navigation bar to see all the  On Line Zoom Learning sessions.