Yom Haatzmaut Blessings

This evening marks Yom Haatzmaut, 67 years since the State of Israel declared its independence.  On that day David Ben Gurion declared:

We appeal to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz Yisrael [land of Israel] in the tasks of immigration and building up and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream - the redemption of Israel.

Yehuda Amichai writes:

Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at Yad VaShem,
They put on grave faces at the Kotel
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures take
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on the top of Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust over our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.

I have since visited Israel many times.  I live in a blessed age when I can travel to Israel with freedom and ease.  There is your Rabbi Moskowitz on his first trip to Israel during the summer of 1979.  And yes there he is standing front and center but apparently already distracted and focused by something off in the distance.

The poem continues:

Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, "You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

Perhaps that is what I already saw then, that has captured my heart ever since.  We are home.

The Declaration of Independence affirms:

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of the Jews' homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz Yisrael the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations.

You can feel it in the air.

...there sits a man who brought fruit and vegetables for his family.

Yom HaZikaron Fragments

This evening marks the beginning of Yom HaZikaron, Israel's memorial day.  This is a day of mourning set aside to remember the soldiers who gave their lives defending the State of Israel and the Jewish people.

Below is the grave of Hannah Senesh, the poet who gave her life trying to rescue Jews trapped by the Nazi's murderous onslaught of Hungary.

Her words still ring true:

Yesh kochavim…

There are stars
whose light touches the earth only after they themselves have disintegrated
and are no more.

And there are people
whose shimmering memories light the world after they themselves are no more

among us.

These lights
which light up the darkest night

they are the starry lights that illumine a person’s path.

A grave of an unknown soldier who died in the battle for Jerusalem in 1948.

And the words of the unparalleled Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai:

God has pity on kindergarten children.
He has less pity on school children.
And on grownups he has no pity at all,
he leaves them alone,
and sometimes they must crawl on all fours
in the burning sand
to reach the first-aid station,
covered with blood.

But perhaps he will watch over true lovers
and have mercy on them and shelter them
like a tree over the old man

sleeping on a public bench.

Perhaps we too will give them

the last rare coins of compassion

that Mother handed down to us,

so that their happiness will protect us

now and in other days.

The day is also given to mourning victims of terror.  I am proud that Israeli officials have urged us to find room in the Jewish heart to grieve Muhammed Abu Khdeir, the young Palestinian boy murdered this past summer by Jewish extremists.  His name is now etched along side the many Jewish victims of Arab terror on Har Herzl's memorial.  This decision is not without controversy. I however find hope in this recognition.  

Yitgadal v'yitkadash...  Indeed when the heart is opened to all wounds God's name is magnified and sanctified.  

And so I pray. Let there be no more victims.  Let there be no more mothers and fathers grieving young deaths.  I rely again on the poet's words:

Let peace come

like wildflowers,

suddenly, because the field

must have it: wildpeace.

Addendum
I am saddened to add that Muhammed's family requested that his name be removed from the memorial.  His father Hussein stated: "My son is gone, my son was burned and we were burned with him. I want justice and not honor. What good is it going to do me if they carve his name in stone?"

Yom HaShoah Names

In memory of the six million and in observance of Yom HaShoah, pictures from Yad Vashem's archives.

Thousands of names...

Millions of names...

Yizkor!

Remember...

Yom HaShoah and Survivor Voices

We say: Never again!

Still we see: Rwanda. Bosnia. Cambodia.

And then we realize.  We have failed to heed this sacred call.  We have failed to teach the world the universal import of the Holocaust.  Never again must mean an end to all genocides.  Evil still persists.

One need only read the newspapers or search the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website to discover the demonic hate that we fear might become future atrocities.  How many more such instances of human beings slaughtering other human beings must our children and grandchildren read about in their history classes until never again becomes a reality? 

And yet for the Jewish people never again has become real.  Because of a vibrant and strong Jewish state, the Jewish people are no longer victimized.  Antisemitism to be sure continues.  Individual Jews are harassed.  Jewish communities are under attack.  But the Jewish people can no longer be persecuted.   Now we can defend ourselves.  Today we know that Jewish life will never again be cheapened.

This is a remarkable turn of events from the tragedy and destruction of a prior generation.  We recall their sacrifice.  We remember the six million lives destroyed for no other reason than they were Jews.  While there are many reasons why the Nazi evil was different than other genocides (factories were built for one purpose alone: mass murder), it remains distinct in our hearts because it happened to our people.  The Shoah stings because it remains our loss.

We recall on this day.  Six survivors. How many millions were silenced?  How many voices stilled?  Let their words be our remembrances. Take a few moments to watch Yad Vashem's torchlighter testimonies. 

Six voices.  Let their survival give us hope. 

Shela Altaraz.

Avraham Harshalom.

Eggi Lewysohn.

Ephraim Reichenberg.

Dov Shimoni.

Sara Weinstein.

Let the world never again know genocide.

Passover, Rains and Miracles

The holiday of Passover brings with it many changes. There is of course the grand Seder meals. We eat matzah rather than bread for eight days (and some seven). We adjust our routines of where we eat out. There is a different air surrounding our kitchens and dining room tables. The week stands apart.

In the prayer service as well we make some adjustments. At Pesah we stop reciting: “You cause the wind to blow and the rain to fall.” This line is added to the second paragraph of the Amidah in which we extol God’s power and might. We add this prayer for rain beginning in the fall with the holiday of Sukkot. Why recite a prayer for rain during the winter months?

