Matot-Masei

Although I am currently in Jerusalem studying at the Shalom Hartman Institute, my thoughts turn to today’s holiday of July 4^th.  I have been thinking about the soldiers who over the centuries fought to gain our independence and still, continue to fight to guarantee our freedom.  I have been thinking about the pain these battles and wars continue to take on our soldiers.

This past fall there was a powerful article in The New Yorker (Dexter Filkins, “Atonement”) about one soldier’s journey to gain forgiveness from the Iraqi family he harmed.  On April 8, 2003 he and his fellow Marines had mistakenly shot twenty innocent Iraqi civilians.  That day continues to haunt many of the soldiers of Fox Company, Second Battalion, Twenty-Third Marine Regiment. 

Years later, one of its soldiers Lu Lobello sought out one of the survivors.  Margaret Kachadoorian had made her way, along with her only surviving child, to Glendale California.  She agreed to meet with Lobello.  From that meeting and their tentative and emerging friendship, he gained a measure of forgiveness.  She gained a measure of healing.

Whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq we must stand with our fellow citizens who fight in our nation’s military.  This article was a reminder that we must recognize the cost and pain to their lives, as well as to the lives of their families.

This week we read about the Israelite’s war with the Midianites.  God commands the people: “Avenge the Israelite people on the Midianites…”  It is a bloody campaign.  In this war, the Israelites killed all the Midianite men, took the women and children as captive and destroyed all their towns.  The Torah offers a ritual for those returning from battle.  “You shall then stay outside the camp seven days; every one among you or among your captives who has slain a person or touched a corpse shall cleanse himself on the third and seventh days.” (Numbers 31:19)

The war with the Midianites is disturbing in its ruthlessness.  Nonetheless the ritual cleansing for Israel’s soldiers is an interesting, and perhaps almost forgotten, footnote.  Even in biblical times there was recognition of the struggle for soldiers to return from battle to home.  But we continue to focus on the horrors of the wars fought in our name.  Why would God command us to destroy the Midianites?  How could God desire vengeance?  We argue about the reasons our country went to war in Iraq.  We continue to debate whether or not it was a justified campaign.  We forget about our soldiers.

Our countries have fought many wars.  Here in Israel the reminders are inescapable.  As I wander Jerusalem’s streets, I walk among memorials: “Here fell…during the battle for Jerusalem during the Six Day War.”  The cost of America’s more recent wars is more distant and for far too many, remote.  We tend to forget about the pain that walks among our soldiers.  Our leaders offer familiar tropes about our soldiers’ sacrifices, and I am sure there will be mention of these today, but too little about their continued pain.  On this July 4^th we would do well to remember their torment.

The Israeli poet, Eliaz Cohen, writes:

You hold back the stream of tears.  We go out for a breath of air on
            the porch
here I prepared a little corner to write the unfinished novel
now from the fig tree in the year the last leaf falls
everything is filled with symbols you say
you fall on my neck, weeping bitterly
my good, loyal soldier, now at long last it is permitted to cry.

On this July 4^th, amidst the barbeques and celebrations, pause, if but for a moment, and remember and offer a tear for our soldiers’ pain.

Pinhas

I am pleased to share that this week’s "Torah Thoughts" was published and distributed nationally by the Jewish Federations of North America.  It can be found at this link and read below.

The Talmud counsels: “Rabbi Hisda taught: 'If the zealot comes to seek counsel, we are never to instruct him to act.'" (Sanhedrin 81b)

And yet the Torah reports that Pinhas was rewarded for his actions.  Here is his story. The people are gathered on the banks of the Jordan River, poised to enter the land of Israel.  They have become intoxicated with the religion of the Midianites, sacrificing to their god, Baal-Peor and participating in its festivals.  Moses tries to get the Israelites to stop, issuing laws forbidding such foreign practices, but they refuse to listen.  God becomes enraged. 

"Just then one of the Israelites came and brought a Midianite woman over to his companions...  When Pinhas saw this he left the assembly and taking a spear in his hand he followed the Israelite into the chamber and stabbed both of them, the Israelite and the woman, through the belly."  The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, "Pinhas has turned back My wrath from the Israelites by displaying among them his passion for Me, so that I do not wipe out the Israelite people in My passion."  (Numbers 25)  Pinhas' passion tempers God’s anger.  Thus Pinhas renews the covenant between God and the people.  

It is for this reason that Pinhas’ memory is recalled at the brit milah ceremony.  As we renew the covenant through the ritual of circumcision we recall Pinhas.  We then welcome the presence of the prophet Elijah who, in the future, will announce the coming of the messiah.  We pray, “This is the chair of Elijah the prophet who is remembered for good.” Perhaps this young child will prove to be our people’s redeemer. 

Elijah is as well a zealot.  He, like Pinhas, has a violent temper and deals with non-believers with an equally heavy hand.  He kills hundreds of idolaters and worshipers of Baal.  So why are these the heroes we recall when we circumcise our sons?  Is it possible that the rabbis saw this ritual and its demand that we hold a knife to our sons as a zealous act?  Was this their nod to the intense passion that is required to perform this mitzvah? 

The Torah suggests, in this week’s portion, that an act is made holy by one’s intention, that the ends justify even extreme means.  Pinhas succeeded in ridding the Israelites of idolatry.  Elijah as well bests the prophets of Baal, bringing the people closer to monotheism.  They are thus revered by our tradition.  I remain troubled and even appalled.  I wonder: why must our passions lead to zealous actions? 

Zealousness and passion are too often intertwined.  Passion is desired.  Zealousness must be quelled.  The knife can be an instrument of holiness or a tool for murder. 

My teacher, Professor Israel Knohl, once remarked that monotheism is given to such violence.  Because it is adamant that there is only one God it promotes the destruction of other gods and occasionally, or perhaps too often, their worshippers.  Monotheism is exacting, and even ruthless.  While I hold firm to its belief I remain distant from the actions it too frequently deems holy.  

And so I draw a measure of comfort from the very same prophet whose actions I abhor.  Elijah’s story concludes with a beautiful estimation of where we might find God.  It is not in a thunderous voice or mighty actions. "There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind...  After the earthquake—fire; but the Lord was not in the fire.  And after the fire, a still, small voice."  (I Kings 19)

This is the Haftarah that is often paired with this week’s portion.  The rabbis offer this reading as a counterweight.  We require passion, but not zealousness.  Not every disagreement is a threat that necessitates radical action.  Believing in one God does not require that we destroy others, or their followers.  A plurality of beliefs does not negate our own firmly held convictions.

The Rabbis teach! If the zealot comes to seek counsel, we are never to instruct him to act. Rely instead on the still, small voice.

