Podcast # 4 | Parashat Tetzaveh

All right. Shalom Shlomo. Shalom Alisha. It's our third? Fourth. Fourth. Time flies when you're having fun. Time flies when you're studying Torah. So, this week we're with the Parashat Tetzaveh. I brought something along from Parashat Tetzaveh for our conversation. We're actually at Parashat Tetzaveh, the second parasha of the building of the Mishkan or the instructions for the Mishkan, not quite the building yet. I'll just remind, if people are listening to this for the first time, we're sitting here, Professor Shlomo Meital and I'm Elisha Wolfin, Rabbi of Kilat Vahavta, and we're discussing the weekly parasha and also some burning topics and issues and boy are things burning right now. Indeed. So Shlomo, what should we start with? So Elisha, you note that in this parasha, the name of Moshe doesn't appear anywhere. It's unique in that sense. Moshe, by name, disappears and my comment on this is the following. The Torah is a moral document. It's a moral guide, a moral compass, but for people like me, I teach management, it's a management manual. Why is that so? Moshe disappears, moves himself aside for Aharon, for the managers that Yitro suggests, for the Kohanim, steps aside. And this is a principle of management. In startup entrepreneurship, we have an illness, a disease called founder's disease. The founder starts a business and then hangs on to it like his baby, but isn't able to really run it. Moshe began the exodus. He's the leader, but now you have to manage it and it's not for him. So he willingly and gladly and gracefully steps aside and hands it over to other people. I think this is enlightening. Wow, Shlomo, as usual, an amazing comment, a brilliant comment. And I have to say, it also touches on our personal endeavor here at the Hafta, as the founder of the Hafta, along with eight families, we got this thing started together. It's a huge issue being the founding rabbi. And I can certainly say, we'll get to the point of Moshe and Aharon, but from a personal perspective, indeed, thank God for Aviva. Thank God that Aviva was also with us almost from the start, pretty much from the start. She was here from the start. There was a short pre-Hafta period and she brought the managerial skills. She brought the bureaucratic skills, which I can bring them along if I really, really work hard, but it's not my forte. And together, just like Moshe and Aharon, and I would not, I'd never compare myself to Moshe in any possible way, shape or form. But the more we can step aside and allow others to step in, is that the word, to rise to the occasion, the more blessing it brings. And it's really beautiful because it leads to our next parasha, next week, Parashat Ki Tisa, when Moshe is really gone and the people are restless and they turn to Aharon, who has taken his place, and they say, you know, this God, this Moshe, this man, what is he? He's gone. He disappeared. Create for us a God that will go before us. And Aharon makes a decision that Moshe would never, ever make. Aharon is the one who forms the golden calf. And Moshe, when Moshe comes down from the mountain and returns back to his position, he decides himself, and there's tremendous wisdom in Aharon's building of the golden calf. It's a wisdom that Moshe cannot comprehend. So, so thank God we have both Moshe to bring his wisdom, and we have Aharon to bring his wisdom, and we needed to say goodbye to Moshe for a month, not for a month, for 40 days, in order to allow Aharon to bring his wisdom forward. And I have a question here, Elisha, about God himself. God created the world, and there's a controversy about this, but is it right to say God created the world, and then, like Moshe, he steps aside. It's up to us to run this world, to run this planet. I think we're not doing very well at it, but I really think we need to take responsibility for this amazing gift that God has given to us. It's up to us. Is that a good way to look at it? Well, who am I to say that's a good way or not a good way, but as usual, you always touch on the biggest issues, the biggest theological questions and issues. I've been grappling with this question, I think, most of my adult life. Where is God? Is God present? Is God not present? We discuss it a lot in our classes here at Baha'u'llah. Is God imminent? Is God within, or is God transcendental? Is he outside of creation, pulling the strings, maybe not pulling the strings, maybe just looking as Beth Midler would say, from a distance. In my own personal theology and my own personal experience, God is very much present. God is very, very much present, but there's an amazing mechanism, and it's the mechanism that you're actually referring to, that we're blinded to his presence. So I follow the Kabbalistic Hasidic notion that God is always present, only we cannot see him. Because of our limitation, we cannot see him. It's a tragedy, but it's also a great thing. That follows what you're suggesting. It's