It is because in the land of Israel the rainy season begins around Sukkot and concludes around Pesah. Many of our prayers continue to focus on Jerusalem and Israel. Even though we do not live in Israel our prayers direct our hearts toward there. Our dreams, and the prayers that give life to these dreams, are wrapped up in that place. Even though our winters are filled with snow (and this past winter far too much snow) we still pray for the life giving rains our holy land desperately requires.

This additional prayer teaches us two things. 1. No matter where we live the Jewish soul reaches out to touch the land of Israel. This is why I continue to observe eight days of Pesah. The additional eighth day is only added for those who live outside the land, for those like ourselves who live in the diaspora. With the advent of computers there is no confusion about the calendar and no delay in the message broadcast from Jerusalem that the holiday begins, eight days remind us that as much as I love my home and this extraordinary country in which I live, every place, every land, every synagogue, every home, is but a fraction of the Jewish ideal found in eretz yisrael.

And 2. We only pray for what is likely to occur. Let me explain. We do not pray for rain during the dry, summer months when if you ever visited Jerusalem during these months you would know that even the air is devoid of humidity. Instead we pray for rain only when we expect it to rain. This is an important lesson about prayer. We do not pray for miracles. Even though our prayers describe an all-powerful God that we believe is capable of anything and everything we do not ask God to exert these powers.

Instead we pray that the world, and nature, might follow its established patterns. In a sense our prayer is: God, please keep this beautiful earth that You created harmonious. Let there be shalom, peace and wholeness. Let me discover evidence of Your hand when the expected rains fall, the flowers’ buds emerge and the grass returns to green.

When nature is again restored, when it rains when it is supposed to rain my prayers are affirmed and my faith is fortified.

During the holiday of Sukkot, when we peer through the flimsy roofs of our temporary booths and see the full harvest moon, we do not add the prayer for rain. We wait until we go inside from our sukkot that we add this prayer. Even though the rainy season begins with this holiday we delay our prayers so that our joy might not be diminished and our holiday will not become ruined.

And then when the stars are not obscured by rain we discover one small miracle. When we leave our Seders and see again that full moon, we discover miracles in the sky. The world remains ordered. Our holidays continue to brighten our year.

Passover Questions

Isidor Isaac Rabi, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his development of MRI technology, was once asked what made him become a scientist rather than a doctor, lawyer or businessman, like all the other immigrant kids in his neighborhood. He answered, “My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: ‘Nu? Did you learn anything today?’ But not my mother. She always asked me a different question. ‘Izzy,’ she would say, ‘Did you ask a good question today?’ That difference—asking good questions—made me become a scientist.’”

The entire Passover Seder is structured with one goal in mind: to elicit the asking of questions. We open the meal by washing our hands without reciting a blessing. We taste bitter herbs. We eat matzah. The Haggadah was written in fulfillment of the command to tell the story of our going out from Egypt. Central to this retelling is the asking of questions.

And yet in the vast majority of Jewish homes we simply turn the Haggadah from one page to the next. We look ahead to see when the meal might arrive. We even recite a formula of questions rather than asking ourselves: Why indeed is this night different from all other nights?

Long ago the rabbis began writing the Haggadah and developing the rituals that define our Seder meal. They were educators. They sought to teach. They understood that the asking of questions is how each generation remakes the tradition and refashions a Jewish life for their own age. But questioning makes us uncomfortable. We shy away from asking. We are so afraid that our children’s Judaism might look different than our own that we recite line after line. Instead we should be asking more questions. We might ask how we are still slaves.

Long ago there was a discussion about the meaning of slavery. “Which was worse,” our ancestors debated, “political enslavement to Pharaoh in Egypt or spiritual slavery to the idols Terah, Abraham’s father, once worshipped?” The argument continued until the early hours of the morning. Thus the commandment to retell the exodus was fulfilled. Later generations made this debate into our ritual. We recite: “In the beginning our ancestors were idol worshipers…” The debate is relegated to the past rather than brought to life in the present.

The Seder and its companion the Haggadah are meant as discussion starters rather than a detailed script. And yet now these words have achieved sacred status. We have grown afraid to ask. I am tempted to cast the words aside and argue, “Why is this night different? Indeed why are we different? What can we offer to humanity? How will these traditions help my children bring healing to our broken world?”

Questions are the essence of who we are. In every generation we have asked anew what kind of Judaism does the future require? The Seder suggests an educational philosophy that empowers our children, our students. It recognizes that our children will be different than ourselves. It insists that they are meant to be different. It reflects a thinking in which questions are the cornerstones of teaching.

We seek not to mold our children into carbon copies of ourselves but instead provide them with invitations to ask. The Seder imagines a child saying, “Mom, why did you forgot to say the blessing after you washed your hands?” I imagine then a discussion of blessings. Why do we wash? Why do we say blessings? Why should we pray?

Are there wicked questions? Can there be a wicked student? I don’t believe so. There are no limits to what may be asked when sitting around the table surrounded by friends and family. Do not be afraid. Be courageous.

Ask. Discuss. Question. Debate.

If we are open to our children’s why’s we invite a better, and more lasting, future.

