Blog - Torah Insights

Love in Leviticus 

The third book of the Torah, the book of Leviticus, focuses on the laws of offerings in the temple, ritual purity, priests, and ritual law. It appears to be a book focusing less on love and connection and more on obligation and service. 

Yet, the opening word of the book tells a different story. 

The third book begins: 

And He called to Moses, and the Lord spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying,

Rashi points out that this verse is unique; the Torah usually tells us that G-d spoke to Moses, but here the Torah adds an  something additional detail, , namely, that G-d first "called" to Moses, and only then "and the Lord spoke to him": 

Rashi explains that calling Moses represents love and affection:  

All forms of God's communication with Moses, whether they were in a form of speaking (וַיְדַבֵּר), in the form of saying (וַיֹאמֶר), or in the form of commanding (צַו), were preceded by a call (קְרִיאָה), an expression of affection.

One may view the Torah's commandments as "service" to G-d - there is something that G-d desires, and we are called upon to fulfill his will. Rashi reminds us that the Torah is an expression of G-d's love toward us. When G-d asks us to do something, He is asking us to seize an opportunity to connect.

Just as G-d’s call to Moses expressed love and connection, so too, within our own relationships, a request can be more than a practical need—it can be a call for closeness. When someone asks something of us, it may reflect a deeper longing to be seen, valued, or understood. And when we ask of others, if we do so with sensitivity, humility, and care, we mirror the divine model: using speech not just to convey a need, but to build a bridge between souls.  

Just as G-d calls us, we, too, call to G-d. 

In the parlance of the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud, the Hebrew word for reading the Torah is Kriah, which means both reading and calling. When we read the words of Torah, we are not merely reading G-d's communication to us, but rather, we feel His love for us, and in turn, we "call" to Him, expressing our desire to connect. 

As The Alter Rebbe, founder of the Chabad movement, writers in Tanya: 

Torah study is referred to as "calling" . This phrase means that in Torah study, one calls G‑d to come to him, so to speak, as a man calls to his friend to come to him, or as a child will call his father to come and join him and not to part from him. (Tanya, Chapter 37)

Unlike the ancient Greek name Leviticus, the Hebrew name of the third of the Torah is Vayikra, "And He called"; reminding us of G-d love for us and His deep desire for connection to us. 

The Pekudei Paradox 

Many spiritual seekers don’t like Judaisim. 

They want to transcend, to free themselves of the trappings of the mundane, and to connect to the infinite. They see Judaisim as being very technical, regulating precisely how and when to perform the Torah’s commandments. 

Are they right? 

They are correct in that they identify the core paradox of Judaism. 

Judaisim is not about transcending the finite to connect to the infinite, nor is it about being grounded in the real world. The paradox of Judaism is the realization that the essence can be found only in the paradoxical fusion of the infinite within finite space and reality. 

The Midrash teaches that the reason and motivation for creation is that “the Holy One, blessed be He, desired to have an home in the lower realms”, yes the infinite, unfathomable G-d, desired specifically to be in the “lower realms”, in the most physical, tangible, finite space. The same is true with the Divine commandments, which is the Divine will being fulfilled through specific actions, performed in a specific time and place.

This paradox is expressed in the final portion of the book of Exodus, Pikudei. Pikudei begins with an accounting of the precise number of all the material used to construct the tabernacle (“These are the numbers of the Mishkan, the Mishkan of the Testimony, which were counted at Moses' command”), and concludes with the description of the Divine presence dwelling in the tabernacle (“And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the Mishkan.”)

The Hebrew word Pekudei itself captures this paradox. Pekudei means ”{counted} numbers”, a number is a defined entity, yet Pikudei also means intimacy and union (as in the Talmudic statement “a man has a duty to be intimate {Lifkod} with his wife”). For indeed, the deepest love is expressed not by sharing words and ideas, but by a physical union. The deepest bond can not be expressed by a spiritual connection, but rather by a physical action. 

