I have been in the shul business now, coming on 24 years. And over these years, it has been my privilege to work with literally hundreds of committed Jews both lay and professional.
More than once, I have noticed a member of the congregation begin an adult education class, or sit on a committee for the first time, looking nervous and downright insecure.
I speak with them after the class or the meeting and I acknowledge their anxiety and I ask them why? The synagogue of all the places in our lives is a warm and accepting place. We welcome everyone and we welcome everyone just the way they are.
And then they enlighten me and remind me that I have to pay closer attention. They say “ Rabbi, I am nervous because I can barely read Hebrew. My Jewish background is not very extensive. I am sure most people in this class or on this committee know more than me. I am so new at all of this. I am an accomplished adult out in the world but I feel like a child when I walk in these doors.”
“I feel like a child when I walk in these doors. How can I, of all people, contribute and make a difference in this place, in this community?”
I think of these good people as I read the parasha this morning. It begins with a description of the Menorah in the Tabernacle. What is the Menorah? It is very simply a candelabra designed to light an inner chamber of the Tabernacle. And we read in the text, “daber el aharon v’amarta elav, behaalotecha et hanerot el mul p’nai hamemora, ya’eru shivat ha nerot.” “Speak to Aaron and say to him, ‘when you kindle the lamps, toward the face of the Menorah, shall the seven lamps cast light.” The lights shine towards the face of the candelabra itself. This seems to imply that light of the menorah somehow shines back on itself. Rashi says that the three branches on the left of the Menorah shine towards the central branch and the three candles on the right shine back to the center as well and according to the Artscroll Chumash, this focus towards the center concentrates all seven candles into perhaps, an intense single beam. I think, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the light of God, blinding, brilliant, shining a laser beam that can burn through things. And there is drama here. Divine light exploding into the ritual lives of human beings.
I like this notion inspired by Rashi. It’s interesting. But I find another understanding of the Menorah even more compelling. It is brought to us from the Sefat Emet, a Chasidic scholar, 19th century Poland. He explains the meaning of the Menorah by bringing a midrash from a collection of midrashim called “B’midbar Rabbah.” Art Green translates the passage for us: “A king asked his loving subject to prepare a meal for him. [The subject] did so gladly, but all in his own ordinary vessels. When the king arrived, accompanied by all his retinue and finery, the subject became embarrassed and put all his own things away. When the king asked where the meal was that he had prepared, the loving subject had to admit that he had been ashamed. But the king immediately insisted that all the royal finery be set aside and that they use only that which this devoted subject had prepared for him.”
Sefat Emet then writes, “We see from the story that it was proper for the subject to prepare the meal as he did, even though he saw all the king’s fancy vessels. Despite everything the king already had, the subject had to do his part....”
So this is a very different way of looking at the Menorah. The Menorah is just a utensil like the subject’s serving dishes for the king. The king didn’t care about the dishes, he didn’t even care about the food. He cared about his subject. God is the king in the midrash and God doesn’t care about the Menorah. Does God need the Menorah’s light in the Tabernacle to see what is going on there? Does God even need the Tabernacle; it was just a tent made of animal skins. Inside was a candle holder with seven candles. God’s light wasn’t in there. This was a simple little structures in which were simple little things. It was all that a wandering people in the desert could offer up to their God. One day there would be a glorious Temple in Jerusalem; one of the construction wonders of the world. That was drama. But the Tabernacle wasn’t drama; it was small, it was simple, it was modest. It was the best the people could do. Let me say this another way, “it was the best, the people could do.
And according to Sefat Emet, God was delighted with the gift of the Tabernacle because it was genuine; it was from the heart and soul of the People of Israel. Small gifts matter. Even a slave people wandering in a wasteland, can give a gift worth giving, accepted and beloved of God.
It doesn’t matter who we are. It doesn’t matter what we know. Every human being has something to contribute, no matter how modest they think that contribution may be. I have witnessed some of the most searching and profound questions coming from a brand new student of Torah. I have witnessed some of the most helpful and meaningful contributions to the shul coming from the least experienced committee member. Everyone brings their own personality, their own ideas, and their own selves to the community and without each of those gifts; the community would be very much impoverished.
God doesn’t seek brilliance, He seeks the heart. When the first sibling, Abel, brought his gift to God, it consisted of one of his best sheep. But it was only a sheep; what does God care about sheep? But the text implies, because it was the best of Abel’s sheep, God was pleased. Cain just brought some wheat --it wasn’t the best wheat; he probably didn’t think too much about his gift, he probably didn’t really care overmuch about it and God rejected it.
Every one of us has a gift to give to the community. Every one of us has a contribution to make that will make a difference. If given with love, with generosity, with a full heart, no matter what it is, it will be accepted and cherished by this community and by God.
I have always imagined that the Menorah wasn’t important because it shined light upon the utensils in the inner chamber of the Tabernacle. Rather, the Menorah was important because it shined light upon the face of the Priest. It was what the Priest as a human being could bring to God that mattered to God. It is the gift of our best selves that we bring to each other and to the community that matters to God. The question, then, that each of us must ask of him or herself? “What will my gift be?”
Friday, May 28, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Shavuot Yizkor and Humility
Jerusalem has been in the news lately --building or not building in Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood in the northeastern part of the city. Jerusalem has never been far from our thoughts. Every day, we face Jerusalem and we pray. After Yom Kippur services and at the end of our Pesach Sedarim, we say, “l’shana habaah b’rushalayim,” next year may we be privileged to be in Jerusalem. Events in Jerusalem thousands of miles away from Denver often touch us as if they happened in our back yard.
Since King David founded the city for the Jewish people 3000 years ago, Jerusalem has been our holy city, our center, our spiritual home.
So I ask you a perplexing question. If Jerusalem is so central to our religious and spiritual existence, than why do we read in Torah, that of all the places in the world, the Torah was given to the Jewish people not in Jerusalem, but rather on top of some unknown mountain in the middle of the desert: called Mt. Sinai?
Is there anything more important than our Holy Torah? It is the word of God revealed to his chosen people. It is our guide, our moral anchor; it is what has distinguished us from the other nations of the world. It has given the Jewish people its identity.
The Torah is the central religious text of our people; why wasn’t it given on Mt. Zion? Why didn’t god’s revelation occur in the holy city of Jerusalem?
The rabbis of the Talmud were also perplexed about this. There are Midrashim that say that Mt. Zion in Jerusalem and Mt. Sinai in the desert were once joined together as one and when they split, the one became the site of the revelation and the other the site of the Holy Temple.
But that Midrash just begs the question. Why did they split? Why did the central religious event in our history not take place in the physical center of our religious world?
There is another Midrash that I think is more to the point. Rabbi Yose Hagalili and Rabbi Akiva were discussing just this issue. And they said that when God was about to reveal the torah, all the mountains of the world began to position themselves to receive the law. They argued for their position. Two in particular, Mt. Tabor and Mt. Carmel both called out to God, “ the torah shall be revealed on me,” and the other, “the torah shall be revealed on me.”
God looked at both mountains and said, “indeed, you are both great mountains, high and grand, but on both of you the pagans of the world have practiced idolatry, you are not fit.”
The Midrash goes on with another interpretation. It says in the Proverbs, “a man’s pride will bring him low.” The Midrash attributes this verse to Mt. Tabor and to Mt. Carmel which came from the ends of the earth boastfully proclaiming, “we are high and the Holy One, blessed be He, will give the Torah on us.” But the verse, “he who is of lowly spirit, shall attain great honor,’ and the Rabbis attribute this verse to Sinai which humbled itself by saying, “I am a low mountain, alone in the desert.” So God placed his glory upon Mt. Sinai and the Torah was given thereon so that the mountain was privileged to attain to all that honor.
Now this Midrash teaches us something all together new; that it was irrelevant to God, where exactly His revelation would take place. The mountain top where God and Moses met did not need to be the highest or the grandest. In fact, God chose a lowly mountain which sat in a wasteland. Nothing could have been less grand, or more remote.
And I think that that is the specific point the Torah is trying to make. There is nothing grand in appearance about the Torah. It is a book. It’s words on a scroll. It was given in a desert, on a lowly mountain. No one but the people of Israel saw this happen, not the Egyptians or the Amalekites or the Moabites or the Babylonians. Sinai was hidden away in a place that was uninhabitable. Nobody cared about Mt. Sinai or the Sinai desert: it was a wasteland.
From outer appearances, there wasn’t much to see on top of Mt Sinai. There was some thunder and lightning at the time of revelation, nothing terribly miraculous, though. Cecil B. Demille had to make up a whole dramatic scene for this event because there is precious little drama described in the Torah.
God was simply not concerned here with outer appearances. The Egyptians made big deal pyramids, great buildings to show their greatness to the world. Not the Jews. Their formative religious event happened in the desert, the drama kept to a minimum and no one saw what was happening in any case.
To look at the Torah, a person is not so impressed. To be impressed, you must look within the Torah. For what is within, changed the course of human history.
The Jews have always been the smallest, the least dramatic, and from outer appearances, the least impressive people in the history of mankind. But we have survived and thrived longer than any other people in the history of mankind.
For what is great about the Jewish people cannot be seen with the naked eye: what is great about our people is our inner character, our souls, our commitment to a God that also cannot be seen.
I bring all this up today, in particular, because today, the second day of Shavuot, we not only recall the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, but we also remember during Yizkor, those who we loved who are no longer with us.
And if you are like me, what we remember of our loved ones was not their public persona, it wasn’t their appearance: how they looked to other people. What we remember of them what was most important about them to us: was the person they were; their inner character, their souls.
One of my wisest teachers in rabbinical school once said to me: it isn’t what you know, it isn’t how you look, that ultimately counts in this life. But rather, it is who you are. Who you really are. It isn’t the physical appearance that everyone sees, or the talk and the persona that you present to the world. It is the soul.
There is a wonderful Hasidic story about the great village rabbi who knew the whole Talmud by heart. He was revered for his teaching, his piety, and his commanding presence. Over the years, legends arose about this rabbi, one in particular that piqued the interest of one of his students. Since this rabbi was mysteriously absent from shul every Yom Kippur mourning, the legend arose that the rabbi would actually ascend to heaven on this morning, and bow at the foot of God to pray for the welfare of the congregation.
But his student, was a skeptic, and he just didn’t believe the legend, so on Kol Nidre, the student hid under the rabbis’s bed to see what would happen to the rabbi in morning.
The morning came, the rabbi arose and put on work clothes and walked into the forest with his axe. The student followed him. . The rabbi walked out into the woods and cut down a tree and began to split the logs into fire wood. He then carried the wood to an old woman’s cottage and brought the wood into her home. The woman cried, “Oh, woodcutter, I have no money to pay you for the logs. And the rabbi said, “you pay me later; you need the wood to stay warm for the coming winter.
Then the rabbi returned home, put on his good cloths and went to shul.
The student was amazed, and never again doubted that the great rabbi, indeed, went to heaven each year on the morning of Yom Kippur.
There is often great beauty that rests deep within the soul and I have no doubt that it is that inner beauty, it is what lies within that makes the difference in a person’s life.
And that is the lesson of Mt. Sinai. Mt. Tabor, Mt. Hermon, Mt. Zion: certainly greater mountains than Sinai. Revelation on these mountains would have been a great show, a wonderful drama, truly impressive for the people of Israel and for the world. But God chose otherwise, because for His people, He knew that their greatness would never be in their numbers, or in their outer appearance, nor in the face they presented to the world. But rather, their greatness would always lie within. Like the Torah, the words and traditions written within, on the soul of our people, is what has transformed the world.
That is true lesson of God’s revelation. And a true lesson of life.
Since King David founded the city for the Jewish people 3000 years ago, Jerusalem has been our holy city, our center, our spiritual home.
So I ask you a perplexing question. If Jerusalem is so central to our religious and spiritual existence, than why do we read in Torah, that of all the places in the world, the Torah was given to the Jewish people not in Jerusalem, but rather on top of some unknown mountain in the middle of the desert: called Mt. Sinai?
Is there anything more important than our Holy Torah? It is the word of God revealed to his chosen people. It is our guide, our moral anchor; it is what has distinguished us from the other nations of the world. It has given the Jewish people its identity.
The Torah is the central religious text of our people; why wasn’t it given on Mt. Zion? Why didn’t god’s revelation occur in the holy city of Jerusalem?
The rabbis of the Talmud were also perplexed about this. There are Midrashim that say that Mt. Zion in Jerusalem and Mt. Sinai in the desert were once joined together as one and when they split, the one became the site of the revelation and the other the site of the Holy Temple.
But that Midrash just begs the question. Why did they split? Why did the central religious event in our history not take place in the physical center of our religious world?
There is another Midrash that I think is more to the point. Rabbi Yose Hagalili and Rabbi Akiva were discussing just this issue. And they said that when God was about to reveal the torah, all the mountains of the world began to position themselves to receive the law. They argued for their position. Two in particular, Mt. Tabor and Mt. Carmel both called out to God, “ the torah shall be revealed on me,” and the other, “the torah shall be revealed on me.”
God looked at both mountains and said, “indeed, you are both great mountains, high and grand, but on both of you the pagans of the world have practiced idolatry, you are not fit.”
The Midrash goes on with another interpretation. It says in the Proverbs, “a man’s pride will bring him low.” The Midrash attributes this verse to Mt. Tabor and to Mt. Carmel which came from the ends of the earth boastfully proclaiming, “we are high and the Holy One, blessed be He, will give the Torah on us.” But the verse, “he who is of lowly spirit, shall attain great honor,’ and the Rabbis attribute this verse to Sinai which humbled itself by saying, “I am a low mountain, alone in the desert.” So God placed his glory upon Mt. Sinai and the Torah was given thereon so that the mountain was privileged to attain to all that honor.
Now this Midrash teaches us something all together new; that it was irrelevant to God, where exactly His revelation would take place. The mountain top where God and Moses met did not need to be the highest or the grandest. In fact, God chose a lowly mountain which sat in a wasteland. Nothing could have been less grand, or more remote.
And I think that that is the specific point the Torah is trying to make. There is nothing grand in appearance about the Torah. It is a book. It’s words on a scroll. It was given in a desert, on a lowly mountain. No one but the people of Israel saw this happen, not the Egyptians or the Amalekites or the Moabites or the Babylonians. Sinai was hidden away in a place that was uninhabitable. Nobody cared about Mt. Sinai or the Sinai desert: it was a wasteland.
From outer appearances, there wasn’t much to see on top of Mt Sinai. There was some thunder and lightning at the time of revelation, nothing terribly miraculous, though. Cecil B. Demille had to make up a whole dramatic scene for this event because there is precious little drama described in the Torah.
God was simply not concerned here with outer appearances. The Egyptians made big deal pyramids, great buildings to show their greatness to the world. Not the Jews. Their formative religious event happened in the desert, the drama kept to a minimum and no one saw what was happening in any case.
To look at the Torah, a person is not so impressed. To be impressed, you must look within the Torah. For what is within, changed the course of human history.
The Jews have always been the smallest, the least dramatic, and from outer appearances, the least impressive people in the history of mankind. But we have survived and thrived longer than any other people in the history of mankind.
For what is great about the Jewish people cannot be seen with the naked eye: what is great about our people is our inner character, our souls, our commitment to a God that also cannot be seen.
I bring all this up today, in particular, because today, the second day of Shavuot, we not only recall the revelation of the Torah at Sinai, but we also remember during Yizkor, those who we loved who are no longer with us.
And if you are like me, what we remember of our loved ones was not their public persona, it wasn’t their appearance: how they looked to other people. What we remember of them what was most important about them to us: was the person they were; their inner character, their souls.
One of my wisest teachers in rabbinical school once said to me: it isn’t what you know, it isn’t how you look, that ultimately counts in this life. But rather, it is who you are. Who you really are. It isn’t the physical appearance that everyone sees, or the talk and the persona that you present to the world. It is the soul.
There is a wonderful Hasidic story about the great village rabbi who knew the whole Talmud by heart. He was revered for his teaching, his piety, and his commanding presence. Over the years, legends arose about this rabbi, one in particular that piqued the interest of one of his students. Since this rabbi was mysteriously absent from shul every Yom Kippur mourning, the legend arose that the rabbi would actually ascend to heaven on this morning, and bow at the foot of God to pray for the welfare of the congregation.
But his student, was a skeptic, and he just didn’t believe the legend, so on Kol Nidre, the student hid under the rabbis’s bed to see what would happen to the rabbi in morning.
The morning came, the rabbi arose and put on work clothes and walked into the forest with his axe. The student followed him. . The rabbi walked out into the woods and cut down a tree and began to split the logs into fire wood. He then carried the wood to an old woman’s cottage and brought the wood into her home. The woman cried, “Oh, woodcutter, I have no money to pay you for the logs. And the rabbi said, “you pay me later; you need the wood to stay warm for the coming winter.
Then the rabbi returned home, put on his good cloths and went to shul.
The student was amazed, and never again doubted that the great rabbi, indeed, went to heaven each year on the morning of Yom Kippur.
There is often great beauty that rests deep within the soul and I have no doubt that it is that inner beauty, it is what lies within that makes the difference in a person’s life.
And that is the lesson of Mt. Sinai. Mt. Tabor, Mt. Hermon, Mt. Zion: certainly greater mountains than Sinai. Revelation on these mountains would have been a great show, a wonderful drama, truly impressive for the people of Israel and for the world. But God chose otherwise, because for His people, He knew that their greatness would never be in their numbers, or in their outer appearance, nor in the face they presented to the world. But rather, their greatness would always lie within. Like the Torah, the words and traditions written within, on the soul of our people, is what has transformed the world.
That is true lesson of God’s revelation. And a true lesson of life.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Netzach of Malchut: A Thought for Day 46 of the Counting of the Omer
You may have been following the counting of the Omer: we do so for 49 days between the second day of Pesach and the first night of Shavuot. The omer connects the two holidays, one to the other. It is as if the two holidays are really one and this is why. Pesach is a holiday of freedom. The Israelites leave the slavery of Egypt to enter the freedom of the desert. But this is not freedom from all obligation, but rather freedom to serve God with all that that entails. On Shavuot, our people received the Torah with its 613 commandments. On Pesach, we celebrate our freedom, on Shavuot, we learn of our responsibilities to God and to each other. Freedom and responsibility: you cannot have one without the other.
During this connecting period of the counting of the Omer, the Jewish mystics envisioned a connection between the seven weeks of counting and the seven lower sefirot which are emanations of God’s holy light that created the world. They would attach two sefirot to each of the forty nine days which gives us insight into the qualities and characteristics of each day from which we can learn something about ourselves.