a great thing because it forces us to discover our own powers, to discover our own morality, to do what's necessary, to do good. If we depended on God doing living life for us, then our muscles of goodness would become atrophied. Yes, and I think that there's a clue in the Parsha to answer the question that I raised about the presence of God and the activity of God. It has to do with something that psychologists talk about. They say there are two kinds of people. There are introverts and there are extroverts. I'm an introvert. I was almost an only child. I have a sister, but she was 12 and a half years older than me and went off to college. I made up games by myself and read things and entertained myself. I'm an introvert. I look inward. There are extroverts. My wife Sharon is an extrovert. She grew up with a sister. They're very close. An extrovert has radar and looks at other people. An introvert has an internal compass and looks inward for guidance. Moshe was an introvert. Aaron was an extrovert. Both are really vital, but here's what I think. Moshe talked directly to God in part because he was an introvert. He found God inside of himself. Aaron was vital and necessary to do God's work, but with other people. What's your take on this? Are you an introvert, Elisha? 100% introvert, yes, absolutely. For many years, I've been actually really drawn to this paradigm, this Jungian paradigm. Rabbi Art Green, whom we both appreciate and we study him quite a lot here, one of his beautiful metaphors is is Mount Sinai necessarily a mountain? The extroverts would see it as a mountain reaching out to God. The introverts would see it as a valley, as a deep, deep valley, like going inward, going inside and finding God within, finding God inside. I'm with you. I'm 100% introverted. There are iffy things, 100%. I'm not so sure. I don't think I could be a communal rabbi if I was only an introvert. But if I continue to track your thought track, again, it's interesting because as Moshe's up on the mountain communicating with God, again, next parasha, it'll be Aaron who will be communicating with the people and attending to their needs. And when Moshe comes down and says, what have you done? What have you done to these people? You know, seeing the golden calf. Aaron will try to explain to him the psychology of the people, but Moshe will just not get it. He just can't get it. And it's beautiful. It's beautiful in the Torah that we have both. We have Aaron who, Aaron in Pilkei Avot we're told, Hevei mitamidat shel Aharon, being the disciples of Aaron, loves the people, loves peace, loves Torah, and brings people, brings them close to Torah through peace. He sees other people. This is something Moshe, and I admire Moshe, I love Moshe purely, but this is something Moshe could not do. Moshe, as we read in parasha Mishpatim, Moshe actually takes his tent outside of the camp and plants it far away from the people. They aggravate him, they annoy him. Yes, I struggled with this my whole life because I'm an introvert. When you work in an academic faculty in a university, you have colleagues, you have to be collegial and somewhat extroverted. In my faculty, I think I got a really bad rap for not being a really good colleague. According to a writer named Susan Kane, who has written about introverts, she thinks introverts are creative because they find ideas inside themselves. In a university, we're compelled to find innovative ideas, but we also need to work with our colleagues and do teamwork. Just as an aside, Elisha, in startup entrepreneurship, you need wild creative ideas, and they come from weirdos who are introverts, and they just don't fit in the system. But in order to implement the wild ideas, you need extroverts who work together as a team, and that's really, really hard to manage for many startups or any organization. The weirdos with the ideas and the extroverts who can make them happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Brilliant, really brilliant. From my experience, it's not easy being an introvert in this world. We're a very noisy world, and if you don't yell, shout, scream, and argue, and demonstrations right now, that's the in thing to go out and demonstrate. If you're not an extrovert in this noisy world we live in, then your voice is not heard very often, and there's a struggle there, but it's a worthy struggle. It's a good struggle, and it's beautiful what you're saying. We really need both. We need both. Yes, we do, and you mentioned demonstrations, Elisha, so I think we have to face this one. There's a 15,000-pound elephant in our room, and we're in a very small room. He had trouble getting in the door, and that's, of course, the so-called judicial reform, which we see as an attack on democracy. Elisha, Orthodox rabbis have been quoted, and there are many such quotes, as saying that there's no democracy in the Torah. There are kohanim, there are leaders, there's no democracy, and the