Fwd: Resources for this shabbat! -- birkat ha-ilanot, the stranger, blood, animal rights, shabbat shabbaton

[David Seidenberg]

There's so much to focus on this shabbat related to this week's portion, which contains some of the most fundamental elements of the Torah! Here are some resources that may help you on neohasid.org.

1) The Stranger

People quote Loving your neighbor as yourself as a foundational element, but the real visionary element is not loving your neighbor, but loving the stranger as yourself. It's easy enough to love your neighbor, and to imagine that they are "like yourself". But we need to use the story of being slaves in Egypt to help us understand how to love the stranger. None of that should be news to anyone. But if you want to take a deep dive into the Torah's views on the stranger, neohasid has a resource with every single verse in the Torah that mentions the stranger, along with commentaries and brief analysis. That resource is here: https://neohasid.org/torah/lovingthestranger/

2) The Blood

This portion has so many verses about blood. The most radical is the teaching that eating an animal without sacrificing its blood is tantamount to murder (Lev 17:3-4). We also are told to bury the blood of a wild animal, just as we would bury a human corpse (Lev 17:13-14). And there is a parallel which might not have drawn your attention before: "Don't stand over the blood of your neighbor" (Lev 19:16) and "Don't eat over the blood" of an animal (Lev 19:26). As I have written in the article linked below, these two verses should be compared with Ezekiel 24:7, “for her blood was within her, she set it on bare rock, she did not pour it on the earth to be covered over with dirt,” and with Job’s plea in 16:18, “O earth, do not cover my blood, and may there be no [resting] place for my outcry.” “Standing over the blood” and "eating over the blood" are therefore both rightly read as the opposite of covering the blood.

If you want to explore all the commandments about blood and not eating the blood or standing on the blood, and how this relates to the way we moderns think about animal rights, read my article from the book "Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism" on differing moral frameworks for interpreting the Torah's views on what we might call animal rights: https://www.academia.edu/40181476/Veganism_and_Covenantalism_Contrasting_and_Overlapping_Moralities

3) Birkat Ha'ilanot, blessing the fruit trees

It's not in the parshah, but fruit trees and orlah are there (Lev 19:23-25), and this is the season! Do birkat ha'ilanot at synagogue this shabbat or one of the upcoming Shabbatot if you have nearby access to flowering fruit trees, or anytime before May 20 when you can get to some. Get a handout with the blessing and some related teachings at: http://www.neohasid.org/stoptheflood/birkat_hailanot/

4) Shabbat shabbaton (in Achrei Mot)

Three things are called Shabbat Shabbaton -- one is Shabat itself (Lev 23:3, also in Exodus), the second is Yom Kippur (Lev 16:31) and the third is the Shmitah year (Lev 25:4) Find a brief vort on those connections here: http://neohasid.org/torah/genesis-shmitah/#shabbaton

rav brakhot,

David Seidenberg