Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 23 Sivan, 5784
Parsha Shelach-Lekha – “Send For Yourself”: (Numbers 13:1 – 15:41)
Seventh Portion: Numbers 15:27 – 15:41

Shabbat Shalom! Today Torah thoughts are out a smidge late. It’s been a quiet day of solitude.  One of the energies out there right now is this idea of restraint – slowing down time to just be in a moment.  The prize of stillness.  It’s not an easy practice for sure – but I have been in a lot of stillness today.

As we finish up Shelach-Lekha – “Send for yourself” we are confronted with the idea moving away from what “should” I do, and what “do I want” to do – and this is courage.  Let’s dig into the final portion:

27But if an individual sins inadvertently, he shall offer up a she goat in its first year as a sin offering.

28And the kohen shall atone for the erring soul which sinned inadvertently before the Lord, so as to atone on his behalf, and it shall be forgiven him.

29One law shall apply to anyone who sins inadvertently from the native born of the children of Israel and the proselyte who resides among them.

So the Torah deals with the “inadvertent” sin.  And it doesn’t matter whether you were a native born child of Israel or an outsider coming in. However..

30But if a person should act highhandedly, whether he is a native born or a proselyte, he is blaspheming the Lord, and that soul shall be cut off from among its people.

31For he has scorned the word of the Lord and violated His commandment; that soul shall be utterly cut off for its iniquity is upon it.

If someone KNOWS they are sinning on purpose? That is a different story.  They are cut off.

32When the children of Israel were in the desert, they found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.

33Those who found him gathering wood presented him before Moses and Aaron and before the entire congregation.

34They put him under guard, since it was not specified what was to be done to him.

And now we get a story. A man was gathering wood on the Sabbath. They clearly knew this was not something to be done. The Torah did not specify what was to be done.

35The Lord said to Moses, The man shall be put to death; the entire congregation shall pelt him with stones outside the camp.

36So the entire congregation took him outside the camp, and they pelted him to death with stones, as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Um. What?

This. Just. Feels “wrong.” And yet, there is an explanation given.  I wrote this two years ago:

Rabbi Samuel Edels wrote something about this which I find interesting:

The Tosafists write that “The wood gatherer’s intentions were for the sake of heaven. When it was decreed that the people would not enter the land, due to the sin of the spies (14:218), the people thought that they were no longer obligated in observing the commandments. So, this person took a stance by transgressing the Sabbath, in order that the people should see him be punished for his transgression, from which they would learn that commandments were still obligatory.”

From the words of the Tosafists it follows that the wood gatherer did not really desecrate the Sabbath at all. According to Jewish law, if a person does a forbidden act on the Sabbath, not because he desires the act itself, but because of the outcome that the act leads to, then he is not considered to have transgressed any Biblical injunction. The wood gatherer’s desired outcome was that people should realize that the commandments were still in force, so he did not in fact desecrate the Sabbath (Biblically).

Why, then, was he punished? Because punishments prescribed by the earthly court must be based on people’s actions, which are concrete, and not upon their intentions, which cannot be ascertained objectively. (end quote)

So this is a really interesting take on the passage and one that does make some sense.

And it’s important to remember what death is. And the question of whether we are “a soul surrounded by the clothes of a body, or a body that contains a soul?” The answer to our belief about our body and soul will likely shape how we feel about this.

So it’s hard to know the accuracy of this account, but it would seem plausible that this unfolds the way it does. And. It makes sense. They thought the Torah didn’t apply – and needed to be shown it did.

37The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:

38Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them that they shall make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments, throughout their generations, and they shall affix a thread of sky blue [wool] on the fringe of each corner.

39This shall be fringes for you, and when you see it, you will remember all the commandments of the Lord to perform them, and you shall not wander after your hearts and after your eyes after which you are going astray.

40So that you shall remember and perform all My commandments and you shall be holy to your God.

41I am the Lord, your God, Who took you out of the land of Egypt to be your God; I am the Lord, your God.

We end the parsha with the passages about Tzitzit. Many of you (who know me) know I wear these daily. I often get asked why I wear them.  This is why.  The purpose of the fringes? To remind me of all the ways I can connect with the Universe. With Hashem. That in a moment, all I have the power to do? Is to do good.

And this is a good way to end the Parsha – and the Sabbath as we wind down to a new day this evening!

What are your thoughts?

Here are my thoughts from the past two years:

Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 28 Sivan, 5783

Shabbat Shalom!

