D'var Torah

Not that this website has ever actually intended to serve a practical function, but...for my relatives who asked for a copy of my d'var torah from my sister's aufruf today, I offer it here:

For those of you who were paying attention to the Hebrew in this week’s Torah portion, you’ll know that we have reached the part of the biblical madness where a number of rules are spelled out for us. How we observe Passover, how after seven years we forgive all loans and free our slaves, and how we offer an offering of our crops to God.

My favorite rule -- which is the one my mother chanted so harmoniously a few moments ago -- is about how we are to exalt our first born. As the little brother it doesn’t give me comfort to know that my mother picked those specific verses, but I suppose it’s really not my place to kvetch about it.

But you know what, I’ve decided I am going to kvetch about it. The one solace I might have had in the text here is that it says the first born male is the one who is supposed to be exalted. Anyone who knows my family is well aware that those rules don’t apply in the Chandler household. So what I am left with: the d’rash at the auf ruf at a time on Saturday morning when I’d normally still be asleep. Well, here goes.

So for the past seven weeks Jews have been counting down the time from our exodus in Egypt to the moment where we received the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai on the holiday of Shavuot. These seven weeks represent a time in the Jewish calendar where couples are not supposed to marry; the idea is that we are supposed to be rejoicing in our freedom. Now were the sages being clever by telling us to rejoice in our freedom during the same period in which we are not supposed to marry? That’s a sermon I am not allowed to give right now.

The better reason that Jews are not supposed to marry during these seven weeks is because traditionally we are supposed to be focused on the harvest. And so, for all of us: local Houstonians or those of you from out of town who are surprised to find that even in Texas we are not tilling the fields of an actual harvest I ask a question. What is our contemporary harvest?

Over the past few hours I’ve heard the endless sounds of the contemporary harvest; the song of my big sister chanting her Torah portion carrying across the house, my mother snipping every bit of fat off of a twenty pound brisket in the kitchen sink. The sights of the harvest are there too: a seamstress shortening my sister’s wedding dress, the rearranging of the refrigerator to make room for trays of cupcakes baked by the mother of the groom.

These are certainly dimensions of the harvest, but they are not the harvest itself. The harvest is something less tangible, something more symbolic. It is not the work of one parent exalting a first born child (as the Torah says to do) or a person doing his or her craft, but rather the efforts of a community to exalt a couple who are united in love, a couple who are the product of the very harvest, and a couple who will turn the earth to yield a future crop and keep the community vibrant.

Weddings are the manifestations of the harvest and they are the apex of our goodwill. The women who came over to the house to labor over cakes or write names on place cards, the rabbi who called in to check on the bride and groom, the men who moved the tables and chairs and built the altar. We are all invested because our bride and groom hold up a mirror and reflect the world that created them. That’s the harvest to me. Thank you all for being a part of it.