When God Calls

This week’s Torah portion is Yayikra, the first portion in the book of Leviticus. Vayikra means, and he called. God calls to Moses and instructs him about the sacrifices which will be offered in the new Tabernacle. These are: the elevation offering, to uplift us; the peace offering, to share celebrations and good fortune with others, and the sin and guilt offerings, for atonement and forgiveness.
The book of Leviticus begins curiously. The Torah reads, “and he called to Moses and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting.” This is the only time in the Torah when God is said to call to Moses. Why does God first call and then speak? Also, the word, Vayikra, and he called, ends in a miniature aleph, a letter printed smaller than usual. It is a hint that we must look closer here to see if there is meaning hidden or embedded in the text. Some of our Torah commentators have written that the small aleph means that God called to Moses softly. This interpretation reminds me of a quotation from Albert Einstein who said, “subtle is the Lord,” a quotation that was also used as the title for a well known biography of Einstein. In our text, the small aleph is like someone who whispers. The whisperer calls to us to pay attention to something that ordinarily may not be noticed. And this is actually characteristic of the way that God does contact us. We are contacted by the events in our lives: a chance meeting, a surprising phone call, a coincidence, seeing something that others are not seeing, or even the chance to perform a mitzvah: the opportunity to help someone that comes only to you.
Einstein, the exemplar of the ability of science to make the world understandable, was not a deeply religious man; but he did believe in God. So it is ironic that our strong belief in science confers upon us a kind of spiritual cynicism that prevents us from receiving the messages that we are sent, disguised as the events in our lives. How do we know that these events are really messages? The S’fat Emet writes that we come to hear – to be able to hear, through doing. That is – the more we take advantage of the opportunities we have to perform a mitzvah – to help and to bring goodness into the world, the more we are able to interpret the events of our lives and see that there is a holy dimension in them. Our lives then become so interesting: like a scavenger hunt in which the clues continually present themselves, when we least expect them, leading us not only to a higher spiritual place, but also to the knowledge that there is a mind and a heart directing this scavenger hunt who is aware of our personal existence. This is having a relationship with God: That knowing and feeling that God knows about me and is sending me ways to improve, grow, and gain understanding. If I know that God knows that I know: this is an authentic relationship.
Our Torah commentators suggest a few reasons why God calls to Moses softly. Perhaps it was to reassure Moses: that God was there when Moses needed reassurance. Perhaps it was in order to encourage him, letting Moses know that all his efforts were appreciated and that he was doing a good job, doing what was right. And finally, perhaps it was to speak tenderly to Moses, letting him know that the love we are capable of, comes from the Eternal One who loves and who teaches us to love. The small aleph in Vayikra stands for so much: for noticing the mundane and from it being able to intuit the holy; for the quiet intimations of God’s continual presence. It also stands, according to the Riziner Rebbe, for the idea of God contracting the Divine Presence; allowing infinite Divinity to become small enough to speak one-on-one with a human being, and conversely, according to the Rimanover Rebbe, for a teaching that we should be humble before the Divine Presence; humble enough to admit our own faults and “strive toward a higher spiritual level,” Aleph, as the first letter in the alphabet, also stands for taking the first small step when God calls. Our patriarchs had an answer when God called to them. It was “Hineni,” meaning, Here I am. I am here, I am present for you, Eternal God. I have heard your calling to me. Just reassure me, encourage me, and speak to me tenderly. Just tell me what you want me to do and I will do it with a willing and loving heart.
May each of us be aware when God calls to us, and may our answer to God always be Hineni: I am ready to do the loving deeds it is my privileg to be able to accomplish.

Shabbat Across America and Beyond

In his book, The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschl retells the legend that “at the time when God was giving the Torah to Israel, God said to them: My children! If you accept the Torah and observe my mitzvot, I will give you for all eternity a thing most precious that I have in my possession. And what, asked Israel, is that precious thing which You will give us if we obey Your Torah? The World to Come. Show us in this world an example of the World to Come. The Sabbath is an example of the World to Come.” Our sages, dating back even before the Talmud was written, said that Shabbat is a taste of eternity, a small island in which we sample the World to Come. On Shabbat we allow ourselves to experience rest and peace, joy and harmony; setting aside the labor of the week, allowing ourselves to stop creating and just be.
On the day of Shabbat we can contemplate the possibility of the messianic age, the time when people will be reconciled with each other. We can imagine a world in which there is no war, one in which people are so spiritually advanced that conflict melts away in the face of our love for each other and our recognition that our Divine souls link us to one another and to God. This vision of a future time, a better time, is one in which there is true cooperation and interdependence. In which what is good for you is also good for me. This is the way the world is supposed to work. I create blessing for you and me. You create blessing for me and you. No one prevents the Divine flow of blessings from coming to themselves or others. Rather than each ego pitted against every other ego, there is a recognition that there is enough for all: a human family working together, as this week’s Torah portion , Pekudei describes: each person bringing a freewill offering; each person contributing labor, materials, or talent to the efforts of the community in building the Holy Tabernacle.
The National Jewish Outreach Program, by creating Shabbat across America has created a holy tabernacle that spreads the shelter of Sabbath peace over all the Jewish people of North America. It has made one small gesture in harmonizing our Jewish family; helping us to recognize that, whatever our different perspectives, we are all playing a part in coming together tonight to celebrate Shabbat. For one evening, we are one in purpose, tasting the harmony and peace of the world to come. A cynic can say this is too small a gesture to really matter. But, in truth, each instance of loving co-existence is real: it is its own island of harmony, and creates its own energies of blessing, giving us hope when we realize how much good we are capable of bringing forth. Creating harmony starts small. It comes from each of our hearts and proceeds outward in larger and larger concentric circles of goodwill. This is what we come here to remember: that if there is the possibility of a messianic time of peace, surely God and we have dreamed it together and will create it together.