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Queen Athaliah and the Half-Shekel (Shabbat Shekalim, Int'l Women's Day)

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Shabbat shalom - and happy International Women’s Day.  On a usual year, International Women's Day falls in an excellent week in the Jewish calendar. It usually sits just on top of Purim, or between Purim and Pesach. Purim, with its hero as a beautiful young woman, rags-to-riches-to-courageous-hero Queen Esther. And Pesach, where the beginning of the narrative - the story of saving the children, which eventually leads to the redemption of the Israelites from slavery - is all about women. Mothers, sisters, midwives, princesses, all conspiring to resist Pharaoh’s most terrible of decrees, and in doing so, securing salvation. This year, the Gregorian calendar and the Hebrew calendar are aligned slightly differently. We have a few weeks to go before we reach Purim. We are instead at Shabbat Shekalim, the Shabbat before we enter Purim’s month of Adar - this year, Adar Sheini.  We don’t really have much in the way of female characters in our readings tomorrow, but there is a woman wh...
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Preparing for Pesach (Pop Goes the Weasel)

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  Passover is almost upon us - and the cleaning season is beginning!   Mishnah Pesachim begins, as our season does, with the removal of chametz (leavened product) from the house. Just before Pesach begins, it tells us, we engage with the process of b'dikat chametz (checking for chametz). Mishnah 1:1 assures us that places we would never take chametz do not need to be checked.   Mishnah 1:2 poses a problem. Okay, sure, you might not take toast into the shower, but you're not in complete control of the world. What if there's a crumb on the floor, and the cat picks it up and takes it into the shower?   . אֵין חוֹשְׁשִׁין שֶׁמָּא גָרְרָה חֻלְדָּה מִבַּיִת לְבַיִת וּמִמָּקוֹם לְמָקוֹם, דְּאִם כֵּן, מֵחָצֵר לְחָצֵר וּמֵעִיר לְעִיר, אֵין לַדָּבָר סוֹף   They need not fear that a weasel may have dragged [chametz] from one room to another or from one place to another, for i...
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The God Who Cries (Rosh Hashanah II 5785)

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  Philip Mantofa's " Shofar " The God Who Cries When did we start crying in private? When we were infants, you and I, we cried out because we wanted something. We cried out on the expectation that a caregiver would hear us and respond to our cries. We cried to be held and cared for. Crying out was intended to draw someone near to us.  For most of us, thank God, care was closeby. It is a heartbreaking fact of the human condition that infants without caregivers will stop crying. Crying out is about drawing near.  Moses cries out as an infant in a basket, and is found by a princess who will become his adoptive mother. She names him Moshe from Mashah, to draw out. He cries; she draws him near.  Even more precisely, to “draw close” in Hebrew is karav - the same root as the word korban, a sacrifice in the Temple. The Temple service was about drawing closer to God. It is no wonder, then, that the service of the Temple could be replaced with the service of the heart.  W...
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