Tzav and Kindling Your Flame

In this week’s portion we learn that the altar fire had to be constantly maintained. “The fire on the altar shall be kept burning, not to go out: every morning the priest shall feed wood to it, lay out the burnt offering on it, and turn into smoke the fat parts of the offerings of well-being. A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out.” (Leviticus 6:5-6)

I imagine that this was an enormously difficult task for the priests. The olah sacrifice in particular had to be burned up entirely on the altar. That is why its root meaning comes from the word to go up. This must have been a very powerful fire.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook saw in this altar fire an analogy to the Jewish heart. Just like this ancient fire had to be kept burning, so too must we keep the Jewish flame burning in our hearts. But today there are no priests to tend to this fire. With the destruction of the Temple and the resulting democratization of Judaism this task fell on each of us. In that moment nearly 2,000 years ago every Jew was empowered to kindle his or her own fire. There are no more priests. Maintaining our fire is each of our responsibilities. We must each nurture our own spiritual fire.

A fire requires two things to burn: fuel and care. So the first question is what is the fuel that nurtures our spiritual fires? I offer some partial answers.

Books. To live up to the title that we are the people of the book requires reading, it entails learning. We are a literate people that demands perpetual study. We are defined by the books we continue to hold in our hands and I hope, our hearts: the Bible, and in particular the Torah that we read line by line year in and year out, and the Siddur, prayerbook. We discover truths in conversation with our holy books. The Torah for example is not a guide book. We don’t read a verse and say, “Now I know what to do.” How else can we explain the demand that we continue to read about sacrifices we no longer offer and verses talking about turning fat parts into smoke? We argue with the text, we draw out meaning from between the lines.

Prayer. To pray on a regular basis helps to rekindle our spirits. Central to Jewish prayer is the attitude of giving thanks. Gratitude is the Jewish approach to the world. That is the essence of the formulation: “Blessed are You Adonai…” Shouting blessings, even in the face of death, singing psalms, even when the world appears dreary, is how Judaism counsels us to shape our hearts. We spend much of our days working towards goals. We are driven by the desire for gain. Even the most noble of these quests creates an emptiness that spurs us forward. Competition is not bad when it pushes us and motivates us to better ourselves. But on Shabbat we take a breath and say “I have enough. I need nothing more.”

And yet we also believe that it is our sacred responsibility to look at the world and say as well, “What can I do to help? How can I alleviate suffering and pain?”

One last suggestion for fuel. Gemilut hasadim. Judaism teaches that these deeds of lovingkindness, such as visiting the sick, feeding the hungry, burying the dead and even dancing with the bride and groom are demanded of us. We help others first and foremost because they require help. We also do this because our souls are nurtured by these acts. We don’t do this as reminders of how fortunate is our lot, but because Judaism obligates us to look outward. We have no ascetic tradition in which the ideal is to reject the world and live apart from others. Only by looking in the faces of others, and seeing their pain as well as their joy, do we kindle, and rekindle, the Jewish flame in our own hearts. Sometimes it is difficult to do these tasks, but nevertheless we do not shy away from the obligation.

Gemilut hasadim, prayer and Torah are the fuel for our Jewish fires. But fires also require care. When tending a fire, we must first take note if and when more fuel is required. We cannot throw a pile of logs on the fire on occasion and then look away hoping the fire will continue to burn. Sometimes we might even need to rearrange the logs. On some days we might study more than pray. On others we might fill our hearts with more of these sacred, loving deeds. And still on others we might just need to sing a song.

Each of us is different. Each of our flames requires care and nurturing. It is in our hands. I can’t do this for you. I can help. I can teach. I can stand by your side. Fellow members of the community can stand with you. Learning is better done with others. Our songs are at their best when sung together. And it is most certainly easier to perform gemilut hasadim when accompanied by others. The kaddish, for example, is never said alone. The hora cannot be danced by yourself. We always journey together.

Still there are no more priests to tend the fire. Your flame is in your hands.

Vayikra and Listening to the Call

This week we begin the sixth year of my weekly Torah Thoughts.  For five years, without ever missing a week, we have learned Torah together.  Thank you for your continued participation.

We begin again.  We begin the third book of the Torah: Leviticus.  This book is concerned with the priestly cult, with sacrifices, ritual impurities and priestly garb.  “The bull shall be slaughtered before the Lord and Aaron’s sons, the priests, shall offer the blood, dashing the blood against all sides of the altar which is at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.” (Leviticus 1:5) 

These words and the book in which they are found challenge us with questions of relevance.  So much of what we read in the pages of Leviticus we no longer do. Thousands of years ago the centrality of sacrifices as the primary means of approaching God was replaced with tefilah, prayer and gemilut hasadim, loving deeds. 

And so we weave stories.  We spin interpretations in order to discover meaning.

The first word of Leviticus, vayikra, means “and he called.”  The book opens with the commandments about sacrifices.  It begins with God calling to Moses.  “And the Lord called to Moses…”  Vayikra is written in a most unusual way in the Torah scroll.  The last letter of this opening word, the alef, is stylized smaller than all other letters.  Alef is silent in Hebrew.  It could be absent.  It also begins the Hebrew word for “I,” anochi.

A midrash in the name of my colleague Rabbi David Stern.  When God calls to us, the “I” must be diminished.  The self must be made smaller in order to hear the call.  The ego must be small but not absent.  How many times has Susie said to me, “I told you that!  You were not listening.”  Focus.  Pay attention.  Listen.

God often calls.  Are we listening?