So tonight begins the forty sixth day of the counting of the omer and the two sefirot attached to this day are called Netzach and Malchut. Netzach is the quality of endurance. Malchut is the quality of dignity. Endurance means never giving up. We cannot achieve anything in life without a dogged can-do attitude. We make mistakes, we change course, but to achieve anything that is important, we need endurance; we have to stay with it, until we get it done. How does this connect with Malchut, human dignity?. Human beings are unique in the animal kingdom because they can imagine a better future and work to make it a reality in the present. Human dignity comes from doing that which is good. And goodness only comes from our patient, consistent and persistent actions. Endurance and dignity flow one from the other.
Tonight and tomorrow as we observe Shabbat we rest, which gives us the time and space to consider how we will make next week better than the last. May God give us the strength to go out and make a positive difference in the world in the week to come.
During this connecting period of the counting of the Omer, the Jewish mystics envisioned a connection between the seven weeks of counting and the seven lower sefirot which are emanations of God’s holy light that created the world. They would attach two sefirot to each of the forty nine days which gives us insight into the qualities and characteristics of each day from which we can learn something about ourselves.
So tonight begins the forty sixth day of the counting of the omer and the two sefirot attached to this day are called Netzach and Malchut. Netzach is the quality of endurance. Malchut is the quality of dignity. Endurance means never giving up. We cannot achieve anything in life without a dogged can-do attitude. We make mistakes, we change course, but to achieve anything that is important, we need endurance; we have to stay with it, until we get it done. How does this connect with Malchut, human dignity?. Human beings are unique in the animal kingdom because they can imagine a better future and work to make it a reality in the present. Human dignity comes from doing that which is good. And goodness only comes from our patient, consistent and persistent actions. Endurance and dignity flow one from the other.
Tonight and tomorrow as we observe Shabbat we rest, which gives us the time and space to consider how we will make next week better than the last. May God give us the strength to go out and make a positive difference in the world in the week to come.
Bamidbar: Making it Count
Tammy related to me the following story about her father. As many of you know, her father Rabbi Herbert Morris of blessed memory, served the Jewish community of San Francisco for 43 years. She told me of his daily practice in the morning, looking in the mirror, he’d say to himself, “Nu, Chayim, how will you be a blessing to others today?” Being a blessing to others --and being so every day; a worthy aspiration. Important to think about. I will come back to this in a moment.
We begin the reading of the fourth book of the Torah this morning, the Book of Numbers. The name comes from the first major theme of the book, numbering the people of Israel, that is, taking a census. We read God’s command to Moses, “Take a census of the entire assembly of the Children of Israel according to their families, according to their fathers’ households, by number of names, every male according to their head count…from twenty years of age up” (Num 1:1-3).
Now, men over the age of twenty were of the age fit to go out to war. Moses knows that war is inevitable in the desert; he needed to count the people to know the strength of his troops. It was a matter of life and death. In the second book of Samuel, King David does the same thing as we read there, “David counted the people who were with him and appointed over them officers of thousands and officers of hundreds” (II Sam 18:1). The Talmud, however, has issues with the taking of the census and counting Jews in general. In Masechet Yoma (22b), it proves the prohibition against counting by citing this verse in the Prophet Hosea: “And the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which will neither be measured or counted.” Already in Exodus, we learn of the “sin” of counting Jews from the following verse in chapter 30: “When you take the sum of the children of Israel according to their counting, then each man will give atonement for his soul when you count them; then there will be no plague as you count them” (v.12). If you count, you have to ask to be forgiven for your sin. So don’t count if you don’t have to.
The commentators claim that the counting of the Israelites in the Torah always happened indirectly. For example, they’d count the half shekel tax levied on all Israelites and from that, they’d come up with the total number of adults among the people. Counting Jews was a serious business that brought plague and disaster if done improperly; if done for a reason other than to fulfill God’s direct command. For example, King David was punished for taking a second census of the people later on in the book of Samuel (II Samuel 24:2). God didn’t command this census, rather, David wanted numbers to satisfy his curiosity as he says, “[take the census] so that I may know [the numbers of my warriors].” For this sin, God took the lives of 70,000 of his men and almost destroyed David’s city, Jerusalem.
Those of you who are minyan-goers have probably witnessed our angst as we wait for the tenth person to join us to make up the minyan. As we have seen, Jewish tradition discourages our counting so we use a trick to count: we recite a 10 word verse from Psalms 28 (v.9), hoshia et amecha, u’vareach nachalatecha, ur’em v’nasem ad olam.” This verse has nothing to do with minyan: it just has ten words: if we have one person for each word, we daven.
So we don’t count Jews, or if we do, we do so carefully and only for Divine purposes. And although no reason is given for this prohibition, we can imagine its rationale. Counting people is risky from a spiritual perspective. It can be dehumanizing. We have seen the numbered forearms of concentration camp survivors: the Nazis took away the names and identities of their victims and referred to them by number. You can kill a number; numbers hide personalities, personal histories, and personhood. We have some 300 people in the sanctuary today –but that number tells us very little about what is actually going on here. . Each person in this room is a world onto him/herself. Our tradition teaches us that he who saves a single human being is as if he has saved the whole world. This is looking at the individual from God’s perspective. If each human soul is made in the image of God, then each individual is as important to us as God. We are not defined by the collective: we are defined by the quality of each individual soul.
On the other hand, and this is a very Jewish thing,there is always an “other hand,” we do count Jews, we just do it cleverly. Whether it is by the half shekel tax or reciting verses or demographic studies: we are still counting individual Jews to know who comprises what we call, Jewish community. But I think there is a lesson in that, as well. When we count the ten of the minyan, we are saying, in effect, that each person in the room makes a difference; each individual “counts,” if you will; there is no community without each and every one of them. It is amusing in the minyan when the tenth person walks into the room. We are so grateful that we give that person a position of honor for the morning. But then we all think to ourselves that once the tenth person walks in, everyone suddenly becomes the tenth person. All become equal, all become important, in fact, all become indispensable in making a single unified whole: a minyan, that can now begin the morning prayers.
We count, when we as individuals make a difference for the benefit of the whole community. This week, we have all been reading about President Obama’s recent nomination to the US Supreme Court, Elena Kagan. Whether you are in support or not of Ms. Kagan’s judicial proclivities, I suspect most of you have taken note that Ms. Kagan had a Bat Mitzvah when she was 13 years old. If she is confirmed by the Senate, she will make the third Jewish Supreme Court Justice in an august body of nine. One third of the Supreme Court coming from a people making up less than 2% of the population in this country.
For American Jews, their small numbers do not adequately reflect the out sized contribution they make to our country. One justice among nine, one minyanaire among ten, one mother or father or sibling in a family; one worker in a corporation, on senator among 100. Contributions are made by individuals; individuals make the difference, but they make a difference in community.
So we are uncomfortable counting Jews but we do so all the time. We do so every time our tradition encourages us as individuals, to, as the saying goes, “stand up and be counted;” to go out into the world and do some good. So my father-in -law would say every morning in front of the mirror: "Nu, Chayim, how can you make a difference today in touching other human beings?" We should all ask ourselves the same question every day.
We begin the reading of the fourth book of the Torah this morning, the Book of Numbers. The name comes from the first major theme of the book, numbering the people of Israel, that is, taking a census. We read God’s command to Moses, “Take a census of the entire assembly of the Children of Israel according to their families, according to their fathers’ households, by number of names, every male according to their head count…from twenty years of age up” (Num 1:1-3).
Now, men over the age of twenty were of the age fit to go out to war. Moses knows that war is inevitable in the desert; he needed to count the people to know the strength of his troops. It was a matter of life and death. In the second book of Samuel, King David does the same thing as we read there, “David counted the people who were with him and appointed over them officers of thousands and officers of hundreds” (II Sam 18:1). The Talmud, however, has issues with the taking of the census and counting Jews in general. In Masechet Yoma (22b), it proves the prohibition against counting by citing this verse in the Prophet Hosea: “And the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which will neither be measured or counted.” Already in Exodus, we learn of the “sin” of counting Jews from the following verse in chapter 30: “When you take the sum of the children of Israel according to their counting, then each man will give atonement for his soul when you count them; then there will be no plague as you count them” (v.12). If you count, you have to ask to be forgiven for your sin. So don’t count if you don’t have to.
The commentators claim that the counting of the Israelites in the Torah always happened indirectly. For example, they’d count the half shekel tax levied on all Israelites and from that, they’d come up with the total number of adults among the people. Counting Jews was a serious business that brought plague and disaster if done improperly; if done for a reason other than to fulfill God’s direct command. For example, King David was punished for taking a second census of the people later on in the book of Samuel (II Samuel 24:2). God didn’t command this census, rather, David wanted numbers to satisfy his curiosity as he says, “[take the census] so that I may know [the numbers of my warriors].” For this sin, God took the lives of 70,000 of his men and almost destroyed David’s city, Jerusalem.
Those of you who are minyan-goers have probably witnessed our angst as we wait for the tenth person to join us to make up the minyan. As we have seen, Jewish tradition discourages our counting so we use a trick to count: we recite a 10 word verse from Psalms 28 (v.9), hoshia et amecha, u’vareach nachalatecha, ur’em v’nasem ad olam.” This verse has nothing to do with minyan: it just has ten words: if we have one person for each word, we daven.
So we don’t count Jews, or if we do, we do so carefully and only for Divine purposes. And although no reason is given for this prohibition, we can imagine its rationale. Counting people is risky from a spiritual perspective. It can be dehumanizing. We have seen the numbered forearms of concentration camp survivors: the Nazis took away the names and identities of their victims and referred to them by number. You can kill a number; numbers hide personalities, personal histories, and personhood. We have some 300 people in the sanctuary today –but that number tells us very little about what is actually going on here. . Each person in this room is a world onto him/herself. Our tradition teaches us that he who saves a single human being is as if he has saved the whole world. This is looking at the individual from God’s perspective. If each human soul is made in the image of God, then each individual is as important to us as God. We are not defined by the collective: we are defined by the quality of each individual soul.
On the other hand, and this is a very Jewish thing,there is always an “other hand,” we do count Jews, we just do it cleverly. Whether it is by the half shekel tax or reciting verses or demographic studies: we are still counting individual Jews to know who comprises what we call, Jewish community. But I think there is a lesson in that, as well. When we count the ten of the minyan, we are saying, in effect, that each person in the room makes a difference; each individual “counts,” if you will; there is no community without each and every one of them. It is amusing in the minyan when the tenth person walks into the room. We are so grateful that we give that person a position of honor for the morning. But then we all think to ourselves that once the tenth person walks in, everyone suddenly becomes the tenth person. All become equal, all become important, in fact, all become indispensable in making a single unified whole: a minyan, that can now begin the morning prayers.
We count, when we as individuals make a difference for the benefit of the whole community. This week, we have all been reading about President Obama’s recent nomination to the US Supreme Court, Elena Kagan. Whether you are in support or not of Ms. Kagan’s judicial proclivities, I suspect most of you have taken note that Ms. Kagan had a Bat Mitzvah when she was 13 years old. If she is confirmed by the Senate, she will make the third Jewish Supreme Court Justice in an august body of nine. One third of the Supreme Court coming from a people making up less than 2% of the population in this country.
For American Jews, their small numbers do not adequately reflect the out sized contribution they make to our country. One justice among nine, one minyanaire among ten, one mother or father or sibling in a family; one worker in a corporation, on senator among 100. Contributions are made by individuals; individuals make the difference, but they make a difference in community.
So we are uncomfortable counting Jews but we do so all the time. We do so every time our tradition encourages us as individuals, to, as the saying goes, “stand up and be counted;” to go out into the world and do some good. So my father-in -law would say every morning in front of the mirror: "Nu, Chayim, how can you make a difference today in touching other human beings?" We should all ask ourselves the same question every day.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Food and Behar/Bechukotai
Do you know where your food comes from? I heard a clever discussion by a chabad rabbi once as he pulled out an apple from his bag.
He asked: “why do we say a blessing before we eat this apple? “ Because,” he said, “we need to become conscious of where this piece of fruit comes from.” He then went on to trace the journey of the piece of fruit back to its origins.
He bought the apple at the local super market. But to get it to that market, the grocer had to purchase it from a wholesaler, who had to buy it from the grower. For each of these steps, the apple had to be loaded onto a truck and shipped. Trucks need gasoline and that starts a whole other progression which starts from the oil well, refinery, shipped to the gas station into the truck etc.
But back to the apple. The grower had to harvest the apple; the apple had to be picked by machine or by worker. The tree that produced the apple had to be watered by rain or some form of irrigation, which required pipes and ditches that has its own progression back to the source of water. So this tree is watered, grown on the property of the grower; probably fertilized (often with fertilizer that itself is derived from petroleum, believe it or not) and sprayed with some kind of pesticide (made from chemicals; another progression). But the tree, of course, comes from a seed, but first the ground is plowed and then the seed is planted. Where does the land and the seed come from, asked the rabbi? Land and seed are the miracles; they come from God. Hence, the blessing.
Every piece of fruit in the grocery store has this progression. Sometimes the progressions are even more complicated because summer fruit, in our winter, has to be shipped from the places it grows; delivered by ship or plane, then by truck to the store. But the whole progession begins with the land and a seed and to say the blessing is to acknowledge these God given gifts of land and seed and hence, for all of our food.
In the Birchat Hamazon, the blessing after the meals, we recite: “’and you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God for the good land God gave you.’ Blessed are You, God, for the land and for the food.”
In the parasha today, the Israelites are to make an adjustment in their relationship to the land. We read, “For six years you may sow your field and for six years you may prune your vineyard; and you my gather in your crop. But the seventh year shall be a complete rest for the land, a Sabbath for God; your field you shall not sow and your vineyard you shall not prune.” Notice the phrase, the seventh year will be a rest for the land and a Sabbath for God. The land and God are intimately related: in our tradition, you can’t have one without the other. The land (meaning here, the Land of Israel) is a representation of God. The land is alive; within it and from it comes Divine blessing. The land needs to be treated with reverence as we treat God with reverence. God is the source of all life; land is the source of all sustenance for all that is alive.
And there are serious consequences in the Torah for abusing the land and ignoring its blessing. In the second parasha of our combined Torah reading today, we read: “if you will follow My decrees and observe my commandments and perform them; then I will provide your rains in their time, and the land will give its produce and the tree of the field will give its fruit. Your threshing will last until the vintage, and the vintage will last until the sowing; you will eat your bread to satiety and you will dwell securely in your land…..but if you will not listen…your land will not give produce and the tree of the land will not give its fruit.”
If all is good, the Israelites will enjoy wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. Seven species of food: sufficient to support human life in the holy land. If all is not good: no rain, no harvest… famine. From the land flows either life or death.
If land and food is a matter of life and death, shouldn’t we spend some time thinking about it? What is our relationship to the food we eat and the land from which that food is produced? How does what we eat define who we are and the values and traditions we pass down to the next generation? Consider the Passover Seder? Rosh Hashana dinner? Pot roast, gefilte fish, chopped liver or matzah. Your grandmother’s kugel, latkes and kishke and corn beef on rye? Kosher, or not Kosher? How much do we eat? Is it healthful or not? With whom do we eat?
Jews are thinking about food, today, in deeper ways than before. You may not be aware that there is a growing food movement in the Jewish community today especially among the younger members of our community. Much to my surprise, I have caught my own kids watching shows on the various food channels: Iron Chef and the like. They find it fascinating as do millions of people who watch these shows. Cooking and baking and trying new tastes. More so than ever before, children of our congregation are entering schools like Johnson and Wales to become chefs. The Young Judea year program in Israel has a specialty tract on culinary arts, learning to cook and bake using ingredients grown in Israel. There is a Jewish food movement, spearheaded by a new organization called “Hazon,” which as they say seeks “An American Jewish community that’s measurably healthier and more sustainable and an American Jewish community that’s demonstrably playing a role in making the world healthier and more sustainable for all.” One the programs they support is called, “CSA’s” which is an acronym for Community Sustaining Agriculture. CSA’s provide a relationship with a local farmer to grow and sell to us organic vegetables. We pay ahead of time to support the farmer, and the farmer grows and delivers the vegetables in their season, native to local soils. We get a basket of vegetables each week and we take them home, cook them and eat them We support the local farmer; we eat vegetables that don’t need to be transported long distances (using less gasoline, less dependence on foreign oil, less support for tyrannical regimes in the Middle East, less pollution, global warming, less pesticides, fertilizer run off into streams, rivers and oceans…. the whole deal). We are also presented with vegetables we have never heard of nor ever seen before, and that makes things interesting in and of itself. We have a CSA program at the Alliance; the Dollin family signed up and we should be receiving our vegetables soon. I will let you know how they are. I am still learning what okra, bochchoi, chard, kohlrabi, collard greens and kale are. I am a cucumber and lettuce kind of guy but it is never too late to try new things.
We have also prepared a garden here at the synagogue. We designed 6 plots in which different families can grow organic vegetables. You have no idea all the issues that are involved. Fertilizer must come from the manure of animals that have never received hormones or antibiotics. The soil must come from land that has never been subjected to pesticides and/or unnatural fertilizer. Even the two- by- fours we use to mark off the plots and into which goes the soil and manure must be of untreated wood (wood from lumber yards is often treated with arsenic and copper and other unpronounceable chemicals; who knew?). We will have classes on how to create a garden, grow vegetables and then cooking classes to learn how to prepare them for our dinner tables. The idea is to get Jews back in touch with the earth, at least in some way, just as our ancestors were in touch with the fields of the holy land of Israel.
Lots to think about and lots to learn. This garden and our CSA are designed to be fun and designed, more importantly, for us to learn. We invite participation in any or all of it. Keep an eye on our website to find out more.
If God expects us to treat the land with respect and reverence and even awe, we need to learn, in a very personal way, what it takes to bring forth food from land. We have to trace our food back to its source of seed and soil. And perhaps even use our own hands to plant and harvest and cook and eat. And then we can for once recite the prayer with complete kavanah, with intention, "to bless the Lord for the good land He has given us, for the land and for the food."
He asked: “why do we say a blessing before we eat this apple? “ Because,” he said, “we need to become conscious of where this piece of fruit comes from.” He then went on to trace the journey of the piece of fruit back to its origins.
