Rabbi Young's Blog

Only in NFTY

2011-12-28T22:14:00.000-05:00

Today I was reminded of how lax I was in writing about the eight miracles of Chanukah in our modern world. Tonight, however, I witnessed one that was worth all the others I skipped.
Tonight is the third night of NFTY-STR's Winter Regional convention. Every year teens from all over South Florida gather for four days of programming led by their regional board. Every year on the third night they run a program called "STR Search," which is basically a talent show. The first act tonight was a senior girl who I have seen sing four years in a row. She is a good singer who, bluntly put, thinks she's great. She gets a little too loud and a lot too close to the microphone. She also happens to be a high functioning autistic child, so nobody minds. As an adult, I think it is great to let her sing away. I know that she has issues but she loves to express herself in song, so I tolerate her. But here's the miracle: the high school kids to whom she sings. The self-focused, apathetic, materialistic kids who don't want to do anything but feed their desires, they don't just tolerate her. They love her.

When she sings, they sing along, they hoot encouragingly, and they cheer while she pushes through difficult parts of the song. When she finishes, they give her a standing ovation. It was so beautiful, I felt tears forming. But I wasn't alone. A quick glance around the advisors sitting in the back taught me that I was not alone by far.

These kids at NFTY-STR are an incredible miracle. They make me proud to work with them, proud to do what I do, and consistently impressed by the vast amounts of compassion they are capable of.

Thank you, NFTY-STR. You are the best gift I have gotten this Chanukah.

Third Day of Chanukah: The Miracle of Freedom

2011-12-23T17:17:00.000-05:00

Today on Facebook I saw a picture.

It was a picture of Gilad Shalit celebrating Chanukah at home. Gilad Shalit, for over 5 years, was held captive by Hamas militants. From the time he was 19 to 25, he was imprisoned and deprived of many of the freedoms the rest of the world takes for granted. On October 18, just over two months ago, he was released in exchange for over 1000 Palestinians who had been captured by Israel.

It is a simple picture but it expresses nothing less than a miracle. Gilad Shalit looks great. A bandaged hand and skinny frame, but smiling and standing on his own two feet. He looks like he is celebrating with six other people (as evidenced by the six glasses on the table), and he is lighting the Chanukiah in his parents’ home. The fact that he could even be photographed like this exemplifies the miracle of freedom.

So often we sit in our homes and light our Chanukiot without even a thought to how lucky we are to be able to do so. Gilad Shalit could not celebrate any holidays for over 5 years, and now because of the perseverance of his family and the willingness of the Israeli government to compromise, we are able to celebrate with him, and acknowledge our own freedom this Chanukah.

May we understand how blessed we are to be free to light our Chanukiot this Chanukah.

A Second Chanukah MIracle

2011-12-22T15:00:00.002-05:00

Today I noticed the miracle of sibling love. Last night we lit candles and opened presents as Natalie ran out the door to a Chanukah party for work. The kids and I had pizza and enjoyed a gift from the previous night: Spy Kids 4. This is, I admit, an awful movie, but my children love it.

So as the movie was coming to an end I decided to play parent. I paused the DVD and told them the movie would be continued when teeth were brushed and pajamas were on. Without so much as a complaint the boys sprang into action as I grabbed Isabella. Bella loves to brush her teeth, so she takes a bit longer than the boys. As she finished I noticed her need for a change, so before going up to get her pajamas I stopped at the diaper station.

Here is where the miracle happened. I heard the boys finishing upstairs, and I thought maybe I would just put Bella to bed when we got up there. Instead of just coming down, however, Alexander came bearing Bella’s pajamas. He told me he wanted to make sure she could get ready too. So he watched as I put her in her pajamas, then asked if he could sit with her through the end of the movie. The two of them sat snuggling, stroking each others hair, and Alex cooed softly to her, “I love you, Bella!”

Watching a 4-year-old be so tender with his baby sister was truly a miracle.

Ma'i Chanukah?

2011-12-21T17:02:00.003-05:00

Why is Chanukah celebrated for eight nights?

Why do we light eight-branch candelabra?

In looking at three different texts about the “history” of Chanukah, we can read three different answers.

First, from the book of II Maccabees, the Chanukah celebration is described as being modeled after Sukkot:

They celebrated it for eight days with rejoicing, in the manner of the festival of booths, remembering how not long before, during the festival of booths, they had been wandering in the mountains and caves like wild animals. ⁷ Therefore, carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to him who had given success to the purifying of his own holy place. ⁸ They decreed by public edict, ratified by vote, that the whole nation of the Jews should observe these days every year (2 Maccabees 10:6-8).

When I read this I picture the exhausted Jewish troops discussing their need for a victory party and debating how they would celebrate. The most recent holiday before the dedication would have been Sukkot, the “festival of booths.” So they would have been disappointed in how they had to celebrate two months prior. Still reminiscing about how Sukkot could have been or would have been if the Temple was under their control, they decided to model their rededication festivities after Sukkot. Makes a lot of sense!

About 100 years later or more, the Jewish historian Josephus explains the same phenomenon. He explains that when the Maccabees were surveying the damage done to the Temple after the war, they found eight spears sticking out of the ground, four on either side of the entrance to the Holy of Holies. That was clearly a sign that they should celebrate their dedication for eight days.

Another 400 years or so later, the Talmud explains that

When the Greeks entered the Temple, they defiled all the oils therein, and when the Hasmonean Dynasty prevailed against and defeated them, they made search and found only one cruse of oil, which they lay with the seal of the High Priest, which contained sufficient oil for one day’s lighting only. Yet a miracle occurred, and they lit the lamp for eight days (Shabbat 21b).

This is the answer we all come up with when we think about the miracle of Chanukah, but it wasn’t written about until several hundred years after the Maccabean revolt! According to the principal of Ockham’s razor, all things being equal, the simplest explanation is most likely to be true. So which is simpler: that a one-day cruse of oil lasted eight days or that a group of people wanted to relive a holiday they enjoyed a lot? Probably the latter.

But more important than trying to figure out what really happened over 2000 years ago is the realization what the development of our ancient texts teaches us. The ragtag group of warrior priests winning the battles over the Syrian Greeks was a miracle. It was amazing that they were able to come to some sort of victory against all odds. That was truly something to celebrate. Perhaps as the years went on they wanted to attribute the victory more to God and less to the guerrilla warriors. That’s terrific, and makes for a great story. So they changed the miracle from the battlefield to the candle light. That’s ok, because Judaism is all about taking the needs of the day and reacting to them as a people. The rabbis of the Talmud created such a powerful story that we still teach it to our children today.

But no matter how amazing their stories are, the rabbis never teach us that their way is the final word. They instead teach us that it is the responsibility of learned Jews to notice the miracles of our day. We might not see a pillar of smoke and fire or a flaming chariot with fiery horses, but we will see a flower blooming. We will connect with a friend, and notice the beauty in the world around us. These are all miracles, and they should be noted as nothing less. It is up to us to tell the stories of the miracles we see every day.

So this week I will try to point out one miracle for each of the eight days of Chanukah. As the first day draws to a close, I remember the latkes my family and I ate last night. To me it was nothing short of a miracle that my wife (very afraid of trying new things) thought the latkes with beets in them were amazing. (She supposedly doesn’t even like beets!) So today’s miracle is for new things: may we all enjoy them this Chanukah!

Chag Urim Sameach!

Fighting Against Jack-O-Lanterns

2011-12-14T19:37:00.000-05:00

For the fourth year in a row, I have gone to rebuild New Orleans with a group of high school students. It has been six years since Hurricane Katrina blew past New Orleans, six years since the devastation wrought by the flooding took place. Each year brings a different experience, a different group of teens, a different perspective. Yet each year has a stronger impact on me than the year before.

The first time I went was 2007. Rabbi Andy Koren and I had been chatting that summer, and he brought up the idea that he wanted to bring a group of teens to clean up New Orleans. He asked if I had any interest in a trip like that, and I responded resounding in the positive. That was all we spoke of it until just after the school year started. He called me and asked if I was still interested, because he needed a few more teens to make the trip viable. If I could bring a few and he brought a few we could make it work together. So we met in New Orleans that winter: 8 from Temple Sinai in Miami, FL, and 15 from Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, NC. That was the foundation on which we have tried to build each consecutive year, and this year was our best trip yet with the highest number of teens participating: 11 from Miami, 15 from Greensboro, and 5 from Roanoke, VA (their first time).

It is an exhausting whirlwind adventure for teens and chaperones alike. We go on a tour of New Orleans. We visit Tulane University. We work in a soup kitchen. We build homes. We do environmental repair. We join Congregation Gates of Prayer in Metairie for Kabbalat Shabbat. We go to Rock and Bowl on Saturday night. We come home physically exhausted and spiritually inspired.

This year our first day was touring and touring. We met our tour guide Julie for burgers, then toured through the streets of New Orleans. Those of us who were veterans on the trip (three of the adults, four of the kids) recognized the flood sites, levies, and pumping stations. We remembered the shore of Lake Pontchartrain, so beautiful and calm, and the stories about how high the waters get on a windy day, not to mention during a hurricane of any magnitude. We also noticed how clean and pretty the city looks on the surface. There are new houses, new businesses, new street signs, and many of the lots are cleaned out and ready for sale. The problem is under the surface. The locals call it the “Jack-O-Lantern Effect.” It looks shiny at first glance, then you notice the holes.

A deeper look under the surface reveals the hollow insides from Katrina’s wrath that have not yet been healed. The 9^th Ward has yet to have significant repair, save the homes Brad Pitt’s foundation “Make It Right,” and the tell-tale pastel painted homes built by Habitat for Humanity. On the outside of broken-down buildings you can see spray-painted X’s with notes left by search crews numbering the survivors and bodies found after Katrina. A large barn we saw was painted with the note, “We’ll be back. Do not tear down.” But 6 years later it looks like they’re still not back. Other homes have been completely razed and the owners have simply walked away from their property and relocated. Others still didn’t even bother with tearing down their destroyed homes. They simply took whatever they could salvage from their flooded homes and walked away. That’s the Jack-O-Lantern Effect. New homes and rebuilding on the surface while the inside decays, just praying for groups of people to descend and make their mark toward healing the Big Easy.

Whenever I look at the overgrown or cleaned bare lots of the 9^th Ward, I wonder how much it would really take to rebuild this amazing city. So I asked our tour guide, who told us that with the dwindling of tour groups over the last 6 years, if we keep coming in the same numbers as right now, we will be finished with the rebuild by the year 2036.

One other site always stirs my emotions, no matter how many times I have seen it. Congregation Beth Israel, an Orthodox synagogue on Canal Blvd. in Lakeview…or what’s left of it. The doors are sealed, the disrepair is visible from the outside, and the letters above the sealed entrance doors are barely legible. They say, va’asu li mikdash, v’shachanti b’tocham, “Make me a sanctuary and I will dwell among them” (Exod. 25:8). The “them” referred to in the book of Exodus is the Israelites, and when we look at this sanctuary that was destroyed by an act of God, it begs the question: “Where was God dwelling during Hurricane Katrina?” It is the answer to this question that makes me emotional. You see, God was in the people of another congregation across the city. Congregation Gates of Prayer, led by Rabbi Robert Loewy, one of the unsung heroes of the flood’s aftermath, opened its doors and hearts to Beth Israel. This Reform congregation in Metairie invited their displaced brethren in, kashered their kitchen so it could be used by both communities, gave them a place to hold services, and even gave them a piece of land on which they would build their new building. Rabbi Loewy has been a model of the Jewish value of hachnasat orchim (welcoming guests) and continues to be an exemplar of the Talmudic dictum, “all [Jews are] responsible for one another” (B. Shavuot 39a). In the words of Rabbi Koren, “None of those lists of great rabbis are worth a thing until Rabbi Loewy tops them all.”

New Orleans is truly an amazing city. The music is infectious, the food is incredible, and the people are the salt of the earth. The Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico make for two gorgeous coasts, and even the swampy marshlands are beautiful and serene. It’s hard to describe, but something about the Big Easy seeps into my soul and keeps me wanting to go back as soon as I leave. After four years of running this trip, we have our habits and our favorite places to go. Rabbi Koren and I are getting to know the area and some of the people. We know the story of the weeks and months that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Yet something struck me this time that has never happened before. Or perhaps the reverse of that is true—something did not happen that has happened I the past.

This year there was a palpable lack of locals thanking us for being there. Of course people thanked us. The organizations we worked with (The New Orleans Mission, Common Ground, and Habitat for Humanity) clearly appreciate the work we do. But they are immersed in the effort to rebuild New Orleans. They are reminded every day of how important it is to be there building, cleaning, planting, and feeding those in need.

The difference came from the people at restaurants, on the street, and in the hotel who ask what we are doing with all these teens. In the past when we have explained what we are doing there with all those kids, the response has been effusive gratitude. “Thank you so much for coming here to help our city.” “New Orleans really appreciates your help.” “The work y’all are doing is so important to us.” The comments from the typical native helped to drive home to our teenagers exactly what they were doing. They weren’t just there to buy trinkets and t-shirts or ogle the drunken revelers (from whom we keep them away). They were there to do something incredibly important to every person they passed on the street, and just about every person made a point to stop and tell us.

This year they didn’t do that. When people asked what our trip was for and I explained, “We’re here to help with the post-Katrina rebuilding effort,” one person (with a New Orleans accent) actually asked me why! I told him there is still a lot of damage that needs to be repaired, and he cocked his head and said, “Well, have fun, y’all!”

The first time someone genuinely thanked us was Saturday night, and I was the only person who heard it. I explained to a woman why we were here, and she thanked us and explained to me that she runs a hotel downtown. I asked where she was in 2005, and she said she got out and went to a cousin in Alabama. She shouted a little of her story to me over the Beatles’ music at Rock N’ Bowl, then she went to her friends and I went back to the teens.

Once again the Jack-O-Lantern Effect was in action. So much of the surface has been cleaned up that people don’t remember how important it is to fix the damage that is still left over. The travel groups have slowed down—maybe they are helping in other places in the world in need of attention, but New Orleans still needs us. That’s why Rabbi Koren and I try to bring so many kids year after year. If they are aware for just a moment of how important it is to look beneath the surface, they will continue to strive to rebuild the world, to do acts of Tikkun Olam in New Orleans, wherever they live, whatever cities need them.

You can’t spell Tikkun Olam without “NOLA,” and when NOLA gets rebuilt, the good times will surely roll again.

Struggles, Problems, and Mistakes

2011-12-10T07:37:00.000-05:00

This week I have watched two on-line videos about the same thing, but expressed in different ways. The first was from a company called Pinkbat on a web site called simple truths. In it, Michael McMillan explains that a pink baseball bat from his youth changed his entire perception of reality. He doesn’t tell the story, but through a series of eye-tricking pictures, he explains that any problem we have is simply an opportunity. He gives the example of Alexander Fleming, a scientist who found his Petri dishes covered with mold after some time away. Instead of trashing his data and viewing the mold as a problem, he instead studies it and discovers penicillin.

McMillan explains the concept of perceptual blindness. This is the idea that allows us to be confused by the picture of the candlestick that looks like silhouettes or the picture that might be and old woman looking forward or a young woman looking away. We all have the tendency to filter out images and information that we do not want in our brains. Once we realize the many different ways there are to distinguish things in this world, we become aware of the opportunities that exist if we could open up to them.

Watching videos on line and learning things from the internet can be an amazing experience. We can learn new ideas and innovative thoughts that nobody has ever thought of before. Or we can simply learn the lessons from Genesis in a new format.

In the Torah portion we are reading this week, Jacob is confronted with a perceived problem. He is on his way to meet his brother Esau. The last time they saw each other was when Esau promised to kill Jacob, so you could say Jacob isn’t too thrilled about the upcoming meeting. On the way to meet Esau, he spends the night alone on the bank of the Jabbok River. He sends his family and servants and flocks and everything on ahead, and he is confronted by a “man,” with whom he wrestles for the entire night. Now this seems like a big problem, but Jacob uses it as an opportunity. They wrestle to a standstill, even after the man (who we know is an angel) wrenches Jacob’s hip at the thigh.

Jacob sees a problem, and he wrestles with it. The word the Torah uses for wrestling is vaye’avek. It is related to the very word for where he stands, Yabok, the Jabbok River. He struggles all night, until he comes to a realization. The angel asks to be let go, and Jacob asks for a blessing. This is one of those strange moments in the Torah where it doesn’t seem to make sense. When Jacob asks for a blessing, what should we expect the next words to be? Baruch atah, or may you be granted, something blessing-like. Instead the angel says, “You will no longer be called jacob, but Israel, for you have struggled with beings divine and human and have prevailed.”

The angel teaches Jacob that in order to solve whatever he is struggling with, he needs a new perspective. The angel lets him know that his struggle is actually a blessing. It is a blessing that must be acknowledged with a change of name that embodies his new outlook. Jacob, now Israel, takes this lesson and uses it on the Jabbok as well. He changes the name from Yabok to Peniel. Even the place of struggle becomes a place where God’s face can be seen.

The second video I saw was from the TED web site. If you have never seen a TED video, they are absolutely worth your ten to fifteen minutes per viewing. They are referred to as “riveting talks by remarkable people,” and there are over 1000 brief videos available for perusing for free. One of the more recent conversations is by Stefon Harris, who plays a piece with his jazz quartet on the TED stage to prove a point. His thesis is, “There are no mistakes on the bandstand.” He explains that the way jazz works is through syncopation and improvisation—the sense of rhythm that is unique to jazz, and the ability of the musicians to play off of one another. It is the second aspect that allows for the idea that there are no mistakes on the bandstand. If one of the musicians were to play a dissonant note, it could sound awkward and out of place, but only if the other musicians ignore it and play over it. If instead the others pay attention to it and incorporate it into their own notes, they are turning a potential mistake into beautiful music.

He tells the TED audience that when, as a jazz musician, he hears someone play something different, his job is to “be patient, listen to what is going on, and pull from what is going on around me. When you do that you inspire the other musicians and they give you more, and gradually it builds.” In other words, allowing ourselves to work with the challenges life presents us is how we create something bigger than we originally intended. We are all experts in our own fields. We think we know everything about whatever it is that we do, and yet there is always someone from whom we can learn. All we have to do is be in the moment, accept from one another, and let creativity flow.

Back to Jacob. After his encounter with the angel he does meet his brother. At first it looks like he is in for another wrestling match. Esau runs at him, grabs him, falls on his neck and….kisses him, and they both cry. I don’t believe Jacob could have allowed for his brother’s kiss if he had not encountered the angel first. Imagine Jacob’s perspective. He thought Esau wanted to kill him. He sees Esau running, feels his brother grab hold of him and fall on his neck. If he was not open to using his brother’s dissonance, he might only be willing to fight. Instead Jacob and Esau cry in each other’s arms, apparently at peace with one another. They later are able to bury their father Isaac together.

So whether we learn from Genesis or from the internet, the message still holds. Throughout life we are presented with struggles. When we encounter something difficult we have two choices. We can see it as a problem, as a mistake, and fight against it, or we can pay attention to the possibilities it presents. We can open ourselves up to new possibilities, and make beautiful music and engender strong connections with others.

CHAI ON CHANUKAH

2011-12-07T09:20:00.000-05:00

New app available from the Apple App Store: Chai On Chanukah. It's an interactive holiday app for kids (with some fun stuff for parents looking over the shoulders of their children).

Check it out, and write good reviews, because Martha Stewart's people are reviewing it too, and the more reviews it gets the more likely she will mention it on her site! Boo yah!!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chai-on-chanukah/id482830803?ls=1&mt=8

Valarmabash!

2011-09-22T16:30:00.000-04:00

Very excited to announce that an app I helped with is now out. The info is here: http://www.fullrelease.us/ and the app (Shofar 4 Kidz) is download-able at the App Store for your iPhone or iPad.

Have fun!

The Conflict in Israel According to Peter Griffin

2011-09-17T09:51:00.000-04:00

In an episode of “The Family Guy,” called “E. Peterbus Unum,” Peter is frustrated about not getting a tax refund. So he declares his home and property a sovereign nation: Petoria. In reaction, the US government surrounds his home with military forces and cuts off the power to Peter’s home. His children can’t go to school, his wife can’t leave to buy groceries, and eventually he asks permission to return to the United States.

This Tuesday, September 20, the UN General Assembly will meet in New York City. The General Assembly was established in 1945 and serves as the main deliberative, policy-making, and representative arm of the United Nations. All 193 member countries of the UN are represented in the GA, and whenever a decision is to be made, each country gets one vote. This coming Tuesday, the world expects at least 140 of these nations to approve a resolution put forward by the Palestinian Authority in which it will ask for the UN to recognize its sovereignty.

As far as I know, there are limited ways to become a recognized nation. A sovereign state must have defined borders with a permanent population and government. It must also be recognized by other autonomous nations. To be granted independence, there cannot be any dependence on other nations for power or support.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian Authority intends to skip all the diplomatic hassle of coming to agreements with other nations. They plan on subverting the normal order and seeking independence through the United Nations. To be clear, the actual language of this resolution has not been made public. We do not know what exactly they will ask for. Common wisdom suggests that the PA will seek statehood within the pre-1967 borders with Fatah and Hamas as partners controlling the government.

This resolution is problematic on several levels. First, it contradicts previous agreements between the Israeli and Palestinian governments that reject unilateral action by either party. Second, in Oslo in 1993 both sides agreed that solutions to the conflict would only be determined through face-to-face bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Third, it does not address the four main issues of the peace process up to this point—Jerusalem, refugees, borders, and settlements. In other words, the idea of submitting a resolution to the United Nations for a sovereign Palestinian Authority is about as well thought out as the nation of Petoria.

Furthermore, there are several potential problems this resolution, should it pass, could create. UN Resolution #181 and others like it, calling for peaceful resolution to the dispute in Israel, might be abrogated under this new resolution. Members of the US Congress have put forth legislation that would cancel funds to the PA as a result of this resolution passing. As an Observer State, a non-voting UN member with certain special privileges, the Palestinian Authority could have access to the international court system to attempt to bring Israel to trial. Israel as a sovereign nation could be delegitimized by the passage of this bill.

So why would the Palestinian Authority want to make such a foolish move? PA President Mahmoud Abbas has said that any form of UN recognition, however symbolic, will increase their leverage over Israel. He is treating this as a game in which he plays the United Nations against the peace process. The United Nations, whose goals include international law, security, and peace, will be used to subvert the very peace it was founded to uphold.

Isaac Herzog, a former Israeli cabinet minister, and member of the Foreign and Defense Committee, wrote a pretty amazing article in which he suggests that Israel—a valid and recognized member of the United Nations—actually vote for Palestinian Autonomy on conditions. In his words:

Israel should announce its support for the UN resolution on the condition that the Palestinians agree to return to the table as soon as possible and without preconditions, fully backed and supported by the international community, and to determine the final settlement through bilateral negotiations. The UN resolution must reflect this aspiration and include Israel’s perspective as well. In addition, the two parties must agree to a framework for an interim process that will allow for negotiations based on Israel’s recognition of a Palestinian state.

Herzog suggests that such a proposal would prevent a violent confrontation, give the Palestinians the dignity they seek, allow the parties to relaunch negotiations, and win Israel international favor while preserving its security needs.

The Reform Movement has long supported a two-state solution, and so do most Israelis. The solution we envision, however, is one where both parties agree to the terms, rather than slamming the doors shut on the peace process just to sneak in through a window. The Israeli government has repeatedly called on the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table with no preconditions, and allow this process to continue toward peace.

For now, American Jews must remain vigilant. There are petitions going around on the internet for us to sign through ARZA, the URJ, JCRC, and more. Google "Palestinian Authority UN Resolution" and you will probably find one. Sign as many as you can. As I have said before, call your government representatives: If you want their phone numbers, just ask. I have them programmed in my cell phone, and you should too.

Most importantly, we must continue to pray for the day when all nations will be one and at peace.

The Four Hour Funeral

2011-07-13T21:26:00.006-04:00

It all started after the food trucks.

On the way home, I notice what I thought was smoke pouring out of the side of my hood. I pull over and call AAA. Then I open my hood to see tons of steam, and what looks like melted plastic. So I wait for the tow truck to take me home, and as we drive I call for a rental car to be ready at 8am so I can get the car and be at work on time for the 10am meeting I have scheduled. Seems like it will be an expensive but uneventful morning.

Then morning came.

It was a pretty typical beginning, which means absolutely insane. The boys are getting ready at a snail's pace, they don't like breakfast (even though I made what they asked for), they don't want to brush their teeth, they don't want to wear swimsuits because they're not going swimming (even though they go swimming every day and love it), and Natalie is sleeping through most of this because they kept her up at all hours the night before. Finally it's my turn to get ready, and I ask Natalie if she can drop me off at the rental place as soon as the kids get picked up at 8. She says yes, then 8 comes and goes. The kids leave with their nanny, I'm ready to go, but she wants another cup of coffee. Then she wants breakfast. Next thing I know it's 8:50. I call the rental place and ask if they have my car and if they can pick me up.

"Sure," the guy assures me. "I will leave in a minute, as soon as I Mapquest your address. I'll call before I leave."

So I do a mad dash for the shower, shave, dress, and grab my phone. At 9:05 I call the place again.

"Hi, just wondering if you're on your way, it has been 15 minutes since he said he would Mapquest and leave, and I live 2 minutes from you."

"Oh, I'm sorry, we're waiting for more cars. We'll call you when we get one."

"Let me understand. You're waiting for more cars to come get me or more cars to rent?"

"To rent. We're out of cars. We'll call you when someone turns one in. It won't be more than an hour."

I look at the clock. It's 9:20. If I leave in 10 minutes I'll barely make it to work on time. Just then, the nanny comes back and says I can use her car for the day, as long as I get it back on time for her to pick up the kids at camp by 3:45. No problem, I think. I have a funeral that starts at 11:30, and I should be done by 1:30, home by 2:15. Piece of cake.

Famous last thoughts, but I did make it to my 10am meeting on time.

The family had asked that I show up to the funeral home at 11:00 in case anybody wanted to share any last minute thoughts. I told them that was a little early, but they seemed to need it. So I left the synagogue at 11--the funeral home is two minutes away. I sauntered in a little after 11, to warm greetings by the mourners. The entire funeral attendance consisted of the deceased woman's son and daughter-in-law, two of the three granddaughters with their husbands, and all three great-grandchildren, age 6 and below. The 99-year-old deceased woman lived a great life and enjoyed time with her three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Her death was sad but not tragic. I had explained to them several time that the service would be very brief. A few psalms, some words of memory, some words of blessing, then we would head to the cemetery. At this point, I was right. We left the funeral home in North Miami Beach at about noon for the hour-long slow drive to Doral.

I made phone calls and marveled at how much nicer the nanny's car is than mine. One of the calls was to the rental place. They still did not have a car for me and would call when they got one. Hopefully within the next hour.

When we got to the graveside, we all pulled over and I got the family settled under the shelter they set up. The funeral director was helping the grave diggers pull the casket out of the hearse, and I walked over to let them know that we would be lowering the casket immediately. I wanted to save a little time and get out of there as fast as I could. After all, I had to return the nanny's car and try to get my rental (even thought the rental place still had not called) or try to get my car fixed.

As I approach the funeral director says, "Did they tell you about our little snag?"

"No," I say as the first drops of worry enter my mind, "what little snag?"

"Well, it seems we have the wrong size casket to fit in the vault."

(A vault is a concrete box that they put at the bottom of a grave to weigh down the casket if the water level rises too much. It is a state law that graves have these vaults. This particular vault is 26 1/2" wide. The casket is 28" wide, plus it had handles.)

Trying not to panic, I ask, "What do we do?"

So the funeral director, the grave diggers, the cemetery director, and I sort of huddle around the grave, looking down at the vault with our backs to the mourners. Occasionally we turn around and smile at them to assure them that everything is going to be all right. There is a great deal of finger-pointing at our huddle between the two directors, and finally they get on the phone to their managers. It turns out that the cemetery only has this size vault, and they tell all the funeral homes that they cannot bury larger caskets in the ground. So the body has to be brought back to North Miami Beach, transferred to another casket, and returned again to Doral. The drive alone should take 90 minutes. I look at a clock. It's already 1:30. I am not going to get home on time.

After frantic calls and texts to my wife and to my assistant, I get all my appointments cancelled, we find a way to get the kids, and I sit down with the mourners. There is no way I am going to get anywhere on time, so I might as well just focus on them. As it turns out, they are really fascinating people. The son is a Hollywood producer. Nothing huge, no blockbusters, but a lot of films I've seen. Very cool stuff. The granddaughters are lawyers, and they do a lot of work for disadvantaged clients on behalf of the state. Even the great-granddaughter had a cool story about her first few days at "clown camp" in the Boston area. We chatted about movies, horses and donkeys, Florida versus Jewish burial law, and the weather (which had gone from thunderstorm to bright shiny day in a matter of minutes--it's Florida). We repeatedly commented that we had never experienced nor heard of anything like this happening before. Oh, and the rental place called to tell me they had a car, but I had to get there fast because there was a line. I asked if they would hold it for me until 4.

At 3:04 the hearse returns with the new casket (a very nice one, I might add). The burial ceremony continues, and by 3:15 we are shoveling dirt graveside. We all waited as the lid was placed on the vault, and then the mourners left. So I followed suit. I went to shake hands with the son, the new eldest of the family. He ignored my hand, opened his arms, and took me in to a huge hug. Not a slap-the-back hug either, but a real, warm hug. It spoke greater volumes to me than the conversations we had as we waited, and meant much more.

I got in the nanny's car at 3:35, after four and a half hours with this family. I was tired and hungry, but at the same time felt like I had made a connection with nine really cool people. It was an interesting afternoon, to say the least.

As for my car, it needs a new engine. The melted plastic apparently used to be something pretty important. As important as the indicator that tells you if your engine is heating up, it would seem.

2011-05-06T19:15:00.003-04:00

One of our fourth grade students here at Temple Sinai said last weekend was like a fairy tale. The prince and the princess were married, and the good guys got the bad guy…and I hear that a mega-wealthy Duke who wants to be king has requested to see the death certificate.

It certainly felt like I was living in a fairy tale when I heard that Rush Limbaugh even uttered the phrase, “God bless President Obama.” Of course, it turns out that he was being sarcastic, criticizing the president for taking too much credit for the raid he directed. But at least partisan pot-shots bring us back to reality. The reality is that on Sunday evening in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a team of Navy Seals found Osama Bin Laden. After being dropped by helicopter into his compound and enduring a 40-minute fire fight, Bin Laden was identified, shot, and killed.

For some of us it feels like the dragon that has been terrorizing our village for the past decade will never again harm us. For others it opens a dialogue of doubt and mistrust. For others it is an opportunity to forward internet memes.

I was in Israel 10 years ago on September 11, and I vividly remember watching the television for three days straight as we wondered what was going to happen to us as Americans in the Middle East. I remember the moment in time when many of us thought that retaliation was the only possible solution. I remember watching news clip after news clip of Al-Qaida supporters dancing in the streets and celebrating at our loss. It made us angry. So angry their leaders told them to stop for fear of what Americans might do.

When I first learned that Bin Laden had been killed, my initial reaction was relief—even joy. I was glad he was gone, and relieved that the head of the beast had been cut off. Then the tweets and texts started pouring in. People were rejoicing in a way that reminded me of those clips 10 years ago.

Looking at our sacred texts, however, teaches us a different message. The book of Proverbs says, “When your enemy falls do not celebrate, and when he stumbles do not rejoice” (24:17). This line comes right after the Proverb tells us that those who do not follow God’s ways are guaranteed to fall. Yet we are not supposed to rejoice when they do. When they die, all opportunity is lost. What miniscule chance there may have been for them to repent is gone. As the book of Ezekiel teaches us, God does not desire the death of the wicked, but that they turn from their ways and live (18:23).

A 13th century collection of Midrash called Yalkut Shimoni comments on the song at the sea, the poem the Israelites sing after they are saved from the Egyptian Army. God makes the Red Sea part for the Israelites, and they cross on dry land. The Egyptians follow close behind, but as soon as the Israelites are safely across, the sea closes and the Egyptians drown. Moses and Miriam lead the Israelites in song praising God, and up above the angels are watching. When the angels begin to sing, God scolds them, “You want to sing while my children are drowning?” We are reminded that all human beings are created in the image of God. Not all the good ones or all with exception. Every human being is in the image of God. Even those who might do us harm.

There are teachings in our tradition that seem to contradict this notion. The Parashah we read this week gives us a review of the law of retaliation. Near the end of Parashat Emor, we read:

If a man maims another, as he has done so shall it be done to him: break for break, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The injury he inflicted on another shall be inflicted on him. One who kills a beast shall make restitution for it; but one who kills a human being shall be put to death. You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike: for I Adonai am your God.

