News from Rabbinate
Revelation in Our Time, or, make Banal Sacral (again).
Two weeks ago, we began reading the Book of Names (Exodus). It is a book of revelation. It opens with Moses’ personal encounter with the Divine and unfolds into a national revelation—God revealing Godself to the people of Israel.
Can we connect this narrative of revelation to our own lives, unfolding alongside our reading of the Torah, especially in the month of Shvat, which has just begun?
This week, we read Parashat Bo. In this portion, Pharaoh offers to release only the Jewish men, allowing them to go and worship YHWH in the wilderness. Pay close attention to Moses’ response:
"And Moshe said, We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters.. for it is a festival of YHWH for us all" (Names 10:9)
In this single verse, Moses declares that the service of God holds equal value for all, and moreover, each person is indispensable—each one is required to participate in order to serve God in the most proper and profound way. I still vividly remember the moment I first encountered this verse—a moment of revelation; the moment I realized that, in fact, synagogues where only men are permitted to pray are perpetuating the ways of Egypt—the very path that the Torah repeatedly commands us not to follow. They embody Pharaoh’s oppressive worldview. This verse is a revelation for us all, a reminder that the path we walk and for which we fight is not part of the orthodox narrative, according to which we stray from the straight path, but rather, we are the ones walking the rightful, original, and divine way.
Next week, we will read Parashat Beshalach, known as Shabbat Shira—the Sabbath of Song—when we chant the Song of the Sea. A beloved custom on Shabbat Shira is to go outside on Shabbat morning and scatter the remains of challah for the birds. It’s an invitation for a revelation. We invite nature to reveal itself to us, and in turn, we discover a melody that has always been there—a sacred, daily song we have simply ceased to hear.
Our ability to perceive nature as a revelation is precisely what we will celebrate together on Tu BiShvat, the full moon of the month of Shvat, on February 12th. As an ancient custom, it is fitting to eat on this day a fruit we have not yet tasted this year—to marvel anew at nature, whose wondrous existence we so often take for granted. This is revelation—a rupture in the ordinary, a glimpse into the hidden, the essential, the unfiltered. And it is within our reach at every moment. May we train ourselves to perceive it in the month ahead.