Speak to the Israelites, so that they will bring for
me an offering. . . This is the offering that you shall receive from them: gold
and silver and brass, blue and purple and scarlet and fine linen. . . and cedar
wood. (Exodus 25:2-5)
The seeds that we plant
through our actions today largely determine the landscape that we will leave
for future generations.
In this week’s Torah portion,
Terumah, God asks the Israelites for
free-will gifts of materials to be used in the building of the portable sanctuary
they will carry through the wilderness.
Many of the items on the list are surprising; they are not things we’d
expect to find in the possession of newly-freed Egyptian slaves.
Perhaps the most unexpected
of all is cedar wood. Cedar (or by some
translations, acacia) trees do not grow in the middle of the very barren Sinai
desert. Thus in his commentary, Rashi
asks: “From where did they obtain this in the wilderness?” He then provides an answer drawn from the
fifth-century collection Midrash
Tanchuma: “Our father Jacob foresaw by means of the Holy Spirit that Israel
was destined to build a tabernacle in the desert, so he brought cedars to Egypt
and planted them and commanded his children to take them along when they would
leave.”
In other words, for the
Israelites to accomplish their religious duties, they needed foresight.
This message is timely for
us, in both ecological and Jewish contexts.
By way of the former, let there be no doubt: we are living in critical days. Even as we are enjoying the warmest February
on record here in Idaho, new NASA data shows that by 2050, most of the western
United States will enter a mega-drought, lasting up to forty years. If we do not begin to deal with the
forthcoming affects of climate change, the results will be disastrous for our
children and grandchildren.
And in the Jewish world, we
are witnessing enormous demographic shifts.
Our ability to sustain vibrant progressive Jewish life depends upon our
capacity to act with foresight and creativity.
I heard much talk of this last week as I attended a conference of the
Covenant Foundation, a leading source of innovation in the Jewish world and the
source of our grant to hire a music educator this year. Here at CABI, we are striving to act in this
spirit, charting our course in a manner that we hope will lay a strong
foundation for future generations. Our music educator will be a big part of
this. And I believe that our ongoing initiative
toward a partnership with the Cooperative Pre-school is also a very significant
step in this direction, and therefore core to our organizational mission of
building enduring Jewish community.
In his commentary on Mishpatim, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson
concludes: “As with our ancestor Jacob, we too must rely. . . on insight, then
translate that insight into action.
Tomorrow begins the moment today is finished. And the work we do today will shape our
children’s tomorrows.”
Our CABI community has a lot
of sacred work to do. It starts today—please
join us.
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