We must incline our ears to detect God’s voice.  It shimmers throughout nature.  In the changing of the seasons, in the emerging leaves of the trees coming to life, the singing of the birds in the morning, and even the flurries of a Spring snow shower, we can discern God’s creative hand.  We must open our eyes and incline our ears.

When a homeless man reaches out to me and asks for food do I respond?  Do I hear the faint words of God calling me to feed the hungry?  Do I fulfill the mitzvot of gemilut hasadim and bring healing to my broken world?

God calls.  Do we listen?

Vayakhel-Pekudei and Breathing Shabbat

The Torah commands: “On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord.” (Exodus 35:2)

The Rabbis expand. They weave interpretations. They suspend a mountain from the Torah’s thread. They sanctify the seventh day with blessings and songs. They set the day apart by their laws and restrictions. From this command they define thirty-nine categories of prohibited work.

They build what Abraham Joshua Heschel lovingly calls a palace in time. For the Jew the Sabbath day is a sanctuary. It is not constructed of space but of time. We spend our week seeking to master the world. We pray in a sanctuary of time. On Shabbat we bow to the setting of the sun. Heschel writes:

The seventh day is like a palace in time with a kingdom for all. It is not a date but an atmosphere. It is not a different state of consciousness but a different climate; it is as if the appearance of all things somehow changed. The primary awareness is one of our being within the Sabbath rather than of the Sabbath being within us. We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like a spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice. (The Sabbath)

We must ask: do we wish to participate in constructing this sanctuary? Do we wish to make Shabbat a part of our commitments? As Reform Jews we need not take every law and demand to heart. Still Shabbat beckons. An atmosphere awaits.

I am in the midst of reading a new book about Shabbat, Judith Shulevitz’s The Sabbath: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time. In it she observes:

Our schedules are not the only thing the Sabbath would disrupt if it could. It would also rip a hole in all the shimmering webs that give modern life its pleasing aura of weightlessness—the networks that zap digitized voices and money and data from server to iPhone to GPS. In a world of brightness and portability and instantaneous intimacy, the Sabbath foists on the consciousness the blackness of night, the heaviness of objects, the miles that keep us apart. The Sabbath prefers natural to artificial light. If we want to travel, it would make us walk, though not too far. If we long for social interaction, it would have us meet our fellow man and woman face-to-face. If we wish to bend the world to our will, it would insist that we forgo the vast majority of the devices that extend our reach and multiply our efficacy.

Who would not agree that our many electronic devices have come to rule our lives? How our lives might be different if we instead allowed God’s creation to dictate our schedules—at least on one day. On Shabbat we could look not to our iPhones, as we are incessantly forced to do, but instead to the beginning of evening. “And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.” (Genesis 1)

Shulevitz continues: “There is something gorgeously naïve about the Sabbath. To forbid people their tools and machines and commercial transactions, to reduce their social contacts to those who live no more than a village’s distance away—it seems a child’s idea, really, of life before civilization.”

We are offered a day to catch our breath. We are given a day to breathe in the neshamah yetirah—the additional soul, the added breath.

Although we do not participate fully in the tradition’s strictures, I continue to wonder how we can make Shabbat a part of our lives. We should ask, can I take the tradition’s intent seriously. How can I bring meaning to my life, to my week, by pausing on this day?

There is something almost magical about setting a day apart.

The Zionist thinker, Ahad Haam, remarked: “More than the Jewish people has kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people.”

We pause. Shabbat breathes life.

Purim, Drunkenness and Eternal Hatreds

This evening begins the holiday of Purim and with it a revelry likened to Mardi Gras. The Talmud (Megillah 7b) commands: "Rava said: It is one's duty to get oneself so drunk on Purim until one cannot tell the difference between 'arur Haman' (cursed be Haman) and 'barukh Mordekhai' (blessed be Mordecai)." That is an extraordinarily drunk state.

I have often wondered about this command. Why would the tradition encourage us to become so drunk that we cannot tell the difference between good and evil? Judaism has long argued that one of the defining characteristics of human beings, over and against animals, is our ability to make such distinctions, to distinguish right from wrong. Why would we want to ever blur that line, mumbling barukh and arur, cursed and blessed? Why would drunkenness be the preferred state of dealing with such a serious question as antisemitism?

The story of Purim, although farcical and even ahistorical, deals with this very question. Haman’s antisemitism and hatred for the Jewish people stems from Mordecai’s refusal to bow down to anyone but God. He refuses to bow down because he is a Jew. Haman therefore vows to kill all the Jews.

When I was young I thought that antisemitism was a problem of prior generations. It would never again regain the destructiveness of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Sure there might still be inappropriate jokes. Sure there might be those who avoided my hand in friendship because I was Jewish, but the hatred my grandfather experienced, I believed, was forever of the past and not the future. My grandfather did not share my youthful optimism.

Antisemitism is an eternal problem, he argued. It changes. It remains eternal. Sadly he was right.

Today antisemitism has again taken on a different form. It is wrapped in the garb of anti-Israel rhetoric. In this country the venom against Jews and Judaism is married to a hatred of Israel.

In ancient times antisemites fixated on the Jewish observances of Shabbat, kashrut and circumcision. How could they not work on Saturday; how could they not eat delicious pork; and how could they destroy their beautiful bodies, antisemites argued. In medieval times the blood libel was added to antisemites’ lexicon. Not only did Jews have strange customs, antisemites preached, but they sacrificed Christian children to use their blood to bake matzah. Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus, antisemites accused. Riots and pogroms followed. Jews were murdered.

