Today, I went to Saturday morning Torah Study at the Temple with Rabbi Berman. He came to Temple with the message about "Classical Reform Judaism" as opposed to traditional reform Judaism that was started in Germany. As you know the classicl reform Judaism advocates worship services in English, the importance of the American experience in our Jewish identity, music in our services, and welcome and support for interfaith families.
In addition, Rabbi Berman talked about the Book of Numbers for the parsha this week. The Book of Numbers deals with God telling Moses and Aaron to take a census of the people in the wilderness. There were approximately 615,000 males and two million people entered the wilderness from Egypt based on the census. One of the spiritual values of taking a census is that there is strength in numbers and people exists not only as an individual but also as a member of a tribe.
Rabbi Berman ended the study with talking about Jewish symbols in the Temple today. He discussed the memorah (7 branches with candles), priestly vestments on the Torah, gold, blue and crimson in the temple, the dome at the top to depict the top of the Tent of Meetings, at well as the decoration around the ark.
Finally, I would like to discussed the importance of numbers as a way of remembering bible stories. The significance of numbers 1 through 5 as follows: One is God, two are the tables, three is the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, four is the matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, and five is the five books of the bible.
No comments:
Post a Comment