Greening CSAIR

As part of CSAIR’s ongoing commitment to tikkun olam, fixing the world, we have applied and been accepted to participate in Greenfaith’s Certification Program for houses of worship (www.greenfaith.org.) We are the first Conservative synagogue to be part of this program. Drawing on 15 years of experience, Greenfaith is an organization that provides support and resources to achieve real environmental results through a range of meaningful projects. The certification program is designed to help houses of worship from diverse traditions become environmental leaders in their local communities. Our hope is that over the next two years we will carry out a range of initiatives to integrate environmental themes into our services, informal and formal education programs, facility maintenance and social outreach.

The CSAIR Board has enthusiastically approved our participation in this program and a CSAIR Green team chaired by Rachel Jacoby Rosenfield is working on a comprehensive program that will touch on and enhance many aspects of shul life and will present many opportunities to get involved. Perhaps you’ve dreamed of an organic garden at CSAIR or a community compost bin? Or perhaps you would like to help plan a tefillah (prayer) walk through a local park for families or to make our kiddushim more sustainable? Or perhaps you have special skills in architecture or engineering and want to help with an energy assessment of our facility? Maybe this idea just appeals to you in general and you want to be involved in some way? Help determine how our shul will take ideas like these (or others!) and make them a reality here in Riverdale. You can get involved in a short-term project or on an on-going basis. Please contact CSAIR’s Green Team at greencsair@gmail.com.

Rabbi Barry Dov Katz

As we kick off our CSAIR Greenfaith Inititiatve, join your fellow congregants in pledging "Humanwatt Hours" (Hwh), an endlessly renewable resource, to greening our synagogue and doing our part to address global climate change. Email the Greenfaith Team at greencsair@gmail.com and share your name, contact information, how many hours you'd like to pledge over the next year (any number from 1-100 works!), and if you have any particular area of interest or expertise. We'll be sure to be in touch and to let you know how you can help!

Bamidbar
D’var Torah by CSAIR Member Sybil Sanchez
May 15, 2010/2 Sivan 5770

In thinking about this week’s parsha, two things come to mind for me – desert and census. In trying to connect the relevance between these disparate concepts, yet a few more things occur to me. First off is the parsha’s name, Bamidbar – also the name of the fourth book of the Chumash, which this parsha kicks off. The book is called Bamidbar, which by the way means desert or wilderness, but is also known in different places as counting or numbers, so somehow these two things – the desert and the census – are intrinsically connected by the parsha’s name itself although it’s still hard to see why.

When I think about this question in terms of my own life I make a personal connection when I consider that the desert is often seen as an empty or barren place and that the census or this counting of numbers was a directive given to the Jews by G-d while they were in the desert in a sense to fill up that space with people. G-d told Moses to rally the troops – counting the men of Am Israel to comprise a line of defense with which to cross the desert into the Promised Land. In my own life, I am reminded of times in my younger days when I found myself in a desert of silence –I was lonely and needed to remind myself of my friends, to create my own private defense by thumbing through my phone book and making phone calls to connect, by writing letters to friends in far flung places, or by gazing at my friend’s pictures in my yearbook when the summer or time had distanced us.

Also, standing here with you today, giving my first D’var Torah ever in the first synagogue and havurah where I am a fully active member, I can’t help but think of another vast divide that has taken me these forty years of my life to cross – a not uncoincidental amount of time by the way, considering the subject at hand. I have gone from having grown up in a very non-Jewish, semi-rural town in Southern New Jersey where being Jewishly isolated and unconnected was a way of life, to living in a very Jewish city yet still in non-Jewish neighborhoods, to finally choosing with my husband to move here to Riverdale where the opportunities for Jewish connection seem as many as the sand grains on a beach, or rather in a desert.

Which brings me to my next point really, again as related to counting in the desert. Is that vastness of sand really barren? Also, why is it so vast and how does counting help us deal with the vastness? While much of the parsha provides an intricate accounting of the lineage of the families of Israel at the time in order of their tribal leaders – Reuben, Simeon, Gad, etcetera – it also raises many questions about the nature of being.

One way of thinking about Bamidbar, or being in the desert, is to think about being in the wilderness – “midbar”, significantly, connotes both. And there is no purer state of being than in wilderness, untampered by human artifice or contemporary values or perceptions of any one time.

I have read that the Torah was unique in ancient Middle Eastern literature as being among the few texts that portrays the desert or wilderness in majestic terms, as a place where G-d allows
G-d’self to be known to humans. Midrash Bamidbar Rabbah comments, “Whoever does not make himself like a wilderness-desert-midbar, open to everything, will not be able to acquire wisdom and Torah.”

So it might seem counter-intuitive, but in giving this important setting – the desert or wilderness – so much thought, I had a hard time avoiding the mixture of metaphors. While on the one hand that’s just like me – the more sleep deprived and overstimulated my brain is, the more likely I am to come up with some malopropism or another – it’s also because of what the wilderness represents. It’s about vastness – as vast as the sea, as vast as the stars in the sky that G-d told Abraham his offspring would equal, as vast as the sand in the desert – the wilderness represents such vastness, such infinity as being beyond our ultimate ability to know.

Perhaps this is why we need the counting: in order to anchor ourselves. To remind us that vastness is composed of limitless amounts of something that we can only define through our own limited, material knowledge in order to begin to understand. Considering the vastness of G-d and how the Torah records our difficulty in gaining direct access to G-d, we might need a solid accounting of our troops, to ground us in the place where we were meant to meet G-d.