Mishnah says, meaning you want a good life, find yourself an authority, a rabbi, and then ask him questions and do what he says, and it's usually a he. So what do we do with this when a large part of our religion claims that democracy is not Jewish? We want a Jewish state. It doesn't mean we have to have a democratic state, and we as a Masorti group, we're committed strongly to democracy. Where do we go with this? Yeah, yeah, that's a huge question. So I think there are many angles for which we can discuss this. The first one, before we get to the taqlis, you know, is the notion of democracy, is that a Jewish idea or not? Before that, I just want to just comment. I mentioned that the greatness of the Jewish civilization throughout the ages was our ability to absorb great ideas that were floating around that did not come from us. And we always use, I mean, the best example is always the Passover seder, and the concept that the way the sages turned the sacrificial Paschal lamb offering that was the essence of the Pesache celebration, turned into a Passover seder. They adopted the symposium, the Roman Greek symposium, almost, you know, the four glasses of wine, the greens at the beginning of the meal, etc., etc. And most important thing, both Greeks and Romans, they were around the meal, they would discuss, they would discuss really important issues and philosophy. And that's exactly what we do. We discuss freedom, and we talk about the story of the exodus and what that means. And our greatness has always been that we didn't think that we have all the answers. There were rabbis, and there were voices who said, no, no, no, we hold all the answers, and we should never listen to other people's wisdom. But we know from Maimonides and many others, if there's a truth out there, hold on to it. You can certainly believe in that. And democracy is one of those ideas. Democracy is that one could say, in a second I'm going to re-examine that. One could say that, indeed, in the Torah there's no democracy. In the Torah it's a theocracy. God is at the center, and God has prophets, and later on there's a king, and obviously there's a priesthood, etc. There is one very powerful passage, a sentence in the Torah that we read only two weeks ago. I'll read it in Hebrew, and then in English. The Hebrew is richer on many levels. So it's from Exodus 23. We actually need the trope in order to help us read this sentence properly. So the English, I have the translation here. The English says, you shall neither side with the mighty to do wrong. Now that's not a very accurate translation, because in Hebrew it says, Rabim doesn't mean mighty, it means majority. So you shall neither side with the majority to do wrong. So side with the majority, we'll get that in a second, but not if it's to do wrong. And the Sages really pick up on that. Then it continues saying, you shall not give perverse testimony in dispute, so as to pervert in favor of the mighty, or of the many. So in other words, and this became one of the 613 mitzvot, suggesting that the Sages did something brilliant. They actually took just part of the sentence and dropped the rest of it. And it's very daring, a very daring move. They said, follow majority rule. And that's a democratic idea. However, the issue right now is, what happens when a democracy, we saw it in Germany in 1933, when Hitler was elected with democratic elections, and they became the majority, and how quickly that turned into a dictatorship. So if we need to follow the majority, then we right now, what right do we have to protest? The majority was elected, and we now need to follow the majority rule. A small majority, by the way, I have to mention this, is a majority of 30,000 votes out of 4.7 million, but nonetheless a majority. Right, but the fact that it's a small majority, the Sages actually discuss that. They have something to say about that. But first and foremost is to say, yes, follow majority rule, but not if, in our humble perspective, it comes to do evil, to do wrong. Then you have the obligation to protest. You have the obligation to go against the decision of the majority. And the Sages, when they discuss it, among other things, they say, if the majority is only a very slim majority, then on major issues, especially issues of life and death, then you have an obligation to protest the decision of the majority. So there's certainly a discussion here about democracy. What I love most about this whole sentence is, is majority, yes, but is the majority seeking goodness? Is it seeking the greater good, or is it seeking a very particular, narrow-minded good, their own good, for example? And it's a tough one. You pointed out in one of our conversations that many of those in the government now were the victims of the pullout from Gaza. That was their home. That was their lives. And the Likud, actually Likud government, later became Kadima, but nevertheless Likud DNA, was the one who pulled us out