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Holiness means being set apart, but not just from something. It means being set apart to Someone. That’s the difference. If holiness is only separation, you end up with legalism. If it’s only connection, you end up with compromise. Torah holds both together.

When grace is received, it often feels like a lifting, a release from heaviness long carried. Something shifts within, as though the gravity of the soul has changed.‍ The rabbinic tradition gives language to this transformation. “Great is repentance, for it can transform even deliberate sins into merits” (Yoma 86b). What once weighed us down can, through grace, become the very ground of renewal.‍

Our sages recognized the importance of distinction and taught us to bless the “One who makes creatures different,” affirming that diversity itself is part of the Divine wisdom. Each person, each animal, each role, reflects a different facet of God’s glory. When these distinctions are honored within a framework of love and covenant, they do not divide us—they deepen our capacity to see one another and to see God more fully.

It may be normal to be anxious as we’re bombarded with reports of antisemitic violence. But the Survivors’ Haggadah (published in 1946 for Jews still in European DP camps observing their first Passover after World War II) declares, “The seder is a protest against despair.”

Our awareness of the distance between humanity and a holy God recalls the famous image from Michelangelo’s painting of the Creation. God and Adam are reaching out to each other with fingers extended but not touching. “In Israel, however, unlike the Sistine Chapel,” notes one commentator, “they do make contact!”  

Our parasha portrays a rarely seen and crucial harmony between divine desire and human motivation. It is a harmony between the exterior — the expressed will of God, and the interior — the heart and will of human beings. This harmony portrayed in Torah reaches its crescendo in the blessings of the New Covenant, and its final cadence in the world to come.

As a congregational leader, I am often asked questions pertaining to belief. People want to know the biblically correct perspective on eschatology, salvation, and the nature of God. I am always happy to answer these questions to the best of my ability, but it’s far less frequently that I’m asked more practical questions: How should I live? What should I do? What sort of person should I strive to be?

Parashat Tetzaveh and Shabbat Zachor, our readings just before Purim, together offer a simple but urgent charge. Remember who you are. Remember whom you serve. Remember why you were redeemed. And do not forget.

In Moses’ day the heartfelt donations were used to construct a special place for Adonai to dwell with his people as they continued on their journey. Today, instead of giving precious materials to construct a physical dwelling we are learning to live less for our own worldly successes and physical desires and more to become one with the Spirit of God.

When we first moved to Ann Arbor, more than forty years ago, there was a Chinese restaurant nearby with a giant lobster in a tank in its foyer. The creature was nearly three feet long and must have weighed close to twenty pounds. No one knew for sure how old it was—perhaps seventy-five years, give or take. So why am I talking about lobsters and what does it have to do with our parasha?

Each time we stand before the open ark, we stand again at Sinai. We repeat Israel’s ancient pledge, affirming that all God has spoken, we will do. Parashat Yitro reminds us that this pledge demands more than belief. It demands shared leadership, covenantal responsibility, and lives shaped by service.

In the modern world, no text has spoken more profoundly to people about their potential to achieve freedom. The message to Israel for all time is clear. The God who has raised you up in fulfillment of his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will not forget his promises to you.

In Parashat Bo, a portion filled with plagues, Pharaoh, and Passover instructions, we are reminded that woven into the fabric of our history, God has provided tangible, sensory traditions that remind us of who he is and who he called us to be.

Just as Israel experienced an initial redemption in Egypt even while still enslaved, so we, too, are invited to live within the redemption God has already enacted in Messiah. Our life is shaped not only by anticipation, but by participation: learning to recognize what God has done, what he is doing now, and how we are to live as his redeemed people today. Our ransomed life is now.

It is only after Moses turns aside that God speaks. Moses first hears God through the miracle of the bush that burns without being consumed. Only then does he truly listen—by pausing, turning, and giving his full attention to what is unfolding before him.