The rabbis jump all over this verse. 11th century French commentator Rashi says that it should not be translated as inflicted, but as rendered, which implies commerce. Therefore, the comparison is not a physical one but a financial one. A man who loses an eye must be paid restitution for that eye, for example. In the early 12th century, Spanish Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra points out that there is no way to possible exact such a punishment physically. In the case of a break for a break, how could the break be made in exactly the same location? Even more so for an eye. Say a one-eyed man causes another man’s eye to be lost. Is it fair, ibn Ezra asks, to make one man go blind in exchange for taking half of the vision of another? So even in the case of lex talionis, we are not commanded to literally injure someone who injures us or even murder a murderer. Instead we are to seek justice. Punish them, but do not allow violence to beget violence.

Simply striking back when our enemies strike us would be giving in to our animal instincts. When the Israelites are saved at the Red Sea at the expense of the Egyptians, God lets them sing. They have just been freed from Egypt. They are confused, tired, and scared. They know they are no longer slaves to Egyptian rule, but they do not know what lies ahead of them. They are in limbo, in between freedom and redemption. When they leave Egypt their bodies are saved, but when they receive Torah they have the ability to free their minds.

The same is true for America. For the past decade we have focused on a scary monster dubbed “Terror.” We have been afraid for ten years to travel; we have allowed prejudice and bigotry to take over our political discourse; we have looked into the eyes of God’s creations and seen only that which is, “other.” Last weekend our Navy Seals took down a symbol of that monster’s power. Our struggle is not over. We will have more monsters to fight, more dragons to slay. We are free but not yet redeemed. We still have to free our minds. As a nation we must come to the realization that we must treat all human beings—even those who would do us harm—as they are: created in the image of God. Then we will be working toward the day when God will be one and God’s name will be one.

Yizkor Pesach

2011-04-25T10:14:00.002-04:00

Salmon spend half of the year swimming with the current or gathering in ponds and inlets. When salmon reach sexual maturity sometime between ages 3 and 5, they fight to swim upstream, back to the location of their birth where they mate and return downstream. They find the spot where they were born to lay their eggs. Amazing! I can’t find my car in a parking lot. After 20 minutes in a store, I spend another 10 minutes wandering around trying to “channel my inner salmon.” I’m the guy setting off my car alarm so I can walk toward the honking after any concert I go to. I even downloaded an app called “Carrr Matey,” which allows me to “drop anchor” when I park, like a beacon that the GPS can find when I go back. This is a terrific app—when I remember to use it before I need it. That’s the tricky thing about memory. No matter what we do to trigger our memory, we need to remember to set the trigger so that our memory can be sparked when we need it.

No matter how our individual short term memory might fall short, our memory as a Jewish people is strong and will not fail us.

Passover is all about memory. The holiday is full of these triggers that help us remember our past and look forward to our future. We herald its beginning with a festive meal, during which we hold a Seder, a structured service. This service reminds us of the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, being freed from the slavery and oppression of the Pharaoh and his taskmasters. There are symbolic foods served during the meal. These serve either as reminders of the Israelite slavery, or as reminders of the spring that is beginning, and the new life that sprouts every year at this time.

Throughout the week of Passover we avoid chametz and kitniyot, leavened products, and eat only matzah. This is also a dual reminder. Eating ha lachma anya, the poor bread, reminds us that we were destitute. We could not eat the fancy breads that had flavor and nourishment. Only the flat, dry, and tasteless bread was available for the slaves of Egypt. It also reminds us of the exodus; how we had to leave Egypt so quickly that the bread was not given sufficient time to rise. Matzah is a reminder of our freedom at the moment of our escape.

Now that we are approaching the end of Passover, we read about the end of our deliverance from Egypt. This morning we heard the cantor chant shirat hayam, the Song at the Sea. This was the moment our freedom was sealed. As the sea parted and allowed the Israelites to cross on dry land, God frees us from the Egyptians and points us toward Sinai. You see, our freedom is not complete just because we are out of Egypt. We have a lot of work to do, and the mountain that looms ahead of us is the reminder that keeping our freedom in tact is only viable if we remain faithful to God. We sing shirat hayam, a song of praise to God, but our journey is only beginning.

Our Haftarah this morning was read from the book of II Samuel. Its theme is also freedom from enemies. After winning battle after battle against the Philistines, David composes a song of praise to God, not too dissimilar from the Song at the Sea. He ends with these two verses:

For this I sing Your praise among the nations And hymn Your name: Tower of victory to God’s king, Who deals graciously with God’s anointed,With David and his offspring evermore
(2 Sam. 22:50-51).

Here his theme shifts. He is no longer singing about freedom, but of redemption. Migdol yeshu’ot malko, A tower of salvation is built to God’s sovereignty. A symbol of the permanence of freedom from our enemies. There is no more to fear because God is with us. All future generations of David will receive God’s grace. Every generation goes through hardships, but we persevere for the sake of future generation. Like a tower standing secure, we will be a beacon for future generations from now until the end of time.

As we move into Yizkor at the end of our Passover observance, we again evoke our sacred memory. We remember our loved ones who served as a beacon for us, and whose memory serves as an enduring blessing. Though we may not be able to see them or touch them, the memory of those who influenced our lives is a real and palpable thing. As a people we trigger our collective memory so that the lessons from our journey to freedom will not be lost on us. We look back to those who accompanied us on our way so that we can teach their lessons to today’s companions. We look back so that we can move forward in a way that will honor their memory and the freedom they have helped us attain. We sing songs of praise to God for the blessings of our loved ones who continue to bless us through the power of memory.

May the memories they leave with us help us to mold our lives into the models they would wish us to be.

Flipping Purim On Its Head

2011-03-03T10:29:00.001-05:00

A Midrash teaches us that when the Messianic Age finally arrives and the world is perfected, there will be no need for any holidays or celebrations, so they will almost all be abolished. There will only be one holiday that will be celebrated in Jewish practice. We might think that holiday would be Yom Kippur, the one time most of us are in the synagogue, or Passover because it celebrates our redemption, or even Shabbat because it is a taste of the world to come. But we would be wrong on all three counts. Yes, the only holiday we will keep on our calendar in a perfected world will be Purim.

Doesn’t it seem a little odd that a minor festival focused on kids’ celebrations and joviality would be described by the rabbis as the only one that will exist in the future? Purim is a time to let loose our inhibitions, dress in silly costumes, drink alcohol, eat sweets, and listen to a lewd and funny story read from a scroll that looks a lot like our Torah. Some of the traditions of Purim are wonderful, like giving mishloach manot, “gift baskets,” to friends or to the needy. Some are strange, like eating cookies named after the villain’s ear. Others are just not recommended, like drinking until we cannot discern two characters of the Purim Spiel. Is this really the type of celebration we want to remain in a perfect world?

Perhaps when we put together two themes of the Purim story we can understand the rabbis’ intent when they suggest Purim will be eternal.

First is the theme of reversals. In the Purim story everything gets flipped on its head. Near the end of the Megillah it even points out that everything Haman had planned had the opposite effect: “…the very day on which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, v’na’afoch hu, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power” (Esther 9:1). Haman built a gallows for Mordechai and was instead impaled upon it. Haman planned to kill the Jews on the 13th of Adar, but that was the day he was killed. He had planned glory and honor for himself that was instead bestowed upon Mordechai. V’na’afoch hu, the opposite happened, and the story is flipped on its head.

Second is the theme of hidden-ness. Haman hides a plot to assassinate the king and take his power, which Mordechai discovers only by hiding while he discusses it. The hero of the Purim story, Esther, derives her name from the Hebrew root that means hidden. Esther hides her identity from the King, and not until the climax of the story does she reveal that she is Jewish, thereby initiating all of the flipping that is done to Haman. In our Purim celebrations, we hide our own identities under costumes.

Perhaps the most striking hidden thing in the story is God. God is never mentioned in Megillat Esther. No miracles happen, nobody says a prayer, not once do we read God’s name during the Purim story. So if God is hidden, when na’afoch hu, the opposite happens, we become completely aware of God’s presence. It is evident at all times. In a perfect world, when we are completely aware of God’s presence at all times, it only makes sense that Purim be our only holiday. Because then Purim itself will be reversed, v’na’afoch hu, and the opposite will happen.

Remembering Debbie Friedman

2011-01-15T08:32:00.003-05:00

Today is Shabbat Shira, our Sabbath of song. It is named for the section of Parashat Beshallach known as Shirat Hayam, the song of the sea. 19 verses of Torah containing some of the most beautiful poetry in the Torah. Literary theorists in support of documentary hypothesis claim that Shirat Hayam, along with Devorah’s song and Moses’ blessing at the end of Deuteronomy, is one of the oldest bits of text redacted into the Bible. It contains the familiar words mi chamocha ba’elim Adonai, mi kamocha nedar bakodesh, which we sing every day to proclaim God’s role in our salvation. Even the layout of the text in the Torah scroll draws our eye to it, and makes it stand out as special and different. They are patterned to remind us either of the waves of the sea the Israelites have just walked through, or to remind us of the bricks they use in construction for the Egyptians.

The verses after Shirat Hayam are called Shirat Miriam, the Song of Miriam. This is a refrain of the first verse of Shirat Hayam, preceded by an introduction. (Plaut pg. 490) In English it says,

Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron's sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels. And Miriam chanted for them: Sing to the LORD, for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and driver He has hurled into the sea (Exodus 15:20-21).

That’s it. That’s all Miriam sings.

In our modern narrative we often think of Miriam leading the entire Israelite community in song, and many of us conflate Shirat Hayam with Shirat Miriam.

If you flip back just one page in the Plaut Commentary (pg. 489), you can see Moses’ song in its entirety. The two-page spread of Shirat Hayam almost makes Miriam’s song pale in comparison. But we don’t think of Moses as the great singer and dancer. We think of Miriam. And we’re not the only ones. The 10th Century French commentator Rashi even suggests that Miriam’s song was an entire repetition of Moses’ song, but truncated because the Torah does not waste words.

Today we still extol Miriam as one of the great prophets of the Bible. She gets her own cup at the Passover Seder. Timbrels are decorated in her honor. Some Modern Orthodox Jews even put a piece of fish on their Seder plate to represent Miriam. All because of how much it means to us as a people to be led in song.

Music is central to the Jewish people. When we hear a niggun, a wordless melody, it helps us focus on prayer or study. We write music to our liturgy. We even read our Torah by singing it—chanting it—to drive its words into our hearts.

Those who lead us in song are great among our people. The word for Cantor in Hebrew is chazzan, which does not mean singer. It means visionary. Someone who sees deep into the meaning of the text and makes that depth accessible to us with music. In NFTY, the Reform Movement’s youth group, there is a core of song leaders who are considered part of the regional board. Musicians bring meaning into Judaism and deserve a special place among us.
One musician in particular has had a long-lasting impact on the Jewish community. Sadly, we lost her this week, and communities all over the world are using this Shabbat, Shabbat Shira, to honor her memory and use her music for worship.

Deborah Lynn Friedman grew up in St. Paul, MN. She was active in her NFTY chapter, and started writing songs to the liturgy and to themes of social action, often using rabbinic and biblical texts. For almost 40 years she brought her music to Jews of all ages, all over the world.
Debbie Friedman’s music taught me the Alef-Bet. We used her version of the Ve’ahavta at the summer camp I went to. Religious school teachers used her songs to teach us about Chanukah and Tu B’shevat.

When Natalie and I were in Moscow, we went to Shabbat morning services at a tiny synagogue celebrating a Bar Mitzvah. Even there, they used Debbie Friedman’s setting to Shema, Mi Chamocha, and Mi Shebeirach. That’s what they knew.

In Fairbanks Alaska, one of the congregants asked me if I could use the traditional Mi Shebeirach for services instead of the new ones we were learning. I asked what was traditional to him, and he began humming Debbie Friedman’s Mi Shebeirach.

Her music is deeply ingrained in modern Jewish practice, and on the hearts of Modern Jews. Like Miriam, she led all the Israelites in song. Her music is our music, and our music is her legacy.

Kol Nidre Sermon 5771

2010-09-19T13:04:00.006-04:00

Reacting to Islamophobia in America:
An Open Letter to Imam Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout

Dear Imam Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout:

You and I have spoken a few times recently, and I want to first express my gratitude to you. You have many times offered to dialogue with the community at large. Your organization, AMANA, the American Muslim Association of North America, does some incredible work with the Greater Miami Community. I know you work very hard to build understanding and respect between the Muslim and non-Muslim communities, so again, thank you.

When my family and I lived in Plantation, our house was in a cul-de-sac with eight or nine other houses. We lived in between two homes whose inhabitants both drove big white vans. One our left was a Pakistani family with children a little older than ours. They were very friendly, and enjoyed spending time outside watching their children play. From their home wafted the sweet and pungent smells of Middle Eastern spices that the wife used in cooking. They moved to America about ten years ago and started a small business that had just begun to be successful. On their white van was their business logo in large red letters.

On our right was an American-born family. The husband and wife were born in Miami and lived in Plantation since they were married. They had teenage kids who spent most of their time shut in their garage practicing with their band. From their home wafted the smell of cigarette smoke. I do not know what they did for a living. On their white van was a large bumper sticker that read, in large red letters, “Islamophobe and Proud of it.”

We were the Jews in the middle.

Since building understanding is part of your mission at AMANA, I would like to open up a dialogue between your community and mine. Right now, a plague of Islamophobia is growing in our country. The Jewish people are commanded to be Or Lagoyim, a Light to the Nations. So I feel it is my responsibility as a rabbi to help fight this plague and work toward ending its run in America. The Jews in the middle are commanded do not stand idly by, and instead work toward the day when all people will be one and acknowledge that God is one.

Brother Sofian, I know you just finished the holy month of your calendar, and I hope you and your community had a Ramadan Mubarak, a blessed Ramadan. As you probably know, we are now in our holiest time of the calendar year as well. We call them aseret yamei teshuvah, the ten days of repentance. We started last week on Rosh Hashanah, celebrating the Jewish New Year. Like the secular New Year, Rosh Hashanah symbolizes a new beginning for the Jewish people. We eat apples dipped in honey to symbolize the circular nature of the year, and our hope that it be a sweet one. We blow a shofar, a ram’s horn, to bring in the New Year with a loud noise that wakes us up and reminds us that it is time to start ourselves fresh, too.

Ten days after Rosh Hashanah we gather again for Yom Kippur, our Day of Atonement—which begins tonight. As I understand it, the fourth pillar of Islam is the belief in a final Day of Judgment, yawm al-din. Yom Kippur is referred to in our liturgy as yom hadin, our day of judgment. On Yom Kippur we spend the day in prayer and study to repent for our sins. We actually have an opportunity to do this every day during the prayer service, but if a Jew is going to go to synagogue only one day in the year, this would be the day. It is known as the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the holiest day of the Jewish year. We fast for 24 hours to help us focus on our spiritual needs instead of our bodies. Our goal for this day is to do what we call tshuvah. I think that by explaining tshuvah to you it might illuminate some of my hopes for the coming year between our two communities.

The word tshuvah has three basic meanings. It means “returning,” “response,” or “repentance.” Of course these three meanings are all related, yet each adds a significant emphasis to what we are doing on Yom Kippur when we make tshuvah.

Tshuvah shares its root with the word lashuv, to turn. The prophet Jeremiah uses this word to describe the best possible relationship between God and the people of Israel:

Im tashuv Yisrael, If you return, O Israel–declares Adonai—Im tashuv eilai, If you return to Me, If you remove your abominations from My presence And do not waver, and swear, "As Adonai lives," In sincerity, justice, and righteousness -- Nations shall bless themselves by you And praise themselves by you.[1]

Jeremiah describes returning, or repenting, as the tool by which we will merit the respect and admiration of other nations. Other people will look to our example and live by it.

Tshuvah as returning means we return to God and faith, to the best version of ourselves we can be, before we were corrupted by prejudice and negativity. It can also mean returning to our roots.

I think about our shared Biblical ancestor Abraham, the first person to embrace monotheism, acknowledging that there is only one God. According to the book of Genesis, after Abraham’s wife Sarah dies, he marries a woman named Keturah. Her name is related to the word ketoret, or incense. In the book of Exodus, Moses marries Tziporah, whose name in Hebrew we translate as “bird,” but it was also a type of incense in Biblical Hebrew. Incense was the import that we got from Ishmaelites, the Arab tribes that were the progenitors of modern Islam. All the more so Tziporah was a Medianite, daughter of the priest Jethro. Both of these women, therefore, represent the lively trade relationship the Israelites shared with the Ancient Arabs, the people who would become Mulsims.[2]

I think about Abraham’s first two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. A Midrash, a rabbinic teaching about the biblical text, suggests that Isaac and Abraham would take trips away from Sarah to visit Ishmael. This suggestion teaches us that both Abraham and Isaac had a loving relationship with Ishmael, and thereby his descendants.

I think about the Talmud, the magnum opus of generations of rabbis. The Talmud refers to some Arab clans as Tayaye. Tayaye were “seminomadic traders living in the vicinity of the Babylonian Jewish community of Pumbedita,” according to Rabbi Reuven Firestone.[3] They were a people who had a great deal of respect and understanding of Judaism and Jewish culture. A Tayaye is credited with showing Rabbah bar Hanah the spot where Korach’s rebels were buried, and shows him the spot “where heaven and earth kiss.”[4] The Talmud illustrates a positive relationship between Jews and monotheistic Arabs, again the people who would become Muslims.

Tshuvah as returning proposes that we go back to our ancient ways. We must heed the words of Jeremiah and return to God and our faith, which will allow other people to live by our example. Both Jews and Muslims must look to the examples set by those who came before us. We must return to the behavior of our ancestors, emphasizing the positive relationships between our two cultures, and cultivating loving relationships between our peoples.

You recently sent me a video of Muslims sharing worship space with Jews in Washington, DC. They celebrated the end of Ramadan by worshipping in an historic Jewish synagogue, donating canned goods to the Christian-run Salvation Army, and participating in an interfaith feast with Christians and Jews. They were invited in response to President Obama’s suggestion that we open dialogue between Jews and Muslims. The video suggests that interfaith events like these are becoming more frequent in Washington. It is my hope that they become frequent here in Miami, too, as well as here at Temple Sinai.

Through tshuvah we can return to the relationships we had in the Bible, in the Talmud, and in our nation’s capital. We can return to become communities that care for one another and understand one another.

In order to understand one another, we can look at the second meaning of tshuvah.

Tshuvah also means “response.” It is a response to questions we struggle with, questions of ideas we have difficulty grasping, and a response to help alleviate some of our own ignorance.

The question that keeps coming up lately is about Park51, the proposed Islamic Cultural Center in Lower Manhattan, has proven to be the catalyst for an intense period of questioning in our lives. It is perhaps the single most divisive issue being discussed today. Should we “allow” a building with an Islamic prayer space inside to be built two blocks away from the most horrific attack ever perpetrated on America?

It is incredibly difficult to get a response to this question when we are inundated with rhetoric from all sides. It has been called the “Ground Zero Mosque,” even though it is not a mosque, nor is it at Ground Zero. Park51 is a cultural center, exactly to you what a Jewish Community Center is to us. JCC’s are so important to us that Temple Sinai has just built a bridge to get closer to ours. We of all people should understand how important the Islamic Cultural Center is to you.

We have been told it will be thirteen stories high, which admittedly sounds huge to a Miamian. Here in North Miami Beach the apartment buildings stick out as they stretch above the other buildings around them. We have to realize that in New York City a thirteen story structure is nothing, blending in with the scenery and getting lost among much taller edifices. We have heard that two blocks away is much too close to World Trade Center Plaza. This leads to another question. How close is too close? Where do we draw the line? Will we force the building to be farther than a block? A mile? A city? A state? A country?

The tshuvah, the response to this question can only come from a place of understanding. We know we cannot tell a religion where they may or may not build their places of gathering and worship. If anyone tried to prevent the building of a JCC because of the actions of a fringe group of Jewish Fundamentalists, my people would raise a litigious firestorm. We know that Islam itself is not to blame for the attacks of 9/11, and we do not hold all Muslims accountable for the atrocities of that day.

I pray that our response to Park51 is one of acceptance and understanding. That it must be built where it is planned. At the same time, Park51 must respond with the pursuit of peace and positive interfaith relations. Imam Rauf, a liberal Muslim who works with the Reform Movement’s Commission on Interreligious Affairs, has already condemned the actions of Islamic Fundamentalists who would do harm to any people. I ask that all Muslim leaders do the same, publically and in a loud voice. To do tshuvah, to respond, with more than religious tolerance, but with mutual respect and appreciation is the best way to honor the fallen of 9/11.

Tshuvah can also mean repentance.

Judaism acknowledges that human beings are not perfect. God created imperfect beings that do good and bad. We try to do good. We try to react positively and work toward the best things in the world. It doesn’t always work that way. We make mistakes. We sin. We miss the mark. Tshuvah is the device God gives us to fix our mistakes and make good on the times we have missed the mark.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, in his book The Thirteen Petaled Rose, writes, “Repentance is not just a psychological phenomenon…it is a process that can effect real change in the world, in all worlds.” My hope is that we can, together, change the world through the power of tshuvah. Repentance is the device by which we end the cycle of “an eye for an eye,” and begin the process of healing our nation and our world.

Brother Sofian, I am writing to admit to you that we American Jews have sinned. We have not fought to guarantee the rights for Muslims that we would demand for ourselves. We should remember how it feels to be denied religious freedom. When we hear the rhetoric of Islamophobia we should be reminded of the ranting of those like Father Coughlin in the 1930’s. It was unacceptable to speak like that then, and it is unacceptable now. We have sinned by not speaking out against those who spread hatred by their words or their fingers. I myself sat silently and deleted anti-Islamic emails sent to groups of people. I watched as I learned from a colleague that it is important to tell our friends and family members not to send us these messages of intolerance. We must not let the voice of hate set the tone for our discourse. We have sinned with our silence and our inaction, and we need to make tshuvah.

I am also writing to ask that the Muslim community make efforts toward repentance. On AMANA’s web site there is a link to a Jewish Fundamentalist organization called Netorei Karta. Perhaps some of their goals match some of the goals of the Muslim community, but their motives are misguided. They are an anti-Zionist fringe group that misrepresents our sacred texts for their own political purposes. I am sure this link is not on your web site to intentionally insult or harm mainstream, Jewish moderates. Please make tshuvah and remove this link. Every step you make towards us makes it easier for us to step toward you.

Through tshuvah, through repentance, we can repair damages done by those who spread hatred and fear. Both the Jewish and Muslim communities have made mistakes. We say things that our counterparts do not understand. Imam Rauf has said things in the past that I find offensive, and I am sure there are Reform rabbis who have upset you and other Muslims. I hope to be a part of the process that brings our communities together through tshuvah. We can only do that by keeping open the lines of communication, even when we hear something that we might not agree with.

Let us be judged favorably on this Day of Judgment, whether we call it yawm al-din or yom hadin.

Brother Sofian, we must teach our two communities to learn about each other, to work with one another, and to care for one another. We can only do this by speaking in peace with one another. We must build a lasting relationship between the Muslim and Jewish communities that will serve as an example to all peoples, that will be a light to the nations; a light that will eventually lead us to mutual admiration, kindness, and peace.

I want to thank you by helping me make the first step toward peaceful dialogue. I am thrilled that you are able to be here tonight to hear me read this letter to you, and I hope it is the beginning of a strong relationship built on respect and understanding.

In Peace, Salaam, Shalom,

Rabbi David Nathan Young

(*Side note to anyone reading this letter--at this point I walked off the bimah and handed a copy of this letter to Br. Sofian. He promised me that he would remove the link to Netorei Karta from his web site. By Sunday morning, my first opportunity to go on line after Yom Kippur, he had already fulfilled his promise and removed the link from his web site.)

[1] Jeremiah 4:1-2
[2] Rabbi Reuven Firestone, An Introduction to Islam for Jews
[3] Ibid.
[4] B. Talmud, Baba Metzia 86b

RH Day II 5771

2010-09-10T15:17:00.000-04:00

“God is a Woman and She is Growing Older”
by Rabbi Maggie Wenig

God is a woman and she is growing older. She moves more slowly now. She cannot stand erect. Her face is lined. Her voice is scratchy. Sometimes she has to strain to hear. God is a woman and she is growing older; yet, she remembers everything.
On Rosh Hashanah, the anniversary of the day on which she gave us birth, God sits down at her kitchen table, opens the Book of Memories, and begins turning the pages; and God remembers.
“There, there is the world when it was new and my children when they were young.” As she turns each page she smiles, seeing before her, like so many dolls in a department store window, all the beautiful colors of our skin, all the varied shapes and sizes of our bodies. She marvels at our accomplishments: the music we have written, the gardens we have planted, the stories we have told, the ideas we have spun.
“They now can fly faster than the winds I send,” she says to herself, “and they sail across the waters which I gathered into seas. They even visit the moon which I set in the sky. But they rarely visit me.” There pasted into the pages of her book are all the cards we have ever sent to her when we did not bother to visit. She notices our signatures scrawled beneath the printed words someone else has composed.
Then there are the pages she would rather skip. Things she wishes she could forget. But they stare her in the face and she cannot help but remember: her children spoiling the home she created for us, brothers putting each other in chains. She remembers seeing us racing down dangerous roads—herself unable to stop us. She remembers the dreams she had for us—dreams we never fulfilled. And she remembers the names, so many names, inscribed in the book, names of all the children she has lost through war and famine, earthquake and accident, disease and suicide. And God remembers the many times she sat by a bedside weeping that she could not halt the process she herself set into motion. On Yom Kippur, God lights candles, one for each of her children, millions of candles lighting up the night making it bright as day. God stays awake all night turning the pages of her book.
God is lonely, longing for her children, her playful ones. All that dwells on earth does perish. But God endures, so she suffers the sadness of losing all that she holds dear.
God is home, turning the pages of her book. “Come home,” she wants to say to us, “Come home.” But she won’t call. For she is afraid that we will say, “No.” She can anticipate the conversation: “We are so busy. We’d love to see you but we just can’t come. Too much to do.”
Even if we don’t realize it, God knows that our business is just an excuse. She knows that we avoid returning to her because we don’t want to look into her age-worn face. It is hard for us to face a god who disappointed our childhood expectations: She did not give us everything we wanted. She did not make us triumphant in battle, successful in business and invincible to pain. We avoid going home to protect ourselves from our disappointment and to protect her. We don’t want her to see the disappointment in our eyes. Yet, God knows that it is there and she would have us come home anyway.
What if we did? What if we did go home and visit God? What might it be like?
God would usher us into her kitchen, seat us at her table and pour two cups of tea. She has been alone so long that there is much she wants to say. But we barely allow her to get a word in edgewise, for we are afraid of what she might say and we are afraid of silence. So we fill an hour with our chatter, words, words, so many words. Until, finally, she touches her finger to her lips and says, “Shh. Sha. Be still.”
Then she pushes back her chair and says, “Let me have a good look at you.” And she looks. And in a single glance, God sees us as both newly born and dying: coughing and crying and laughing and dancing, as a young child afraid of the road ahead and as an old person looking back wondering where the years went.
In a single glance she sees our birth and our death and all the years in between. She sees us as we were when we were young: when we idolized her and trustingly followed her anywhere; when our scrapes and bruises healed quickly, when we were filled with wonder at all things new. She sees us when we were young, when we thought that there was nothing we could not do.
She sees our middle years too: when our energy was unlimited. When we kept house, cooked and cleaned, cared for children, worked, and volunteered—when everyone needed us and we had no time for sleep.
And God sees us in our later years: when we no longer felt so needed; when chaos disrupted the bodily rhythms we had learned to rely upon. She sees us sleeping alone in a room which once slept two.
God sees things about us we have forgotten and things we do not yet know. For nothing is hidden from God’s sight.
When she is finished looking at us, God might say, “So tell me, how are you?” Now we are afraid to open our mouths and tell her everything she already knows: whom we love; where we hurt; what we have broken or lost; what we wanted to be when we grew up.
So we change the subject. “Remember the time when… “
“Yes, I remember,” she says. Suddenly we are both talking at the same time; saying all the things the greeting cards never said:
“I’m sorry that I…”
“That’s alright, I forgive you.”
“I didn’t mean to…”
“I know that. I do.”
We look away. “I never felt I could live up to your expectations.”
“I always believed you could do anything,” she answers.
“What about your future?” she asks us. We do not want to face our future. God hears our reluctance, and she understands.
We are growing older as God is growing older. How much like her we have become.
God holds our face in her two hands and whispers, “Do not be afraid, I will be faithful to the promise I made to you when you were young. I will be with you. Even to your old age I will be with you. When you are grey headed still I will hold you. I gave birth to you, I carried you. I will hold you still. Grow old along with me….”
Our fear of the future is tempered now by curiosity. The universe is infinite. Unlimited possibilities are arrayed before us still. We can awaken each morning to wonder: What shall I learn today? What can I create today? What will I notice that I have never seen before?
It has been a good visit. Before we leave, it is our turn to take a good look at God. The face which time has marked looks not frail to us now—but wise. For we understand that God knows those things only the passage of time can teach: that one can survive the loss of a love; that one can feel secure even in the midst of an ever changing world; that there is dignity in being alive even when every bone aches. God’s movements seem not slow to us—but strong and intent, unlike our own. For we are too busy to see beneath the surface. We speak too rapidly to truly listen, and we move too quickly to feel what we touch. We form opinions too fast to judge honestly. While God, God moves slowly and with intention. God sees everything there is to see, understands everything she hears, and touches all that lives.
Ahh, that is why we were created to grow older: each added day of life, each new year make us more like God who is ever growing older.
How often do we sit in the house of prayer holding in our hands pages of greeting cards bound together into a prayer book, hundreds of words we ourselves have not written. Will we merely place our signatures at the bottom and drop the cards in the mail?
God would prefer that we come home. She is waiting for us, ever patiently until we are ready. God will not sleep. She will leave the door open and the candles burning waiting patiently for us to come home.
Perhaps one day…perhaps one day we will be able to look into God’s aging face and say, “Avinu Malkeinu, our Parent, our Ruler, we have come home.”

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5771: 400 Years of Reform Judaism

2010-09-09T08:53:00.001-04:00

A man goes to an Orthodox rabbi and asks if there is a bracha for a brand new BMW. He is very excited to have it, and would like to have it blessed. Does such a bracha exist?

“Of course,” responds the rabbi. “There is a bracha for everything! But first, please tell me, what exactly is a BMW?”

Well, the indignant new car-owner refuses to have his new Beamer blessed by someone who doesn’t appreciate a fine automobile. So he goes to a Conservative rabbi.

“Rabbi,” he asks, “will you please offer a bracha to my new BMW?”

“I’d be honored,” says the Conservative rabbi as he adjusts his yarmulke. “But first, please tell me…what’s a BMW?”

Frustrated, the man storms into a Reform rabbi’s study. He asks the rabbi, “Excuse me, but do you know what a BMW is?”

“Of course!” says the Reform rabbi. “It’s a fine luxury automobile. Boy would I love to drive such a precision instrument of beauty, speed, and agility.”

Thrilled, the man hugs the rabbi and says, “Yes, and I just bought one. Will you please offer a bracha to my new BMW?”

“Of course!” the Reform rabbi replies. “But first, please tell me…what’s a bracha?”

I learned that joke in Israel, working as a bartender for a small café close to HUC in Jerusalem. The owner, Gilad, was a loud, brash Israeli with a penchant for making fun of anything American, and his favorite targets were the Reform rabbis in training who frequented his café, since it was located across the street from Hebrew Union College. Typically Israelis don’t understand Reform Judaism. Really most of the world doesn’t understand it. In the Holy Land, as with most of the world, there are two types of Jewish practice. There’s dati, the religious, Ultra-Orthodox, black-hat-or-sheitle-wearing Jews who keep to their secluded neighborhoods. Then there’s the chiloni, the secular, non-practicing Jewish Israelis who look like a typical American or European. The dati go to synagogue three times a day, celebrate Shabbat and chagim with passionate ferocity, and spend their time in study whenever possible. The chiloni go to synagogue once or twice a year, if at all. They typically celebrate Passover Seder and they might light a menorah on Chanukah, but that’s about as “Jewish” as they get.
In fact, for about 1800 years, those were the only two ways to be Jewish. We either went all in or went for nothing at all. Segregated communities prevented intermingling with gentiles for all but merchants, and most Jews were content with that type of lifestyle. This year marks the 200th anniversary of when that all changed.

