This morning, we had our final all-school tefillah with our 8th graders. This tradition, which has continued to evolve over the years, was quite a moving one. One of our guests, Rabbi Eric Woodward, shared a special blessing with our soon-to-be graduates and likened them to the Levites in this week’s parasha, Beha’alotcha, where they are charged with the holy work that they will do to in and around the Mishkan, or Tabernacle, that Israelites are commanded to build for worship during their desert journey. At the end of the Torah service, we participated in a relatively new tradition where our 8th graders passed the Torah from one to the other until it reached the seventh graders who then returned it to the ark and led us in the concluding prayers, thus beginning to take on the mantle of leadership as graduation approaches next week. With our first and second graders receiving their siddurim last week and our sixth graders celebrating Torah Night last night, this is certainly a time of year to celebrate the accomplishments of our students and how we are preparing them for a lifetime of service, in a very different way than the Leviim of old, but still with specific skills and duties that they will take with them beyond Ezra.

The parasha also describes the menorah, or candelabra, that was just one of the parts of the Mishkan. The text features God giving Moses instructions for the mounting of the menorah and some of the commentaries on the text refer to each of the lights as a lamp itself, therefore making the menorah a collection of separate lamps that come together to shed light. Seforno, the 18th century commentator on the Torah explains that the right side represents preoccupation with eternal values and life in the future, while the left side represents the concerns with physical life on our planet, but that they very much work together. I love how this describes not only two very different ways of processing the human experience, but also suggests differences in styles of learning. 

Our 7th and 8th graders took this even further and used this as a jumping off point for a discussion where they sought to find six different themes or practices in Jewish tradition that relate to fire (representing the six branches of the menorah). The students compared and contrasted these different fire based practices, their functions, and how they might bring additional meaning to our lives. The same way that each of these practices can relate back to the function of the menorah in the Mishkan, the menorah can also represent the way each of us brings our specific skills, gifts, and talents and how we contribute them to our community.

Wishing you all and your loved ones a Shabbat Shalom and a restful weekend, 

Tani Cohen-Fraade