Once again, we are getting ready for a new moon cycle, and hopefully we are setting our intentions as a lot of change is headed our way.  A spiritual mentor encouraged me to not look ahead as the coming chaos – but a reminder that we can walk in the eye of the storm always – find the light and peace with the storm swirling around us – and like in Jewish tradition – remember the things that are happening around us – things we may not have predicted to happen – are all happening FOR us – and not TO us.

In my meditation app this morning (10% Happier) I have been working through a class on Performance.  George Mumford shared that we have basically three choices about how the Universe is –

1. The universe (God, Spirit, whatever you would like to call it) is unfriendly towards us – and really all we can do is fight a losing battle because the universe is against us.
2. The universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly towards us – and what we do doesn’t really matter with regards to what is happening around us – we can just make the best choice we can in each moment.
3. The universe is friendly towards us – and we can observe with curiosity where the universe is guiding us on our journeys.  We can fight against this – or we can receive and embrace it.

I thought this was an interesting take going into the sabbath.

And – we bring this idea to Hashem, don’t we?  Do we see Hashem as kind towards us? Do we read the Torah trying to find kindness? Or do we see Hashem as harsh – a cosmic judge who has put us here to set us up for failure – and read the Torah trying to prove to everyone (including ourselves) that the Torah is just evidence of how Hashem is just mean – and really setting us up for failure.  Of course, we can believe Hashem is neither kind nor harsh – and the Torah is just a pretend book written for the purposes of man.  But all are options for us – how we approach it though – we have choice.

I continue to see the evidence that the Torah is a book on the journey of Spiritual liberation.  And on this journey we will make mistakes.  How we make mistakes (and whether they are intentional or unintentional) isn’t as crucial as to what we do AFTER the mistakes.

This is my take today.  What is yours?

Tyler’s Torah Thoughts for 26 Sivan, 5782

Shabbat Shalom! And Shabbat before the new month! This upcoming week is when the new month Tammuz arrives! It’s a special Shabbat for sure!

Today we close the Parsha of Shelah-Lekha (“Send For yourself”) with three passages: dealing with inadvertent personal idolatry, the first observation of the sabbath and the mitzvah of Tzitzit.

I keep coming back to our personal journeys from slavery to freedom. The tabernacle is built, we’ve been given direction (the Torah) and now it’s time to move! Yesterday we discussed inadvertent community sin. Today we start with inadvertent individual idolatry.

As we enjoy our freedom, Hashem knows we will inadvertently fall into idolatry. It’s a good question – what are our current personal idols?

And how do we deal with these Idols? Even Idols that we didn’t even realize were idols; the Torah says this:

1. Offer up a female goat in its first year
2. Priest will atone for each person before God, atoning on their behalf, and the individual will be forgiven
3. A reminder once again; one mitzvah here for the native born children of Israel AND the converts. There were not two separate mitzvahs

But what about a person who sins intentionally? You basically have your soul cut off from God’s people. And this also applies to native born and convert. If they do not repent of this, their soul is cut off – and their sin will be with them.

So. On one hand – wow. If we sin intentionally- we are cut off because as the Torah says “they are expressing contempt for God” and they have “disdained God’s word and violated His mitzvah.” That seems harsh. But there is mercy here;

“That soul will be utterly cut off IF THEY DO NOT REPENT.”

So if we repent, even when we sin intentionally- there is forgiveness and restoration.

Something to chew on.

Next we talk about the sabbath. On the second sabbath they observed, they found a man gathering sticks on the day of the Sabbath. The people who saw him warned him not to do so because it was a violation. He persisted. They took him into custody and brought him to Moses and Aaron. God told Moses he needed to be put to death. The entire congregation should pelt him with stones. And they did.

Now hold up. What is going on here? Why was he gathering sticks? Why did he ignore the requests to stop? What were his motives? Something doesn’t make sense here!

Rabbi Samuel Edels wrote something about this which I find interesting:

The Tosafists write that “The wood gatherer’s intentions were for the sake of heaven. When it was decreed that the people would not enter the land, due to the sin of the spies (14:218), the people thought that they were no longer obligated in observing the commandments. So, this person took a stance by transgressing the Sabbath, in order that the people should see him be punished for his transgression, from which they would learn that commandments were still obligatory.”

From the words of the Tosafists it follows that the wood gatherer did not really desecrate the Sabbath at all. According to Jewish law, if a person does a forbidden act on the Sabbath, not because he desires the act itself, but because of the outcome that the act leads to, then he is not considered to have transgressed any Biblical injunction. The wood gatherer’s desired outcome was that people should realize that the  commandments were still in force, so he did not in fact desecrate the Sabbath (Biblically).