In July, 1810, a wealthy Jewish scholar named Israel Jacobson built a synagogue in Seesen, a town in Central Germany. Jacobson had, nine years earlier, established a school for interfaith families, 40 Jewish and 20 Christian. Though Jacobson was passionate about interfaith relations, he also saw the need to educate the young in religious values as soon as possible. So he built his synagogue on school grounds, and called it Jakobstemple. Jakobstemple was the first synagogue to have an organ installed for worship services. Jacobson also distinguished his worship style by praying in both Hebrew and German, allowing women and men to sit together, and not requiring the men to wear head coverings. He also performed the first Jewish Confirmation service, confirming five young Jewish boys in the first year of Jakobstemple’s operation. Many leaders of the Reform movement refer to the founding of Jakobstemple as the beginning of Reform Judaism, and to this year, 2010, as our bicentennial.

1810 was also the birth-year of Abraham Geiger, one of the most influential early reformers of Jewish practice. Geiger was a brilliant scholar and an observant Jew, but he believed that Judaism developed through history from Temple Judaism to Rabbinic Judaism, from Rabbinic to Medieval, from Medieval to modern, and so on. He saw this change not as a problem to be dealt with, but a strength that allows Judaism to thrive throughout the ages while remaining relevant to the Jewish people. Each new change was moral progress that reflected the ideals of Jewish life.

In 1825 Temple Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina brought other liberal synagogues to form the “Reformed Society of Israelites.” These reformers were influenced heavily by the Haskalah—the Jewish Enlightenment movement in Europe—and their practices combined the aesthetics of the Seesen Jakobstemple with some of Abraham Geiger’s liberal theology. Add to that the idea of religious freedom in America and you get what we today refer to as “Classical Reform.” Men and women sat together and listened to the organ play hymns as they admired the church-like architecture painted with frescoes and adorned with stained glass and intricate chandeliers. They did not participate as much in worship as they did attend worship, like going to a concert. The cantors chanted beautiful melodies and the rabbis preached from on high. This kind of worship was inspiring to American Jews, especially the German immigrants who were looking for a universalistic approach to religion. They wanted Jewish practice that consisted of prayers almost entirely in the English language, and sermons — generally half an hour or more every week — intended to teach and edify. They were cultural rather than “religious” Jews.

In 1846 a rabbi named Isaac Mayer Wise came to the United States to work in Albany at Temple Beth Emet, where his radical ideas were not as welcomed as he had hoped. He was dismissed after four years, and made his way to the Holy City—Cincinnati, OH. There he became the rabbi for Kehilah Kedoshah B’nai Yeshurun, which would become known as Wise Temple. Throughout his tenure in Cincinnati, he established three major institutions that have since become the pillars of the Reform movement. In 1873, 34 Reform congregations formed the Union of American Hebrew Congregations under Rabbi Wise’s leadership. (This became the Union for Reform Judaism in 2003.) Two years later they established a seminary for Reform rabbis called Hebrew Union College, and in 1889 he helped found the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the professional union of the Reform rabbinate.

With these pillars in place the Reform movement over the last 200 years has become the most popular and powerful movement in North America, with over 900 congregations representing over 1.5 million Jews. We have declared our beliefs through four Platforms—four declarations of the principals of Reform Judaism. In 1885 the first platform declared the Mosaic laws that “regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress…entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state,” meaning Jewish people could look like, eat like, and live with other people, Jew or Gentile. It also rejected the concept of a return to Zion and especially that of a Messianic return to “Palestine.” It acknowledged the validity of its “sister faiths,” Christianity and Islam, and elevated social action over Rabbinic Law.

Throughout the years the platforms changed, and by 1999 the movement divided its platform into three core values: God, Torah, and Israel. These three headings became and remain the themes of Reform Jewish practice, and the three things on which it stands. We also believe in the importance of Educated Choice, learning Jewish custom, law, and tradition so well that we are able to make choices about how to incorporate Judaism into our lives. We might choose to keep kosher or not, to wear a kippah or not, to celebrate Shabbat in a myriad of different ways…or not. Once an Educated Choice has been made, Personal Autonomy is respected.

In the Forward, Michael A. Meyer recently looked into the development of Reform Judaism over the past 200 years. He writes:

For the most part, Reform Judaism, 200 years after its symbolic origins, is a
quite different entity. In some respects it has become more radical than its
earlier historical manifestations, with its complete religious equality for
women and GLBT—Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender—Jews; its embrace of
patrilineal descent; and its greater willingness to include within the Reform
community non-Jews who are committed to raising their children as Jews. Yet in
most respects it is far more traditional than in its Classical days. We
use more Hebrew in our worship services, we have re-instated B’nai Mitzvah and
sometimes even Pidyon Haben, and we embrace Israel as our homeland, even if we
have never been there.

Reform Judaism demands connecting with Halacha, Jewish law, but it does not demand its authority. As Mordecai Kaplan put it, Halacha has a vote but not a veto. What makes Reform Judaism applicable and connected to Jewish life is its insistence that we look at Jewish practice in light of modernity—that we harmonize the dati with the chiloni that is within each of us.
One of the challenges to creating this harmony is that we have learned to demand logic in our daily practices. Logic and religion do not always jive, and it is up to our teachers—rabbis, cantors, Jewish educators, and lay leaders, to explain rite and ritual. We need these explanations to be logical, without the hocus-pocus that satisfied the religiosity of our ancestors.

When I was a teenager I went to services at an Orthodox shul with my uncle. He wanted to show me what “real Judaism” looked like, and encouraged me to ask questions throughout the service. I didn’t have too many questions. Except for being entirely in Hebrew, it was pretty much the same as the services I went to throughout my years at Jewish summer camp. They did all the same prayers, just fast and garbled. Then they got to the point where an elderly gentleman walked up to the bimah, stretched out his arms, spread his fingers like Mr. Spock, and began chanting, “YivarechechAW Adonoy viyish’merechAW….” He was reciting the three-fold benediction, the same blessing we offer to B’nai Mitzvah in our ark. Before he began to speak, my uncle told me to cover my eyes, as did every other person in the room.
This was new to me. “Why do we close our eyes?” I asked my uncle.

“Because,” he explained, “that man is a Cohen, and when a Cohen does this prayer, the Shechina—God’s presence—comes down to that very spot. If you look once, you’ll go blind, and if you look a second time, you’ll die.”

“Ok,” I said, “but how can you look twice if you’re already blind?”

He looked at me and exclaimed, “Oy are you a Reform Jew!”

His statement was an expression of his exasperation. It was also right on the money. As a Reform Jew I question, and I need solid answers to my questions, or at least an honest “I don’t know.” Reform Jews need meaningful rituals, created jointly by our clergy and members of our community—people who are educated in the worship experience and who understand its spiritual value. We need harmony between our Jewish practice and our modern lives. One cannot conflict with the other, and hopefully one can even enhance the other.

I believe that over the next 200 years we will continue to hold to these values.

Chances are in 200 years there will once again be two movements of Judaism, each of them split into grades of expression and intensity. There will be Orthodoxy, the branches of Judaism that continue to adhere to the words of Torah and Talmud, seldom veering to the right or the left. Like today, they will wear similar clothing, have similar views, and apply no thought to the practice of their religion, even the aspects that do not make sense. They will simply follow the rules, and do as their rabbis tell them.

The other movement will be Liberalism. Its main branch will probably be what was the Reform movement, which will maintain its strength as a movement because of our union. But there will be other, smaller branches like Humanists and the Chavurah movement. Liberal Judaism will encompass the branches of Judaism that require its congregants to think, to determine what aspects of Judaism are meaningful to them and make educated choices about their practices.

People often express their worry about the shrinking of synagogue partnership, the lack of people’s need to belong to a community. I believe this need will ebb and flow over the next two centuries. As our community’s needs change, the role of the synagogue will have to change with it. Our synagogues will move, grow, and shrink, and our buildings will be expanded or become obsolete. Jewish Community Centers will likely grow as places where Jewish people gather to pray, study, and celebrate. We will also use our homes to invite Jewish gatherings, as well as mountain tops, ocean cruises, desert treks, and forest hikes.

Over the next 50 to 100 years I imagine a steady decline of Conservative and Reconstructionist Judaism, with their congregations shifting either to Modern Orthodoxy or joining the Reform movement. It will get to the point where the Conservative leadership will approach the Union for Reform Judaism and ask for a merge. The resources of the Reform movement will be combined with Conservative membership—actually, by then they’ll probably call it partnership. New platforms will be produced by the dual leadership of the movements. The 8th Platform of the Reform Movement will be the 1st Platform of the new movement, and the conference will be held in Jerusalem, to emphasize the holiness of the undertaking. We will change the name of the Union for Reform Judaism, calling it the Liberal Jewish Union, a name inclusive enough for the Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews to feel comfortable and similar enough for Reform Jews to still feel at home.

The Jerusalem Platform will be published in Hebrew, English, Arabic, Russian, Farsi, Amharic, Spanish, and French, but every version will have Hebrew text to emphasize the importance of the Holy Language. It will be simultaneously edited by the rabbis in attendance, thanks to the holographic text-editing functions on their cell phones. Meanwhile, the platform will be viewed via live-Tweet on gigantic screens in the conference center at the King David Hotel. It will still lay out the importance of God, Torah, and Israel.

We will still believe in one God, but there will be no common definition as to what God is. We will acknowledge that 2 Jews can have more than 3 opinions on any topic, including God. “Ethical Monotheism” will be liberal Judaism’s two-word theology. We will hold morality above ritual, and social action over the supernatural.

We will continue to respect Torah as a divinely inspired but not divinely authored literary work. It will continue to reflect our desire to reach for God and holiness. We will not consider its laws binding, but we will consider its laws. We will understand that it is a document intended to teach us about ourselves and the best version of ourselves we can be.

Israel as a nation will always be a special place to liberal Jews. They will even have a party in the Knesset, the State of Israel’s Parliament, and this party will be as influential as the Shas and other Orthodox parties are today. This influence will create significant changes in Jewish practice in Israel as well. For example, the Kotel, the Western Wall, will have a section for men and women to pray together, and a place where they can remain separate if they so desire.
But Israel can also refer to the Jewish community, and Israel as kehilah kedosha, a holy community, will be heralded as the true expression of liberal Judaism, and we will understand that if any people is oppressed, no people can be chosen.

Educated choice will remain one of the principals of Liberal Judaism, and Liberal Jews will engage in deep, serious discussion with their rabbis before making decisions that affect their lives. Religious schools and day schools will require a parent track where children are granted huge scholarships when their parents engage in parallel learning. All people will be allowed to enter the doors of Liberal synagogues, and partnership will be granted to anyone who wishes to practice Judaism with a liberal bent. GLBT Jews, Interfaith families, and Jews of every color and walk of life will be welcome within the liberal synagogues’ walls. Nobody will care if the person next to them believes differently than they do. In fact, they would think it strange if they did. People’s differences would be lauded, and their uniqueness would be a source of learning for the whole community.

Perhaps this seems like a strange, fantastic, impossible view of the world in 200 years. Maybe none of this vision will come true, but I would guess that at least some of it will come to fruition. The future is mysterious, and none of us will be here to determine if anything I have said this evening will come to pass. Many challenges await the Jewish people. The strong pull of our jobs and non-religious commitments provide us with many “reasons” to simply step away from Judaism and live only in the secular world. If we give in to this pull, there will be no Judaism in 200 years. If we resist it by clinging to the Jewish values we hold dear, our community will maintain its spiritual connection to each other and to God.

Judaism for our grandchildren’s grandchildren will only survive the complexities of the future if our community moves with them, accepting their differences of opinion and belief as expressions of the divine within them—a reflection of the divine within each of us.

In order to make our synagogue a place that will provide for various loyalties, we must begin to prepare right now. We must maintain a serious, engaged commitment to this amazing Jewish community in 5771, so that it will last to 5971 and beyond. We must open our minds to Jewish learning, open our arms toward people who are different from us, and open our homes to our Jewish neighbors, whether or not they believe or behave like we do.

May we, as a community, not only survive but thrive for the next 200 years and beyond. May we create Jewish practice in our homes and here at Sinai that reflect our Reform values and keep our children connected to the Jewish community.

Kein Yehi Ratzon.

Elul Thoughts 5770, part 2

2010-08-12T17:03:00.000-04:00

Elul 2 (August 12): by Rabbi Alan E. Litwak
The High Holy Day period is about both getting inside and outside of yourself. We need to get inside ourselves and be willing to see who we truly are – our faults and failures, as well as our strengths and successes. Only then, can we properly focus our attentions and energies on the wider community. There is a wonderful Hasidic lesson that juxtaposes these focuses and suggests a reason for the separation.

A rich miser once complained to the Rabbi about the many demands that were made upon him. The Rabbi led him to the window and said: “Look out and tell me what you see.” “I see people,” said the man. Then the Rabbi led him to the mirror on the wall and said, “Now look and tell me what you see.” The man answered, “Now I see myself.” “The difference between the glass in the window and the glass in the mirror is only a layer of silver,” said the Rabbi. “As soon as a bit of silver is added, you cease to see others and see only yourself.”

Over the next few weeks, I challenge you to find those things that focus you solely on yourself and clear them away so that you can see the needs and concerns of others.

Elul Thoughts 5770, part 1

2010-08-12T17:02:00.000-04:00

ELUL 1 (August 11): Joining in the Great Return, by Rabbi Alan E. Litwak
My teacher, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, taught:
“Teshuvah is the ever present possibility, urge, and gesture of returning to our Source, the Holy One of All Being. Through teshuvah all life is returned to its source. As Rav Kook teaches, it flows unnoticed throughout creation. Teshuvah is not simply apologizing or making right the damage we have done, though these are prerequisites. It is only this: The Return. Teshuvah is the hardest thing in the world . . . but it is also the easiest thing, since the process of teshuvah begins with the simple thought of wanting to begin.
More than just an individual gesture, teshuvah is a great world yearning that flows through and animates all creation. Through attempting to repair and heal what we have done in the past, we set it within a larger context of meaning and effectively rewrite the past. What was once only some thoughtless or even wicked act, now – when viewed from the perspective of our present teshuvah – becomes only the embarrassing commencement of this greater healing now realized.”

V’zot haTorah

2010-07-17T10:26:00.002-04:00

V’zot haTorah asher sar Moshe lifnei b’nei Yisrael al pi Adonai b’yad Moshe.
This is the Torah that Moses placed before the Israelites—the mouth of Adonai at the hand of Moses.

I often tell my 6th grade Bible students that just as their English teachers won’t let them use a word in its own definition, they may not use the Torah as proof that the Torah was written by God. I believe it is a Divinely inspired work, I just don’t necessarily believe in the literal meaning of al pi Adonai b’yad Moshe, from the mouth of God at the hand of Moses.
This morning we begin reading the book of Deuteronomy. It is the last book of the Torah, the fifth of the “Five Books of Moses.” It is mostly a review of the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the bank of the Jordan River on which they stand, poised and ready to go into the Promised Land.

The book of Deuteronomy begins, “These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.…” Twelfth Century Spanish Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra comments on the words “on the other side of the Jordan,” expounding on twelve secret verses from the Torah. Like Deuteronomy is a review, he sees it as an opportunity to review what we have learned from the remez, the hints of the hidden meaning of the text.

His comment is incredibly cryptic, so stay with me:

If you will understand the mystery of the twelve [final] verses, “And also Moses
wrote…” (Deut. 31:22), “and the Canaanites were then in the Land” (Gen. 12:6),
“and on the mountain Adonai is seen...” (Gen. 22:14), “and his bedstead of iron
is now in Rabbat Amon” (Deut. 3:11), then you will comprehend the truth.

In his introduction to the Torah, ibn Ezra writes:

The words of the Torah are never less than straightforward... therefore, if
there appears something in the Torah which seems to contradict reason or to
refute the evidence of our senses then here one should seek for the solution in
a figurative interpretation. For reason is the foundation of everything. The
Torah was not given to men who cannot reason and man's reason is the angel which mediates between him and his God.

This means we have to use his method of understanding the Torah to interpret his commentaries.

Ibn Ezra writes of understanding certain verses to comprehend the truth. He points to other verses in the Torah. In looking to these verses alone, no connection is clear. But in looking at ibn Ezra’s commentaries on these verses, he writes about a secret or refers the reader to his comment here. He also writes in his commentaries that “the wise man will be silent,” in reference to the secret he is trying to reveal. The twelve final verses are the end of Deuteronomy. They describe Moses going up from the Steppes of Moab to Mount Nebo. Ibn Ezra comments here, pointing out that the directions Moses takes from Moab to Nebo is not from the Jordan River, but from Jerusalem. Therefore the other textual references he gives, from as early as Genesis 12, are also from the perspective of coming from Jerusalem. This means the Torah at these points must have been written after the Jewish people were already in Jerusalem, already across the Jordan. This gives us internal textual evidence that the Torah was written at a later time than the happenings in the Torah.

This contradicts the belief that Torah was given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. We would think that the rabbis who come after him would have hidden away this revelation, but they don’t! We can read it in all of his biblical commentaries. So it seems that not until modern times do we get the insistence that Torah comes directly from God, unchanged through Moses’ hands to Joshua, the elders, the prophets, the rabbis, and to us today. Who would have thought that the concept of Torah MiSinai was a modern construct—a reaction to modernity? It seems that up to the 12th Century and beyond, a faithful Jew did not need to believe that this document was actually handed to us by God. So literary criticism—the view that Torah comes from at least four different redacted sources penned by many authors—has always been a perfectly acceptable, and a completely Jewish principle.

And yet even with our critique, we still sing V’zot HaTorah at the end of our Torah service. We will declare that this scroll is our sacred work that was given to God by Moses.

Not because we literally believe it to be, but because it is the heart of our religion while we provide the head. As ibn Ezra explains, reason is a gift that allows us to understand Torah at a higher level. An angel that mediates between us and God.

So perhaps when we hold the Torah aloft and sing we are not thanking God for literally giving us the Torah. Instead we are thanking God for the angel of reason that helps us understand the words of our sacred text.

Thanks to Rabbi Stephen Wylen for inspiring this post with his article in the CCAR's "Voices of Torah."

Four is Greater Than One

2010-06-25T19:17:00.002-04:00

It’s hard to believe it has only been a year. One year ago today I was standing in the bedroom screaming for Natalie to come and check out the television. The news program was announcing that the King was dead. The King of Pop, that is. For weeks Michael Jackson was all we heard about. It was as if every newscast had become an episode of Behind the Music. The world seemed to mourn for their king with nearly as much—if not more—reverence than for a relative. Street dancers mounted guerilla renditions of the Thriller dance or choreographed new moves to Beat It in subway stations. Suddenly people wanted to hear from the other four Jacksons again.

Today he is all over the news again. Tribute concerts are happening all over the world this weekend. Rebroadcasts of interviews with his family and people who knew him are airing. I learned yesterday that Jackson's estate was $500 million in debt when he died, but since his passing it has made over a billion dollars. Plus we can expect to see 10 posthumous albums between now and 2017. All this in just one year.

Admittedly, I was not a huge fan. I liked his music—Thriller was the first album I ever bought—but I did not mourn his passing. Nevertheless, the news of his first Yahrtzeit, so to speak, saddens me to no end. The reason I am sad, though, has absolutely nothing to do with Michael Jackson.

I am sad because today is another anniversary. An anniversary that we are all but ignoring. Four years ago today, 19-year-old Gilad Shalit was kidnapped by Palestinian militants, and he has been in Gaza ever since. As far as we know, he is still alive. The last proof of life was in September 2009, when he held a newspaper for a video camera as he read a statement declaring him “in good health and well-treated.” But his gaunt stature does not look as if he is in good health. And as far as being well-treated, he is denied the ability to communicate with his family, and the International Red Cross has been denied access to him. In fact, due to lack of access, the IDF is not 100% sure he is still in Gaza.

I am sad because we are not remembering Gilad Shalit here in America. This is not because of Michael Jackson, though Americans prefer pop culture to foreign politics. It is not even because America is not a Jewish country. Even American Jews are largely ignoring this important day. As I scrolled down my list of tweets this morning—the list of comments by those I follow on Twitter—I looked for the #Gilad that would signify people tweeting about the 23-year-old solider still in captivity after four years. I could not find it. I looked at the URJ’s tweets about child obesity, gay pride, and interfaith families. I looked at NFTY and read about local events. I looked at the RAC’s tweets about Greening Reform Judaism, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Iran sanctions and Darfur. There is a fringe group of activists in New York City taking a flotilla around the Statue of Liberty and passed the UN building, but other than that very little about Shalit is mentioned by American Jews.

They are remembering Gilad in Israel. On Sunday morning his family—his mother Aviva, father Noam, and brother and sister will march from Mitzpe Hila in the Galil to Jerusalem to camp in front of the Prime Minister’s Residence. Thousands of people are expected to join them as they walk from northern Israel to its heart, and thousands more are donning yellow ribbons in support. Aviva and Noam Shalit say they will remain camped across the street from the PM’s residence until they receive word that Gilad is coming home.

In Judaism we focus on life. The Talmud teaches that whoever saves one life, it is as if the entire world had been saved. We are also taught that we should pay an exorbitant amount for the freedom of captives if we are asked. Every life is created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, and anyone who would intentionally do harm to another human being attempts to destroy the image of God. Gilad Shalit is a young man who, if allowed to live free, has his whole life ahead of him. The very notion that Gilad Shalit might still have a chance to live his life is cause for all Jews to do whatever we can to support his family on their march and to call for Israel to do what it can to bring him home safe.

In a few moments we will rise and chant the ancient words of our Aleinu prayer, expressing our hope that the day will come when all people, all over the world, will behave as one. Bayom hahu yihyeh Adonai echad ush’mo echad, “On that day Adonai will be one and God’s name will be one.” That can only happen when we treat every life as valuable, precious, expressions of godliness. I pray that the world would value the life of one young soldier as much as it does the death of the King of Pop. Until that day, we need to raise our voices in prayer and song. We need to let it be known to our friends, our families, our congress and senators, that we do not want to wait anymore. Free Gilad Shalit.

Meanwhile, we offer our prayers for Gilad and all Israeli soldiers who risk their lives every day to make our Holy Land a safer, better place.

Preparing for Shavuot

2010-05-18T16:00:00.002-04:00

Natalie has a lot of shoes. This is by no means a disparaging statement. She’s no Imelda Marcos. Nevertheless, when Natalie and I discuss her legions of shoes lined up on the closet floor, I often suggest giving some away to make room for new ones. I have even suggested that if she gets rid of enough, I would buy her new ones myself. But for some reason she just cannot let go of a pair of shoes. At first I just didn’t get it. I threw my hands up in despair, not wanting to fight over shoes. But recently I realized that I do the same thing.

I have a lot of T-shirts. I wear at least one every day, usually two if I go to the gym. Yet I own way more than I need. As a youth worker, I acquire a lot of T-shirts at conventions and trips. People like to give me superhero T-shirts, which I love, and sometimes I will even go on line and buy a shirt that makes me laugh to read it, like “I’m with stupid” with an arrow pointing up.

Last week I had trouble shutting the T-shirt drawer after doing laundry, and I hadn’t even put them all away! So I dug around a little bit. I realized I never get to the T-shirts on the bottom of the drawer between laundry cycles. So I took them out. I made a little pile of T-shirts I haven’t worn in at least a year, and soon enough the drawer was only half-full. And I still have all I need and more. I have no plans to go out and buy more T-shirts, but at least now I have space, and Goodwill has “I’m with stupid.”

Tonight is Shavuot. The Torah tells us very little about what to do for Chag Shavuot, or the “Feast of Weeks.” We are commanded to count off seven weeks from Pesach, and to rejoice with an offering to God at the Temple. We know that the three chagim, the three sacred festivals, are all agricultural celebrations. Shavuot is when the first stalks of wheat ripen and can be brought to the Temple for an offering. We know everyone is supposed to celebrate, as we are told in Deuteronomy, “You shall rejoice…with your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite in your communities, and the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow in your midst” (16:11). The whole community is a part of this sacred celebration.

That’s all we know!

Some time during the Tannaitic period, the time leading up to the 2nd Century CE, the Rabbis made the connection between the holiday Shavuot and the Biblical account of Moses ascending Mount Sinai. Exod. 19 says that the Israelites came to Sinai on the third new moon after the exodus, which is the month of Sivan. Then there is a period of getting ready. Moses goes up the mountain, talks to God, who tells him to remind the Israelites that they must obey God’s commandments. They agree, and Moses tells them not to even come close enough to touch the mountain, and to get ready to meet God in three days. These three days pass immediately, and boom! We are at Sinai amid peals of thunder, ready for Kabbalat haTorah, the accepting of Torah.

Tomorrow morning we will be here in the sanctuary, reenacting Kabbalat haTorah as a community as we take the Torah in our arms for our personal blessings. Tonight I want us to think about those three days that pass in as many words. Three days of purification and preparation for revelation that get absolutely no mention in the Torah as far as what happens during those three days. What were the Israelites doing those three days? Probably getting rid of their shoes and T-shirts.

Receiving Torah is a really big deal. In addition to preparing to receive the guide book for how to live as a people, they are preparing to meet God. The One who brought them out of Egypt is freed them from slavery is giving them the greatest gift in the world—the Torah. To do this they need to get rid of any preconceived notions they have. They cannot be thinking of God as an Egyptian deity or as a statue or stone. They must throw away these pre-monotheistic ideas and make room for God. Because just like in our closets and drawers, there is no way we can receive anything if we are full to capacity.

Just like the Israelites at Mount Sinai, we know there are great things ahead of us. We are building great things for our community, our families, and ourselves. If we do not properly prepare for what we receive, we just won’t have room for it. We need to get rid of the old to accept the new. Let go of our preconceived notions of what clothing and stuff we need, how much money we need, and how we should think and behave. Empty our drawers, our minds, and our hearts. Then we will truly be able to accept the very best that God has to offer us. We will have room in our lives for new things. We will have room in our minds for new ideas, and we will have space in our hearts for a renewed relationship with God.

As we prepare to accept Torah tomorrow morning, may we be blessed with space. May we maintain an openness that will allow us to accept the gifts that are available to us. May this Shavuot bring us closer to one another, to the Torah, and to God.

Chag Sameach.

The National Day of Prayer

2010-05-06T20:51:00.003-04:00

Today is May 6, 2010.
As the first Thursday in May, it also happens to be the National Day of Prayer.
Following the lead of Presidents Adams, Lincoln, and others, President Harry S. Truman signed a bill into law that required every president to declare a day of his choosing as National Prayer Day. In 1982, President Reagan made that day the first Thursday in May for him and all subsequent presidents.
All morning while driving the boys to school and back I listened to what seemed like an endless stream of pro- and anti- National Day of Prayer commentary. Frankly, I can understand the opinions expressed on both sides. Our National Day of Prayer poses quite a conflict between my religious sensibilities and my liberal mindset.
As a rabbi it should be obvious that I pray. I pray all the time. During services that I lead or help lead, I find it completely necessary to seek out prayerful moments, such as during silent meditation or when the cantor is singing. I pray when I exercise, in the car, and when I change my kids’ diapers (“Please, God—let it not be messy!”) I pray out loud and to myself, in groups and alone, at mandated and random times. Sometimes I use liturgy, sometimes I make things up as I go. Because of the myriad of moments of prayerfulness that I seek out, I can appreciate the need for a National Day of Prayer. I find it comforting to know that when I lift my eyes and call out to what I call “God,” I am not the only one who believes. Maybe I am crazy to believe in a deity whose existence defies all logic, but I’m in a company of some 95% of the country whose beliefs are similar.
As a liberal, however, I am acutely aware of the perils of the other 5% and our requirement as a nation to stand up for them, too. No matter how many religions a generic day of prayer touches, even if every synagogue, church, and mosque were to log in 100% participation, we would leave out some of our country who feel uncomfortable with prayer. This is unacceptable to me. No matter how many times I defend my beliefs to my non-believing brother-in-law, I would not want to insult him by requiring he participate in prayer at the same level as we do. On the other hand, we do pressure him into joining us when we recite Hamotzi—grace before meals.
Still, there is a difference between family pressure and federal law.
Our constitution, in the very first amendment, states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” This is a slippery slope when arguing the establishment of a day of prayer. When I think about the 5% or more who either do not believe in God or are uncomfortable expressing said belief, the National Day of Prayer makes me cringe. Maybe it’s just the language. If we called it a day of meditation or reflection, it could hardly be construed as offensive to those who do not meditate or reflect. But the word “pray” raises the hackles of our brothers and sisters who choose not to partake in it. These same people are not bothered that it is currently Jewish History Month even though they are not Jewish, but for some reason prayer is bothersome.
Being a person of faith allows me to comfortably believe in God as I imagine God, and that faith gives me great comfort—no matter what other believe or do not believe. Therefore, I hesitate to support a law that asks people to pray. I do not want to participate in a government sponsored program that excludes some of our citizens.
The solution remains a mystery to me, and perhaps on May 5, 2011 I will have an answer.
For now, I will just have to pray on it.

From Freedom to Redemption: Our Journey Towards Shavuot

2010-04-04T15:42:00.003-04:00

There are many suggestions as to why we might count every day from Passover to Shavuot. Historical critics suggest that during the period of the Omer, our ancestors were completely focused on their agricultural endeavors. Offerings given during these weeks expressed hope for an abundant harvest, while simultaneously thanked God for the bounty of the land.

Shavuot, throughout the ages, has come to be associated with the revelation of Torah on Mount Sinai. When we left Egypt we were slaves, still clinging to our slave mentality. We were not a people until we received Torah and in unison proclaimed that we will hear and obey. The Medieval mystics see the Omer as a time for intense spiritual preparation. The 49 days of counting equal seven times seven. There happen to be seven lower sefirot, the emanations of God in Kabalistic thought. The ultimate goal in mystical practice is to elevate oneself through the seven sefirot until one has, in essence, become one with God’s fundamental nature. Each sefirah, in turn, has seven within itself. So the mystic wishing to attain spiritual enlightenment over this period would elevate one level within an emanation each day, and one full emanation each week, allowing for complete connectedness with God at the moment of revelation. Please don’t try this at home.

Today we mark the counting with blessing. After our blessing over counting the Omer, we declare which day of the Omer it is, and we mark how many weeks and days. For example, next Friday night after our blessing we will say, “Today is the 11th day of the Omer, which equals one week and 4 days.” Some Jews will even recite Psalm 67 after the counting every night--not because it is relevant to the Omer, but because it has 7 verses, and a total of 49 words.

However we mark the counting, we all count in our own way, and our counting prepares us for that pivotal moment at Mount Sinai. Some study Torah every day to prime their minds for the receiving of Torah. Some meditate every day to imagine what it will be like to have God revealed to us. Some of us technophiles are blogging or tweeting every day to share our counting with the electronic world.

Yesterday while listening to the radio I heard a story about a different kind of counting. The story was about the oldest daughter of one of our Temple Sinai families. She is not counting specifically for the Omer, but her counting started as the Omer was beginning. She will be counting to almost 500 over the next 3 weeks, not in sheaves of grain, but in miles. Lauren Book-Lim started walking yesterday. She started her walk at the Aventura Mall, and she will end on April 20th in Tallahassee. These two locations are of particular significance to Laruen. She was sexually abused at the Aventura Mall, and on April 20th she plans to lobby for legislation to help protect children from sexual abuse at a rally at our state’s capital. Her walk coincides with April’s designation as Sexual Abuse Awareness Month. Her journey will take her from the enslavement of abuse—the fear and confusion that comes from an authority figure so horribly breeching trust—to the freedom of having her voice heard.

Lauren was sexually abused by her live-in nanny for seven years, beginning when she was ten years old. Today she is studying for her Masters in Elementary Education and she runs an organization called Lauren’s Kids, a non-profit organization that strives to educate survivors about how to heal, and encourages victims of abuse that “it’s OK to tell.”

According to Lauren, her journey from Aventura to Tallahassee “is a physical manifestation of your spiritual and healing journey.” Lauren’s freedom from the chains of her abuse stems from her willingness to tell her parents what was happening to her at the hands of her nanny. She was able to free herself with help from friends and loved ones, and now seeks to do the same for others.

As we go on our symbolic journey from Passover to Shavuot, we pray that Lauren’s journey will meet all of its goals and more. Our redemption at Mount Sinai came in the form of our written Torah. We hope that her redemption for Lauren’s Kids and all victims of sexual abuse will come in the form of stronger victim care legislation and stricter laws to deal with abusers. We know that even though we were granted freedom for our oppressors, no Jewish person can feel truly free until all people are free. May our counting throughout our journey this Omer season bring us and all people to true freedom and redemption.