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe, Likkutei Sichos 26, Pekudei 2

Ideal Vision vs. Real Life

The world we live in is inherently imperfect and often falls short of the ideal visions we create in our minds.

Often, the fantasy of a vacation, an experience, or a relationship is far more pristine than the realities of real life, where we struggle through tension and distraction in order to achieve moments of joy and connection. Often, the perfect picture we imagined distracts us from appreciating the blessings we have.   

After two portions dedicated to G-d conveying to Moses the commandment to build the Tabernacle and its furnishing, in this week’s portion, the Torah repeats every detail and tells us how Moses conveyed the commandment to the Jewish people who fulfilled the commandment and actually constructed the temple.

Why the repetition? The Torah could have avoided tens of verses by stating that Moses repeated the commandment to the Jewish people, who then fulfilled all that they were commanded to do. 

The repetition points to the tension between the ideal and the actual. 

The Torah is highlighting the critical importance, not the perfect temple Moses heard about on Mount Sinai, but rather the actual temple built by people in the real world. Our efforts to perform good deeds are imperfect, flawed, and complicated, yet that is precisely where G-d chooses to dwell. For G-d wants a home not in the perfect, ideal, heaven, but rather in the flawed and imperfect earth. 

Is Purim the Greatest Holiday? 

Purim is a unique holiday in many ways, which leads to the question, is Purim greater or less significant than all other holidays? On the one hand, it seems that the joy of Purim is greater than other holidays, as the Talmud states, "Rava said: A person is obligated to become intoxicated with wine on Purim until he is so intoxicated that he does not know how to distinguish between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai". On the other hand, Purim is the only holiday when we do not recite the Hallel, {Hallel is the song of praise from King David's Psalms recited on every major holiday}.

Why, in fact, don't we say Hallel on Purim, asks the Talmud, and offers two answers: 

The first answer is: "Hallel is not recited on a miracle that occurred outside the Land of Israel". 

The Talmudic sage Rava offers another answer: "The reading of the Megilla itself is an act of reciting Hallel." In other words, Rava fundamentally disagrees with the first answer; while the first answer says that Hallel is not recited, Rava argues that we do indeed recite praise to G-d, it's just that the praise is offered in a different format; instead of reciting Hallel we read the story of the scroll of Esther. 

The Talmud states, ״One who reads Hallel every day is tantamount to one who curses and blasphemes God. {He displays contempt for Hallel by not reserving it for days on which miracles occurred}". That's because although we understand that the natural order itself is also an expression of the Divine, nevertheless, Hallel is recited only for a miracle where the hand of G-d is revealed and obvious. 

Purim is a unique holiday. There were no obvious miracles, only a series of coincidences over more than a decade that orchestrated the salvation of the Jewish people. The Talmud, therefore, states that one opinion is that we do not recite Hallel upon the Purim miracle as it occurred outside of the land of Israel, the place where G-d’s providence is obvious and palpable.

Rava offers a deeper explanation. Rave says that reading the Megillah is in itself a form of Hallel. Rave tells us that while it is true that the miracle of Purim occurred outside of Israel, both literally and figuratively, while it is true that, at first glance, the presence of G-d is not indisputably obvious, nevertheless, "The reading of the Megilla itself is an act of reciting Hallel". When we read the Megillah and adapt its perspective, we learn to see the story, we discover the common theme that threads together the seemingly unrelated events. When we read the Megillah and internalize its message, we learn to see the presence of G-d within nature. The Megillah itself triggers the requirement to say  Hallel and also serves as a distinctive form of Hallel for the unique miracle that is clothed within nature. 

The ramifications of Rava's perspective are profound. The joy of Purim is greater than the joy of all other holidays, because celebrating Purim and reading the Megillah empower us to feel the presence of G-d, not only in Israel but also throughout the entire world; not only in the extraordinary but also in the ordinary, not only in the apparently holy, but also in the seemingly mundane.   