In modern times antisemitism metastasized into something even far more sinister and deadly. Jewish identity was racial. It was a matter of blood. It was not something that a Jew could renounce by conversion or by a rejection of Jewish tradition. The Nazis argued that if a person had one Jewish grandparent they were Jewish, whether or not they were observant or even called themselves Jewish. They were therefore marked for death. Emil Fackenheim, a modern Jewish philosopher, argued that the Nazis robbed Jews of even choosing martyrdom. It was not their choice of conversion or death as it was during the Inquisition. The selection for death was our tormentors’ choice. To be called a Jew was determined by others.

Today we see something far different. On college campuses such vitriol is leveled against the State of Israel. Both of my children have experienced this on their respective campuses. For a sobering account of this problem watch the video “Crossing the Line” produced by Jerusalem U. The BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) Movement argues that Israel is like apartheid South Africa, a country that was founded on an immoral principle.

Let me be clear. Israel is a vibrant democracy. Within Israel, and throughout the world, there are legitimate discussions of Israel’s policies. There are well-founded criticisms of Israel’s decisions and its actions. Debate is the cornerstone of any democracy. However when one attacks the legitimacy of the State of Israel, when one argues that Israel’s very existence is immoral, this is antisemitism. Every people has the right to self-determination. This is Zionism’s founding principle. To attack this right is antisemitism. Today, here is where this age old problem is manifest.

And so I return to the Talmud. It would be really nice if for one day we did not know and did not have to worry about this eternal problem. Although I would never encourage the drunkenness the Talmud demands (especially for my college students) it would be nice if on one day our history was not so serious and antisemitism was not, again, so real. It would be nice if on this day everything became blurred and we did not have to obsess about right and wrong, good and evil.

What a wonder it would be if our history were not so deadly serious. What a world we could found if, at least on this one day, we could discover such uninhibited joy.

My grandfather however was right. History continues to torture us.

And yet we continue to celebrate. We continue to rejoice. We even continue to laugh.

And perhaps that is why the Rabbis also argued that there will be no need for our holidays when the messiah arrives. When Elijah announces the coming of the messiah and the world is redeemed and rescued from the evils of history, there will be no more holidays except one.

Then, only Purim will continue to be observed. Chag Purim Samayach!

Ancient Problems, Modern Answers

What follows is a slightly updated and emended form of the sermon delivered this past Shabbat.

Shabbat Zachor is the Sabbath of Remembrance. This day is assigned to the Shabbat immediately preceding Purim. On this Shabbat we are commanded to remember what the Amalekites did to the Israelites on their journey through the wilderness. The Torah states: “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey, after you left Egypt—how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear. Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!” (Deuteronomy 25:17-19) Why is this read prior to Purim? Because the tradition argues that Haman was a descendant of Amalek. There is a thread that connects all our enemies.

One generation’s evildoers are descended from the prior generation’s. The wickedness is the same. The battle is eternal. Leon Wieseltier argues: “All violence is not like all other violence. Every Jewish death is not like every other Jewish death. To believe otherwise is to revive the old typological thinking about Jewish history, according to which every enemy of the Jews is the same enemy, and there is only one war, and it is a war against extinction, and it is a timeless war.” Antisemitism is, I fear, eternal, but not every antisemite is Haman. Today’s enemies are not the Nazis. The situation is different. The problem is real. The threat is great. Still 2015 is not 1938. There are differences.

On Tuesday Prime Minister Netanyahu will speak to Congress....

This post continues on The Times of Israel.

Tetzaveh, Candles and Emotions

Candles are important religious symbols. We kindle Shabbat lights on Friday evening and the multiple wick havdalah candle on Saturday evening. We light candles to mark the beginning of our holidays: on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Pesah and Shavuot. We light the menorah on each of the nights of Hanukkah.

At each of these occasions we sanctify these holy days by reciting a blessing: “Blessed are You Adonai our God Ruler of the universe, who sanctifies us with mitzvot and commands us to kindle the lights of…” We elevate the day, we set it apart and call it holy by the lighting of candles and the reciting of these words. It is possible that our tradition mandated this candle lighting long ago at the approach of evening in order to illuminate the dark night. How else could we continue to enjoy the company of friends on Shabbat evening prior to the development of artificial illumination? And thus it is the blessing that sanctifies the day rather than the candle lighting. And yet the flames captivate us.

In contemporary culture candles enthrall us as well. We light birthday candles and sing “Happy Birthday.” Perhaps some light anniversary candles to celebrate their years together. Or perhaps we light these candles to create a romantic mood. And lest I forget, Long Island has given the Jewish world a new custom: the bar/bat mitzvah candle lighting ceremony. Honored guests are each accorded a candle. The young boy or girl offers rhymed words about his/her relative and then a song is played as the family member comes forward. Finally everyone sings “Happy birthday” as the candles are blown out.

Again candles elevate these occasions. Is it the words we sing or the lighting of candles that affects the mood? Would the words alone be enough? Is the magic of the occasion brought about by the kindling of these lights? Why do candles add holiness? Why do candles sanctify days and help to set them apart?