of Gaza. This was not a left-wing decision, but rather a right-wing decision. And they, I can just imagine the pain, the pain, and you know them personally, and the pain of a country turning its back to your pain, saying, we're pulling out of Gaza. Yeah, we're uprooting your homes. We're uprooting everything. And because that was the majority rule, and the Supreme Court went along with that. Now, I was personally in favor of that decision, but nevertheless, I'm not so sure. We, as the majority at the time, were sensitive to the incredible pain that this small group of 4,500 settlers who were uprooted from their homes. And now, as far as they're concerned, it's time for revenge. And so I think that's what happens when we look at democracy as that democracy can easily turn into a dictatorial move. Majority decided, we followed that. If we are not sensitive to the Ra, you know, if we're not sensitive to the evil and the injustice and the problematic aspects of our decisions, then we're not doing our democratic duty. And there's a mantra that Haaretz has used effectively, the newspaper, the daily newspaper, democracy does not end with elections. It does not end with an election, and then you won and you do whatever you want. There is a process, and it continues. And this is what is happening now. We have not ended by simply giving up and throwing our hands up. We have the obligation to protest. And it's part of the democratic process, not anarchy, but democracy. Right. And the big issue, I mean, part of the big issue is the whole, the impact this is going to have on the courts. And in the same parasha, a little bit later, it's Pogshat Mishpatim, he talks about justice, he talks about the judicial system, and he talks about not taking bribes, because bribes blind us to righteousness. And unfortunately, in this government right now, there are a number of people who are accused of of bribes and lies. Convicted of bribes. And actually convicted of bribes and misconduct. So it's a tough one. But the Torah has something to say about that, both about democracy and about justice. Yes, indeed. Perhaps on another issue, maybe a little lighter, Havisha. So Tetzaveh is about Kohanim, and the role of Kohanim. And I have a small story to tell about Kohanim. So at Technion in the medical school, we have a wonderful scientist, Professor Karl Skoretzky. He met Aliyah from Toronto. He's a nephrologist, but also a genetic researcher. And he has a story. He was once in shul, he's religious, and he normally is called up to the Torah first as a Kohen, but there was a Sfardi there who was also a Kohen, and the Sfardi Kohen was called up. And he looked at the Sfardi Kohen, his fellow Kohen, and the man had dark skin, and looked nothing like Karl Skoretzky, the Ashkenazi from Canada, from Toronto. And he asked himself, wait a second, 3,500 years ago, Aharon, the first Kohen, and then his sons, passed down to his sons, and their sons, 140 generations from that time, and here we are, 140 generations later, are we really descendants from Aharon? We Kohanim. The Kohen passes it on to the son, the male. So wait a second, if this really does work, then it must have to do with the Y chromosome, because men have the Y chromosome, women have two Xs, men have X and Y, right? Maybe if we looked at the genetic structure of the Y chromosome, could we find similarities among Kohanim that were markers, that don't exist in Jews who are not Kohanim? I mean, it's a long shot and a wild idea. So he did the research, he collected samples of tissue from inside the cheeks of 106 Kohanim, and he found the Kohen gene, he found the marker. And indeed, the research proves that it cannot be by chance that this marker exists only in Kohanim. It's one in 10,000 that it occurs by chance. So he found that the Kohen gene and the Kohanim really are descendants of Aharon. I think that's quite amazing, isn't it? It is, it is, it's amazing. It's amazing, you know, thinking as you're telling the story, thinking, so what's the significance of that, you know? So, you know, we, I mean, genetics is a very important field of research and study and can bring a lot of healing to the world on many levels. But what's the spiritual meaning of it? Does it have spiritual meaning? So, first of all, I'm not so sure. But what I am sure of, it's a great example of how we preserve identity. The commitment of the Kohanim to their to their genealogy, to their role in the world, their commitment to being Kohen, it's really remarkable. It's really remarkable. And so many Jews have abandoned their Judaism over the years, and all the more so in our generation right now, Jews were opting out. And here's a story about a group of people who took their religious role very seriously and remained committed to it. It brings a lot of dilemmas, obviously, to the forefront, but nevertheless, it's an amazing story of commitment. And maybe that's what it takes from a Kohen to be committed, to be