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe, Purim 5722  

Finding Fulfillment 

The second half of this week's portion addresses in great detail the seven days of Miluim, the inauguration and initiation of the priests to the temple service. After reading about the commandment to build the temple in the last portion and reading about the commandment to fashion beautiful garments for the priests in the first half of this week's portion, the Torah describes the process by which the priests were initiated into the priesthood, a process that took seven days, requiring unique offerings and services. 

The Hebrew word for the inauguration, Miluim, literally means to fill. The verse states "and you {Moses} shall fill the hand of Aaron and his sons", and refers to the offerings as "fulfillment", and the seven days as days of "fulfillment". What exactly does "fulfillment" mean in the context of inauguration, and why does the Torah use this unusual expression for the inauguration? 

The Kabbalists explain that the seven days of inauguration were designed to "fulfill" and "correct" the seven days of creation we read about in the book of Genesis. G-d created a beautiful world, but unfortunately the human being did not engage with the world in a wholesome manner, he defied the will of his creator by following the temptation of the tree of knowledge. He was therefore expelled from the tranquility and innocence of Eden.  

The construction of the temple was the opportunity to fill the world with what it was lacking from the time of the seven days of creation. The introduction of the temple, symbolizing the spiritual relationship with G-d, allowed a person to feel fulfilled. No amount of material possessions or pleasures can bring the person fulfillment, for the physical is inherently temporary and fleeting; it cannot confer a sense of fullness and permanence which it does not possess. Only by building a home for G-d, by filling the material objects and experiences with spiritual and holy meaning, can a person truly "fill" the physical world created during the seven days of creation with true fulfillment, pleasure, and joy that emerged from the seven days of the inauguration of the temple. 

Adapted from the Kedushat Levi

Temple or Home? 

We are at the point in the story when G-d asks for a temple. We were liberated from Egypt. We received the Torah, and now G-d tells Moses to speak to the children of Israel, telling them: “Make for me a sanctuary and I will dwell in their midst.”

When we think of a sanctuary or temple, we think of a grand structure, a monument, a citadel that expresses the grandeur of G-d, an imposing building designed to make a person feel small and humble in its presence. Yet, as we read through the details of this week’s Torah portion, we realize that the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, was actually a furnished home, incorporating the essential elements and furniture of a modest, but beautiful home.    

A home needs two basic rooms (larger homes have two categories of rooms): an outer room for eating, relaxing, and living, a room to spend time with family and friends, a room with a table and some light; and an inner room, a bedroom, a personal and intimate space. The Tabernacle, too, possessed these two rooms, “the holy”, the outer chamber with a table, a menorah, and an alter; and an inner room, the “holy of holies”, the place of intimacy with G-d, which contained only the ark with its covering of Cherubim, male and female winged figures, symbolizing the romantic and intimate bond between G-d and the Jewish people.    

Perhaps the overarching lesson of this Parsha is that, G-d wants his temple to look like a home, to indicate that the reverse is also true: each of our homes can be a temple for G-d. As G-d wants to dwell not only in the grandeur of a temple but also in the daily life experienced in our homes. 

Further in the book, the Torah relates, “he places the menorah in the tent of meeting facing the table”. The Table and the Menorah must be placed across from and facing each other. The Torah is teaching us that the table with the showbread, symbolizing the physical needs and experiences of life, must face the Menorah, which symbolizes the spiritual parts of life. Our home becomes a home for G-d when our physical experiences are impacted and illuminated by spiritual light and purpose. Every activity can create a home for G-d when it is a component of our spiritual purpose and journey.   

G-d is in the Details 

Where in the World is Mount Sinai? 

The Jewish people are very good at preserving their history. We know where and when all the significant events of our past occurred. There is, however, one exception. The location of the most important event of our history, the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, is unknown.  