The Torah begins: “You shall further instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps regularly.” (Exodus 27:20)

Perhaps it is because the kindling of a flame is basic and almost primal. This act alone helps to add sacredness to occasions. It hearkens back to the Torah’s words. It is the lighting of the candles rather than the words that affects our emotions.

The Talmud teaches that as the sun set on the sixth day of creation Adam became frightened. So on Saturday evening God gave Adam the gift of fire to dispel his fear and sadness, to illuminate the darkness. God taught humanity how to use fire for noble and sacred purposes. This is why the havdalah blessing is unique among the candle blessings: “Blessed are You Adonai our God Ruler of the universe creator of the lights of fire.”

Most would agree that of all the candles we light none has a greater hold on us than the yahrtzeit candle. This candle burns from sunset to sunset. We light it to sanctify the anniversary of a death. It is a private moment of reflection and contemplation. In the evening when we awake for a light night snack the small flame illuminates the kitchen with its glow. The candle is called in Hebrew a ner neshamah—literally, a soul candle.

Unique among all the candles our tradition prescribes there is no blessing for the yahrtzeit candle. No words are required. Is this to say that all words would prove inadequate? What a remarkable admission. For a tradition built on words, an edifice in which days are ushered in and out by blessings and moments are sanctified by the words “l’hadlik ner,” on this occasion we stand in silence and stare at a flickering candle. The flame is enough--perhaps. It is the light of the soul. The memory continues to burn.

“A candle from God is the soul of a human—ner Adonai nishmat adam.” (Proverbs 20:27)

Crossing the Line

This is a sobering video about the increasing anti-Israel, and antisemitic, incidents at college campuses throughout the country.  Many of my students now confront this at their universities.



Opposing Israel's specific policies or particular actions is not wrong.  Calling the Zionist project, the effort to build up Jewish sovereignty in the ancient land of Israel, racist or immoral is antisemitic.  All peoples, Jews and Palestinians in particular, have the right to self-determination.

Terumah and the Fiery Heart

The Hasidic rabbi, Menahem Mendl of Kotzk was by all accounts a firebrand. He served a community in Poland until 1839 when he retreated from public life and lived in seclusion for the last 20 years of his life. He never published. All that survives of his work is a small collection of sayings. In fact towards the end of his life he burned all of his writings. Everything that he ever wrote was destroyed save what his disciples remembered. He was singularly consumed with devotion to God. He railed against false piety.

This week we read of the details for the construction of the tabernacle, the portable mishkan, around which the ancient Israelites focused their devotion. The Torah declares: “And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. Exactly as I show you—the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings—so shall you make it.” (Exodus 25:8-9)

Can any building truly house God?

Can any building other than the original mishkan be perfect? And so we continue struggling, attempting to figure out how best to bring God to earth, how to make God’s presence felt in the here and now. All of Jewish history is in part a record of the attempts to decipher how to build that mishkan again and again, how to recreate that moment of God’s nearness found in the Torah. How do we build a Jewish life out of the fragments of belief that are left to us by our ancestors?

Our efforts are imperfect. Our sanctuaries inadequate.

Rabbi Menahem Mendl of Kotzk asks about this week’s verses: why does the Torah say that God will dwell among them and not that God will dwell in the sanctuary. He answers his own question: “It says ‘among them’ and not ‘among it,’ to teach you that each person must build the sanctuary in his own heart; then God will dwell among them.”

The trappings and beauty of our sanctuaries pale in comparison to the heart. That is where true piety can be found. We do not require buildings. We do not need sanctuaries. And if we are to take Menahem Mendl’s life as an example, we do not even require books.

We only require a true and devoted heart.

Mishpatim, Prayer Breakfasts and Moral Clarity

Mahatma Ghandi famously said: “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Ghandi’s life was of course the living embodiment of the pacifist tradition. He preached against taking up arms and called others to turn away from seeking the revenge that the Torah’s words imply. Ghandi, and the vast majority of commentators, however misunderstand the Bible’s intent.

This week’s portion states: “But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.” (Exodus 21:23)

Scholars suggest that an eye for an eye is a poetic way of expressing the idea, also enshrined in American law, that the punishment must fit the crime....

This post continues on The Times of Israel.

Yitro and Calming Smiles

The Torah recounts the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai:

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. (Exodus 20:15)

The Talmud reimagines:

When Moses ascended to heaven to receive the Torah he found the Holy One sitting and fashioning crowns upon certain letters. Moses said to God: "Master of the world, who requires you to do this?" God replied: "There is a person who will come to be after many generations, called Akiva ben Yosef; he will one day expound heaps upon heaps of laws from each and every crown." Moses said before God: "Master of the world, show him to me." God replied: "Turn around." He turned around and found himself behind the eighth row in the Talmudic academy—behind the regular students arranged in order of excellence in the first seven rows. Moses did not understand the discussion and was dazed. When Rabbi Akiva came to a certain point, his students asked him "How do you know this?" Akiva replied, "This is a law given to Moses from Sinai." Then Moses was calmed. But Moses turned back and stepped before the Holy One and said: "Master of the world, You have such a person, yet You give the Torah through me?" God replied: "Be still, that is how it entered my mind." (Babylonian Talmud, Menahot 29b)

Here the Rabbis appear to admit that although their project is interpretive it is in truth innovative. They seem aware of the fact that they are creating something so new that even Moses would be unable to understand it. He would be relegated to the back row of the class.

Sometimes the distance between generations is so great that one generation struggles to understand the other.