Balak

Balak, the king of the Moabites, grew frightened by the growing numbers of Israelites, saying,  “Now this horde will lick clean all that is about us as an ox licks up the grass of the field.” (Numbers 22:4)  He sent for the prophet Balaam and commanded him to curse the Israelites.  Balaam saddled his donkey for the journey.  Lo and behold the donkey saw an angel of the Lord and spoke to Balaam preventing him from cursing the Israelites.  The animal helped to open the prophet’s eyes so that he might bless the people.  The story’s irony cannot be missed.  The prophet is blind.  The animal sees.

A talking donkey?  The tradition of course views this as a miracle that we should not question.  The 20^th century Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, suggests that he believes the story only when it is read in synagogue or perhaps it is better to say, at that moment he suspends disbelief and doubt.  He said, “On the Shabbos when they read it from the Torah, I believe it.”

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner writes: “Taken literally, the whole story is obviously silly.  Or is it?  Even though it makes us uncomfortable, animals can and do know things hidden from human perception and people do routinely communicate with them.” (Lawrence Kushner and David Mamet, Five Cities of Refuge)

Anyone who has a pet will affirm this observation.  Animals have an awareness that humans sometimes lack. Birds for example are able to weather hurricanes and storms far better than we are.  Not only are the blessed with the ability to fly outside of the storm’s path but they are also endowed with an inner barometer that forewarns them about impending storms.  Each species of birds has developed different strategies for dealing with the weather.

Since the hurricane we have noticed, for example, that the local osprey have changed their nesting patterns.  In the days following the storm we spied an osprey on our neighbor’s front lawn.  Recently as I rode towards Target Rock along West Neck Road I discovered an osprey nest on the edge of the causeway.  In the past these birds could only be seen off in the distance atop tall poles.  Since Hurricane Sandy they apparently were forced to build nests in whatever trees were still left standing.

Usually when riding, I never stop, except at traffic lights of course.  But this moment took my breath away.  There, only a few feet above the road was an osprey nest with chicks in it.  Their parent (I have no way of determining whether it was the mother or father) stood near its young with a fish in its talons.  I stopped to marvel at nature.

I breathed in God’s creation.  I discovered amazement at its ability to find rejuvenation.  Even after the devastation of Superstorm Sandy nature returns and is restored.   I listened to the osprey’s call and its chicks’ whistle.  And like Balaam I sang: “How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob/ Your dwellings, O Israel!/ Like palm-groves that stretch out,/ Like gardens beside a river,/ Like aloes planted by the Lord,/ Like cedars beside the water…” (Numbers 24:5-7)

Hukkat

The Israelites are nearing the end of their wandering and will soon cross into the Promised Land. They will require new leadership.

We see the beginnings of this transition in this week’s portion. We read of the deaths of Miriam and Aaron. We also learn that Moses will only be allowed to take the people to the edge of the land. He is punished for an incident that occurs in this Torah portion. The people were without water and again they complained against Moses and Aaron. God instructs these leaders to command a rock to provide water.

Instead Moses hits the rock with his staff. He and his brother Aaron scream at the people, “Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you from this rock?” (Numbers 20:10) Water flows from the rock, but still God is disappointed and responds, “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.” (20:12)

For millennia rabbinic commentators debated Moses’ sin. Was it that that he did not follow God’s instructions to the letter? Was it that he hit the rock rather than commanding it? Perhaps he did not give proper credit to God for the miracle. Or was it instead that he showed condescension and disdain towards the people he led.

Rabbi Alexander Zusia Friedman, an early 20th century Orthodox leader of Polish Jewry, who was murdered in the Holocaust, wrote: “There is a deeper leadership lesson behind the incident of Moses striking the rock. In order to secure obedience Pharaoh appointed taskmasters who shouted, “Do it or else!” Once the Torah is given, the leaders are to direct the people by speaking and teaching. When people refuse to follow, one should inspire them with words—not sticks.” (Wellspring of Torah)

His interpretation offers an inkling to Moses’ sin. Sometimes successful leadership is a matter of tone. It is about temperament. Moses lost patience with the people he led. His frustration is understandable. Too often the people failed to appreciate the blessings of freedom and instead saw only its struggles and challenges. Nonetheless leadership demands understanding. It requires patience. This week, the elderly Moses loses faith with the people he leads.

And so Moses is forbidden from entering the Promised Land. More often than not we see this as God’s punishment for our hero’s great sin. Perhaps we should read this not so much as punishment but instead as God’s recognition that people will no longer follow a leader who exhibited such disdain towards them. The people could no longer follow a leader who shouted, “Listen, you rebels…”

Today’s leaders no longer have miracles to support their pronouncements. They no longer carry sticks. They have only their speaking and teaching. Sometimes we are tempted to think this is not enough. We see our leaders become frustrated when their visions appear unattainable. We witness people becoming disheartened when dreams go unfulfilled. We are tempted to resort to sticks, to coercion. Then we become like Pharaoh’s taskmasters.

And then no one reaches the Promised Land.

Korach

This week’s Torah portion is about Korach and the rebellion he leads.  Korach and his followers rebel against Moses and his leadership, claiming: “You have gone too far!  For the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst.  Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?” (Numbers 16:3)  Korach is severely punished for questioning Moses.

There is a debate regarding Korach’s sin.  What was his terrible wrong?  Most agree that he should not have questioned Moses during such a difficult period.  The people were wandering through the wilderness.  They required decisive leadership.  The community needed to be unified.  Korach sought to sow divisiveness when unity was demanded. 

But there appears more to Korach’s words.  Yeshayahu Leibowitz, an Israeli scientist and Jewish philosopher, offers an intriguing interpretation.  Korach’s sin is revealed in his claim that “all the community are holy.”  Korach implies that the people have already achieved their goal of holiness and nothing more is demanded of them. (Etz Hayim Torah Commentary)

The Torah challenges us, however, to become holy.  “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” the Holiness Code admonishes us. (Leviticus 19).  What follows then are primarily a list of ethical demands.  The intention is clear.  What makes us holy are our every day actions.  “Do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich…  Love your neighbor…  You shall have an honest balance and honest weights…”    

But there are people who believe that just by virtue of their being Jewish they are already as close to God as they need to be.  They do not see the challenge in the Torah’s command.  They see it only as privilege.  Chosenness in this worldview is not the call to improve the world that it must be for the Jewish people to realize its birthright but instead only a blessing conferring privilege. 

Holiness is a goal that we must strive to achieve each and every day.  It must forever remain a future goal not a present day boast.  The sin of Korach was not that he sowed dissent, but instead that he thought the work was already finished. He believed that there was nothing more he needed to do.  There were no improvements to be made.  His world was already holy, he appeared to believe. 

