The Mishkan, My Congressman & My Congregant

“Everything needs money, but money isn’t everything.”

This sentiment is very true of the Mishkan project - a fundraising effort so successful, they even raised too much. The project, however, was about much more than money.

”V’yikchu li terumah mei’et kol ish asher yidvenu libo tikechu et terumati – The children of Israel shall bring me an offering: of every man whose heart prompts him to give.” (Shemot 25:2)

Contributions were critical, but just as important was “nediv leiv.”

Rashi says that nediv leiv means to have a generous spirit and goodwill. The Mishkan was a voluntary project as opposed to the half shekel “tax” that everyone contributed. Malbim adds that the voluntary nature of the Mishkan donations relayed the key principle that every contribution counted – even “a simple thread.” Giving was important, but there is the act of giving and there is the heart of giving.

Researchers have studied why people donate. The reasons for charitable giving fall into three broad categories. There is the “purely altruistic” – I donate because I value the social good done by the charity. The “impurely altruistic” – I donate because I extract value from knowing I contribute to the social good for the charity. And the “not-at-all altruistic,” I donate because I want to show off how rich I am.

Giving is a response to a need. The Mishkan teaches us the importance of nediv lev, the importance of feeling good about giving and the value of every single gift.

I believe there is another aspect to nediv leiv – leadership.

The word “nediv” means great one or leader. (See Tehillim 113:8.) In constructing the Mishkan, leaders were needed. Who is a leader? Anyone who steps up to support the effort. Contributing to the Mishkan project was more than giving material support to a project. It was a mitzvah. A mitzvah means commandment, but it can also mean connection. Donating to the Mishkan meant standing up to align oneself in a mission.

Our giving at any level should be generous and heartfelt, and it is also a statement of stepping up to lead and connect with the cause we support.

This week, I attended the AIPAC Congressional Summit in Washington, DC. AIPAC is a “national movement of pro-Israel Americans” dedicated to “keeping Israel safe and America strong” by “encouraging bipartisan support for the US-Israel relationship, supporting pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans, and lobbying for pro-Israel policies.” It is impossible to ignore that all this involves money. At the same time, we also need nediv lev - spirit, generosity, and leadership – in our efforts to support Israel.

I led lobbying meetings with my congressman, Rep. Laura Gillen, and my congregant, Rep. Dan Goldman. Both are emerging as stalwart supporters and champions for the US-Israel relationship and support policies that matter to the Jewish community such as fighting Jew-hatred. They are contributing to the fight for Israel with their enthusiastic support, voices, and votes. That’s nediv lev.

One of the most popular speakers was Senator John Fetterman, whose support for Israel since October 7 has been ironclad. He speaks from the heart. He supports Israel because in the battle of good versus evil, you must support good. Forget about the “think pieces” and complex geopolitical calculations. Those are all simply big words diverting people from the truth. Fetterman’s energy and outspoken passion – sadly rare in his party – have literally made him a rock star in the pro-Israel community. (People were literally jumping on their seats to catch a glimpse.)

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson put his support for Israel in very straightforward – and Biblical terms. He invoked God’s promise to Avraham, “I will bless those that bless you” (Bereishit 12:3) and said, “Let’s be on the right side of that one!”

These non-Jewish supporters of Israel express nediv lev – leadership that comes from the heart.

It is easy to be turned off by politics, but this week in Washington, I was thinking about our obligation to be generous supporters and leaders for the causes that matter most to us. This means contributing our time, our money, our energy, our voices, and our leadership.

We must support our Mishkan, our shul.
We must support those in need.
We must support Israel – including pro-Israel politics.

Our support must be accompanied by a nediv lev mindset of each and every gift counting as we give with purpose, goodwill, enthusiasm, and leadership.

Orange in the New Black

How did black become the color of mourning?

Ancient Romans wore a dark toga, called the toga pulla, as a symbol of mourning. This likely influenced later Western mourning practices. Queen Victoria’s prolonged mourning for Prince Albert in 1861 helped solidify black as the standard mourning color in Britain and beyond. Religions viewing black as a color of solemnity and seriousness also contributed to black as the color of mourning.

While Jews don’t have the custom to wear black, Ramban quotes an unknown Midrash that says Moshe told Yehoshua to wear black as a sign of mourning. There are also several Talmudic statements about death and wearing black. So why isn’t wearing black a Jewish mourning custom? Rabbi Yechiel Michel Tucazinsky explains that once non-Jews adopted the practice of wearing black as a sign of mourning, Jews declined to embrace it as a custom. In the end, it remains a sartorial decision.

I believe black being associated with death is about emotion and not color. Black is the absence of light and color, which represent life. When we encounter death, we confront blackness and darkness. The Bible uses the expression “choshech v’tzalmavet – darkness and shadow of death” (Tehillim 107:10, Iyov 3:5). Death envelopes us with feelings of darkness regardless of color.