Shabbat Shekalim

2010-02-13T08:45:00.002-05:00

Today we are celebrating a special Shabbat. It goes by three different names. It is Shabbat Mishpatim, pointing to the Parashah, which is composed of a myriad of laws Moses lists for the Israelites after receiving the Ten Commandments. It is also called Shabbat Mevarchim Rosh Chodesh, which is the name for any Shabbat preceding a new month. Tonight as the sun sets the month of Adar begins, bringing with it the joy of Purim, as it says in the Talmud, Mishenichnas Adar marbim b’simchah, “Whoever enters Adar, their joy is increased.”
Today is also Shabbat Shekalim. This is the extra-special name given to Shabbat Mevrachim Rosh Chodesh Adar. It is the first of four special Shabbatot leading up to Pesach—(Shekalim, Zachor, Parah, Hachodesh).

Named after the special verse that is sometimes added to the end of the regular Torah reading. It comes from Exod. 30:11, which discusses the census of the Israelites, measured by each person giving a half-Shekel for their counting (Plaut 632).

11 God spoke to Moses, saying: 12 When you take a census of the Israelite
people according to their enrollment, each shall pay Adonai a ransom for himself
on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being
enrolled. 13 This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall
pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight -- twenty gerahs to the shekel -- a
half-shekel as an offering to the LORD. 14 Everyone who is entered in the
records, from the age of twenty years up, shall give Adonai’s offering: 15
the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel
when giving Adonai’s offering as expiation for your persons. 16 You shall
take the expiation money from the Israelites and assign it to the service of the
Tent of Meeting; it shall serve the Israelites as a reminder before Adonai, as
expiation for your persons.

At its simplest level, this is a census with taxes. The taxes go to support the governing body, which in the case of the Torah is the Mishkan. Later, this would be given to the Temple. So right around this time of year, Shabbat Shekalim, the census takers would go around from tent to tent or house to house and collect a half-shekel from each person. By the time the month was over they would be finished, and taxes could be paid. The significance of it taking a month is that next month’s Rosh Chodesh—the first of Nissan—is described in the Talmud as the New Year for Kings and the calendar. This was the day when taxes were due. Not too far off from April 15th even today—especially next year on a Hebrew leap year.

In the Middle Ages, the Jewish Community was granted a certain amount of autonomy as long as it paid its taxes. They would conduct a census and collect taxes from everyone in the community throughout the month of Adar. This was especially easy because nobody would want to miss Purim. Once the taxes were collected, a representative from the Jewish Community would take the money to the king. As a community, we regularly paid on time. Any Jewish family who could not afford or was lax in paying taxes was dealt with within the community. If a poor family was missing a few ocins, a rich family would kick n a few extra. The king’s tax collectors never knew anything except the Jews pay on time. This is actually a double savings because it means the kingdom gets its taxes in full from a whole city, and no money needed to be spent on tax collection and enforcement for that city. This practice is one of the major contributing factors to Jewish survival for two thousand years. We were a financial boon for any kingdom, so we were left alone.

Looking a little closer at the text, we can find a little more than just instructions on how to pay taxes. Take a look at verse 15: The rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving Adonai’s offering as expiation for your persons. A half shekel was practically nothing to the rich and not too bad for the poor. Everyone could find a half-shekel to pay. Even those in the community who panhandled for a living could find a half-shekel to give to the Tabernacle. So no-one was allowed to give more or less than the prescribed amount.

This is one of the stranger dictates of the Torah. It would seem better to practice the way we did in the Middle Ages, and allow the poor to get by while the rich cover for them. That is because the purpose is of collecting a half-Shekel is not monetary. Collecting exactly the same amount from every Israelite served the purpose of counting. As it says in the beginning of the pericope, “when you take a census.” So the reason a rich person does not pay more and a poor person does not pay less is twofold.

First, it could mess up the census! If some people were paying more or less it makes it way harder to count the number of Israelites. Each half-Shekel was one person. It keeps things simple.

The 19th Century scholar Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch sees another side of the half-Shekel. According to him, “The equal participation of all the Israelites symbolizes that all Jews must share in achieving national goals. One who does so gains infinite benefit, because the mission of Israel is dependent upon the unity of the whole.”

In our community, no person’s work is more significant than another. No person is any more or less important than another. When we all put the same effort toward the goals of our community, we naturally become stronger and more likely to achieve our goals. The best part about this is that it doesn’t take much. As I mentioned before, a half-Shekel was something the poorest in the community was able to pay. We only need a little effort, but if everyone participates, we will be the strongest community the world has ever known.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-14T17:13:00.002-05:00

I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions.

My friends used to hear that from me just about every year around this time: “I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions.” The reasoning behind it has changed over the years, but the result is the same, and I still don’t do New Year’s Resolutions.

When I was in high school I would say it simply to be rebellious. I thought I was cool if I didn’t do what everyone else was doing. Like any rebellion for the sake of rebellion, I had no good reason for it. I just liked to say it.

In college I said it with the qualifier, “Jews make resolutions in September.” True as that may be, the deeper meanings of repentance and self-improvement that surround the High Holy Days was not my intent. I was still just being rebellious, but I was adding Jewish pride to my yearly uprising.

New Year’s Resolutions do have a knack for getting broken. On the news today the anchors were joking about breaking them. Has anyone here already broken their New Year’s Resolution? I checked Facebook earlier today, and at 9AM a friend of mine posted that he broke his resolution. 9AM! How resolved could he have been? So perhaps it is better simply not to make a promise than to plant false hopes.

Really it is just the phrase I have issue with. It is a little silly to make a resolution only one day a year when we don’t really intend to keep it. I mentioned a minute ago that I used to say, “Jews make resolutions in September.” Perhaps that is a bit of an understatement. Over the High Holy Days we make t’shuvah, which is more than a resolution. A resolution is an attempt to fix an aspect of our self that we want to improve, like to lose weight, leave less of a carbon footprint, or fix something in the house. T’shuvah is more complete. We translate it as “repentance,” but it is literally a “turning.” When done right, t’shuvah is a complete re-inventing of the self. When we make t’shuvah there is no need to make a promise to change because the change becomes a part of us.

To say that we only do it over the High Holy Days is misleading on another level, too. In the daily Amidah, the blessings we recite during every prayer service on the week, we recite a series of four blessings that that form a step-by-step guide to t’shuvah if we pay attention to their intent.

Quick review: the weekday Amidah is composed of 19 blessings. The first three are blessings of praise to God. The last three are blessings that give thanks to God. In the middle are 13 blessings that ask for things, which are called bakashot. There are blessings for healing and world peace, and blessings for the vanquishing of our enemies and material abundance. Anything that could be requested is asked for in those 13 blessings.

The first four bakashot are called Binah, T’shuvah, Selichah, and Ge’ulah, or Understanding, Returning, Forgiveness, and Redemption. As the name for the second of these blessings tells us, this is the guide to t’shuvah. In order to truly make t’shuvah we must first understand ourselves. The Binah blessing asks God to share Divine insight with us. We ask to get in touch with true understanding of ourselves we see with great clarity what is required of us. We call it an epiphany or an Ah-Hah moment. This self-awareness is only possible when we completely understand our imperfections and are ready to change. Clearly this does not happen often, which is why we pray for it every day, and why it is the first thing we request. If and when we do get these moments of clarity about ourselves we are ready to move to the next step.

T’shuvah is the blessing that asks God to return us to God’s teaching, God’s guidance, and God’s presence. T’shuvah helps us know how to make the change. Making t’shuvah cannot be done alone. We need God’s guidance to return to a better version of ourselves, whatever that may be. We turn inward with our new-found understanding so that we might be able to return to the best self we can be.

The next blessing is Selichah, or forgiveness. Now this seems a little backwards from how we usually talk about t’shuvah. Usually we ask forgiveness first, then we try to figure out how not to repeat our sins. That is t’shuvah as repentance, but as far as resolving to better ourselves, we cannot ask forgiveness until we have a real understanding of what we have done wrong and God’s guidance to be able to fix it. A friend of mine once taught me that “I’m sorry,” isn’t an apology, it’s a line. A real apology is the ability to point out exactly what we have done wrong and how we plan to fix it. But this forgiveness is not from one person to another. This is the ability to forgive ourselves. To do that we first need understanding and returning.

Self-forgiveness is a truly remarkable thing, and once that has been accomplished we can be redeemed, which is the meaning of Ge’ulah. The fourth blessing asks that God redeem us swiftly. Redemption is a higher state of being, the betterment of self that leads to the betterment of all. It is the result of truly transforming, making t’shuvah in a real, lasting, and meaningful way.

We strive daily to make ourselves better. Every time we participate in a weekday prayer service we ask God’s help to make ourselves better. That’s the key to understanding the difference between t’shuvah and a resolution. When we make a resolution we are promising to do something on our own. When we do t’shuvah we know that we can only change with God’s help, and that if we strive to reach for it, God is with us to be our guide and to help us turn.

May we strive every day to improve ourselves. May we understand and build on that understanding not only today but every day, so that 2010 will be a year of blessing, a year of happiness and health, and a year of daily improvement and t’shuvah.

Not the Health Care Sermon You Were Expecting

2009-10-01T21:11:00.004-04:00

You may have read this in your email in-box, but it’s worth a repeat:
The first Jewish woman President is elected.
She calls her Mother: "Mama, I've won the elections, I’d like you to come to the swearing-in ceremony."
"I don't know, what would I wear?"
"Don't worry, I'll send you a dressmaker"
"But I only eat kosher food"
"Mama, I am going to be President of the United States, I can get you kosher food"
"But how will I get there?"
"I'll send a limo, just come mama"
"Ok, Ok, if it makes you happy.”
The great day comes and Mama is seated between the Supreme Court Justices and the Future Cabinet members. She nudges the gentleman on her right and says, "You see that girl, the one with her hand on the Bible?...Her brother's a doctor!"

How many of us here tonight ever had a parent nudge them toward medical school—successfully or not? And the rest of you…law school, right?

The medical field is a bit of an obsession for the Jewish people. From having the best chicken soup recipe to believing that we know everything about skin cancer because we had a mole in 5th grade, we are a medically focused people. Health care is incredibly important to us.

Now don’t leave just yet. I am not going to talk about politics tonight or the national plan for health care. While it is a good idea to discuss Health Insurance Reform, that is not our topic for this forum. The truth behind the joke of the mother at her daughter’s inauguration is that for us medicine has greater significance than politics.

The Jewish view is that health care is imperative, preventative, and collective. We must care for ourselves when we are sick, we must do everything in our power to stay healthy, and we must take care of those who are sick as a community. Let’s take a look at each of these three facets of Jewish Health care.

Jewish health care is imperative.

Above all else, Judaism teaches that human life is the most important thing there is. Deuteronomy tells us we are to choose life and live (30:19). Genesis tells us we are all created in the Divine image (1:27), which means we need to treat the form our souls inhabit with respect and dignity. Leviticus tells us not to stand idly by the blood of our neighbors (19:16).

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, recently cited these texts. From them he points out two central ideals that Judaism adheres to. The first is that an individual’s life is more valuable than anything, and saving the life supersedes almost all else. Second, God has endowed us with the understanding and responsibility to be God’s partner in making a better world. Using our ability to cure illnesses has been a central thought in Jewish history.

From these two ideals—that life is sacred and that we are commanded to protect it—the Rabbis from Talmudic times to today have continually offered requirements for us to fulfill both of them.

The Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin (17b), lists ten things we must have in any city where we would reside. It says:

A Jewish person should not reside in a city where the following ten things are not found: (1) A court of justice; (2) a charity fund; (3) a synagogue; (4) public baths; (5) toilet facilities; (6) a mohel; (7) a doctor; (8) a notary; (9) a shohet; and (10) a school-master. Rabbi Akiba is quoted [as including] also several kinds of fruit [in the list] because they are beneficial for eyesight.

Six items on the Talmud’s list are directly related to health care issues. Public baths because cleanliness helps prevent certain skin afflictions, infections, and bacteria. You know all those signs that tell us to wash our hands? Well, the Talmud knew about that almost 2000 years ago.

Toilet facilities—well, I hope I don’t have to go into detail about why keeping waste away from homes is beneficial. Having bath houses and restrooms also increases the town’s general aesthetic and decreases its environmental impact.

A mohel, because the very first time a Jew has elective surgery, it should be done right.

Having a doctor in town is also obvious, and often when this passage of Talmud is quoted, “doctor” is the only requirement cited.

A shochet is a kosher butcher, which is related to the preventative aspect about health care. We need to get our food from a trusted source—someone who knows the ins and outs of preparation of anything we would put into our bodies. This is also why Rabbi Akiva, like many of our parents, tells us we should eat a little fruit. It’s good for you.

The charity fund is also part of health care. It is the Jewish belief that the public is responsible for helping the poor pay when they cannot afford the best care. The Shulchan Aruch, Joseph Caro’s 16th-century compendium on Jewish Law, takes it a step further. Caro writes that Jewish doctors must cover all costs of treatment when their patients cannot afford to pay. But I promised this would not get political, so we’ll move on.

Six out of ten things we must live near relate to health care. It is a Jewish imperative to take care of our bodies, to get proper treatment when we are sick, and to ensure that our neighbors are cared for as well.

Jewish health care is preventative.

Even before we are required to take care of anything wrong with us, we are required to keep bad things from happening to us.

We believe that God owns everything, including our bodies. Since they are gifts from God, it is our responsibility to care for them. Just as we are obligated to take care of a car on lease or a house we rent, we must take care of that which God has loaned us. Exercising, eating right, getting enough sleep, and maintaining good hygiene are not for appearances. These are religious duties that keep our covenant with God regarding our bodies.

One of the greatest Jewish scholars of all time, Maimonides, was both a rabbi and a physician. Boy was his mother proud!

One of Maimonides’ writings is called Mishneh Torah, a 14-book compendium of Jewish law, philosophy, and practices. Early in this work, in the section call “Laws of Ethics,” he writes:

…when one eats and drinks it should not be done simply for pleasure, or else a person might eat and drink only sugary foods. Rather, pay attention to eat and drink in order to maintain the body health. Therefore, one should…eat things that are good for the body—whether they are sweet or bitter. Also, one should avoid eating that which is bad for the body, even if they are sweet to the palate (Hilchot De’ot 3:2).

Maimonides also speaks out against over-indulging and the sicknesses that can come from it, and he presents a plan for regulating the diet. His nutritional guidelines are almost exactly what the USDA teaches grade school students in the form of the healthy eating pyramid.

A note regarding over-indulging: Judaism often appears to give mixed messages about eating and drinking. We sanctify with wine. We use bread at our meals. We encourage certain foods for certain holidays, such as jelly donuts, hamantashen, and blintzes—none of which are considered healthful. On Purim we are even commanded to drink alcohol until we cannot tell the difference between Haman and Mordechai. Do not think that this means we are to put our health at risk.

Anyone who cannot physically or psychologically handle sweets or alcohol or any other type of food is forbidden to take part in these practices. We are allowed to use grape juice in place of wine. We can replace our sugary confections with a piece of fruit. If we can handle it, then we are permitted to celebrate according to the dictum, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.” If we cannot, it constitutes a danger to our health, and according to the Shulchan Aruch, “One should avoid all things that might lead to danger, because avoiding a danger to life is more important than complying with a ritual” (Yoreh De’ah 116:5).

Knowing that we are to avoid danger easily gives us understanding of what Jewish law says about smoking. We have known the dangers of smoking for years, and the negative effects it has on our health, even if we are only bystanders. Cigarettes are the only products legally sold to us that, if used the way they are intended, will kill the users. It’s only a matter of when.

We are commanded to do whatever we can to avoid the need to receive medical treatment. Eat right, exercise, maintain good hygiene, use alcohol sparingly, and stay away from cigarettes and recreational drugs. We do what we can to prevent the need for health care.

Jewish health care is collective.

Health care is a communal concern. When someone in our community is sick or in need of healing, we react together. When we pray, our daily liturgy is full of prayers that thank God for our health or asking God to keep us healthy. We recite Mi Shebeirach for the sick when the Torah is open to demonstrate its severity. There is a prayer for healing in the Amidah, as a part of Asher Yatzar, and elements of health and protection in Haskiveinu. We thank God for giving strength to the weary and lifting up the fallen.

At Temple Sinai when we recite Mi Shebeirach during a Shabbat morning service, we read a list of names. These are people who might have asked for our prayers and people who might have been put on the list by our partners. If anyone ever feels they need us to pray for their healing, we will absolutely say a Mi Shebeirach for you. All you have to do is let us know you are in need.

Do we believe that God miraculously grants healing to the sick? That by praying the sick will be healed? Not necessarily. But we do believe that there is great power in community, and that together our prayers do reach God. If our prayers do nothing else, then they give comfort to the sick. Comfort helps to relieve stress, and less stress means more healing. So maybe our prayers can be effective.

We add to our prayers with action. The morning blessing Eilu Devarim reminds us that Bikkur Cholim, visiting the sick is one of the duties whose worth is immeasurable. Bikkur Cholim, is a central Jewish value. Rabbi Litwak, Cantor Kruk and I visit partners in the hospital or at their homes regularly. Our caring community does it as well. Spending time with someone who is sick is an easy way to show that we care, and it brings a little light into a dark time.

The practice of Bikkur Cholim is exemplified in a Midrash:

When Abraham was circumcised and was in pain from the circumcision, God told the angels to go and visit him. But before they arrived, God came in first, as the Torah says, “And God appeared to [Abraham] and after that, “He lifted his eyes and saw three men approaching” (Tanhuma Vayera 2).

Abraham circumcised himself at 90 years old. He was in a great deal of pain, and God came to visit him. The 41st Psalm tells us that “Adonai supports one who lies on a sickbed.” So it is not just biblical characters that merit God’s attention, but anyone who is ill. Like the poem about the footprints in the sand, God is with us when times are hardest. If Bikkur Cholim is important enough of a duty for God to practice it, think about how much more so is it incumbent upon us to visit the sick. In fact, when we sit with someone who is ill, we are representing God.

We can also help by healing with our feet. In a few weeks, the weekend of October 16th, we will hold our second annual Pink Shabbat for breast cancer awareness. We will pray for those who a re struggling with breast cancer, rejoice with those who have survived it, and remember those who have succumbed to it. On Friday evening, October 16th, we will have a special Shabbat service here in the sanctuary. On Saturday morning we will join the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. We will meet bright and early for a very brief Shabbat service in the amphitheatre at Bayfront Park in downtown Miami. After services we will attend the Survivor Ceremony, followed by the 5K Run or Walk for the Cure.

Temple Sinai is currently the only Jewish organization sponsoring this event. Even though the Race for the Cure is on a Saturday, we feel that participating falls under the guidelines that saving a life supersedes all else. We hope you can join Team Sinai, put your pink on, and walk with us. More details are on flyers in the Bloom lobby.

Whether we are praying, visiting, or walking, we respond to issues of healing as a collective—a strong caring community—emissaries of God.

Not everyone can be the doctor that would make our mothers so proud. But everyone can and should be a part of the healing process. It is imperative for us to be healers. It is crucial that we keep ourselves healthy through preventative measures. We face health issues as a collective.

May this year be a year of good health for all of us and our families.

A year of providing necessary care.
A year of maintaining our health with our good habits.
A year of caring for each other and staying active in our caring community.

21st Century Jews

2009-10-01T16:20:00.019-04:00

Pay attention, this may be the only time you hear me make a sports reference in a sermon:

A few years ago, someone from the congregation I was working with approached me just after Rosh Hashanah. “Rabbi,” he said, “I know next week is Kol Nidrei, but that night the Steelers are playing. The Steelers are my second religion. I’ve got to watch that game on TV.” I said “that’s what VCRs are for.” “Oh!” he said, looking surprised, “you mean I can tape Kol Nidrei?”

How many of you are on Facebook? Look around at the people in this room with our hands up. For the few of you who have not yet connected to the phenomenon created by Mark Zuckerberg, allow me to offer a brief explanation. Facebook is a social netweorking website. "Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region." This definition is according to Wikipedia, an online collaborative encyclopedia, where users can edit the encyclopedia’s entries, which were until very recently immediately posted to the site, and later submitted for review. Now a panel reviews all submissions before they go live.

But there are other wikis, which allow users to collaborate immediately about documents or other projects….

Wait. Am I going too fast here?

Does anyone know what this is?

This is the Gutenberg Printing Press. Built in the 15th century, it revolutionized reading, making it possible for the average person to afford books. In 1455, the Gutenberg Bible was first printed and has remained number 1 on best-seller lists ever since. Before the printing press, only the wealthy were literate. Writing implements and parchment were expensive, and most literature was transcribed by professionals who had to be paid. Plus it took time to read, and time was also a luxury of the rich.

Today we live in a literate society, thanks in part to Gutenberg and his Printing Press. Of course if you don’t want to lug around books, you can use one of these:

The Amazon Kindle is a book-reading tool that allows users to read from a “paper quality” screen held easily in one hand. The first version of the Kindle came out in November, 2007, and was sold out in five and a half hours. The latest version, the Kindle DX, which you see here, is the size and weight of an average magazine, holds approximately 3500 non-illustrated books, and has a battery life of two weeks. The price tag hasn’t yet made it accessible to everyone, but to everyone who missed my birthday a week ago, if you each kick in a dollar….

I have one more bit of technology to show you. Does anybody know what this is?
This is called a node, or a touch graph. It is a graphic display of about half of my Facebook friends, grouped according to network. I’m the larger red circle in the middle. Some of you might be in the red group, which represents my Miami connections. Perhaps the best thing about Facebook is demonstrated by the node. What keeps me intrigued about nodes is the knowledge that every one of these dots on my node has a node of their own. If you were to pick any random dot on this Touch Graph, you would see a similar graph with that person in the center, connecting me and everyone on my node to them indirectly. The combinations are infinite to connect any two people on Facebook. There are hardly six degrees anymore.
Facebook has revolutionized networking, allowing people to connect with others to help them find a job in this difficult economy. Employers are now checking Facebook pages of applicants before offering them a job. It has become the final stage of the interview process—what is your social networking image?

Admittedly, I am a bit of a technophile. I was among a small group of rabbinical students with palm pilots plugged in to collapsible keyboards in rabbinical school. I rarely used a pen and paper. I was among the first to get a laser keyboard that projected onto my desk and sensed where my fingers were—when it worked I could type by tapping my desk. I use Facebook daily, I use a Zune at the gym, I text with an average rate of 1400 outgoing and incoming each month. At a meeting about technology for about 50 Miami Jewish professionals, I was the only one in the room with a blog. This sermon was intentionally edited and discussed using as much technology as possible with the help of Rabbi Bradley Levenberg from Temple Sinai in Atlanta. We used a wiki, Twitter, Facebook, email, and cell phones both for talking and for texting.

Temple Sinai is integrating technology into our practice regularly. We use a program called Hineynu to help us know who in our congregation is celebrating a simcha or suffering a loss. Temple Sinai has a Facebook Group, as does the Jacobson Sinai Academy and the Sinai Parents’ Association. We have a beautiful new web site that Debbie Blooomfield and Cantor Kruk spent most of the summer putting together. On the web site a JSA parent can find the Digital Backpack, David Prashker’s answer to the problem of too much paper being sent home. Our newest toy is an internet camera which we have used for three webinars so far. Our Log-in Lunch and Learns for the High Holy Days have been well attended on line, and we are very excited to offer more interactive learning opportunities. New innovations in technology allow us to do amazing things. We hope to keep taking advantage of all of them.

There are also some drawbacks to overuse of technology. Seven years ago my father (z”l) and I were driving Natalie’s and my things from storage in Cincinnati to our new apartment in New York. He spent most of the time on his cell phone, and I spent most of the time with my headphones on. Neither of us did it to avoid the other. We enjoyed each other’s company and had a great time chatting at restaurants and in our hotel room during the day-and-a-half journey. It just happened because we wanted to plug in. We were close enough to touch, and yet with our devices we put bubbles around ourselves and hardly spoke a word to each other in the car.

We see this kind of thing all the time. Kids in restaurants texting or playing hand-held video games. Parents at the dinner table answering the cell phone instead of talking to the people in front of them. Drivers. Oh, Miami drivers. The average speed while talking on the cell phone with a hands-free device is 10 mph slower than while not using the phone at all.
In the 21st Century we have a great task ahead of us. It is our responsibility to make technology accessible to as many people as possible, and at the same time to stay plugged in to each other and not just to our machines. We need to revel in physical contact as much as we enjoy wi-fi connections.

Natalie and I recently had the “good touch/bad touch” conversation with our five-year-old Gabriel. Gabriel loves to pick apart details of any instructions we give him, so he kept asking which kind of touch certain activities were from non-strangers. “Hitting?” “Bad touch.” “Hugging?” “Good touch.” “Kissing?” “Good touch if both people want to kiss.” “Tickling?” “Usually good touch.” “Spanking?” “Bad.” “Potching?” “Good.” After exhausting his list, he came to a conclusion. “Daddy,” he said, “there are lots more kinds of good touch.”

I hope he’s right. Touching is generally a very, very good thing. We know that newborns need to be held. Holding hands with a new romantic interest can be electric, and holding hands with our spouse can be comforting. We hug and kiss people we haven’t seen in a while, and some of us hug and kiss every time we see certain people.

In the 1986 remake of The Fly, Jeff Goldblum’s character is trying to make a teleportation machine, but whenever he sends an animal through it ends up destroyed on the other side. Geena Davis’ character helps him make his transporter work when describing how it makes grandma’s crazy to pinch babies’ cheeks. He can only send a live creature through his teleporter after he teaches his computer to love flesh, to go crazy over it like a grandmother over a baby’s cheeks.

Technology can keep us simultaneously connected with hundreds of “friends” on Facebook. I can send an e-card to my sister on her birthday. This sermon will be posted on my blog.

We cannot use technology to hug our friends. I won’t be able to see the look of surprise on my sister’s face when I actually remember her birthday. And while we appreciate emails and calls after a loss, nothing compares to the warmth of an embrace and the comfort of the loving presence of family and friends.

There are very few of us who would deny that in person is better than on line for certain connections. Taping Kol Nidre just doesn’t cut it. And isn’t it better to go to the stadium than to watch the game on TV?
So what does Judaism say about Modern Technology? It is pretty hard to find a Biblical story about the internet or a Pesikta from the Talmud about web-based technologies. But we can glean the Biblical lesson about modern technology by reading about the technological achievements of Genesis. First, The Tower of Babel.

[The people of earth] said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks and burn them hard." -- Brick served them as stone, and bitumen served them as mortar. -- And they said, "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for ourselves; else we shall be scattered all over the world." Adonai came down to look at the city and tower that man had built, and Adonai said, "If, as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another's speech." Thus Adonai scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel, because there Adonai confounded the speech of the whole earth; and from there Adonai scattered them over the face of the whole earth (Genesis 11:3-9).

The inhabitants of the ancient world did not have electronics. Their technological advances were the bricks and mortar they used to build a tower. The Torah would not mention the architectural style—using bricks burned hard—if it was not significant. We can learn from this that they were utilizing the very best of their engineering abilities. The tower of Babel was the most technologically advanced design of the day.

The people declare they want to build the Tower of Babel to make a name for themselves, and to not be scattered all over the world. They want to make themselves great. God comes down, sees what they are doing, and punishes them with the very thing they were trying to avoid in the first place. God knows that if they are only concerned with themselves, they will suffer for their egotism. Perhaps if they were building a tower to be able to visualize the grand scheme of world issues, we would all still be speaking Hebrew today. When technology is used only to better ourselves, we lose sight of the world at large.

The other side of Biblical technology comes a few chapters earlier, from the story of Noah. God gives Noah instructions about how to build a contraption that will, in essence, save the world:

Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make it an ark with compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make an opening for daylight in the ark, and terminate it within a cubit of the top. Put the entrance to the ark in its side; make it with bottom, second, and third decks (Genesis 6:14-16).

While the reenactment of this story from the movie Evan Allmighty makes this technique look ancient, in Biblical times this was top-notch shipbuilding. Again the important distinction is not only that Noah was able to build an ark that could hold all of the world’s animals. Noah’s purpose was not self-serving. He was acting at God’s command to save the world. Noah’s technology provided protection from the destruction of the world.

So it is not technology that causes problems. It is how we use it that matters.

Sometimes we can become too focused on the technology itself and not enough on what it can do to help others. We can connect with people across the globe for free. We can donate money to Israel with a click of our mouse. We can express our solidarity by joining the fast for Darfur. We can learn from incredible resources and inspirational leaders.
Just as the High Holy Days is our time to reconnect with ourselves, we need to find that balance between connecting on line and connecting face to face. May our connections this year bring us great fulfillment and joy. May we find our hearts more linked than our modems, and our ability to reach out enhanced.

Shanah Tovah

MA NISHTANAH HALAILA HAZEH?

2009-09-21T12:40:00.008-04:00

Last year over the High Holy Days I spoke about Shabbat. This year I am thinking about Passover. Passover is by far my favorite Jewish holiday. We celebrate in such a tactile way, using all of our senses to celebrate. My favorite section of the Haggadah is the section that begins, “The Torah alludes to four children: one wise, one wicked, one simple, and one who doesn’t know how to ask.” Part of its charm is the memory it elicits. My father z”l would assign us to read the children we embodied. These children sit with us at our Seder, and we welcome their questions. We answer them according to the script of the Haggadah, and we move on to “Dayeinu,” and “Chad Gadya.”

The first child is the Chacham, the wise one. This child asks the details and minutia of the laws of Passover. The question comes directly from Deuteronomy 6:20, “What are the precepts, statutes, and laws that Adonai our God commanded you?” We are to answer that it is forbidden to conclude the afikomen after the Passover offering. This is a confusing answer. By reading through the Mishnah on the laws of Passover, creatively named Mishnah Pesachim, we find that this law is the very last law about conducting a Seder. Most haggadot take this to mean that we should explain every detail of the laws to this child—from the first to the last. Perhaps we should take a second look at the law itself. We do not conclude with the afikomen. Why not? Because Afikomen does not just mean dessert, it also means drunken revelry. We don’t end our Seder with debauchery, we end it with Hallel and Nirtzah—praising God and a declaration of acceptance of the Seder ritual. Studying the details of the laws of Pesach keeps the Chacham entertained, and reminds this child that there is always more to learn.

The next child is called Rasha, which is usually translated as “wicked.” This was my sister’s part at the Seder. The Rasha’s question is, “What is this service to you?” and we are to chastise this child because of the “to you” in the question. By putting the question in 2nd person, this child is thought to be separating from the community. The Haggadah instructs us to teach that child in first person in return, saying “This is what Adonai did for me when I came out of Egypt.” I have never really been satisfied with this answer. First, the understanding that a child can be wicked is disturbing. Children are simply mirrors of the world we present to them, so it is perhaps we who are wicked when a child challenges us. Second, hinging the child’s personality on the phrase “to you” is silly to the attentive reader. Second person is not unique to the Rasha’s question. The Chacham’s question ends, “that Adonai our God commanded you.” So perhaps this is not a wicked child, but a rebellious one. The Chacham wants to know the rules and follow them, while the Rasha needs to know the reasoning behind the rules. If we are offensive to them or rebuke them for questioning, we end up ostracizing them instead of welcoming them as participants at our table. The Rasha requires us to think carefully about our answers.

The next child is the simple child—the Tam. This is the role my father would assign to me. The Tam’s question during the Pesach Seder is just like the child’s name. It is a simple question. The tam asks, “Ma zot?” or “What is all this?” The Haggadah instructs the parent to tell this child, “With a mighty hand Adonai brought us out of Egypt.” It is a simple answer for a simple understanding. This answer explains the reasoning behind everything at the Seder, without any details or further explanation. The simple child can easily digest this answer, even though it holds within it the reasoning for everything we do at the Passover Seder. Worst case scenario, the Tam will say, “Ok,” and move on. At best, the answer will elicit more questions, and the Tam can start to have a serious conversation about the rituals we perform.

The fourth child is called Sh’eino Yode’a Lishol—The One Who Does Not Know To Ask. This child sits quietly at the table. Not a word is uttered about the Seder. No questions come to mind. So we explain to the Un-asking child, “This is what Adonai did for me when I came out of Egypt.” Sound familiar? This is exactly the script we are given for the Rasha! According to the Seder ritual, we are to answer the child who asks no question exactly the way we respond to the one the Rabbis called wicked! It is as if the Mishnaic Rabbis of the 5th Century formulated the popular dictum, “The only stupid question is the one that goes unasked.”

