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by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar
What follows is the d’var Torah I delivered last Friday night.
We always love for you to join us at either or both of our Shabbat services, Friday night with music, a d’var Torah, and dinner; Saturday morning with prayer, Torah discussion, and lunch. All are welcome.
This week, aligned with Eli’s Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish community all around the world begins to read the third of five books of Torah: The English name for that book is Leviticus, as in the Levites — the persons, the tribesmen, whose task it was to tend to the sacred work of the Tabernacle, the portable sanctuary that traveled with the Israelites in the wilderness, reminding them of God’s presence within them.
But the Hebrew name for this third book of Torah, also the name of this week’s Torah portion, the first portion from this book, is a bit simpler: Vayikra, which means simply, called/God called. God called to Moses.
The notion of a call is centrally present in Jewish life. Jewish holidays are called mikra’ei kodesh — holy callings. Passover is zman heruteinu, mikra kodesh — the time of our freedom, a holy calling; Sukkot is zman simhateinu, mikra kodesh, the time of our joy, a holy calling, and so forth — as though, as Rabbi Art Green teaches us, these holidays are calling out to us in some way, to bring to life different experiences. The call to experience a sense of freedom, the call to experience a sense of joy. As it says in the Book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, to everything there is a season.
Only, according to Jewish tradition, we don’t have to wait for these signature seasons, these signature moments, to tune ourselves to the call.
My teacher, Rabbi Jacob Staub, cites the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism, for the teaching that “There is a bat kol (a divine voice) that perpetually ‘sounds’ — calls out — from Mount Horeb (Sinai), saying: ‘Return, you wayward children.'” That’s all of us. This call, the mystics teach “is the cause of our yearning for the Infinite: However stuck we are in our wayward ways, there is a whisper, a subliminal vibration that stirs within us and moves us to yearn to get closer to the Holy One.” “The call continues to ‘sound’ today,” he teaches, “at every moment. The variable,” he says, “is whether we are open to hearing it.”
Jewish life is filled with such calls. In fact, I sometimes translate the word Mitzvah, as in Bar Mitzvah, as a sacred call of Jewish life. Remember that to become Bar Mitzvah, as we’ll say more about tomorrow, means to take on a new adult relationship to the mitzvot, to the sacred callings of Jewish tradition, recognitions that each moment in life potentially carries with it opportunities to respond to a call, a call to give tz’dakah, a portion of our earnings to those in need, a call to pass by a mezuzah, a reminder of our love for the source from which we flow, the call to honor Shabbat, to give ourselves permission to slow down, to just live.
Jewish tradition suggests that the stakes of such calls are not low; the very state of the world depends on our response. As I share often, a Jewish tradition has it that when the world was created, when God said, vayehi or, let there be light, the light was so powerful that it had to be encased in vessels, caskets. But so powerful was the light that when the vessels reached the space of creation, the space of the world, the vessels shattered, and sparks of light were scattered all over the universe.
“That is why we were created,” tradition says, as composed by anthologist Howard Schwartz, “to gather the sparks, no matter where they are hidden.” These sparks are calling out to us to be released. And through our kavanah, through our intentionality, through our actions, these sparks are released. A kind exchange with a neighbor, a blessing over our food, lighting the candles of Shabbat; each of these can redeem a spark, returning them to their source. “When the task of gathering the sparks nears completion,” tradition says, “God will hasten the arrival of the final redemption, collecting what remains of the holy sparks that went astray.”
In addition to the calls present throughout life, we sometimes need to attune ourselves to a call more fundamental than that. In the third chapter of Genesis, we read that Adonai, God, “vayikra” called to, “the human being, and said to him, ‘ayeka?'” meaning, “where are you?”
To whom is this call extended? Well, on the face of it, this call is to Adam, after he and Eve have gone astray from the one thing asked of them in the Garden of Eden.
Digging deeper, the call is to all of us — “where are we in our journeys?” a call asks. Where do we find ourselves, and how are we called to respond?
In my best moments, as I encounter challenges throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the year, I ask myself, where am I in this moment? How am I called to respond? — an active response, a passive response, patience, silence?
In my not so best moments, I don’t have the wherewithal to ask that question, I’m not able to attune myself to any call, I just act and react on whim.
As Rabbi Shefa Gold writes, in response to this Torah portion, Vayikra, and God called, “So often the complications of life seem to draw us away from the call. We become alienated, distracted, complacent, blind to what is essential; deaf to the music at the core of silence; numb to the mystery that dwells at the heart of this life. Our daily struggles sometimes close us off from the flow of the Great Love.”
“The blessing of Vayikra, God called,” she writes, “is the call to come into harmony, balance, connection and intimacy with the God who has freed us for this love.”
Easier said than done right? Rabbi Gold talks about listening to the music at the core of silence. My teacher, Barbara Breitman, says this sort of listening “isn’t listening to the audible, the voice from the mountaintop — it’s to the inaudible, the unpronounceable, the ineffable. The call ringing out from the source of life, through our souls, into the world.”
Listening to that call, she says, “is the listening that requires us to quiet the noise in our minds, listening that involves both the outer and the inner ear” — the inner heart.
May we all find ourselves able to attune to this call.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi K.