Today, we feel black because of the color orange. Orange is the color of our mourning with the confirmation of the murder of Ariel and Kfir Bibas and as we await final word on their mother Shiri.

For more than sixteen months, the Bibas family and those orange-haired boys became a symbol of the barbarism and evil of Hamas and their partners. The overwhelming horror of October 7 – over 1,200 murdered and 250 kidnapped – made individual stories necessary to focus our collective grief, outrage, and resolve. There were many powerful individual stories that we followed, and each of them is a profile in courage. At the same time, there was something about a heroic mother protecting her two little, easily recognizable children that captured our imagination. For Hamas to kidnap them – or dare harm them – galvanized us to stand up for them and all the hostages and has enabled so many to pay such a steep price to try and defeat our enemies.

And now, the worst has come to pass.

Seth Mandel wrote how this conflict has confronted us with so much disappointment. The murder of the Bibas boys, however, is especially painful.

“Kfir’s face became a symbol of the conflict because it represented a line that had been crossed and cannot be uncrossed…Kfir became a symbol because he is the answer to every relevant question about this conflict. His case is the war boiled down to its essence. Kfir is the dividing line. In a better world, there’d be no one standing on the wrong side of it.”

The murder of Ariel and Kfir is an emotional – and maybe strategic – turning point. Liel Leibowitz noted:

“The footage of a dead Jewish baby returning home to Israel for burial compels us to tell the truth: The assertion that most, or even many, Gazans are innocents hijacked by their tyrannical leaders is a polite fiction…Like Abraham, our shared Patriarch, we, too, struggled to find the righteous among the wicked…Israel’s neighbors to the south had all the opportunities anyone could reasonably ask for to resist, repent, recalculate course. And at every turn, they returned to the singular idea that gives them life and meaning: Kill the Jews, all of them, gleefully…And the lesson we must learn is simple. It comes down to one word: enough.”

The murder of Ariel and Kfir is more than another display of murderous terror. It is a jarring confrontation with the reality of the pure evil of our enemies and how so much of the rest of the world does nothing. Seeing orange envelopes us in “choshech v’tzalmavet - darkness and shadow of death.” Orange is the new black.

How do we respond? Each person will respond differently. At the same time, Judaism is about action, about going forward.

Orange must be the color of our resolve.

In May of 1957 fedayeen terrorists entered the village of Kfar Chabad in Israel. They made their way to the synagogue of the local agricultural school, where the school's young students were in the midst of the evening prayers, and raked the room with gunfire. Five children and one teacher were killed and another ten children wounded. Despair and dejection pervaded the village. There were some who saw what happened as a sign that their dream of a peaceful life in Israel was premature. The idea of disbanding the community was raised. The village was slowly dying. The Chasidim sent a telegram to the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York and eagerly awaited a response. Five days later, a response via telegram came from the Rebbe.  It had just three words: “Be’hemshech ha-binyan tinacheimu - By your continued building will you be comforted.”

Israel is continuing to grow and build.

This week, a delegation of American Jewish leaders visited Kibbutz Nir Oz, the home of the Bibas family as well as Oded Lifshitz, 83, who was murdered over a year ago and whose remains were returned this week. They encountered a carpet of green as the wheat and potato fields that were trampled by terrorists on 10/7 have since been replanted and are growing anew. Kibbutz member Nir Metzger explained, “It took us a lot of time to go back to work in these fields. The war was going on… then we weren't allowed to enter these fields. But the minute that they had enough security here, we were already inside, and they allowed us to go into the fields bit by bit.”

Gadi Mozes, 80, one of the leaders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, was kidnapped on October 7. As he was brought back into Israel from Gaza last month, he asked the convoy he was riding in to slow down so he could look at the fields and vowed to rebuild the kibbutz.

We are reeling from seeing orange and feeling “choshech v’tzalmavet.” There is no magic formula for comfort. At the same time, we must try and keep in mind some basic facts. Jews move on. Our enemies hate us. We will fight back. We will keep building. We will win.

The Epilogue to the Decalogue: Judaism is Like a Ramp

Hey, Jews! You just received the Torah. What are you going to do next?

Well, the answer – unlike Jalen Hurts after winning the Super Bowl – is not, “Going to Disney World!”

The experience at Sinai was a big deal. The Children of Israel became a free nation upon leaving Egypt. They became Jews at Sinai when God spoke to them. That’s why the last verse of Parshat Yitro, just a few verses after the last commandment, seems so anticlimactic.

וְלֹא תַעֲלֶה בְמַעֲלֹת עַל מִזְבְּחִי אֲשֶׁר לֹא תִגָּלֶה עֶרְוָתְךָ עָלָיו:

 “Do not ascend My altar by steps, that your nakedness may not be exposed upon it.” (Shemot 20:23)

What altar? Why a ramp? What’s wrong with steps? How can we understand what I call this “Epilogue to the Decalogue?”