And yet a thread connects the two. Both share a belief. They hold on to the faith that even such apparently unrecognizable innovations were given on Mount Sinai. When God handed the written Torah to Moses God also revealed the oral Torah, the method by which we would continue to interpret its written words.

We weave new interpretations.

Would my grandparents understand my children’s Jewish lives? Would they find comfort in today’s prayers and songs? Would they approve of such new interpretations as Od Yavo Shalom Aleinu or Debbie Friedman’s Mi Shebeirach: “Bless those in need of healing with r’fuah sh’leimah, the renewal of body, the renewal of spirit, and let us say, Amen”? Would their hearts only be stilled when my daughter would declare: “I am named for my father’s grandfather and my mother’s grandfather.” Then they might be calmed. The thread becomes revealed. Their hearts would exult. And their minds might declare, “Look at her smile. Look at her sing.”

The exultation is found in singing. We draw comfort in a smile.

The story unfolds. Moses is not satisfied. Perhaps he asks too many questions.

Then Moses said: "Master of the world, you have shown me Akiva’s Torah, now show me his reward." God said: "Turn around." He turned around and saw Akiva's flesh being weighed in a butcher shop.

Their earlier admission turns horrifying. History reminds us that the greatest rabbi, the most masterful interpreter of Torah, is murdered by the Romans. As we recount on Yom Kippur afternoon, Rabbi Akiva is martyred because of his devotion to Torah and his support for the Bar Kochba rebellion.

We discover hidden warnings within the Talmud’s story. If you believe that a life devoted to Torah, a life committed to Jewish observance, guarantees a life of ease and the blessing of 120 healthy years, then beware. Take care against such seductions. Even the individual who Moses himself admits was the most deserving of receiving the Torah suffers a cruel and torturous end. Torah can add meaning to our lives. It does not promise longevity.

Still Moses will not relent with his questions.

Moses exclaimed: ‘’Master of the world, such Torah and such a reward?" God replied: "Be still, that is how it entered my mind."

The thread continues.

Emily Dickinson writes:

They might not need me—yet they might—
I’ll let my Heart be just in sight—
A smile so small as mine might be
Precisely their necessity—

The questions daze. The smile stills.

And we continue to weave the imagined thread that extends to Sinai.

…Be still, that is how it entered my mind....  

Beshalach and Tibetan Shul

This week we begin the wandering that defines the remainder of our Torah.

I am in the midst of reading Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost. I am taken with the author’s meditations on journeying. She quotes a Tibetan sage who lived six hundred years ago. He teaches about the meaning of a path, a track. In Tibetan, this is called, shul.

[A shul is] a mark that remains after that which made it has passed by— a footprint, for example. In other contexts, shul is used to describe the scarred hollow in the ground where a house once stood, the channel worn through rock where a river runs in flood, the indentation in the grass where an animal slept last night. All of these are shul: the impression of something that used to be there.

Too often we pine after such impressions. We long for what we believe we had years ago. We conjure images of the past and mythologize distant events.

After seeing Fiddler on the Roof for the first time I asked my grandmother who spent her first ten years living in a shtetl outside of Bialystok about shtetl life. I walked away from the show believing much of the play’s idyllic portrayal. My Nana immediately disabused me of such notions. “The Cossacks murdered Jews. We were always hungry. No one in the shtetl got along.” (By the way Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, upon which the Broadway play is based, offers a more realistic and sobering account.)

Our wandering ancestors also reimagine the past. “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 to!” (Numbers 11:5-6)

One wonders if the intention of our wandering was to get lost. Then such mythic remembrances could die in the wilderness and only a new future could be seen. Then only the dream would be held in our hearts. Perhaps God sets us out to wander with this purpose in mind. To move forward towards dreams we must let go of our longings for yesterday.

And yet the past appears to offer security. Memory seems more clear than the future’s uncertainty. We cannot know what future will look like. And in this unknowing our discomfort grows. We become nostalgic for the past.  We long for the impression of what used to be there.

Nostalgia pulls us backward. It is emotionally satisfying and perhaps even a times uplifting. But it is also a drug that quickly becomes toxic. Why? Because we mistakenly believe that the past is known and the future uncertain. Our minds play tricks on us. We reimagine events. We write new histories. Thus nostalgia makes for a poor foundation on which to construct a future. In fact the word “nostalgia” came into English usage to describe a medical condition of intense homesickness. During the American Civil War, for instance, Northern doctors attributed a number of soldiers’ deaths to nostalgia.

I require no gifts of prophecy to declare that the future will look different than the past. Do we worry like the Israelites who long for the certainty of slavery or do we ask difficult questions? Do we choose an uncertain picture of an unknown future over an imperfect impression of a worn past? Do we choose a dream, a vision over nostalgia, longing? Do we look to long term stability over short term rewards?

The Talmud teaches:

One day, Honi the Circle Maker was walking on the road and saw a man planting a carob tree. Honi asked the man, “How long will it take for this tree to bear fruit?” The man replied, “Seventy years.” Honi then asked the man, “And do you think you will live another seventy years and eat the fruit of this tree?” The man answered, “Perhaps not. However, when I was born into this world, I found many carob trees planted by my father and grandfather. Just as they planted trees for me, I am planting trees for my children and grandchildren so they will be able to eat the fruit of these trees.” (Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 23a)

I do not know what the trees I plant will look like in 70 years. Who among us believes that we will live beyond 120 years? I cannot know if the dreams I hold in my heart will flower or even bear fruit. Nonetheless I pledge to choose the future over the past. I knowingly choose uncertainty over fading impressions. I choose dreams!