He bought the apple at the local super market. But to get it to that market, the grocer had to purchase it from a wholesaler, who had to buy it from the grower. For each of these steps, the apple had to be loaded onto a truck and shipped. Trucks need gasoline and that starts a whole other progression which starts from the oil well, refinery, shipped to the gas station into the truck etc.
But back to the apple. The grower had to harvest the apple; the apple had to be picked by machine or by worker. The tree that produced the apple had to be watered by rain or some form of irrigation, which required pipes and ditches that has its own progression back to the source of water. So this tree is watered, grown on the property of the grower; probably fertilized (often with fertilizer that itself is derived from petroleum, believe it or not) and sprayed with some kind of pesticide (made from chemicals; another progression). But the tree, of course, comes from a seed, but first the ground is plowed and then the seed is planted. Where does the land and the seed come from, asked the rabbi? Land and seed are the miracles; they come from God. Hence, the blessing.
Every piece of fruit in the grocery store has this progression. Sometimes the progressions are even more complicated because summer fruit, in our winter, has to be shipped from the places it grows; delivered by ship or plane, then by truck to the store. But the whole progession begins with the land and a seed and to say the blessing is to acknowledge these God given gifts of land and seed and hence, for all of our food.
In the Birchat Hamazon, the blessing after the meals, we recite: “’and you shall eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord your God for the good land God gave you.’ Blessed are You, God, for the land and for the food.”
In the parasha today, the Israelites are to make an adjustment in their relationship to the land. We read, “For six years you may sow your field and for six years you may prune your vineyard; and you my gather in your crop. But the seventh year shall be a complete rest for the land, a Sabbath for God; your field you shall not sow and your vineyard you shall not prune.” Notice the phrase, the seventh year will be a rest for the land and a Sabbath for God. The land and God are intimately related: in our tradition, you can’t have one without the other. The land (meaning here, the Land of Israel) is a representation of God. The land is alive; within it and from it comes Divine blessing. The land needs to be treated with reverence as we treat God with reverence. God is the source of all life; land is the source of all sustenance for all that is alive.
And there are serious consequences in the Torah for abusing the land and ignoring its blessing. In the second parasha of our combined Torah reading today, we read: “if you will follow My decrees and observe my commandments and perform them; then I will provide your rains in their time, and the land will give its produce and the tree of the field will give its fruit. Your threshing will last until the vintage, and the vintage will last until the sowing; you will eat your bread to satiety and you will dwell securely in your land…..but if you will not listen…your land will not give produce and the tree of the land will not give its fruit.”
If all is good, the Israelites will enjoy wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. Seven species of food: sufficient to support human life in the holy land. If all is not good: no rain, no harvest… famine. From the land flows either life or death.
If land and food is a matter of life and death, shouldn’t we spend some time thinking about it? What is our relationship to the food we eat and the land from which that food is produced? How does what we eat define who we are and the values and traditions we pass down to the next generation? Consider the Passover Seder? Rosh Hashana dinner? Pot roast, gefilte fish, chopped liver or matzah. Your grandmother’s kugel, latkes and kishke and corn beef on rye? Kosher, or not Kosher? How much do we eat? Is it healthful or not? With whom do we eat?
Jews are thinking about food, today, in deeper ways than before. You may not be aware that there is a growing food movement in the Jewish community today especially among the younger members of our community. Much to my surprise, I have caught my own kids watching shows on the various food channels: Iron Chef and the like. They find it fascinating as do millions of people who watch these shows. Cooking and baking and trying new tastes. More so than ever before, children of our congregation are entering schools like Johnson and Wales to become chefs. The Young Judea year program in Israel has a specialty tract on culinary arts, learning to cook and bake using ingredients grown in Israel. There is a Jewish food movement, spearheaded by a new organization called “Hazon,” which as they say seeks “An American Jewish community that’s measurably healthier and more sustainable and an American Jewish community that’s demonstrably playing a role in making the world healthier and more sustainable for all.” One the programs they support is called, “CSA’s” which is an acronym for Community Sustaining Agriculture. CSA’s provide a relationship with a local farmer to grow and sell to us organic vegetables. We pay ahead of time to support the farmer, and the farmer grows and delivers the vegetables in their season, native to local soils. We get a basket of vegetables each week and we take them home, cook them and eat them We support the local farmer; we eat vegetables that don’t need to be transported long distances (using less gasoline, less dependence on foreign oil, less support for tyrannical regimes in the Middle East, less pollution, global warming, less pesticides, fertilizer run off into streams, rivers and oceans…. the whole deal). We are also presented with vegetables we have never heard of nor ever seen before, and that makes things interesting in and of itself. We have a CSA program at the Alliance; the Dollin family signed up and we should be receiving our vegetables soon. I will let you know how they are. I am still learning what okra, bochchoi, chard, kohlrabi, collard greens and kale are. I am a cucumber and lettuce kind of guy but it is never too late to try new things.
We have also prepared a garden here at the synagogue. We designed 6 plots in which different families can grow organic vegetables. You have no idea all the issues that are involved. Fertilizer must come from the manure of animals that have never received hormones or antibiotics. The soil must come from land that has never been subjected to pesticides and/or unnatural fertilizer. Even the two- by- fours we use to mark off the plots and into which goes the soil and manure must be of untreated wood (wood from lumber yards is often treated with arsenic and copper and other unpronounceable chemicals; who knew?). We will have classes on how to create a garden, grow vegetables and then cooking classes to learn how to prepare them for our dinner tables. The idea is to get Jews back in touch with the earth, at least in some way, just as our ancestors were in touch with the fields of the holy land of Israel.
Lots to think about and lots to learn. This garden and our CSA are designed to be fun and designed, more importantly, for us to learn. We invite participation in any or all of it. Keep an eye on our website to find out more.
If God expects us to treat the land with respect and reverence and even awe, we need to learn, in a very personal way, what it takes to bring forth food from land. We have to trace our food back to its source of seed and soil. And perhaps even use our own hands to plant and harvest and cook and eat. And then we can for once recite the prayer with complete kavanah, with intention, "to bless the Lord for the good land He has given us, for the land and for the food."
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Highlights Message June 2010
Food
One’s mercy must extend to all the oppressed. One must not embarrass or destroy them, for the higher wisdom is spread over all that was created: inanimate, vegetable, animal, and human. For this reason were we warned against desecrating food stuffs ... and in the same way, one must not desecrate anything, for all was created by His wisdom—nor should one uproot a plant, unless there is a need, or kill an animal unless there is a need. (Rav Kook; First Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel)
And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink their wine; they shall also make gardens, and eat their fruit (Amos 11; a messianic vision of Jews returning to their land to plant, grow and harvest their own food).
In the messianic era when the world will be perfected, Jews will return to the land and grow their own food. Today, we are so distant from our food sources that few of us really know where our food comes from, how it is grown, harvested and transported to a city grocery store for us to buy. For the most part, we are unaware of how the animals we eat are raised, transported and slaughtered. There is a growing concern about and interest in food and what we might do to encourage the food industry to provide healthier, more ecologically sound and humane sources of food to feed the 7 billion people in this world, 800 million of whom are undernourished. Jewish tradition demands that we be mindful of food and not abuse the earth from which it comes. In light of these concerns, I thought it might be helpful for us to spend some time thinking about these issues from a Jewish perspective.
We will start our exploration with the creation of a synagogue garden which we will call “Gan Kehilati” (the community garden). Fred Karp, Bob Goldman, Kim Turnbow, Miriam Greenberg and others are heading up a project to create a learning garden just south of the synagogue kitchen. We are providing garden plots for people to rent (for a nominal fee). One plot is reserved as a “teaching plot” for classes and demonstrations. After we grow and harvest the organic vegetables, we will provide cooking classes to teach delicious, healthful (and kosher) ways to prepare them. Much more information will follow. If you are interested in the gardening classes or in helping with the garden, please contact Naomi Kirshner nkirshner@headenver.org or Fred Karp fredkarp@earthlink.net. Keep an eye on our website under “Community/Community Garden,” for up-to-the- minute information about this project. You might also consider reading Michael Pollan’s book Omnivore’s Dilemma for background information.
JCC Maccabi Games
In August 2010, Denver will celebrate the JCC Maccabi Games®, welcoming over 1,500 Jewish athletes ages 12-16 with their families and friends, and more than 1,000 volunteers and 600 host families. This Olympic-style sports competition provides a unique combination of sports, cultural and social activities. From August 1st – 6th, delegates from all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Israel, and Europe will test their skills in sporting events and experience a journey far beyond athletic competition- inspired with the values of community involvement, teamwork, integrity and pride.
By using sports as the vehicle, the ultimate mission of the games is to cultivate a deeper understanding and appreciation of Jewish values within Jewish teens by enriching their Jewish identity in an informal setting and encouraging their identification with Israel at the same time.
Would you like to get involved in this wonderful event sponsored by our community? Call Naomi Kirshner nkirshner@headenver.org or visit the JCC Maccabi Games website http://www.jccdenver.org/maccabi/.
Have a great summer and see you at the games!
One’s mercy must extend to all the oppressed. One must not embarrass or destroy them, for the higher wisdom is spread over all that was created: inanimate, vegetable, animal, and human. For this reason were we warned against desecrating food stuffs ... and in the same way, one must not desecrate anything, for all was created by His wisdom—nor should one uproot a plant, unless there is a need, or kill an animal unless there is a need. (Rav Kook; First Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel)
And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink their wine; they shall also make gardens, and eat their fruit (Amos 11; a messianic vision of Jews returning to their land to plant, grow and harvest their own food).
In the messianic era when the world will be perfected, Jews will return to the land and grow their own food. Today, we are so distant from our food sources that few of us really know where our food comes from, how it is grown, harvested and transported to a city grocery store for us to buy. For the most part, we are unaware of how the animals we eat are raised, transported and slaughtered. There is a growing concern about and interest in food and what we might do to encourage the food industry to provide healthier, more ecologically sound and humane sources of food to feed the 7 billion people in this world, 800 million of whom are undernourished. Jewish tradition demands that we be mindful of food and not abuse the earth from which it comes. In light of these concerns, I thought it might be helpful for us to spend some time thinking about these issues from a Jewish perspective.
We will start our exploration with the creation of a synagogue garden which we will call “Gan Kehilati” (the community garden). Fred Karp, Bob Goldman, Kim Turnbow, Miriam Greenberg and others are heading up a project to create a learning garden just south of the synagogue kitchen. We are providing garden plots for people to rent (for a nominal fee). One plot is reserved as a “teaching plot” for classes and demonstrations. After we grow and harvest the organic vegetables, we will provide cooking classes to teach delicious, healthful (and kosher) ways to prepare them. Much more information will follow. If you are interested in the gardening classes or in helping with the garden, please contact Naomi Kirshner nkirshner@headenver.org or Fred Karp fredkarp@earthlink.net. Keep an eye on our website under “Community/Community Garden,” for up-to-the- minute information about this project. You might also consider reading Michael Pollan’s book Omnivore’s Dilemma for background information.
JCC Maccabi Games
In August 2010, Denver will celebrate the JCC Maccabi Games®, welcoming over 1,500 Jewish athletes ages 12-16 with their families and friends, and more than 1,000 volunteers and 600 host families. This Olympic-style sports competition provides a unique combination of sports, cultural and social activities. From August 1st – 6th, delegates from all over the United States, Canada, Mexico, Israel, and Europe will test their skills in sporting events and experience a journey far beyond athletic competition- inspired with the values of community involvement, teamwork, integrity and pride.
By using sports as the vehicle, the ultimate mission of the games is to cultivate a deeper understanding and appreciation of Jewish values within Jewish teens by enriching their Jewish identity in an informal setting and encouraging their identification with Israel at the same time.
Would you like to get involved in this wonderful event sponsored by our community? Call Naomi Kirshner nkirshner@headenver.org or visit the JCC Maccabi Games website http://www.jccdenver.org/maccabi/.
Have a great summer and see you at the games!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Works in Progress; Acharei Mot/Kedoshim
I asked a member of the congregation once, “So, how are you doing?” What I was expecting to hear, of course, was “I’m fine, how are you?” But this person said something I hadn’t heard before. He said, "How am I doing? Well, I’m a work in progress.”
A work in progress. When I was younger, I had a sense that we learn through our college years and then we go to work and the learning stops. We might take some management courses or something related to our work, but the bulk of what we know, we learned before age 21 and then we simply go out and live our lives. Perhaps that was why I was surprised when I first learned about “elder hostels.” These are programs that provide adult education classes for seniors on virtually any subject including Jewish studies. I wondered what seniors still wanted to learn that they hadn’t already learned through simply living their lives?
I shouldn’t have been surprised: there is a lot to learn at any age --as long as the mind and soul are active, it changes and develops and grows. Just like anything else that is alive, as soon as we stop growing, we start dying.
We are all works in progress: it doesn’t matter one’s age, our place in life, married, single, parents or grandparents. We are not yet what we need to be and that is true up until the time that we take our very last breath.
Last week’s Torah portion focuses on disease. If an Israelite were found to be leprous, the priest would declare him impure and the leper would be forced outside the camp. The Rabbis understood leprosy as a punishment for the sin of lashon harah; they compared the word: metzorah which means leprosy, to the phrase, motzi shem rah; which means slander. When you demean someone else in speech to a third party, you create a kind of disease in the community that can spread out of control. Lashon harah attacks the very fabric of the community like leprosy attacks the body. Speech can be used in beautiful and constructive ways: poetry, kindness, expressions of love and appreciation. Or it can be used to destroy reputations, sow the seeds of discord, envy, pettiness. Last week’s parasha focuses on what can go wrong in the hearts of people in the community, how Israelites can push God away and give in to their baser instincts.
But then we come to this week’s parasha: Acharei Mot/Kedoshim. Here we see just the opposite. We read of the Yom Kippur service in the Tabernacle. This service represents the human spirit reaching out to God, renouncing sin and using our power of speech for prayer seeking atonement. We read also about our obligation to care for the poor, respect one’s parents, observe the Sabbath, be honest in weights and measure, love one’s neighbor. Here again we see the human spirit aspiring to the good, to the Godly, to what the Torah calls, “kedusha,” holiness.
The question then is raised for each and every Jew, in fact, for every member of the human family: will we stay mired in the diseases of the spirit, to what in us is lowly and petty and driven by our baser instincts? Or will we reach out to God, to all that is the best in us, to what makes us distinctively human, and to what makes us good?
Jewish tradition understands this question to apply, essentially, to every decision we make, every day of our lives. Here is the question in other words: will I move towards God or away from God with what I am about to do right now? Works in progress.
From the second night of Passover to the first night of Shavuot, we count the Omer, 49 days in all. We are today counting the 25th day of the Omer. The Omer is a measure of grain, harvested from the new barley crop and brought to the Temple on the second day of Pesach. The Israelites would then counts 49 days at the end of which, they would bring another measure of grain for sacrifice, but this time from the newly harvested wheat crop. Why 49 days and why barley at the beginning of the period and wheat at the end?
The Rabbis understood Pesach as the time the Israelites left the degradation of Egypt. After 49 days of purification in the desert, they came to Mt Sinai and on the festival of Shavuot, they received the Torah. According to tradition, there were 49 levels of Egyptian impurity that the people had to shake off, one level each day, until they were sufficiently pure to receive the Torah.
Now the first omer offering was of barley which is a coarse grain that was used to feed animals. At the end of the seven weeks, they offered up wheat which is a smoother, softer and a more easily refined grain that was used to make bread eaten by human beings.
Can we not say then that at the beginning of the 49 days, just after the people left Egyptian slavery, they were a courser lot, robbed of their humanity, treated like animals and perhaps, even acting more like animals, baser, more instinctual, more violent and cruel? And that the seven week period was really a period of spiritual and emotional refinement: a gradual control of their baser instincts, a turning towards their better selves; from violence to compassion, from hatred to love, from treating each other like objects to respect, from cowardice to courage, from pettiness and jealousy to loyalty?
That, by the way, is why the Kabbalists attached their notion of the 7 lower sefirot to the 49 days of sefirat ha omer. Each of the seven sefirot represents human qualities to which we aspire: love, respect, compassion, courage, loyalty and so on. Contemplating these sefirot each day encourages us to refine the self. Each day we count, each day we get better. In our tradition, the number 7 represents wholeness: 7x7 or 49, complete wholeness. We don’t just refine ourselves between Pesach and Shavuot, we refine ourselves, throughout our entire life, our whole life long.
So you see, we are all works in progress. There is not a person among us who can’t improve him or herself in some meaningful way every day. It takes the simplest act of self-reflection to see where one needs the most work. God doesn’t expect of us, perfection. But He does expect of us a slow, thoughtful, life-long process of developing our better selves. So what will you work on today? Shavuot is fast approaching; we have no time to waste.
A work in progress. When I was younger, I had a sense that we learn through our college years and then we go to work and the learning stops. We might take some management courses or something related to our work, but the bulk of what we know, we learned before age 21 and then we simply go out and live our lives. Perhaps that was why I was surprised when I first learned about “elder hostels.” These are programs that provide adult education classes for seniors on virtually any subject including Jewish studies. I wondered what seniors still wanted to learn that they hadn’t already learned through simply living their lives?
I shouldn’t have been surprised: there is a lot to learn at any age --as long as the mind and soul are active, it changes and develops and grows. Just like anything else that is alive, as soon as we stop growing, we start dying.
We are all works in progress: it doesn’t matter one’s age, our place in life, married, single, parents or grandparents. We are not yet what we need to be and that is true up until the time that we take our very last breath.
Last week’s Torah portion focuses on disease. If an Israelite were found to be leprous, the priest would declare him impure and the leper would be forced outside the camp. The Rabbis understood leprosy as a punishment for the sin of lashon harah; they compared the word: metzorah which means leprosy, to the phrase, motzi shem rah; which means slander. When you demean someone else in speech to a third party, you create a kind of disease in the community that can spread out of control. Lashon harah attacks the very fabric of the community like leprosy attacks the body. Speech can be used in beautiful and constructive ways: poetry, kindness, expressions of love and appreciation. Or it can be used to destroy reputations, sow the seeds of discord, envy, pettiness. Last week’s parasha focuses on what can go wrong in the hearts of people in the community, how Israelites can push God away and give in to their baser instincts.
But then we come to this week’s parasha: Acharei Mot/Kedoshim. Here we see just the opposite. We read of the Yom Kippur service in the Tabernacle. This service represents the human spirit reaching out to God, renouncing sin and using our power of speech for prayer seeking atonement. We read also about our obligation to care for the poor, respect one’s parents, observe the Sabbath, be honest in weights and measure, love one’s neighbor. Here again we see the human spirit aspiring to the good, to the Godly, to what the Torah calls, “kedusha,” holiness.
