What an Eventful Week

 I’m on a plane traveling from Denver to Salt Lake City. Thank G-d this trip is for two very happy events. Last night Jasmine Joshua, who lived in our house for over three years while she was going to school in Palo Alto, got married to Dovid Braslawsce. It was a beautiful wedding.

Tomorrow my new grandson Zippel will with Hashem’s help have his bris in Salt Lake City.

Dena and I are thrilled to share the nachas for both. 

Today is the Yahrzeit of my grandmother, the holy Rebbetzin Mariasha Garelik. She must be having a lot of Nachas in Gan Eden.

As I settled into my seat on the very full plane, I was thinking that we find a connection and a lesson in the weekly Parsha to every event that happens in the world, there must be some connections here.  Sure enough there are references in our Parsha to weddings, bris, and my grandmother’s yahrtzeit (well, in a more general way).

Wedding: Amram, the leader of the Jewish people in Egypt, did not want to bring children into a world where all the boys were being drowned in the Nile. He and his wife Yocheved divorced, and everyone in the community followed their lead.

Their young daughter Miriam questioned their decision. Pharaoh’s decree, she said, is against boys, and your decision is also against girls. Amram remarried his wife Yocheved, and all the others followed suit.

This was a fateful decision, because shortly thereafter Moshe, the Jewish redeemer, was born.

Bris: When Moshe was born, the Torah says, his mother “saw him that he was good.”  What does “he was good” mean?  There are a few interpretations, but one is that he was born circumcised. Also, on the way back from Midian to Egypt, the Torah tells us, Moshe’s wife Tziporah circumcised their son.

Yahrzeit: Our Parsha tells us about the incredible self-sacrifice of the holy women in Egypt. The midwives disobeyed Pharaoh and refused to kill the Jewish boys. Our sages taught that it was in the merit of the righteous women that our forefathers were redeemed from Egypt. My grandmother, along with many other heroic women, refused to allow the Soviet Union to destroy their Judaism, and raised children faithful to Torah under pain of death. In fact my grandfather, whose yahrzeit (anniversary of being shot by Stalin’s butchers) is next week was murdered because of his refusal to stop performing the bris on Jewish babies. 

Jewish marriage in its current form was established, according to many authorities, in Egypt, and this is a Mitzvah that Hashem gave to Amram. This teaching is based on the verse in the Parsha describing Amram’s marriage to Yocheved.  The institution of bris goes back to our forefather Avraham. Both of those Mitzvot relate to the sanctity of the Jewish people. The bris represents the everlasting covenant between Hashem and the Jewish people, transcending logic, eternal and without limit, regardless of personal behavior.

The sanctity of family life is a pillar of Judaism. Marriage, Mikvah, treating each other with love and respect, and recognizing the boundaries of intimacy as an expression of holiness have kept our identity sacred for generations.

These are two Mitzvot that need a little shoring up. Sadly there are those who question the need for a bris altogether, and there are many Jews who have a medical circumcision rather than a halachic bris by a Torah observant mohel (The traditional procedure performed by a mohel is actually much less painful for the baby). And the lifestyle of the world around us does not support the sanctity of marriage.

It is therefore wonderful to be participating in two such great joyous and holy events over a span of three days.

I wish Jasmine and Dovid many happy years together in a home filled with the light of Torah and Mitzvot, and I wish my daughter and son-in-law Sheina and Rabbi Avremi much true nachas from their new baby and all their kids.

Oh and one other thing. Today is the yahrzeit of the Rambam, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, about whom it is said, “from Moshe (the original Moshe of our Parsha) to Moshe (ben Maimon), there was none like Moshe.”