A Bit of Drash

I've come back to how I want to start this post again and again. It would be easy to make this entire post about my friend Susan. In a way, it will be.

A few months ago, Susan asked me to co-lead a Friday night service at my synagogue with her. This was outside of my comfort zone, but if there was a person who could get me to stretch past my comfort zone, it was Susan.

A few weeks before the night I was supposed to co-lead services, Susan got sick. Then she asked my friend Uri if he could co-lead in her place. A few days before the service, we found out she had cancer. On March 29th, Uri and I co-led the service, and Susan Zoomed in. She said that she found what I said to be touching.

Susan passed away a few days ago.

Here is a cleaned up version of the drash (sermon) I gave that Friday night.

The parshah for tonight is Tzav. "Tzav" means "command," and this is another parshah that revolves around the temple offerings. Like Jerry, I visited the Chabad website to dig deeper into this week's Torah portion.

What stood out to me about the parshah and the commentaries I read is about the routine aspects of the temple offerings. Yehoshua B. Gordan writes about the daily offering, which was offered twice daily, and illustrates how the tzav, or command, for the offering was necessary because of the immense expense for the Jewish people it had the potential to represent. This offering was "one lamb in the morning and another in the afternoon—day after day, year after year, century after century, throughout all the years of the Tabernacle, the First Temple, and the Second Temple." It was also a burnt offering, so no part of the offering was used. This was a real sacrifice that was given when times were good and when times were lean.

Katia Bolotin writes about how the words "tzav" and "mitzvah" share a common root that means "connection." G-d's commandments connect us to the divine.

With all of this talk about offerings made in a temple that is no longer standing, how then do we connect this parshah to our own lives?

When people ask what my favorite holiday is, I say Shabbat. I thrive on the routine and familiar. The High Holidays and festivals throughout the year, they're exciting, but my soul knows true peace by coming to Friday night services, seeing the regulars who can be counted on for a minyan each week, and the joyful conversation at oneg.

I know peace when I connect with the prayers we recite over and over again. I chant Yedid Nefesh and am transported to the first time I heard it at Shir Chadash in New Orleans. Adon Olam starts, and I yearn for the times where each night it was sung to a different tune, a playful change of pace where you never knew if you'd recognize the tune or if the congregation would be able to sustain it through to the last note. In New Orleans, we didn't sing the Debbie Friedman version of Mi Shebeirach, but I still remember the tune and the words from my time at Congregation Beth Am in Tampa 15 years ago.

These routines and rituals connect us to each other, to our ancestors, and to G-d. Martin Buber writes about how we find G-d through our connections to others, and I feel that coming to Shabbat each week and revisiting these prayers and each other bring us together for what can come to be our most important connections.

Postscript

This idea of reciting the words of our ancestors each week is even more meaningful to me now because I think of the impact that Susan had on our synagogue community and how, even though it was for a short time, her voice was joined with ours and helped shape our connections. And each person that she touched is now carrying a part of her with us every time we come together, and her legacy will continue as we continue to pass our culture and faith down to new generations.