I remember being small and feeling safe beside my Opa, my grandfather, during Kabalat Shabat services in my home synagogue. I didn’t know what a sacred space is, but the chair on the first row, on the men’s side of the synagogue was our sacred space. I was happy there. There Judaism was planted in my heart.
My grandfather was the religion director of the synagogue, the “Gabay haGadol”. He carried one of the Torah scrolls to the new building of the synagogue, he wrote sermons when the rabbi wasn’t there, he coordinated aliot and other mitzvot during the service, and I was so proud to be his little girl. He never told us much about his life in Germany, but I knew he wanted to become a rabbi, but he never got the chance to study. His brother was a rabbi, and moved to the States before the war. My Opa was saved with his mother and sister by Rabbi Dr. Fritz Pinkuss, a German rabbi who studied with his brother and lived in Brazil. He came to London, a place that he learned to love, and then to Brazil.
Living in London I have somehow reconnected with my grandfather’s legacy. My presence has also brought him way back to a place he loved, and to the path that he dreamed of. Thursday was his 40th year yahrzeit, but he is still very much alive in my thoughts and in my heart, and I miss him so much!
Last week we began a new book, Vaykra full of offerings, sacrifices, and some difficult texts that challenge us. This week’s Sidrah includes a second Torah reading, Parah Adumah, about the red cow, sacrificed to clean the priests from the impurity of death. As a community, we begin our journey to Pesach, to freedom.
In this week’s parashah, Tzav, we read about the ordination of Aharon and his sons. Next week we will read about the death of Aharon’s sons. At the moment that God fills Aaron’s hands with abundance, appointing him as high-priest and his descendants as an eternal priesthood, his two eldest sons die when they attempt to offer incense with a flame brought from outside the newly dedicated sanctuary—a strange, uncommanded offering. Professor Marcus Mordecai Schwartz suggests that “all power, especially religious power, can be overwhelming and dangerous, and it needs to be contained in order to be safely employed for the betterment of the world.”
Aharon’s reaction is silence. A painful and dark silence.
“If death is tearing apart, the ritual binds us up and offers hope of restoration.” Teaches Rabbi Mychal Springer. The additional sidrah read during this shabbat, “the Parah Adumah, makes clear that contact with the dead disrupts our ability to function, and that we must engage in a ritual in order to be restored into society and into proper relationship with God.”
Power and death, two extremes of life changing events which need a ceremony, a ritual to separate mundane and sacred, impure and pure. But after the ritual, a new beginning and a new path is opened before us. Life is renewed.
“This Shabbat is also Shabbat Mevarekhim Hahodesh, the Shabbat on which we say the blessing for the coming month (now the month of Nisan) which begins in the next week. We pray that our lives will be renewed. In a sense, the new month reminds us all to focus on the possibility of the new heart and the new spirit. The announcement of the new moon helps us to recognize the liminal spaces in which we live, waking us from any complacency, and helps stir our yearning for a renewed heart. The prayer reminds us to ask for that renewal, to know that it is always possible.”[1]
Such renewal brings us the experiences from throughout our lives. We bring our loved ones and the imprinted lessons that they left in our souls. Aharon brought the pain of losing his sons, the knowledge of his responsibility in his role of High Priest. Each of my friends, who are being ordained soon, bring their own losses, lessons and happiness with them to this new time of their lives. I bring my grandfather’s legacy with me.
Once, when I was little, coming back from shul, my grandfather told me: “There is a woman rabbi in the States!”. I don’t remember the rest of the conversation. However, this memory assures me that wherever he is, his hands are over my head, and I am being consecrated each and every day of my path to becoming a rabbi.
May we all live the dreams and maintain alive the teachings and memories of our loved ones in everything that we do.
Shabbat Shalom.
[1] Rabbi Mychal Springer
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