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Please mail a check to:
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Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
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For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Finding: the Torah of God, the Torah of intimacy, the Torah of transformation, the Torah of wisdom with Reb Mimi Feigelson in parashat Shelach.
I have no idea what world we will be living in by the time Shabbat arrives.
So, I want to hold these moments that we have together as an opportunity to share these days given that I don’t know where I am going to be and where you are going to be where this Torah brings us together.
What are you holding onto right now to give you a sense of a world that you can feel alive in?
What is giving you meaning?
What is giving you purpose?
How are you moving forward?
Who are you doing it with?
I want to ask another couple of questions and at any time you can pause to sit with the questions themselves, that is also a gift that can share.
I want to think about three couples that I am sitting with these last weeks:
The first couple is: Information vs. Transformation
Knowledge vs. Wisdom
Physical Closeness vs. Intimacy
I am going to repeat that:
Transformation vs. Information
Wisdom vs. Knowledge
Intimacy vs. Physical Closeness
I want to ask you how do you live with these concepts and what is it that you are seeking right now? As we are in this desert together.
Are you looking for information or are you looking for a way to go through a process of transformation?
Are you looking for knowledge or are you actually looking for wisdom that we can grow with?
Are you looking for physical closeness or are you actually looking for intimacy, which is a whole different quality of closeness?
I ask this about ourselves in terms of our relationship with ourselves right now. Am I looking for information versus really asking how to go through the process of transformation as we are going through these weeks?
Am I looking for knowledge right now which is ‘webbed’ information or am I actually seeking wisdom so you know how to be, how to live, how to exist beyond existing?
The last is what kind of connection are we looking for? Do I want an intimacy which teaches me so much more than what only physical closeness has to offer? It is connected to the wisdom it is connected to the transformation.
I ask this about myself. I ask this about my community. I ask this about my family. I ask this about my friends. I ask this about my country. I ask this about the Torah. I ask this about my relationship with God.
Each one of these questions helps me be more of what I am.
So in this week’s Torah portion where there is so much happening, for me the place where I seek intimacy, where I seek wisdom, where I seek transformation is the story of the ‘stick collector,’ the מְקֹשֵׁ֥שׁ עֵצִ֖ים.
A midrash in the Talmud tells us that he was Zelophehad. The daughters of Zelophehad come to ask Moshe about their inheritance.
Now what do we know about the ‘stick collector?’ We know that he went out on Shabbat and collected sticks. A violation of Shabbat. A violation which merits, if that is the right word, punishment by death. And yet the daughters of Zelophehad come to Moshe Rabbeinu. He doesn’t know exactly what the halakha is.
He knows, the Talmud tells us, that it is death by not what kind of death. The Talmud tells this amazing things about the daughters of Zelophehad. How they were wise and what their wisdom was. How they understood and they knew what was happening in the Beit Midrash and they were dealing with the exactly the laws that were connected and that pertained to them.
Rashi quotes the Midrash that says, that they saw what the Torah in the Heavens and what the Heavens is.
מלמד שראייתן בשמיים מה שלא ראה משה רבנו
Their eyes were the Torah of God, the Torah of intimacy, a Torah of transformation, a Torah of wisdom.
It is in their merit that the Laws of Inheritance are named after them, are bound to their identity.
I want to ask us right now, when we are in so much turmoil right now, and seeking for elements and moments and seeds of joy, seeds of life, seeds of sustenance.
I want to ask you to pause today to seek transformation versus information, to seek wisdom versus knowledge, and to seek intimacy versus physical closeness.
I pray that we will come together in moments of intimacy, of wisdom and transformation, and wake up into a new world, a healthier world, a healed world. A world in which we can sustain and support and bring life and vitality to each other, to our relationship of ourselves, to our relationship with God and the world which God created and planted us on.
Shabbat shalom, only blessings and health and healing.
(image: Daughters of Zelaphehod, Foster Bible Pictures, 1897 via wikicommons)
Reb Mimi serves as the Mashpiah Ruchanit (spiritual mentor) of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary. She teaches Talmud and Hassidic Thought in the rabbinical program as well as in the Schechter Institute. She guides and walks with the rabbinical students on their personal-spiritual journeys. Previously, she served as the Mashpiah Ruchanit of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles for 16 years. Prior to this Reb Mimi was one of the founding administration and faculty members of the “Yakar” Beit Midrash and community.
