Rabbi Eliot Baskin
Thursday, March 23, 2023
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Invocation for Colorado State Senate on MLK
Jan 19th, 2023 by Rabbi Eliot J Baskin
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
Shavuot 5782 Survivor Season 613: Sinai Wilderness with Rabbi Eliot Baskin
Shavuot 5782
Survivor Season 613:
Sinai Wilderness
with Rabbi Eliot J Baskin
Learning blessing:
Baruch
atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu la’asoak
b’divrei Torah.
Blessed
are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who hallows us with mitzvot, commanding us to soak up
words of Torah.
W5 Five Ws of journalism: Who, What, Where, When and Why?
Text 1
Rabbi Oshaya Rabbah said: The Torah says, "I was the
artisan's tool for the Holy One, Blessed be."
As a rule, an earthly monarch who is
building a palace does not build it according to his own ideas but according to
an architect; and the architect does not know how to
build it out of his head but has parchments or tablets to know how to design
the rooms and openings. In this way, God looked into the Torah and created the
world.
B'reishit
Rabbah 1:1
Text 2
After creating the earth, the Holy One
said to it, "If Israel accepts the Torah, you
shall survive, but if not, I will return you to chaos."
Tanchuma Genesis,
Shabbat 88a
Text 3
Once the world was created, it could not
have been sustained had it not occurred to the Divine Will to create human
beings to engage in the study of Torah. For just as God looked into the Torah
and created the world, humans look into it and sustain the world.
Zohar 161
a-b
Text 4
Why was the
Torah given
in the wilderness? To teach
that if you do not set
yourself free like
the wilderness,
you do not
merit the Torah.
And just as
wilderness has
no end, so Torah
is without
end.
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Invocation for State Senate Feb 17th, 2022 President's Day
Tuesday, May 25, 2021
Invocation for Colorado State Senate Tuesday May 25, 2021
Invocation for State Senate by Rabbi Eliot Baskin Tuesday May 25, 2021 Seventy-Third General Assembly Tuesday, May 25, 2021 STATE OF COLORADO 102d Legislative Day
As we gather together this morning I'd like to share with you an archaic word, Respair, that I think merits rejuvenation. It's coined from Latin roots meaning “again” and “hope.” Respair was last used in the Middle Ages following the plight of the bubonic plague. Respair means “the return of hope after a period of despair.” I believe that "Respair" is ripe for reviving during this period of emergence from our Covid pandemic
Let us pray:
Grant, Source of all Life, Makor Chayyim, that you Senators and staff be imbued with a spirit of respair as you reflect on your first 100 days of legislative work of healing and transformation. May peace and harmony always prevail in your midst so that the challenging pandemic needs of our state receive your undivided attention, unhampered by personal differences and partisan animosities.
May the Fount of Wisdom, Chonain HaDaat, provide upon all in this chamber knowledge, understanding and intelligence tempered by compassion, righteousness and hope as you legislate during this time of respair for the good of all here in Colorado.
Amen.
Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Invocation for Colorado State Senate May 18th, 2021 Shavuot
Tuesday May 18, 2021 Shavuot, Pentecost, Revelation Revealed
What book would you use to begin teaching Judaism to a child? According to tradition, it is none other than “Leviticus.” This middle book of our Pentateuch, Vayikra, is known as the Torat Kohanim, the Torah of the kohanim or priests, and of the Levites from which we get the English name of the book, Leviticus. The Levites were the priests’ assistants from the tribe of Levi (as in the popular brand of jeans, “Levis,” invented by a Jewish peddler, Levi Strauss, for the prospectors of the California Gold Rush).
“Said Rav Assi: Why do young children begin the study of Torah with the book of Leviticus, and not with Genesis? Surely it is because young children are pure, and the sacrifices korbanot are pure; so let the pure come and engage in the study of the pure” (Leviticus Rabba 7).
My Jewish education as a young child at a Reform temple in Toronto also began with Leviticus and I’ve always had a perplexing relationship ever since. I remember starting religious school with the presentation of a JPS Tanach. The teacher stated that the curriculum for the entire year would be the book of Leviticus. As we meandered through the quagmire of the sacrificial cult, I got lost in the plethora of disgusting details.
Several years later, I experienced deja vu when my bar mitzvah portion, Emor (Leviticus 21:1 – 24:23), was assigned, also from the book of Leviticus. I begged my tutor for the context of my portion and again got lost in the restrictions related to priests’ sexuality and marriage.
Fast forward to my first year in Israel for rabbinical school at HUC-JIR when my freshman sermon date was chosen and I was assigned this week’s portion, Vayikra. When I approached my rabbinic advisor for a clue as to where to start my homiletic journey, he pointed out the first word with its unique orthography of VAYIKRa.
The opening word of Leviticus is Vayikra is spelled with a little aleph. There are only nine small letters in the Torah and out of 27,057 alephs in the Torah and only this one is written small! Why?
The 19th century Italian Bible commentator, Samuel Luzzato, commented about the economic space saving technique when all the words ran together to save room on costly parchment. This helps explain the final forms of some of the Hebrew letters in order to determine when a word ends and another begins. The Sages suggest a homiletic explanation that this small aleph refers to the humility of Moses of whom the Torah says, “Now Moses was very meek (ענו), above all the people which were upon the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3).
Vayikra is the only book of the Torah that contains no history or stories, only laws and rituals, mostly about sacrifices, korbanot.
Our Sages opined many reasons for the sacrifices. The Rambam, the great 12th century philosopher, saw the sacrifices as a historical or pragmatic concession to customs of the times, as a weapon against rampant idolatry and child sacrifice. Maimonides radically proposed that the cult was only relevant in ancient times. This approach parallels the omission of liturgical references to restoration of the sacrifices in Reform liturgy.
The Ramban the 13th century commentator and mystic, saw the sacrifices as a ritual valuable in itself to promote communion with Deity. The Hebrew word korban, comes from the root karov, to draw near. Sacrifices were originally intended for us to draw near to Diety. Nachmonides taught that the blood represented the soul and therefore, sacrifices are the coming together of body and soul in service to God.
Whether a vehicle for prayer or historical concession, sacrifices were universally condemned by the prophets as we read in Isaiah traditionally read by all streams of Judaism on Yom Kippur morning for the haftara:
“What need have I of all your sacrifices?” Says the Eternal. “I am sated with burnt offerings of rams, And suet of fatlings, And blood of bulls; And I have no delight in lambs and goats (Isaiah 1:11-14). Instead of means to an end, the sacrifices degenerated into an end in themselves, from rite to rote.
After the fall of the second temple in 70 CE, prayer became the offering of our hearts and not of our flocks. Our tables became the metaphoric temple of old with ritual washing and blessings and salt on our food evoking the sacrifices of Leviticus.
The structure of the first word of Vayikra hints at the potential pitfall of the sacrifices. With the small aleph the text reads Vayikra, “God called out”; without the aleph we have Vayikar, “it happened.”
As we begin, Vayikra, may our pure learning, prayer and sacred service call out and not merely happen as we make sacrifices for the good of all.