Final Clearance for entering the last Stretch to Final Redemption

Parashat Shemini  Leviticus 9:1 – 11:47
Haftarah Shemini   2 Samuel 6:1 – 7:17  (2 Samuel 6:1 – 19)

This week we have completed the 8-day commemoration of Pesach – the Exodus from Egypt. In our recent Parashot reviews we have shown how Scripture refers to a Second Exodus (Jer. 16:14-15) bringing the Exiles of all 12 Tribes, the two Houses of Israel, back from where they have been spread amongst the Nations across the four corners of the World.  All commentators agree that we have reached the End Times as we are approaching the Final Redemption or release from Bondage, when we will have to Return to Covenantal Torah-founded relationship with the G-d of Israel.  The 12 Tribed Kingdom of Israel will be restored and re-united into ONE nation which will serve as G-d’s Light unto the Nations. They will rule with G-d in His Universal Kingdom having been imbued totally with His Spirit under a new Eternal Covenant to raise them to the heights of perfection – as He is Perfect. (Ref. Servant of G-d;  New Covenant – ref. also to Additional Ref’s at the foot of this and these articles)

According to the allegorical pattern presented by the Festive Pesach ceremonies, these 8 days of Pesach brought the Israelites in Exodus finally and protectively through the Red Sea,  now beyond the reach of Egypt and under the Personal Presence and Protection of HaShem through His Shechinah. Yet, there remained the covenanting to G-d at Sinai (receiving of the Torah, His Will specifications) and the Entry into the Land. This entry was delayed several times due to the incompetence of the Nation to conform to G-d’s requirements. This is the stage now having been reached by those from the House of Judah and the re-awakening House of 10-Israel who,  like the 20% of the Nation in the 1^st Exodus, chose to Return to the Land of their forefathers, the Land of the Covenant which will serve as the seat of the Universal Rule of the God of Israel.

This week’s Parashah deals with the Shechinah of G-d establishing His Presence in the Tabernacle built by the Nation to serve as the Temple which HaShem wishes to dwell in amongst His People.  Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks in his Parashat review points out the foundational choice that these Returnees in the 2^nd Exodus have to make – a Pointer for especially the House of 10-Israel which, unlike the House of Judah, have lost their Torah identity totally in their Exile. It is mirrored in a fearfully awesome and tragic event right at the Time of the inaugurational service in the Tabernacle.

This links up perfectly also with our recent Blog commentaries (Ref. Menu / Blogs in date order and follow linksto ‘Related Studie” at the foot o each Page) on the current Corona Plague which is engulfing the Earth. We have posed the possibility that HaShem, at this Time of the approaching Final Redemption, may well be forcing humanity (and especially His ‘Servant’ in preparation) to reach their Final stage of Choice whether they wish to humble themselves to accept each other for uniting into ONE Nation, as He requires.  The Nation of Israel has been divided for 2700 years now – at first enemies in the Land of Israel after the split of the World Empire of Solomon and for the last 2000 years the Family Feud has continued in bloodletting animosity between Jews and Christians. The G-d of Israel is now calling all exiles Home to unite under Torah as His Light unto the Nations. Final Redemption is at hand, but the Family Feud needs to be settled – and G-d is waiting on His People to reconcile. It is now Time that Christians abandon their rejection of Torah and of Jews – and for Jews to realize that they were called to share the Torah with all the Nations. Corona Plague has unmasked this staggering Realization that Together we shall survive as His Torah Kingdom or else die under the plague and Curses of Torah rejection! There will be NO escape – His Torah Kingdom shall be established through those who wish to embrace and unite under His Universal Torah – simply His Will for His entire Creation!

This humbling before HaShem requires:

• that The House of 10-Israel realize that they have to return to Torah and to subject themselves to the Torah guidance of the Rabbinical Divinely mandated Mechoqeck Judicial arm of HaShem; and
• that Judah repent from having neglected to guide the nations in Torah, hoarding Torah for themselves only especially at this time of Torah restoration by millions of non-Jews around the World who undoubtedly are the awakening House of Israel (Ephraim).

Turn now to Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sack’s Parashat Shemini commentary.

 

Limits (Shemini 5780)

By Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks; rabbisacks.org

DISCLAIMER – the authors and promoters of the articles and videos that we place here are mostly not connected in any way to KOL HATOR and may well not share our views and interpretations. We do however thank them for their insight and pointers that confirm our understanding and often broaden our insight.

The story of Nadav and Avihu, Aharon’s two eldest sons who died on the day the Sanctuary was dedicated, is one of the most tragic in the Torah. It is referred to on no less than four separate occasions. It turned a day that should have been a national celebration into one of deep grief. Aharon, bereaved, could not speak. A sense of mourning fell over the camp and the people. God had told Moshe that it was dangerous to have the Divine Presence within the camp (Ex. 33:3), but even Moshe could not have guessed that something as serious as this could happen. What did Nadav and Avihu do wrong?

