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…le meaning. And not VaYiqra alone, of course, but most of Bamidbar (Numbers), from which our additional reading comes; a large portion of Shemot (Exodus), and Devarim (Deuteronomy), as well. Our world was rent asunder, smashed into a thousand pieces. The parallel of Temple worship with the synagogue and prayer is more than just an analogy, it is an exact spiritual equivalent. That is because, as all of you know, the practice of synagogue-based Jud…
…ing the Torah we know that this is a portrait of a shamash (ritual director), not a rabbi. As viewers and members of an egalitarian synagogue, are we able to ignore the “Rabbi” title? As we dug deeper, we searched for images of women. We found a woman in a reproduction of a lithograph by the Greek-Israeli artist Rafael Avraham Shalem, recalling a Greek Sephardic family preparing for Shabbat. We found women in the contemporary print by Deborah Joy…