Theme
In modernity nobody forces us to be jewish. So why still identify as jewish? And if we decide to identify as jewish, how do we do it? How do we conect? How do we make judaism feel current, valid and modern? What are things that need to be restored, rebuild and preserved? What are the building blogs that make up our jewish identity.
Questions for the commentaries
1. How do the texts deal with traditions /what is the attidue towards tradition?
2. How do they try to make Judaism feel current and valid?
3. What value has the law?
4. What value has tradition?
5. Does the text demand something from us? If so, what?
"Listening to Heart-Wisdome" by Jill hammer in: "Torah Queeries Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible"
There are two modes of revelation in the Torah. One mode is that of Sinai; revelation comes from a mountaintop, in the form of laws and principles. The law treats everyone equally. It is a transcendent law, Divine in origin, and descends to touch every member of the covenant with its truths. The other mode is that of the mishkan, the Tabernacle or Sanctuary. As the Israelite people build the mishkan, the shrine they will carry through the wilderness, they rely on their inner wisdom and individual gifts. Although the pattern of the mishkan comes from the Eternal, the gifts that make the sanctuary what it is come from the depths of the human heart. [...]
He [Moses] says, “These are the things God has commanded: Take from among you a gift for the Eternal. All those whose hearts are willing shall bring a gift for the Eternal” (Ex. 35:5). The Tabernacle cannot be built only according to law. It must be built by those whose hearts are willing.
The people immediately respond to this plea. “Everyone whose heart lifted him up, and everyone who was moved by a spirit of generosity, came bringing the gift of the Eternal for the work of the Tent of Meeting, for its service, and for the sacred vestments: men and women, all who were generous of heart” (Ex. 35:21–22). Notice that the genders, so carefully separated by Torah law, come together to create the sacred shrine. There is no division between man and woman. All desire to be part of the building of the Tabernacle.
"A Knack for Design" by Lisa Edward & Laurence Edwards in :"Torah Queeries Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible"
[...]There are yet other passions we have in our community for restoring, rebuilding, preserving. [...]
Queer Jews also fit Fellows’s restoration category, building connections to the past—with continuous improvements and embellishments. Could there be a more contemporary example of this phenomenon than the expansion in understanding of what, and who, constitutes families—not only same-sex marriage, of course, but also what Marla Brettschneider calls “the family flamboyant”? How ironic that the very people accused of being boundary crossers and tradition smashers are in the fore- front of preserving, reclaiming, and reworking traditions.
Part way through Pekudei, the Israelites deliver all the completed parts of the Tab- ernacle of the Tent of Meeting, including “the service vestments.” Though some as- sembly is required, the text tells us that “when Moses saw that they had performed all the tasks—as the Eternal had commanded, so they had done—Moses blessed them” (39:43). Clearly this massive project, involving all the people, had been completed dutifully and most beautifully down to the last detail. With what words did Moses bless them? asks the midrash, noticing the absence of said blessing in the Torah, and it answers that Moses said, “May it be God’s will that the divine Presence rest upon the work of your hands.” How much of the queer participation in Jewish life today— the energetic commitment to the religion and culture pouring in from the fringes— comes with a longing for a blessing such as this one? Would that more queer participants could offer their talents and service, arising from natural inclination, with the expectation or, better yet, certainty of such a blessing.
If the book of Exodus, concluding with the completion of the Tabernacle in Pekudei, “births” the Jewish interest in creating sacred space—in building the perfect building in which God would choose to dwell and in designing the ritual role and ritual garb of the priests who tend the sacred place—it also births a passion handed down generation to generation (l’dor vador) to preserve, repair, and reconstruct that which has been handed down, to keep sacred space and sacred passions a living, breathing way of life.
Hirsch on Badim, poles, בדים
The בדים the means of carrying the Ark, symbolically represent the command and the mission to carry the Ark and its contents, if it becomes necessary, away from the precints of it present position. The command that these means of transport may never be lacking is to emphasise in our minds the fact that from the very beginning it must be made clear that this Torah and its mission is in no way bound or confined to the place or existence at any time of the Temple and Sanctuary.
This meaning of the constant presence of the בדים. as proof of the idenpendence of Torah of any place, receives further emphasis when it is contrasted to the other appurtences of the Sanctuary, especially to the Table and Menora, both of which had to be supplied with בדים, but the poles did not have to be permantly in place [...] Israels Table and Israels Menora - its material life in its full completeness, and its spiritual and intellectual life in complete clarity and brightness - are bound to the soil of the Holy Land. Israel`s Torah is not.
"Die Bauleute - über das Gesetz" von Franz Rosenzweig von 1925
Aber einerlei ob innerhalb oder außerhalb der alten Grenze, in jedem Fall ist es ein neues, ist es unser heutiges Gesetz, was so gesetzt wird, und doch gerade dadurch wieder - das Gesetz. Denn eben dies war es ja, was wir an dem Gesetz, wie seine neuen Hüter es uns entgegenhielten vermißten und vermissen durften: daß das alte nicht auch zugleich ein neues war. Eben diese Mangel an Heutigkeit war anerkannt, wenn durch jene Grenzlinie, von der ich sprach, das Leben von heute zum "Erlaubten" geworden war. Damit war dem Gesetz selber die heutigkeit abgesprochen. Vergessen war die Paradoxie schon den alten Erklärern überwaltige Kühnheit, die den Mose des Deutronomium zu dem Geschlecht, das nicht am Sinai gestanden hatte, sprechen lassen konnte: Nicht mit unseren Vätern schloß er den Bund, sondern mit uns, uns, diesen, hier, heut, uns allen, den Lebenden [...] wir kennen die Grenze nicht und wissen nicht, wie weit die Pflöcke des Zeltes der Torah hinausgerückt werden können uns welche unserer Taten bestimmt ist, sie hinauszurücken. Daß sie hinausgerückt werden, und durch uns, darf für uns sicher gelten; denn wie dürfte auf die Dauer etwas draußen bleiben; da würde ja die Grenze das, was sie nicht werden darf: starr und bekannt [...].
"The builders - about the law" by Franz Rosenzweig from 1925.
But no matter whether within or outside the old boundary, in any case it is a new, it is our present law, what is thus set, and yet just by this again - the law. For it was precisely this that we missed and were allowed to miss in the law as its new guardians held it out to us: that the old was not at the same time a new one. It was precisely this lack of modernity that was recognized when, through that boundary line of which I spoke, the life of today had become the "permissible". Thus the law itself was denied its presentness. Forgotten was the paradox already to the old explainers overwhelming boldness which could let speak the Moses of the Deutronomium to the generation which had not stood at the Sinai: Not with our fathers did he make the covenant, but with us, us, these, here, today, all of us, the living [...] we do not know the limit and do not know how far the poles of the tent of the Torah can be moved out and which of our deeds is destined to move them out. That they will be moved out, and by us, may be considered certain for us; for how could anything remain outside in the long run; then the border would become what it must not become: rigid and known [...].