The question then is raised for each and every Jew, in fact, for every member of the human family: will we stay mired in the diseases of the spirit, to what in us is lowly and petty and driven by our baser instincts? Or will we reach out to God, to all that is the best in us, to what makes us distinctively human, and to what makes us good?
Jewish tradition understands this question to apply, essentially, to every decision we make, every day of our lives. Here is the question in other words: will I move towards God or away from God with what I am about to do right now? Works in progress.
From the second night of Passover to the first night of Shavuot, we count the Omer, 49 days in all. We are today counting the 25th day of the Omer. The Omer is a measure of grain, harvested from the new barley crop and brought to the Temple on the second day of Pesach. The Israelites would then counts 49 days at the end of which, they would bring another measure of grain for sacrifice, but this time from the newly harvested wheat crop. Why 49 days and why barley at the beginning of the period and wheat at the end?
The Rabbis understood Pesach as the time the Israelites left the degradation of Egypt. After 49 days of purification in the desert, they came to Mt Sinai and on the festival of Shavuot, they received the Torah. According to tradition, there were 49 levels of Egyptian impurity that the people had to shake off, one level each day, until they were sufficiently pure to receive the Torah.
Now the first omer offering was of barley which is a coarse grain that was used to feed animals. At the end of the seven weeks, they offered up wheat which is a smoother, softer and a more easily refined grain that was used to make bread eaten by human beings.
Can we not say then that at the beginning of the 49 days, just after the people left Egyptian slavery, they were a courser lot, robbed of their humanity, treated like animals and perhaps, even acting more like animals, baser, more instinctual, more violent and cruel? And that the seven week period was really a period of spiritual and emotional refinement: a gradual control of their baser instincts, a turning towards their better selves; from violence to compassion, from hatred to love, from treating each other like objects to respect, from cowardice to courage, from pettiness and jealousy to loyalty?
That, by the way, is why the Kabbalists attached their notion of the 7 lower sefirot to the 49 days of sefirat ha omer. Each of the seven sefirot represents human qualities to which we aspire: love, respect, compassion, courage, loyalty and so on. Contemplating these sefirot each day encourages us to refine the self. Each day we count, each day we get better. In our tradition, the number 7 represents wholeness: 7x7 or 49, complete wholeness. We don’t just refine ourselves between Pesach and Shavuot, we refine ourselves, throughout our entire life, our whole life long.
So you see, we are all works in progress. There is not a person among us who can’t improve him or herself in some meaningful way every day. It takes the simplest act of self-reflection to see where one needs the most work. God doesn’t expect of us, perfection. But He does expect of us a slow, thoughtful, life-long process of developing our better selves. So what will you work on today? Shavuot is fast approaching; we have no time to waste.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Yom Hazikaron Commemoration
On behalf of the Hebrew Educational Alliance and the Jewish Community, I welcome you to this Yom Hazikaron commemoration.
We read in Genesis of God’s promise to Abraham and his descendents, “and he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur Kasdim to give you this land to inherit it.” Throughout Jewish history, enormous sacrifice was required to realize this promise.
Since 1948, almost 23,000 men and women of the Israel Defense Forces have lost their lives defending the State against Arab aggression. Almost 2,000 Israelis have lost their lives in senseless and cruel acts of terrorism. We in the Diaspora must recognize that our brothers and sisters in Israel are on the front lines in defense of not just their own families and communities, but our families and communities as well. I am convinced that the fate of Jews worldwide is directly tied to the fate of Jews in Israel. As they go, so we go. To my mind, there is no world Jewry without the state of Israel.
So we commend and remember and pray for the souls of those who have fallen in Israel in the past 62 years. And we will pray for the welfare of those who stand in its defense today. God’s promise to our ancestors has been made real in our day. We must not forget the sacrifice of those who have made it so.
We read in Genesis of God’s promise to Abraham and his descendents, “and he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur Kasdim to give you this land to inherit it.” Throughout Jewish history, enormous sacrifice was required to realize this promise.
Since 1948, almost 23,000 men and women of the Israel Defense Forces have lost their lives defending the State against Arab aggression. Almost 2,000 Israelis have lost their lives in senseless and cruel acts of terrorism. We in the Diaspora must recognize that our brothers and sisters in Israel are on the front lines in defense of not just their own families and communities, but our families and communities as well. I am convinced that the fate of Jews worldwide is directly tied to the fate of Jews in Israel. As they go, so we go. To my mind, there is no world Jewry without the state of Israel.
So we commend and remember and pray for the souls of those who have fallen in Israel in the past 62 years. And we will pray for the welfare of those who stand in its defense today. God’s promise to our ancestors has been made real in our day. We must not forget the sacrifice of those who have made it so.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Thank you all for being here. This is perhaps the most important program of the year for the Alliance. The Yom Hashoah committee works for an entire year to present this commemoration for the community. They work so hard with one clear vision in mind; to make sure that the young people in our community remember how human beings, if not checked by people of good will, can become beasts, violent and murderous. We call upon our young people to remember because there is great and enduring power in memory. To remember evil is to work tirelessly to prevent it from happening again. To forget the past is to invite the horrors of the past into the present yet again. You and I and our children after us, must continue to stand strong against evil as we remember. That is our job tonight and throughout the year and throughout our lives. Zachor, lo tishkach: remember, do not forget.
Our Yom Hashoah committee today feels a sense of urgency not felt so much in previous years. The urgency is that we are slowly losing the generation of the survivors who have given us first hand reports about the Shoah. That truth has been brought home to us with great poignancy this past year as we lost our teacher and friend, Jack Goldman. Jack was the inspiration for the Yom Hashoah Committee at the HEA since its founding. He worked with the committee every year sharing his personal experience in the Shoah. For those who didn’t know Jack well, I would like to say just a few words about his life. Jack Goldman was born in Mannheim, Germany: on Erev Yom Kippur, 1923. He spent his early years in Mannheim growing up with his sisters, Terry and Debby. When the Nazis came, his sisters were able to escape on the Kindertransport. They found their way to America to survive the war.
But Jack was arrested by the Nazis in 1938.
He was first brought to a prison in Berlin and then transferred to Sachsenhausen. He then went to Dachau and later to Auschwitz. In 1945, he was forced into a death march out of Auschwitz and he collapsed from typhoid just before reaching Dachau for a second time. His clothing was in tatters, no shoes on his feet. He somehow survived and lived to see the American army liberate the camp.
Jack was good with languages and knew English. When he regained his strength, he began to work for the American army: he was just 22 years old. After the war, he was able to start his life again. He married Margot in 1952 and they were married 57 years. Together they raised four loving children: and received endless naches from their 8 grandchildren. What was so remarkable about Jack is that he picked his life again, after great tragedy and strife, and went on to live a good life and become a leader in our community: teaching us all and our children and grandchildren, in the Jewish community as well as in the general community about the Shoah. He taught us all about our responsibility to ourselves, to the State of Israel and to the world to never let it happen again. We dedicate this evening’s program and all the work that we do to teach the Shoah, to our friend, teacher and mentor, Jack Goldman.
We thank all the people on the Shoah committee that have worked so hard to make this presentation to us tonight. We thank all the participants in the program, as well, for their involvement in this important work. And in particular, we thank DU Hillel for supporting our program tonight from a grant provided by Hedy Mantel (Tessler) in memory of her parents.
Welcome to you all again and may we to continue to focus our attention on the lessons of the Shoah; zachor, lo tishcach: remember and never forget.
Our Yom Hashoah committee today feels a sense of urgency not felt so much in previous years. The urgency is that we are slowly losing the generation of the survivors who have given us first hand reports about the Shoah. That truth has been brought home to us with great poignancy this past year as we lost our teacher and friend, Jack Goldman. Jack was the inspiration for the Yom Hashoah Committee at the HEA since its founding. He worked with the committee every year sharing his personal experience in the Shoah. For those who didn’t know Jack well, I would like to say just a few words about his life. Jack Goldman was born in Mannheim, Germany: on Erev Yom Kippur, 1923. He spent his early years in Mannheim growing up with his sisters, Terry and Debby. When the Nazis came, his sisters were able to escape on the Kindertransport. They found their way to America to survive the war.
But Jack was arrested by the Nazis in 1938.
He was first brought to a prison in Berlin and then transferred to Sachsenhausen. He then went to Dachau and later to Auschwitz. In 1945, he was forced into a death march out of Auschwitz and he collapsed from typhoid just before reaching Dachau for a second time. His clothing was in tatters, no shoes on his feet. He somehow survived and lived to see the American army liberate the camp.
Jack was good with languages and knew English. When he regained his strength, he began to work for the American army: he was just 22 years old. After the war, he was able to start his life again. He married Margot in 1952 and they were married 57 years. Together they raised four loving children: and received endless naches from their 8 grandchildren. What was so remarkable about Jack is that he picked his life again, after great tragedy and strife, and went on to live a good life and become a leader in our community: teaching us all and our children and grandchildren, in the Jewish community as well as in the general community about the Shoah. He taught us all about our responsibility to ourselves, to the State of Israel and to the world to never let it happen again. We dedicate this evening’s program and all the work that we do to teach the Shoah, to our friend, teacher and mentor, Jack Goldman.
We thank all the people on the Shoah committee that have worked so hard to make this presentation to us tonight. We thank all the participants in the program, as well, for their involvement in this important work. And in particular, we thank DU Hillel for supporting our program tonight from a grant provided by Hedy Mantel (Tessler) in memory of her parents.
Welcome to you all again and may we to continue to focus our attention on the lessons of the Shoah; zachor, lo tishcach: remember and never forget.
Zealotry and Its Cure
I wrote my senior sermon on this parasah, Shemini. The senior sermon in Rabbinical School is a really big deal. All your classmates are there as well as your professors. You have studied sacred text for 6 years and now it was the time to show what you learned in a 20 minutes talk. I prepared for this 20 minutes for months. I gave the sermon and got good reviews from my professors: renowned historians, Biblicists and Talmudists. So now I was supposedly ready to go out into the world of the pulpit and get reviews of my sermons from Jews in the pews. I fondly remember how gentle my professors were in comparison.
So Parashat Shemini. There is drama in this parasha which is rare in the Book of Leviticus which speaks mostly about the list of animal sacrifices made by the priests in the Tabernacle. But in our parasha there is much more; there is malfeasance, there is sin, there is destruction and death.
This is what happened. Two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, themselves priests, as the text says, “took up their fire pan, and they put fire in them and placed incense upon it and they brought before God, an alien fire that He [God] had not commanded them [to bring]. [Then,] a fire came forth from before God and consumed them and they died before God.” This is an incredible story. Here are two priests who bring a strange fire: an extra sacrifice that God had not commanded them to bring, and they died for it. Now, they didn’t kill anybody. They didn’t commit adultery. They were not worshipping idols. They just brought an extra sacrifice that wasn’t on the list of required sacrifices. In a sense, they just did a little more than was asked of them. Why did they have to die, as if a little more incense offered up in the Tabernacle was some kind of religious catastrophe?
There is a lot of rabbinic commentary on this episode as you might imagine. Some say that the essence of their sin was that they offered up this sacrifice in the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle that was reserved only for the Kohen Gadol (they weren’t) and only on Yom Kippur (it wasn’t). Some say that they should have used fire that had come from the alter but instead used fire that came from elsewhere (thus, the phrase, alien fire), so that was their sin. Some say that it was an appropriate sacrifice but it had not yet become a part of the regular sacrificial system; it was premature, in other words; and thus forbidden.
All interesting, I think, but not as interesting as the commentary of the Sifre, the legal commentary on the Book of Leviticus. It says there that Nadav and Avihu brought their additional sacrifice out of an extreme love of God. The sons of Aaron had already witnessed the eight day celebration of the inauguration of the Tabernacle and the elevation of the priestly tribe (the descendents of Aaron). Nadav and Avihu suddenly became two of the most important young men in Israel. They were excited. They were overwhelmed, they were, in fact, ecstatic.
So, implies the Sifre, they got carried away. They did more than they should have. They took it upon themselves to make up their own ritual, their own sacrifice, their own tradition. And God saw this as dangerous for the People so He took their lives with fire (just as they had committed their sin, with fire).
Judaism doesn’t like ecstatic displays of religious fervor. In the Talmud, Masechet Chagigah, there is the story of 4 rabbis who entered “the garden,” perhaps a metaphor for an ecstatic mystical spiritual experience. The four rabbis were, Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher (a derogatory name for Elisha ben Abuya who became an apostate) and R. Akiba. The text then reads: “Ben ‘Azzai cast a look and died.” Perhaps he looked into the face of God. It was too much for him and he perished. “Ben Zoma looked and went insane.” Alisha ben Abuya looked and left Judaism. Only Rabbi Akiva, the greatest legal mind among the four, departed from the garden, unharmed.
What happened in that garden? No one knows but it clearly was overwhelmingly powerful. It was certainly religious fervor; these rabbis went to a spiritual place to which they had no business going. They got carried away, literally. One just dropped dead, one went crazy, one had to leave the faith all together and only Rabbi Akiva made it out of there in one peace.
Why Rabbi Akiva? Rabbi Akiva was religiously and spiritually the most mature. He was steeped in tradition. He had an overwhelming experience yet was able to fall back on Jewish law and tradition to keep him sane and grounded in this world. Few of us are like Rabbi Akiva. There are places in our spiritual lives we should not go. Ecstatic religious fervor should not be part of our religious experience. It causes problems, it hurts us and it harms our community.
Examples? I don’t think too many of us are at risk of flying off into some ecstatic trance from which we will never return. But I do think there is risk today. Perhaps not from a spiritual extremism, but there is risk from religious extremism and zealotry. Religious extremists go beyond what their tradition teaches. These people look at isolated religious texts, mostly out of context, and take them too far. They can easily become zealots for some cause or ideology that they come to believe God requires of them. Religious zealots have caused a lot of suffering in Jewish history. Jewish zealots fought each other in the first century CE, convinced that their understanding of Judaism was correct. Their infighting made the community weak, susceptible to the Roman conquest which ultimately destroyed the Temple and created a Jewish dispersion that lasted two thousand years. In the second century CE, Jewish zealots believing the messiah had come, antagonized the Romans which led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews and the destruction of some 50 Jewish towns and 1000 Jewish villages.
Zealotry. A dangerous problem in Judaism and in all religion, really, in all cultures both religious and secular.
I believe we all have, perhaps what we can call, “zealous tendencies.” How do you know whether that is true for you?
Here is a test for zealotry which I made up. You can make your own test.
First: zealots never think they are zealots; they just think they are passionate in their cause.
Second: zealots think their reasoning is impeccable and can’t believe how ridiculous the other guy’s reasoning is.
Third: zealots look to leaders for guidance and affirmation and those leaders can easily manipulate their zealot followers. Zealots never question or challenge their leaders.
Fourth: zealots believe that they already know everything they need to know. They do not listen to anyone who disagrees with them or are different from them in any significant way. Zealots rarely learn anything new.
Fifth: zealots don’t see the real people who are in front of them; people are only important if they validate the zealot’s worldview. And that worldview is usually distorted.
Sixth: zealots always have enemies who are often imaginary. Zealots believe other people are dangerous.
Seventh: zealots believe that people who don’t agree with them, are … zealots.
We all have some zealotry in us: we all at times enter that same crazy garden of the four rabbis, where we can get over-excited and self- righteous in our religious experience and/or in our ideology. The cure for zealotry and religious extremism? Moderation. There are a lot of ways to understand Jewish tradition and practice today, but I require of my approach to Jewish life –moderation. My Judaism cares less about ideology and more about practice. It encourages calm, caring, compassionate, reasonable behavior. My Judaism accepts and encourages differences of opinion (read any page of Talmud, to see what I mean). My Judaism is tolerant of Jews who practices differently than I do and does not believe that those Jews who do things differently that I do are “doing it wrong.” My Judaism respects Jewish leaders but realizes that Jewish leaders are flawed human beings like anyone else. My Judaism abhors violence and understands all human beings to be made in the image of God. My Judaism is a Judaism of moderation. I believe my Judaism and other religions and ideologies like it, control our natural tendencies to zealotry and extremism.
So I say, let’s stay out of the garden that the four rabbis entered. Instead, let’s keep our feet firmly planted in this world and do what it right for our community and our world.
So Parashat Shemini. There is drama in this parasha which is rare in the Book of Leviticus which speaks mostly about the list of animal sacrifices made by the priests in the Tabernacle. But in our parasha there is much more; there is malfeasance, there is sin, there is destruction and death.
This is what happened. Two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, themselves priests, as the text says, “took up their fire pan, and they put fire in them and placed incense upon it and they brought before God, an alien fire that He [God] had not commanded them [to bring]. [Then,] a fire came forth from before God and consumed them and they died before God.” This is an incredible story. Here are two priests who bring a strange fire: an extra sacrifice that God had not commanded them to bring, and they died for it. Now, they didn’t kill anybody. They didn’t commit adultery. They were not worshipping idols. They just brought an extra sacrifice that wasn’t on the list of required sacrifices. In a sense, they just did a little more than was asked of them. Why did they have to die, as if a little more incense offered up in the Tabernacle was some kind of religious catastrophe?
There is a lot of rabbinic commentary on this episode as you might imagine. Some say that the essence of their sin was that they offered up this sacrifice in the inner sanctum of the Tabernacle that was reserved only for the Kohen Gadol (they weren’t) and only on Yom Kippur (it wasn’t). Some say that they should have used fire that had come from the alter but instead used fire that came from elsewhere (thus, the phrase, alien fire), so that was their sin. Some say that it was an appropriate sacrifice but it had not yet become a part of the regular sacrificial system; it was premature, in other words; and thus forbidden.
All interesting, I think, but not as interesting as the commentary of the Sifre, the legal commentary on the Book of Leviticus. It says there that Nadav and Avihu brought their additional sacrifice out of an extreme love of God. The sons of Aaron had already witnessed the eight day celebration of the inauguration of the Tabernacle and the elevation of the priestly tribe (the descendents of Aaron). Nadav and Avihu suddenly became two of the most important young men in Israel. They were excited. They were overwhelmed, they were, in fact, ecstatic.
So, implies the Sifre, they got carried away. They did more than they should have. They took it upon themselves to make up their own ritual, their own sacrifice, their own tradition. And God saw this as dangerous for the People so He took their lives with fire (just as they had committed their sin, with fire).
