When Shavuot Falls on a Friday

Rabbi Melanie Aron

June 20, 2003

When Shavuot falls on a Friday, the calendar of Torah readings for the month becomes complicated. That is how I had the pleasure of hearing Parashat Naso read twice this year. Once at Shir Hadash in accordance with Reform practice and the custom of all the Jews of Israel on June 7th and a second time at the Union of American Hebrew Congregations biennial on June 14th because of a custom established by Rabbi Bernie Zlotowitz some 30 years ago.

It's not a bad Torah portion to read twice: it's long and has lots of interesting sections, but this year it seemed to add insult to injury.

You see I had pulled a muscle in my back and the section that kept being read aloud was about all the things I was not supposed to do- lifting and carrying and shlepping. The portion describes the different groups of the Kohanim, moving parts of the tabernacle from place to place. The reading is quite detailed with the listing of exactly who would be carrying which items. It might seem tedious but looked at in another way it has some interesting lessons. Rabbi Mark Plevin summarized the portion in this way.

We learn from the transporting of the Mishkan that everyone carried something and no one person carried everything. Everyone carried something different, and often in different ways- by hand, by cart, and so forth.

And finally, at the end of the day, when you got to the new place and it was time to put the tabernacle up again, you needed all the parts, the big parts and the small parts, the important parts and the seemingly less important parts, or the tabernacle would not come back together.

To me that seemed like the perfect message for this Shabbat - as we thank our volunteers and past board members, and install a new board for the coming year. Our roles are not defined with the precision of the Torah portion, and we have the challenge of figuring out what it is we are meant to carry, but still, the truth is that for the Temple to thrive we must each carry something. Our task is to find the individual and unique thing we have to contribute.