Thinking about the desert and a census, like so many Jewish concepts, includes an intrinsic paradox. And it makes me think about the Kaballist notion of Tzimtzum – that a vacuum was necessary in order for G-d to contract and make space available for Creation. Yet, being that G-d is infinite and that we are products of G-d’s Creation, total contraction clearly is impossible. Such understanding of the notion of Tzimtzum implies that G-d be simultaneously transcendent, or infinite, or vast, and at the same time immanent, or present, or accounted for – in and among us in a material sense. Again this speaks to stretching the limits of our understanding of wilderness or infinity or G-d, versus accounting or census or humanity.

The line is: “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh Adoshem Tz'vaot Melo Kol Haaretz Kevodo” – ‘Holy, holy, holy, The Lord of Hosts, The entire world is filled with G-d’s Glory.’

We also say in that section, “Baruch Kavod Adoshem Mimkomo,” – ‘Blessed is the Glory of the Lord from G-d’s Place.’

And, “Yimloch Adoshem L'Olam, Elohayich Tzion Ledor Vador Halleluyah” – the ‘Lord shall reign forever, You are G-d in Zion from generation to generation, Hallelujah.’

I mention this in relation to the themes of desert and census in Bamidbar for three reasons:

1. Because it includes the concept of Hosts – literally, a holy army of troops – which relates to the census that Moses is required to fulfill in Bamidbar;

2. Because it includes place – Mimkomo – space being another concept for the desert as a holy place where G-d would speak to humans; and,
3. Because of the implication not only of G-d’s infinity (by reigning forever), but also of our commitment to and reflection of that infinity through the passing on of generations.
I said that this section essentializes my beliefs about my role in our community and in G-d’s Creation, in part that’s because of the initial phrase – Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh. The three repetitions of this expression of holiness could be, and have been, attributed to many things. In my mind, they can easily represent the three sentences above as being holy concepts – that is the holiness of hosts or of community; the holiness of wilderness or space or the material world; and of course, the holiness of G-d and our commitment to declaring G-d’s vastness through out the generations.

For another thing, they could be reflective of the three types of relationships described in Jewish thought – ‘Ben Adam L’Atzmo, L’Chavero, and La’Makom’ -- a human’s relationship to oneself, to others and to God, the infinite, whom we call here simply “The Place” with a capital ‘P’. These vectors of relationship form the bedrock of who I seek to be and how I seek to relate to Jewish life as a way of being. Plus: the notion of filling the entire world with G-d’s Glory tells me that I am not alone, no matter what, because I am part of something, a place filled with G-d and belonging to G-d.

Rav Nachman’s song, “Kol haolam kulo gesher tzar me’od – V’ha’ikar lo lefahed klal,” embodies these three relationships. He tells us that the world is a narrow bridge, and that the most essential thing is not to be afraid. In crossing that bridge from one’s relationship with oneself to one’s relationship with G-d, is the bridge – one’s relationship with others. In the vastness of the world that we must cross through our lives, we rely on hosts, our own personal troops of community and friends to get us through from one side to the other, and it’s essential to trust rather than fear those relationships as we seek to locate ourselves within the vastness of
G-d’s Glory.

A final thought about being in the desert or Bamidbar is the word midbar itself. Those who know Hebrew will also know that the word midbar is very similar in its root form to midaber (speaking) and to davar (word or thing). It’s interesting to note that the parsha begins with the word yidaber, a conjugation of midaber, in reference to G-d speaking to Moses. This brings us back to the embedded complexity of this parsha through its name -- as the name Bamidbar has so many meanings and implications that are interrelated. In my mind, the connection here – from desert to counting to words to things – becomes very clear. Again, when I was younger, I filled emptiness in time with words, much as the Jews in the desert filled emptiness in space with things – or with accounting.

Yet, relating this to Tzimtzum (the notion of a necessary vacuum of space to make room for Creation), and to Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh Adoshem zvaot melo kol haaretz kivodo, turns this entire parsha on its head. After all – we have the filling of the emptiness, versus the absence necessary for Creation, versus the holiness of worshipping an infinite G-d in G-d’s Glory; with “G-d’s Glory” implying a sense of location with boundaries, like the ancient Temple or other loci of divine presence. How do so many things add up?

I think that they are answered by a midrashic quote I found in a friend’s educational material about Shavuot. She asked the question, ‘What does silence sound like?’ and then answered it with this quote from Midrash Shemot Rabbah (29):

Rabbi Abahu said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: `When God gave the Torah, no bird chirped, no fowl flew, no ox made a sound, angels did not fly, Seraphim did not say "Kadosh," the sea did not stir, no creature spoke. The world was utterly silent--and a voice was heard: "I am the Lord your God."

This story reflects to me the empty vastness of silence required in order to hear the sound of
G-d’s voice. In other words, if G-d was required to create a vacuum in order for Creation, and us as a part of Creation, to come into being, it follows that we are required to recreate or perhaps relocate such a vacuum in order to for us to come back into G-d’s presence. While we might count our hosts, flip through our phone books, and build armies of Facebook friends and chatter – we must also remember to go back to the desert, to find our location in wilderness and sit still together with the bird, the fowl, the ox, the angels, the Sea, and the other creatures in that Midrash.

Thus, when thinking about desert and census as defined in Bamidbar, I think that the name is telling us that Bamidbar represents not one thing or the other, neither infinity alone nor humanity alone, but rather the continuum between the two – and the necessity to go from G-d’s presence to our own and back again by recognizing both the vacuum of Creation, and the counting of the hosts with which to fill it. Shabbat – as Heschel described it, a palace in time – is one way to create that space by unplugging, being still and recognizing our limitations in order to seek G-d’s vastness, but we come upon another opporutnity this very week as as week to contemplate our revelation of the Torah on Mount Sinai on Shavuot.

Shabbat Shalom