Shabbat Weekly Dvar Torah

Life moves in cycles. The world around us is never static: days rise and fall, seasons turn, tides ebb and flow. Scientists tell us that even the tiniest parts of our bodies - every cell - operate on a circadian rhythm, a 24-hour clock that governs sleep, metabolism, mood, and even immunity. When we live in harmony with these rhythms, we thrive. When we ignore them, everything feels out of balance. The natural world preaches the same lesson. Trees shed their leaves in autumn, not in despair, but in preparation. By letting go, they conserve energy, store life within their roots, and ready themselves for renewal in the spring. What looks like loss is in fact a cycle of strength. The Jewish year is built on this wisdom of cycles.

It is a rabbinic dictum not to attempt to weigh the value of one mitzvah against the other. Rather than saying that this mitzvah is more important than another, we are to recognize that all mitzvot are grounded in our brit (covenant) with the Holy One and derive their authority out of our chosen response to God's will. And yet... it is hard to resist the temptation to create a hierarchy. So, at least in the popular mind, there are some mitzvot so central to Jewish identity that they are almost synonymous with Judaism itself. Lighting Shabbat candles, wearing a head covering, and kashrut, the dietary laws. So central, in fact, is kashrut, that it has become the way to refer to any action or person that is moral, upright, and proper. In that sense, it has even entered the English language.

Let’s be honest: sometimes it takes losing something to truly appreciate what we had. For many of us, gratitude only kicks in when the Wi-Fi drops… or worse, the phone drops (!), and we brace ourselves for the worst only to flip it over and realize it’s not broken. That moment of relief? That’s modern-day gratitude. On a more serious note, when health, mobility, or time slip away, the fragility of these things becomes starkly clear. At 50, facing a terminal neurological condition (PSP – Progressive Supranuclear Palsy) and having just experienced the first need to use a wheelchair, life has come into sharper focus. And I can honestly say I feel enormous gratitude for the blessings I have and continue to receive. It’s a perspective shift forced upon me one I’m not sure I would have arrived at on my own.

Each year, in the dog days of summer, our text and our tradition point us towards love. Coming out of the intense mourning of Tisha B’Av, we find ourselves poised at the nexus of Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort and Shabbat Vaetchanan, this Shabbat on which we read the Torah’s commandment to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength. And tonight, largely unnoticed outside of Israel, we’ll celebrate Tu B’Av…. And, while the modern celebrations mirror our Hallmark holiday, Tu B’Av appears in rabbinic literature and beyond as a day of comfort and healing, a return to love after the pain and grief of Tisha B’Av — commemorating tragedies in Jewish history and considered to be the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.

There’s a well-known story (apocryphal or true, we’ll never know) of Napoleon riding by a synagogue on Tisha B’Av (which falls tomorrow night through Sunday) and hearing wailing and crying from within. When he asked an aide what was going on, he was told the Jews were mourning the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years before. His response: “A nation that cries and fasts for over 2,000 years for their land and Temple will surely be rewarded with both.” I heard that story for the first time at Camp Pembroke, the Jewish girls camp I attended from ages 9 to 19. And the main question that I remember thinking about the story at the time was: Why were they crying so loudly that Napoleon could hear them from outside!?!

Most of us remember playing hide-and-seek as children. I often thought of the game as one that revealed the difference between those of us who relished being “it” (trying to find their friends after the proper period of counting) and those for whom being “it” came with severe anxiety. As far as the hiders went, growing up was marked by being able to find ever more sophisticated places to take refuge. It was only when the cry of “Ollie Ollie oxen free!” could be heard that we knew it was safe to come out. And it all began again from there. This Shabbat we read the Torah portions Matot-Masei, which taken together, bring the book of Numbers to a close. Among the many matters discussed — such as the rules for entering a foreign city and the taking-on and annulling of vows — are the cities of refuge to be established once the Israelites settle in Canaan.

Every so often, the Jewish calendar gives us a parsha that arrives right on time — not just in the weekly rhythm of Torah, but in the deeper rhythm of our lives. Parshat Pinchas is one of those moments. On the surface, it’s not a parsha that immediately signals inclusion. It begins with zealotry and ends with offerings. But tucked within its verses is a quiet, powerful revolution led by five women — daughters who asked a question, told the truth, and changed Torah forever. Their names — Machla, Noa, Hogla, Milka, and Tirza — are not just listed once. The Torah mentions them again and again. We are meant to remember them, to speak their names, to learn from their courage. Their father, Tzelophechad, had died without sons. And in the system of inheritance at the time, that meant his family’s name, and land, would be erased.

As Balak begins, the 40 years of desert wandering have passed and the Israelites finally arrive on the borders of the land of Canaan. They are about to move in and conquer it all and seem unstoppable to their opponents. Balak, King of Moab, a neighboring nation, comes up with a novel plan: he will hire Bilaam, a top pagan sorcerer, to curse the Israelites, destroying their chances of defeating his own army and entering his land. Only the scheme doesn’t work. Bilaam may be a polytheistic prophet, but he is also an honest man who conveys only what God permits him to say. This is a colorful portion: we are gifted with such entities as a professional sorcerer-for-hire, an angel with a fiery sword, a talking donkey…