The simple understanding of the verse is that when walking on stairs, there is a chance for an immodest display of the body. Remember that they wore robes (like dresses) and might reveal too much leg or the like on the steps. That’s all fine based on the fashion of those times and the focus on modesty during worship. At the same time, there must be something deeper being conveyed.

The key message of the ramp is found in how it differs from steps. When walking up or down steps, one can comfortably stop. The steps provide a platform of sorts on which one doesn’t face any gravitational pull to keep going down nor exert oneself to remain in place. A ramp always requires effort. One can’t just remain in place on a ramp without fighting the gravitational pull downwards. One has to climb or else be pulled down.

The ramp teaches us that to be Jewish is to remain in motion, to exert ourselves, and to be ready for what comes next. The Torah was given to the Jews as an eternal covenant, but that doesn’t mean it is frozen and all we do is stand still. We need to keep striving to confront an ever-changing reality with effort and creativity.

Rabbi Norman Lamm wrote about the tension between the old and the new in an essay entitled “The Future of Creativity in Jewish Law and Thought” (Seventy Faces, Volume Two, pp. 3-16). He notes society’s fascination with change and all things that are new. Think of how we greet each other. Sometimes, we’ll say, “Hello,” or “How are you?” Of course, many of us simply say, “What’s new?” We are always looking for whatever is new. Rabbi Lamm calls this “neophilia,” love of the new.

At the same time, Judaism is based on tradition. We don’t just change things. In a sense, Judaism has “neophobia,” a fear of the new. Rabbi Moshe Sofer even proclaimed “Chadash asur min ha-Torah – that which is new is forbidden by the Torah.” When we talk about a brighter Jewish future, we say, “chadeish yameinu k’kedem – make things new like they were previously.” (Eicha 5:21) Even to go forward, Jews go backwards!

Judaism’s veneration of the past is balanced by our belief that Judaism must remain fresh and new. The Midrash (Sifrei Devarim 58) teaches that we should experience Judaism as if it is new each day. Rabbi Tzadok HaKohein of Lublin (Tzidkat HaTzaddik #227) taught the Jewish soul is characterized by chiddush, creativity and newness. The soul is referred to as neshama which is similar to the word neshima, breath. We call Jewish spirit ruach, which is also the word for wind or air. Just like a person needs to breathe air in and out constantly, Judaism and the Jewish soul need vitality. Reb Tzadok writes:

“This is the power of the neshama that it breathes a new divine spirit into the heart at all times by means of the mind’s chiddushim (new insights) and wisdom, telling it to perceive at all times new and vital spirituality.”

Rabbi Lamm fears Jews may be letting neophobia overwhelm our need to remain creative. He tells of a learned Rabbi presenting several practical solutions to contemporary challenges to a senior colleague for his approval and endorsement. The senior colleague responded, “I’ve studied the issues, and I agree with you, but I must withhold my support because I never heard my own teacher address these issues.”

We have a glorious tradition to use as a basis to continue climbing the ramp and not get stuck on the steps of our ancestors. As Yogi Berra used to say, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Rabbi Lamm writes: “In some circles, anything new is looked upon with dread…If this happens, our whole intellectual mesorah from Sinai down will be derailed…”

The tradition of Sinai is one of addressing the issues as they appear, to utilize the wellspring of the past, to be inspired by the Divine revelation of the Ten Commandments and all that followed, and to then address the real-world concerns of today which are ever changing.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik once gave a shiur. Of course, it was brilliant and innovative. Someone in the audience was surprised at some of the presentation and asked the Rav, But Rabbi Soloveitchik, what is your source?” The Rav answered, “A clear and logical mind.”

The majesty and glory of the Ten Commandments launched the Jewish nation. The epilogue to the Decalogue represents an appropriate strategy for the Jews beginning right after Sinai. It is the proper strategy for us to utilize as we strive for a meaningful relationship with God in a complex world where we think we have the answers, as we seek meaning in confusing and challenging times, and we creatively face up to the questions of today.

We cannot be afraid of proposing new and different ideas while remaining true to our tradition. A slippery slope requires sturdy shoes. We just need to keep climbing the ramp.

Sing; Sing a Song; Sing Out Loud; Sing Az Yashir

Sing. Sing a song. Sing out loud. Sing out strong.

Do you have a song in your head right now? These are lyrics from a 1971 song written for Sesame Street that was made famous in 1973 by the Carpenters. Some songs get stuck in our head – whether we like it or not. That’s how music works.

In Judaism, some songs become so popular that they become ingrained in our religious consciousness. Think about the classic Kiddush melody composed by the 19^th century composer Louis Lewandowski. We all know it. (And, now, it will be stuck in your head.)

