In this morning’s portion, we read the instructions concerning the construction of the laver, the “kiyyor,” as follows: ויעש את הכיור נחושת ואת כני נחושת במראות הצובאות. The use of these copper looking glasses or mirrors, was an occasion of disagreement and controversy in the days of old. We read that Moses objected to the women donating their mirrors for use in the Tabernacle.(והי' מואס בהם מפני שעשיין ליצר הרע (רש"י). The mirror is an instrument of vanity and a tool of temptation, and vanity, Moses insisted, has no place in a Tabernacle. And yet, our rabbis continue and tell us that Moses was ultimately forced to accept the “maross tzov’oss,” as the Torah clearly indicates. Why was this?Two answers present themselves to us. And the answers indicate two of the most important functions of a Synagogue, two seemingly opposite yet really complementary principles of a “mishkan.”The first is indicated by the Midrash (see Rashi): When the Jewish men folk were herded into the forced labor camps as slaves of Pharoah, and subjected to inhuman working conditions, we are told that their women brought them their food and their necessities.

In our traditional Jewish literature, especially our Kabbalistic literature, all of life, experience, and existence are conceived of as consisting of three dimensions: Olam, Shanah, and Nefesh. Literally, these mean: world, year, and soul; actually what is intended by these terms is: Space, Time and Man. One of the distinguished Rabbis of the State of Israel, Rabbi Shelomoh Yosef Zevin, sees this triadic structure in the opening verses of today’s Sidra. We read va-yakhel Mosheh et kol adat benei yisrael, that Moses assembled the entire congregation of Israel, and there he taught them the commandments of the Shabbat and Mishkan, the construction of the Tabernacle. The act of assembling all of Israel represents the element of Nefesh of Man. The mishkan is that which occupies a specific place. And Shabbat recurs every week, and hence represents the dimension of time. It should be understood that this is not merely a way of describing the world or experience. It is a framework that has high spiritual significance, for it means that Judaism considers that these three elements interpenetrate each other and are interdependent. This view teaches that, on the one hand, man needs the awareness of time and space; that is, he needs the spiritual implications, and the consciousness of the spiritual potentialities, of both history and geography, the realms of Shanah and Olam. Thus, Judaism speaks of kedushat ha-zeman, the sanctity of time, as in the celebration of Shabbat and the various festivals. And Judaism speaks too of kedushat ha-makom, the holiness of place, as, for instance, the mishkan or, today the synagogue. On the other hand, both time and space are significant in the divine economy only because of man, because of nefesh. Thus, Shabbat, which is a symbol of time, requires the participation of man (Nefesh) in order to make it meaningful. According to the Torah, on the seventh day of creation, God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; nevertheless man was commande…

It is my considered and solemn expectation that when the historian of the future writes the story of American Jewry, he will record, correctly, that the major influences on the religious character of the community were exerted not by scholars or rabbis, not by theologians or academicians or heads of Yeshivot, but – by the New York Times. I wish I could be only semi-serious about that statement; I am not. It is unfortunately true that the masses of our people, in their profound ignorance, are far more affected by the headlines in our prestigious press than by the real issues and their consequences. It is because of two such page-one articles that I wish to discuss this morning a problem with which I have not dealt at length for about two years: the dialogue between Judaism and Christianity. Last week, the front pages told us that dialogue was entering into a new stage, in which Jews and Christians were preparing for theological conversations. The second headline, two days ago, informed us that certain Madrid Jews had participated in services with Spanish Catholics in a Catholic church.Briefly, it is important for every Jew, and especially every member of this congregation, to know that the first report is misleading and the second unfortunate.The first is misleading, because there is no change at all contemplated in our policy. Those who have favored theological dialogue in the past have practiced it without waiting for the consent of the press; and those who are opposed to it – and this includes mainly the Orthodox group and, through it, the Synagogue Council of America – will not do so now or in the future. There is no change in our position. The second report, concerning Madrid, is regrettable. It is unfortunate that the only way to signal even a slight improvement in tolerance for Spanish Jewry is to invite us to worship in a Catholic church, instead of in the more humane and meaningful move of permitting Jews to pray in their own synagogues without molestation …

