Dear Friends,
In my rabbinic life, and likely in your life, too, there are verses from text which stick to us profoundly. It may be “Call me Ishmael,” opening Moby Dick, or the closing of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Or it could be from biblical text, “A time to be born, and a time to die.” Or, from Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Or it could be the relatively unheralded verse which opens this week’s Torah portion: “If a man makes a vow to the Eternal or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips.” (Numbers 30:3)
Why is this verse so prominent for me? It charges that one should do whatever one says one will do. It should be a given.
But that is not why this verse is powerful to me. There is a story…
In the summer and fall of 1982, I was in my first year of rabbinic school, living in Jerusalem. That summer, working on my biblical Hebrew skills, I spent a whole Shabbat afternoon, alone, sprawled in a nearby park with a copy of the Torah. I read and translated this entire Torah portion in Hebrew. It was hard work, and I felt proud of my achievement, and this verse remained with me, likely because in the Hebrew, it is very poetic with a beautiful cadence.
Two months later, I was sitting in a liturgy class with a memorable professor, Dr. Eliyahu Schleifer, the chair of the music department at Hebrew University. Dr. Schleifer asked a question about the meaning of our words. I raised my hand, and, without the text in front of me, I cited this verse to him in Hebrew by rote, and answered his question. He looked at me, wide-eyed, as if he had seen an apparition – wondering if I was a savant and had the Torah memorized. No first-year rabbinic student should have known that verse! I shouldn’t have known it! But because of that summer afternoon in a park, this verse was stuck in my mind, and I had the unexpected opportunity to thoroughly surprise my shocked professor.
Thus, every year when we come to this portion, I remember the odd set of circumstances. I recall my saintly teacher, and his unexpected and truly undeserved impression of me, and my explaining that it was purely circumstantial. And, I recall the joy which, for a moment, connected him and me over a mostly unheralded text.
We all have odd, remembered moments in our lives, which pop up unexpectedly. What’s yours?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
In my rabbinic life, and likely in your life, too, there are verses from text which stick to us profoundly. It may be “Call me Ishmael,” opening Moby Dick, or the closing of Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Or it could be from biblical text, “A time to be born, and a time to die.” Or, from Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”
Or it could be the relatively unheralded verse which opens this week’s Torah portion: “If a man makes a vow to the Eternal or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips.” (Numbers 30:3)
Why is this verse so prominent for me? It charges that one should do whatever one says one will do. It should be a given.
But that is not why this verse is powerful to me. There is a story…
In the summer and fall of 1982, I was in my first year of rabbinic school, living in Jerusalem. That summer, working on my biblical Hebrew skills, I spent a whole Shabbat afternoon, alone, sprawled in a nearby park with a copy of the Torah. I read and translated this entire Torah portion in Hebrew. It was hard work, and I felt proud of my achievement, and this verse remained with me, likely because in the Hebrew, it is very poetic with a beautiful cadence.
Two months later, I was sitting in a liturgy class with a memorable professor, Dr. Eliyahu Schleifer, the chair of the music department at Hebrew University. Dr. Schleifer asked a question about the meaning of our words. I raised my hand, and, without the text in front of me, I cited this verse to him in Hebrew by rote, and answered his question. He looked at me, wide-eyed, as if he had seen an apparition – wondering if I was a savant and had the Torah memorized. No first-year rabbinic student should have known that verse! I shouldn’t have known it! But because of that summer afternoon in a park, this verse was stuck in my mind, and I had the unexpected opportunity to thoroughly surprise my shocked professor.
Thus, every year when we come to this portion, I remember the odd set of circumstances. I recall my saintly teacher, and his unexpected and truly undeserved impression of me, and my explaining that it was purely circumstantial. And, I recall the joy which, for a moment, connected him and me over a mostly unheralded text.
We all have odd, remembered moments in our lives, which pop up unexpectedly. What’s yours?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
