Four Sabbaths; Four Pillars

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Over 2,000 years ago, our Sages introduced special Torah readings into the liturgy during the four Sabbaths surrounding Purim.  This is no surprise, because our Sages were Rabbis, and it is apparent to me that Rabbis are genetically predisposed to prolong the services in any way they can–sermons, psalms, and, in this case, special Torah readings.

As to sermons, they are rites culturally appropriated from other religions and therefore prohibited by the Torah; surprisingly, no Rabbi to whom I have expressed that view ever agreed with me.  As to Psalms, they are obviously Jewish in origin and occasionally augment the service with a timely message, but I think that when one is added to the service, something of equivalent duration should be deleted.  The special Torah readings of Adar, however, are sui generis and merit close scrutiny, which, I believe, will be rewarded with an insight into the essential character of Judaism.

Stay with me.

רֹאשׁ חֹדֶשׁ אֲדָר שֶׁחָל לִהְיוֹת בְּשַׁבָּת, קוֹרִין בְּפָרָשַׁת שְׁקָלִים (שמות ל). חָל לִהְיוֹת בְּתוֹךְ הַשַּׁבָּת, מַקְדִּימִין לְשֶׁעָבַר… בַּשְּׁנִיָּה, זָכוֹר (דברים כה). בַּשְּׁלִישִׁית, פָּרָה אֲדֻמָּה (במדבר י״ט:ב׳). בָּרְבִיעִית, הַחֹדֶשׁ הַזֶּה לָכֶם (שמות יב)…

This Mishna in Megillah tells us that at the outset of Adar, we read Parshat Shekalim, about the coin donated by each Jew in the desert.  Next, we read Zachor, reminding us of the eternal battle against Amalek.  Then Parah, about the red heifer, the ashes of which purified those who had become ritually impure, and also had the anomalous reverse characteristic of rendering the pure impure.  Finally, Hachodesh, about the primacy of the month of Nissan.

Shekalim–Coins.  Zachor–Remember.  Parah–Cow.  Hachodesh–Month.

Interestingly, when the practice of reading these Torah portions commenced, two variant modes of implementation arose.  In Israel, they read the special portion in lieu of the weekly Torah portion.  The Babylonian community read the special portion in addition to the weekly Torah portion. Guess which practice was selected by our genetically predisposed Sages?  Right.  Why make the service brief rather than prolonged?  (And, because most of you, especially those in Israel, are not familiar with Yotzrot, the special prayers inserted in the Shemoneh Esreh on those Sabbaths, I won’t even begin to describe the countless hours–or so it seemed when I was young–those impenetrable prayers added to the service.)

It then fell to the Rabbis to expound upon, in those transgressive sermons, the choice of these seemingly unrelated topics.  Hmmmm.  They surround Purim; perhaps they relate to the Purim holiday. Shekalim, because the aggregate amount of money equaled the amount paid to Achasverosh for permission to kill the Jews.  Zachor because Haman was descended from Agag, the Amalekite King spared by King Saul.  Parah because . . . it’s about a cow . .  and ritual purity.  Hachodesh because . . . it’s about Nissan.

If you are particularly sensitive to tone, you probably noticed that I don’t find these explanations coherent or persuasive.

So I, disclaiming Sage status, offer my own.

I submit that these four topics are designated not because of Purim, but because they are a necessary introduction to Pesach. Upon the Exodus, we transitioned from a family to a nation, with a national character, communal obligations, a shared destiny, a mission.  The four special Sabbaths, with their special Torah readings, enumerate essential pillars of Jewish identity and survival, the sine qua non of our unique people.  These are the values that make us a Jewish nation.  Once these are established and accepted, we may proceed to celebrate the holiday of our national birth and make our way to a national home.

The elements of Jewish character described in these Torah portions define us as a special people, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a community consecrated to God.  People who adhere to these precepts and principles are worthy of being Chosen.

Pay attention.  We begin.

Shekalim describes the first two of these elements.  Each member of the servile multitude that left Egypt was required to contribute a half-shekel.  The rich could not contribute more nor the poor less.  This established among the newly-freed slaves the principle of equality.  Every Jew is of equal value.  We each may have different talents and physical characteristics, but we are all equal in our access to and ownership of Torah, which does not pass by inheritance but by individual effort and achievement.  We were all at Sinai.  Each of us is responsible for one another.  The fact that the coin is a half rather than a whole suggests that there is always more to strive for.  The fact that it is a donation marks us as charitable, people who give without remembering and receive without forgetting.

That characteristic confirmed, we move to the next essential pillar: history and memory. Zachor. We must always remember who we are, who our enemies are, and what our mission is.  We must remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.  We must remember that we were strangers in a strange land.  We must remember that we have intractable enemies who seek our destruction.  We must remember that God redeemed us from slavery and brought us to the Promised Land.  We must remember the covenant.  We are shaped by memory and we are adjured to preserve it.

So we are a giving people and a nation of equals. We have a shared communal memory that must be cherished and maintained.

The next one is the hardest, and I apologize if it offends. The third pillar is faith. The law of the red heifer is a mystery.  It is described as a chok, a law not susceptible to rational analysis or comprehension.  We don’t know why God commanded it; we just believe that He did and that, therefore, it is incumbent upon us to perform. Judaism is, at its core, a religion, as well as a civilization, a culture, a nation, a people.  It has mystery and majesty.  It has a God who requires certain things of us, whether we understand them or not.  All Jews are Jews and I have no problem with those who see Judaism as a kind of ethical culture society or even those whose religious practices are closer to those of Unitarians than to my own.  I do not judge those for whom tikkun olam circumscribes the entirety of Judaism.  I believe that everyone has an absolute right to determine for herself what type of Judaism to follow, or to follow no type of formal Judaism at all.  I just believe that the Sages are trying to teach us that a Judaism not based on adherence to Jewish law will not survive more than a few generations, as the memory of observance recedes. That is why the Sages devoted one of the four Sabbaths preceding Passover to a law that epitomizes a faith not accessible to our rational minds.  If we can accept that one, we can accept them all.

In order to survive as a Jewish nation, we must be charitable, we must recognize the equality of all Jews in the eyes of God and our own, we must have a shared memory and history, and we must follow the Jewish religion.

[Note:  my observation about the endurance of religious observance is based on millennia of Exilic experience; in galut, those who abandoned religious observance eventually fell away from Judaism itself.  The experiment in Israel is too new to judge.  Perhaps the very fact of being Israeli in a Jewish homeland will be sufficient to preserve a Jewish identity and culture for generations, even without religious observance.  I hope so.  We can’t afford to lose any precious Jewish souls.]

Finally, there is Hachodesh, the month.  The unique feature here is that God, having created the perfection of nature, grants us, with all our human frailty, the power to shape the calendar.  It matters not that the scientific expertise exists to calculate the precise moment of the new moon, and thereby to determine when the holidays will occur.  The power to declare the new month is reserved for the Sanhedrin, based upon testimony of human witnesses.  This grant of the capacity to control the calendar and time, as it relates to ritual, places humans at the center of Jewish existence.  The perspective that the world was created for us and it is our job to seek to perfect it is necessary for a newly formed nation to take its place as the designated people of God, a light unto the nations.

Shekalim.  Zachor.  The red heifer.  The month of Nissan.  When you list them that way, they do not sound like the essentials of Judaism.  But when you see them as representative of charity, equality, a shared national history and memory, religious observance, and focus on humanity, you perceive the pillars of Judaism, in four easy lessons.

And now we are prepared to usher in the holiday of Pesach–redemption–as a Jewish nation in a Jewish homeland.