A busy week and Parshat Nasso

It's been a pretty busy week here, but we've thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Daniel is walking more every day and now prefers to walk holding onto someone’s hand rather than crawling (unless speed is particularly important, when crawling tends to win!). Last Thursday my mum taught him how to kiss instead of bite, so there have been lots of big fat smacking kisses ever since – very sweet! He’s also worked out how to shake his head, but I don’t think he’s realised yet that it means ‘no’,

On Saturday afternoon, on a whim, we hit the Devon County Show. It’s horrendously expensive, and next time we’ll go for the whole day and take our own food, but we still came away sun-baked and happy! I finally got some fruit bushes, which will go into the veg patch later today.

Yesterday dh took Daniel to Exmouth for a picnic on the beach with our NCT group, and nearly got frostbite on his feet as Daniel stood at the edge of the sea, laughing at the waves and investigating shells, oblivious to how cold the water was! Still, he was brought back soundly asleep, covered in sand and looking blissfully content! Will definitely have to take him more often.

I, meanwhile, was in Paignton doing a presentation on Jewish music for an interfaith youth group. I managed to cover quite a lot in the time, and the comments I got about my singing made it worthwhile :-)

Finally, on Friday evening I led the synagogue service, so here’s the latest sermon on Parshat Nasso:

When I first read this week’s portion, I was completely stumped. I had absolutely no idea what to do with it! I get a weekly sermon by email from Leo Baeck, so I looked to that for inspiration, only to find that Rabbi Josh Levy had clearly had the same problem and had to resort to the Talmud for something very worth saying, but not very connected to the portion!

So what does it say? Well, there’s a bit more census, and a description of who should carry which parts of the Tent of Meeting when the Israelites move camp. Then, and this is the bit which Progressive Jews using the Triennial cycle are reading this year, there is a long and very repetitive section detailing the offerings made by the heads of each tribe. Each gave

one silver bowl weighing 130 shekels,

 one silver sprinkling basin weighing 70 shekels,

both filled with fine flour mixed with olive oil.

One spoon weighing 10 shekels  of gold filled with incense.

One young bull, one ram and one lamb.

One young he goat.

Two oxen, five rams, five he goats and five lambs.

That’s quite a long list. But instead of simply saying “each gave...”, the list is repeated for every one of the named heads of the tribes – all twelve of them.  It’s a bar mitzvah student’s dream, just having to repeat the same section 12 times! But joking aside, why be so long-winded? Not just the description, but also the presentation of the offerings was fairly drawn out, as each tribal head made his offering on a different day.

I think this is really important. They each gave the same, and it would be so easy to see each gift as just a small part of the final total. But for each tribe, this was a substantial offering. Each of them made the effort to acquire a considerable amount of goods, and by presenting them separately, and then naming and listing them separately, we value each individual contribution. It is so easy to focus only on the end result and forget the people who made it happen. When we remember and appreciate each individual, we will value the end result so much more. 

A paint job is not just a paint job when someone has gathered sponsorship and abseiled down a building to pay for it. A service is not just a service when a group of people have given their time and effort to plan, make challah, advertise and simply show up to make up a congregation.

When we remember those details we enrich our own experience and show true (and much-needed) appreciation to those who do all those seemingly mundane tasks, without which the wonderful end results could not happen.