Immediately after G-d descended on Mount Sinai and imparted the Ten Commandments, G-d conveyed to Moses a grammatically problematic statement:

An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall slaughter beside it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your cattle. Wherever I will mention My name, I will come to you and bless you. (Exodus 20:21)

Rashi explains that “I will mention my name” actually means that the Jewish people will mention G-d’s explicit name. Nevertheless, the verse says, “I will mention”, because the verse is referring to the place at which G-d will give us permission to use His explicit name: 

Hebrew אַזְכִּיר, lit., I will mention. [This should apparently read תַּזְכִּיר, you will mention. Therefore, Rashi explains that it means: whenever] I will permit you to mention My Explicit Name, there I will come to you and bless you. I will cause My Shechinah to rest upon you. From here you learn that permission was given to mention the Explicit Name only in the place in which the Shechinah comes, that is in the Temple in Jerusalem. There, permission was given to the priests to mention the Explicit Name when they raise their hands to bless the people. 

While, according to Rashi, this verse refers to one specific place, the sages of the Mishnah introduce a revolutionary interpretation. The Mishnah states that “when ten people sit together and occupy themselves with Torah, the Shechinah abides among them”, and then explains that the same is true for five people, three people, and two people. The Mishnah continues:  

How do we know that the same is true even of one? As it is said: “In every place where I will mention my name I will come unto you and bless you”. (Avos 3:6)

According to the sages of the Mishnah, immediately after the awesome experience at Sinai, G-d informed Moses that whenever one person, wherever he or she may be, studies Torah, the Divine presence will rest there. In other words, there is no need to know the precise location of Mount Sinai because whenever we study Torah, we recreate the revelation of Sinai wherever we may be.  

How is it possible that every Jew can transform any corner of the world? How can our mortal lips utter words that will accomplish the seemingly impossible, transporting the experience of Sinai to the most distant location on earth? It is because when we speak words of Torah it is G-d’s words speaking through us. The verse says, “I will mention my name”, although the verse means that the Jewish people will call G-d’s name, because whenever we study Torah, when we voice the words of G-d, it is G-d speaking through us.

Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe, Shabbat Yisro 5751    

How to Split a Sea 

They were trapped. 

The Jewish people had just departed Egypt, hoping to experience freedom and liberation, but now they were trapped. Pursuing  them was the Egyptian army, the Red Sea was before them. They did what you would expect them to do, they called out to G-d. 

The Torah recounts G-d's response: 

The Lord said to Moses, Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the children of Israel and let them travel. (Exodus 14:15)

G-d's response is totally unexpected. After all, what is wrong with prayer? Isn't it a Mitzvah to pray to G-d when in distress? 

The Ohr Hachaim, the 18th-century commentator and mystic, explains that, the Jewish people were not worthy of the great miracle of the sea splitting on their behalf. G-d commanded Moses "speak to the children and let them travel", the people should travel forward with faith that G-d would protect them. The miracle would occur in the merit of the faith they would display.

This story is a lesson on how we can achieve personal freedom in our own lives. Occasionally, we feel stuck, we don't see how our own challenge or difficulty can be resolved. Our natural impulse is to remain paralyzed. What is the point of taking positive action when we don't see how it  will solve the overarching problem? This attitude is, in fact, what keeps us "imprisoned" in the adverse circumstance. G-d gives us  the key to freedom, "speak to the children and let them travel"; the key to liberation is taking a positive step. This will trigger a divine blessing which will free us of negativity,  bringing us to a place of positivity and liberation. 

Service or Festival? 

There was a breakdown in communication  between the parties. Finally, after seven plagues, Pharaoh was ready to negotiate with Moses regarding who would be permitted to leave Egypt. The Torah relates: 

Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh, and he said to them, "Go, worship the Lord your God. Who and who are going?" Moses said, "With our youth and with our elders we will go, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our cattle we will go, for it is a festival of the Lord to us." (10:8-9)

Pharaoh was sure that this was a scam. Pharaoh declared:

Not so; let the men go now and worship the Lord, for that is what you request." And he chased them out from before Pharaoh. (10:11)

Seemingly, Pharaoh wanted to ascertain  that the Jewish people who were going to serve G-d in the desert would return to Egypt; he, therefore, wanted the women, children, and cattle to remain behind as security. 

