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.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
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
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