Most of our Haggadot would tell us to explain to the Unasking Child all the laws of Pesach from beginning to end. We assume that when no question is asked, there are too many questions to know what to ask first! So we explain everything. Eventually this child will know enough to ask a question.

Surely tonight, about halfway between last Pesach and next, the four children are still sitting among us. Even though we only talk about them on Passover, we deal with them every day. On the High Holy Days we tend to sit quietly (some of us not-so-quietly), read from the machzor, and listen to the music. We don’t often ask questions or encourage questions from our children. This year we should do just that. Let’s think about what the four children might be asking on the High Holy Days.

The Chacham asks about all the precepts, laws, and statutes about the Days of Awe. Our challenge is the same as it was on Pesach. We try to keep this child engaged. Perhaps we would answer with the opening of Tractate Yoma:

“Seven days before Yom Kippur, the High Priest goes from his home to [a special location]….”

Yoma is the tractate of the Talmud that deals with the rituals of the High Holy Days. This suggests a different approach than our answer to this child on Pesach, with hopefully the same result. Instead of citing the very last law of Yom Kippur, we cite the first. Perhaps this will inspire the Chacham to study the Talmud. By starting at the beginning of the tractate, we can illustrate the myriad of opinions that emanate from it. The Talmud is not a list of rules, it is a discussion among rabbis who lived over generations. The Talmud reminds us that knowing the laws is not enough. We must discuss, question, and debate. This particular law also reminds us that the High Holy Days are not about getting to the end, they are about the process of repentance. This process does not begin on Yom Kippur or even seven or ten days before. We begin on the first of Elul, a month ago tonight. If the High Priest, the most respected figure in Ancient Jewish practice, had to spend a week in solitude preparing for Yom Kippur, how much more important is it for us to spend time reflecting?

The Rasha is probably the one who leaves Rosh Hashanah services right as the sermon starts. While they are here, they might ask, “What is the meaning of this service to you?” Instead of rebuking the child, we can think about what this child might really be asking. Maybe the question points to the service itself, as in “why do we have to sit through all this stuff?” Show the rebellious child the readings in the front of the Gates of Repentance. Explain that there are a great many ways to think about this holiday. Maybe this child is challenging our own views on the High Holy Days. If this is the case, accept the Rasha’s challenge. Think about what the High Holy Days mean. How do we react to the concept of Tshuva? What bits of wickedness do we have within us that we would strive to turn around for the better?

Tonight the Tam is asking “Ma zot?” What is this? The simple child seems to have a sense of wonder. This child might be overcome by our beautiful sanctuary, by the drama of opening the ark as the clergy enter to lead us in prayer, by the powerful music emanating form the organ and the cantor. Perhaps the Tam does not have the vocabulary to ask deeper questions about our rituals, but at least a question is asked. Our answer to the Tam could be: Avinu malkeinu choneinu va’aneinu ki ein banu ma’asim. Avinu Makeinu, have compassion and answer us, for we have little merit. This answer evokes deep emotion from us, and its layers of meaning allow for more questions. Why do we sing it so many times? Why is God a parent and ruler? Why don’t we deserve forgiveness?

The answer is also simple. The Days of Awe are about asking forgiveness. In the words of Rabbi Akiva, “Everything else is commentary.” The architecture of the sanctuary, the music, the liturgy, everything else is an attempt to enhance the experience. The tam reminds us to focus on the basic meaning of High Holy Days.

The Sh’eino Yodea Lishol might be here with us tonight too. Be careful. The Unasking child is not the one sitting quietly and following along in the machzor. The Unasking is here, but not present. This is the person texting through services or playing a video game, blissfully ignorant to the fact that we on the bimah can see everything that happens in the congregation.

The un-asking child is not the child who does not know how to ask questions or which questions to ask, it is the child who does not even know to ask. Think of the four children as four generations of Jewish men. The Chacham is the one who is active in the synagogue, participates in programs, is a Chai donor, goes to every Shabbat he can. The Rasha is then the one who rejects synagogue life, thinking dad’s interest in this stuff is irrelevant. Being Jewish is enough to him. Doing Jewish, not so much. Jewish learning? Out of the question. He no longer comes here unless he is dragged in by his family, and he complains about it before, during, and after. His son the Tam learns from his example. The Tam comes to believe that the rituals and practices of Jewish life are “just for grandpa.” Maybe he comes to services on the High Holy Days, but not if it’s on a school night or if he has soccer practice. So he grows up with no vocabulary for Jewish life, no real exposure to Jewish rituals. His son, therefore, is the Sh’eino Yodea Lishol. He has been taught by his father the Tam and his grandfather the Rasha that there are more important things to do than engage in Jewish life. He has absolutely no exposure to the synagogue, never sets foot in that door. He has no questions because he has nothing to question.

That is exactly why we must take the Unasking child under our wing and teach him everything we can. We start with apples and honey to lure him back to us with their sweetness and the prospect of a sweet new year. We talk about the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, how exciting it is to be a part of a community that gets to celebrate together. We listen together to the sound of the shofar, the wail that awakens our soul every year at this time. We discuss repentance and the need to say we’re sorry.

Clearly we would all like to be the Chacham. We want to be thought of as intelligent, knowledgeable about our customs and wise enough to know how to apply them. Sometimes we do all emulate the Chacham. We have a little of each of the four children in us. We are wise at times, rebellious at others. We occasionally need to take information in its simple form, and sometimes we are completely ignorant.

Just before we read about the four children in our Passover Haggadah we say this blessing: Baruch Hamakom; Baruch Hu; Baruch Shenatan Torah le’amo Yisrael; Baruch Hu. Blessed is Source of Life, Blessed is the One; Blessed is the Giver of Torah to the people Israel; Blessed is the One. In the first century CE, around the time the Passover rituals were being developed, this four-part blessing was commonly used to introduce Torah study. Since the inspiration for the story of the four children comes from the Torah, it makes sense to recite such a blessing at this point in the Passover Seder. But something stands out about this particular blessing. Every line begins with the word Baruch, or blessed. Four times we repeat the word Baruch just before we discuss the four children. Implicit here is the understanding that every type of child—wise, wicked, simple, and un-asking—is a blessing. We are thankful to have all four children at our tables and in the sanctuary. We are proud to be a community made of all kinds of different personalities.

Temple Sinai’s leadership has spent quite a bit of time lately discussing how we might engage each of these different personalities. We have discovered that in general if someone thinks, “I don’t know anything about X or Y,” that person will is not likely to come to the synagogue to find out, at risk of being thought of as ignorant. Or perhaps that person just does not know everything that Temple Sinai has to offer.

In our endeavor to engage all the varied personalities in our community, Temple Sinai offers plenty of ways to stay connected. We offer something for each of the four children within us.

We have spent the last month thinking about the past year and how we can improve ourselves. The whole month of Elul we get ready for the High Holy Days. Every day for the last month Rabbi Litwak has sent out an Elul thought. We have been able to read thoughts from many of you Chachamim here tonight. We have read your thoughts about health and healing, family and friends, summers at camp and Chanukah at college. Our Elul thoughts are a way to share ideas across the range of experiences represented by our partners. To see all of our Elul thoughts, go to our web site, tsnd.org as you can see conveniently written on your program.

The four children within us have a wide range of opportunities to engage with our community in learning. Our energetic Ruach and Torah Study 101 groups meet every Saturday morning. Ruach gathers in the library for a little breakfast and lively discussion and questioning about the weekly Torah portion. Torah Study 101 meets in Rabbi Litwak’s study, where we take a simple, story by story look at the entire Torah. We have been on this track for a year now, and we’re barely halfway through Genesis.

Every other Thursday we offer simple tastes of Talmud in Rabbi Litwak’s study. No prior knowledge is required for any of these classes, just a sense of wonder and a desire to learn.

The best way to find out what works for you is to try a little of everything. We have learning opportunities at Temple Sinai on a regular basis, including our amazing discussion about Israel last week with Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, and our discussion this coming December with a Palestinian and an Israeli from the organization Seeds of Peace. Rabbi David Saperstein will join us in January as Scholar-in-Residence, and this coming Wednesday is the last of our four Log-in Lunch and Learn sessions. For our learners who are actually children we are offering a new Sinai Chai this year for 7th and 8th graders, and we are participating in Melton’s Communiteen at the JCC for high school students.

For details on any of these programs, all you have to do is ask a question. Or better yet, call or email to let us know what you are questioning. What do you want to learn about? How can we help connect you to other like-minded partners? Remember, we work for you. We will do our best to put together what interests you.

The High Holy season gives us a chance to improve ourselves. The only way to do that is through learning. Jewish learning is not about facts and figures. It is about connecting. Or in the words of the 20th Century scholar Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, “When I pray I speak to God. When I study God speaks to me.”

May we all stay connected throughout 5770. May we acknowledge the different children around us and within us. May we keep them actively engaged in life at Temple Sinai and the Jewish community around us.

Shanah Tovah.

CAN OUR FAILINGS BE REDEEMED THROUGH OUR DEEDS? by Rabbi Alan E. Litwak

2009-09-21T11:50:00.004-04:00

I am thrilled to have my first "Guest Blogger," Rabbi Alan E. Litwak, senior rabbi at Temple Sinai of North Dade, and my boss.

Can we ever really overcome our faults? Is our sinful behavior so deeply engraved in our nature that we are only deluding ourselves when we believe we can eradicate it? Is the popular adage, “You can not change human nature” really true?

Our congregant, Marylou Brotherson, sent me an article written last week in the wake of Senator Edward Kennedy’s death, asking the same question. The author of the article quoted the poet John Berryman, in his "Sonnets for Chris" -- which was about an earlier act of adultery. Berryman asked "Is wickedness soluble in art?" What the poet wanted to know was whether he could be forgiven -- or redeemed -- for his act of immorality by striving for the artistic heights? Are we, in some way, able to get past our past, through our subsequent actions?

Let’s get it right out of the way: Edward Kennedy was a weak, flawed and, occasionally wicked human being. Yes, he cheated on a Harvard exam hoping to stay eligible for football. Yes, in his early days in the senate he was looked upon as a lightweight who got by on charm, a famous name and a great staff. Yes, his indiscretions and infidelities were, in part, the cause of his divorce. And yes, he closed down many a bar in Palm Beach and Cape Cod.

With all that said, we are now able to examine his good deeds.

Entering the Senate in 1962 at age 30, Senator Kennedy brought with him a storied name and virtually nothing else. Now, at his death some 47 years later, he leaves the Senate as one of the most effective senators of the past 100 years. He drafted and shaped some of the most significant legislation in the past century. Among the over 300 laws that never would have been enacted without Kennedy are:

The 1964 Civil Rights Act

The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Expanding voting to 18-year olds.

The 1985 legislation that imposed sanctions on the apartheid government of South Africa.

The 1988 bill that provided $1.2 billion for AIDS testing, treatment and research.

The 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act.

The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act.

The Kennedy-Hatch Act of 1997, which provided health insurance for children.

Heightened taxes on tobacco.

The Kennedy-Kassebaum bill which made health insurance portable for workers.

The "Patients' Bill of Rights" which he co-sponsored with John McCain

One wonders how, with all the loss, tragedy and foibles, Kennedy could have fought on for so many decades. What was it that made him get up each day and do the best he could to make this a better world? Was it an intense desire to tip the scales? Although no one can ever know for certain, this drive, according to one of his friends, has always been his defining quality.

Because of all he went through in his family, Ted Kennedy became what the great political writer Jack Newfield called "America's grief counselor." By way of example, Newfield noted that "when two planes were hijacked out of Boston's Logan Airport on 9/11 and 93 residents of Massachusetts went to their deaths; Senator Kennedy personally called more than 125 family members offering assistance and solace." One conversation with a grieving father so moved the senator that he sent the man a copy of a letter that his father, Ambassador Kennedy, had written to a friend in 1958 upon hearing of the death of the friend's son. That note, perhaps better than anything else, provides the key to what, when all is said and done, made Senator Ted Kennedy so utterly unique.

"When one of your loved one goes out of your life, you think of what he might have done for a few more years, and you wonder what you are going to do with the rest of yours. Then one day, because there is a world to be lived in, you find yourself a part of it, trying to accomplish something -- something he did not have time to do. And, perhaps, that is the reason for all. I hope so."

In the end, despite all his personal foibles and humiliations, his public losses and private tragedies, he has done well. He has done more than his share to help make this world a better place. There are those who would say that wickedness can never be soluble in good deeds; that “once a sinner always a sinner.” I will certainly not dismiss him because of what happened that one night in 1969 in a place called Chappaquiddick. Nor, will I release him from responsibility for his sins simply because he spent the better part of his life engaged in the act of overcoming loss, tragedy, and personal shortcomings. And, neither would Judaism.

Judaism’s answer to the question of whether we can escape our past is to reject any and every kind of fatalism that denies us the freedom to choose our way and to strike out in new directions. We are not enslaved by the impersonal laws of nature. God encourages and awaits our return. There is a wonderful Midrash that teaches “God said to Israel, "My children, Open the door of repentance as wide as the 'eye of a needle,' and I will expand it so wide that wagons and carriages can pass through." (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 24)

HERE IS THE KEY POINT: According to our tradition, great action, in and of itself, cannot redeem a person’s sins. The action must be directly linked and in response to the sin. Senator Edward Kennedy was a great man, a brilliant legislator, a tireless champion of those without a voice. The question of his redemption can only be answered by God and by those against whom he transgressed, and it is determined by his teshuvah.

The great composer Wagner’s virulent anti-Semitism is not mitigated by the brilliance of his musical compositions. O.J. Simpson’s talent on the football field does not outweigh or excuse his past sins.

Did Senator Edward Kennedy do the necessary teshuvah? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But, he or we need not be seen in the light of either/or. Human beings are not wholly sinful; nor are they completely pure. The great legacy of Judaism is to recognize that we are both. One does not erase the other.

The month of Elul and the subsequent High Holy Days bring us a reassuring message that we are not eternally bound by what we have been. We can throw off the oppression of enslaving habits. Our tomorrow can be freed from the shackles of yesterday. We can conquer the selfishness that shrinks us, the prejudice that blinds us, the envy that gnaws at us, and the greed that impels us. The verdict is still out on whether we can actually change human nature. However, it is human nature to change human actions, and that is what these days of teshuvah are all about.

God Within

2009-09-16T10:41:00.001-04:00

Elul Thought #27

Last night I read Murphy Leopold’s beautiful Elul thought, and today I am going to riff off of a part of her thought.

She wrote, “Does anyone else hear Charlton Heston as the voice of God in the Torah?” in reference to the burning bush scene from The Ten Commandments. Moses, played by Charleton Heston, approaches the burning bush, and God’s voice speaks, also played by Charleton Heston. The same dual-casting is used in the animated The Prince of Egypt for the same scene, but with Val Kilmer playing both voices.

This casting choice is also a theological choice. It says, in essence, that when Moses hears God’s voice, he hears his own voice. In other words, God’s voice is not the cinematic presentation of a booming, masculine voice from the clouds. It is the still, small voice within us. This is why the Hebrew word l’hitpalel, “to pray,” is a reflexive verb. We do not direct our prayers outward; we direct them inward, to the Divine Spark nestled deep in our soul.

When I am reading or thinking and I “hear” words in my head, the voice of those thoughts is my voice. I assume it is the same with all of us. Who knows? Maybe we all hear God’s voice, disguised as our own. Perhaps what we call the voice of conscience is that same voice that Moses heard at the burning bush, that all the Israelites heard at Mt. Sinai, and anyone can hear if we are able to recognize our own connection with God.

Have a very sweet and happy 5770.

Shanah Tovah!

Remembering September 11

2009-09-11T21:20:00.004-04:00

Eight years ago, I was living in Jerusalem. It was almost 4 in the afternoon, and my classmates and I were moving to the large classroom for our Tuesday afternoon seminar. My cell phone rang. It was my mother. She was calling to tell me that there had been a terrible accident in New York City at the World Trade Center. (Remember those 5 minutes? In between horror that there could be such a terrible accident and the realization that this was no accident?)

When the second plane hit, my mother said something to the effect of, “Oh my God, a plane just hit the second tower.” I told her, “Please, don’t hang up, we’ll never get this connection back.”

For a while my mother was one of two phone connections we had to the states. One of my classmates ran around the school looking for someone who could bring a TV to where we were. Another ran to the library to get on the internet for updates. Whoever had a spouse with them in Israel was either calling frantically or running home. I stood at the front of the classroom, relaying information from my mother to the other 62 students in the year in Israel program.

When the TV arrived and we were able to tune in to CNN, I hung up my phone and sat with Natalie to watch in horror as they showed the planes crashing and the buildings falling, over and over. After sitting in the classroom for a couple of hours, two classmates who lived across the street from HUC offered their homes to all of us. So most of us crammed into the two apartments, which happened to be in the same building, one floor apart. We used the Markleys’ apartment to watch news, and the Cytron-Walkers’ apartment to watch movies over the next two days.

For my four classmates with family or friends in New York City, those first hours were gut-wrenching. It was not until 2 in the morning our time that we heard that the last relative was safe. Most of us slept on the floor or couches in our friends’ apartments. We couldn’t be alone. We felt so helpless watching from half a world away. We held each other as tightly as we could. We wondered if we were safe as American Jews in Israel. We prayed.

My friend Heidi was living in New York at the time. Her brother was working in the World Financial Center, near the World Trade Center. She was able to talk to him only for a second before the connection was lost. She would learn much later that he was under the World Trade Center when the first plane hit. He ran when debris got too close for comfort, and made it to safety. Meanwhile, Heidi’s office was evacuated, and she and some co-workers got on a subway. It stopped in a tunnel in between two stations for what she describes as the longest 45 minutes of her life. After walking, riding a ferry, and walking more, she found her way to a bar where she was a regular. Her mother actually called the bar when she could not reach her by cell, and said it was the first time she was ever thankful her daughter was in a bar.

My friend and colleague Rabbi Stephen Wise was also at HUC when the planes hit the World Trade Center, but he was at the New York campus. They were holding morning services when they heard what sounded like a bomb exploding. They went to the street to see what had happened, then made their way to the roof of the building where they saw the second plane hit and the towers fall. Instead of standing in awe, they went to the blood centers and hospitals en masse. They rolled up their sleeves to give blood to those who needed it. They prepared triage areas in hospital parking lots for the wounded. Only the wounded never arrived. There were no wounded on September 11, only victims and the rest of us.

There are so many stories, so many memories. There are memories of tragedies and miracles. A man decides he needs coffee an hour earlier than usual. A woman sleeps in and doesn’t get to work that day. A firefighter goes back up the stairs to try to save one more life.

Memory is central to the Jewish belief system. We are commanded, “Remember the days of old, Consider the years of ages past” (Deut 32:7). In our weekly practice, remembering is one of two ways the Torah tells us to sanctify Shabbat. We are constantly reminded that we were slaves in Egypt. Two weeks ago we read from Parashat Ki Teitze, “Remember what Amalek did to you….do not forget” (Deut 25:17-19). Memory is powerful—palpable. A memory can make us laugh or cry. It can activate our senses and stir our souls.

So tonight we remember September 11, 2001. Like the memory of Amalek, we remember the evils that befall us as a people. Even when we feel helpless, when we think there is nothing we can do, we can remember. Our memories bind us as a nation, and strengthen us as a people. We remember that even in the darkest hour of our nation, we can find a glimpse of light.

My good friend Brian called me on September 12, 2001. Brian is ex-military, and I knew that the attack would have a serious impact on him. I had been expecting his call, but I did not anticipate what he had to tell me. You see, he had missed most of the drama of the day. He spent most of it in the hospital delivery room. His wife Colleen had given birth to a beautiful baby boy on September 11th, 2001. Brian had called to ask me if I would be Nathan’s Godfather. So for me September 11th is both a day of unfathomable dread and a day of uplifting joy. A day remembered for the end of lives, and the beginning of life.

I want to close with a thought posted on Facebook this morning by Pete Pirro, my freshman year roommate at Bradley University:

Exactly eight years ago... Vulnerability crept into our nation and murdered the
innocent. War unfulfilled, life, men and women still underappreciated. Souls
sent to rest too early, fears perked, hearts swooned and time stopped.
Understand the brevity of life, remain vigilant, give of yourself and never
forget that we rest beneath a blanket of freedom stained with sweat and blood.
God Bless each and every one of you.

Zichronam livracha. May the memory of the victims of 9/11 be a source of blessing for us personally and as a nation.

Elul Thought

2009-08-30T14:45:00.002-04:00

As I write this, I am in Cincinnati for my nephew’s b’rit milah. He was born on the last day of Av, and his birth reminds me of some of our Elul themes.

As Elul begins, we are given the opportunity to look back and seriously consider how we would like to live our lives. Like a newborn baby, we are full of potential. The High Holy Days are a time to tap in to our potential and create the best version of ourselves for the coming year. Elul provides for us a full month of preparation for the Days of Awe. We cannot expect to go to synagogue once or twice a year and immediately feel renewed. Just like we give a newborn milk or formula before solid foods, we take time to prepare before our feast of the spirit over the High Holy Days.

Thinking about the new arrival in my family gives Elul even greater significance this year. In holding with Ashkenazi custom, my sister has named him after our father Victor Young z”l. My nephew will spend his life honoring my father’s memory by carrying his name. Sad as we are that our father will not be here to hold his grandson, make fun of him, and hunt for pine cones with him, we know that Victor Aaron Dujan carries with him a legacy that we are all proud to bestow upon him.

As it says in Pirkei Avot 4:13, “A good name surpasses all else.” In his name is a great deal of potential. Victor means “conqueror,” and Aaron means “mountain of strength.” We pray that Victor Aaron Dujan will be able to conquer everything that comes his way with great strength of character.

May we all find the strength to use Elul to realize our fullest potential. May the month ahead bring us into a year of conquering the changes we wish to make in ourselves.

2009-08-30T14:45:00.001-04:00

Attack in Tel Aviv

2009-08-10T12:44:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday night there was a terrible attack in Tel Aviv. It was not a terrorist attack or a strike by Palestinian militants. It was Jew to Jew—an attack by one Jewish person on a group of people. A masked man stormed into a basement and sprayed automatic gunfire into a crowd of people. Two were killed that evening, and 15 others wounded. Police still hunt for the man responsible for this horrifying act, an act of hatred and prejudice.

For the past week much of the media has been referring to this tragedy as happening in a club. This is true, but it is also misleading. When we hear of an event happening at 11 at night in a club, we think of a nightclub, especially when it comes to light that this was a GLBT club—a place for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender youth. It was not that kind of club. The shooting happened at the Agunah Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association building. This masked man opened fire in a room where gay teenagers were holding a weekly support group. They were sitting with their counselor, with friends who understood them. Perhaps they spoke about the issues they faced as teenagers in a society whose rules are based on a stringent interpretation of their religion. Perhaps they were wondering how and when they would tell their families that they did not live under the assumptions that a heterosexual society puts on people. Instead of counsel and comfort, last Saturday evening they instead endured hate and violence.

Last Saturday night, Liz Trobish and Nir Katz were gunned down in a place they believe was safe. Liz was 17, Nir was 26. Nir was the counselor at the center, working to help others through what their families see as subversive lifestyles. It is scary to think of the teens who have to tell their parents that they have been hospitalized at the same moment they tell their parents that they are gay or lesbian. It is terribly painful to know that several of those parents have not yet visited their children in ICU because they are gay or lesbian.

This is not the first time such an attack has been executed against Israel’s GLBT community. In 2007 a bomb was planted at an entrance to a settlement with a note that said, “Sodomites Out.” A device was planted in an attempt to prevent people from attending the 2006 Israeli Pride Parade in Tel Aviv. In 2005 at the Pride Parade in Jerusalem, a man ran into a crowd brandishing a knife, wounding three parade-goers. Of all these hate crimes, the knife-wielder is the only one who has been caught.

Throughout the past week, Israel has heard loud condemnations from both sides of the issue. Knesset Member Nitzan Horowitz, Israel's only openly gay elected official, condemned the attack this past Sunday, saying:

This is undoubtedly the worst incident targeting the gay community in Israel. It
has the characteristics of a hate crime, of someone who attacked to blindly
strike out at every person on the spot...

The leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party decried the attack as well, stressing Judaism’s belief in the sanctity of human life. Last Saturday’s shooter ignored this sanctity in a blind display of hatred.

While it fills me with pride that so many Jewish leaders from all walks of our faith would speak out against this bloodshed, I am reminded that many of the criminals who perpetrate these acts of hatred do so inspired by guidance from “spiritual leaders.” Let me be clear: I do not blame any particular person or religious movement for the shooting last weekend. We don’t know who the shooter is. At the same time, I am suspicious when bombers leave signs like the 2007 “Sodomites Out”—a clear cut Biblical reference left at a settlement entrance next door to a far-right-wing yeshiva. But the police have no suspects for that one.

The Torah teaches us to pursue justice. It teaches us to love our neighbor as ourselves. It teaches that all human beings are created in the image of the Divine. Pursuit of justice means we stand up for the orphan, the widow, the poor, and anyone whose voice is not being heard. When we combine that with love for our neighbor, it means when we see injustices heaped on our neighbors, we take it to heart because our loved ones are not being treated as if they are created in the image of God.

Earlier this week, the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism hosted a vigil in Washington, DC. Mark Pelavin, Associate Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, made a statement asking that the Jewish community make a promise:

A promise to preach respect. A promise to seek justice, to speak for
righteousness, and to always, always demand equality. A promise to proclaim that
bigotry and hatred have no place in our society and that love and tolerance are
our cherished religious values. Values that cannot be compromised and cannot be
shaken. Values that do not falter in the face of violence and hate.

May the memories of Liz Tronbish and Nir Katz serve as constant reminders that our work in this world is not finished. We have much to do to fight against the hatred and violence enacted upon our neighbors. May God bring speedy healing to those still being treated in Tel Aviv hospitals, and may the families of the victims come to soon know peace.

Ken Yehi Ratzon.

Visions and Visionaries

2009-07-24T18:56:00.000-04:00

Yesterday morning I was watching The Today show as I got ready for work. Meredith Viera was interviewing Susan Boyle, the famous Britain’s Got Talent contestant who has been all over the news this summer. For those of you without a television or internet access, Susan Boyle walked on to the Britain’s Got Talent microphone and endured eye-rolling and taunting by the judges because of her frumpy looks and socially awkward comments. Then she began to sing. Her stunning, powerful voice filled the theater and immediately brought the audience to their feet. Famous naysayer Simon Cowell stared open-mouthed and teary-eyed as she belted from Les Miserables, “I Dreamed A Dream.”

Immediately Susan Boyle was catapulted into super-stardom. The YouTube video of her performance got over 3 million hits in one day. It has since gotten ten times that many. Though she ultimately lost the television program’s competition, it takes a Goodsearch to find out the name of the winner. It is Susan Boyle who we remember, and who we most certainly had not heard the last of.

The coincidence of her song choice, “I Dreamed A Dream” has not been lost on those who cover her story. Her dream was to sing, and sing she did. Perhaps this is the very reason for her popularity. That a person can tap into a talent so special that physical appearances, social ability, and mental ability melt away into inconsequential trivialities. All that matters is doing what she does best. She had a vision and worked to make it a success.

Very few of us have the vision to accomplish all of our dreams. We may be successful and happy, yet there is still the possibility there is something we still want. One of the best ways to accomplish our goals is to envision them already completed. We can close our eyes and see the health, wealth, family, happiness, whatever it is that we feel we desire. Sometimes our vision is out of focus and we need meditation and prayer to pull ourselves back together. Some of us are better at having the visions than others.

In Hebrew the word for vision is chazon. We find it in this week’s Haftarah, from the beginning of the book of Isaiah: Chazon Yishayahu ben Amotz, asher chazzan al yehuda v’yerushalayim. “The vision of Isaiah, son of Amoz, which he envisioned about Judah and Jerusalem.” This Saturday is called Shabbat Chazon, in reference to the first word of the Haftarah. Typically the Haftarah will point to an element of the Torah portion. A word or a theme from the Parashah will be reflected in the Haftarah selection, allowing us to connect the later parts of the Bible to the weekly Torah reading. This week, however, the Haftarah is tied to the calendar, the last of three Haftarot of rebuke leading up to Tisha B’av this coming Thursday.

Isaiah alternates between harsh scolding of the Israelites’ behavior and compassionate consoling and reminding that if they change their ways, his destructive prophesies will not come true. In Isaiah 1:18, the prophet offers a deal with Israel:

"Come, let us reach an understanding, declares the Lord.
Be your sins like crimson,
They can turn snow-white;
Be they red as dyed wool,
They can become like fleece."

In other words, no matter how bad it gets, no matter what we have done or what situation we find ourselves in, we can always make it better and succeed. Isaiah is referring specifically to the sins of Israel. Crimson is the color of blood and reminds us of the evil we do, the harm we do to others. Turning our deeds snow-white is absolution. When we do good, good things happen.
Isaiah is talking about the major sins of Judah, especially giving in to the idolatrous practices of their neighbors. But the concept holds true for lesser things in our lives, too. If we can purify our thoughts and our actions, envision our lives the way we want them to be and behave in a way that will get us there, our visions will be realized just as easily as red dyed wool can become like fleece.

Perhaps what we need now is not a vision of doom and gloom. Not a vision of cause and effect theology. What we need is a vision of optimism. In Yiddish, the term alle mailis refers to all the best that life has to offer. When a person has alle mailis, they have looks, brains, and talent all rolled in to one with the added bonus of loving family and friends. When we envision all these things for ourselves, it is the first step in making our vision a reality.

May all our positive visions this week come true.

Shabbat Shalom.

A Pre-Shabbat Thought

2009-07-16T15:04:00.007-04:00

SHABBAT “UNPLUGGED”

“The most profound change came when I turned off the TV. That suddenly transformed the whole Shabbat experience. It wasn’t about the electricity; it had more to do with the noise, the intrusion of the mundane into the sacred.”

“Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”
“No soup for you!”
“How you doin’?”
“To the moon, Alice!”
“Say goodnight, Gracie!”

Surely at least one of these popular TV catch phrases is familiar to you. Television informs our world. It is one of our major sources of information and entertainment. When I was in Religious School in Cincinnati, it was impossible to participate in conversations on Sunday mornings unless you had seen the previous evening’s Saturday Night Live. Thursday nights were dedicated to The Cosby Show and Family Ties (and if the President was on, it would ruin the whole evening). We couldn’t leave our Tuesday night dinners at Grandma and Grandpa’s house until after we had all watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! Before DVR’s, we would drive ourselves crazy making sure we were in front of the TV at the right time.

In the movie The Princess Bride, the narrator tells his grandson at the beginning, “When I was your age, television was called books!” When the rabbis of the Talmud were prescribing rules about keeping Shabbat (including the 36 categories of forbidden work), they had no idea what television was. They didn’t even know radio, electricity, or the printing press. Life was work and study. Families gathered around a table and listened to a wise master instead of staring at an electronic box for hours on end. To forego work on Shabbat provided an opportunity to focus more on reading our beloved texts.

Summer is a great opportunity to catch up on reading. We do it at the beach, at parks, and in bed at night. (It doesn’t hurt that most of our TV shows are on summer hiatus.) This week, in the spirit of both Shabbat and summer, I have two suggestions. First, spend a little extra time reading this Shabbat. Read with your family or friends, join a book club, or just pour a cold drink and relax with a book in your favorite spot. Second, let us know what you’re reading. I would love to learn from your suggestions, and I would be glad to share. Shabbat Shalom, and happy reading!

A Pre-Shabbat Thought

2009-07-10T19:16:00.002-04:00

From the Union for Reform Judaism's, "Gift of Shabbat" Deck of cards:

L’HAVDIL—MAKING SHABBAT DIFFERENT

“I differentiate Shabbat by keeping kosher: no milk and meat together, no otherwise forbidden foods, paper plates, etc.”

I am a “foodie,” or as much of one as a pescetarian can be. I love to cook and to eat. I watch Food Network and listen to The Splendid Table. I adore entertaining and cooking for family and friends. Food is very much a part of my physical and spiritual nourishment. (I’m even the one who typically comes home from a day at the office and cooks for my family.)

Cooking can be a chore, but it can be incredibly relaxing. The rhythm of the knife going through the vegetables, the creative nature of putting together a meal, and the soothing kitchen sounds of bubbling pots and clinking spoons can put me into a Zen-like state. Cooking before Shabbat dinner is even more special. Every Shabbat Natalie, the boys, and I gather around our kitchen table and recite the blessings over the candles, the kids, the wine, and the meal before we eat.