There is, however, a deeper element to Pharaoh's refusal. In Egyptian culture, only the priestly class served their Gods. Service was relegated to a small group of individuals who could truly understand and meditate on spiritual concepts. For Pharaoh, it was conceivable that educated men would go and serve G-d in the desert, but it was implausible that women and children could be part of the service.

Indeed, Pharaoh's words, "Go, worship the Lord your God. Who and who are going?" was not a question, it was a statement. Pharaoh stated: look at all the surrounding cultures, "who and who are going?" Only an elite group of men worship.

Moses insisted that, if we are to serve G-d properly, all Jewish people must participate: "With our youth and with our elders we will go, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our cattle we will go". Our service of G-d is radically different. There are no representatives before G-d; but rather, each and every individual has a personal and unique relationship with G-d. 

Moses continues: "for it is a festival of the Lord to us"; the way we serve G-d is not only through study and meditation but also through festival and joy. The way we connect to G-d is through experiencing joy and happiness, which is possible only when we are all united and present together.   

Part of a Greater Story  

It was, perhaps, the rock bottom moment of the slavery. G-d sent Moses to Pharaoh to demand, "Let my people go and serve me in the desert", yet not only did Pharaoh refuse to obey, but he intensified the burden on his Hebrew slaves. Moses cried out to G-d, demanding to know why G-d had sent him on this seemingly futile  mission:

So Moses returned to the Lord and said, "O Lord! Why have You harmed this people? Why have You sent me? Since I have come to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has harmed this people, and You have not saved Your people." (Exodus 5:22-23)

In this week's Torah portion, we read G-d's elaborate response to Moses’ argument. There are many ways G-d’s response is interpreted, the following is one explanation.

What do we do when we are trapped in a metaphorical Egypt? What do we do when we see no way out of our current difficulty and challenge?   

When Moses cried out to G-d, instead of providing a direct answer, G-d began by evoking events of the past, His covenant with the Patriarchs, Abraham, Issac, and Jacob: 

I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob with [the name] Almighty God, but [with] My name Hashem, I did not become known to them. And also, I established My covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings in which they sojourned. (Exodus 6:3-4)

Then G-d went on to talk about future events, the giving of the Torah and the entry into the land of Israel: 

And I will take you to Me as a people, and I will be a God to you, and you will know that I am the Lord your God, Who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you to the land, concerning which I raised My hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you as a heritage; I am the Lord. (Exodus 6:7-8)

G-d conveyed to Moses that the way to be free is to raise oneself above the moment. This moment may be difficult, we may be trapped in Egypt, yet we are free if we realize that this moment does not define us. We are part of a bigger story. We are part of a greater history. We are a link between an illustrious past and a bright future. 

The same is true in our personal life. To experience liberation in a moment of challenge and difficulty, is to know that this challenge, this moment, this failure, or this setback does not define us. We are greater than the moment. The setback is here not to define us but as a springboard to bridge our past and our future, to help us reach a deeper dimension of our life, a greater chapter in our story.

Is the Name Moshe Grammatically Correct?

Moshe. What a beautiful name. 

The name was given to him by his adoptive mother, the daughter of Pharaoh, who called him Moshe because he was drawn from the water. As we read in the Torah: 

Pharaoh's daughter went down to bathe, to the Nile, and her maidens were walking along the Nile, and she saw the basket in the midst of the marsh, and she sent her maidservant, and she took it. (Exodus 2:5)

After the baby was given to his birth mother to nurse, the Torah relates: 

The child grew up, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became like her son. She named him Moses, and she said, "For I drew him from the water." (Exodus 2:10)

If you are familiar with Hebrew grammar, you may ask, why was he named Moshe ("the one who draws") and not Mashuy ("the one who was drawn")? After all, the one who drew was the daughter of Pharaoh and not the passive baby? 

The classic Biblical commentator Ibn Ezra raises this question and explains that in Biblical Hebrew nouns are flexible and do not conform to the specific rules of grammar:  

Do not be perplexed as to why moshe was not called mashuy, as nouns do not keep their forms as verbs do. 