Holiness must not be a claim of privilege.  It is a demand of us made each and every day, each and every hour, each and every moment.  We become holy by what we do.  Our birthright only acquires holiness through our actions.

Shelach Lecha

Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic’s literary editor, writes:

How much can an idealist know about the world and still not be defeated by it?  Consider love: blind love is surely an inferior sort of love—the expression of the fear that the object of love may not be sufficient to justify it; but hope, too must face the problem of ignorance.  With too little knowledge, hope may be a delusion; with too much knowledge, hope may be destroyed.  To some extent, idealism is always a defiance of the facts—but defy too many of the facts and you court disaster.  People who wish to change the world have a special responsibility to acquaint themselves with the world, in the manner of scouts or spies. (“Flaking Paint and Blemishes,” The New Republic, June 10, 2013)

Herein we gain insight to the sin of the spies detailed in this week’s portion.  Moses commands twelve spies to scout the land of Israel.  Ten bring back a negative report.  “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its settlers.  All the people that we saw in it are giants…and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.”  (Numbers 13:32-33)

Really?  Every single one of the inhabitants was a giant?  And you were tiny grasshoppers? 

The Hasidic master, Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, teaches:

Did the spies lie?  Did they make up what they told the people?  Obviously not; they told the people exactly what they had seen….  The truth is not necessarily as things appear, but stems from the depths of the heart, from the sources of one’s faith.  Truth and faith go hand in hand, and a person does not acquire truth easily and by a superficial glance.  What is required is hard work and effort, wisdom and understanding.  The spies did not work at finding the truth in God’s word. 

Two spies return with a positive report.  They do not deny the challenges ahead and the battles that will confront the Israelites.  They are also imbued with confidence and seek to inspire the Israelites about their mission.  These spies were Joshua and Caleb.  “Caleb hushed the people before Moses and said, ‘Let us by all means go up, and we shall gain possession of [the land], for we shall surely overcome it.’” (Numbers 13:30)  For this reason Joshua and Caleb are the only people among all the Israelites who were born in Egypt as slaves who were allowed to cross into the freedom that would be found in the land of Israel.  The people who followed them across the Jordan River were born in the wilderness and not in slavery.  Can a slave ever see freedom?  Their eyes could only see giants.  Those who only see giants blocking their path can never truly achieve liberation.

Joshua and Caleb did not offer the people an unrealistic assessment.  They did not suggest an overly optimistic appraisal.  Their message was the proper mixture of reality and hope.  You can only lead a people to a better future if it is a realistic future.  You can only change the world if you know the world.

I recall a modern example.  Years ago, in March 2002, I was in Israel at a rabbinic convention.  It was during the height of the second intifada and there were daily terrorist bombings in Jerusalem.  One morning we gathered to hear Shimon Peres.  The night before the Moment Café was bombed and eleven people were murdered.  One of the young women who lost her life worked in the Foreign Ministry with Shimon Peres who was then Foreign Minister.  He spoke to us about her life, and her funeral that he had just returned from, but then turned to his vision for a new Middle East in which Arab states and Israel would share trade and commerce in a manner similar to the European Union.  I thought to myself, “Is he blind?  How can we build a new Middle East when suffering daily terrorist attacks?”  I want a new Middle East as well.  I want a Middle East at peace.  My dreams must be tempered by present realities.

Ideals cannot ignore reality.  Then again dreams are how we move forward.  Visions are how we change our destiny.  Allow reality, allow terrorism and fear, to obscure your ideals and the world will indeed never change.  Allow dreams to blind you, so that you only see visions of perfection and not present threats, and you will never find security and quiet.  Going about our everyday lives is indeed dependent on being unafraid.  Building a better future is secured by continuing to hold ideals in our hearts.

I turn to Wieseltier’s insights: “The world may thwart our efforts to improve it, but it cannot thwart our conceptions of it improved; and that is our advantage over it.  We can always resume the struggle.” I rely on Hasidic intuitions.  Truth and faith must go hand in hand!

Behaalotcha

An intriguing verse is found in this week’s portion: “The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, ‘If only we had meat to eat!  We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled.  There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look at!’” (Numbers 11:4-6)

What is so great about cucumbers that would cause people to weep?   Obviously it is not about the objects themselves but instead a longing for the past, even when it was one of slavery.  We tend to mythologize the past.  As soon as we confront struggles and challenges with the new direction we have chosen, or for that matter were dragged into, we long for the past, even when that reality was not in our best interest.  How else can we explain the Israelites craving leeks and onions?  I certainly doubt they were making chicken soup in Egypt!  Now that they are confronting hardships and difficulties they long for the past—even when it tasted terrible.

This week I discovered another lesson about these foods.  In next week’s portion, the scouts travel the land of Israel and bring back a report.  They speak of the foods of this new land.  In the land of Israel there are to be found for instance grapes, figs and pomegranates.  David Arnow points out that these are perennials.  By contrast the foods of Egypt are annuals.  They have to be replanted every year. 

Grapes, figs and pomegranates produce for many years, although they take several years to mature and bear fruit.  They of course require care and nurturing, but they remain a long-term solution to hunger.  The lesson becomes clear.   It was not only Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites but also the very foods of Egypt.  These they had to plant year after year.  Still they long for the familiar.  They long for the very tools by which they were enslaved.

I wonder to what foods are we enslaved.  In our modern society where we are far removed from the processes of planting, growing and harvesting our foods have we become chained to certain foods?  Would our gullets shrivel without sugar or corn syrup, chicken or steak?  There is growing evidence that many of the foods of modern culture pose health dangers, especially in the quantities that we eat them, yet we continue to claim that we cannot do without.

I am left wondering.  Are we once again languishing in Egypt, dependent on yearly crops that do not promise a better long-term future?  Is it possible to look beyond the yearly cycle of planting and harvesting and instead plan not only for our children but even our great grandchildren’s future?  Can the very foods we eat become part of a grander dream?

The prophet proclaimed a messianic vision:  “And every man shall sit under his grapevine and fig tree and no one shall terrify him.”  (Micah 4:4)

Naso

This week’s Torah portion contains the priestly blessing.  “The Lord spoke to Moses: Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus shall you bless the people of Israel.  Say to them: The Lord bless you and protect you!  The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you!  The Lord bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace!”  (Numbers 6:22-26)

In ancient times the priests uttered this blessing on a daily basis.  In Sephardic synagogues as well the priestly blessing is recited during the morning prayers.  In Ashkenazi synagogues, however, it is only recited on Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot and Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  This priestly ritual, known by its Yiddish name dukhanen, is re-enacted by those who trace their lineage to the ancient priests. 