Food is eaten. A meal is experienced. The Shabbat meal is a special, shared experience. In our home, we don’t eat leftovers or throw together sandwiches. We spend time talking about what we want. We think about what foods go well together, what we have not had in a while, and whether I have time to make something as fancy as what I envision. Whatever ends up on the table is made with love and care, which is what the Shabbat meal is all about.

May your Shabbat meal bring you closer to the ones you love this week and always.

Shabbat Shalom!

2009-06-29T13:22:00.001-04:00

From the URJ's DAVAR ACHER section of Ten Minutes of Torah, posted a week ago on the URJ site:

Challenging God

Throughout the Bible, God is challenged. Abraham challenges God. Pharaoh challenges God. Jezebel challenges God. The Israelites constantly challenge God.

What is it that distinguishes these challenges and God’s responses to them? Parashat Korach gives us a little insight. We read of four different challenges this week, and four levels of response. Korah bands with Dathan and Abiram against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites gather against Moses and Aaron. Moses and Aaron beseech God not to destroy the entire community. The chieftains of Israel accept the challenge God puts forth for the right to be in the Divine Presence.

Korah’s rebellion is the most severe. As Jacob Milgrom points out, Korah and his band are "demoralized by the majority report of the scouts and condemned by their God to die in the wilderness"(The JPS Torah Commentary, Numbers [Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1990] p. 129). They are angry, and perhaps jealous of their cousin Moses, and they express their anger by inciting the community. Even our typically humble Moses denounces the revolt, telling Korah rav lachem, "You have gone too far,"echoing Korah’s his own words from a few verses earlier (Numbers 16:3, 7). The people of the Korahite rebellion are utterly destroyed, either sent to Sheol or burned to ash by fire from God.

When the Israelites rebel as a community, they do so out of fear. They have just seen 250 of their religious leaders die, and they are afraid that it is because of Moses and Aaron and this invisible God they are following around the wilderness. God sees this as punishable by death, but Moses and Aaron intervene, challenging God to reconsider punishing them with the same ferocity as Korah. God does reconsider, and the reaction to the Israelites is modified. When the chieftains accept God’s challenge, none are punished because God sets the terms. Their acceptance shows a willingness to adhere to the results of the challenge. Their staffs do not sprout, and only Aaron is given the right to be in the Ohel Mo-eid the "Tent of Meeting.”

God can take a challenge, but not every confrontation is equal. The difference is in the intent of the challenger. If we are acting out of anger, jealousy, or fear, we are demonstrating a lack of faith in God’s leadership and ability to protect us. If we put forth a challenge out of a desire to change the world for the better, perhaps God will regard our request. Our greatest hope of this comes when we challenge ourselves to become better versions of ourselves. May these challenges help us to nurture our communities to fuller Jewish lives.

Eulogy for Dr. George Tiller

2009-06-05T12:55:00.004-04:00

The poet Marcia Falk adapted a poem ascribed only to the name Zelda, called “Each of Us Has a Name,” which reads in part:

Each of us has a name
given by the source of life
and given by our parents

Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

This past Sunday in Wichita, KS, a man whose name is known to many in the political, social action, and medical communities was shot and killed in his church. He was serving as an usher, handing out programs much like our Shabbat greeters do here at Temple Sinai. His wife was singing in the choir when a man walked in, shot and killed Dr. George Tiller, and ran away.

Dr. Tiller made a name for himself, given to him in many forms. He was named a friend and supporter of Kathleen Sebelius, our current Health and Human Services Secretary. He was dubbed “Tiller the Baby Killer” by Bill O’Reilly. He was labeled hero by the hundreds of cards and letters that line the walls of the Women’s Health Care Center. He was named “Godless Murderer,” and “Church-Going Martyr,” in the same article of the Wichita daily newspaper. He was called father to four, and grandfather to 10.

I have been to Wichita only once—April 9th to 15th, 2006. Natalie and I met Dr. Tiller, and spent time with him in his clinic for a week. We did not want to go, but to us there was no real choice. About a month before our ordination and investiture from HUC, Natalie was 34 weeks pregnant, and we discovered that the baby had microcephaly and lissencephaly. In plain English, the head was too small, and the brain was not developing. The first, second, and third opinions all told us the same thing. Our baby would not live outside the womb. So Natalie and I made the difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy.

In the United States, abortion is legal, but it is up to the states to determine limitations or restrictions on these laws. The Women’s Health Care Center in Wichita is one of three locations in the US that legally performs late-term abortions, or abortions after the 21st week of pregnancy. Dr. Tiller was referred to us as the best of those three, so we quickly made plans to fly to Wichita.

Though I do not wish this experience on anyone, I can say that Dr. Tiller deserves his designation as a caring, compassionate professional in his field. My memory is weak about our time there, perhaps subconsciously as a defense mechanism. I remember fake wood paneling on the walls, worn couches in several different waiting areas, and sympathetic faces on everyone on staff.

We were there with three other couples, all going through the same thing, though for different reasons. Not one person was there because of an unwanted pregnancy. All of us were distraught that our babies could not survive outside the womb. Dr. Tiller and his staff guided us gently and honestly through this incredibly painful process.

Throughout our week there, Natalie spent a lot of time asleep or in a drug-induced haze, so I had a lot of time to sit in our hotel room and think. I kept a journal when I could handle it emotionally, and I read. I read emails and magazines, and studied a little Mishnah. I took in the words of Tractate Niddah (5:3) which says, “A day-old son who dies is to his father and mother like a full bridegroom.” This phrase stuck in my mind, especially the use of the word “bridegroom.” There are many words the Talmud uses to distinguish different stages of life. It could have said elderly man, full-grown son, or young man with equal gravity to describe a parent’s loss. Using “bridegroom” must be intentional, and it works on two fronts.

The first is independence. A bridegroom is clearly of an age where the parents have completed raising the child until he is ready to be on his own. They know who he is, the kind of person he is, what interests he has, and what his aspirations are. Their loss equals the loss of a fully developed human being, no matter what age he is.

The second speaks to emptiness. Even before a woman gets pregnant, she is making plans for the child’s life. When a couple discovers that they are going to have a child, the plans begin. If this is the birthday, then this will the Bar Mitzvah. This will be graduation, and hopefully around here is the chuppah. Who knows, maybe by this year we’ll be grandparents! Describing the loss as “like a full bridegroom” reminds us that we are going to miss out on every simchah that might have been, from birth to the wedding and beyond.

Dr. Tiller had an understanding of this pain, perhaps better than anyone who has never gone through it personally. As a doctor he was upfront about everything he was about to do and everything we needed to do to make things go well. When we arrived, he sat all four couples down and told us everything that was going to happen. He showed us the instruments he was going to use. He told us how the drugs would make the women feel. He told them flat out that it was going to hurt and she needed to be ready. He was brutally honest. He told us that he had lost a patient about a year and a half prior to our visit. He asked if we had questions, and when challenged, he answered respectfully and honestly.

He also asked about us. He wanted to know who we were, what we did, and how we lived as couples and families. When it came out that Natalie and I were about to become Jewish clergy, he mentioned that his on-staff chaplain was not Jewish, but he wrote down the name and number of a local Reform rabbi who we might want to talk to. Admittedly, we did not use the number. So the next evening, that rabbi called us in our hotel room. He said Dr. Tiller had called the synagogue, let them know we were in town, and said he suspected we weren’t in a place where we could make the first move. He invited us to Passover Seder at his home two nights later, and said we could decide anytime up to dessert being served that we wanted to show up, and that he would understand if we wanted to keep to ourselves. All because Dr. Tiller cared enough to make sure someone was reaching out to us.

Judaism acknowledges that life is sacred. Dr. Tiller personified the value of pikuach nefesh, saving a life, putting his own life at risk every day in order to fulfill this value. Jewish tradition dictates that before Kaddish we do not say the name of non-Jews unless they fall under the category of gerei tzedek, the righteous gentiles who live ethical and valiant lives. In that vein we will add Dr. Tiller to Temple Sinai's Kaddish list tonight, honoring him as a ger tzedek.

In the words of Dr. Cheryl Gutmann, Chair of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism: "As our hearts and prayers go out to Dr. Tiller’s family, we think of his personal heroism and that of the other brave and courageous providers and professionals who are part of reproductive health centers across this country."

Zelda’s poem closes:

Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work

Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given
by our death

Zichrono livrachah: May his name be remembered for a blessing.

Tying the Knot

2009-04-17T11:29:00.003-04:00

I should never promise to post on my blog right before I go on vacation. Nevertheless, here is last week's sermon on Marriage Equality:

In between undergraduate school and rabbinical school, I lived in Los Angeles. For about two years I worked for a company called “Cootie Shots.” We were a small theatre company—with actors, director, and stage manager we were six people. We would travel to elementary schools and high schools all over LA and the surrounding areas to deliver what we called, “Theatrical inoculations against bigotry,” in the form of a 30 minute play comprised of short vignettes.

One of my favorite of these vignettes is a Dr. Seuss-like tale by Mark Rosenthal called “The Parable of the Stimples.” Here is a brief synopsis:

In a faraway land there lived a people who were just like us in almost every way. They were all different. They were different shapes, sizes, colors, and abilities. Some of them were born with a special ability. The ability to make funny noises. These people were called Stimples, and making funny noises made them very happy.

People who couldn’t make funny noises were called Blimbers. Blimbers and Stimples lived among one another. They were friends, relatives, or colleagues. They would go through life not knowing who was who unless a Stimple got caught making a funny noise. That’s right, got caught. You see, funny noises were considered wrong, weird, or something to fear!
Nobody really knows why Blimbers didn’t like Stimples. That’s just always the way things were. Mama and Papa Blimbers made sure their children knew that being a Blimber was the only proper way to be, because Stimples were strange.

Some Blimbers didn’t care what the Stimples did. They were fine being friends, or they just ignored them. Others really didn’t like the noises, and they believed funny noises were evil. They tried to change any Stimples they met. They would even try to keep them from making funny noises by making laws to get them in trouble if they made funny noises.

The parable continues to tell the story of Gilbert, a happy little boy who discovers that he is a Stimple, and cannot be convinced that there is anything wrong with it. In fact, Gilbert has a teacher who they find out is a Stimple, and the Blimbers try to get her fired, but Gilbert stands up for her and all the other Stimples in town.

And everyone lives happily and noisily ever after.

If only it were that easy.

Gilbert’s tale is just a story, but it is so much like real life for so many Americans. Every day, Americans are denied some of the rights that many of us hold sacred because they are different.
This week we celebrate Passover, our Festival of Freedom. We declare at our Seder tables that we empathize with the plight of our ancestors who were enslaved in Egypt. We declare during the Ha Lachma Anya section, “This year we are slaves. Next year may we be free.” Everyone has something that keeps us enslaved. We all have Pharaohs that rule us, often harshly. For approximately 10% of Americans, there are laws that forbid them to marry whomever they want. For our gay and lesbian population, civil liberty is being denied. In most of the country, a loving, long term relationship between two people who pay taxes and contribute to society is not legally recognized if they happen to be the same gender.

Why? I have no idea.

Marriage is a legally binding relationship that two people enter into when they love each other so much, that they want to share everything, including their rights. According to organizations against marriage equality, marriage is the union of a man and a woman. The problem with this limiting definiton is that no two marriages are the same. We cannot truly understand marriage based on a definition. We should understand marriage based on the positive examples of such a union. Marriage should be defined as mutual love, respect, support, and building a life together in partnership.

We often hear organizations claiming that gay marriage is “a threat to the sanctity of marriage.” I have never heard this talking point explained. How can it possibly be a threat? The way I understand it, when gay people marry, they don’t use up the state’s marriage licenses; my marriage is still legally recognized; Natalie and I will not suddenly fall out of love; and our children will still be legitimate. In the words of Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry, “The idea that treating gay people as equal under the civil rights laws of this country would be a threat to other people is bogus.”

But there is good news in our recent national history. This Tuesday the state legislature of Vermont passed a law recognizing same-sex marriage. Vermont joins the ranks of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa as leaders in marriage equality. In the words of Barbara Weinstein, Legislative Director of the RAC,

The Vermont legislature made clear that all loving, committed couples, regardless of the sexual orientation of those involved, deserve respect and recognition from their government.

I am proud of the four states that have legalized marriage for everyone, just as I am hopeful for states like New York, whose governor has declared he would sign a marriage equality bill into law. I am thrilled to live in a world where we can make a noise. Not a silly noise like the Stimples, but a loud noise. A noise that will ring in the ears of our legislators and let them know that we want everyone in America to be legally bound to their basheret, their soul’s true mate. We can make this noise with what we probably have close to us right now—our cell phones. Program your state and federal politicians’ phone numbers into your phones. For Floridians, Senator Nelson is 202-224-5274, Senator Martinez is 202-224-3041, Governor Christ is 850-488-7146, and Representative Wasserman-Schultz is 202-225-7931. For other states or to find your representative, go to http://www.usa.gov/. It is so easy to call the people whose job it is to represent you to your government. Usually the people who answer the phone are friendly, well-informed, and willing to help. Make a noise, tell them you are a tax payer and a voter. Tell them you want marriage right for all Floridians and all Americans.

Not every statement has to make noise. Some of the boldest statements are made without a sound.

Perhaps you have already noticed the white knot on my lapel. You may have noticed similar knots on the tuxedo lapels of several attendees at the most recent Academy Awards: Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Richard Jenkins, Anne Hathaway’s father and many more sported white knots on their lapels. We have all been to http://www.whiteknot.org/, an organization that recently started using a white knot as the sign of support for marriage equality. Pinning a white knot to our clothing declares to the world that we believe everyone should have the right to tie the knot.

I recently purchased enough white ribbon and pins to make 200 white knots for anyone who so desires. After services tonight I will be pinning anyone who asks with a white knot. The ribbon and pins will remain on my desk, and I will gladly help everyone who wants to make a noise for marriage equality do so. Together we can make a bold statement in favor of marriage equality. On the phone and close to our heart.

As the closing of “The Parable of the Stimples” reminds us:

Once the Blimbers saw there was nothing to fear,
Then those weird, funky Stimples did not seem so queer.
They laughed at the same things! They didn’t have warts!
Some were very religious. Some even played sports.
But the one thing in common all these folks did share
Wasn’t their tastes or the clothes they would wear.
It’s that they’re all human, with blood in their veins,
And air in their lungs, and thoughts in their brains.
It’s hard enough really to know who you are,
To try to judge others is harder by far.

May we soon see the day when marriage is for everyone, and anyone can be emotionally, physically, and legally with the person they love.

Parashat Tetzaveh

2009-03-07T08:07:00.002-05:00

In a terrible accident at a railroad crossing a train smashed into a car and pushed it nearly four hundred yards down the track. The driver of the car survived and took the train company to court.At the trial, the engineer insisted that he had given the driver ample warning by waving his lantern back and forth for nearly a minute. He even stood and convincingly demonstrated how he'd done it. The court believed the engineer, and the suit was dismissed."Congratulations," the lawyer said to the engineer when it was over. "You did superbly under cross-examination."
"Thanks," he said, "but he sure had me worried."
"How's that?" the lawyer asked.
"I was afraid he was going to ask if the lantern was lit!

Up to this point in the Torah, the commandments have focused on the building and lay-out of the Tabernacle. This week we get to hear how it is put to action. The Parashah begins:
"You shall further instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, leha’alot ner tamid, to raise an eternal light" (Exod 27:20).

This is a bit of an odd place to begin the Parashah. For one thing, this is the second-to-last verse of the previous chapter. Why not simply finish the chapter? Another oddity is topical. Most of Parashat Tetzaveh deals with the priests. Lighting the ner tamid is about the menorah. Last week we dealt with the structure of the Tabernacle, including the menorah. So why do we deal these verses separately?

Because these verses stand out, there is a wealth of commentary on them, including several midrashim. Leviticus Rabbah tells a story related to this verse. A rabbi gives examples of why God does not need our light. God created the sun, which is so strong we cannot look into it. God created lightning, which dazzles the world from end to end. God created the eyeball, which takes in light through the black part, and nothing is perceived through the white part. To each of these examples of God’s greatness, another rabbi responds with a verse from Isaiah: “Adonai delights in righteousness. He will make Torah great and glorious” (42:21). In other words, I have come, says God, for no other purpose than to endow you [to whom the Torah was given] with the merit [of observing her precepts].

Here, the rabbis compare the Torah to the light that God creates. God makes miraculous light in the huge natural forms of sun and lightning. God also makes miraculous light in the miniscule cells of the eye. It sets a wonderful contrast between the great and the small, all of which are under God’s domain. And the Torah is what gives us our light. The Torah is our guide in the darkness, allowing us to see our way in the world.

This Midrash continues with a further comment. Humans light lamps from fire that is already kindled. But God creates light out of darkness. If out of darkness God created light, why does God need our light? Because kindling fire raises us as eternal lights. This play on the verse from our Torah portion adds another source of light—the Jewish people. We become the light that burns eternally, we become the beacon in the darkness, we are the righteous in whom God delights.

An 11th century Midrash called Exodus Rabbah also comments on our verse. In this Midrash we are reminded that when we light a flame from another flame, the light is not diminished. Both fires burn equally, and the light is doubled. The same is true of our deeds. When we give money or objects, we no longer have that money or object. When we give of ourselves, we give of our light. We can bring wick after wick after wick to our flame, and keep lighting them infinitely. That light is not lost—it is increased, just like when we light one flame from another it doubles the light.

That is why these two verses appear at the beginning of this week’s Parashah. The first words we read this week teach us to establish an eternal light above the holy ark for the Torah as well as in our heart. Only after we understand our role in the community are we ready to understand the role of our ritual leaders. We bring the light of Torah and our own light to as many people as we can, behaving as a nation of priests and an or lagoyim, a light to the nations.

25 Random Things About Me

2009-02-10T09:40:00.003-05:00

About 25 people have tagged me in a note on Facebook regarding 25 random things about themselves. I have resisted up to this point, thinking that people who don’t know 25 things about me probably don’t really know me, hence the difference between “actual” friends and “FB Friends.”

Let me be clear: If you are my FB Friend, you are my friend. I love that people want to connect with me electronically, and even as I aspire towards having 1000 FB Friends there are still some people who I ignore because a) I don’t know who they are or b) I don’t like them and don’t want them seeing my stuff. And yet, there is a difference between knowing someone on line and knowing someone through experience.

Regarding tagging people in notes with 25 random facts, it is intriguing and I have enjoyed reading most of them. Here are mine:

1. My number one is and will always be my family. Natalie, Gabriel, and Alexander are the three best things that ever happened to me, and I love them with all my heart. No list about me should ever have them anywhere but #1.

2. I love my job. I get up every day excited to go to work and see what new things are happening at Temple Sinai. I love rejoicing with people when they have simchas, and I am honored to be there for people who are down. I adore the children I work with and most of their parents. My boss is an inspiring leader and a model for the kind of rabbi I would like to become when I am a senior.

3. My favorite part of my job is officiating at simchas (baby namings, and weddings especially).

4. I am not dumb enough to mention my least favorite part on the internet.

5. I love to cook. It is such a thrill for me to watch people enjoying food that I have prepared. I treat everyday cooking like a miniature work of art that I carefully craft for a limited audience.

6. I just stopped to think for the first time and this is only #6.

7. I am a superhero fan. I have been reading comicbooks since I was a teenager, but I have only been purchasing them regularly for about three years. I am not the biggest comicbook geek I know.

8. The biggest comicbook geek I know is Michael “Cap” Canaan.

9. My thesis title was “A Study of Heroic Characters in the Bible and Comicbooks.”

10. I spell comicbooks as one word intentionally, because that is how it should be spelled.[1]

11. I have written enough about comicbooks.

12. I practice zymurgy. The first time I tried it was with Ian Bannen, who I have known longer than any of my other friends.

13. I have a tattoo.

14. I want another one.

15. I am currently one of four chaplains for the North Miami Beach Police Department. I have a badge.

16. My favorite color is purple, but as I type this, I am not wearing anything purple.

17. I am a pescetarian, which some people call “fish eating vegetarian.” I think “fish eating vegetarian” is an oxymoron. I believe people should eat what they like, and I simply do not like meat. It began as an awareness of the connection between dead animals and what was on my plate, but now it is all about eating what I like. I was a vegetarian for about ten years, and started eating fish when my girlfriend (now wife) required sushi two or three times a week. Sick of vegetable rolls, I tried fish and liked it. Every once in a while I try chicken or beef. I still don’t like them.

18. I spent most of my entire freshman year of college barefoot, except when I was in the theatre building or when it was too cold (in which case I usually dis-shoed once I was indoors).

19. I have had some of the most interesting jobs I can think of without necessitating a reality show based on there extreme nature. The rest of this list is an incomplete list of said jobs.

20. I was a nude model for art classes for two years in college.

21. I was a lifeguard at a college pool, which is another word for watching elderly professors swim laps—they actually let me read magazines while I worked!

22. I was the West Coast PR Bear from “Bear in the Big Blue House.” That means live appearances only, no speaking. It was probably the easiest job I ever did compared to what I was paid.

23. I was a Showtender for Marvel Mania (among other things), and I got to flip bottles and throw things at people. It was a lot of fun, and I broke a lot of glasses.

24. I worked in a scene shop for all four years of undergrad, which is like being a construction worker but everything you build is only supposed to last two weekends. Kind of like a government construction job.

25. I was the Assistant Brewmaster for Watson Bros. Brewhouse for exactly two weeks. (While I waited for them to agree to train me as a bartender.)

[1] In agreement with comicbook writer/publisher/guru Stan Lee, who explains in the introduction to Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics that the use of the modifier “comic” in front of the word “book” implies some sort of triviality and humor, like the funny pages in a newspaper, whereas “comicbook” describes a genre of literature, unmodified. Les Daniels, ed. Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics (London: Virgin, 1991), iii.

Heroes of 2009

2009-01-25T20:43:00.004-05:00

We love our heroes.

Usually not all at once, though. We prefer them one at a time.

I have been thinking a lot about the latest hero, the pilot "Sully" Sullenberger, who landed a plane full of people on the Hudson River last weekend. This is a real hero. He is a great guy who doesn't want the spotlight. He just wants to do his job the best he can, and love his wife and family, probably squeezing them a little tighter lately. Sure, he'll accept the key to New York City and take the microphone in Danville, (for 23 seconds). But we can't get enough of him. And I have a suspicion as to why.

Having a hero lets us off the hook.

I don't intend to minimize the amazing act of heroism that Mr. Sullenberger performed last weekend. He did an incredible job, and he deserves a great deal of credit (and vacation). I do not fault him for the attention he has been getting. I do fault us for giving him so much attention. There were 155 people on board that flight. 2 pilots, 5 flight crew members, and 148 passengers. It is abundantly clear why Sullenberger is a hero. What about the other 154 people? His co-pilot surely had a hand in that fantastic, by the books landing. The flight crew, as I understand it, was instrumental in getting the passengers to calm down. And guess what? The passengers calmed down! 148 airline passengers all (eventually) followed the instructions given to them by the flight crew! I've never heard of that before! Every single person on that airplane is a hero, and every single person deserves mention by name.

And that's not all.

Commuter ferries on the Hudson River turned toward the crash-landed plane. The Coast Guard, paramedics, fire and police departments all helped get people out of the water, transport the injured to hospitals, and did everything they could to get all the passengers warm and dry. But all we hear about is Chelsey Bennett Sullenberger III. Again, I do not intend any ill will toward Mr. Sullenberger. I am just a little ashamed that his name is the only one we know out of all the heroes involved in this amazing escapade of heroism involving hundreds of heroes.

In Hebrew, the word for hero is gibbur. The root G-B-R comes from the word gever, which means "guy." The word gibbur is in a "stronger" grammatical form. It is just like gever, just more so. In Hebrew, being a gibbur (hero) is just like being a regular gever (guy), only more so. All of us have the potential to be a hero written into our very nature. Heroism is lauded because we all hope that we will behave the way the heroes do when (God forbid) we are faced with a horrible situation. Every regular "guy" has the potential to be a hero, and so many guys become heroes every day. If something were to happen to me, I know my friends, family, congregants, and fellow Americans will be there for me whenever and however I need them.

So why wait?

There are so many opportunities to be a stronger version of ourselves on a daily basis. We can give a little more tzeddakah than we usually give. We can help out in a soup kitchen or at a homeless shelter. We can use a little less and plant a little more. We can give a sandwich or a cup of coffee to the guy asking for spare change. We can teach somebody. We can smile and be kind to each other. The possibilities are endless.

We don't need a hero.

We need us.

Sermon on Honesty from Jan. 2, 2009

2009-01-03T07:33:00.001-05:00

When I went to summer camp we used to do a lot of “mixers”—you know, the games where a group of people gets to learn a little more about the others in the circle. My favorite of all the mixers was a game we called, “Two Truths and a Lie.” The game was easy. Each person listed three things about himself or herself. Two needed to be true, and one needed to be a lie. Then the group would debate and vote on which was the lie. I was great at this game. I would use two stories that were true and unbelievable, and for my lie I would tweak something that most people knew about me. For example, my lie would be something like, “I have been a vegetarian for ten years,” when in fact I had been a vegetarian for twelve. It was like a lie within a lie because I was intentionally misrepresenting something I was counting on the group to know about me. It worked pretty well. The elements of truth within the lie made it believable enough that the fictional piece would be immediately considered fact. The schadenfreude of tricking my peers was seldom paralleled.

I also pride myself in being an excellent lie-spotter. Even today I love to play poker and another card game involving lying whose name is not appropriate for Shabbat services. These games are not about the cards—they’re about the people holding the cards and how well they lie or tell the truth. When a poker player spots the sign that an opponent is not being honest, we call it a tell. When somebody figures out your tell, you are likely to lose all the chips in front of you.

We have heard quite a bit lately about people getting caught in dishonesty. Governor Rod Blagojevich and Bernie Madoff dominate our news cycle of late. Governor Blagojevich is accused of trying to sell the senate seat that President Elect Obama has left empty. His behavior has been so disdainful, he is still carrying out his duties as governor. Even though there are no official charges brought against him, something about his behavior just doesn’t sit right. Even the Senate has declared that they will not acknowledge anything he does from now on because of his political taint. And if a group of 90-some politicians thinks he’s untrustworthy….

Mr. Madoff’s lies are far-reaching. To be honest, I do not believe I understand it completely, but here is my layman’s version of the scam. He told people that they would be guaranteed 12% return on their investments through him. This is a good thing, so people would send him very large checks, which he did not actually invest. When one of his customers would view a statement, they would see an increase in their investments, but it was all false. So with the economy crashing and his investors asking for their money, the scam was exposed. It is still unclear how much of his estimated ½-billion dollar value is real and how much is just declared value built up from the scheme. His lie destroyed the lives of hundreds of people and charities who invested with him, and bankrupted companies who thought they had millions of dollars. What is worse is that he is a member of the Jewish community. His deceit makes all of us look bad.

I am not fond of generalizations, but I think it is safe to say that everyone occasionally tells lies, even if only by omitting bits of the truth. Just yesterday Natalie and I were discussing the current situation in Israel in front of Gabriel. He started asking questions about why they are fighting. We told him an abbreviated version of the situation, leaving out details and over-simplifying both sides of the conflict. It may not have been an outright lie, but we were not completely truthful with him, either. Is that wrong of us? Should we have told him the whole truth?

What about the tooth fairy? Is it okay to tell our children that a fairy flies around taking teeth and leaving money for them? Should we berate our Christian friends and neighbors for the Santa Claus myth? What about Chanukah? Should we continue to tell the story of the oil lasting eight days when we know it is historically inaccurate? What about Bible stories? Where do we draw the line?

It is human nature to embellish. Our parents tell us not to tell lies, and we do the same to our children. As I teach my sixth grade Bible students, you don’t tell people not to do something that they’re already not doing. In other words, if we were naturally truthful people there would be no need to tell us not to lie. Like Bill Cosby says, God never had to tell the fish, “Don’t jump out of the water.” But we have to be told that honesty is the best policy.

The Torah teaches us not to bear false witness against our neighbors and not to swear falsely by God’s name, which we learn whenever we study the Ten Commandments. Both of these commandments can be read as specific to certain situations. Not bearing false witness can be seen as a court-room commandment. The legal language used here lends to it being interpreted as applicable only when on the witness stand. Not swearing falsely by God’s name refers specifically to oaths. So if we take the most literal meaning of these two commandments, we know not to lie in court or when using God’s name to take a vow.

We know that lies are bad. It is engrained into our upbringing. I even tell my children and students that they get into less trouble when they tell the truth. And yet the Torah never says, “Don’t lie.” There is never an absolute restriction against falsehoods. Always a commandment with conditions that can be interpreted into, “That doesn’t apply to me in this circumstance.” Perhaps that is the Torah’s way of telling us that there is no such thing as absolute honesty.

The Torah does describe how to punish dishonesty, and it takes four verses to describe the crime and punishment. Leviticus 5:21-24 call it a trespass against God to deal falsely with our neighbor in business, through robbery, fraud, a pledge, finding a lost object, or “any one of the various things that one may do and sin thereby.” The punishment is harsh. The one who lies must pay back 120% to the other. They must be paid back, then given another fifth on top of what they originally lost. That’s huge! I have never heard of a 20% loan. It seems to be a very harsh punishment.

There is also a notion in the Talmud called lashon hara, guarding against evil speech. What is evil speech? This is also up for interpretation. We are not to use our words for evil purposes. Do not gossip, insult, or speak slanderously about our neighbor. In the American court system, if it is truthful it is not slander. According to Jewish law, even speaking the truth can be slanderous. The restriction of lashon hara is not to guard against falsehood. It is to guard against that which hurts another person.

Perhaps that is the piece of Jewish law that teaches us about honesty. In the words of Rabbi Hillel, “Do not do to another person that which is hateful to you. All the rest is commentary….” The guiding principal is not whether what we are saying is completely true, partially true, or outright false. The important thing is how it feels, our intent, and how we treat others with our words.

When we discover that we have been lied to, our trust feels violated. We feel foolish for believing something that sounded too good to be true. We protect ourselves under a shroud of cynicism that blurs any future stories we hear. Even if we find out that the intent was to teach something important, the message is lost in the pain of that violation of trust, and the intent no longer matters. As Jews, the concept of lashon hara implores us to be very careful with the words we use. Even with the best of intentions, there is a line that we must be careful not to cross. The difference between an embellishment to enhance our message and a falsehood that obscures it is a subtle difference. But when our tale becomes a public one, and people share in the message it is the difference between fame and notoriety.

Since guarding our tongues is so important to us, we can be harsh critics of those who make mistakes in this realm. Being hurt by a lie can blind us to the need of our neighbor to make tshuvah, to repent, apologize, and mend their ways. It will be impossible for Madoff to pay back the money he never had, and it is sometimes impossible for our trust to be given back. But we are a people who does not do to others what we would not have done to us. We would not withhold forgiveness when someone is truly sorry—we understand the need for tshuvah.

The book of Proverbs says, “Truthful speech abides forever, A lying tongue for but a moment” (12:19). In other words, the pain caused by a lie will go away. The healing that comes from the truth will be lasting.

Where do we go from here?

Let us enter 2009 with compassion. We have been hurt by the past, and we will deal with it as a community. We may be skeptical for a while, but we will believe again. May we find the coming year full of blessing and reasons to believe in each other anew.

Kol Nidre Sermon

2008-10-10T10:25:00.004-04:00

TGIS (Thank God It’s Shabbat)

Shabbat Shalom!

It is always wonderful to see so many people here on a Friday night. Temple Sinai is a loving community of Shabbat worshippers …. [Rabbi Litwak interrupts]

Excuse me, I have just been informed that tonight is Wednesday. [Crumple up fake page of sermon and throw it backwards to Rabbi Litwak.]

Shanah Tovah!

It is always wonderful to see so many of you here on Yom Kippur. As we begin what is considered the holiest of days, we treat ourselves a little differently tonight.

On most days we take good care of our bodies. We eat healthful food, we wash our bodies and brush our teeth. On Yom Kippur we fast, refraining from food and water for our insides, and soap and water for our outsides. Yom Kippur is a day of abstention.

Most days we wear whatever we find in the closet. Tonight we pay attention to how we look. Some of us wear white, some will not wear leather, some even wear a kittel, the traditional garb worn on only two occasions in a lifetime: under the Chuppah when getting married, and under the lights of our sanctuary when greeting God on Yom Kippur. Many of us will wear a Tallit and Kippah, perhaps for the only day this year. Yom Kippur is a day of mindfulness of our appearance.

Most days we find ourselves focused on the events of the present. We focus on our immediate goals and how we can accomplish them as fast as possible so we can move on to the next goal. But not Yom Kippur. Tonight we reflect upon the past. We take stock of our shortcomings and we pray for a better year than the year that just ended. We think carefully on how we can improve ourselves to make this year a year of blessing. We apologize for our past misdeeds, and we work to improve our bad habits and imperfections. Kol Nidre is a night of reflection, while Yom Kippur is a day of repentance.

