The End of a Book

Good Shabbas everyone! It’s Friday, and thank goodness for that.

Well, it’s the end of the book of Vayikra, and we finish it off with reading Behar and Bechukotai, which makes us and Israel on track to read Bamidbar at the same time. In case you didn’t remember, Pesach’s 8th day in the diaspora made us one week behind with the parshiot. What does this mean? I don’t know. But it’s still interesting.

However, back to the end of Vayikra. So Vayikra speaks a lot (and when I say a lot, I mean it) about sacrifices. We started off the book with the parsha of Vayikra describing the burnt offerings that we would have to give to God, whether it was for Shabbat, sins, festivals etc… And the book ends with the Behar and Bechukotai telling us about the Shmita or Sabbatical years. The shmita also alludes to sacrifices, where a Jew living in Israel would have to stop, for a whole year, tending to his field, let it lie fallow and allow anyone to take anything from it. So a huge sacrifice.

What is it telling us? I’m not a Rabbi, so I’m not at liberty to tell you. But to me, it’s saying that life is full of choices. Whether it’s the right or wrong choice that we take is not known to us. But what we do know is that we have to do what is correct and moral. What is correct and moral? Whole different discussion. But I think we have that voice inside telling us what is the right thing to do in any situation.

Have a great Shabbat, enjoy the Parsha, and I’ll talk to you on Shavuot!

The End of a Book

Good Shabbas everyone! It’s Friday, and thank goodness for that.

Well, it’s the end of the book of Vayikra, and we finish it off with reading Behar and Bechukotai, which makes us and Israel on track to read Bamidbar at the same time. In case you didn’t remember, Pesach’s 8th day in the diaspora made us one week behind with the parshiot. What does this mean? I don’t know. But it’s still interesting.

However, back to the end of Vayikra. So Vayikra speaks a lot (and when I say a lot, I mean it) about sacrifices. We started off the book with the parsha of Vayikra describing the burnt offerings that we would have to give to God, whether it was for Shabbat, sins, festivals etc… And the book ends with the Behar and Bechukotai telling us about the Shmita or Sabbatical years. The shmita also alludes to sacrifices, where a Jew living in Israel would have to stop, for a whole year, tending to his field, let it lie fallow and allow anyone to take anything from it. So a huge sacrifice.

What is it telling us? I’m not a Rabbi, so I’m not at liberty to tell you. But to me, it’s saying that life is full of choices. Whether it’s the right or wrong choice that we take is not known to us. But what we do know is that we have to do what is correct and moral. What is correct and moral? Whole different discussion. But I think we have that voice inside telling us what is the right thing to do in any situation.

Have a great Shabbat, enjoy the Parsha, and I’ll talk to you on Shavuot!

Speaking of Speech…

Good Shabbas! It’s always a nice feeling that it’s Shabbas, it’s the weekend, and we’re moving closer to something we want (or something we don’t want).

This week’s Parsha is Emor, which means speak, and there are a vast number of commandments as always in the book of Vayikra. But there is always something which speaks to us, that affects us when we read it. And something that is always an interesting subject is blasphemy.

We get told about a son of the Tribe of Dan, whose father was an Egyptian, got into a fight and pronounced God’s name in blasphemy. The people took him to Moses, who then was told by God that the blasphemer should be killed by stoning. So those that witnessed the man, who used the forbidden four letter name of God (that he heard at Sinai), stoned him.

I don’t know about you, but that is deeply troubling to me. I’m rather uncomfortable by the fact that this happened, that those who heard him blaspheme brought him to justice, and were given leave to execute judgement. If God is the almighty, shouldn’t God have killed him? 

One positive thing we can take from this is that speaking ill of somebody, even something like God, is a terrible thing. Words are extremely powerful (God created the world through speech) and the least biting comment can still have far-reaching consequences. You know about the butterfly effect right? Instead of creating with our words and emulating God, we now destroy with them. Instead of being a light unto the world, we become a destructive force.

So, next time you think of something negative to say, maybe just bite your tongue, cause a lot more can be bitten off if you ‘blaspheme’ against someone or something.

Good Shabbas!

Being Holy

Hi Everyone! 

Sorry it’s been so long, I guess the book of Vayikra doesn’t sit well with me. It’s a book with a lot of laws and commandments, and not much of a storyline. But we read it, and it holds important concepts for us to consider, understand, and try make sense of how it affects us today.

This week’s parshiot (it’s a double parsha this week) of Acharei and Kedoshim speak first of impurity, and what we cannot do, what we cannot touch and who we can’t have relations with (all rather graphic). Kedoshim, meaning holiness, speaks about how we must be holy, because God is holy. I understood this to mean that although there is a lot we cannot do, there is still so much we can do to make ourselves holy. Even though we may keep all the laws, and keep to the book, we have to make an effort to do it with a certain holiness. And i think this goes for everything in life. Instead of just keeping to the rules, understand how the rules and your application of them will affect you, your friends and family. Because if we take that into account, we can truly uphold the holiness of God… By just being a mensch.

Good Shabbas, have fun 🙂

Craig