a committed Jew, a committed person, to serving the people. Yes. Serving God, but serving the people. That was Avalon's role. But Elisha, where are the women in this story? Because women are daughters of Kohanim. We live in an age where we're trying to be egalitarian. Masorti is egalitarian. Where are the women in the story of the Kohanim? Right. Were you already part of our Kila when we had that huge debate? Okay, so I guess briefly before, shortly before you and Shona moved to Zichu Nehukov and joined our Kila. But we did that debate in our previous congregation in Moriah, and it was fierce. A world war. So I'm aware of the problem. Yeah, yeah. Three women stepped up and said, you know, we are either not Kohen ourselves, or our daughters are not Kohen because our husbands are Kohen. And, you know, if we are an egalitarian movement, as you said, then we're egalitarian. And here too. That was a real, real, real tough one. Because we could say, you know what? Yeah, you're right. Why don't we just have women step up to the priestly blessing, to the Dohanim as well? We could do that. We could do that. But that's not exactly how Halakha has changed over the years. There's a process. And we had some serious study sessions here at the Kila where everyone was invited to discuss it. We brought a few experts on the field who taught us what is a Kohen? What is that, the concept of Kohen? And now, personally, as Elisha, I was open to all possible outcomes. I really was. I didn't cling to one option. However, the feeling... We took a poll. We actually took a poll. Apropos democracy, we took a poll here. And the majority in the poll, and there are many who respond to the poll, the majority said that they are not yet ready for that equality, for that part of equality. That's aspect number one. But then you could argue. So am I now going to follow the majority? Am I doing evil? Is this a majority that's promoting evil by promoting inequality? What really convinced me at the end was that the role of the Kohen belongs to a paradigm, to a time that doesn't exist anymore. Unlike a rabbi. You know, we have rabbis now for 2300 years or so. And rabbis had no relationship to genealogy. Everyone who was willing to learn and study could become a rabbi. So the whole rabbinic position was a very democratic shift in the Jewish hierarchy and evolution. But not so the Kohen. And it's very clear. The Torah is very, very clear. And the Sages are very clear. Well, Judaism is transferred from the mother. The Kohuna is transferred from the father. And our movement does not accept patrilineal descent. And the same thing goes for Kohanim. And the Kohen is a kind of position, we don't have a temple anymore. So it's not a practical position yet. When the Messiah comes, everything will change. But the Messiah will solve all these problems. We eventually decided, because it's not equal, we decided to do away with the Dohanim, with the priestly blessing. We obviously read the priestly blessing, but we read it without the priest going up. What you would basically do if there were no Kohanim present in the room. That was our solution. Everybody was upset with the solution. The three women were very upset. One of them left the Kila quite angry. And a few others left because they loved the Dohanim, they loved the priestly blessing, and they were very, very hurt by that. And then something happened. About a year and a half or two years later, we were on a Shabbaton, a Kila, Shabbaton. We're up in Tel Hai. And it happened to be Parashat Nassot, and that's the Parashat of the priestly blessing. And almost spontaneously, all the Kohanim in the room, and I gave my approval to it, stepped up to do the priestly blessing. Because it was a Shabbaton, and it was Parashat Nassot, and there were tears in the room. It was very, very emotional. I was actually quite shocked how moving and tearful this whole thing was. And realized, we need the priestly blessing. We need the priestly blessing. And we re-instituted the priestly blessing. And yes, it's the last remnant of something which is not equal, just as Judaism is passed through the mother and not through the father. But Elisha, I experience it every Shabbat and Shul, the priestly blessing, and it is very meaningful and very moving. And I think this wonderful story raises a bigger issue. And that issue is something that concerns me a lot. The survival of the Jewish people. Will we survive as a Jewish people? And how will we survive? What is our survival strategy? And there are two opinions, polar opinions. The ultra-orthodox belief and practice, building walls. We build a wall around ourselves, and we, as a community, make sure that there are no deviations. And we preserve everything that we've done for hundreds of years. And we dress like Polish noblemen, but we build a wall. A spiritual ghetto. A spiritual ghetto. And the other approach is not to build a wall, but the opposite. To build a phone line. And