Judaism doesn’t like ecstatic displays of religious fervor. In the Talmud, Masechet Chagigah, there is the story of 4 rabbis who entered “the garden,” perhaps a metaphor for an ecstatic mystical spiritual experience. The four rabbis were, Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Aher (a derogatory name for Elisha ben Abuya who became an apostate) and R. Akiba. The text then reads: “Ben ‘Azzai cast a look and died.” Perhaps he looked into the face of God. It was too much for him and he perished. “Ben Zoma looked and went insane.” Alisha ben Abuya looked and left Judaism. Only Rabbi Akiva, the greatest legal mind among the four, departed from the garden, unharmed.
What happened in that garden? No one knows but it clearly was overwhelmingly powerful. It was certainly religious fervor; these rabbis went to a spiritual place to which they had no business going. They got carried away, literally. One just dropped dead, one went crazy, one had to leave the faith all together and only Rabbi Akiva made it out of there in one peace.
Why Rabbi Akiva? Rabbi Akiva was religiously and spiritually the most mature. He was steeped in tradition. He had an overwhelming experience yet was able to fall back on Jewish law and tradition to keep him sane and grounded in this world. Few of us are like Rabbi Akiva. There are places in our spiritual lives we should not go. Ecstatic religious fervor should not be part of our religious experience. It causes problems, it hurts us and it harms our community.
Examples? I don’t think too many of us are at risk of flying off into some ecstatic trance from which we will never return. But I do think there is risk today. Perhaps not from a spiritual extremism, but there is risk from religious extremism and zealotry. Religious extremists go beyond what their tradition teaches. These people look at isolated religious texts, mostly out of context, and take them too far. They can easily become zealots for some cause or ideology that they come to believe God requires of them. Religious zealots have caused a lot of suffering in Jewish history. Jewish zealots fought each other in the first century CE, convinced that their understanding of Judaism was correct. Their infighting made the community weak, susceptible to the Roman conquest which ultimately destroyed the Temple and created a Jewish dispersion that lasted two thousand years. In the second century CE, Jewish zealots believing the messiah had come, antagonized the Romans which led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews and the destruction of some 50 Jewish towns and 1000 Jewish villages.
Zealotry. A dangerous problem in Judaism and in all religion, really, in all cultures both religious and secular.
I believe we all have, perhaps what we can call, “zealous tendencies.” How do you know whether that is true for you?
Here is a test for zealotry which I made up. You can make your own test.
First: zealots never think they are zealots; they just think they are passionate in their cause.
Second: zealots think their reasoning is impeccable and can’t believe how ridiculous the other guy’s reasoning is.
Third: zealots look to leaders for guidance and affirmation and those leaders can easily manipulate their zealot followers. Zealots never question or challenge their leaders.
Fourth: zealots believe that they already know everything they need to know. They do not listen to anyone who disagrees with them or are different from them in any significant way. Zealots rarely learn anything new.
Fifth: zealots don’t see the real people who are in front of them; people are only important if they validate the zealot’s worldview. And that worldview is usually distorted.
Sixth: zealots always have enemies who are often imaginary. Zealots believe other people are dangerous.
Seventh: zealots believe that people who don’t agree with them, are … zealots.
We all have some zealotry in us: we all at times enter that same crazy garden of the four rabbis, where we can get over-excited and self- righteous in our religious experience and/or in our ideology. The cure for zealotry and religious extremism? Moderation. There are a lot of ways to understand Jewish tradition and practice today, but I require of my approach to Jewish life –moderation. My Judaism cares less about ideology and more about practice. It encourages calm, caring, compassionate, reasonable behavior. My Judaism accepts and encourages differences of opinion (read any page of Talmud, to see what I mean). My Judaism is tolerant of Jews who practices differently than I do and does not believe that those Jews who do things differently that I do are “doing it wrong.” My Judaism respects Jewish leaders but realizes that Jewish leaders are flawed human beings like anyone else. My Judaism abhors violence and understands all human beings to be made in the image of God. My Judaism is a Judaism of moderation. I believe my Judaism and other religions and ideologies like it, control our natural tendencies to zealotry and extremism.
So I say, let’s stay out of the garden that the four rabbis entered. Instead, let’s keep our feet firmly planted in this world and do what it right for our community and our world.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Jerusalem
When the Dollin family finished their Seder last Sunday night, together with Jews throughout the world and throughout history, we sang: L’shana HaBaah, Birushalayim: next year in Jerusalem. We say the same thing as our last prayer on Yom Kippur. In the Bible, the word Jerusalem appears 667 times. In the Talmud, the word appears over 1,000 times. Jerusalem appears in our prayer liturgy dozens of times. When we pray, we face Jerusalem. When not in Jerusalem, Jews throughout history have yearned to be in Jerusalem. Jerusalem has been a part of the Jewish personality for 3010 years since David founded the city in the year 1000 BCE.
I thought I would take us on a quick historical tour this morning to give both ancient Jerusalem and modern Jerusalem some context as the holy city has been in the news lately --particularly regarding the plan by the municipality of Jerusalem to build an additional 1600 apartments in a Jewish suburb called Ramat Shlomo. It has created a bit of a stir internationally and has strained the US-Israel relationship. We will hear much more about Jerusalem in the news in the weeks and months ahead so I thought I would speak about it a bit today.
The Jerusalem story begins with King David who captured a small fortified hill in the Judean Hills from a Canaanite tribe called the Jebusites. The hill was steep and easy to protect. It also had water from a small spring adjacent to the hill.
David’s son Solomon expanded the city by building a temple just to the North. For the next 1000 years, give or take a few years, that temple, destroyed once and rebuilt, was the central focus of the Jewish people. In King Herod’s day, the Temple was expanded into an enormous complex that struck awe in the hearts of Israelites that would visit it from all over the land -three times annually. One of those times was Pesach when each Israelite family would offer up a lamb to be sacrificed by the Priests and eaten in Jerusalem by the family.
The second Temple was destroyed in 70CE by the Romans to the horror of the Jewish people. For the next 2000 years, Jews would yearn for the Temple to one day be rebuilt ---the laws of the Temple sacrifices were studied in every bet midrash in every country in the world where Jews lived. Jewish prayer would speak of the Temple. To this day on Shabbat and the Holidays, a special section of the service is reserved for commemorating the ritual that took place in the Temple. We will chant that very service today in a few moments.
Over time, most Jews came to believe the Temple would only be rebuilt when the messiah comes. Never the less, Jerusalem the city, retained a mystical holiness and its memory would always remain in the mind of Jews. As we read in the Psalms, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy."
After Jerusalem fell to the Romans, the Romans created a classic Roman city on its ruins they called Aelia Capotolina in which they worshiped pagan gods. When the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth century, Jerusalem became a Christian city with little attention paid to the Temple Mount but a lot of focus on the development of what became the Church Middle East, and Caliph Umar captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine overlords. He cleaned up the Temple Mount that had been used as a garbage dump and built a mosque on it. That began a uncomfortable sharing of the Holy City between Christians, Muslims and Jews that exists to the present day.
In 688, work began to create a dome around a protruding rock on the Temple Mount that was believed to be the rock upon which Abraham offered up Isaac for sacrifice. Muslims also believe it was from this rock that Mohammed ascended to heaven. The Al Aksa Mosque was first built in the year 705.
Crusaders sacked Jerusalem in 1099 killing everyone in sight and made Jerusalem Christian again, creating churches on the Temple Mount. The Muslims recaptured the city under Saladin, about a hundred years later and it became a Muslim city once again. Mamluks from the Eurasian Steppes, converts to Islam, were the next to invade and they took Jerusalem in the 13th century and held it until 1516 when Jerusalem was taken over by the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman empire held the city for the next 400 years. Then came the British. General Allenby entered the Jaffa Gate in December of 1917.
Zionism was well under way by then. The first Zionist Congress in Basel was in 1897. Jews had always lived in Jerusalem but now, many more came. Already by 1850, Jews were a majority. By 1922, there were 34,000 Jews in Jerusalem, 15,000 Christians and 13,500 Muslims. By the mid 1800’s, neighborhoods began to sprout up outside the city walls to the west. By 1880, there were 9 Jewish neighborhoods in the new city. Arabs and Christians built outside the city walls as well. Building in Jerusalem, both on the west side and the east side, continues to the present day.
There was conflict in the Holy Land between Arabs and the growing Jewish presence during the British Mandate. The British turned the problem over to the newly created United Nations. In 1947, the UN approved a partition plan: separate Arab and Jewish territories with a non-binding resolution to keep Jerusalem under international auspices, what they called a “corpus seperatum.” The Jews accepted the partition plan. The Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab countries rejected it. Israel was attacked, the Jewish population of Jerusalem was under seize, the Israeli army broke the seize and captured West Jerusalem. They signed an armistice with Jordan who had annexed the Old City and East Jerusalem. The city was divided between Israel and Jordan for the next 19 years. During this time, Jordan destroyed over 50 synagogues in the Jewish quarter, one of them the Hurvah synagogue built in 1864. That synagogue was just rebuilt and rededicated last month, on March 16th. Fatah official, Khatem Abd el-Khader, called the recent renovation and dedication of the Hurva synagogue a "provocation", warned Israel that it was "playing with fire" and called on Palestinians to "converge on Al-Aksa to save it.” Violence erupted and one might ask just who provoked whom?
The Jordanians after 1948 according to the terms of the armistice agreement, were obligated to let Jews visit the Western Wall, the Kotel. They did not allow it. The Christian population in Jordanian Jerusalem fell from 25,000 to 11,000 as restrictive laws were imposed on Christian institutions as well. The Holy Sites in the Old City were completely cut off to the Jewish people. The ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was compromised and cut off from the Jewish people. At the same time, the Knesset, government offices, offices of foreign affairs and police as well as the president’s residence were built in West Jerusalem.
In 1967, Israel begged the Jordanians to stay out of the inevitable war with Syria and Egypt. Never the less, on May 30th, King Hussein signed an military pact with Nasser who had blockaded the Straits of Tiran, put 100,000 Egyptian troops into the Sinai and vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. Israel attacked on June 5th, surrounded the Old City and captured it on June 7th. Jerusalem was now in sovereign Jewish hands. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol announced that Jerusalem was “the eternal capital of Israel.” On June 27th, 1967, the Knesset annexed all of Jerusalem, east and west. In 1965, Teddy Kollek had become mayor of Jewish Jerusalem. After the '67 war, Jerusalem city boundaries were drawn up and Kollek began building a unified city with full access to all holy sites guaranteed by law.
Some international bodies claim that Israel’s annexation of West Jerusalem after 1948 was illegal according to international law. They also claim that the 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem was illegal. There is considerable debate on this subject. Israel claims it is not illegal and that Israel and the Jewish people have a historic right to Jerusalem that goes back 3 millennia. I, for one, agree with that position.
From 1967 until the Oslo process in the 90’s, no Israeli administration, Labor or Likkud, right or left, even considered re-dividing Jerusalem. Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin did put Jerusalem theoretically on the negotiating table but even he held firm for Jewish sovereignty over the entire city saying, “if they told us that the price of peace is giving up on a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, my reply would be ‘let’s do without peace’.” In 2000, Prime Minister Barak considered offering some sections of East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital along the lines of a rather tortured division of the city proposed by President Clinton. But PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat rejected the whole deal and a second Intifada broke out. At a post summit conference, Chairman Arafat revealed his designs on a united Jerusalem under Palestinian sovereignty as he said: “not only [over] the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Temple Mount mosques, and the Armenian quarter, but it is Jerusalem in its entirety, entirety, entirety.” So, after a 3000 year journey, we come to the present. At a ill-timed moment in history, a mid level Israeli bureaucrat announced stage four of a seven stage process in the construction of 1600 apartments in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in a northeastern suburb of Jerusalem. Construction in this part of Jerusalem has been going on for years with nary a complaint by Jew or Palestinian. This neighborhood itself is a large Jewish religious neighborhood surrounded to each side by even larger Jewish neighborhoods. This neighborhood would never be a part of any peace plan. The residents of this neighborhood as well as most residents of Jerusalem are scratching their heads perplexed that Ramat Shlomo became the source of an international incident. No one in Israel would consider “Ramat Shlomo” a settlement like you might find on some hill top in the West Bank. In fact, no part of Jerusalem, east or west can be considered a settlement as it is has been annexed Israeli territory since ‘67 which means all residents of Jerusalem, Arab and Jew, are full citizens of the State of Israel. This is not the case in the West Bank and that is why the West Bank has always been in play in peace negotiations.
The ill-will expressed publicly two weeks ago between the US administration and Israel has pretty much blown over. I suspect, however, that the issue of Jerusalem will come up again if any kind of peace process actually begins again. But perhaps the conflict of the past few weeks is an important one. It brings to light that re-dividing Jerusalem in any meaningful way would meet severe resistance by the overwhelming majority of Israelis. That would make it unlikely that an Israeli administration would be able to offer it up again at the peace table.
So that’s Jerusalem. The name means city of peace but it has engendered conflict throughout its 3000 year history. We can only pray that one day, Jerusalem, as the capital city of the State of Israel, will be able to live up to its name.
I thought I would take us on a quick historical tour this morning to give both ancient Jerusalem and modern Jerusalem some context as the holy city has been in the news lately --particularly regarding the plan by the municipality of Jerusalem to build an additional 1600 apartments in a Jewish suburb called Ramat Shlomo. It has created a bit of a stir internationally and has strained the US-Israel relationship. We will hear much more about Jerusalem in the news in the weeks and months ahead so I thought I would speak about it a bit today.
The Jerusalem story begins with King David who captured a small fortified hill in the Judean Hills from a Canaanite tribe called the Jebusites. The hill was steep and easy to protect. It also had water from a small spring adjacent to the hill.
David’s son Solomon expanded the city by building a temple just to the North. For the next 1000 years, give or take a few years, that temple, destroyed once and rebuilt, was the central focus of the Jewish people. In King Herod’s day, the Temple was expanded into an enormous complex that struck awe in the hearts of Israelites that would visit it from all over the land -three times annually. One of those times was Pesach when each Israelite family would offer up a lamb to be sacrificed by the Priests and eaten in Jerusalem by the family.
The second Temple was destroyed in 70CE by the Romans to the horror of the Jewish people. For the next 2000 years, Jews would yearn for the Temple to one day be rebuilt ---the laws of the Temple sacrifices were studied in every bet midrash in every country in the world where Jews lived. Jewish prayer would speak of the Temple. To this day on Shabbat and the Holidays, a special section of the service is reserved for commemorating the ritual that took place in the Temple. We will chant that very service today in a few moments.
Over time, most Jews came to believe the Temple would only be rebuilt when the messiah comes. Never the less, Jerusalem the city, retained a mystical holiness and its memory would always remain in the mind of Jews. As we read in the Psalms, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy."
After Jerusalem fell to the Romans, the Romans created a classic Roman city on its ruins they called Aelia Capotolina in which they worshiped pagan gods. When the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in the fourth century, Jerusalem became a Christian city with little attention paid to the Temple Mount but a lot of focus on the development of what became the Church Middle East, and Caliph Umar captured Jerusalem from the Byzantine overlords. He cleaned up the Temple Mount that had been used as a garbage dump and built a mosque on it. That began a uncomfortable sharing of the Holy City between Christians, Muslims and Jews that exists to the present day.
In 688, work began to create a dome around a protruding rock on the Temple Mount that was believed to be the rock upon which Abraham offered up Isaac for sacrifice. Muslims also believe it was from this rock that Mohammed ascended to heaven. The Al Aksa Mosque was first built in the year 705.
Crusaders sacked Jerusalem in 1099 killing everyone in sight and made Jerusalem Christian again, creating churches on the Temple Mount. The Muslims recaptured the city under Saladin, about a hundred years later and it became a Muslim city once again. Mamluks from the Eurasian Steppes, converts to Islam, were the next to invade and they took Jerusalem in the 13th century and held it until 1516 when Jerusalem was taken over by the Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman empire held the city for the next 400 years. Then came the British. General Allenby entered the Jaffa Gate in December of 1917.
Zionism was well under way by then. The first Zionist Congress in Basel was in 1897. Jews had always lived in Jerusalem but now, many more came. Already by 1850, Jews were a majority. By 1922, there were 34,000 Jews in Jerusalem, 15,000 Christians and 13,500 Muslims. By the mid 1800’s, neighborhoods began to sprout up outside the city walls to the west. By 1880, there were 9 Jewish neighborhoods in the new city. Arabs and Christians built outside the city walls as well. Building in Jerusalem, both on the west side and the east side, continues to the present day.
There was conflict in the Holy Land between Arabs and the growing Jewish presence during the British Mandate. The British turned the problem over to the newly created United Nations. In 1947, the UN approved a partition plan: separate Arab and Jewish territories with a non-binding resolution to keep Jerusalem under international auspices, what they called a “corpus seperatum.” The Jews accepted the partition plan. The Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab countries rejected it. Israel was attacked, the Jewish population of Jerusalem was under seize, the Israeli army broke the seize and captured West Jerusalem. They signed an armistice with Jordan who had annexed the Old City and East Jerusalem. The city was divided between Israel and Jordan for the next 19 years. During this time, Jordan destroyed over 50 synagogues in the Jewish quarter, one of them the Hurvah synagogue built in 1864. That synagogue was just rebuilt and rededicated last month, on March 16th. Fatah official, Khatem Abd el-Khader, called the recent renovation and dedication of the Hurva synagogue a "provocation", warned Israel that it was "playing with fire" and called on Palestinians to "converge on Al-Aksa to save it.” Violence erupted and one might ask just who provoked whom?
The Jordanians after 1948 according to the terms of the armistice agreement, were obligated to let Jews visit the Western Wall, the Kotel. They did not allow it. The Christian population in Jordanian Jerusalem fell from 25,000 to 11,000 as restrictive laws were imposed on Christian institutions as well. The Holy Sites in the Old City were completely cut off to the Jewish people. The ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was compromised and cut off from the Jewish people. At the same time, the Knesset, government offices, offices of foreign affairs and police as well as the president’s residence were built in West Jerusalem.
