A Message from Rav Yosef to Our BDJ Community:
There are so many different ways to mark the passage of time. For us, one of those ways is the passage from one book of the Torah to another. Back on Simchat Torah, with a Delta-diminished crowd in shul, we transitioned from Devarim back to Bereishit, and we’ll now transition from Bereishit to Shemot under similar circumstances. Looking further back, we can recall having been “locked down” from the middle of Shemot through the end of Vayikra, and davening outdoors from Bamidbar all the way around to nearly the end of Vayikra again, before the Torah returned to its resting place.
The Torah cycle and its moments of transition conjure up the cycling of the seasons, of the holidays, of the times that family, typically, gathers to celebrate. It is our familiar companion, walking us through life as it has walked our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents through their lives for millennia. It invites us, each Shabbat, to learn and to reflect, to gain perspective on whatever our current circumstances might be, and sometimes to simply be momentarily distracted from those circumstances.
Wherever you may be this Shabbat, whether it has been a week since you last heard the Torah read or 21 months since you last heard the Torah read, let’s all open the parsha together. To get perspective, to get distracted, and most of all to remember that you and I and each of us is a member of loving shul community that can be held down by Covid, but which will not be defeated by it. If we all will it, when the day comes, we will all find one another and embrace in shul again. Please will it.
Beginning Shemot assures us that we have a Vaykikra and a Bamidbar and a Devarim still ahead.
~ Rav Yosef