I asked for this week because the 22nd is my birthday, without knowing what the parsha was, or at least not paying attention.
The last time my birthday came on a Saturday was six years ago, and I gave the d'var Torah at my synagogue. That was my first d'var Torah after having surgery to remove a cancerous kidney, and also my 60th birthday.
It was also Shemini. I didn't realize that until I read it earlier this week in preparation for writing this drosh.
Shemini means the eighth day. After seven days of practicing the required rituals, Aaron and his sons, at the dedication of the Tabernacle, are also dedicated as priests. This is perhaps the first separation of church and state - Moses teaches the rites to his brother so that he can be the political leader, the judge, rather than being in charge of the new religious practices. These practices are rigorously defined, and also the ritually pure and clean state the priests need to assume before approaching the altar to perform them. the ritual has already been written out in detail as Moses performed them and taught them to Aaron previously.
This is a beginning. There are seven days in the week, and it would have been entirely appropriate for the dedication to mark the new beginning of this new religion. Yet in the very first word, the eighth day's importance is marked.
This is not the only place where seven days are followed by an eighth of special celebration; the holidays of Sukkot and Shavuot are eight days long. The seventh day is the Sabbath, but the eighth is a super-Sabbath. Similarly, every seven years is a Sabbatical year, but the 50th year is a Jubilee marking the end of a 49 (seven times seven) year cycle. During the Jubilee year, all slaves, bought or indentured, are freed, and the people are warned not to take this into account when acquiring new workers, for example, putting off the loan for indenture until after the Jubilee.
You can read more about this interesting subject in this drosh from Chabad.
But Aaron didn't just learn the rituals with which to dedicate the Tabernacle. He himself was changed, inducted with his sons into a new state of being, his life taking on a new meaning.
Which brings me back to the d'var Torah I gave six years ago.
Sometimes a life event changes us in some fundamental way - I have heard people describe marriage or becoming a parent for the first time this way. For me, the event was having cancer.
I was dealing with major depression at the time, had recently gotten my first computer, with which I was gingerly becoming acquainted, including posting comments and eventually diaries here at Daily Kos, and was dealing with my decision to bar my mentally ill son from my home, which had not come easily.
And in the middle of all this, I decided that I wanted to live. And with that came a responsibility to behave differently, to be dedicated to something larger than myself. For me, that was political activism and using an oft-neglected gift for writing to advance things I believed in. It meant not isolating as much as I had done. It meant attending Netroots Nation, and accepting gifts from friends to do so. It meant getting out there as I had when younger to protest and/or advocate different policies and candidates.
It meant finding my voice and becoming a member of a community.
So my d'var Torah six years ago was about the process of rededication that was just beginning for me, about the way that everything after cancer felt new and looked new, that the six months since my surgery and been a series of firsts for me - first time playing music, first time going food shopping, first birthday, first d'var Torah, and so on. I have tried to continue even after the glow wore off.
Shabbat shalom.