In 1967, Israel begged the Jordanians to stay out of the inevitable war with Syria and Egypt. Never the less, on May 30th, King Hussein signed an military pact with Nasser who had blockaded the Straits of Tiran, put 100,000 Egyptian troops into the Sinai and vowed to drive the Jews into the sea. Israel attacked on June 5th, surrounded the Old City and captured it on June 7th. Jerusalem was now in sovereign Jewish hands. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol announced that Jerusalem was “the eternal capital of Israel.” On June 27th, 1967, the Knesset annexed all of Jerusalem, east and west. In 1965, Teddy Kollek had become mayor of Jewish Jerusalem. After the '67 war, Jerusalem city boundaries were drawn up and Kollek began building a unified city with full access to all holy sites guaranteed by law.
Some international bodies claim that Israel’s annexation of West Jerusalem after 1948 was illegal according to international law. They also claim that the 1967 annexation of East Jerusalem was illegal. There is considerable debate on this subject. Israel claims it is not illegal and that Israel and the Jewish people have a historic right to Jerusalem that goes back 3 millennia. I, for one, agree with that position.
From 1967 until the Oslo process in the 90’s, no Israeli administration, Labor or Likkud, right or left, even considered re-dividing Jerusalem. Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin did put Jerusalem theoretically on the negotiating table but even he held firm for Jewish sovereignty over the entire city saying, “if they told us that the price of peace is giving up on a united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, my reply would be ‘let’s do without peace’.” In 2000, Prime Minister Barak considered offering some sections of East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital along the lines of a rather tortured division of the city proposed by President Clinton. But PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat rejected the whole deal and a second Intifada broke out. At a post summit conference, Chairman Arafat revealed his designs on a united Jerusalem under Palestinian sovereignty as he said: “not only [over] the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Temple Mount mosques, and the Armenian quarter, but it is Jerusalem in its entirety, entirety, entirety.” So, after a 3000 year journey, we come to the present. At a ill-timed moment in history, a mid level Israeli bureaucrat announced stage four of a seven stage process in the construction of 1600 apartments in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in a northeastern suburb of Jerusalem. Construction in this part of Jerusalem has been going on for years with nary a complaint by Jew or Palestinian. This neighborhood itself is a large Jewish religious neighborhood surrounded to each side by even larger Jewish neighborhoods. This neighborhood would never be a part of any peace plan. The residents of this neighborhood as well as most residents of Jerusalem are scratching their heads perplexed that Ramat Shlomo became the source of an international incident. No one in Israel would consider “Ramat Shlomo” a settlement like you might find on some hill top in the West Bank. In fact, no part of Jerusalem, east or west can be considered a settlement as it is has been annexed Israeli territory since ‘67 which means all residents of Jerusalem, Arab and Jew, are full citizens of the State of Israel. This is not the case in the West Bank and that is why the West Bank has always been in play in peace negotiations.
The ill-will expressed publicly two weeks ago between the US administration and Israel has pretty much blown over. I suspect, however, that the issue of Jerusalem will come up again if any kind of peace process actually begins again. But perhaps the conflict of the past few weeks is an important one. It brings to light that re-dividing Jerusalem in any meaningful way would meet severe resistance by the overwhelming majority of Israelis. That would make it unlikely that an Israeli administration would be able to offer it up again at the peace table.
So that’s Jerusalem. The name means city of peace but it has engendered conflict throughout its 3000 year history. We can only pray that one day, Jerusalem, as the capital city of the State of Israel, will be able to live up to its name.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
D’VAR TORAH
BAT MITZVAH OF AVIVA ORIT DOLLIN
MARCH 20, 2010
5 NISSAN 5770
FIRST DAY OF SPRING
PARASHAT VAYIKRA
Wake up! Wake up to this moment. And what an exquisite moment it is! Our fourth child, our only daughter, one of two Dollin natives born here during our (what is now 16 year) tenure at the Hebrew Education Alliance in Denver, CO (Rose Hospital), becoming a bat mitzvah. Thank you all (family and friends) for being here to celebrate with us.
I have been patiently waiting all my years as a mother for this moment…the moment my only daughter celebrates her coming of age as a Jewish woman. I’ve written this speech a dozen times in my head. In it, I share with all of you what I have finally figured out…how to be a modern, and religious Jewish woman; how to reconcile tradition and modernity; how to make your voice heard while maintaining tzni’ut, modesty; how to infuse old rituals and traditional woman’s roles with new meaning (significance); How to be fluent in deciphering passages of Torah and Talmud, while adding one’s own distinct voice to the conversation of our patriarchs; how to care for others when they need help, while knowing how to make a good brisket for Shabbat. How to be a ‘mother in Israel’ without being subservient and relegated to a supporting role in history.
Needless to say, it’s been a humbling experience. Because I realized that I haven’t yet figured it all out! In many ways, I find being a woman in religious Judaism as challenging to me personally as it was 20 years ago. Actually, more so, as twenty years ago, at least I knew I was right! Now, I’m not so sure. Women in Judaism have come really far…the fact that you, Aviva, attend a school that unapologetically teaches Talmud to girls is proof of that. At the Denver Academy of Torah, a modern orthodox school, you have been taught Torah, Jewish law, Hebrew, prophets, and Talmud alongside your male classmates.
The question I have for myself, for Vivi and for you today, is ‘what will your role be in the history of our people’?
I have been privileged this year to be the teacher for an extraordinary group of women. This minyan of women, including many female leaders of our Jewish community, and I have been studying leadership and looking at our biblical foremothers as models. What do we learn from them? How do we learn it? When we look at women who came before us, what lessons of leadership do we glean? How have we exercised leadership differently than the men in our world? What are the different ways we make our voices heard? We found we could learn quite a lot from our biblical foremothers. And we were a bit surprised…while the techniques and strategies they employed were different than the patriarchs, their actions often led directly to redemption: of the Jewish people, and even of humanity. I’d like to introduce you to some of the women we have studied.
Sarah is our most ‘traditional’ woman. We don’t learn much about her from the biblical text, but the midrash (rabbinic commentary on torah) fills out her personality. The grammatical nuance in her name change, from ‘Sarai’ to ‘Sarah’ takes her from Abraham’s wife to the princess of a nation. And it is in her tent (her home) that God’s female presence (Shechina) dwells.
At the same lesson, I introduced two other Sarah’s of Jewish history: Sarah Schenirer, a fervently Orthodox woman, recognized that women needed to be Jewishly educated so their commitment to traditional observance stayed strong. With the blessing of the Belzer Rebbe, she founded the first Beis Yaakov school for girls. Agudat Israel adopted the Beis Yaakov model as its educational arm for women. Absolutely revolutionary in her time.
Sarah Aaronsohn forged a new role for women in the resettlement and regeneration of Palestine as a Jewish homeland. Born in Zichron Yaakov in 1890 to a prominent family, she never completed her formal education, yet spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, Turkish and French, some Arabic and taught herself English. She learned agronomy and botany, widely traveled the land of Israel (Palestine). Around the time Sarah Schnirer was organizing Beis Yaakov in Poland, Sarah Aaronsohn, a secular Jew, joined ‘Nili’, a pro-British underground movement of Jews in Palestine, determined to create a new Middle East by liberating the country from corrupt Turkish rule. She worked in intelligence and espionage, was captured and tortured by Turkish authorities, and committed suicide rather than divulge further information. She was called a “Jewish Joan of Arc”, and her martyrdom shattered many myths about Jewish women.
I asked my ladies to share the Sarah they most identified with; the maternal, pious, home-based biblical Sarah, the fervently religious Sarah who believed the perpetuation of Judaism depended on Jewishly educated women, or the brave, Zionist Sarah who forged new paths for women engaged in the enterprise of creating a Jewish homeland? We learned from each other as each of us chose the Sarah with whom we most identified: some of us choosing a quiet, home based life of devotion to faith and family, some pushing religious boundaries from within, and some shattering established norms of femininity.
Judges 4:5; “Devorah the prophetess, wife of Lapidot (Barak)…would sit under the date palm, between Ramah and Bet El on Mt. Ephraim, and the children of Israel would go up to her for judgement.” Devorah is history’s first female prophetess and judge; highly unusual, considering traditional Jewish law does not allow women to be valid witnesses. Her placement between two cities teaches us she had an innate sense of fairness, not favoring one over the other. She prophecies that the general Barak will be victorious, but that his success will come through the hand of a woman, which in fact happened. God had plenty of men around to choose as prophets. Why did God choose Devorah? She apparently, had something to bring to the table that a man did not. She referred to herself a ‘mother in Israel’. It is her maternal faith in the people, similar to what a parent feels for a child, that is needed at this moment in Jewish history. Devorah reignites the peoples’ sense of value as God’s chosen.
From Devorah, we studied the question “In a man’s world, how have you exercised leadership differently than a man?” We learned about empowerment rather than imposition, invigorate rather than force, cultivate rather than command. The skills Devorah used as judge and prophet in Israel were very different than the skills men brought to the job. At that time in Jewish history, patience, insight, and the ability to inspire and nurture were required, and God purposefully chose a woman to lead the people in that way.
We just celebrated the holiday of Purim, where we read the book of Esther. God’s name is absent in the book of Esther – God is not mentioned in the whole book. Yet by the end, God’s presence is felt. We learn from this that even when things appear hopeless, miracles can and do happen; and they can happen through the hand of man (OR, as in this case, through the hand of a woman). We further learn about the role of a woman. Esther, like other Persian maidens in the king’s palace, spends a great deal of effort and time focused on her beauty. As the Jewish people are threatened with extinction, her uncle Mordechai admonishes her, “Who knows but for this very moment you were destined to be in this place…in a position to save your people?” And in a transformative moment of clarity, showing exemplary courage, Esther accepts the challenge, saying “I will go to the king on behalf of my people, and if I should perish, I will perish.” Esther leads us to the question, do any of us experience such moments of clarity? Would we realize it, or would we need someone to point it out to us?
In just over a week, we will celebrate the holiday of Pesach. We will recount the story of the exodus from slavery in Egypt. We will recognize the sorrow of the Egyptians as they suffered through the plagues. We will feel the fear of uncertainty, doubt about our future as we rapidly bake our matzah and prepare for our leaving. We will joyously recognize the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. And as we arrive safely on the other side, and our enemies are vanquished, Moses will sing a song of deliverance, and we will celebrate the crossing of the Red Sea, following Miriam’s lead, where she takes her timbrel and leads the women in song and dance. Miriam teaches us that God chooses women also as prophets; and that their way of prophecy may be different than a man’s. Miriam added the element of spirituality to our lives. We learn from her that God is not only served through the mind and through deeds, but also through the heart…the spirit. Miriam’s reward is no less than to be the progenitor of the Messiah.
Sarah, Devorah, Esther, Miriam, each exercising leadership of the Jewish people, yet in so many different ways. I used to think there was one way…lead like a man…out in front, bold, charismatic. But now I feel differently. Getting a bit older, learning from biblical and historical role models, engaging with modern women and their leadership choices, I am not so sure about the one way…the right way. So I ask Vivi today, and all Jewish women here, ‘what will your role be in the history of our people’?
Many of you don’t know that this is Vivi’s second bat mitzvah. Her first took place last year, as she turned twelve, quietly, among her girl friends and some family members and congregants present to hear her deliver a d’var Torah at mincha, followed by a gathering where we made blankets for Newborns in Need… and ate ice cream sundaes. This is what Vivi wanted. And to respect her as a young Jewish woman coming of age, this is how we honored her.
And this morning, is how she honors her father. As the rabbi’s daughter, he expected her to do what other 13 year olds did at our congregation, lead the service, read torah and haftorah, and speak before the kahal. And she did, beautifully, dutifully and happily. Through her actions, she taught me a lesson in humility. She was not so strident to think that there is only one way to behave in the world; she recognized that she was faced with competing priorities, each of critical importance in her life. She didn’t agonize, criticize or complain. She was not grouchy or resistant or mean. She accepted her world the way it was. She made peace with her place in it. She is a model to me of a righteous Jewish woman.
To wear a hat in shul or not? To accept an aliyah to the Torah or not? To speak out in front of others or to lead the way through subtle modeling? To cook a good brisket or to fight for our homeland? Who knows what is the ‘right’ way? In the words of your favorite country music song, (written by a man) “the only thing for certain is uncertainty.” So it is with humility, and uncertainty that I move forward. Perhaps I will be able to look back on my life and see clearly what my place was in the history of our people.
What I wish for you is not certainty, but security in knowing that before you came many, many Jewish women who all made their place in the history of our people in a different way. Know that all around you are amazing Jewish women, adding their unique spirit to our people. Know that this moment is precious, and will not ever be repeated. Don’t wait until you have it all figured out…you may never…but accept each moment for what it is. My wish for you is that you find your way, you add your unique voice to the history of our people, and I think, you are well on the way to doing just that.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tamra Dollin
BAT MITZVAH OF AVIVA ORIT DOLLIN
MARCH 20, 2010
5 NISSAN 5770
FIRST DAY OF SPRING
PARASHAT VAYIKRA
Wake up! Wake up to this moment. And what an exquisite moment it is! Our fourth child, our only daughter, one of two Dollin natives born here during our (what is now 16 year) tenure at the Hebrew Education Alliance in Denver, CO (Rose Hospital), becoming a bat mitzvah. Thank you all (family and friends) for being here to celebrate with us.
I have been patiently waiting all my years as a mother for this moment…the moment my only daughter celebrates her coming of age as a Jewish woman. I’ve written this speech a dozen times in my head. In it, I share with all of you what I have finally figured out…how to be a modern, and religious Jewish woman; how to reconcile tradition and modernity; how to make your voice heard while maintaining tzni’ut, modesty; how to infuse old rituals and traditional woman’s roles with new meaning (significance); How to be fluent in deciphering passages of Torah and Talmud, while adding one’s own distinct voice to the conversation of our patriarchs; how to care for others when they need help, while knowing how to make a good brisket for Shabbat. How to be a ‘mother in Israel’ without being subservient and relegated to a supporting role in history.
Needless to say, it’s been a humbling experience. Because I realized that I haven’t yet figured it all out! In many ways, I find being a woman in religious Judaism as challenging to me personally as it was 20 years ago. Actually, more so, as twenty years ago, at least I knew I was right! Now, I’m not so sure. Women in Judaism have come really far…the fact that you, Aviva, attend a school that unapologetically teaches Talmud to girls is proof of that. At the Denver Academy of Torah, a modern orthodox school, you have been taught Torah, Jewish law, Hebrew, prophets, and Talmud alongside your male classmates.
The question I have for myself, for Vivi and for you today, is ‘what will your role be in the history of our people’?
I have been privileged this year to be the teacher for an extraordinary group of women. This minyan of women, including many female leaders of our Jewish community, and I have been studying leadership and looking at our biblical foremothers as models. What do we learn from them? How do we learn it? When we look at women who came before us, what lessons of leadership do we glean? How have we exercised leadership differently than the men in our world? What are the different ways we make our voices heard? We found we could learn quite a lot from our biblical foremothers. And we were a bit surprised…while the techniques and strategies they employed were different than the patriarchs, their actions often led directly to redemption: of the Jewish people, and even of humanity. I’d like to introduce you to some of the women we have studied.
Sarah is our most ‘traditional’ woman. We don’t learn much about her from the biblical text, but the midrash (rabbinic commentary on torah) fills out her personality. The grammatical nuance in her name change, from ‘Sarai’ to ‘Sarah’ takes her from Abraham’s wife to the princess of a nation. And it is in her tent (her home) that God’s female presence (Shechina) dwells.
At the same lesson, I introduced two other Sarah’s of Jewish history: Sarah Schenirer, a fervently Orthodox woman, recognized that women needed to be Jewishly educated so their commitment to traditional observance stayed strong. With the blessing of the Belzer Rebbe, she founded the first Beis Yaakov school for girls. Agudat Israel adopted the Beis Yaakov model as its educational arm for women. Absolutely revolutionary in her time.
Sarah Aaronsohn forged a new role for women in the resettlement and regeneration of Palestine as a Jewish homeland. Born in Zichron Yaakov in 1890 to a prominent family, she never completed her formal education, yet spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, Turkish and French, some Arabic and taught herself English. She learned agronomy and botany, widely traveled the land of Israel (Palestine). Around the time Sarah Schnirer was organizing Beis Yaakov in Poland, Sarah Aaronsohn, a secular Jew, joined ‘Nili’, a pro-British underground movement of Jews in Palestine, determined to create a new Middle East by liberating the country from corrupt Turkish rule. She worked in intelligence and espionage, was captured and tortured by Turkish authorities, and committed suicide rather than divulge further information. She was called a “Jewish Joan of Arc”, and her martyrdom shattered many myths about Jewish women.
I asked my ladies to share the Sarah they most identified with; the maternal, pious, home-based biblical Sarah, the fervently religious Sarah who believed the perpetuation of Judaism depended on Jewishly educated women, or the brave, Zionist Sarah who forged new paths for women engaged in the enterprise of creating a Jewish homeland? We learned from each other as each of us chose the Sarah with whom we most identified: some of us choosing a quiet, home based life of devotion to faith and family, some pushing religious boundaries from within, and some shattering established norms of femininity.
Judges 4:5; “Devorah the prophetess, wife of Lapidot (Barak)…would sit under the date palm, between Ramah and Bet El on Mt. Ephraim, and the children of Israel would go up to her for judgement.” Devorah is history’s first female prophetess and judge; highly unusual, considering traditional Jewish law does not allow women to be valid witnesses. Her placement between two cities teaches us she had an innate sense of fairness, not favoring one over the other. She prophecies that the general Barak will be victorious, but that his success will come through the hand of a woman, which in fact happened. God had plenty of men around to choose as prophets. Why did God choose Devorah? She apparently, had something to bring to the table that a man did not. She referred to herself a ‘mother in Israel’. It is her maternal faith in the people, similar to what a parent feels for a child, that is needed at this moment in Jewish history. Devorah reignites the peoples’ sense of value as God’s chosen.
From Devorah, we studied the question “In a man’s world, how have you exercised leadership differently than a man?” We learned about empowerment rather than imposition, invigorate rather than force, cultivate rather than command. The skills Devorah used as judge and prophet in Israel were very different than the skills men brought to the job. At that time in Jewish history, patience, insight, and the ability to inspire and nurture were required, and God purposefully chose a woman to lead the people in that way.
