When we say Zichrona Livracha (may her memory be for a blessing), it is like an invitation. We invite parts of those we have lost to live within us, and for those parts to bring goodness to us. It is a way for us to continue to learn from our loved ones and to concatenate generations, and it helps to ease some of the pain of absence.
This week, the world has lost a great teacher of Torah, Rabbi Andrea Weiss, Ph.D., Zichrona Livracha. May her memory be for a blessing. Rabbi Weiss was the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Provost of the Hebrew Union College, but she had been part of the faculty of HUC since the year 2000. It is through this position that I and other members of our TDHS clergy were fortunate to know Rabbi Weiss (and was only one of many ways that she and Rabbi Weiner were connected). She was also one of two co-editors of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary (CCAR Press, 2008). It is through this that we might all begin to make her memory a blessing. Let us invite her teaching to live within us!
The introduction to this week’s parsha, Ki Tisa, in the Women’s Commentary was written by Elsie R. Stern, Ph.D., and gives us a further sense of Rabbi Weiss’s contribution to the Jewish world. Stern writes that although the three main units of this parsha “do not present a seamless narrative, they do contain a series of thematically related scenes that all negotiate the central issue catalyzed by the Sinai event: How can God and Israel maintain a relationship that takes into account the enormous disparities between the two parties—God, who is utterly holy, and Israel, a ‘stiff-necked’ and backsliding nation that can achieve holiness but not maintain it?”
According to Stern, the parsha presents three strategies for sustaining this relationship. These strategies were for our ancient ancestors and may hold something for us even today, but we also know other ways to maintain our relationship with God. One of them you may already know, and it could be why you’re reading this Two Minutes of Torah! By studying Torah and searching out the meaning in our text, we continually approach and engage in this relationship.
In her life and work, Rabbi Weiss helped to bring so many people into relationship with God through the study of text. And through her work, her students, and the students of her students, she will continue to have an impact on countless Jewish minds and souls! To that effect, I invite you to join me in learning Rabbi Weiss’s Torah this Saturday morning at Torah study, during which we will focus on the Women’s Commentary for this parsha that she edited. Let us come together in mixed grief and solidarity and honor Rabbi Weiss by inviting her memory to be a blessing for our community.