Among those who attend Reform synagogues, this threefold priestly blessing is associated with the blessing the rabbi offers at weddings, baby namings and b’nai mitzvah.  On these occasions it is offered not to the Jewish people as a whole but to an individual or couple.

In its traditional formulation it was a blessing offered for the Jewish people.  “Thus shall you bless the people of Israel.  Say to them…”  But the grammar is then incorrect.  The “you” of the blessing is in the singular not the plural.  Why would a blessing directed to “them” be formulated in the singular?

Rabbi Simhah Leib, a Hasidic rebbe, comments: “The priestly blessing is recited in the singular, because the most important blessing that the Jewish people can have is unity.  This was attained at Mount Sinai, where our Sages tell us on the verse, ‘and Israel camped there’—and the word for ‘camped’ is in the singular—that ‘they were as one person with one heart.’”

People often mistake unity for agreement.  A group can be unified but not always agree.  Disagreements, passionate debates, are part of any marriage or community. There must, however, be a unity of purpose and mission.  Sometimes I wonder if the Jewish people have lost this unified vision.  Do we continue to share the belief that the purpose of leading a Jewish life is not only to teach Jewish observance to our children and our children’s children, to make sure that each and every child has a bar or bat mitzvah, but instead as Elie Wiesel once said, “to make the world more human?”

That remains the vision I hold before my eyes.  “The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.”  Perhaps this is why unity is our most important blessing and prayer.  Can we ever fulfill such a grand vision if we remain divided? 

Unity must remain our most fervent prayer.  “…May the Lord grant you peace.”

The Forgotten Holiday

What follows is my May-June newsletter article.

One would think that a holiday that offers cheesecake as its required delicacy would be among our most popular.  On Shavuot it is customary to eat dairy foods so cheesecake and blintzes are its traditional foods. 

Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.  Contained in the Torah are the laws for slaughtering meat.  Thus we can only eat dairy until the time we receive these specific laws.  In addition the Torah is likened to milk and honey.  It is as sweet as honey and as pure as milk.  It is for these reasons that we eat dairy.

Still, despite these favorite foods, Shavuot remains the forgotten holiday.  It could not of course be more important in its message.  So why is it neglected?  Perhaps this is because its primary observances are not found in the home, like the seder of Passover, but instead in the synagogue.  At Shavuot services we read the Ten Commandments.  In addition it is customary that we stay up all night studying Torah in a Tikkun L’eil Shavuot. 

Sometimes I wonder if this holiday is better suited for college students with their late night study habits.  Purim, with its wild parties and drinking, and Shavuot with its similar last minute, all night cramming for an exam, should be most appealing to college age students.  Then again the reason for Shavuot’s neglect can also be found in the Torah.  The Torah does not in fact delineate an exact date for the holiday. 

Instead it is calculated in relation to Passover which is accorded the date of the fourteenth of Nisan.  We are commanded to count seven weeks from Passover to Shavuot.  Shavuot’s name means “weeks.”  The Omer period connects the freedom from Egypt with the revelation at Sinai.  The Jewish contention is obvious.  The freedom celebrated on Passover is meaningless if not wedded to the Torah revealed on Shavuot.

Still, in this lack of a fixed date we discover Shavuot’s true meaning.  One day alone cannot be assigned to Torah.  This must be our occupation each and every day. 

The fulfillment of being granted freedom is only discovered when married to something greater.  We may be free to do whatever we want and whatever we please (and of course eat anything we desire).  But meaning and fulfillment are only discovered, and revealed, when tied to something.  On Shavuot we receive the answer.  Torah is how we discover this meaning.

Shavuot grants meaning to Passover.  Torah lends fulfillment to freedom.

Shavuot

The holiday of Shavuot begins this evening.  It marks the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.  Each of the major holidays has a megillah assigned to them.  On Passover we read Song of Songs.  On Sukkot we read from Ecclesiastes.  On Shavuot we read from the Book of Ruth.  This fascinating story tells the tale of Ruth, a Moabite, who marries into the Israelite family of Naomi.  Sadly their husbands die and so Naomi urges her to return to her own country.

Ruth refuses and pledges herself to Naomi and her people.  “Do not urge me to leave you, to turn back and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.  Thus and more may the Lord do to me if anything but death parts me from you.” (Ruth 1:16-17)

And with these words Ruth pledges herself not only to her mother in law but to the Jewish people.  Why is this story assigned to Shavuot?  One reason is that just as the Jewish people choose the Torah so too does Ruth.  Her personal choice is mirrored in the people’s communal decision to accept the Torah’s privileges and responsibilities. 

There is, however, another reason hidden within the tale.  Ruth is a Moabite.  The Moabites were Israel’s enemy.  She is therefore the stranger par excellence.  No one can be more distant from the Jewish people.  Yet she still chooses to wed herself to the Jewish people.  Even more significantly she is welcomed into the communal fold.

When Ruth and Naomi arrive in Bethlehem, one of the city’s leading citizens, Boaz, treats them with compassion.  Boaz lives by the Torah’s command: “When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the orphan, and the widow—in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings.” (Deuteronomy 24:19)  The Book is therefore a test of society’s ability to live by the commandments of the Torah.  Ruth is a stranger.  She is an orphan.  She is a widow. 

These categories represent the powerless in ancient Israelite society.  They lack a protector.  Boaz rushes, without hesitation and doubt, to Ruth’s defense. “When Ruth got up again to glean, Boaz gave orders to his workers, ‘You are not only to let her glean among the sheaves, without interference, but you must also pull some stalks out of the heaps and leave them for her to glean, and not scold her.’” (Ruth 2:15-16)  The fact that Ruth and Boaz are later married, and live happily ever after, is secondary.

Boaz welcomes the stranger, the orphan and the widow.  His act reminds us of our own obligations.  The Book of Ruth calls us once again to the demands of a life wedded to Torah.  As we celebrate the giving of the Torah we must also ask about its central obligations.  The Book of Ruth spells out these obligations.  Always reach out to those in need. 

Each and every year when we read this book we are asked by its story if we are living up to these demands.  Are we treating with compassion the weakest and most vulnerable in our society?

Boaz and Ruth have a child and a measure of joy is restored in Naomi’s heart.  She is told, “Blessed be the Lord who has not withheld a redeemer from you today!” (Ruth 4:14)  And then we read the most unlikely of epitaphs.  Their great grandson is King David.  From David’s line, the tradition teaches us, the messiah will be called.

The redemption of the world does indeed begin with one act of kindness.