to connect with the outside world. And to absorb ideas and adapt them to the changing times. And controlled innovation. So cultivate the old, explore the new, and be wise enough to know the difference between the two. And when to go with the old, stay with the old, and when to practice the new. I think this is our Masorti contribution. We don't throw out the halakha totally, nor do we totally embrace it as it is, but try to adapt it. As with the Kwanim. And the way you do this, Alicia, is you try things. It's a wonderful story that you're told, because we tried it experientially. And on an emotional, visceral level, it worked. It fit. It felt right. And that's the way you make decisions. When you buy a pair of clothes, a shirt or a jacket, try it on, right? You can't tell until you put it on, if it suits you. The same is true of religious practice. So I think this is what will preserve the Jewish people. This approach, rather than the approach of no change, ever old. Just do what we've always done for a hundred years. Yeah, well, again, another huge dilemma. You have this great gift of touching on all the huge dilemmas of our civilization. And I have to be very honest, I don't have necessarily set views on all these things and clear answers myself, answers for myself. But I remember sitting here. I'm going to give some credit now to the altar Orthodox. There was this Haredi youngster who came from Jerusalem to study in Yeshiva, in the Haredi Yeshiva here, Chazon Ish in Zichon Yaakov. I think he was like 17 or 18 years old. And he came to visit. He came in, obviously it was late at night, no one would see him, because he was very curious. And I remember, you know, he came a few Friday nights and he was like in the lobby, kind of looking in, can I enter, he was looking for our materials. And I walked out and had a long conversation with him. And we decided to meet. He didn't have a phone, so he had to call me from a pay phone. And I had to answer every phone call to make sure that I respond to his call, because I couldn't call him back. And we met. And we sat here in this office where we're sitting right now. And he, first of all, he knew nothing about modern history. When I talked to him about the era of the Enlightenment, 220 years ago, he had no idea whatsoever. And he said to me the following. And what he said was a critique of the Orthodox. He didn't even mention the non-Orthodox movement. But in defense of the ultra-Orthodox. He said, when I look at a lot of Orthodox families in Israel, the two parents are Orthodox. If they have five kids, they're lucky if one or maybe two remain Orthodox. And the rest leave religion. They say they're kippah off, they're in the army service or whatever. And statistically, he's right. He said, my grandfather, he says, has over 100 great grandchildren already. And they're all thrown. No one has left. And I said to him, well, that's a great sign of success. But is that how we measure success? Is success, you know, I can tell you also that anyone who is imprisoned will never get into trouble outside because they're in prison. They're within the walls. If you are happy where you are, if you're happy being ultra-Orthodox, if you're happy in your spiritual ghetto, then go for it. I'm all for it. We're pluralistic. And I'm 100% for it. But yes, it's dangerous. Being open to the world is dangerous. But you know what? I wouldn't want to live any other life other than being open to the world because there's so much out there, so much wisdom, so much beauty, so much fresh air. And that beauty and fresh air only enlivens my own Jewish heritage and roots. So at the risk of losing Jews at the fringes, maybe even more than fringes, maybe we're losing quite a lot. I would not want to give up the openness that we believe in. Yes, there's a big but. And that is you can be open to the world and learn about the world, but you darn well better learn about your own religion. Yes, yes. Because that's crucial. If you don't, then you're really, you're lost because you don't value what an enormous gift it is. We have to do better in that, Elisha, because such a large part of our Jewish population are not sufficiently educated in Judaism. Right, absolutely, absolutely. And that's why one last thing, because I think we do have to end. That's what we call the Hafta. I think the whole premise of our congregation, of our shul, is that we come to this whole thing from a place of love. And loving Judaism, loving people, loving God, loving humanity, loving the world. And from a place of love, Judaism really deepens. It stays both open and it deepens, and no one has to feel they're running away from anything, but rather they come back to the springs of love to nourish their souls. Beautiful Hafta end on. So, I want to wish everyone Shabbat Shalom, and thank you for joining us. And feel free to pass on this podcast to your friends, and we'd love to hear from you. Shabbat Shalom. Shabbat Shalom.