TEMPLE EMANU-EL

A Reform Jewish Community for all of Tucson
225 North Country Club • Tucson, AZ 85716
(520) 327-4501 • Fax: (520) 327-4504
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Yom Shishi, 15 Sivan 5773

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon's Weekly Torah Talk on Beha'alot'cha 5773

Did You Hear? Gossip and Goodness

May 22, 2013

This week our portion, Beha'alot'cha from the Book of Numbers, is filled with a series of incidents and events from the Wilderness Days, as well as a couple of important commandments. It's in this week's portion that instructions are given to create the first menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum that has become the most enduring symbol of Judaism. It's also here that we get the first rumblings of rebellion that will explode into full-fledged revolt against Moses and Aaron in just a few more weeks, the disastrous story of Korach. But most significant in this week's sedrah is a peculiar little story about gossip.

Moses has married a new wife, and his brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, don't think much of her. So they begin to talk about her, and about Moses, behind his back, circulating rumors and gossip. She isn't of the right ethnicity, they don't like her influence on Moses, she probably laughs inappropriately or wears her hair too long.

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon's Weekly Torah Talk on Naso 5773

All the Blessings We Need

May 15, 2013

This week we chant the second portion of the book of Numbers, Naso, which includes a remarkable blessing. The Birkat Kohanim, the priestly blessing, is really three distinct brachot, three separate prayers, with which the ancient priests were commanded to bless the people.

From its inception this three-part blessing has had exceptional importance. The Torah quotes God saying, "With this blessing you will place My Name on the people of Israel, samu et shemi"—that is, this very blessing is so important that it conveys God's presence among us, and offers God's protection to us. The blessing was given by the Kohanim, the highest class of priests, those who were entrusted with the service of the Tabernacle and Temple.

That is, to our ancestors, it was exactly this triple-bracha that brought God to us. When the priests chanted it at one of the pilgrimage festivals it conveyed divine acceptance and presence as nothing else could.

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon's Weekly Torah Talk on Bamidbar 5773

Finding Faith in the Desert

May 8, 2013

This week we read the Torah portion of Bamidbar, the first in the book of Numbers, which is given its English name by the census that occupies a good part of the beginning of the Torah portion. The Hebrew name for this portion, and this book, Bamidbar, means "in the Wilderness". While the name comes from the first words of the book, it has a greater resonance and meaning than simply its lexicographical location. It also speaks of place in a very different and powerful way.

Every time we Jews seek inspiration, it seems, we must head out into the desert. It was true of Abraham and Jacob; it's certainly true of Moses; and after the Exodus it is true as well for the whole people of Israel, who wander for 40 years in the Wilderness of Sinai, the Midbar Sinai, seeking God and revelation.

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon's Weekly Torah Talk on Behar-Bechukotai 5773

Mt. Sinai is Here

May 1, 2013

This week we read the sedrah of Behar-Bechukotai, the double portion at the end of the book of Leviticus. In these final sections of the middle book of the Torah there are interesting oddities—and lessons—both at the beginning and the end of each portion.

Behar begins with the statement that "God spoke to Moses at Mt. Sinai saying", a seemingly unambiguous phrase. And at the end of the opening covenantal section of Bechukotai the Torah reiterates that God gave all the regulations and laws contained here at Mt. Sinai. Finally, Bechukotai concludes the book of Vayikra by telling us "these are the commandments that God commanded Moses for the Israelites on Mt. Sinai".

All well and good. These rules of holiness and personal conduct must have been commanded at Mt. Sinai.

Yet earlier in Leviticus it makes it pretty clear that God has given most of these commandments not at Mt. Sinai itself, but in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, the Ohel Mo'eid, the Tent of Meeting, as the people wander around. In fact, the whole book of Leviticus is apparently given after we have left Sinai and begun our journey to the Promised Land. Clearly, as Behar begins the Israelites don't actually seem to still be at Mt. Sinai at all.

What gives?

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon's Weekly Torah Talk on Emor 5773

Baking Holiness

April 24, 2013

As many of you know, each week my wife Wendy, a professor of British literature and Women's Studies, bakes challah. She began fulfilling this paradigmatic "woman's mitzvah" last fall when our congregation—and our family—tired of the Trader Joe's challah we had been serving and finally refused to eat it. Using the recipe that Julia Tenen, an outstanding challah baker from our congregation, had given her as a gift before she moved to Japan, Wendy immediately began creating lovely loaves that we share with our Temple weekly.

Frankly, like Julia's, it is the best bread in the history of the world, a delicacy appropriate for a deity...