On March 1, just three weeks ago, Rabbi Arthur Starr was here and gave a drasha discussing, among other things, the first shabbat after the 9/11 attack. He said, we must feel for those wounded and killed in that horrendous event, but we must also make Shabbat a respite from all of that. Those words seem very prescient today. We come together as a community to mourn, to comfort, to support one another, but we don’t limit that to one day of the week. Yesterday we commemorated the victims. Today, we heal ourselves.
I’ve chosen not to read my original drasha, but to read extracts from a drasha written two years ago by Rabbi Jeffrey Kamins, Senior Rabbi of Emanuel Synagogue in Sydney, Australia.
The Torah of Priests for a Kingdom of Priests: Living with Conscious Being
Vayikra, the third book of the Torah, is known in the tradition as “Torat Cohanim”, dealing as it does with many laws concerning the priests and their role in leading the people in service to God. ... Of all the books in the Torah, Vayikra challenges us to think about what it means to live by the Torah’s precepts and what it means to be in service to God.
Just as the Cohanim of Torah and Temple times were called to lead the people in service to God, so too the Jews, known as a “mamlechet cohanim” – a kingdom of priests – are called to lead humanity in service to God as a “holy nation”. With the destruction of the Second Temple, the role of the Cohanim in their service is more circumscribed; [but] our service as a holy nation has never been more demanding.
...
To be a “kingdom of priests”, a people willing to take a leadership role among humanity in the service of God, requires diligent study and discerning application of Torah. … [The] opening word “vayikra”, whose last letter “aleph” is written small, provides an important insight into how we can connect with God and how we can read Torah.
Much rabbinic commentary has been written about the meaning of this “small aleph”. ... The Hassidic master, Menachem Mendel of Rymanov, taught that the only revelation actually heard by the people was just the aleph, the sound of which is silence. The small aleph at the beginning of Vayikra is a reminder that when we are called to the service of God, we should always recall just how small we are in the face of the infinite, ineffable mystery of life. Life in all its majesty and mystery is what we are called to serve. Understanding God as “existence and presence”, the creator of life, should inform our conscious being.
This principle guides us in our study and application of Torah. ... Our words and our will should be striving toward that which we understand as the source of Conscious Being.
Reading Torah as a pathway to conscious being and then accordingly applying its lessons is the ultimate “avodah”, or service of God. ... There is so much in this book that guides us to living with deep awareness, such as teachings concerning the sacredness of time through Shabbat and festivals, the protection of the poor and underprivileged, the relationship we have with the animal world and our planet, and the striving for God as a holy people.
... A “kingdom of priests” must study and apply Torah with humility to understand our sacred responsibility of living with conscious being.
That is the end of Rabbi Kamins drasha, but I will add one more thought to this. We are all familiar with the Mishna tractate on the Sanhedrin, or rabbinical courts, warning:
Adam was created singly, to teach us that whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world.
This is quoted in the Quran, in the retelling of the story of Cain and Abel.
Our world was destroyed on March 15th; a week ago we awoke to a new world. Our leaders, and the thousands of kiwis who have donated time or money are already helping to make sure it is a better world. What else can we do to help?
Shabbat shalom.
