Pekudei; Seeing the Big Picture

When I tell my children stories at bedtime, they always remind me that every story has to have a happy ending. The story can’t end with someone dying, losing the game, or going being punished. In bedtime stories, everyone lives happily ever after.

In fact, there is a psychological test in which a person is asked to put the pieces of the puzzle in order to tell a story. Based on how they sequence the story, the psychologist can tell if they are capable of being optimistic.

As it is with bedtime stories, so it is with Jewish books. There are four Jewish books which end on sad notes and Jewish tradition will not tolerate it. What we do is, we take the second to last verse, which is happier, and we repeat it so that the books end a high note. So we rewrote the end of Isaiah, kohelet, malachi and eichah.

What about the book of Exodus, which we finished today? What kind of ending does it have? As the book of Exodus comes to a close, we need to look back and ask, what has this book been about? If we know what it is about, we can understand how it ends and if it all ended happily ever after. At first, we are tempted to say that exodus is about exodus. After all, this is what some have called it Exodus. However, as the ramban, Nahmanides points out, this doesn’t explain why the book ends on the note of the mishkan, the tabernacle. I believe that this particular ending has something to say to us as we contemplate the recent attacks in Israel.

So let’s review. What is in this book? The exile in Egypt, the slavery, the birth and growth of moshe, the ten plagues, the exodus, the splitting of the sea, the giving of the torah at Sinai, the instructions of the tabernacle, the sin of the golden calf, the forgiveness for the sin, and the carrying out of the plans for the tabernacle. It seems that somehow the tabernacle is the climax, not exodus and not Sinai. The climax is the last verse which says that there was a cloud of G-d on the tabernacle in front of all of Israel. The divine revelation, g-d residing with the jewish people, this is the ultimate dream, the ultimate blessing, the ultimate goal, the happy ending.

But in order to achieve that goal, they had to overcome something: the sin of the golden calf. They had sinned. They had broken the covenant. They had to do something to achieve that closeness with G-d again. Could they achieve that closeness once more? Could they collectively and on a long term basis achieve that which was achieved at mt. Sinai, a constant presence of G-d?

The answer is yes. The story of this book is a story of how, despite their sins, despite their falling from grace, the Jews were able to get back to where they had been. Think about how the book could have ended differently; It could have ended with the sin of the golden calf, or with the sins of the desert, the spies, korach and the story of the striking of the rock. But, like all but 4 of the 24 books of the torah, it ends on a high note.

It’s a question of framing. How do we frame the story of the Jews? By telling the story in this way, it is if to say, yes, we can live with G-d. Yes, we can be worthy. Yes, there can be a happy ending. No, our lives needn’t be framed by our sins and our mistakes.

How do you frame the problems in Israel today in the context of the history of israel’s struggle? Here’s how we can’t and shouldn’t frame it. Here’s a way of framing the history which will only depress us. Over one hundred years ago, herzl and other Zionists had a dream to end the bloodshed of the kishinev pogroms and others yet to come. They would establish a home for the Jews in Palestine. Now Jews could determine their own destiny and protect themselves. Now, 111 years later, Jews in Ashkelon, Sderot, and even Jerusalem find themselves with rockets in their homes and dead children in the yeshiva library. Now we live in a world in which violence on campus’s is routine, the UN can’t even bring itself to condemn the targeted killing of 16 year olds, and thousands are celebrating the death of 7 teenagers in gaza. This is how not to tell the story. This is not a jewish story.

How do we tell the Jewish story? How do we look at what can be a very depressing, hopeless situation? It goes like this; this is how I should tell the story to my kids and I would suggest you should tell our story to your children and more importantly to yourselves; For two thousand years, Jews dreamt of having their own state. Jews dreamt of return to the holy land. Jews dreamt of praying in the holy places, restoring the glory of the jewish nation. In many ways, we have achieved our goals. Thousands upon thousands of jews study torah every day in yeshivot up and down the ancient landscape of Israel. Millions work and live in isreal, raise families, speaking Hebrew, fighting in the Israeli army, and feeling proud to be part of a new Israel.

This past week, and over the past number of years, and probably for the next number of years we have been and will be engaged in an outrageous struggle with a people who want no normalcy, who don’t respect civilian life or even their own, who would rather spend their lives ruining ours than improving their own, whose only hope is to destroy us. We will win this battle, because their bankrupt way of thinking will lead to their own demise. We will win this battle with G-d’s help. We will win this battle with help from countries such as this which still possess a moral compass.

And then, the Jerusalem Talmud taught us this week in our daily class, there is a mandate to end all blessings on peace. The amida ends on peace, the priestly blessings end on peace, the benching ends on peace. So I will end this story on peace. In the end, we know, we trust, we pray, we believe, that G-d will bless his people with peace. Hashem yevarech et amo vashalom. This is a jewish ending. This is a Jewish story. This is how we should think and this is how we should communicate to our children.

(The Talmud in megilah teaches us that the seeds of our happy ending have already been planted. When the Jews were told to give the half shekel which we read about on this Shabbat shekalim, this was the happy ending being written before the jews would give gold to the golden calf, before haman would give silver to the king to have us killed. The happy ending was pre-ordained, because we are prepared for the bad day and we are ready to get beyond it. Each good act we do today is our preparation for the hard times and the good times yet to come when only the good will prosper. )

This is true not only on the national level but on the personal level as well. Never can we frame our personal story with a bad ending. IN life there are no sad endings, only new beginnings, and if we frame our personal story in the right light, there are no sad endings, only new challenges to reframe our existence in the light of new challenges.

Hashem yevarech et amo vashalom, G-d will give strength to his people, Hashem will bless his nation with peace. This is the happy ending to all of our personal and national stories. Let it be soon and in our times. Shabbat shalom.