We just celebrated the holiday of Purim, where we read the book of Esther. God’s name is absent in the book of Esther – God is not mentioned in the whole book. Yet by the end, God’s presence is felt. We learn from this that even when things appear hopeless, miracles can and do happen; and they can happen through the hand of man (OR, as in this case, through the hand of a woman). We further learn about the role of a woman. Esther, like other Persian maidens in the king’s palace, spends a great deal of effort and time focused on her beauty. As the Jewish people are threatened with extinction, her uncle Mordechai admonishes her, “Who knows but for this very moment you were destined to be in this place…in a position to save your people?” And in a transformative moment of clarity, showing exemplary courage, Esther accepts the challenge, saying “I will go to the king on behalf of my people, and if I should perish, I will perish.” Esther leads us to the question, do any of us experience such moments of clarity? Would we realize it, or would we need someone to point it out to us?
In just over a week, we will celebrate the holiday of Pesach. We will recount the story of the exodus from slavery in Egypt. We will recognize the sorrow of the Egyptians as they suffered through the plagues. We will feel the fear of uncertainty, doubt about our future as we rapidly bake our matzah and prepare for our leaving. We will joyously recognize the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. And as we arrive safely on the other side, and our enemies are vanquished, Moses will sing a song of deliverance, and we will celebrate the crossing of the Red Sea, following Miriam’s lead, where she takes her timbrel and leads the women in song and dance. Miriam teaches us that God chooses women also as prophets; and that their way of prophecy may be different than a man’s. Miriam added the element of spirituality to our lives. We learn from her that God is not only served through the mind and through deeds, but also through the heart…the spirit. Miriam’s reward is no less than to be the progenitor of the Messiah.
Sarah, Devorah, Esther, Miriam, each exercising leadership of the Jewish people, yet in so many different ways. I used to think there was one way…lead like a man…out in front, bold, charismatic. But now I feel differently. Getting a bit older, learning from biblical and historical role models, engaging with modern women and their leadership choices, I am not so sure about the one way…the right way. So I ask Vivi today, and all Jewish women here, ‘what will your role be in the history of our people’?
Many of you don’t know that this is Vivi’s second bat mitzvah. Her first took place last year, as she turned twelve, quietly, among her girl friends and some family members and congregants present to hear her deliver a d’var Torah at mincha, followed by a gathering where we made blankets for Newborns in Need… and ate ice cream sundaes. This is what Vivi wanted. And to respect her as a young Jewish woman coming of age, this is how we honored her.
And this morning, is how she honors her father. As the rabbi’s daughter, he expected her to do what other 13 year olds did at our congregation, lead the service, read torah and haftorah, and speak before the kahal. And she did, beautifully, dutifully and happily. Through her actions, she taught me a lesson in humility. She was not so strident to think that there is only one way to behave in the world; she recognized that she was faced with competing priorities, each of critical importance in her life. She didn’t agonize, criticize or complain. She was not grouchy or resistant or mean. She accepted her world the way it was. She made peace with her place in it. She is a model to me of a righteous Jewish woman.
To wear a hat in shul or not? To accept an aliyah to the Torah or not? To speak out in front of others or to lead the way through subtle modeling? To cook a good brisket or to fight for our homeland? Who knows what is the ‘right’ way? In the words of your favorite country music song, (written by a man) “the only thing for certain is uncertainty.” So it is with humility, and uncertainty that I move forward. Perhaps I will be able to look back on my life and see clearly what my place was in the history of our people.
What I wish for you is not certainty, but security in knowing that before you came many, many Jewish women who all made their place in the history of our people in a different way. Know that all around you are amazing Jewish women, adding their unique spirit to our people. Know that this moment is precious, and will not ever be repeated. Don’t wait until you have it all figured out…you may never…but accept each moment for what it is. My wish for you is that you find your way, you add your unique voice to the history of our people, and I think, you are well on the way to doing just that.
Shabbat Shalom.
Tamra Dollin
Friday, March 5, 2010
Jewish Unity
There is a great story about an embarrassed guest at the Shabbat table of a famous rabbi. The Shabbat table was meticulously set: a beautiful white table cloth that was used only to celebrate the holiness and joy of the family Sabbath. The guests were talking and enjoying when one of them accidently hits his wine glass with his hand and out spills the wine, soiling and staining the table cloth and everyone gasps in horror. With barely a moment passing, the rabbi takes his hand and intentionally hits his wine glass spilling the wine and making an even bigger mess.
To the rabbi, the table cloth was unimportant. How his guest felt was paramount. At the moment of the first spill, the guest was singled out: the center of negative attention; he felt alone and embarrassed and in a sense, alienated from the others around the table. The rabbi would not allow it; he spilled his wine to bring his guest back into the fold --people spill wine; you are one of us, we are all together despite our clumsiness, despite our flaws, despite our superficial differences.
Something similar happens in our parasha this morning. Moses is atop Mount Sinai, the people of Israel are down below. Seeing that Moses is delayed in coming down from the mountain, the people panic and insist that Aaron build them a Golden Calf. God is angry and tells Moses that He will destroy the people for their sin and make Moses and his descendants, God’s people. As Moses descends the mountain seeing the Golden Calf, he too is angered and throws down the tablets, breaking them as the base of the calf.
On the surface of the text, it looks like Moses throws down the tablets because he’s angry. But a midrash takes this passage in another direction. For the Midrash, Moses throws the tablets as an intentional sinful act. After all, God will not be pleased with Moses smashing His holy tablets. In effect, Moses is saying to God: the people sinned, but I too have sinned. If you are going to destroy them, then you will have to destroy me too. Moses will not let God separate his fate from the fate of his people. They are one, they are unified; leader and people and God spares them both.
I mentioned in my sermon last week about Esther, reticent to approach the king to advocate for her people. And Mordechai comes to her and tells her explicitly: do not think that you are somehow different and separate from your people. Their fate is your fate; if the Jews are destroyed, so will you be. And, of course, Esther does approach the king and in the end, saves her people, saves her crown, saves her own life.
In World War One, many German Jews distinguished themselves as officers and soldiers in the German Army. They were war heroes and the German government decorated them and honored them as loyal and courageous citizens of the German reich.
With the rise of the Nazi government, these war heroes assumed they and their families were safe –they had risked their lives for Germany; they were more German than Jewish. In fact, most German Jews as the Nazis were amassing power, believed that ultimately, in the end, the German people would not allow Nazi anti-Semitism to prevail; Jews had lived in Germany for generations. They lived, worked, had friends, were integrated and assimilated into German culture and society. But they were wrong for most all of them were murdered –the war heroes, their families, their children and grandchildren. If you had a Jewish grandmother, you were a Jew and you would die. Jews in Nazi Germany all suffered the same fate: as Mordechai said to Esther two and a half millennia before Hitler –do not think that you of all Jews will escape with your life by being in the King’s palace.” You won’t, we didn’t and we never will. History has shown us that the fate of world Jewry is our fate whether we like it or not; whether we are assimilated or not; whether we practice our Judaism or not.
If we are all in the same boat, than we had better figure out a way to get along and present a united front to what has always been a hostile world. It was for good reason that the original motto for United Jewish Appeal was “We are One.” We weren’t at that time, nor have we really ever been –but the motto stood because we knew then that internal division in the Jewish community threatened Jewish lives. In the second Temple period, the rabbis attributed the destruction of the Temple not to Roman invasion, but to divisiveness in our own community. They called it “sinat chinam,” senseless hatred among Jews. Their divisiveness made them weak so that the Romans had an easy time of it wiping them all out and leveling our Holy Temple.
There is dissension in the Jewish community today. Between those who understand their Judaism differently. Between Jewish Democrats and Jewish Republicans. Between Jewish hawks and Jewish doves. And of most concern to me now: diverse approaches to the support of the State of Israel. It has been since 1967 already, that the demonization of the Israel by many in the world, has grown and prevailed. We see it coming out of the Arab world, which we expect, but now we see it throughout Europe and in many quarters in America: particularly on college campuses and growing among some American Protestant denominations.
We are not immune to these characterizations and our children are even less immune. Most young Jews don’t know all that much about Israel so they are all the more likely to fall under the sway of Israel’s enemies. Israel, as a Jewish state is under attack. In the last several years, the notion of a bi-national state has been proffered as a solution to the problem. A bi-national state means that Israel would annex the territories, Palestinian refugees return, everyone gets a vote, and suddenly, Jews become a minority and Israel in no more. The greatest Jewish experiment in modern times is over. And make no mistake, the fate of Israel is the fate of world Jewry. If Israel were to fail, I am convinced, world Jewry would follow.
In the Jewish community, we can debate the merits of this Israeli government verses that one, this policy or that: that debate happens publically in Israel every single day. But to my mind, the American Jewish community must present a unified front to the world --American Jews support Israel as a Jewish State, today, tomorrow, forever. Divisions between younger Jews and older, between liberal Jews and conservative must not pull us apart for we have one message that only we can and must make: we support Israel as a Jewish state and will do whatever we can to protect it for the safety and security of Israelis and the for the future of our Jewish communities all over the world.
The rabbi spilled his wine all over his table cloth to let his guest know that no matter how clumsy, no matter how different on the surface, really, no matter what: we are the same. We are one family, one community, one people and as such, we will accept each other unconditionally and we will stand together so we don’t fall apart. When we have forgotten this lesson in the past, Jews perished. The fate of the Jewish people has been placed in our hands. It’s our responsibility now and soon we will hand it down to our kids. We have to be ready and we must equip our kids to do the same. We are called upon today to step forward to do our part. We really have no choice but to do so. Shabbat Shalom
To the rabbi, the table cloth was unimportant. How his guest felt was paramount. At the moment of the first spill, the guest was singled out: the center of negative attention; he felt alone and embarrassed and in a sense, alienated from the others around the table. The rabbi would not allow it; he spilled his wine to bring his guest back into the fold --people spill wine; you are one of us, we are all together despite our clumsiness, despite our flaws, despite our superficial differences.
Something similar happens in our parasha this morning. Moses is atop Mount Sinai, the people of Israel are down below. Seeing that Moses is delayed in coming down from the mountain, the people panic and insist that Aaron build them a Golden Calf. God is angry and tells Moses that He will destroy the people for their sin and make Moses and his descendants, God’s people. As Moses descends the mountain seeing the Golden Calf, he too is angered and throws down the tablets, breaking them as the base of the calf.
On the surface of the text, it looks like Moses throws down the tablets because he’s angry. But a midrash takes this passage in another direction. For the Midrash, Moses throws the tablets as an intentional sinful act. After all, God will not be pleased with Moses smashing His holy tablets. In effect, Moses is saying to God: the people sinned, but I too have sinned. If you are going to destroy them, then you will have to destroy me too. Moses will not let God separate his fate from the fate of his people. They are one, they are unified; leader and people and God spares them both.
I mentioned in my sermon last week about Esther, reticent to approach the king to advocate for her people. And Mordechai comes to her and tells her explicitly: do not think that you are somehow different and separate from your people. Their fate is your fate; if the Jews are destroyed, so will you be. And, of course, Esther does approach the king and in the end, saves her people, saves her crown, saves her own life.
In World War One, many German Jews distinguished themselves as officers and soldiers in the German Army. They were war heroes and the German government decorated them and honored them as loyal and courageous citizens of the German reich.
With the rise of the Nazi government, these war heroes assumed they and their families were safe –they had risked their lives for Germany; they were more German than Jewish. In fact, most German Jews as the Nazis were amassing power, believed that ultimately, in the end, the German people would not allow Nazi anti-Semitism to prevail; Jews had lived in Germany for generations. They lived, worked, had friends, were integrated and assimilated into German culture and society. But they were wrong for most all of them were murdered –the war heroes, their families, their children and grandchildren. If you had a Jewish grandmother, you were a Jew and you would die. Jews in Nazi Germany all suffered the same fate: as Mordechai said to Esther two and a half millennia before Hitler –do not think that you of all Jews will escape with your life by being in the King’s palace.” You won’t, we didn’t and we never will. History has shown us that the fate of world Jewry is our fate whether we like it or not; whether we are assimilated or not; whether we practice our Judaism or not.
If we are all in the same boat, than we had better figure out a way to get along and present a united front to what has always been a hostile world. It was for good reason that the original motto for United Jewish Appeal was “We are One.” We weren’t at that time, nor have we really ever been –but the motto stood because we knew then that internal division in the Jewish community threatened Jewish lives. In the second Temple period, the rabbis attributed the destruction of the Temple not to Roman invasion, but to divisiveness in our own community. They called it “sinat chinam,” senseless hatred among Jews. Their divisiveness made them weak so that the Romans had an easy time of it wiping them all out and leveling our Holy Temple.
There is dissension in the Jewish community today. Between those who understand their Judaism differently. Between Jewish Democrats and Jewish Republicans. Between Jewish hawks and Jewish doves. And of most concern to me now: diverse approaches to the support of the State of Israel. It has been since 1967 already, that the demonization of the Israel by many in the world, has grown and prevailed. We see it coming out of the Arab world, which we expect, but now we see it throughout Europe and in many quarters in America: particularly on college campuses and growing among some American Protestant denominations.
We are not immune to these characterizations and our children are even less immune. Most young Jews don’t know all that much about Israel so they are all the more likely to fall under the sway of Israel’s enemies. Israel, as a Jewish state is under attack. In the last several years, the notion of a bi-national state has been proffered as a solution to the problem. A bi-national state means that Israel would annex the territories, Palestinian refugees return, everyone gets a vote, and suddenly, Jews become a minority and Israel in no more. The greatest Jewish experiment in modern times is over. And make no mistake, the fate of Israel is the fate of world Jewry. If Israel were to fail, I am convinced, world Jewry would follow.
In the Jewish community, we can debate the merits of this Israeli government verses that one, this policy or that: that debate happens publically in Israel every single day. But to my mind, the American Jewish community must present a unified front to the world --American Jews support Israel as a Jewish State, today, tomorrow, forever. Divisions between younger Jews and older, between liberal Jews and conservative must not pull us apart for we have one message that only we can and must make: we support Israel as a Jewish state and will do whatever we can to protect it for the safety and security of Israelis and the for the future of our Jewish communities all over the world.
The rabbi spilled his wine all over his table cloth to let his guest know that no matter how clumsy, no matter how different on the surface, really, no matter what: we are the same. We are one family, one community, one people and as such, we will accept each other unconditionally and we will stand together so we don’t fall apart. When we have forgotten this lesson in the past, Jews perished. The fate of the Jewish people has been placed in our hands. It’s our responsibility now and soon we will hand it down to our kids. We have to be ready and we must equip our kids to do the same. We are called upon today to step forward to do our part. We really have no choice but to do so. Shabbat Shalom
Friday, February 26, 2010
Role Models, Priests and Queens
I ain’t no role model, I am a basketball player!. I suspect that just about everyone in the sanctuary this morning has heard of this comment by Basketball power forward, Charles Barkley who played for Philadelphia, Phoenix and Houston and retired in 1999. He was one of the best players ever in the NBA and in fact, he wasn’t such a great role model: spitting, fighting and gambling; he didn’t show the greatest of sportsmanship and was no stranger to indiscreet commentary on basketball and life. To be fair, his point about basketball players and role models, in context, meant that he didn’t think basketball players should be considered role models: most kids aren’t going to the NBA --great fame and tens of millions of dollars are unrealistic and inappropriate goals for children.
But Barkley said it and it got a lot of people thinking about the role models we have in this society. Barkley may have denied it, but he was a role model whether or not he was comfortable with the role. So much so that kids began going around saying, “I aint no role model either, just like Charles.”
Well, if sports figures are role models, then they have a huge responsibility to which many of them are ill equipped to manage. Tiger Woods learned a painful lesson as we watched his mea culpa on television just a few weeks ago. His behavior off the golf course does matter to us ---and especially to the companies that use him in their ads. Tiger Woods admitted in an interview to what many politicians and leaders of industry have admitted to: they thought that all the love, adulation, money and fame somehow made them exempt from the moral norms that applied to everyone else in society. And of course, they all learned in a painful and humiliating way that this is generally not the case. We love and admire our role models --but we also expect them to be people whose behavior we can respect in and out of the spotlight.
I think a part of what we enjoy so much about the Olympics is that the athletes, perhaps with a lot of coaching, act on camera in a sportsmanlike way. It makes us feel good. The skier Bode Miller embarrassed himself and all of us when he acted poorly in Torino where he won no medals, and made us all the more proud of him in showing some humility this year in games at which he won several medals. Those in the limelight are role models: there is no escaping it. They can do a lot of good if they come to realize this early in their careers.
We see an indication of this in the parasha this morning. Most of the parasha deals with what the Cohanim, the Priests are supposed to wear. The description of the priestly vestments is in excruciating detail; as if Priestly holiness is dependent on appearance. Yet one cannot imagine God concerned about clothing: the vestments aren’t for God, they are for the people. Priests must appear to the people in a certain way; they are role models --they show the people of Israel what it means to be distinct, dignified, respectful in a way that is worthy of approaching God in His sanctuary. Both what they wear and who they are watched carefully by the people; their behavior will determine the integrity and vitality of their religious community. Needless to say, the Priests have a big responsibility in their role as Israelite leaders.
We come upon another figure head and leader of the Jewish people, this weekend, as we read the Book of Esther. The Megillah is a funny book, but it has a side to it that we might consider deadly serious. The central figure in this story is most certainly Esther. All the other characters in the book are unidimensional; King Achashverosh is a simpleton, Haman is wicked, Mordechai is clever. But Esther, she is more complex; she is beautiful, assimilated (she becomes a Persian King’s wife), and perhaps even seductive. But when we first meet her, we don’t really know what to make of her. She becomes the queen and you suspect from the text, that the Jews of the land must be proud that one of their own could reach such heights in the Persian court. Then comes chapter 4 and now we learn what this lady is made of. Haman has declared the death of all the Jews and Mordechai sends Esther a message asking her to intervene with the King. She refuses saying that the King hasn’t summoned her and if one approaches the King without being summoned, that person will die. And she doesn’t want to die.
Then Mordechai teaches her a lesson in loyalty. He writes to her: “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the King’s palace. On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crises.” Now Esther has a decision to make. Does she step up for her people or take care of herself? We wait in anticipation; we wait for her to realize that her high position is not one of entitlement but one of responsibility. She is in the public eye; she is the queen; she has the power, will she do what is right? And then she says: “then I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish.” The queen becomes a hero that day.