Bamidbar

There is an interesting, and perhaps even strange, verse that concludes this week’s Torah portion.  Its meaning, and understanding, is dependent on how we translate its words.  “But let them not go inside and witness the dismantling of the sanctuary, lest they die.” (Numbers 4:20)

In ancient times the Israelites traveled through the wilderness, carrying with them the portable tabernacle and its sacred objects.  Their sanctuary was portable.  It was the job of certain members of the Levites to dismantle this tent of meeting as they journeyed from place to place.  In essence they had to break down camp and pack it up.  Apparently no one else could witness this task.  This could diminish the power of the sanctuary in their eyes.  To see it as it was dismantled could lesson its holiness.

All of us have attended concerts, shows, or even weddings and b’nai mitzvah.  There is a certain majesty that is of course absent when you see the empty room before it is set up for the ceremony or performance.  The magic is not yet there.  It is even more disheartening to see all of the trappings of the pomp and circumstance dismantled, or (and I find this especially disquieting) the leftover food discarded in trash cans.  The excitement and enthusiasm of the celebration are now behind us.  They linger only in our memories.  The Torah suggests that to see the sanctuary taken apart diminishes these memories.

Perhaps this is the message that Jackson Browne sings about.  Sing it with me!  “Now the seats are all empty/ Let the roadies take the stage/ Pack it up and tear it down/ They're the first to come and last to leave…”   Such appears the plain meaning of the text.

But the literal translation of the verse offers another interpretation.  The verse is literally rendered: “Let them not come and look at the sacred objects even for a moment, lest they die.”  Here it is not the dismantling that causes problems but instead just looking at these sacred objects.  How could looking at an object lead to death?  There must be spiritual message that we can uncover.  How we look at objects and the meaning we invest in them is now our question.

In our basement are piles of forgotten things.  There can be found old toys, discarded furniture, even computer hard drives.  Over the years we have accumulated too many things.  To wander in our basement is to tour our family’s history, from cribs to toddler beds to now (and years behind schedule) a new queen size bed.  Shira’s bunk bed was only just given away to our neighbor’s young daughter.  (May she enjoy many happy sleepovers underneath its covers!)  We seem to find it difficult to discard these once precious objects.

We should take counsel from our tradition.  Judaism views objects as tools.  They do not have meaning in and of themselves.  We invest meaning in them.  An ordinary piece of jewelry becomes a wedding band, a silver goblet a kiddush cup.  How are these ordinary objects transformed and invested with holiness?  It is by our use.  It is how we use them day in and day out that gives them meaning.  It is also of course how they were used by generations prior to us.  In fact our most precious kiddush cup is rather plain.  It is treasured because it was given to us by Susie’s grandparents who in turn received it from their grandparents.  It is for this reason that many couples use a grandparent’s wedding band at their wedding ceremonies.  

Other times we invest too much meaning in objects.  Our children believe that they must have the latest iPhone or iPad, the best sneakers or lacrosse stick.  Is your computer running Windows 8 or perhaps Mountain Lion?  Are you playing basketball in the sneakers that Lebron James recommends?  We are led to believe that our gadgets and clothing must be the most up to date and contain the latest innovations.  Advertisements prod us with suggestions that we can buy greater meaning, and of course better athletic prowess, by purchasing ever-newer products.  We come to believe that meaning is immediately seized as soon as we take hold of these objects.  In truth it is always how we use them.  We grant meaning to them.

And here we discover the greater lesson contained in the Torah portion.  When we look at objects, and fail to see the people grasping them, when we invest life saving or life altering qualities in this gadget or another, then a spiritual death creeps into our souls.

We invest meaning in the objects we hold.  They can never confer meaning to our lives.

Behar-Bechukotai

The Torah is quite literal in its understanding of human events.  It proposes the following: if you do good then you will receive many blessings.  If you do bad then evil will befall you.  This week’s portion proclaims: “If you follow My Laws and faithfully observe My commandments…you shall eat your fill of bread and dwell securely in your land.…  But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments …  I in turn will do this to you: I will wreak misery upon you—consumption and fever, which cause the eyes to pine and body to languish…” (Leviticus 26)

This theology does not of course comport with reality.  Each of us can name any number of righteous people whose lives were sadly cut short.  Far too many people who fill their lives with noble pursuits are not blessed with a fair allotment of years.  We can also name others who never, for example, gave a penny to tzedakah yet who still live a long, healthy, untroubled life.  The equity and justice that the Torah promises is never apparently realized or matched by our everyday experiences.

Our tradition offers many explanations for this discrepancy between the Torah’s promises and our observations.  I favor the suggestion that what we read in the Torah is not so much theology but instead a prayer.  Who among us would not pray that everything be perfectly measured and fairly balanced?  I pray that the world and our lives could be measured by such perfect justice.  Such is not our reality.  But it remains my prayer.

Yet in one regard the Torah’s literalism appears to match recent, contemporary experiences.  The Torah also declares: “You shall faithfully observe My laws and all My regulations, lest the land to which I bring you to settle in vomit you out.” (Leviticus 20:22)  The Torah is of course speaking in particular about the land of Israel.  That land remains the place to which we lavish the most concern.  The Torah contends that continuing to reside in that land is intimately tied to our behavior. 

Still this phrase has been whirling in my thoughts these past months.  Our experiences of this past year suggest even more that nature has a temper.  My hometown is, for example, once again besieged by record breaking floods.  Our own Long Island is still struggling to recover from Hurricane Sandy.  High school students in the Rockaways only just returned to their school on Monday.  Why is there still debate?  Scientists agree that many of these changes are caused by global warming. 

We are indeed responsible for these changes.  We have failed to live up to the Torah’s mandate “to till the earth and tend it.” (Genesis 2:15)  We are stewards of God’s nature.  While Judaism clearly teaches that we can use nature for our own benefit we also have a responsibility to care for it and ensure that our children and grandchildren can derive the same benefit.  There are not an infinite number of natural resources to forever be exploited.

We have failed to live up to this challenge.  The hurricanes signal our failure as much as they indicate nature’s fury.  Yet there is time to mend our mistakes and fashion a different future for our descendants.  There are opportunities to renew our commitment to this biblical command to be stewards of the earth.

Only one time does the Torah state that God will remember the land.  It occurs in this week’s portion: “Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob; I will remember also My covenant with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land.” (Leviticus 26:42)  What prompts this remembrance by God?  It is our repentance.  It is our recognition of our failures.  God is moved by our repentance.  We need only change.

I wonder.  Is it possible that the Torah is correct and that our present reality is the realization of its prophecy?  Is it also possible that God could be moved by our repentance and that we can once again live in harmony with the land?

For Our Teachers and their Students

Tom Friedman writes:

And that’s why the faster, more accessible and ultramodern the Internet becomes, the more all the old-fashioned stuff matters: good judgment, respect for others who are different and basic values of right and wrong. Those you can’t download. They have to be uploaded, the old-fashioned way, by parents around the dinner table, by caring but demanding teachers at school and by responsible spiritual leaders in a church, synagogue, temple or mosque. 

