This week, Fiddler on the Roof comes to town at the Walnut Street Theater. One of my favorite lines from the show occurs when the townspeople ask the rabbi if there is a proper blessing for the czar. The rabbi responds: “Of course. ‘May God bless and keep the czar… far away from us!’”
Apart from demonstrating the rabbi’s wisdom (which I always appreciate seeing!), the line reminds us that Judaism has blessings for all sorts of occasions — positive, painful, or just peculiar. There is even a special blessing that is only to be said when one sees 600,000 Jews together. Why that number? This week’s Torah portion, at the beginning of the book of Numbers, relates that the Israelites took a census of their community, and that is how many males over the age of 20 there were. Actually, we were told this number earlier, in Exodus, when the Israelites were engaged in building the Tabernacle, a portable dwelling-place for God, a symbol of God’s presence in their midst. What is the point of the Torah telling us how many Israelites built the Tabernacle? It teaches us that it takes a community to build their sacred place. In other words, their sacred place would not have been built without that substantial community to do it.
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Now you can order Torah Cards, make donations to the Endowment Funds, purchase a leaf for the Tree of Life -Tree of Simchas, make a Yahrzeit Donation, make a contribution to the Religious School or Nursery School, honor your child's religious school teachers with RSPO Teacher Tribute donations, and order book plate dedications...and enjoy the convenience of online ordering! You can even pay for your donation with a credit card at the same time that you place your online order, or you can pay by check and mail it to the synagogue.