The weeks before Purim and Pesach are weeks of planning and dedicated eating – eating as much of the chametz in our homes as we can, prior to Pesach. The pasta, the bulghur, the cookies, (so much baking as we use up the flour), checking our pantries for what must be eaten or sold before that first night.More
So much going on at this time of year – Purim/Pesach/Shavuot – we do love celebrating springtime, don’t we?
And now we are also celebrating our return twice a month to being in a room with each other for services. We hope to see you soon – April 1st is our first Kabbalat Shabbat service and then April 9th our first Shabbat morning service.
And our Seder will also be in person – but with a twist. We are honouring our own heritage of our families having to flee our homes – not just from Mitzrayim, but often much more recently with pogroms decimating Jewish villages throughout the Pale of Settlement, in the Ukraine and Russia. And we can never forget the massive uprooting and decimation of our families homes during the Shoah.
Mah nishtana ha Laila hazeh? Why is this night different from all other nights?
This year we are not serving a festive meal. We are asking you to join us, to be together, in person. But instead of a four-course dinner, we will eat matzah, dry as fear in our throats. We will eat chrain, the bitterness of horseradish bringing tears to our eyes. And we will eat charoset, a reminder of that mortar that binds us to our past, but that also brings the sweetness of memories forward on our tongues.
We will have our four cups of wine, and we will dip a little parsley in salted water. This will be our Seder: a Seder where we reflect on what it might mean to flee in the night, to not be able to feed our children, to not know where we might sleep. Come and join us on First Night, April 15th, at the JCC.
With love, with hope,Rabbi Lynn
It has been quite a week. Meeting new members, hearing of a young boy needing emergency surgery and then put on life support, another boy needing surgery, a dear friends daughter died, another friend’s mother died, I met with two young couples getting married this summer, some people needed an ear as they contemplated life changes. And, as you do, our members have stepped up with food, and most importantly with compassion and offers of help. Thank you all.
This week as we open up the Book of Vayikra, we notice one of those anomalies in Torah that fascinate us. The aleph katan, the little aleph.
The word aleph means “to teach” implying we should all allow ourselves to be humble in our learning, throughout our lives. The greatest teacher in our midst, Moshe Rabbeinu, was known to be the most humble of men that ever lived. Any of us that have taken on learning as adults know how challenging – and humbling – it is to learn new and difficult material. Wrapping our tongues around new sounds, learning to lead prayers in Hebrew, struggling with new concepts is humbling to the core. Perhaps this is why Judaism demands we always be learning, always challenging ourselves; we should know to be humble in the face of all there is to learn and know. May this little aleph sustain us all as we help each other learn and grow in our wonderful Kolot Mayim community, no matter what challenges we face.
With great love,
Rabbi Lynn
I read this recently: The word spiritual contains the word ritual. How had I not seen this before?
As we read through the final words of the journey of Exodus/Shemot, I am struck by this juxtaposition of word within word. The last two books – Vaykhel/Pekude provide extraordinary detail about the construction of the Mishkan, the sanctuary where God will reside with the people Israel. This collection of souls are barely a people at this point, even having stood at Sinai in their joined numbers; they are still learning how to do this “people” thing. The half-shekel requirement is part of building that bond. Giving on a footing of equality helps to build a bond of community. The many rituals of Judaism are not outside spirituality – they are within its very essence – our very essence. As we prepare to leave Shemot and enter the pages of Vayikra/Leviticus – many, many rituals – we begin to glimpse this essence.
As we read through this week’s Torah reading, we cannot help but be struck by God’s wanting us to live with beauty – and precision. Everything in order, everything measured, everything in its place. B’Seder – even as we may use this phrase to mean all is okay, we are actually saying all is in order. Marie Kondo has nothing on Torah.
There is civil disobedience and there is just plain disobedience. This week, as we read Ki Tissa, we face into some of the precipitating factors that led the Israelite people to melt down gold and build the Golden Calf – and hedonistically dance around said calf in the absence of Moses. Moses was gone forty days and was just about to return to the people from Sinai, when God – from a vantage point we can only imagine – told Moses what “his” people were up to in his absence.
Last Shabbat we learned about the phrase, ”Humanly holy”; a phrase taught by the Kotzker Rabbi. The Kotzker taught that each of us holds a portion of the Mishkan, the Sanctuary built for God’s Presence on earth, in our hearts – and we create that mini-Mishkan by bringing holiness into our own choice about our behaviour, our daily humanity. Tetzaveh teaches one very specific way that idea of humanly holy is brought to bear here in Victoria.
Details, details, details – such is the stuff of life and certainly of Torah. We seemingly spend acres of ink – and time – to parse out what all these details signify, both in meaning and practice. I spoke on Shabbat about Torah being the social media of its day – where we learned together about our responsibilities as a people who said yes to the mitzvot and to God. We had much to learn, then and now, and the conversations continue.
The learning we engage in about how to best have a good life are a constant. How many conversations do we even have at home about housework? Who is responsible for what, when, and how? How do we handle our finances – separate accounts, joint accounts, pre-nups, savings, budgets? Who is cooking and who is shopping – and who is cleaning? Torah, the mitzvot ask another level of engagement and learning, for us as Jews: How do we navigate Jewish observance – or not – in our respective households?
Although I am not a lawyer, Mishpatim will always be a favourite and memorable Torah reading for me. This was the parashah of my conversion, my birth-day, if you will, and I hold each specific memory of that time in 1992 as a jewel in my mind.
Judaism is not anarchist by nature; our halachah recognizes our human tendency to chaos and reinforces at every turn order and stability, reliability and recognition, even as it is circumstantially pliable. I am certainly honoured to serve as rabbi of Kolot Mayim, but I am utterly honoured to be counted as a Jew. Thank you to all for your continued welcome.
Tazria
March 28, 2022 by Rabbi Lynn Greenhough • From the Rabbi's Desk Tags: tazria •
It is time for my annual sending of photos of our beautiful Victoria to my brother who lives in Calgary: sprays of pink cherry blossoms, blooming magnolias and clematis, all sent as counterbalance to the near dead looking grey soil of Ted’s backyard.
And yet. I know that spring will come to Calgary. I know that his backyard will be luxuriously thick with grass sooner than I could imagine. I am not quite sure how it happens but I have witnessed the revival of the earth in Calgary – it is a different miracle of welcome than what we are accustomed to here, with our quarter year of springtime.More