I used to teach a lot of Bar and Bat Mitzvah lessons, but these days I only have one student left. As I made the shift out of Jewish education (although I still lead services in a clergy position) and into professional writing, these lessons just kind of petered out. My lone student these days is a wonderfully bright tween who I’ve had the pleasure of working with since she was about seven.
She’s always had a bit of an introspective, insightful spirit. Back in 2018, I actually wrote a blog post about some pretty great advice for creative folks she shared with me when she was only eight years old.
These days, she is interested in the properties of various precious and semi-precious stones. I don’t know much about crystals and their energies, so this is one topic that provides an opportunity for me to learn from my student. We’ve been discussing different entry points to Jewish spirituality (with such a rich culture, the Torah is just one gateway to Judaism) and crystals are an interesting one. One that happens to be featured in this week’s Torah portion.
Tetzaveh is the eighth portion in the book of Exodus, and it starts out by continuing last week’s discussion of sacred objects and their careful construction. While last week, in Terumah, the text was about the Ark of the Covenant, this week is about the High Priests themselves: Aaron…
