Help this child/Pope goes backards?/Sermon on Trumah

1. Our EHNTJC members the Barons ask I pass this along:
Our close friends Gelena and Sasha Zeltser have gotten tragic news. Their 7 year old son, Sammy, has been diagnosed with terrible genetic disorder, adrenoleukodystrophy. The family had agreed to a very risky but the only available option – bone marrow transplant. Children's Memorial Hospital found a match and is about to start preparing both Sammy and donor for an operation.
Zeltsers will be facing with huge expenses going forward: loss of income (Gelena is leaving job up to 1 year), new insurance payments, deductibles (tens of thousands of dollars), medical aid personnel and equipment, lodging for the duration of hospital stay, alternative clinical and spiritual therapies, etc. They are selling the house and are already thin on resources. PLEASE, help the Zeltsers win the battle. Any assistance will be appreciated. I ask of you only 2 things:
1) Go to www.sammyzeltserswish.org, make a donation and learn about Sammy and his disorder2) Spread the news – ask your circle of friends to help in the same way I am asking you today. We need to create a huge awareness.G-d Bless you for your kindness.
Vadim Muchnik
Director, Central Transport
Evanston Northwestern Healthcare
Evanston Hospital
2650 Ridge Ave
Room B106
Evanston IL 60201

2. Jewish groups decry new Catholic text







Published: 02/06/2008


A coalition of Jewish groups expressed disappointment at the new text of the Catholic Church's Prayer for the Jews.

The prayer removes language considered offensive to Jews, including a reference to Jews’ “blindness” and a call that God “may lift the veil from their hearts,” but still prays for the salvation of the Jews exclusively through conversion to Christianity.

Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday unveiled the replacement for the Good Friday prayer in Latin, which is not used by most of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.

"We had hoped that the prayer in the Latin rite would be the same as that of the universal Catholic liturgy in use since 1970," said Rabbi David Rosen, the chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations. "This new version for the Latin rite appears to be a regression from the path advanced by the declaration of the second Vatican Council. We urge the Catholic Church to deepen its exploration of the full implications of Nostra Aetate's affirmation of the eternal validity of God’s Divine Covenant with the Jewish People."

IJCIC, a coalition of Jewish organizations representing world Jewry to other world religious bodies, is the formal Jewish partner of the Vatican.


3. Parashat T'rumah
Exodus 25:1-27:19
Triennial Reading: 25:1-25:40
February 9, 2008 / 3 Adar I 5768
This week's commentary was written by Rabbi Marc Wolf, Senior Director,
Community Development, JTS.

It was a demonstration of will; nothing short of unbridled desire to
succeed led the Giants to their Superbowl victory. What made this game
spectacular, more than any other in recent history, was how clear that
manifestation of will was.
I employ religious language here intentionally, you can be sure. And
while we may sometimes walk the thin line of idolatry when referring to
sporting giants, there is no denying that our collective love of great
moments like this past Sunday are imbued with a passion that is truly
religious in nature. When Eli Manning, somehow channeling Houdini,
slipped from the pile of the Patriots' defensive line to set up the Giants
touchdown in the last moments of the fourth quarter, it was nothing short
of a religious moment.
What the Giants come to teach us this week is that human will is
sometimes much more apparent than divine will. With Parashat T'rumah, our
weekly reading of the Torah takes a dramatic shift. After the engaging
stories of Genesis, slavery and redemption through the Exodus, and the
theophany on Sinai, we now turn to the almost absurd details of the
construction of the mishkan, the portable tabernacle that will not only
accompany the Israelites through their wanderings, but occupy most of the
remaining columns of Exodus.
Commentators struggle with the meaning of the mishkan, its role in the
people's relationship with God, and how to wade through the details and
measurements of its construction. Is it not a bit odd that a God who
is attempting to encourage the people to think beyond the physical
suddenly commands a home? "Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell
among them" (Exod. 25:8). Just a few chapters ago we read of God's desire
to break the Israelites from their habit of needing physicality in
their worship. Could a home situated on prime real estate at the center of
the people really be what God is looking for? We cannot help but wonder
what the Torah is conveying as God's will in building the mishkan.
The answers commentators provide offer some guidance. For some, the
mishkan created a link to their recent immediate experience with God. The
experience of revelation had a limit, and the concern was that as the
people journeyed further from Sinai, their connection to God would
diminish. Don Isaac Abarbanel posits this when he comments, "God's intention
with the construction of the mishkan was to contest the idea that God
had forsaken the earth." As the people journeyed through the
wilderness, they needed reassurance that God was present in their lives. In this
sense, the mishkan provided a locale for God, a divine pied-à-terre,
if you will. Seforno understands the mishkan as a divine address as well
but identifies it as the spiritual address for the people's prayers
and service to God. We have adopted this even in our lives in directing
our prayers toward Jerusalem, and more specifically, the site of the
Temple, the successor to the mishkan.
With his aversion to anthropomorphism, Maimonides cannot accept that
God commands the construction of the mishkan for a dwelling, but rather
as a place for God's presence. In The Guide for the Perplexed,
Maimonides explains terms employed by the Torah; on the idea of God dwelling, he
states: "In every case in which [dwelling] is stated in reference to
God, it is used in the sense of the permanence of the Shekhinah--God's
presence--in a place" (I:25). With Maimonides, the mishkan serves as a
spiritual conduit to God, but not as a physical dwelling. When the
people needed to feel the immanence of God's presence, there was the
mishkan. In this sense, there was a spiritual reaction elicited that bordered
on the physiological.
There are many synagogues even today that inspire this feeling--and
serve as that conduit. However, I cannot imagine that God intended for us
to restrict our relationship to the walls of our synagogues. Again we
return to, and question the purpose of, this idea of limiting
interaction with the divine to the defined space of the mishkan.
The Sefat Emet, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter, reads the opening of our
parashah in its entirety to decipher the will of God in the building of the
mishkan. He cannot read the command to build the mishkan so that God
will dwell among the people without its preface of the command for the
people to offer gifts: "Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you
shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him"
(Exod. 25:2). It is the responsibility of each individual to come
forward and assist in the building. The Sefat Emet writes,
Material things have no will. And everything must have a will--that is
essential. This proves that these things depend upon humanity who has a
will. And with this will humanity can incline every thing towards God
. . . This is the meaning of the verse: "let them make Me a sanctuary
that I may dwell among them"--among each individual (T'rumah 5633).
By changing the understanding of the command, the Sefat Emet places
humanity at the fulcrum; the achievement of the divine will rests with our
ability to make the most of our raw materials. The responsibility
rests with us. It is through our actions that the inanimate has the
potential to fulfill a divine will.
However, if the mishkan is a vehicle through which we may enact the
divine will, we still seek to understand how to do that. How do we act to
enable the presence of God to dwell among us? We read what may be a
clue in the companion haftarah:
"With regard to this House you are building--if you follow My laws and
observe My rules and faithfully keep My commandments, I will fulfill
for you the promise that I gave to your father David: I will abide among
the children of Israel, and I will never forsake My people Israel" (I
Kings 6:12-13).
The intention involved in pairing the Torah reading with this selection
is obvious. When does God dwell among the people? When we live a life
devoted to mitzvot. We must read the two together, and learn a lesson
from the mishkan. Like the raw materials of the mishkan, mitzvot have no
will. Just as simply building the mishkan did not bring the presence
of God, so too simple observance will be ineffective. What will bring
the presence of God is our intentional unbridled will to bring the
presence of God into our lives through the engagement of mitzvot.
Imagine if we approached mitzvot with the passion of the Giants this
past Sunday?
Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Marc Wolf