The simplest explanation is the one given explicitly in the text. They offered “strange fire that was not commanded.” Why should they have done such a thing? And why was it so serious an error?

The explanation that makes most sense psychologically is that they were carried away by the mood of the moment. They acted in a kind of ecstasy. They were caught up by the sheer excitement of the inauguration of the first collective house of worship in the history of Avraham’s children. Their behaviour was spontaneous. They wanted to do something extra, uncommanded, to express their religious fervour.

What was wrong with that? Moshe had acted spontaneously when he broke the tablets after the sin of the Golden Calf. Centuries later, David would act spontaneously when he danced as the Ark was brought into Jerusalem. Neither of them was punished for their behaviour, (although Michal did reprimand her husband David after his dance). But what made Nadav and Avihu deserve so severe a punishment?

The difference was that Moshe was a Prophet. David was a King. But Nadav and Avihu were Priests. Prophets and Kings sometimes act spontaneously, because they both inhabit the world of time. To fulfil their functions, they need a sense of history. They develop an intuitive grasp of time. They understand the mood of the moment, and what it calls for. For them, today is not yesterday, and tomorrow will be different again. That leads them, from time to time, to act spontaneously because that is what the moment requires.

Moshe knew that only something as dramatic as shattering the tablets would bring the people to their senses and convey to them how grave was their sin. David knew that dancing alongside the Ark would express to the people a sense of the significance of what was happening, that Jerusalem was about to become not just the political capital but also the spiritual centre of the nation. These acts of precisely judged spontaneity were essential in shaping the destiny of the people.

But Priests have a different role altogether. They inhabit a world that is timeless, ahistorical, in which nothing significant changes. The daily, weekly and yearly sacrifices were always the same. Every element of the service of the Tabernacle was bound by its own detailed rules, and nothing of significance was left to the discretion of the Priest.

The Priest was the guardian of order. It was his job to maintain boundaries, between sacred and secular, pure and impure, perfect and blemished, permitted and forbidden. His domain was that of the holy, the points at which the infinite and eternal enter the world of the finite and mortal. As God tells Aharon in our parsha: “You must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean; and you must teach the Israelites all the laws which the Lord has imparted to them through Moshe.” The key verbs for the Kohen were lehavdil, to distinguish, and lehorot, to teach. The Kohen made distinctions and taught the people to do likewise.

The priestly vocation was to remind the people that there are limits. There is an order to the universe and we must respect it. Spontaneity has no place in the life of the Priest or the service of the Sanctuary. That is what Nadav and Avihu failed to honour. It might have seemed like a minor transgression but it was in fact a negation of everything the Tabernacle and the Priesthood stood for.

There are limits … To teach them, and us, that even in Eden, Utopia, Paradise, there are limits. There are certain things we can do, and would like to do, that we must not do.

The classic example is the environment. As Jared Diamond has documented in his books, Guns, Germs and Steel, and Collapse, almost wherever human beings have set foot, they have left a trail of destruction in their wake. They have farmed lands to exhaustion and hunted animals to extinction. They have done so because they have not had, embedded in their minds and habits, the notion of limits. Hence the concept, key to environmental ethics, of sustainability, meaning limiting your exploitation of the Earth’s resources to the point where they can renew themselves. A failure to observe those limits causes human beings to be exiled from their own garden of Eden.

We have been aware of threats to the environment and the dangers of climate change for a long time, certainly since the 1970s. Yet the measures humanity has taken to establish limits to consumption, pollution, the destruction of habitats and the like have, for the most part, been too little, too late. A 2019 BBC survey of moral attitudes in Britain showed that despite the fact that a majority of people felt responsibility for the future of the planet, this had not translated into action. 71 percent of people thought that it is acceptable to drive when it would be just as easy to walk. 65 percent of people thought it acceptable to use disposable cutlery and plates.[1]

In The True and Only Heaven, Christopher Lasch argued that the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment endowed us with the belief that there are no limits, that science and technology will solve every problem they create and the earth will continue indefinitely to yield its bounty. “Progressive optimism rests, at bottom, on a denial of the natural limits on human power and freedom, and it cannot survive for very long in a world in which an awareness of those limits has become inescapable.”[2] Forget limits and eventually we lose paradise. That is what the story of Adam and Eve warns.

In a remarkable passage in his 1976 book on inflation, The Reigning Error, William Rees-Mogg waxed eloquent about the role of Jewish law in securing Jewish survival. It did so by containing the energies of the people – Jews are, he said, “a people of an electric energy, both of personality and of mind.” Nuclear energy, he says, is immensely powerful but at the same time needs to be contained. He then says this:

In the same way, the energy of the Jewish people has been enclosed

in a different type of container, the law.

