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June 20, 2025 - 24 Sivan 5785
Dear Friends, This week's parasha, Shlach L'cha, includes the mitzvah of making challah, and dedicating this first yield of our baking to God, just as we do with the firsts of everything. In connection with this commandment, I share with you an excerpt from my Senior Sermon at Hebrew Union College to my future colleagues, just over 18 years ago, on the salt we traditionally offer each Shabbat with our t'rumah, our donation of challah to God.: I remember Friday evenings growing up. Mom cooked a delicious Shabbos dinner as Dad made sure everything was in place for services. Adam and I would set the table - silverware, salad dressings, the appropriate fixings for the main course. We’d light the candles and say the blessing, followed by rounds of hugs and kisses so everyone could wish everyone Shabbat Shalom. Then we'd say Kiddush, bless the challah and sit down for the meal. Everything had its place, time, and reason—just the way we Stroms like it. Except for one thing. One thing I never quite understood. Why did Dad sprinkle salt on the challah as we blessed it? I can't tell you how many times I asked, and how many times he patiently answered me that it was a reminder of the sacrifices made in the days of the Temple. It became a perfect example of a minhag you know so well and can't do without, but you don't know the reasons for it. No matter how many times it was explained to me, I just could not understand how something so small and seemingly trivial could have become and remained such an essential part of our Shabbos observance. The reaction was nearly identical the first time I read through Parashat Vayikra. In Leviticus 2:13, we read v'chol korban minchatcha ba-melach timlach, (וכל קרבן מנחתך במלח תמלח) “You shall season your every offering of meal with salt; you shall not omit from your meal offering the salt of your covenant with God; with all your offerings you must offer salt.” Why? Honestly, who cares? What makes salt so important that it needs to be a part of every meal offering we make? Why is it mentioned three times? And why is it referred to as melach brit eloheicha, the “salt of your covenant with God?” For one, salt is a preservative. Its application ensures that our offering will last, at least longer than without it. If the offering here is Judaism itself, we need to ask ourselves the difficult question: Just what are we preserving? How do we present our faith, both within our communities and to the non-Jewish world? I am concerned - and I am not alone - that we invest too much of our time, energy and resources putting the wrong face forward. We create whole curricula around the awareness of anti-Semitism and ways to confront it. We spend hours showing our kids Schindler's List, Life is Beautiful, and The Pianist. We lament the fact that we have been charged with imparting 3,000 years of tradition in two to four hours a week, yet we devote entire semesters and even years of religious school education to the rise and fall of Adolf Hitler. We focus remarkably little on the 613 Mitzvot given to us, yet adopt a 614th that commands us not to give Hitler a posthumous victory. The belief is that emphasis on the threats to our survival will somehow enable us to secure it. The message is that survival is the most important goal, and that merely continuing to exist is a victory. Our teaching falls in line with what Salo Baron called ‘the lachrymose theory of Judaism,’ where we lament our minority existence and warn children that the life of the Jew is a difficult one. If this is the essence of our education, not only are we selling ourselves incredibly short, but we are putting the proverbial cart before the horse. We are so focused on survival that we pay little attention to how we've survived so long, and just what it is we wish to survive. This is not to say that these aspects should be glossed over, or that we should pretend they don't exist. But Judaism is so much more than anti-Semitism, so much more than surviving the Holocaust. And if this were the sum total of what we've received from Jewish tradition and teaching, not a single one of us would be sitting here, spending three to five years in study, dedicating our lives to it. At some point along the way, every one of us felt the effects of the salt; not merely because Judaism was preserved for us, but because it brought out the flavors we knew, or at least hoped, were always there within us. Whether it was a single moment after which everything changed or a cumulative feeling that evolved over time, we need to remember it every day of our schooling and our careers. We need to recall that spark that lit the fire under us and brought us to these hallowed halls to strengthen our covenant with God.
As we strive to live meaningful Jewish lives in the modern world, accepting fully the task of fighting against anti-Semitism, bigotry, and hatred of all kinds, let us also remember that Judaism is a tradition so rich in wisdom, goodness, values, and - yes - joy, as well. Let us work towards not just our survival, but also our thriving as a people, through fighting the good fights, as well as through celebration of, and immersion in, the wondrous beauty of Jewish culture. Doing both, as best as possible, is how we ensure that, indeed, Am Yisrael Chai, that the Jewish people will continue to live and flourish, to make our lives and our world better than how we found them. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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