And our prayerbook reminds us:

When Torah entered the world, freedom entered it. The whole Torah exists only to establish peace. Its highest teaching is love and kindness. What is hateful to you, do not do to any person. That is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Go and learn it. Those who study Torah are the true guardians of civilization. Honoring one another, doing acts of kindness, and making peace: these are our highest duties. But the study of Torah is equal to them all, because it leads to them all. Let us learn in order to teach. Let us learn in order to do!

All the emails, blog posts, Facebook friends, Tweets, Instagram photos in the world cannot replace the good old-fashioned stuff of Torah and the hard work of its most important teachers, parents and grandparents.

"For our teachers and their students, and the students of the students, we ask for peace and lovingkindness, and let us say, Amen."

Leon Wieseltier on the Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre and Our Emotional Efficiency | The New Republic

Leon Wieseltier observes that we might be better served by some righteous indignation and anger rather than by the suggestion of far too many that we move on, rebuild and even put the Boston Marathon attack behind us.  He writes:

Vigilance, increased and intense, is not a victory for the terrorists. Mourning, and the time it takes, is not a victory for the terrorists. Reflection on all the meanings and the implications—on the fragility of our lives—on terrorism and theodicy—is not a victory for the terrorists. A less than wholly sunny and pragmatic view of the world is not a victory for the terrorists. What happened on Boylston Street was not a common event, but it was not a singular event. There is a scar. Taking terrorism seriously is not a victory for terrorism.

The cliches about rebuilding and standing taller are not always the best responses.  They are unhelpful when mourning the loss of a loved one.  Time does not in fact heal.  What time instead offers is how to keep on living despite the loss.  We learn how to live only with those imperfect memories.  We struggle to continue telling our father's or mother's story or as in this case, a child's.  But is that ever possible when the loss is outside the natural order and one discovers oneself mourning a child, ripped from one's arms by the anger of a terrorist?  Is anger really then a misplaced emotion?

Years later there still must be tears.  There is nothing wrong with that.  In fact crying is sometimes the best, and only, response, we have.  Jeremiah laments:

A cry is heard in Ramah—

Wailing, bitter weeping—

Rachel weeping for her children.

She refuses to be comforted

For her children, who are gone. (Jeremiah 31:15)

When approaching this massacre continued tears may in fact lead to continued anger and perhaps even prevent us from moving on.  Is that wrong, Wieseltier reminds us.  We are angry that these two human hearts can be so twisted by hate that they would construct a kitchen made bomb whose only intention was to murder, and especially maim, as many people as possible.  Those tears should continue to burn in our hearts.  Anger can serve a noble purpose.

Being angry at the right things, and people, can serve to make us better--and perhaps even our world better--or at least safer.  The attempt to quickly repair the destruction and erase the anger can turn us away from the work that must be done.  Moving on may be incorrect.  Moving forward--and now in a new and different direction--is the only task.

Emor

I just started reading Jack Kornfield’s After the Ecstasy, the Laundry.  Here is the observation that informs his book: “We all know that after the honeymoon comes the marriage, after the election comes the hard task of governance.  In spiritual life it is the same: after the ecstasy comes the laundry.  Most spiritual accounts end with illumination or enlightenment.  But what if we ask what happens after that?”

It occurs to me that the Book of Leviticus is all about the laundry.  After the ecstasy detailed in Exodus, the liberation from Egypt and the revelation at Sinai, we confront the details of how to lead a Jewish life.  “These are the set times of the Lord, the sacred occasions, which you shall celebrate each at its appointed time…” (Leviticus 23:4)  What follows is a list of our major holidays.  It is an exhausting list of chores.

People often think that religion is about ecstasy.  It is about returning to Sinai.  It is instead about the laundry.  It is about order.  The Jewish prayerbook is called of course a siddur.  This name comes from the same Hebrew root as seder and means order.  Our prayers are not about ecstatic moments but instead about following a prescribed order. 

People pine after what today we might call a spiritual awakening.  They run after euphoria.  Everything must be inspiring.  All must produce an ecstatic high.  Perhaps this is one explanation as to why people commit adultery or experiment with drugs.  They want to rediscover that ecstatic moment they imagine once was.  They go to extraordinary, and sometimes even destructive, ends to recapture a mythic past.

Life is instead about the laundry, not the ecstasy.  Religion in general and Judaism in particular orders ecstasy.  It seeks to frame the ecstatic.  Why?  We cannot exist for too long in these ecstatic moments.  One need only look to the prophets for evidence of these inherent dangers.  We read their words for inspiration, chanting the Haftarah every Shabbat morning, but look away from their lives as models for our own.  They were intimate with God but distant from people, often painfully standing apart from their very own families.   The everyday stuff of life will not get done if we spend our days as if we were also ecstatic prophets.  The meals will never get cooked.

Too much ecstasy is a dangerous thing.  After the people experience God at Mount Sinai they cry to Moses, “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance.  ‘You speak to us,’ they said to Moses, ‘and we will obey; but let not God speak to us, lest we die.’” (Exodus 20:15-16)  Too often people think that Sinai is our religious ideal.  The ecstatic is the religious goal.  Instead it is the Shabbat table.

There we find order.  We discover joy.

Leviticus gives us the holidays.  It offers us brief days of ordered illumination, rejoicing and celebration, punctuating the year.  Leviticus introduces us to the laws of kashrut.  These are at their best moments of religious awareness discovered at each and every meal.  We discover these not on some lofty mountaintop but instead in our homes, at our tables, in our kitchens.

Religiosity is found doing the laundry.  Piety can be discovered in everyday chores.

Recently I was kibitzing with our students as they enjoyed their pizza before the start of class.  I am not sure how the discussion started, but I found myself talking to them about taking responsibility for their own actions and doing things for themselves.  That is of course the underlying meaning of the bar/bat mitzvah celebration.  So I told them that they should learn to do their own laundry.  They stared at me as if I was from outer space, then laughed and looked knowingly to each other affirming that it was I who really did not understand the ways of the world.

Still I stubbornly believe.  I continue to teach that life is not only about what is fun and enjoyable.  It is not all Sinai.  It may be as simple as if you cannot fold your own clothes how can you order a life of meaning?  The exhausting details of the Book of Leviticus are actually where life is lived.  Exodus inspires.  It can provide meaning.  But it is the chores of Leviticus where we live.

That one moment of ecstasy must often last a lifetime.  The remainder is doing the laundry. 

