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From the Rabbi:
The Sefirat HaOmer and Parshat Yom HaShmini are here, which means it's now "Yom Season". This week, Friday is 'Yom HaShoah'. Next week we'll mark 'Yom HaZikaron' and 'Yom HaAtzmaut'. Two weeks later, 'Yom Yerushalayim'.
All these special Yoms are not part of the Biblical or Rabbinic Calendars but rather innovations of the 20th century to mark the incredibly dramatic events which have sculpted the landscape of modern Judaism and given a totally different shape to contemporary Klal Yisrael.
However, it's not just that we now have a chief rabbinate of Israel - a centralized authority capable of instituting such national holidays that makes these unique Yoms so special. There's something about the the events they commemorate, being during the Omer, and the conjunction with Parshat Yom HaShmini that makes it all particularly appropriate.
For close to twenty centuries we Jews lived out of time and space. Wandering from land to land, generation to generation, this world wasn't really our home. Our home was Torah, Mitzvot, Spirituality. Our eternal and timeless values defined us far more than where and when we lived or the challenges we endured. Yes, there was some evolution of Torah Sh'baal Peh through those centuries, and that was largely in response to evolution of politics, technologies, fashions, architecture etc., but by and large, the ebb and flow of history wasn't our national narrative.
Think for example about the Pesach Seder. "What makes this night different from all other nights"? That same question asked year after year elicited always the same answer - "we were slaves to Pharaoh and now we're free". It's different because it's Pesach, because of what happened in the Torah, and our obligation is to re-experience that moment.
Today however in the Library of Congress, there are more volumes under the title "Passover Haggadah" than any other. There's a Haggadah dedicated to every spiritual, social and political trend and cause. Chassidic, Zionist, anti-Zionist, civil rights, addiction, feminist, LGBTQ, interfaith, environmental... even a BDS Haggadah! We've come to see the question of "why is this night different" as not being about Pesach in general, but being about THIS Pesach. What makes this Pesach unique and different from other years? Who's the Pharaoh in our time and what's the liberation we're experiencing here and now? This re-entry into history represents a monumental shift in attitude, I'd like to suggest that it actually has everything to do with the experience of these Yoms, Parshat Shmini and the Counting of the Omer.
The Holocaust wasn't just another pogrom. It was different in motivation, character and scale. And also in response. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising (the date which was chosen for Yom HaShoah) was a vastly different reaction to violence than we Jews had to the Chmelnitsky pogroms for example. The wars to establish and protect the State of Israel are a new phenomena among us, unprecedented since Bar Kochba some 1800 years prior. The recapture and liberation of Jerusalem? That's not just another day at the office, that's something of monumental importance to the overall arc of Jewish History.
All of these events represent a movement from the eternal religious values which sustained our medieval ancestors back into time and space and marking the unique texture of history as being religiously meaningful. This "downward" spiritual movement is also the primary theme of Parshat Shmini - the inauguration day of the Mishkan. If indeed God is to "dwell within us" as the Mishkan represents, it's not just in universal and eternal values, it's also in the uniqueness of each individual person and in the uniqueness of every day. So too, the Sefirat HaOmer teaches us to (Psalm 90:12) "Count our days in order to bring Wisdom into our hearts" - To recognize the special unique character of each day and the growth opportunity unlike any other. It's not 'another day another dollar', it's Tiferet Sheb'Gevurah.
Shabbat Shalom,
Reb Shlomo
Classes This Week
- Shabbat 7:00 PM before Mincha
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Sunday at 7:00 PM - KOT Beit Midrash Deep Dive into Davening
- Tuesday at 12:30 PM - Parsha Conversations at Cheryl's office
- Wednesday, 7:30 pm after Mincha - Please join us for a special Yom HaZikaron / Yom Haatzmaut presentation "Israel at 77" by Rabbi Yehoshua Grunstein of Efrat. Followed by a festive Yom HaAtzmaut Maariv.
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