That has acted as a bottle inside which

the spiritual and intellectual energy could be held;

only because it could be held has it been possible to make use of it.

It has not merely exploded or been dispersed;

it has been harnessed as a continuous power …

Contained energy can be a driving force over an indefinite period; uncontrolled energy is merely a big and usually destructive bang.

 In human nature only disciplined energy is effective.[3]

That was the role of the Kohen, and it is the continuing role of halachah. Both are expressions of limits: rules, laws and distinctions. Without limits, civilisations can be as thrilling and short-lived as fireworks. To survive they need to find a way of containing energy so that it lasts, undiminished. That was the Priest’s role and what Nadav and Avihu betrayed by introducing spontaneity where it does not belong. As Rees-Mogg said, “uncontrolled energy is merely a big and usually destructive bang.”

I believe that we need to recover a sense of limits because, in our uncontrolled search for ever greater affluence, we are endangering the future of the planet and betraying our responsibility to generations not yet born. There are such things as fruit we should not eat and fire we should not bring.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks

 

KOL HATOR Commentary

The Second Exodus which may now be taking place in fulfillment of Prophecy (Jer. 16:14-21) entails bringing back the Exiles of all 12 Tribes, two Houses of Israel, from where they have been spread amongst the Nations across the four corners of the World.  All commentators agree that we have reached the End Times as we are approaching the Final Redemption or release from Bondage, when we will have to Return to Covenantal Torah-founded relationship with the G-d of Israel.  The 12 Tribed Kingdom of Israel will be restored and re-united into ONE nation which will serve as G-d’s Light unto the Nations. They will rule with G-d in His Universal Kingdom having been imbued totally with His Spirit under a New Eternal Covenant to raise them to the heights of perfection – as He is Perfect.  (Ref. Servant of G-d;  New Covenant – ref. also to Additional Ref’s at the foot of this and these articles)

According to the allegorical pattern presented by the Festive Pesach ceremonies, these 8 days of Pesach brought the Israelites in Exodus finally and protectively through the Red Sea now beyond the reach of Egypt and under the Personal Presence and Protection of HaShem through His Shechinah. Yet, there remained the covenanting to G-d at Sinai (receiving of the Torah, His Will specifications) and the Entry into the Land. This entry was delayed several times due to the incompetence of the Nation to conform to G-d’s requirements. This is the stage now having been reached by those from the House of Judah and the re-awakening House of 10-Israel who,  like the 20% of the Nation in the 1^st Exodus, chose to Return to the Land of their forefathers, the Land of the Covenant which will serve as the seat o the Universal Rule of the God of Israel.

Rabbi Sacks’s review points out the foundational choice that these Returnees in the 2^nd Exodus will have to make – a Pointer for especially the House o 10-Israel which, unlike the House of Judah, have lost their Torah identity totally in their Exile. It is mirrored in a fearfully awesome and tragic event right at the Time of the inaugurational service in the Tabernacle.

This links up perfectly also with our recent Blog commentaries on the current Corona Plague which is engulfing the Earth. We have posed the possibility that HaShem, at this Time of the approaching Final Redemption, may well be forcing humanity (and especially His ‘Servant’ in preparation) to reach their Final stage of Choice whether they wish to humble themselves to accept each other for uniting into ONE Nation, as He requires.

The Nation of Israel has been divided for 2700 years now – at first enemies in the Land of Israel after the split of the World Empire of Solomon and for the last 2000 years the Family Feud has continued in bloodletting animosity between Jews and Christians. The G-d of Israel is calling all exiles Home to unite under Torah as His Light unto the Nations. Final Redemption is at hand but the Family Feud needs to be settled – and G-d is waiting on His People to reconcile. It is now Time that Christians abandon their rejection of Torah and Jews – and for Jews to realize that they were called to share the Torah with all the Nations. Corona Plague has unmasked this staggering Realization that ‘Together we shall survive’ as His Torah Kingdom or else die under the plague and Curses of Torah rejection! There will be NO escape – His Torah Kingdom shall be established through those who wish to embrace and unite under His Universal Torah – simply His Will for His entire Creation!

This humbling before HaShem requires:

• that The House of 10-Israel realize that they have to return to Torah and to subject themselves to the Torah guidance of the Rabbinical Divinely mandated Mechoqeck Judicial arm of HaShem; and
• that Judah repent from having neglected to guide the nations in Torah, hoarding Torah just for themselves especially at this time of Torah restoration by millions of non-Jews around the World who undoubtedly are the awakening House of Israel (Ephraim).