I feel I owe it to my congregation to begin today’s sermon with an apology, or at least with an explanation. Ever since our country has slowly but surely been sucked into the vortex of the Vietnam involvement, I have refrained from any public comment on the war. This I have done for three reasons. First, I have always been apprehensive about reducing the pulpit to a platform, and making of the sermon a running journalistic commentary. Second, I have always considered Vietnam to be a technically political, diplomatic, and military problem, beyond any special competence that a Rabbi can be expected to possess. Third, I have been annoyed at those clergymen, Jewish and non-Jewish, especially the former, for whom Vietnam and civil rights have become the totality of religion, as if there is nothing else in Judaism to speak of except to fulminate against the Vietnam war and to espouse the cause of civil rights.However, because of developing events, I have been forced to change my attitude, and I therefore feel impelled by conscience to address myself to the problem of Vietnam, though not without some hesitation.I am still opposed to any political pronouncement from the pulpit. But Vietnam has become one of the major moral problems of our time. True, it remains largely a political issue. Yet, there comes a time when certain issues expand beyond the narrow lines of politics and into the larger sphere of morality.A great part of our population is convinced that the Vietnam war is immoral. At the very least I believe that most of us here this morning are not enthusiastically certain of its morality. The following, I believe, is an excellent test of how to intuitively judge the moral quality of the Vietnam War: How would you feel if your 18 year old son was ready to be drafted? Would you feel, as you felt during World War II and even during the Korean war, that it was unfortunate, but that as long as it was going to be done the cause was worthy of the sacrifice that you and…

The sermon given for this Shabbat dealt with the question of Shabbat. First I gave the definition of Melakhah, as derived from the propinquity of Shabbat to Mishkan, as melekhet machshevet, i.e., creative change in nature. I explained the importance of this as a method of acknowledging God’s ownership and ultimate title to the universe. The result of this is: responsibility to the world, nature, one’s possessions (as exemplified by ecology), sharing with the poor, and a humble attitude towards wealth.In support or illustration of this point, I quoted the remark by Rabbenu Bachya ben Asher in his Kad Hakemach. On the verse beini u’bein b’nai Yisrael ot hi le-olam, which usually is translated as, “between Me and the children of Israel this (the Sabbath) shall be a sign forever” (and this is, of course, the true translation, because the word olam in biblical Hebrew always is temporal rather than spatial), Rabbenu Bachya maintains that a subsidiary meaning of the word is the spatial dimension – i.e., “between Me and the children of Israel this (the Sabbath) is a sign for the world,” that God created and has absolute right over the world, and that He lends it as a trust to mankind, and the children of Israel must acknowledge this ownership and this responsibility towards the world, to tame it but never wreck it, to subdue it but never destroy it, by observing the Sabbath.After this I went into the definition of menucha in its two forms, shevitah and nofesh, as developed in my booklet for the J.E.C. The Sabbath: Model for a Theory of Leisure, part of which I published in the Yavneh Shiron. As examples of nofesh, I gave: unrushed prayer (Ramban: Mikraei Kodesh) and the study of Torah (quoting Rabbi Akiva to the effect that the Torah was given on the Sabbath). Then I led into a psychological difference between shevitah and nofesh: shevitah, taken in the wrong way, can develop into the kind of day Philo described: a chance for reinvigoration so as the better to work during …

At the end of our Sidra, Moses is commanded to construct the laver and its base out of brass. Where is he to get the material from? The Torah says: במראות הצובאות, from the mirrors, made of burnished copper, which the women had donated at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. An old tradition has it that these mirrors were a point of contention between Moses and the women (thus making Moses the first Jewish leader to have a problem with women’s rights). He refused to accept the mirrors, because he considered them a token of vanity, a quality which has no place in the Sanctuary. However, the Almighty interceded on behalf of the women, and insisted that the mirrors be accepted. The reason, as quoted by Rashi, is that the women used these mirrors to make themselves attractive, thus enabling the continuation of Jewish family life even in the bitter circumstances of Egyptian slavery.I suggest a modified interpretation of that controversy between Moses and the women. The mirror is not only a specifically human invention, but it also elicits a special response. Ethnologists tell us that most animals, in looking into a mirror, believe that they are facing some other member of the same species. It is only man, and the higher primates such as chimpanzees, who recognize that the image they see in the mirror is – oneself.Thus, the mirror is a symbol of viewing oneself in the eyes of another; it represents the capacity and tendency to see oneself as others do.It is for this reason that Moses refused to countenance a mirror in the Temple. To be concerned with the impression one makes on another is an insult to authenticity. Moses demanded of his people to act on principle, not for effect; out of conviction, with no concern for public relations; because they believe in what they do, not because others approve. He wanted substance, not image; persuasion and not projection. The mirror represented what the sociologist David Riesman, in our days, has called other-directedness, and thi…