Achrei Mot-Kedoshim

The Israeli author David Grossman writes in his recent collection of essays, Writing in the Dark, of his worries that Israel is letting go of its dream for peace, that decades of war have eroded its most cherished vision.  He writes:

If we ever achieve a state in which we have no enemies, perhaps we will be able to break free from the all-too-familiar Israeli tendency to approach reality with the mind-set of a sworn survivor, who is practically programmed—condemned—to define the situations he encounters primarily in terms of threat, danger, and entrapment, or daring rescue from all these….  The survivor thereby all but dooms himself to exist forever within this partial, distorted, suspicious, and frightened picture of reality, and is therefore tragically fated to make his anxieties and nightmares come true time and time again.

The most insidious danger of terrorism is that it erodes our dreams.  In its randomness it can never kill millions of people, but it can destroy a million souls.  It can prevent us from doing the ordinary things of life, a morning jog, catching a flight to see relatives, frequenting the movie theatre or a favorite outdoor café.

One of the most remarkable things about our tradition is that it was magnified under duress.  While the Romans oppressed us we authored the Mishnah, while the Crusaders persecuted us we penned some of our most remarkable prayers and while the Arab armies attacked us we built a vibrant Jewish democracy.  We fought to maintain our most cherished beliefs and values despite the fact that we were attacked or tortured, persecuted or terrorized.

In this week’s Torah portion we are given a number of ethical mandates.  Only three times does the Torah command us to love.  In the Shema, appearing in Deuteronomy, we are commanded to love God.  The other two mitzvot appear this week.  Here in the Book of Leviticus we are commanded to love the neighbor and love the stranger.  “When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him.  The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt…”  (Leviticus 19:33-34)

Here, in the Torah, we discover a people who recently escaped from 400 years of slavery.  It would have been understandable had they codified a law that said, “Never allow yourselves to become victimized or enslaved.”  Instead the Torah says that because we had such intimate knowledge of suffering we must be on guard never to allow others to be cast aside as other. 

In our new reality, where tests of endurance become instead testimonies to survival, many will be labeled stranger.  Foreigners will be pointed.  Others will be blamed.  In fact, only a small few are guilty.  In this country stranger and citizen are one.  And that belief is our best response to terror.  No one is ever cast outside.  That is the vision we must protect.

Since Monday’s bombing I have received a number of emails about security briefings.  I am certain that soon we will see new security protocols for marathons.  We might even see restrictions placed on the purchase of pressure cookers, as we have to come know the all too familiar removing of our shoes following the shoe bomber.  Some of these changes will be welcome.  Others not.  Some might provide a brief measure of comfort.  Others will soon become an annoyance.  No amount of additional security measures will prevent all future terrorist attacks.

There is only one response.  That is to focus on our values and beliefs.  Our answer is to forever hold on to our visions and dreams.

At morning services we sing a prayer authored millennia ago, and penned amidst the pains of sufferings and destructions.

Grant peace, goodness, and blessing to the world; grace, kindness, and mercy to us and to all Your people Israel.  Bless us all, O our Creator, with the Divine light of Your presence.  For by that Divine light You have revealed to us Your life-giving Torah, and taught us lovingkindness, righteousness, mercy and peace.  May it please You to bless Your people Israel, in every season and at every hour, with Your peace.  Praised are You, O Lord, Bestower of peace upon Your people Israel.

Such is the Sim Shalom prayer that we sing each and every morning, in each and every generation.  We began praying this prayer when peace was but a distant hope.  We sang its words not only to reach upward begging God for peace but also to reach inward so that our souls would never be hardened by the violence and terror our bodies experienced.

I believe it is possible to be vigilant about life while holding on to the dreams that nurture our souls.  In truth, we must come to recognize that we can never fully protect ourselves.   We can however guard our souls.  We can preserve our values.  I will not have it any other way.

Boston Marathon

Our hearts our joined in sorrow and outrage with our neighbors and friends of Boston.  Again an American city has been struck by terror.  We pray that those injured may find healing and the families of those murdered will find a measure of consolation.

As in Israel, the joy and celebration of today’s Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day, is tempered by yesterday’s Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day.  My rejoicing is diminished.  And so I turn to Israel’s poetry.  I find myself once again pulled toward Yehuda Amichai’s poems. 

What follows is the poem Amichai read at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony when Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Yasir Arafat were awarded the 1994 prize and although that peace agreement is fractured I continue to cling to its dream. The poem seemed fitting for the hope of that occasion.  It gains poignancy with each passing year.  The urgent dream of peace is renewed with even greater force after yesterday. 

Not the peace of a cease-fire
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,

that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds—

who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,  

suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

Peace remains my prayer—for Israel, for America, for the world.  I vow.  I will never allow terrorism to diminish my choices.  I will not allow it to destroy my dreams.  May our children, and our children’s children be granted a world free from terror.  And may peace come soon—because we must have it.  

Yom Haatzmaut & Tazria-Metzora

Today, five women were arrested at the Kotel, the Western Wall.  Why?  They were praying at their monthly Rosh Hodesh service and were arrested for wearing tallism and singing out loud.  In a ground breaking decision the judge dismissed the charges and the request of the ultra Orthodox rabbis who control the Kotel that the women be barred from praying at the Wall for the next three monthly services.  The judge stated that the women are not in fact disturbing the public order with their praying.  Instead she argued that the disturbance is created by those publicly opposing the women’s prayers.

In Israel today there is a struggle over the control of Judaism’s holiest site.  At the Wall the prayer area is divided between a men’s section and a women’s.  Over the years the women’s section has grown increasingly smaller.  For the past twenty five years Women of theWall has gathered on the first of the Hebrew month to offer prayers at the Kotel.  They are often arrested and frequently harassed.  Their argument is mine.  All Jews should be allowed to pray as they see wish at the Western Wall, the last remnant of the ancient Temple, the place that has served as a source inspiration for countless generations.    

This week’s Torah portion begins with a discussion about childbirth and concludes with leprosy.  (When I was in rabbinical school I never imagined discussing such topics with 13 year old boys and girls!)  The ancients were terrified of blood, as well as diseases about which they understood little, and therefore prescribed rituals to overcome what they believed to be their defiling nature.  Curiously after giving birth, a woman had to wait two weeks before performing these rituals if it was a girl rather than one for a boy.  After my students overcome their disgust with the Torah’s details and their embarrassment talking about these matters with their rabbi, they often object to this discrepancy.  Both boys and girls ask, “Why do you have to wait two weeks for a girl and only one week for a boy?  That is not fair!”

