By Rabbi Abraham Unger, Ph.D.
Executive Director
This Week’s Torah Portion
Preparing for Freedom
This coming Shabbat morning we read a special Torah portion heralding the upcoming new month of Nisan during which Passover falls. We are officially in the season of preparing for our Seders and the holiday.
It is a time my grandmother would call “spring cleaning,” and indeed it is. We turn over our residences to search for any piece of leavened food, from crumbs to loaves of bread. We bring out holiday dishes, and our homes become fresher and more festive. All of this work has a spiritual meaning. We are refreshing our spirits as well, and that is manifested by beautifying the physical world we inhabit with our closest loved ones.
Preparing for freedom means looking at our world with renewed eyes. What will we do with our talents? How will we choose to best put them to use? How will we strengthen our relationships? All of these questions ask how to make the most of our humanity.
Freedom means the ability to make choices. This is the time for us to begin to think about how to follow through on all the aspirations we hold as human beings seeking to better our world.
Weekly Parenting Message from the Parsha
We Are All Responsible
How do we convey to our children the life lesson that they are an integral and obligated member of the Jewish community? In the opening of this week’s parsha, Moses gathers the Children of Israel to press forward with key assignments so the community can build a life of meaningful freedom. The Torah makes a point of noting he gathered all Israelites, including the children. The classic commentator Rashi notes on this verse that all were assembled specifically because of “his order”, meaning a sense of collective obligation rather than an ad hoc voluntary coming together.
From our very start, the Jewish community felt bound both to each other and by each other. As the saying goes, we are “all for one, and one for all.” Moses had to reconfirm the social institution of the Sabbath in this week’s parsha, and organize collections for national infrastructure starting with the traveling tabernacle in the desert. These monumental tasks require a feeling of commitment translated into action. While Judaism certainly has a philosophy, its core value is one of deed and movement forward. Ours is not an abstract faith, but one built upon engaging with the world.
This is the central Jewish value we must transmit to our children – that they are bound by something greater than themselves, and yet fully seen and valued for their individual talents and eventual contributions. If we can pass on that core belief, we’ve done our jobs as mothers and fathers.