Esther becomes a true Jewish leader in this chapter as soon as she realizes that her life is not as important as the life of her people. Charles Barkley didn’t see this. Back then, he never asked himself the question, “perhaps I have attained success and fame for some deeper purpose.” To help inner city kids, to fund a youth sports league, to contribute to education or to promote exercise and good health. He, like every other leader, every other role model, has the power and influence to do good in ways most of us simply can’t do. You may have noted that Canadian Olympians Jennifer Heil who won a silver in women’s moguls and Alexandre Bilodeau who won the gold in men’s moguls pledged $25,000 each to charity and challenged the other medal winners in the games to do the same. Very impressive, I think, for a 26 and 22 year old. Everyone is watching them; everyone admires and respects them: everyone wants to be just like them. And this is precisely the time for them to be gracious and generous and do something that has lasting meaning. We all might believe that we “ain’t no role model,” but we are. Someone is always watching us; our kids, our students, our friends, our co-workers and we can’t let them down. We are all role models so let’s be role models for the good.
Shabbat Shalom
But Barkley said it and it got a lot of people thinking about the role models we have in this society. Barkley may have denied it, but he was a role model whether or not he was comfortable with the role. So much so that kids began going around saying, “I aint no role model either, just like Charles.”
Well, if sports figures are role models, then they have a huge responsibility to which many of them are ill equipped to manage. Tiger Woods learned a painful lesson as we watched his mea culpa on television just a few weeks ago. His behavior off the golf course does matter to us ---and especially to the companies that use him in their ads. Tiger Woods admitted in an interview to what many politicians and leaders of industry have admitted to: they thought that all the love, adulation, money and fame somehow made them exempt from the moral norms that applied to everyone else in society. And of course, they all learned in a painful and humiliating way that this is generally not the case. We love and admire our role models --but we also expect them to be people whose behavior we can respect in and out of the spotlight.
I think a part of what we enjoy so much about the Olympics is that the athletes, perhaps with a lot of coaching, act on camera in a sportsmanlike way. It makes us feel good. The skier Bode Miller embarrassed himself and all of us when he acted poorly in Torino where he won no medals, and made us all the more proud of him in showing some humility this year in games at which he won several medals. Those in the limelight are role models: there is no escaping it. They can do a lot of good if they come to realize this early in their careers.
We see an indication of this in the parasha this morning. Most of the parasha deals with what the Cohanim, the Priests are supposed to wear. The description of the priestly vestments is in excruciating detail; as if Priestly holiness is dependent on appearance. Yet one cannot imagine God concerned about clothing: the vestments aren’t for God, they are for the people. Priests must appear to the people in a certain way; they are role models --they show the people of Israel what it means to be distinct, dignified, respectful in a way that is worthy of approaching God in His sanctuary. Both what they wear and who they are watched carefully by the people; their behavior will determine the integrity and vitality of their religious community. Needless to say, the Priests have a big responsibility in their role as Israelite leaders.
We come upon another figure head and leader of the Jewish people, this weekend, as we read the Book of Esther. The Megillah is a funny book, but it has a side to it that we might consider deadly serious. The central figure in this story is most certainly Esther. All the other characters in the book are unidimensional; King Achashverosh is a simpleton, Haman is wicked, Mordechai is clever. But Esther, she is more complex; she is beautiful, assimilated (she becomes a Persian King’s wife), and perhaps even seductive. But when we first meet her, we don’t really know what to make of her. She becomes the queen and you suspect from the text, that the Jews of the land must be proud that one of their own could reach such heights in the Persian court. Then comes chapter 4 and now we learn what this lady is made of. Haman has declared the death of all the Jews and Mordechai sends Esther a message asking her to intervene with the King. She refuses saying that the King hasn’t summoned her and if one approaches the King without being summoned, that person will die. And she doesn’t want to die.
Then Mordechai teaches her a lesson in loyalty. He writes to her: “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the King’s palace. On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crises.” Now Esther has a decision to make. Does she step up for her people or take care of herself? We wait in anticipation; we wait for her to realize that her high position is not one of entitlement but one of responsibility. She is in the public eye; she is the queen; she has the power, will she do what is right? And then she says: “then I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish.” The queen becomes a hero that day.
Esther becomes a true Jewish leader in this chapter as soon as she realizes that her life is not as important as the life of her people. Charles Barkley didn’t see this. Back then, he never asked himself the question, “perhaps I have attained success and fame for some deeper purpose.” To help inner city kids, to fund a youth sports league, to contribute to education or to promote exercise and good health. He, like every other leader, every other role model, has the power and influence to do good in ways most of us simply can’t do. You may have noted that Canadian Olympians Jennifer Heil who won a silver in women’s moguls and Alexandre Bilodeau who won the gold in men’s moguls pledged $25,000 each to charity and challenged the other medal winners in the games to do the same. Very impressive, I think, for a 26 and 22 year old. Everyone is watching them; everyone admires and respects them: everyone wants to be just like them. And this is precisely the time for them to be gracious and generous and do something that has lasting meaning. We all might believe that we “ain’t no role model,” but we are. Someone is always watching us; our kids, our students, our friends, our co-workers and we can’t let them down. We are all role models so let’s be role models for the good.
Shabbat Shalom
Friday, February 19, 2010
Adar and Joy
Mishe’nichnas Adar Marbim B’simcha. We read in the Talmud: when the month of Adar arrives, simcha, joy, increases. We announced the coming of the month of Adar in our service this morning, and according to tradition, this brings with it a sense of excitement and anticipation to celebrate, act silly and very simply, have a lot of fun.
Purim comes on the 14th day of this month. The celebration is based on the book of Esther, the careful reading of which cries out “farce.” The story is silly, filled with exaggeration: a six month feast, a 7 day drinking bacchanalia; a beauty contest in which the women primp and powder for a full year for their single night with the king. And of course, there is the pledge by a Persian official to annihilate all the Jews in the kingdom because a single Jew didn’t bow down to him in the street. The bad guy gets tricked and his evil plan foiled and the Jews celebrate their salvation without a single reference to God, a bit odd for a Biblical book but perhaps not so odd for this type of story.
We read the Book of Esther because it’s fun. We dress up in costumes, we gragger enthusiastically with mention of the name of Haman, we eat sweets, we feast and drink and joke and put on silly plays. It’s all about joy: mishenichnas Adar, marbim b’simcha: when Adar arrives, joy increases.
We use the word “simcha,” all the time in Judaism. It is a Hebrew word that almost every Jew knows: we are celebrating a simcha today, with the Bar Mitzvah of Spencer Soicher. Last week, we had three “simchas” on the bema: anniversaries and birthdays. We sing siman tov and mazal tov: we celebrate. The birth of a child, a Bar Mitzvah, a wedding. Every chance we get in Judaism, we smile and have a good time. With a history of persecution and stress, we don’t want to miss even a single opportunity to feel and express joy.
Purim has four mitzvoth: four observances that we are obligated to perform. Each of them legislates, in a sense, the enhancement of simcha. The first is the reading of the Megillat Esther itself. We can’t do this alone: we have to be together with other Jews to read the Megillah --the more the better. In the text, Haman says to the king regarding the Jews, “there is a certain people who are scattered and dispersed amongst the people in the states of your rule.” The commentators seize on this statement ---the people are scattered, which means that they are distant from one another, there is no sense of community with them, no unity. So the Rabbis require that the community in the present, now, does the opposite; we come together for the reading of the Megillah: and create a celebration together. There is a sense of power and a sense of belonging to something greater than the self, when the community assembles. Unity and connection to others feels good. The Rabbis in the Talmud knew this; when we come together, we experience joy.
The second mitzvah: matanot l’evyonim: giving to the poor. Here again, the enhancement of joy: certainly in the life of the needy recipient of tzedakah whose burdens are eased, at least for the moment. But joy also in the life of the giver as well. Nothing feels better than giving to those in need. To help another gives one’s life a sense of meaning and purpose. If you want to feel better about yourself, give of yourself. Giving tzedakah, increases joy.
The third mitzvah: mishloach manot. This is giving gifts to your friends. One of the plagues of our society is alienation from others. If we so desired, we would never have to leave our homes. Most everything in our lives need not be personal --we can shop, bank, work and be entertained, with virtually no human interaction. But there is a much better way, of course and that is to reach out and connect with others, to enhance friendships. In our community, there are couples that meet each other at a program called Baby University: which is a prenatal Jewish lamaze, of sorts. It is Jewish education and planning for the coming of a new baby. Couples in this program, perhaps most importantly, meet at the class and make friends at this formative experience in their lives and many of them remain friends for decades. They celebrate the bris or baby naming together; they send their kids off to preschool together; they join synagogues together; they celebrate holidays, and life cycle events, together, and so on through their lives. And it makes them happy! Friendships are the lifeblood of community and it brings joy to our lives. Mishloach manot: at Purim time, we increase joy by sending gifts to our friends.
And finally: the seudat Purim: the Purim feast. During Purim: we eat together. Purim is the story that defines the joke: at Jewish holidays, “the bad guy wants to kills us, we win and then we eat.” This Purim, the synagogue is sponsoring a community dinner: we will all come together to feast on great food, to watch a Purim speil, to laugh and joke and have a lot of fun. Jewish eating has never been about nourishment; it’s about building relationships and transmitting our culture and our values. The Purim feast does just that in an atmosphere of simcha: of joy.
With all of that in mind, I have to confess that I am uncomfortable with the phrase: mishenichnas adar, marbim b’simcha: when Adar arrives, joy increases. And I am uncomfortable with it because it implies that joy is somehow unique to Adar, only one of the twelve months of the year. But it’s not. We read in one of the zemirot, one of the songs traditionally sung at Shabbat dinner on Friday night: menucha v’simcha, or l’yehudim: “the rest and joy of Shabbat, illuminate the Jewish people. The deep spiritual rest of the Sabbath brings joy, perhaps an even deeper and more abiding joy than the celebrations which come in Adar. Shabbat is the foundation for the spiritual existence of all Jews who observe it.
There are about 350 of us here in our synagogue community that understand this; we are here every Shabbat morning for a spirited service and we remain, sometimes for hours, at our kiddush: connecting with friends and building our community. It’s very simply, fun and people do it each week. But we have a little over 2000 adults in our congregation and we are concerned about them too. We want to bring to at least some of them the deep joy that comes from Shabbat prayer, services and community.
As most of you know, the Cantor and I went to New York this past Shabbes to see some shuls that are doing innovative Shabbat services that attract hundreds of worshippers of all ages on Friday nights. In particular, we went to a congregation called B’nai Yeshurun, on the upper west side of Manhattan, to see what they do on Friday nights. They have a very soft and soulful service with voices accompanied by a variety of instruments that bring a full and joyous sound to the traditional prayers. Everybody in the congregation sings and sings loudly. The congregation has come to know the prayers and the melodies by coming often and their voices fill up the sanctuary: as do ours here at the Alliance on Shabbat morning. I had the sense as I sat there at B’nai Yeshuran, at this Friday night service, that my prayers were carried heavenward with the power and presence of the whole community singing as one. If one were to use just one word to describe the service, that word would be “joyful.”
As you might imagine, we were impressed. We want to bring that sense of joy to our Friday night experience, for all of you to come and for those in the congregation who might not feel that the Shabbat morning service is accessible to them, but are searching none the less for a deeper connection to the shul and to Shabbat. Perhaps what makes this service accessible to many is not only the great music and spirit in the sanctuary, but also the fact that Friday night services last just one hour.
We will call our service, “Nashira,” which means, “let us sing.” We will use instruments to accompany our voices for Kabbalat Shabbat until we come to the prayers that begin Shabbat proper and then we will put our instruments aside and chant the prayers together a cappella. The first service will be on April 9th and more information about “Nashira,” can be found in the March Highlights.
“Mi shenichnas adar, marbim b’simcha: Adar is upon us and we focus on the joy of living as a Jew. We will enjoy Adar and Purim this year, but we will continue with on simcha on Shabbat as well. We invite you all to this new service so that joy in our community will increase for us on Shabbat and indeed, all year round.
Shabbat Shalom.
Mishe’nichnas Adar Marbim B’simcha. We read in the Talmud: when the month of Adar arrives, simcha, joy, increases. We announced the coming of the month of Adar in our service this morning, and according to tradition, this brings with it a sense of excitement and anticipation to celebrate, act silly and very simply, have a lot of fun.
Purim comes on the 14th day of this month. The celebration is based on the book of Esther, the careful reading of which cries out “farce.” The story is silly, filled with exaggeration: a six month feast, a 7 day drinking bacchanalia; a beauty contest in which the women primp and powder for a full year for their single night with the king. And of course, there is the pledge by a Persian official to annihilate all the Jews in the kingdom because a single Jew didn’t bow down to him in the street. The bad guy gets tricked and his evil plan foiled and the Jews celebrate their salvation without a single reference to God, a bit odd for a Biblical book but perhaps not so odd for this type of story.
We read the Book of Esther because it’s fun. We dress up in costumes, we gragger enthusiastically with mention of the name of Haman, we eat sweets, we feast and drink and joke and put on silly plays. It’s all about joy: mishenichnas Adar, marbim b’simcha: when Adar arrives, joy increases.
We use the word “simcha,” all the time in Judaism. It is a Hebrew word that almost every Jew knows: we are celebrating a simcha today, with the Bar Mitzvah of Spencer Soicher. Last week, we had three “simchas” on the bema: anniversaries and birthdays. We sing siman tov and mazal tov: we celebrate. The birth of a child, a Bar Mitzvah, a wedding. Every chance we get in Judaism, we smile and have a good time. With a history of persecution and stress, we don’t want to miss even a single opportunity to feel and express joy.
Purim has four mitzvoth: four observances that we are obligated to perform. Each of them legislates, in a sense, the enhancement of simcha. The first is the reading of the Megillat Esther itself. We can’t do this alone: we have to be together with other Jews to read the Megillah --the more the better. In the text, Haman says to the king regarding the Jews, “there is a certain people who are scattered and dispersed amongst the people in the states of your rule.” The commentators seize on this statement ---the people are scattered, which means that they are distant from one another, there is no sense of community with them, no unity. So the Rabbis require that the community in the present, now, does the opposite; we come together for the reading of the Megillah: and create a celebration together. There is a sense of power and a sense of belonging to something greater than the self, when the community assembles. Unity and connection to others feels good. The Rabbis in the Talmud knew this; when we come together, we experience joy.
The second mitzvah: matanot l’evyonim: giving to the poor. Here again, the enhancement of joy: certainly in the life of the needy recipient of tzedakah whose burdens are eased, at least for the moment. But joy also in the life of the giver as well. Nothing feels better than giving to those in need. To help another gives one’s life a sense of meaning and purpose. If you want to feel better about yourself, give of yourself. Giving tzedakah, increases joy.
The third mitzvah: mishloach manot. This is giving gifts to your friends. One of the plagues of our society is alienation from others. If we so desired, we would never have to leave our homes. Most everything in our lives need not be personal --we can shop, bank, work and be entertained, with virtually no human interaction. But there is a much better way, of course and that is to reach out and connect with others, to enhance friendships. In our community, there are couples that meet each other at a program called Baby University: which is a prenatal Jewish lamaze, of sorts. It is Jewish education and planning for the coming of a new baby. Couples in this program, perhaps most importantly, meet at the class and make friends at this formative experience in their lives and many of them remain friends for decades. They celebrate the bris or baby naming together; they send their kids off to preschool together; they join synagogues together; they celebrate holidays, and life cycle events, together, and so on through their lives. And it makes them happy! Friendships are the lifeblood of community and it brings joy to our lives. Mishloach manot: at Purim time, we increase joy by sending gifts to our friends.
And finally: the seudat Purim: the Purim feast. During Purim: we eat together. Purim is the story that defines the joke: at Jewish holidays, “the bad guy wants to kills us, we win and then we eat.” This Purim, the synagogue is sponsoring a community dinner: we will all come together to feast on great food, to watch a Purim speil, to laugh and joke and have a lot of fun. Jewish eating has never been about nourishment; it’s about building relationships and transmitting our culture and our values. The Purim feast does just that in an atmosphere of simcha: of joy.
With all of that in mind, I have to confess that I am uncomfortable with the phrase: mishenichnas adar, marbim b’simcha: when Adar arrives, joy increases. And I am uncomfortable with it because it implies that joy is somehow unique to Adar, only one of the twelve months of the year. But it’s not. We read in one of the zemirot, one of the songs traditionally sung at Shabbat dinner on Friday night: menucha v’simcha, or l’yehudim: “the rest and joy of Shabbat, illuminate the Jewish people. The deep spiritual rest of the Sabbath brings joy, perhaps an even deeper and more abiding joy than the celebrations which come in Adar. Shabbat is the foundation for the spiritual existence of all Jews who observe it.
There are about 350 of us here in our synagogue community that understand this; we are here every Shabbat morning for a spirited service and we remain, sometimes for hours, at our kiddush: connecting with friends and building our community. It’s very simply, fun and people do it each week. But we have a little over 2000 adults in our congregation and we are concerned about them too. We want to bring to at least some of them the deep joy that comes from Shabbat prayer, services and community.
As most of you know, the Cantor and I went to New York this past Shabbes to see some shuls that are doing innovative Shabbat services that attract hundreds of worshippers of all ages on Friday nights. In particular, we went to a congregation called B’nai Yeshurun, on the upper west side of Manhattan, to see what they do on Friday nights. They have a very soft and soulful service with voices accompanied by a variety of instruments that bring a full and joyous sound to the traditional prayers. Everybody in the congregation sings and sings loudly. The congregation has come to know the prayers and the melodies by coming often and their voices fill up the sanctuary: as do ours here at the Alliance on Shabbat morning. I had the sense as I sat there at B’nai Yeshuran, at this Friday night service, that my prayers were carried heavenward with the power and presence of the whole community singing as one. If one were to use just one word to describe the service, that word would be “joyful.”
As you might imagine, we were impressed. We want to bring that sense of joy to our Friday night experience, for all of you to come and for those in the congregation who might not feel that the Shabbat morning service is accessible to them, but are searching none the less for a deeper connection to the shul and to Shabbat. Perhaps what makes this service accessible to many is not only the great music and spirit in the sanctuary, but also the fact that Friday night services last just one hour.
We will call our service, “Nashira,” which means, “let us sing.” We will use instruments to accompany our voices for Kabbalat Shabbat until we come to the prayers that begin Shabbat proper and then we will put our instruments aside and chant the prayers together a cappella. The first service will be on April 9th and more information about “Nashira,” can be found in the March Highlights.
“Mi shenichnas adar, marbim b’simcha: Adar is upon us and we focus on the joy of living as a Jew. We will enjoy Adar and Purim this year, but we will continue with on simcha on Shabbat as well. We invite you all to this new service so that joy in our community will increase for us on Shabbat and indeed, all year round.
Shabbat Shalom.
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