Most days we spend our time at work. On this High Holy Day we spend time with family and community. We turn off our cell phones and disconnect from the professional world. We focus on our spiritual gains and we pray. For 364 days out of the year, we focus on the routine; but on Yom Kippur we focus upon the Divine inside us all.

You know, Yom Kippur is kind of like Shabbat! [Retrieve crumpled paper.]

In fact, the Torah describes Yom Kippur as a day of complete rest: Shabbat Shabbaton, the Sabbath of Sabbaths. On Yom Kippur we read Torah and Haftarah just like on Shabbat, and the Haftarah includes the reminder from Isaiah to “call the Sabbath "delight," The Lord's holy day "honored";” in order to seek favor from God.

Where Shabbat does differ from Yom Kippur, though, is in oneg Shabbat, the joy of Shabbat. On Shabbat we enjoy Challah, wine, meals with family and friends, a mid-day schluff, and of course the double mitzvah… (You laugh, but it’s in the Talmud!) On Shabbat we increase our bodily pleasure so that we can increase the pleasures of our souls. We are told to remember Shabbat, honor Shabbat, and keep it holy. Like on Yom Kippur we are not to work on Shabbat, but with a slightly different impetus.

Yom Kippur is Shabbat shabbaton lachem, the Sabbath of Sabbaths for you. Saturday is Shabbat ladonai elohecha, Sabbath for Adonai your God. Every Friday night as the sun sets, we are sanctifying a moment in time that serves as a declaration of our faith in God.

In the 2nd chapter of Genesis we first hear of Shabbat. God spends the first chapter of the Torah creating. Light and darkness, earth, water, sun, moon, stars, plants, and animals. In six days God creates heaven and earth. On the seventh day God rests.

Genesis 2:3 explains, “And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because on it God ceased from all the work of creation.”

And there, in the second chapter of the Torah, God creates the weekend.

I think about our calendar. With the calendar we measure time through planetary movement. In one day the earth rotates on its axis once. In one month the moon revolves around the earth once. In one year the earth revolves around the sun once. And yet there is nothing in the cosmos that delineates a week. We have to work out weeks on our own. The week is the only calendrical measurement of time that is not determined by movement of astrological objects. The only one!

That means we can observe days, months, and years. There is ebb and flow to them. It gets dark and light. The moon grows and disappears. The planet gets colder and warmer.

We cannot observe a week happening. No star or planet makes it clear that a week has gone by. We have to pay attention to know what day it is. How many of us go back to work on a Tuesday after a long weekend and say, “Today feels like a Monday!” Even with the calendar in front of us it is sometimes hard to keep track.

The week is not planetary time…it is God-time. God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. A week is a Torah-mandated measurement of time!

So celebrating Shabbat becomes a declaration of our faith in God. We stop working because God stopped. And God stopped because God wants us to stop.

In his book The Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel describes the daily human quest as a conquering of space. Heschel describes how we build things and acquire things, and these things take up space in the world. We understand our achievements through how we have used our space. Look at what I have built, look at what I own, look at what I can buy. Often we conquer space at the expense of time. We use our days to the fullest of their capacity. In conquering space, we lose time.

My friend Brian joined the US Army after he graduated college. Years later he would describe with great agony some of the perils of Basic Training. Of course, in Basic he had to do a lot of push-ups. He told me that unlike the movies they didn’t have to do 50 or 100 push-ups at a time. They had to do push-ups to Muscle Failure. His drill sergeant would make them push until they were unable to push any more. They would fall on their faces, exhausted, and do it again the next day.

This is exactly how many of us work in our professional lives. We push and push until we cannot so much as open an email, then we drive home, collapse, wake up, and start all over again.

If we keep it up we will cause problems worse than muscle failure. We will have mental and spiritual failure. Eventually something has to give. If we refuse to take time, time will find a way to catch up to us.

The Torah gives us a way to take time. We are commanded not to work on Shabbat. Outside of the restriction against kindling a fire, it does not teach us much more than that. Honor it, remember it, sanctify it, and don’t work. What does that mean?

In the Talmud, Tractate Shabbat lists 39 malachot—39 activities that are not allowed on Shabbat. No plowing, grinding, tearing, writing, baking, cutting, lighting a fire, etc etc. You can probably find a complete list on Wikipedia. These 39 malachot are derived from the work done making bread, making clothing, tanning animal hides, and building the Temple. In strict practice today you either find behavior tailored to allow following the rules, or acrobatic manipulation of the law.

For example, in Israel most hotels place what looks like a mini-package of tissues in guest rooms on Friday afternoon. These are not for blowing your nose, but for use after relieving yourself. Pre-measured toilet paper prevents the observant Jew from tearing on Shabbat.

Some people will put timers on their lights, water heaters, and televisions. That way they can derive the benefits from light, hot water, and their favorite program without actually flipping the switch on Shabbat.

Perhaps we think of these as silly and/or hypocritical. Why waste material and packaging just to not rip toilet paper on Shabbat? Isn’t being environmentally conscious more important to us today? And a timer seems like a waste of energy. If we are not home, the lights still go on. Even more to the point, why is it ok to use the electricity if it is not ok to turn it on?

These manipulations of everyday activities are not done to skirt halachah. The special toilet paper, Shabbat timers and elevators, walking from place to place, not carrying things, and everything we do or do not do on Shabbat serve to make Shabbat special. This is sanctifying Shabbat—making it Holy.

Perhaps this is not what works for us, but to the traditional Jew it makes perfect sense. Our task, then, is to find ways to make Shabbat meaningful for us.

This past November at the URJ Biennial convention in San Diego, Rabbi Eric Yoffe, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, offered some of his thoughts on Shabbat and how to make it Holy again. Shabbat worship is an integral part of our week. In Rabbi Yoffe’s words,

Reform Jews [keep] Shabbat because they need Shabbat. In our 24/7 culture, the boundary between work time and leisure time has been swept away, and the results are devastating…. For our stressed-out, sleep-deprived families, the Torah’s mandate to rest looks relevant and sensible. Our tradition does not instruct us to stop working altogether on Shabbat; after all, it takes a certain amount of effort to study, pray, and go to synagogue. Be we are asked to abstain from the work that we do to earn a living, and instead to reflect, to enjoy, and to take a stroll through the neighborhood…. We are asked to stop running around long enough to see what God is doing.

He explained the centrality of Shabbat worship to Judaism, especially to Reform Judaism. We have a need to focus less on the restrictions of Shabbat, and more on the joy, celebration, and worship.

In 1991 the CCAR Press published Gates of Shabbat, a Guide for Observing Shabbat. In this book, Mark Dov Shapiro describes three types of Shabbat worshippers, three examples of how to take a break on Shabbat and make it holy. He calls them The Walker, The Museumgoer, and The Painter. The Walker serves as the more traditional Shabbat observer. He spends no money and uses no technology. He will go to the park or take his canoe out on a local river. He will picnic at the beach or study with a group of friends. The Walker “puts aside the so-called necessities of modern life and uses Shabbat… [to do] something positive through thought, leisure, and friendship….”

The Museumgoer also stays away from work on Shabbat, but this Jew is willing to drive and spend money, but she puts limits on how her money will be spent. For example, she will not go shopping on Shabbat, but she will drive to and pay the admission for a day at a museum. Shabbat for the Museumgoer is made holy through freedom from necessity. Her activities increase in holiness when she shares them with her family and friends. Of course, these activities can all be done on a day that is not Shabbat. For Reform Jews, what makes these activities special for us is the intent as we do them. We honor Shabbat by refreshing and giving new life to our soul. No chores or errands are allowed.

The Painter is a very different example of a Shabbat observer. God stopped the work of creation on Shabbat and rested. We are to follow God’s example with our rest. Painting can be considered a form of creating, so how does the Painter justify his Shabbat ritual? He uses the book of Deuteronomy, in which Shabbat is described as a reminder of our liberation from Egypt. Therefore, it makes sense to the Painter to allow himself to feel liberated as well. An activity like painting, even though it is not halachically shabbes-dik, can be the perfect restful antidote to the meetings and appointments of the work week. As long as the activity is not something we get paid for during the rest of the week, engaging in some form of art allows the mind to relax while the hands move the brush.

There are many ways to honor Shabbat and sanctify our day of rest. As a gift to the Union, Rabbi Yoffe gave us 52 suggestions. The Gift of Shabbat Box from the Union for Reform Judaism contains a deck of cards, each with a creative way to celebrate Shabbat. Everyone who attended the Biennial in San Diego received a Shabbat deck. Tonight, we are giving a Shabbat deck to each of you. As you leave this evening, please pick up one deck per family from the ushers.

Some of the suggestions will be meaningful to you, and some will not. All of them will get us thinking about how to bring the Shabbat experience into our lives as individuals, as families, and as a community.

Now, I have been playing card games since I was 5 years old, and I know that with 52 cards you can play hundreds of different games. We are going to play a little game this year with our cards. And I am not only referring to the Poker tournament on November 1. Every Friday night as we kindle the Shabbat lights we are going to draw a card from the Gift of Shabbat deck. The following Shabbat, we will briefly describe how that particular card can add meaning to our lives here at Temple Sinai. So when we draw the card that says, “I try to do something cultural on Shabbat afternoon…” the Museumgoer might hear about it and tell us about her Shabbat ritual. Then she or the clergy might tell the congregation about it the following Friday night, just before we draw the next card from our deck.

With the Gift of Shabbat Deck, there are infinite possibilities to enhance your Shabbat experience and engage in sanctifying Shabbat as a community. We will continue to celebrate Shabbat together, and we will find more meaningful and exciting ways to make our Shabbat holy. If you already have a regular Shabbat activity that you do, share it with us. Include your Temple Sinai family in your Shabbat ritual. Perhaps what is routine for you will be inspirational for someone else.

If something happens to you on a particular Shabbat that makes you aware of its holiness, tell us. We want to involve as many people as possible in our exploration of Shabbat worship over the coming year.

Temple Sinai is going to be playing with Shabbat this year as well. We will still offer our beloved programs like Tot Shabbat and Friday Night Live. Tot Shabbat will have one minor change. Instead of 7:00 Tot Shabbat services, we will begin our Tot Shabbat experience at 6:00. After a brief, under-5-friendly service, we will enjoy a Shabbat dinner together here at Temple Sinai. Often these programs will feature one or two of our ECE classes singing songs they learn from Miss Pat, and everyone is always invited to enjoy. Adults should be accompanied by a child.

Our Friday Night Live services are always well received. Cantor Kruk rocks the house, and the ruach is palpable. We will continue Friday Night Live every other month—even numbered months—on the third Friday of the month. This month we celebrate FNL on October 24, which is Shabbat Bereshit. What a way to begin our Torah cycle!

On odd numbered months we are going to try something new. The third Friday of each odd-numbered month will be a Family Shabbat. Family Shabbat nights will begin at 5:30. Family Shabbat services are come-as-you-are, family-friendly, and relatively short. Whether you are coming from work, the gym, or soccer practice, everyone is welcome. Our Family Shabbat experience will tap into our summer camp Shabbat memories. We will lead with guitars and storytelling, creating a tangible, visceral experience that our children and adults will love. We hope you will join us in just one month from now on November 14 at 5:30 PM for our first Family Shabbat.

Friends, this is a major, seed-changing task that lies ahead of us, and some of you will be asked to help. The lay leader, perhaps better than the rabbi, can implement this kind of change to restore Shabbat to its rightful place. At Rabbi Yoffe’s suggestion, Temple Sinai will create a Shabbat Task Force—a cadre of Temple Sinai partners who will meet weekly for eight weeks, experiencing Shabat at Temple Sinai and at other local synagogues. They will learn from the best practices of Shabbat worship and report back to the Jewish Living Committee and the clergy. We will then weave the suggestions of the Task Force in to our own Shabbat worship experience.

The more we experience Shabbat, the more we will understand how Shabbat rest can be liberating.

Tonight is Kol Nidre. It is a night full of spirituality and meaning. Our challenge is to bring some of the Kavannah—the intention—of Kol Nidre to our souls every week.

Tonight we think about the vows we have broken and those we have renewed. Let us make a communal vow to make Shabbat observance, in some way, a central part of our Jewish identities for the coming year.

Tonight we dream. We remember the past and dream of the promise of a rich future. Our dream tonight is of a meaningful Shabbat. Shabbat for us will be a day of rest, a day of revitalization, a day of connection with our loved ones.

On this Yom Kippur, this Shabbat of our souls, we embark on a journey of many chances to experience Shabbat Kodesh, the Holy Sabbath, every week.

So again, I bid you all Shabbat Shalom.

Rosh Hashanah Day II

2008-10-01T09:33:00.000-04:00

My Trip to the Creation Museum

I never expected all the dinosaurs.

As we rode in the taxi entering the grounds of the museum, they were the first things we saw. Bronze statues of dinosaur skeletons graze all over the vast lawn in front of and leading up to the Creation Museum.

In 1994 Ken Ham set down the plan to build a museum dedicated to creationist theology, and the belief that the world literally was created in six 24-hour days, like it says in the Torah. He strove to build a reasoned, logical defense to those who would question creationism. We’ll get to this later. 13 years and seven million dollars later, he built the Creation Museum in Petersburg, KY. It’s about 15 miles south of Cincinnati, so while the CCAR Convention was gathered in Cincinnati this past spring, I had to see it for my self. I invited two other rabbis to grab a cab with me, and soon we were there. Looking at the dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs are a running theme throughout the Creation Museum. There are statues of dinosaurs, animatronic dinosaurs, and a movie about dragons—who are really just leftover dinosaurs. This is contrary to what I knew about creationists. They think dinosaur bones are all fake, right?

It makes for an extremely kid-friendly museum. Think about it—how many kids do you know who are fascinated by dinosaurs? The way they tell it, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, just like all the other land animals. So when God put all the creatures in the Garden of Eden, the dinosaurs were there with them.

The first room in the museum has an eerily lifelike pair of animatronic men squatting on either side of a partially uncovered dinosaur skeleton. One is an elderly, white-bearded caucasian, and the other is a young-looking Asian man. The old white man narrates a film about their archaeological exploits that plays on a loop. He explains that he believes that the world was created in six 24-hour days, while his friend believes that the earth is [say with a chuckle:] billions of years old.

What struck me about this display is the comforting figure of the Santa Claus-like white man with the message from the Bible, as compared to the Asian “archaeologist,” who believes in a process of evolution that took eons.

The Asian man is the “other,” and that he is far eastern is likely a conscious choice. Asian religions are the farthest theologically from Christianity. They are unrelated to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. So in the very first exhibit, a perception is established. There is certainty and comfort in the creationist message, in contrast to scientific theory. They are only theories, after all, Santa Claus reminds us. The creationist message is delivered in a nice, calm, soft spoken voice that reminds us of our grandfather. The “others” believe that which is alien, foreign, and not like us. It was an extremely clever presentation, and very scary.

Throughout the museum there is only one path, so it can only be navigated from beginning to end. Before it gets to the creation story, there is an exhibit about the Bible itself. It mostly describes use of the Biblical canon in various communities, most notably that of the Jews. One display has three different versions of the Pentateuch. The first was a reproduction of a stone with ancient proto-Hebrew carved into its surface. The second was a reproduction of a Greek scroll. The third was an actual Torah, marked with a plaque describing it as a scroll from Poland rescued from the Holocaust. I leaned in to inspect it, and discovered that it was open to Genesis 32, the story of Jacob wrestling the angel.

As I read, I thought of how clever the museum’s design is. Hebrew and the display of ancient languages gives validity to the museum’s message. If the words on this scroll were written in a language that the Jews still use today, it stands to reason that the message in the scroll must be fact, right?

Even cleverer is the precise scene to which this Torah was opened. As Jacob struggles with the angel, so does the creationist struggle with the other who challenges the Biblical message.

Before long, a woman I did not know saw me staring at the text and said, “It looks like it’s upside down, doesn’t it?”

I couldn’t resist showing off. I pointed to where I was reading, “it says here, vayivater ya’akov l’vado, and Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until dawn. It’s the story of Jacob wrestling the angel.”

“Where did you learn that?” she asked.

I got a little nervous at this point, “I have a Master’s degree in Hebrew Literature,” I told her quickly. While this is true, I suddenly felt the need to run away into the next exhibit.

From there on in the museum, Hebrew text is prominent. Sometimes it is used like the Hebrew word Metushalach—as a nametag of sorts on the desk of the animatronic Methusaleh. Other times it is in the background of still and electronic displays all over the museum. Consistant use of the Hebrew language serves as a validation of sorts. Every time Hebrew is on display, it is an implicit reminder that this stuff “really happened.”

After the museum’s version of the history of Torah, we get to the Biblical account of creation. We read this story today during our Torah service. God creates the world in six days. Light and darkness on the first day, water and sky on the second, land and plants on the third. The next three days God spends filling the creations of the first three days. Sun, moon, planets, and stars on the fourth day, birds and fish on the fifth, and land animals on the sixth, including the first human being. The Bible does say that after six days, “The heaven and the earth and all their array was completed…” (Gen 2:1). We heard Cantor Kruk chant those very words. They are very much a part of Jewish tradition. This is Rosh Hashanah, after all, and we are celebrating the birthday of the world.

So how do we reconcile what we know about the universe and how it works with what it says it in the Bible? For that I look deep into the wisdom texts of our age, and one of the most venerated scholars known to modern Americans. That’s right, I speak of Indiana Jones. In the third Indiana Jones movie, Dr. Jones writes the word “FACT” on the chalkboard, and says to his students, “Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.” Understanding the wisdom of this statement, I often tell the opposite to my sixth grade Bible students. I tell them that facts can be empirically proven through evidence or observation. Truth, according to my definition, is dependent on belief. The Bible is concerned with truth, not facts. Truth is not beholden to logic or reason. We can believe something fully, to the fullest extent of our being, and have absolutely no proof of it.

Remember I said we would get back to the Creation Museum’s “reasoned, logical approach” to answer those who question creationism? This is an attempt to use a system of facts to prove a truth. There is a movie in the Creation Museum called, The Created Cosmos. It is a planetarium-style film, during which the viewers are treated to a tour of the universe as we know it, starting on earth observing the planets and stars, then moving out into space, past our solar system, out of the Milky Way, and eventually as far out as humanity has been able to observe at this point. While looking at the view from millions of light years away, the narrator attempts to prove that the earth is 6000 years old. He says:

Critics claim that it is impossible for the light from these galaxies to reach earth in only 6000 years. They claim that these galaxies prove the universe is billions of years old. But in fact there are several different ways to get light to travel these distances in a short period of time. These include gravitational-time dilation, altered synchronous conventions, and others.

This is logic and reason. Gravitational-time dilation, altered synchronous conventions, and others. After the movie, I asked the two I was with if they had every heard of these. Since none of us had, we looked up these supposed proofs up on line. We found gravitational time dilation, but could not find altered synchronous conventions. Since I was in my home town, I called my high school physics teacher to verify the information.

Gravitational time dilation is a theory that claims gravity is stronger when objects are closer to large objects, therefore light moves faster when close to planet-sized objects. When light moves faster, it distorts the way time is perceived. The proof used for this theory is that when an atomic clock, the most accurate type of clock there is, gets placed on a mountain, it moves slower than an identical atomic clock on the ground—closer to earth’s gravitational field. The problem with this theory is that this is not a measurement of time moving slower; it is a measurement of clocks moving slower.

According to my teacher, another problem with using this theory is that in order for light to travel millions of light years in less than 6000 years, it would have to travel on a path that skirts hundreds of millions of large planetary objects—large enough and close together enough to alter the speed of light. These objects would have to be visible to have this kind of impact, and we cannot see them.

Well, it sounded reasoned and logical before we looked it up. Or at least it sounded like fancy scientific jargon.

One more “proof” from the Creation Museum: While traveling through the Biblical story, we come to a replica of Noah’s Ark. The miniature ark is about three feet long. In the middle of the ark is an open door, with a platform attached to a tiny staircase. On the platform stands a teeny tiny Noah, guiding the animals two-by-two into the ark. The animals walking up the platform include a pair of elephants, a pair of giraffes, and a pair of triceratops.

Oh, yes. The dinosaurs are still around with Noah. You see, according to the museum, the fossilized dinosaur bones that we find in different layers of the earth are real. They just aren’t millions of years old as science claims. On a plaque in the Noah exhibit, it says:

Because things were buried in sequence during the flood, it left a pile of rocks and sediment each time and gave the appearance of layers of strata, which is why scientists misinterpret the layers of strata as coming from different era.

So fossilization was not the result of millions of years of pressure from layers of earth. According to the Creation Museum, fossilization happened in 40 days due to the tremendous pressure from the Great Flood. The extinction of dinosaurs happened slowly over the following two thousand years, with only one or two dinosaurs left by the middle ages—which spawned dragon legends so prominent throughout the world. Presented to the museum-goer as reasoned and logical.

This presentation does elicit questions in the mind of the thoughtful observer. What about carbon-dating? Why haven’t archaeologists found dinosaur bones that are younger than the Flood? And of course: What are you people smoking? Sadly, I had no representative from this culture who I could ask. I did hear a father’s reaction to his daughter’s questions. We were in the Tower of Babel exhibit, and I heard him yelling at her. “Stop asking so many questions!” he scolded her. “Just listen and pay attention. You don’t question this stuff, this is God’s word.”

Throughout the museum, there are monitors with God’s word on display. On every monitor, Biblical quotes flash on the screen while a voice reads the quotes aloud. Each of these screens has different texts, but over the same background. The background is a Torah scroll opened to the very beginning, the chapter we read today. On every monitor the Bible quotes are read across a Hebrew background—the original Hebrew text on a Torah. Remember, Hebrew serves as validation.

Here’s the problem: The Torah on every monitor is upside-down. Mistaking the letters like the friendly woman at the Torah display, the confused designers created a display of upside-down Torah throughout the entire museum.

I am reminded again of high school science. In anatomy class, we learned that the human eye is an amazing instrument for capturing light. It is able to detect different colors of light, adapt to different intensities of light and dark, and focus differently for objects that are far away or up close. When an image hits the optical nerve, however, that image is upside-down and 2-dimensional. The brain then flips this image, and uses information from both eyes to create the 3-D, right-side-up view of the world we enjoy. Without our brains working properly, we would see the world upside-down and flat.

The same is true with any information we take in. There are generally three sides to any story: yours, mine, and the facts. If we hear only one side of the story, we cannot possibly understand it properly. This is even the case when we watch the news. There is no such thing as an unbiased reporter. Opinions are disguised as information, and the medias feeds us constantly with lie after lie, scandal after scandal, anything that sells commercials. The media plays to our anxieties by presenting upside-down images on a screen of rendered half-truths.

When we hear a story from any source, our job is to do our due diligence and check the facts. Don’t trust what you learn from television, radio, emails, or even this bimah. Use your brain. Check the facts.

In just over a month we are going to vote. Voting itself is easy. It takes only pushing a button. What happens before pushing the button is the important part. It is our duty as American citizens to vote with our brains. We do this by thinking first about our values. What is important to us? How do we react to the issues of 2008? How important is one issue over another?

Then we look to see which candidate is a more suitable representation of our views. Based on using our brains, not on believing the stories we are told.

The dinosaurs are long gone. By using my brain and taking in as many sides of the story as I can, I have come to the conclusion that the Earth is in fact much, much more that 6000 years old. The Torah is not a history book about the past. It is a guide to teach us how to live right now. It is full of exhilarating stories about our mythological ancestors and how they overcame tremendous odds to succeed as God’s special people. We can learn from the examples of the great faith they had in God to get them through the difficult times.

One of the lessons from the Bible is that before us at every moment there are choices, and if we choose wisely we will live well. The choices we make are not always as clear as good over evil. More often they are between good and better. It is not always easy to tell which is which. The answer only becomes clear when we use our brains.

May we all use the coming year to ask good questions of anyone who presents a truth to us. May God grant us the wisdom to not take anything at face value, no matter how good it seems. May we use our minds to discover the facts that will lead us into a sweet, healthy, and prosperous 5769.

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon

2008-09-29T19:12:00.000-04:00

Clothing The Naked

In the movie Fiddler on the Roof, the beggar Nachum asks the character Lazar Wolf for alms. Lazar Wolf hands him a coin and says, “Here is a kopek, Nachum.”
Nachum responds, “One Kopek? Last week you gave me two!”
“I had a bad week, Nachum.”
“So?!? If YOU had a bad week, why should I suffer!?!”

Things are tough right now for Americans. And while we have bad weeks, bad months, or even a bad year, Carlos and Juan have had it worse.

Carlos grew up in Arkansas, where his middle class parents gave him everything they could, which wasn’t much. In his teens he developed a rebellious streak. He began fighting with his parents, mostly about his desire for freedom and independence, or rather his desire for what he believed freedom and independence were. When the fighting came to a head, Carlos fell into a deep depression and ran away from home. He was 16 years old.

Carlos fell in with a bad crowd. He joined a gang, got into drugs, and began stealing. His depression continued, and he decided to run even farther. He soon found himself here in Miami. But he again found solace in drugs and alcohol. This time he became an addict, living on the streets, sleeping in parks and under overpasses, and trying to avoid any police contact.

One night Carlos was attacked by two young men who stabbed him 47 times and left him for dead. He went into a coma, and contrary to doctors’ predictions, he came out of it after three months.

When he was released from the hospital, he found himself at Camillus House, a non-profit organization that works to keep people off the streets and in a safe haven. Camillus House took him in, gave him a room, hot meals, health care, doctors to talk to, and most importantly: support.

Today he is 24 years old. Thanks to Camillus House, Carlos got back on his feet, stopped using drugs, and even went to school. He even rekindled a relationship with his parents thanks to their guidance. He lives in Miami in a studio apartment that his parents helped him secure. He splits his free time between studying for his culinary school exams and volunteering at Camillus House. Carlos wants to make sure that he can prevent as many people as possible from going down the path that nearly killed him. He knows from experience that Camillus House provides that kind of help to people like he was.

Juan is eight years old, and the middle child out of seven. He lives in San Ramon, Nicaragua, a little ways north of Managua. San Ramon is a small city, with a population of 23,000 spread over about 300 square miles. The local hang out is a small pharmacy that sells different tea leaves for every medical ailment from skin rash to TB. San Ramon is known as the location of La Chureca, the largest landfill in Nicaragua.

La Chureca is the dump where Managua sends its garbage and it is the site of Juan’s family’s home. Juan, his parents, and his six brothers and sisters live in a two-room home on the landfill. All nine of them sleep in the same room. The parents and two youngest children share a bed, and the other five sleep on the rock floor. When it rains, the floor gets wet where they sleep. The bathroom is separated only by a curtain, affording little privacy. The kitchen is a wood stove, which must be watched carefully lest the cardboard walls ignite from a spark. This is not an unusual case, it is just the way many people live in La Chureca.

Like the other 1500 residents of La Chureca landfill, Juan goes to work with his father and older siblings every day. To them, work means collecting scrap metal, glass, and anything else they can sell to recycling centers. Juan offers a heartwarming smile when he finds what he calls tresoro, “a treasure.” He displays the kind of grin that makes you sad to see it because you know how infrequent his smiles must be. Today it is a jar of baby food with only a bite or two missing.

Navigating the workplace means walking over broken glass, metal shards, splintered wood, used syringes, and biomedical waste. Every now and then pockets of gas from decomposing waste below the surface will ignite causing an explosion, hurdling loose trash like shrapnel through the air. The children of La Chureca are known as los ninos de la basurera, or “Children of the Garbage.” They grow up with no clothing, no shoes, and their skin is extremely dark due to overexposure to the sun and lack of exposure to water for getting clean. These conditions lead to many incidents of cancer and physical and mental disabilities.

Recently Juan received help from caring individuals who donate their time, supplies, and money to the people of La Chureca. You see, Juan had a tumor in his brain. With no access to medical care and no ability to pay for care if there was access, Juan’s cancer spread into his eye and jaw. The treatment for his cancer happened in Managua, where doctors were able to operate and remove the tumor successfully. While Juan was in surgery and recovery, his mother had to stay at a shelter nearby, not unlike a Ronald McDonald House.

San Ramon is trying to build housing to keep los ninos de la basurera out of La Chureca and in safe living conditions with their families. Despite the deplorable living conditions, the people living in the landfill still have a will to survive, a strong sense of community, and a tremendous work ethic. But they need help.

The Torah says, “The poor will always be with us” (Deut 15:11). Judaism is grounded in a realistic view of the world. We know that while we may have lofty ideals of healing the world, and bringing peace and prosperity to the four corners of the earth, we are far from that goal today. Whether we look to Miami, Managua, or beyond, the poor are always with us.

In ten days we will fast for a day. Some people are lucky to fast only once a week. On Yom Kippur we will pray and study, asking God for forgiveness for what we may have done this past year that has missed the mark. We will read the words of Isaiah, who will ask if such a fast is enough. Isaiah describes exactly what kind of fast God wants for us:

To unlock fetters of wickedness, And untie the cords of the yoke; To let the oppressed go free; To break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, And to take the wretched poor into your home; When you see the naked, to clothe him, And not to ignore your own kin (Isa 58:6-7).
According to Isaiah, if we behave as such, God will look favorably upon the people. If we feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, and clothe the naked we will gain God’s goodwill. As a prophet, that was Isaiah’s job. Prophets spoke out against societal norms in favor of reconciling humanity and God. In the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, “The prophet was an individual who said ‘No’ to his society, condemning its habits and assumptions, its complacency, waywardness, and syncretism.” He adds, “The prophet is a person…who suffers harms done to others.” More than others, the prophet is able to understand the will of God and to translate that understanding to his fellow human beings.

This is more than an intellectual understanding. The prophet is touched by God to the core of his being and is able to know better than others the will of God and how that will should be manifest in our world. The prophet offers God’s words to the people with emotion and anguish. Although standing apart from the people, the prophet is one with the people, so words which condemn them condemn him as well.

Like the prophets of old, we hear the stories of Carlos and Juan and we feel their pain. We watch the You Tube videos and Dateline stories and tear up while sitting on the couch or at the computer. We do not want the world to be so full of anguish.

Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and noted psychiatrist, wrote “being human means being conscious and being responsible.” In other words, we are obligated to observe the world around us, and to react to injustices when we have the power to lessen their impact. When we hear of the suffering of the widow, the orphan, and the poor, it is our responsibility as human beings to do what we can to ease their suffering.

The Talmud tells a story of Roman governor Turnusrufus challenging Rabbi Akiva: If God loves the poor, why doesn’t God feed and clothe them? Rabbi Akiva responds that it is our duty to care for them. In order to be partners with God, we must be responsible for the well-being of all God’s creation.

We understand today that dire situations are not always the result of bad behavior. Some people make mistakes that cause their situations, but not all. Some people are born into poverty. Some people’s lives are destroyed by hurricanes or other natural disasters. Some find themselves too old to compete with their colleagues, then too old to be hired in their trained profession. Whatever the case, it is our duty to lift up the downtrodden, to work as God’s earthly partners, to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked.

How do we do this? How do we make a difference?

By cleaning out our closets.

At the end of the school year this past May, Ivania and Rodney Max called to talk to me about an idea they had. Ivania travels occasionally to her native Nicaragua, and she told me about los ninos de la basurera like Juan. She showed pictures and videos, told stories, and helped make me conscious of their story. She asked what we could do to help them. Could we ask our congregation for clothes, toiletries, and medicine? Could we go even further?

We added another dimension to the Maxes’ suggestions. We are already conscious of the struggles of people like Carlos who rely on Camillus House for food, shelter, and care. Miamians know about the work they have been doing in our community since 1960. Just in case, Camillus House offers free meals, showers, medical care, and addiction treatment for Miami’s needy. They become the brethren of the broken, giving creature comforts, rehabilitation, and hope. Now we Miamians are also conscious of La Chureca and their struggles. We know we are responsible for our local community, and our global community. The Maxes thought we should find a way to help both at the same time.

So that is exactly what we did. We put boxes in the lobbies—the main entrances to the synagogue. Big wardrobe boxes with little signs that said, “Please drop your clothing to give to the people of Managua and Miami.” With very little advertising, almost completely word-of-mouth, the response was tremendous. In one month, we collected piles of clothes that we split between Camillus House here in Miami, and La Chureca in San Ramon. When Camillus House picked up their portion, we knew there was a lot, but the shock came when we weighed the boxes to ship to San Ramon. Temple Sinai sent the Maxes to La Chureca with 800 pounds of clothes and supplies. 800 pounds!

