Parashat HaShavua - Emor

דַּבֵּ֞ר אֶל־בְּנֵ֤י יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ וְאָמַרְתָּ֣ אֲלֵהֶ֔ם מוֹעֲדֵ֣י יְהוָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־תִּקְרְא֥וּ אֹתָ֖ם מִקְרָאֵ֣י קֹ֑דֶשׁ אֵ֥לֶּה הֵ֖ם מוֹעֲדָֽי׃ 

Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: These are My fixed times, the fixed times which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions.

Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
--Joni Mitchell

There is a Hasidic teaching that the meaning of מִקְרָאֵ֣י קֹ֑דֶשׁ (mikra’ei kodesh) is “callings of holiness,” that is to say, that each holiday is a palace in time (to use Rabbi Heschel’s image) which we enter in order to call forth the particular holiness or spiritual quality embedded within it.  On Passover we were liberated and the holiday each year calls us to liberate ourselves, on Shavuot, Torah was revealed and each year, we are called to open our eyes to the Torah that needs to be revealed at this particular moment in time, and so forth.

A parable is told to illuminate this process: A king was traveling through the desert with his daughter, who was thirsty. But instead of dispatching a horseman to fetch water from the nearest town, the king ordered a well to be dug at that very spot and to mark it with a signpost. “Right now,” the king told the daughter, “you have easier ways to get water than digging a well. But perhaps one day, many years in the future, you will again be traveling this way. Perhaps you will be alone, without the power and privilege you now enjoy. Then the well we dug today will be here to quench your thirst. Even if the sands of time have filled it, you will be able to reopen it if you remember the spot and follow the signpost we have set.”

I am tremendously moved by this midrash this year, having been through a cycle of the Jewish holidays during which I got to feel first hand what it was like to not be able to go back to the well. This past year, I did not sit with the same friends that I meet every year in the Sukkah, laughing and lingering over dessert and conversation in the still-warm October sun. I did not invite my husband’s extended family for a crowded, noisy Hanukkah party in our apartment so that we can continue a tradition begun by his parents. I didn’t set folding tables all the way along the length of our living room so that we can have many friends and family at our seder.

Here is what I learned from this year: having these simple yearly pleasures at their appointed time is truly a spiritual well from which I draw well-being. I don’t think I have ever appreciated as I did this year what a gift the Jewish cycle of holidays are, bringing color and connection to my life. As Joni Mitchell said so well, “don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”  When my family went to our friends’ home for Shabbat dinner last week for the first time in over a year, we all said the shehianu together before beginning the meal.

After finishing this dvar Torah, I heard the news from Meron.  It is unspeakably tragic that those who felt called by the holiness of a sacred site paid for their pilgrimage with their lives.  What a heartbreaking juxtaposition to learn that these deaths occurred on the day when we celebrate a plague lifting and death finally abating.

As I write this dvar Torah, we are beginning our Lag Ba’Omer celebrations in the Lower School. The halls are filled with the joyful sounds of happy children celebrating.  As the Jewish holidays teach us in so many different ways -- including the semi-mourning period of the Omer, which is punctuated by the happy occasions of Yom Ha Atzmaut and Lag Ba’Omer --  joy and sadness are inextricably bound together.  We enter into Lag B’Omer this year with the sounds of parents weeping and the sounds of children’s laughter in our ears.  

Rabbi Anne Ebersman
Director of Jewish Programming N-5 and Director of Hesed (Community Engagement) and Tzedek (Social Responsibility)