Why, then, was he punished? Because punishments prescribed by the earthly court must be based on people’s actions, which are concrete, and not upon their intentions, which cannot be ascertained objectively. (end quote)

So this is a really interesting take on the passage and one that does make some sense.

And it’s important to remember what death is. And the question of whether we are “a soul surrounded by the clothes of a body, or a body that contains a soul?” The answer to our belief about our body and soul will likely shape how we feel about this.

Finally, the parsha ends with the mitzvah of Tzitzit. For those of you who know me, I’ve been starting to wear Tzitzit on a regular basis. This Torah passage explains why;

God spoke to Moses and told him to speak to the children of Israel:

1. Make Tzitzit on the corners of their garments, throughout their generations. My thought here is that this is a statement that is pretty clear and hard to argue with. It’s for generations. At no point has the “generations” come to an end. There was nothing about this mitzvah being about “coming into the land.”
2. They should place a thread of tekhelet (which is a special dye that is turquoise that is no longer available to us) in the Tzitzit at each corner. Now; some will focus on the color – and make a strand of the Tzitzit turquoise. Others won’t do this because they can’t – and believe Hashem has stopped us from doing this for now. This part isn’t as clear.

Now why? Why does God want us to do this? He’s pretty overt here:

1. When we see it, we will remember all the mitzvahs
2. When we remember the mitzvahs we will do them
3. When we remember, we will not follow after the spies (the evil inclination)
4. So we remember the mitzvahs and do them and then we will be holy to our God.

And then, to emphasize; the parsha ends with:

“I am God, your God, who took you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am God, your God.”

I read this as “I am God, your God, who took you out of the slavery of sin in your life to be your God.” And there is comfort there.

It’s a process. It’s a journey. We don’t read in the Torah of God snapping his fingers and “fixing us.” We read how God was helping us, but we had our own process to go through – where we made mistakes, where we turned back to slavery. But each step of the way God helped us.!

What are your thoughts?

As always on Shabbat, Haftorah thoughts are in the comments below:

Todays Haftorah is from Joshua 2:1-24

This is the story of Joshua sending spies into the land – right before we entered the promised land after wandering the desert. It’s juxtaposed with the story of Moses sending the spies; and it is interesting.

What I love about this story is that we find a woman at the center of it.

Given what is going on in our country right now; the Torah continues to show the critical nature of women to our story. We would do well to consider this.

So; Joshua doesn’t send 12 spies. He sends 2.

The spies go into the land. And they went a woman’s house (who sold food) named Rahab. They stayed there.

The King of Jericho found out and he wasn’t too happy. He sent messengers to Rahab to release the men to him.

But Rahab protected the Jews. She lied to the king’s messengers to protect them. Again; motives matter. She hid the Jews on the roof under the flax stalks.

She basically told the messengers the dudes ran off when the city gates closed.

The messengers left the city after the gates were closed and went to the Jordan River.

Rahab, before bed, went up to the roof and told the men she knew. She knew God had given them the land. The people knew. And she told them everyone was scared. She said messages of what was going on and how God was protecting them had traveled – the dried up sea from Egypt. Then what happened with the Two Kings of the Amorites who were destroyed.

Rahab begged the men for kindness for what she had done. She asked for kindness for her father’s house. She asked for a sign they would not be harmed.

The men pledged their lives to defend hers from death- if she keeps it a secret.

They say something interesting here.

They say “when God gives us the land, we will deal with you kindly and truly.” There was no “if” here. These spies knew. It was going to happen.

A lot had changed since the original spies went into the land. The community had grown. Developed.

And Rahab gave them an escape route to go hide for three days in the mountains. She let them down by a rope. Her house was built into the wall, so this was a natural thing- she let them down outside the city wall.

The men gave her instructions to protect her; they gave her a line of scarlet to hang in the window (the one she let them down on) and get everyone she wanted to protect inside her house.

If anyone left the house, their blood would be on their own heads. If they are stayed in the house, their blood would be on the spies heads. And; if Rahab tells anyone? They are blameless at that point.

Later on; she bound the line in the window as the Jews invaded.

The spies went back and reported to Joshua everything that happened.

So; my takeaway. Rahab showed kindness to the Jews; even out of fear and self preservation, and she saved her family because of it. That is a powerful statement that the Jews went into the promised land because of a woman. Had she not helped, had she not lied, this may have been a very different story!

What are your thoughts?