That’s amazing!

And we can do better.

Two years ago, I watched with great pride as Temple Sinai filled a mock apartment ten times over with living needs over the High Holy Days. I knew I had found a congregation of justice pursuers who are conscious of the plights of others, and who act responsibly toward them.

Tonight I ask that you act again. I believe that we, as a congregation, will be able to fill the stage behind you with one ton—2000 pounds of clothing by Yom Kippur this year. One ton of clothes for the needy in Miami and San Ramon. For a congregation of nurturers like you, this should be an easy task.

With your program tonight you were given a list of five simple steps to help you find clothing you do not need.

Step One: sort through your closets and drawers. When was the last time you cleaned your closet? Pesach? …of 1984? We could all use a cleaner bedroom, and having clean closets always makes me feel like I have so much more space when getting dressed in the morning. So open your closets and drawers and see what you have forgotten is in there.

Step Two: Make a pile of the clothes you no longer want. Err on the side of donating it. As a rule, if you have not worn something in over a year, get rid of it. And please remember, the 80s are not coming back. Someone will be thankful for your gold lamay pants matching jacket.

Step Three: Sort through the pile. Something tells me this step is more for the men. If it looks like something that would look better as a dishrag, cut it into squares and leave it in the shmata drawer.

Step Four: Fold your donations. Wash them if necessary. Make your donation presentable.

Step Five: Bring your donation in to Temple Sinai! Put your folded clothes on the stage in the Social Hall, and we will update you throughout the High Holy Days as to how much we have collected. I look forward to seeing us reach our goal of a ton of clothes in ten days.

The boxes in our lobby have been decorated by the 5th grade class with the help of our art teacher, Tina Ohayon. In the boxes and on the stage, we will be collecting clothes, toiletries, and toys. Please try to bring in neatly folded clothing, as it will make them much easier to donate.

In the main office we will be collecting monetary donations. The money we collect will be used to defray the cost of shipping to San Ramon, and to buy medical supplies in Nicaragua.

There is a hidden sixth step as well. For anyone who has the desire, the Maxes are offering an opportunity to travel with Ivania to San Ramon to hand our gifts to the people of La Chureca. If you are interested in joining the Maxes on this mission, all you need is a plane ticket, and they will take care of the rest. Please let me know, and I will make the connection between you and the Maxes.

We are in the middle of a financial crisis in America that has the media screaming about the Hoover administration and another Depression. Like Nachum said, if WE had a bad week, why should Carlos and Juan suffer?

Give what you can, and clean out your closets to help clothe the naked.

Parashat Ki Teitze

2008-09-20T08:14:00.000-04:00

Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt -- how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the LORD your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

Deuteronomy 25:17-19

We are halfway through Elul, the month during which we are supposed to be preparing for the High Holy Days. We are immersed in our self-contemplation, searching our souls to determine how we can be better people in the next year. It is a time of asking for and giving forgiveness. Not only is it incumbent upon us to seek to reconcile with those we have wronged, it is our duty to forgive those who have wronged us.

So how do we deal with this passage of Torah right in the middle of our preparations? How do we handle the command to blot out an entire people? Surely the next generation of Amalekites had nothing to do with the attack in the desert on our way to Mount Sinai. Are we to understand that some wrongs are unforgivable?

Amalek’s “big sin” is often cited as taking advantage of the weak, slow, and overburdened Israelites. The real issue is that they were “undeterred by fear of God.” The Amalekites had no respect for the humans they were fighting, hence their dishonorable tactics. No thought toward the human beings in a battle is equated with no acknowledgement of the Divine spark within them. The Israelites are commanded, conversely, that God requires of them “Only this: to fear Adonai you God…” (Deut 10:12). Without fear of God, we lose our humanity because we do not acknowledge the godliness within ourselves.

We have ruach elohim within us, and we have Amalek at times. During Elul it is our responsibility to seek that Divine spark within, recognize the times we have behaved like Amalekites, and wipe out those aspects of our behavior. Then we must seek the times when we behave with reverence and awe in our hearts, and strive to live the way we know we can.

Do not forget!

Parashat Shoftim

2008-09-19T14:12:00.000-04:00

If, after you have entered the land that the LORD your God has assigned to you, and taken possession of it and settled in it, you decide, "I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me," you shall be free to set a king over yourself, one chosen by the LORD your God. Be sure to set as king over yourself one of your own people; you must not set a foreigner over you, one who is not your kinsman. Moreover, he shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the LORD has warned you, "You must not go back that way again." And he shall not have many wives, lest his heart go astray; nor shall he amass silver and gold to excess.

Deuteronomy 17:14-17

After wandering through the desert and witnessing God’s miracles and fighting for the Holy Land, we still will be exposed to the other people and the way they govern themselves. So of course we might want a king of our own. How nice of God to be understanding and allow us to learn from their examples. After all, without a ruler there is chaos, and we need to have order to be able to follow God’s laws. Remember, God’s punishments are to the third and fourth generation, not necessarily to the current one. A king punishes immediately, and only those who are judged to have done wrong. R. Shmuel says that the role of the king was to physically protect the Jewish people. So the implication is that God’s rule over us is a spiritual one.

But if the king is chosen by God, why do we need the rest of the criteria? Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels explains that these limitations are set to prevent an abuse of power, and to keep the kingship from becoming and exploitative institution (from his D’var Torah for AJWS). But perhaps the most important limitation is just after our pericope: When he is seated on his royal throne, he shall have a copy of this Teaching written for him on a scroll milifnei hakohanim halevi’im, “[by] the Levite priests” (Deut 17:18).

The translation of milifnei as “by” by JPS leaves a little to be desired, but “from before the Levite priests” makes no sense. It should be understood as, “according to the interpretation of the Levite priests,” which would require the king to have Levite advisors around him constantly in order to live and rule according to Torah law. This interpretation brings to light what a brilliant piece of legislature the Torah is. The writer says to the reader, “You can have someone in power in addition to me, as long as my representatives are right there, making sure you don’t get too powerful. It seems like the origin of checks and balances. I wonder if it worked as well then as it does today….

Thanks to Bob Sugarman for your help with this week’s D’var Torah.

Parashat Re'eh

2008-09-15T14:47:00.000-04:00

If your brother, your own mother's son, or your son or daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your closest friend entices you in secret, saying, "Come let us worship other gods" -- whom neither you nor your fathers have experienced -- from among the gods of the peoples around you, either near to you or distant, anywhere from one end of the earth to the other: do not assent or give heed to him. Show him no pity or compassion, and do not shield him; but take his life. Let your hand be the first against him to put him to death, and the hand of the rest of the people thereafter.

Deuteronomy 13:7-10

Throughout Jewish tradition the danger of worshipping other gods has taken many forms. The Midrash of Abram smashing his father’s idols is one of the first, giving us a demonstration of how we should behave around idols. Moses gives us another demonstration, reacting with such anger at the idolatrous Israelites dancing around the golden calf that he smashes the tablets given to him by God. The third of the Ten Commandments, “You shall not make a sculpted image,” is arguably the first commandment that actually is a command, illustrating its high priority in monotheistic worship of God. The poetry of Isaiah denounces “non-gods” and decries illegitimate devotion, so that even the idea of anything other than God is as condemnable as praying to other gods.

Earlier in Parashat Re’eh we read that God will choose a place for us to worship so that we will not be tempted by the profane locations of other religions (Deuteronomy 12:5), but never before have we heard such a harsh punishment for idolatry. Should they attempt to lead us astray, we must pursue even our closest friends and family members. Not just destroy their work like Abram or get angry at them like Moses, but seek to kill them.

I cannot imagine an example of when this commandment may have been followed through. At the same time, it serves as a declaration of just how serious this “no other gods thing” is. Monotheism was an innovative religious practice when the Israelites were learning their religion. Harsh punishments declared for ignoring the most important practices strengthen the magnitude of the law. We never intend to do harm to our loved ones. The purpose of the text is to show them that there is very little if anything in this world more important than devotion to God and God alone.

Parashat Ekev

2008-08-25T13:42:00.000-04:00

Parashat Ekev begins with a reminder that if we follow the commandments God will reward us with blessing. Standing at the Jordan, the Israelites could see before them the greatest of the blessings God offers: the Holy Land. In Deuteronomy 8:7-9, we read that the land is
“a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; 8 a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; 9 a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing…”

This land that the spies found to be flowing with milk and honey also will provide seven species of valuable produce for consumption and trade. Next we are told that the stones of the land will yield iron, and that copper can be mined from the hills. It is a sharp contrast to desert life, where the land provided nothing but scorpions and snakes, and where the hills gave us sand and more sand. It is hard to imagine a better reward to a generation of people who have never known anything but desert life.

The next section, immediately following the description of this amazing land, reminds us of desert life again. Beginning with verse 12 we hear an admonition to not forget the travels in the desert. It would be easy after living in this prosperous land to not remind the future generations about the trials of the forty year journey through the desert. Why bother them with the difficulties of the past when we can enjoy what we have today? The Torah answers this very question.

We are commanded not to forget that God brought us out of Egypt. God led us through the wilderness, gave us water and food where there is none to be found. God would not let our clothes wear down or our feet swell. We did not have to worry about the day to day. We had food, water, and clothing provided for us by God. It was a miraculous time.

In the Promised Land there will still be food and water, but humans will grow and harvest the food. Humans will draw water from the wells. After a little while in the Promised Land it would be easy to believe that the crops that we grow and the water we draw are from our efforts alone. We might forget that the figs, pomegranates, wheat, barley, olives, and honey are gifts from God.

So we are commanded to never forget the wandering in the desert. A reminder not that we have had it so rough, not a chest beating for all we have endured. This is a reminder that everything we have is a miracle from God. Remember the miracles in the desert? Remember the water flowing from a rock and the manna falling with the dew? We still live with miracles! They just are not as blatant as they used to be, so we are commanded to remember the miracles of the past in order to acknowledge the miracles of today.

During prayer services we remind ourselves of this in the Modim section of the Amidah. We thank God “for your wondrous gifts at all times, morning, noon, and night.” We also remind ourselves of this when we pray nissim b’chol yom, the blessing section for our daily miracles. Reminders in our liturgy and our Torah are there to keep us from thinking that everything we do comes from our power. The gifts of having food and water, sharing time with our loved ones, and providing the basic necessities for them are miracles.

May we all be able to realize the miracles of every day, big and small. May we find that as we work towards perfecting the world, we acknowledge God’s work with our hands. May it be God’s will that we continue to be instruments of making miracles.

Parashat Va'etchanan

2008-08-17T09:26:00.000-04:00

The Reubenites and the Gadites named the altar "Witness", meaning, "It is a witness between us and them that Adonai is our God."
(Joshua 22:34)

Gabriel had his four-year check up this week. Not a big deal—it was mostly looking in the mouth, ears, and eyes. The usual doctor stuff. The one thing that was different this time was Gabriel’s first hearing and vision test. He passed both with flying colors and sounds, so no worries. The hard part was getting Gabriel to take the tests.

The first test was for hearing. He had to put the ear phones on and listen for a beep in one ear or the other. We tried to make a game out of it. “How fast can you raise your hand after a beep?” “Great job!! Two points for Gabriel!!!” (You use a lot of exclamation points when talking to a four-year-old.) When the nurse was finished, she took off the earphones and told us that his hearing is great. Never one who lets people go without a joke, I asked, “What can you tell us about his listening?” She responded, “Try being interesting,” without skipping a beat. I must have been the 1001st time she had heard that one.

This week in Parshat Va’etchanan we read the Shema, our Jewish credo. It’s the first prayer we memorize in religious school. It’s the beginning of the instructions written in our mezzuzot and our tefillin. “Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai alone,” is how it is translated in “Gates of Grey.” The first word, shema, is the command form of the verb lishmoa, “to hear.” We are commanded to hear that we have one and only one God, and we refer to God as Adonai. Hear. Not listen, just hear. Like Gabriel’s hearing test, it leaves us wondering about the difference between hearing and listening. It makes us wonder why the word is not hitbonen “concentrate,” or hakshiv “pay attention.”

In the book of Joshua, chapter 22, Joshua sends the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and half of Manasseh back to their land holdings across the Jordan River. Before they cross the river, the three tribes build a “great conspicuous altar.” This angers the other tribes, as they believe the altar is for worshipping other gods. The Reubenites, Gadites, and Manassites explain that they built the altar not as hillul hashem (so to speak), but for future generations, so that if the tribes in the Promised Land were ever to question the validity of the outer tribes’ stake in Klal Yisrael, the altar would serve as a witness. In fact, they name the altar “witness,” as it says in Joshua 22:34 (see above), and the inner tribes are pleased.

Just like the “great conspicuous altar” served as a witness to the future generations of the Reubenites and the Gadites, the Shema serves as a witness to our future generations. The words of the Shema are as familiar to our Jewish youth as the Pledge of Allegiance is to most American youth. We pass these words down from generation to generation, reminding ourselves and our children to keep the words of the Shema on our heart and minds, to write them on our doorposts and in our phylacteries, and to discuss them and teach them at every opportunity. When we go into any synagogue, anywhere in the world, we can be assured that the words of the Shema will be recited aloud. We feel at home when we hear the familiar words of our liturgy, even if different nusach is used. Any Jewish person who walks into any synagogue is welcomed by the familiarity of the words we say, which serve as our testament. The Shema is our way of proving, as it were, the validity of our faith in God, and our connection to the Jewish people.
There is a textual link to this idea in addition to the theological one. In Joshua 22:34, they build the altar as a witness that “Adonai is God.” In the words of the Shema, we declare that Adonai is God. We are commanded specifically to hear, but there is a hidden command in the verse. The enlarged letters ayin and dalet in the first and last words of the Shema spell the word eid, or witness—the name of the altar built by the Reubenites and Gadites. The implicit command is that we are to use this creed as a witness for future generations. We need only hear the shema, and we have witnessed the faith of generations past. So too will our grandchildren’s grandchildren witness our faith every time they hear the Shema, wherever they are. These six words hold such meaning that our faith is reaffirmed every time we read them, every time we utter them, and every time we hear them.

Just by hearing these six words, we serve as witnesses. Sometimes when we hear we are being passive, just letting sounds flow into our ear. With the words of the Shema, we cannot hear them without listening. It is culturally impossible for us to just hear these powerful words, so we are commanded to hear them, and God knows that when we hear these words, we are connected as a people of faith. Just letting the words enter our ears makes us a part of a people that has survived generations.

Parashat Devarim

2008-08-08T14:56:00.000-04:00

Deuteronomy 1:12-13
12 How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering! 13 Pick from each of your tribes men who are wise, discerning, and experienced, and I will appoint them as your heads."

The first thing that struck me about this choice for our continuing chevruta is the first word in Hebrew: eichah. With Tisha B’av this coming Sunday, and Megillat Eichah in our purview, I have to point out that this is an appropriate pericope to study indeed (Thanks to Rabbi Brad Levenberg for suggesting these verses).
Back to the text, Moses bewails the need to share in the leadership of the Israelites in a review of Parashat Yitro where his father-in-law tells him the same thing. Moses appoints a leadership team to help him. In sharing in the responsibilities of managing the Israelites, Moses hits on an extremely important aspect of Jewish Life: We cannot be alone.
So too on Tisha B’av, our day of mourning when we lament over the tragedies that have befallen our people age after age. We do not eat, and mourn on a personal level by how we treat our bodies. But that does not suffice. We gather to mourn and pray. We read aloud the words of the book of eichah, “How lonely sits the city Once great with people! She that was great among nations Is become like a widow; The princess among states Is become a thrall.” We sit lonely, but not alone.
When we are at our most desperate, we call on our community as Moses does when he appoints leaders of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands. When we are mourning personal or communal losses, we call on our community to cry with us. When we are feeling lonely, we call on our community to remind us that as a Jewish people, we are never alon.

Save a Life (Sermon delivered 7/11/2008)

2008-07-11T14:42:00.000-04:00

"If you will heed the LORD your God diligently, doing what is upright in My sight, giving ear to My commandments and keeping all My laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, ki ani adonai rofecha for I the LORD am your healer."
(Exodus 15:26)

Just before our silent prayer this evening we prayed for healing. Every Shabbat we take the opportunity to interrupt our regular worship service to ask for healing on behalf of those in our lives who are suffering from some sort of illness. Every day, as a part of the daily Amidah, we ask God to heal our friends, our family, ourselves. As Modern Jews we straddle two worlds: the world of science and the world of faith. We understand that we should go to the best doctors available for healing. Even the Talmud requires it. Yet we say Mi Shebeirach every day, even on Shabbat.

We believe that God is rofeinu, our healer. For many of us the Mi Shebeirach is the most intense prayer experience we have over the course of any given week. Expressing our hope that our loved ones will be healed may or may not help them heal. There are studies that show that when a person knows people are praying for healing, something happens physiologically and they are able to heal. When a person is unaware that people praying for them…we do not know. But even as Modernists, we are certainly open to the possibility that God has an active role in the healing process.

At the same time, we understand that God no longer serves as the miracle worker of the Biblical stories. We know that God must follow the laws of nature, and if a person is injured or contracts or inherits a disease, that person must deal with it as nature demands. That might mean taking the appropriate medicines, a regimen of physical therapy, or enduring years of waiting for an organ donor. These processes may take days or years. They may be done alone or require the help of an entire community.

Sometimes, though, we can take steps in advance to help the process of healing. The Talmud says that when a person saves one life, it is as if they saved the entire world. You can try to save a life by doing nothing more than putting a Q-tip in your mouth.

Mira Elias was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia on July 6, 2004. She had treatment and thought it was gone, but a year later she found out it had come back. Then, in November that year she did receive a miracle. Only her miracle came not in the form of a burning bush or a parting sea. Her miracle is named Tzivya. On November 4, 2005, Mira received a blood stem cell transplant from Tzivya, and just two months ago the two of them met for the first time. In Mira’s words, “Because of Tzivya I am alive today and able to look forward to my future.”

Michael Faust was diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia in March 2004. He spent months traveling the globe from New York to Australia looking for someone who could help him with a cure. In February 2006, after nearly two years of searching, he was matched with a bone marrow donor, also named Michael, and they too were able to meet two months ago. In Faust’s words, “Michael has given me a great deal more than blood stem cells. He has given me another chance to be with my family, another chance to get back on the tennis court, another chance to start my own family, another chance to accomplish my dreams and most importantly, he has given me a second chance at life.”

Maybe you have heard similar stories. Perhaps you have read about them on line or seen a feature on a news program. We love to watch these stories, we might even tear up in sympathy or in joy. There is a way to do more than watch. We have an opportunity to try to save a life. We can register with Gift of Life.

Gift of Life is a bone marrow registry started in 1991. In its first four years, over 60,000 registrants of Eastern European Jewish descent signed up to be donors. Today, Gift of Life manages a registry of over 120,000 bone marrow donors and a bank of over 800 umbilical cord blood units. They have facilitated transplants for over 1,500 patients in need, and processed over 18,000 searches for patients worldwide. One in 1,000 of the donors in Gift of Life's registry are called to donate their marrow or blood stem cells each year, and I was called this week. I signed up in 2006 at a drive at Hebrew Union College. I wrote down my name and address, swiped my inner cheek with a Q-tip, put it in a hermetically sealed container, and that was it. Until this weekend.

I received a letter on Saturday that I was a potential match for a 7 year old boy in desperate need of a blood stem cell transplant. I was to call the Gift of Life and check my email for a consent form. I called on Monday and had a lovely conversation with their interviewer Amanda. She asked me health questions for about 20 minutes, and told me to send in the consent form as soon as possible. Time, of course, was of the essence. By Wednesday Amanda had called to speak to me again. Because of a melanoma I had four years ago, I am not a match for this boy. Honestly, I feel like I’ve been dumped. My blood will not be used to save his life, and he must keep searching. My opportunity to be someone’s miracle will have to wait.

Though I am unable to help this particular boy, I have an unusual benefit that other potential donors may not have. I have a pulpit and a blog. I can teach you about this opportunity and convince you to sign up. I do hope I get called again. Until then I pray that you will sign up to be the next miracle. Go to the Gift of Life web site. www.giftoflife.org. Since saving a life is a Mitzvah that supersedes Shabbat, go home tonight and register on line.

The patients on the recipient list have been praying fervently for God to serve as their healer. They pray for a miracle every opportunity they get. God no longer splits the seas or makes the dry bones dance. God works in more subtle ways. God works through us. God today is Adonai rochecha, Adonai our healer, through scientific advances and through our willingness to donate blood stem cells and bone marrow. We have the opportunity to put out a helping hand to people like Mira and Michael. Sign up for Gift of Life, and one day you might be God’s next miracle.

Yizkor Shavuot Sermon

2008-06-19T14:15:00.000-04:00

This is from almost a month ago, but it is the sermon I delivered on Shavuot this year. Enjoy!

When God gave Torah at Mount Sinai, no bird chirped, no fowl flew, no ox lowed, no angel stirred a wing, no seraph sang. The sea did not roar, creatures did not speak—the whole world was hushed into breathless silence. It was then that the voice went forth: anochi Adonai elocheicha, “I am the Lord your God” (Exod. 20:2).[1]

The world was in perfect silence that morning when we stood at Mount Sinai. Last night when we dedicated Ingrid Roskin’s sculpture of the Ten Commandments in the Bloom Lobby, I was reminded of a Kabbalistic Midrash about the revelation experience. It stems from an argument about how many commandments were revealed at Mount Sinai.

In the Torah, just after the section we read today, in verse 15 of Exodus 20, the Israelites tell Moses they will do whatever he tells them, and that he should go and talk to God. “Do not let God speak to us anymore,” the Israelites say, “lest we die.”

The midrash begins with a debate about whether this verse is out of order in the Torah. The rabbis involved in the discussion suggest different positions for the verse, moving it backward through the list of ten. “It should go after the ninth commandment.” “No, it should go after the eighth!” “The seventh!” etc. etc.

Reading this Midrash, we would think that once it gets to the suggestion to put this verse after the first commandment, it would be over. But that is just the point where it starts to get really clever. We read that the Israelites could only stand to hear the first word of the commandments, the word anochi, or “I.” Once God declared the one-ness of God, the Israelites needed no more convincing. The power of God’s voice speaking just one word was a complete revelatory experience. Just by God declaring God’s presence, the Israelites had complete faith and agreed to God’s commandments. All it took was one word.

But another rabbi says, “No, it wasn’t after the first word, it was after the first letter.” The first letter in the word anochi is an alef. What does alef sound like? It is silent. So by saying that the Israelites could not handle hearing God’s voice after God spoke the alef means the experience was intense when God spoke silence. When God prepares to speak, takes a breath, as it were, and pronounces only an alef, the world stood still. The Israelites were convinced. The revelatory experience was complete.

We are taught that when the Israelites received the Torah, it was not just the Israelites living in the desert at the time who were there at the mountain. When God revealed Torah, every Jewish soul was there at the foot of Mt. Sinai. All the souls that were yet to be born, and all the souls that had already passed on— every Jew was there that day.

The revelation of Torah allows us to come to a moment in time when we all stood together. Our past, our present, and our future, standing as one and declaring our faith in God and Torah: na’aseh v’nishmah. By standing with the souls of those yet to be, we acknowledge that we will be faithful to God and God’s Commandments in all of our future generations. By standing with the souls of the departed, we remember that our ancestors merited this pact, and it is our responsibility to uphold it.

Most of us do not remember standing at Sinai, but we were there. We were there in the ancestors who raised us with our sense of community. We were there in the form of people who were our teachers. We were there in the bodies of the family we love.

As we move into Yizkor, our service of memory, we move from ancient memory to recent memory. We remember the loved ones who stand with us at all points in our lives. We do not only remember the moments of thunder and lightning and shofars blowing on a mountain top. We also remember the moments of silence, when not even a word was needed to know that those we love, love us in return.
[1] Exod. Rabbah 29:9

Shemini

2008-04-10T15:52:00.000-04:00

In Parashat Shemini (Lev. 9:1-11:47), we read about the priestly inauguration, the downfall of Nadav and Abihu, and the list of fit and unfit animals for human consumption. The parashah ends with a reminder that we are to be holy because God is holy, and that the dietary laws are written here to help us distinguish between the tamei and the tahor, translated often as “unclean and clean.” The words actually refer to the ritual purity of the animal, not the sanitary nature of the beasts. The Torah does not allow humans to ingest anything impure. Doing so would take us out of the state of holiness that we strive for.

Maimonides adds to the dietary laws. He reminds that food is for maintaining the body’s health and not for pleasure. He instructs not to eat until full. He explains the order in which food should be eaten. He also delineates six food groups:
Grains
Vegetables
Fruit
Dairy
Meat and Protein
Sweets, Oils, and Fatty Foods

Maimonides recommends that a person should eat more foods from groups 1-3 and less from groups 4 and 5, and as little as possible from group 6. This is nearly identical to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “Food Pyramid” of recommended daily servings of the food groups. The FDA recommends 6-11 servings of grains, 3-5 servings of vegetables, 2-4 servings of fruit, 2-3 servings of dairy and meat, and sparing use of fats, oils, and sweets.

The difference between Maimonides and the FDA comes in the intent of the dietary restrictions. The FDA is concerned with health for the sake of being healthy. Maimonides is, like the Torah, concerned with connection to God. He declares explicitly in Mishneh Torah:

Since maintaining a healthy and sound body is among the ways of God—for one cannot understand or have any knowledge of the Creator if one is ill—therefore one must avoid that which harms the body and accustom oneself to that which is helpful and helps the body become stronger.

(Hilchot De’ot 4:1)

To Maimonides maintaining a healthy body is a direct link to maintaining a healthy mind, which in turn is a direct link to being open to God.

As a people, Jews take every opportunity to sanctify the eating experience. As it says at the end of Parashat Shemini, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” Rabbi Litwak spoke last night about how the biblical dietary laws are for the purpose of being holy. In addition to the biblical dietary laws (if we follow the laws of kashrut), we say blessings any time we eat, including before and after each meal. We eat special foods on certain holidays, and no food on other holidays. We dip apples in honey on Rosh Hashanah, bless the seven species indigenous to Israel on Sukkot, and imbue our meal with symbolism on Pesach. All of our practices with food serve the same purpose. Every time we are about to feed our most basic desire—physical sustenance—we take a moment to acknowledge our most complex aspiration: Our connection to God.

Pikudei

2008-03-08T07:26:00.001-05:00

“Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud had settled upon it and the Presence of the LORD filled the Tabernacle.” Moses does go into the Tent of Meeting in Numbers 7:89. This is easily explained away by saying that the cloud would lift when God summoned Moses so that he could enter the Tent of Meeting, then it would return when Moses left. Rashi translates “because” as “when,” and other commentators follow his lead, making the second clause a modifier for what would seem like a disagreement with different verses of Torah, which of course cannot happen, ever.

I am still left with a question, though, about God’s presence in the tent. That God can be held to one location is a dubious assertion at best in my opinion. God is everywhere and fills everything. There is godliness within us and saturated into the fiber of our universe. So to declare that God’s presence fills the Tent of Meeting is redundant, because God’s presence fills everywhere. Therefore, there would be no lack of space for Moses in the Tent of Meeting because we already occupy the space of God’s presence just by being in the world.

It seems to me that the cloud serves as a symbol of God’s presence at rest. If the community was up and moving when the cloud was up and moving and at rest when the cloud was at rest, it would stand to reason that when the cloud was at rest God was not ready for business, so to speak. Or even better, God wanted Moses to take leadership in his own hands and not consult God for every aspect of Israelite life. Keep in mind this comes just after Moses’ face-to-face encounter with God. God gives Moses a once in a lifetime glimpse into the very real presence of God, and he is not to rely on it regularly. When the cloud is there, Moses remembers that he can do this on his own. He can lead the people into the Promised Land and complete their journey from Egyptian degradation into liberation in Israel.

Vayakhel

2008-03-07T12:47:00.000-05:00

The commandment to keep Shabbat appears 10 times in the Torah. Often we do not understand exactly what that means. “Remember Shabbat and keep it holy” (Exod 20:8 et al). Do no work because, “in six days Adonai created Heaven and earth and on the seventh day God rested” (Exod 20:11). We are vaguely aware of all kinds of things we don’t do on Shabbat, some of which seem a little ridiculous to our modernist point of view.

“On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the LORD; whoever does any work on it shall be put to death” (Exod 35:2). The appearance of Shabbat in this week’s Parashah seems to be a non sequitur. Before we get to this point Moses is re-receiving the Torah from God. He comes down the mountain with his Hi-Pro glow, gathers the Israelites, and reiterates the commandment for keeping Shabbat just before going into the description of collection of goods for building the Tabernacle, hiring inspired contractors for building the tabernacle, then actually building the Tabernacle. The Shabbat restriction seems out of place.

The Rabbis of the Talmud take this out-of-place (which they cannot believe is out of place) pericope to serve as a reminder that the work that is prohibited on Shabbat includes all of the work necessary for building the Tabernacle, from paying for it to laying the finishing touches. They come up with 39 activities that are forbidden on Shabbat, and many of the restrictions that do not get specific mention in Torah are derivatives of the idea that the Israelites are reminded of Shabbat just before they begin the Tabernacle’s construction.

When we step back and think about exactly what the Israelites are engaged in right now, it becomes clear that the Shabbat reminder fits perfectly here, as do the 39 restrictions. The Israelites are about to build the Tabernacle, the place where God’s earthly presence will dwell. It was the single most important thing they would build in their life time. They spent years building for the Egyptian Pharaohs, building places of worship for idolaters. Now they finally have an opportunity to build something for their God, for their worship. God knows that the Israelites will put everything they have into the building of their own Tabernacle, and Moses reminds them of the command to keep Shabbat so that they do not get carried away and forget why they are building the Tabernacle in the first place.

Even for the modernist, Shabbat is critical in the scope of living a Jewish life. Shabbat is the day that God took to rest because God knows that we have the tendency to get lost in our work. We do not take all of our vacation days, we don’t take breaks or stop for meals, we go to work sick, we push ourselves to the limit. Written into the system is a day to focus on ourselves and our families. We do not do what we do on the other six days. We spend time with each other or alone, relaxing, learning, reading for pleasure, and shifting from the mundane into the holy. Even if what we are engaged in is the most important thing to us, Shabbat supercedes.

Parashat Ki Tisa

2008-02-21T16:20:00.000-05:00

In a scene of personification extraordinaire, God “walks” past Moses, covering him with a “hand” so that Moses will not see God’s “face,” but only God’s “back.” Knowing that God cannot walk, has neither hand, back, nor face, we are left with a tremendous ability to interpret here, and as the centuries have passed, the commentators have taken this opportunity often.

Rashi (in one of the more laughable and yet more famous Rashi-isms) says that “My back” means that Moses can see the knot in God’s Tefillin. Saadia Gaon calls it “The end of God’s light,” implying that we cannot know God from the beginning, only from the end. Ibn Ezra points out that it is a metaphor, but does not explain it, instead choosing to talk about other metaphors and draw parallels. Bechor Shor explains the metaphor as incomprehensible, since we cannot look God square on. My personal favorite comes from a combination of Ralbag and Sforno. Gersonides interprets “my back” as “events that I leave in my wake,” and Sforno teaches that Moses will see how the actions of the world below originate with God above.

When we see God’s back, therefore, we are seeing the results of God’s work in the world. Sforno describes in another commentary a footprint left in the sand. We no longer see the foot, but we know one was there. So too with God’s work in the world. We see the events God leaves in God’s wake, like the Israelites saw with the plagues and the Sea of Reeds, like Noah saw in the rainbow, and like Elijah saw in the still small voice as God passed by the mouth of his cave. The difference between the Israelites, Noah, and Elijah is that the Israelites and Noah needed huge, glaring signs of God’s presence, whereas Elijah recognized the soft murmuring sound as God’s true voice.

When God’s presence is glaring and in our face, noticing God is easy. We thank God for a miraculous recovery of someone’s health, for the fingers-of-God that pierce a cloudy sky and warm us on a dreary day, and for the epiphanies we get when studying a difficult topic. We do not always recognize God’s work in the every day, in water we drink, air we breathe, or light we use to see. As Sforno reminds us, everything in the world below originates with God. It is our job to take notice, to recognize the still small voice that calls to us from what seems like the mundane aspects of life.

Welcome!

2008-02-17T11:58:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Rabbi Young's blog.
Feel free to post questions and comments about my 8th grade class, public speaking engagements, or anything happening at Temple Sinai. I will do my best to keep this blog up to date with the many happenings at Temple Sinai.
Keep checking in, and check out www.tsnd.org for more details of temple events!
-R. Young