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by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar
I write on Day 657 of the war that started on October 7, 2023, a war that feels more interminable and heartbreaking by the day. At this point, nearly 75% of Israelis, “including 60% of people who voted for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, back an agreement with Hamas that would release all the hostages at once in exchange for an end to the Gaza war.” I pray this comes to pass.
I recommend this piece by David Horovitz, the founding editor of The Times of Israel, a centrist Israeli publication. In it, he is wrestling with the heartbreak of what he describes as “a war that began because of the absolute imperative to destroy Hamas’s military machine and get back the hostages [that] has metastasized into an Israeli military takeover of most of Gaza, overseen by a government dependent on the support of would-be permanent occupiers of Gaza, with some 45 soldiers killed since the last ceasefire collapsed, and hundreds of Gazans dying in search of food.”
As most readers of this column will know, Israel — the people, the land, the country — is something that I hold dear, and so, as with the United States, I pray it always pursues the best of who it can be. I pray it does not allow its enemies to let it lose hold of its moral bearings. Israel has achieved significant military victories over the course of this war — against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, all enemies that would see Israel destroyed and who, in many cases, put their own people in harm’s way in the meantime. At a certain point, these military victories need to be paired with laying a diplomatic foundation to the path for peace. While Hamas will surely be no partner for peace, Israel will need to find partners among the Palestinians who can be. The toll that this war is taking — on Israeli society, on the hostages, and on the Palestinian population — cannot endure.
I have been so heartened by internal conversations I’ve seen in our own community at Society Hill Synagogue wrestling with these challenging matters, heartbreaking as they may be. I have seen true leadership across the spectrum among our volunteers engaging in hard conversations about how Society Hill Synagogue can engage with what is happening in Israel, Gaza, and across the Middle East, in ways that respect our connection to Israel while honoring a diversity of perspectives regarding the conflict, and I have been heartened by their work. I’m honored to be part of this community.
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Meanwhile, I wanted to share a little bit about what we studied this past Shabbat as part of our Saturday morning service.
In the Torah we reached Parshat Pinhas, specifically the portion of Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers, in which the Israelites receive commandments about the specific offerings or sacrifices (korbanot in Hebrew, from the root which means “drawing close”, as in drawing close to God) that they are expected to bring in association with the rhythms of their year: daily offerings, weekly offerings on Shabbat, monthly offerings on Rosh Hodesh (the New Moon), and annual festival offerings on Pesah, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot (and its concluding celebration Shemini Atzeret).
We observed that while we might think of the sacrificial offerings as a wholly antiquated notion, relegated exclusively to Torah portions we do not otherwise invoke, in fact, the specific verses that we were called upon chant last week have we become a regular part of our liturgy: the musaf (“additional”) service traditionally chanted after the Torah service at every Shabbat and holiday, quotes directly from this parashah, citing the specific verses associated with the holiday or Shabbat we are celebrating.
This past Shabbat, I asked our Torah study participants what meaning we might make in modern times of engagement with such an ancient practice, even if only verbally.
Participants shared the profound effects of translating what once was a physical/material practice to a spiritual realm, while also emphasizing the role of keeping memories alive as a means of keeping a people vibrant.
We studied Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who cites the interpretation of a phrase related to sacrifices in the Book of Leviticus: “When a person offers of you an offering to the LORD…” “The order of the words is unexpected,” he writes. “It would be more natural to say, ‘When one of you brings an offering.’ From this, the Jewish mystics concluded that the real offering is ‘of you,’ that is, of self. The animals were the outer form of the command, but its essential core is the inward act of self-sacrificing love.That is why, after the destruction of the Temple, prayer could substitute for sacrifice.”
We further studied Rabbi Daniel Landes, who observed that “The korban is an expression of life’s finitude, an encounter with mortality, a forced admission of how fleeting life really is. The priests of old would lay hands upon the sacrifice, then (in some cases) say a vidui (‘a confession’), and then sprinkle or dash the blood on the altar, as if to say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ But,” he continued, “even as sacrifice allows us to encounter human finitude it also draws us near to infinity. The korban allows for transformation: the offering and the lifting up of the merely material into the spiritual. From the most base and mundane parts of existence, one brings a gift that finds its way to God.”
From an ancient practice to a contemporary translation of coming close to God, we pray we honor the best of that spirit.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi K.