Yet, perhaps, the form Moshe ("the one who will draw") is indeed precisely what his adoptive mother had in mind. When we look at Moshe's life for clues as to why he was chosen to lead the Jewish people, a pattern emerges. The Torah tells us nothing about his greatness, wisdom, humility or prophecy. Instead, the Torah relates three stories in which Moshe stepped in to protect the vulnerable: Moses saved a Hebrew slave from the Egyptian oppressor, he saved a Jew from being struck by his fellow Jew, and he protected the daughters of Jethro at the well in Midian. 

Moshe learned to step in and help others, despite the risk to himself, from his adoptive mother.. His name served as a constant reminder that his adoptive mother defied her father Pharaoh's wicked decree and drew him from the Nile, saving his life. Yet the name Moshe focuses not on the great act that she did, but rather on the lesson that she sought to teach him. He too must follow his adoptive mother's example, "drawing others" from their "water", saving others from their plight.

He must not only remember that he was saved, but that memory must motivate him to save others; he must not be a "Mashuy", "one who was drawn", but a Moshe, "one who draws others". 

The Crouching Lion 

At the end of his life, Jacob summoned each of his children to his bedside and blessed each one with their individual blessing. The blessings are beautiful and poetic but also mysterious and cryptic; they address both the character of each son as well as future events that would unfold with their descendants and members of their tribe. There are, therefore, multiple layers of interpretations and perspectives on each phrase of the blessings. We will explore dramatically different interpretations of one phrase in the blessings to Judah. 

Jacob blessed Judah with leadership, military might, and an abundance of wine, representing the fertility of his future portion of land in Israel. Jacob stated: "A cub [and] a grown lion is Judah", which Rashi interprets as referring to King David: "He prophesied about David, who was at first like a cub: "When Saul was king over us… and at the end a lion, when they made him king over them". Then, continuing with the metaphor of the lion, Jacob continues:  

A lion's cub Judah, from prey my sin you ascended; he kneeled, crouched as a lion and as an old-lion who will raise him?  (Genesis 49:9)

If the lion represents the might of King David, then what is the symbolism of crouching? Rashi and Onkelous explain that the crouching lion is a metaphor for a time of peace and tranquility, when the lion can rest and does not have to assert his might, for all its enemies will have already been vanquished. As Rashi explains:  

 This refers to the reign of King Solomon, when peace prevailed in the land and the people of Israel sat "each under his grapevine and each under his fig tree". No nation dared disturb their tranquility, as none would dare disturb a lion's rest. 

The Zohar, the primary book of Jewish mysticism, offers a completely opposite reading. To the Zohar, the crouching lion refers not to the tranquility of the era of King Solomon, when the Jewish people were at their peak both physically and spiritually, but rather to the time of exile, when the Jewish people are "crouching", are subjugated under oppressive nations. Yet they nevertheless retain the strength of the lion and remain steadfast in their commitment to Judaism and G-d. As the Zohar explains:  

This describes the people of Israel in their exiles: although they have been brought to their knees, they have the strength and perseverance of a lion, and are not swayed by the nations who persecute them and attempt to seduce them away from their faith and their practices. 

The Zohar, the inner perspective of the Torah, invites us to reexamine the apparent reality and find the deeper truth. Yes, the lion is crouching, seemingly in a weakened position, but, in truth, the lion is crouching in preparation of pouncing. The same is true for the Jewish people. Our personal and collective challenges, while they seem to weaken us, are, in truth, an opportunity to dig deeper and discover reservoirs of strength, to not only survive but ultimately to transform the world as well. As the Zohar continues: 

And as a lion who crouches not out of weakness but in order to pounce on its prey and vanquish it, so too the bride Israel in her exile is fallen only in order to pounce from her crouch as a lion and banish idolatry from the world.

Translation of Onkolous and Zohar taken from the new Open Book Chumash