Randy Schoch – Para-Rabbinic Fellow
We have had a great and busy month here at our little shul. In addition to our regular Friday evening Sabbath services, we had a special combination Torah Service and Holocaust Remembrance Program on the 2nd Saturday April 10th. Madelene (designed & edited) and Lee (assembled) a service and booklet for a moving service that will be recollected for a long time to come. Congratulations to the Weinbergers.
At this time of year, we begin to read and study in the book of Leviticus what is generally referred to as the “Holiness Code”. It contains ideas, verses, and mitzvot (commandments) which I use in my personal prayer life and in teaching my 5th Grade classes at Beth El Hebrew School in Alexandria. It starts off in 19:1 with “You must be holy, since I am G-d your Lord (and) I am holy” and then continues to list and explain many of the commandments we remember for an earlier Torah portion but with much more added and expanded.
One idea that seems to bother my 5th graders is that the Holiness Code holds us to very high standards and we are not able to “toe the line” so to speak. I try to impress upon them that our G-d is a loving parent and will not reject us if we don’t reach perfection. Keep in mind that when we take a test in the classroom the passing range is usually 70% or better. Do your best!
Another point of the Holiness Code that had been especially troubling to my students was “You must love your neighbor as (you love) yourself”. Most of them have no trouble with “loving themselves” and I have reminded them numerous times that the love referred to here is not the close, intimate, “touchy feely” love. You don’t even have to like your neighbor but you must be just, honest, fair, and forgiving. We all need to be reminded to practice that kind of “love”.
A little bit of Kabbalah from the Rebbe, obm before closing: “What you see of a person, you may not like. Yet who this person really is, you can never know. As for the G dly soul inside—it is the unknowable itself. Speak to that: Look past the outer shell and talk to the unknowable inside. Only from there can come real change”.
ב׳שלום,
R. Schoch, PRF
Disclaimer – Anything written in this column is only my own impression of events, the way that I interpret them, and not meant to be factual and true. If confronted by a challenge, I will immediately claim senility and deny writing whatever is being challenged.