Several years ago, I organized a weekday morning Bar Mitzvah. Many of the family members were not regular shul attendees. I offered the men a chance to put on tefillin if they didn’t bring their own. One of the male relatives had not donned tefillin in decades. I announced pages regularly so everyone could follow, and I tried to incorporate what I thought were familiar tunes. Before the Amidah, I sang the well-known “Tzur Yisrael” melody composed a century ago. All of a sudden, the 75 year-old man who hadn’t been in synagogue regularly in years was singing at the top of his lungs.

Music is the language of the Jewish soul.  

This Shabbat is known as “Shabbat Shirah.” Song features prominently in the Parsha as the Jews sing Az Yashir, the Song at the Sea, after their miraculous salvation. In the Haftorah, we hear Shirat Devorah, Devorah’s song.

Az Yashir has become part of the daily Shacharit service. The Chafetz Chaim (Mishnah Berurah OC:51) notes that when we sing this song, it should be “b’simcha,” with joy, and we should imagine ourselves as if we are actually crossing the split sea at that moment.

Why is this song so important? Why are we encouraged to sing? Why are we meant to go back in time and reexperience the song?

Az Yashir provides a needed daily dose of song, joyously connects us to our past, and encourages the optimism that is critical to Jewish thriving.

1) As Jews, we need a daily dose of song.

Song inspires, entertains, and adds joy. People remember songs more easily than words. The daily singing of Az Yashir encourages more song and more singing by more people.

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once noted that when two people talk at the same time, it is just noise, but when two people sing at the same time, it is a harmony. It is for this reason that Az Yashir occupies such a prominent role in our daily prayers. It’s a reminder and motivator that we need to capture the joyous optimism of song and strive for a musical and passionate Judaism, one in which our entire community sings together.

2) As Jews, we need a daily dose of connecting with our past.

Az Yashir was not just the Jews singing then. It’s a call to keep singing and pass the song on to the next generation.

The first verse of the song ends with the word “leimor - saying.” Leimor usually means that the words will be repeated to others. Here, however, everyone – Moshe and the people – were all singing the song together. Who else needs to repeat these words? Who else needs to hear the message?  

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev explained that the Jews were looking to pass on this majestic experience to future generations. They were, in effect, singing to us so that we, in turn, will sing like they did. The song is not just sung. It continues. It reverberates. It gets picked up by the next generation and the next and the next.

Anyone familiar with “This is the song that never ends…” sung by Shari Lewis on the album Lamb Chop's Sing-Along, Play-Along? (You can thank me later.)

“This is the song that doesn't end
Yes, it goes on and on, my friends
Some people started singing it not knowing what it was
And they′ll continue singing it forever just because…”

The Jews knew why they were singing. They kept singing so the next generation would keep singing, and they, too, would, hopefully, know why. Even if there shall arise a generation that doesn’t know why, they’ll sing it as well.

3) As Jews, we need a dose of optimism and faith that things will work out.

Some of the Jews were ready and waiting for an opportunity to sing. Miriam was ready for Az Yashir. After the nations sings, Miriam leads the women in singing and dancing with tambourines. Rashi wonders where Miriam got these tambourines. Why would they have been on the packing list for leaving Egypt? Why were the women so ready to sing and dance?

Faith and optimism.

Miriam, in a sense, was born ready. Her worldview was one of optimism and faith that all will be fine and in accordance with God’s plan. She prepared the women in advance and was, accordingly, ready to exult. Miriam modeled the faith found in music.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote: “Faith is more like music than like science. Science analyses, music integrates. And as music connects note to note, so faith connects episode to episode, life to life, age to age in a timeless melody that breaks into time…Faith teaches us to hear the music beneath the noise…The history of the Jewish spirit is written in its songs. The words do not change, but each generation needs its own melodies.

“Rabbi Akiva says, ‘Sing every day, sing every day.’” (Sanhedrin 99a) Are we ready to sing every day?

These days, we are bombarded by messages of how difficult things are. While we remain realistic, we sing Az Yahir each day to insert some song – some soul, some sense of Jewish eternity, and some faith – into our lives.  

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczna Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto, suggested an exercise to get us singing and to capture the spiritual benefits of song.

“Take a musical phrase, turn your face to the wall, or simply close your eyes and remind yourself that you stand in the presence of God. With your heart breaking open, you are here to pour out your soul to God with music and melody, emerging from the depths of your heart. Inevitably, you will begin to feel the emergence of your spirit in great joy and delight. At first it was you singing to your soul, to wake her up, but slowly you will feel your soul singing her own song.” (Bnei Machshavah Tovah #18)

Sing. Sing a song. Sing out loud. Sing out strong. Maybe Sesame Street had the right idea.