Although Yom Haatzmaut is a day deserving of great celebration, I would like to dwell on this continuing discrepancy.   I agree with my students’ evaluation.  Unfortunately the Torah’s ancient perspective still holds sway over many Jews’ hearts and minds.  I appreciate the opinion of Jewish tradition that men and women are given different obligations.  Men are obligated to pray; women are not, the tradition reasons.   Furthermore a woman’s singing might distract a man from his prayer obligations.  Such are not my beliefs.  If a man finds himself distracted then he should look within rather than out.  He alone is responsible.  Each of us is responsible for our own actions. Yet my commitment to pluralism must allow for other Jewish beliefs to coexist with my own. 

In fact, Natan Sharansky, the Soviet Jewish dissident, recently proposed the building of a third prayer area at the Kotel.  There egalitarian praying would be permitted.  There men and women could join in prayer together.  I would welcome such a change.  For too long the ultra Orthodox perspective has been allowed to define the customs and traditions of the Wall.  For too long the Wall has divided the Jewish people rather than uniting.  My dream for this place is that at the Kotel we can become again one Jewish people, while holding on to different Jewish traditions.

What is lacking in the modern State of Israel is this commitment to Jewish pluralism.  This is something that American Jewry can offer to our Israeli friends.  It is desperately required.  We should not be shy about advocating this teaching to the state we so dearly love.  Otherwise the Jewish state will also become a source of division rather than unity. 

There is much to celebrate about the modern State of Israel.  We have returned to our ancient land, resuscitated an unspoken language and restored the Jewish people to being masters of their own fate. Despite enemies who continue to attack the State of Israel, the Jewish nation thrives and prospers.  Still there is much to be done. 

I remain hopeful.  If we can do this much in the span of three generations, then I have faith that we can also one day soon restore to the Jewish state a desperately needed commitment to pluralism.

The Synagogue

What follows are my remarks from our congregation's annual fundraiser and some tentative thoughts about the meaning of the synagogue for our new age.

...Many of us attend countless charity events throughout the year, especially during these Spring months.  We are often beseeched to support these worthy charities with dire warnings.  Our gifts are equated with saving lives.  Our monies go to important research that could in fact save someone from cancer or protect an Israeli city from Hamas rockets.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I am not at all suggesting that these charities are unimportant.  They do extraordinarily important work.  For those of us privileged enough to have attended the recent AIPAC conference we came to understand this significant work.

Yet more often than not these charities appeal to our fears and worries.  They ask for our donations in terms of life and death.  The synagogue cannot appeal to such sentiments.  It was once, in the not too distant past that we could ask for donations to a synagogue by saying “The Jewish people will die without the synagogue.   Give for our survival.  Give so that we can guarantee your grandchildren will be Jewish.”

Despite the fact that I continue to believe in this mantra, that the synagogue is the only institution that can best guarantee Jewish survival, I recognize that such appeals no longer work.  We must appeal to something else and perhaps even more significant, for survival must be wedded to meaning.  In our world most, if not all, believe that you can live without the synagogue.  You can even have a bar/bat mitzvah without a synagogue, not a good one of course, but the valued ceremony nonetheless.  I remain perplexed by the belief of far too many that one can become a bar/bat mitzvah in the absence of community.  Yet we recognize that such is the sentiment of our age.

And that is why I remain even more grateful for your support this evening.  It is more that just I am really happy to see you.  It is because your attendance lends meaning to our synagogue.  It is where we can best find community.  It is where anyone can be welcomed regardless of station or circumstance, means or knowledge, commitment or understanding. 

Thus the only argument that might work for our institution is that here one can find meaning and community.  In an age when a group of people can be standing together but each texting someone else on their cell phones, we need community more than ever.

Here we can find a circle of community. Here we might become better, our children might become the menschen we dare to dream they can be.  Here we can learn to love our Jewish traditions and become attached to the Jewish people.  Here our children might come to love Jewish life.  Here, at the JCB, we can rediscover the joy of Jewish living.  Those arguments can perhaps become the compelling arguments for our age and in them we can discover our new trope.

So tonight I thank you for helping to affirm that the synagogue is vital and that our JCB community unique.  May we go from strength to strength, m’chayil l’chayil.     

Yom HaShoah & Shemini

Decades ago the olah, the burnt offering sacrifice, described in this week’s portion, was translated as the holocaust offering. For obvious reasons this translation is no longer used.   The olah offering was entirely consumed by fire on the sacrificial altar.  The Hebrew is derived from the word “to go up” because the sacrifice’s smoke ascended to heaven.  The ancients believed that such sacrifices kept the world finely balanced.  

The Holocaust is referred to by the Hebrew term Shoah.   This is usually translated as “catastrophe or ruin.”  Unlike the biblical reference that refers to a sacrifice we offer, the term Shoah suggests the destruction it indeed was.  It is a term however that appears infrequently in the Bible, but fittingly is found in the Book of Job. 

There, the word appears in one of Job’s laments.  “Of what use to me is the strength of their hands?  All their vigor is gone. Wasted from and want and starvation, they flee to a parched land, to the gloom of desolate wasteland.” (Job 30:2-3)  Raymond Scheindlin in his landmark translation of Job renders this verse as: “…in dearth and famine, barren, fleeing to wilderness, a horror-night of ruin.”

This captures the import of the catastrophic events of 1933-1945.  It was indeed a “horror-night of ruin.”  In addition the lamenting of the biblical hero of Job is far more fitting of our understanding of these events.   The biblical book concludes with Job’s question of “Why me?” unanswered.  God does respond to our hero, but offers little by way of explanation.  Job discovers little justification for the suffering he endures.  The Holocaust leaves us as well with these unanswered questions.

Recently Rabbi Herschel Schacter died.  He was one of the first Jewish chaplains, serving with US armed forces, to enter the concentration camp of Buchenwald.  According to The New York Times obituary (March 26, 2013), he ran from barracks to barracks shouting, “Jews, you are free!”  He also met a seven year old boy there. 

The Times describes the encounter: “With tears streaming down his face, Rabbi Schacter picked the boy up. ‘What’s your name, my child?’ he asked in Yiddish.  ‘Lulek,’ the child replied.  ‘How old are you?’ the rabbi asked.  ‘What difference does it make?  I’m older than you, anyway.’  ‘Why do you think you’re older?’ Rabbi Schacter asked, smiling.  ‘Because you cry and laugh like a child,’ Lulek replied.   ‘I haven’t laughed in a long time, and I don’t even cry anymore. So which one of us is older?’”

When a child loses the innocence and joy of childhood our world has been upended, when he teaches a rabbi the import of suffering, we might lose faith.

The holocaust offering described in the Book of Leviticus suggests a world where good and evil, reward and punishment are perfectly balanced, in a neat and tidy fashion.  Offer a sacrifice.  God will respond.  Such is not the world that emerged from the Shoah.  It was a catastrophe that we struggle still to understand—and even name.

The child survived the war.  He is now Rabbi Yisrael Lau, the chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.