“So God led the people around and around, by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds.” (Exodus 13:18)

I will continue to wander.

And we will write a new Torah.

Bo, Freedom and Meaning

“Let My people go!” Moses declares to Pharaoh. (Exodus 10:3)

This familiar verse is often cited as a defense of freedom and individual liberty. What is the meaning of freedom? Does it mean that we are free to do whatever we want? Is it permissible, for instance, to draw cartoons that others find offensive? Are we free to shout words that others find provocative?

Speech and the freedom of expression have limits. Most of us remember learning how the US Supreme Court drew its few lines around speech. The court affirmed the First Amendment but added that we are forbidden from screaming “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater. In other words speech can be curtailed when there is clear evidence that our words will cause others physical harm. Now that people crowd together in lesser numbers in theaters will the court one day redefine “fire” for the internet age?

Judaism teaches that words can be among the most hurtful weapons people wield. Our tradition argues that lashon hara, gossip, can destroy a person’s reputation, that misplaced words, or even evil speech, can cause irreparable harm to another. Still would we want our country’s legal tradition to limit speech? Would we want our nation to differentiate between sacred and profane and draw lines declaring some words as profanity and others sacrosanct.

The danger then becomes the words with which I agree are holy and those which I oppose are blasphemous. While I might be sympathetic to Muslims’ feelings I am still unwilling to limit a cartoonist’s right to draw even the most offensive cartoons. Would I still affirm this freedom of expression if the cartoonist rendered caricatures of Auschwitz? I have no doubt that I would deem such cartoons blasphemy. Would I then want my nation’s laws to hue to my definitions of holy and profane? Who gets to define what is blasphemy and what offends religious sensibilities? In liberal democracies we have declared such drawing of lines off limits.

Like all religious traditions Judaism speaks about blasphemy, calling it hillul hashem, desecrating God’s name. Often Jewish literature describes actions as defaming God. If a person is clearly identifiable as Jewish, i.e. wearing a kippah, and cheats in business then this constitutes a hillul hashem. This person dishonors the Jewish tradition and brings shame to God. The object of leading a Jewish life is not only to add meaning to an individual’s life but also, and perhaps more importantly, to bring others to Torah. By doing something unethical we undermine this goal. Doing something unscrupulous amounts to blasphemy.

Like Judaism every religious tradition circumscribes freedoms. The question at hand is the proper balance between individual freedoms and a tradition’s dictates. Although we might disagree about where to draw such lines, the meaning of freedom is discovered when one draws limits and in how one curtails freedoms. That is the contention of the Jewish tradition.

Judaism believes that freedom only gains its fulfillment when wedded to obligation. It is the pledge to others and to God where freedom becomes meaningful. In the devotion, in the choice to do something for another, or for God, meaning is gained.

We discover that the portion’s verse is often misquoted and left incomplete. The Torah declares: “Send My people out so that they may serve Me.”

I must choose service. I must choose to pray. I must choose the ethical. Freedom is the necessary condition for meaningful devotion.

Martin Luther King and Dreaming Big

What follows is the sermon I delivered this past Shabbat.

This weekend we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr Day. On this day we reflect on his achievements. We also ponder what remains to be realized in the civil rights struggle.

As you know Martin Luther King gave his most famous speech in August of 1963 standing before Washington DC’s Lincoln Memorial and in front of the thousands who marched there to further civil rights.

In that “I Have a Dream” speech, he said:

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!

After a particularly dark week, when despair grips us, when we see clear evidence of what happens when antisemitism goes unchecked, when terrorism again frightens us, I want to reflect not on these evils, but instead on the importance of dreams. Faith in general and Judaism in particular is built on the dream that tomorrow can be better than today. For the religious person dreams are not fantasies. They can be felt. They can be touched. Dreams are as real as the earth and sky. We tenaciously hold on to dreams despite what happens around us. We remain undeterred by tragedy. We do not veer because of evil.

Let us take but one example from history. For nearly 2,000 years we prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem!” I am certain there were times when some laughed at such statements, when there were even Jews who lost hope, who despaired and scoffed at such dreams, calling them perhaps fantasies. We have lived through unimaginably dark days and yet we continued to sing, we continued to shout, “We will return!” And now we have returned. Jerusalem is rebuilt; it is a teeming, thriving, modern city. Israel certainly faces its challenges—and that is perhaps an understatement—but let us take heart in the realization of our dream.

Do you think that Zionism could have been successful if not for that ancient hope, that Jewish dream that every child heard at their Seder tables? I don’t think so. Better realities are built on ancient dreams. That is what today’s Jerusalem should loudly proclaim to every Jewish child.

The person of faith does not dismiss dreams. The religious personality does not scoff at visions. They instead embrace them and take them into their hearts. At the darkest times, they don’t resort to cynicism. Instead they sing louder.

Sure there is a lot of work still to be done to realize Martin Luther King’s dream; we always fall short of dreams. Far too many African Americans do not share the opportunities my children take for granted. We can argue about the whys, but that fact remains unaltered. And yet my children really don’t judge others by the color of their skin or by their religion or by their sexual orientation. They look instead to the content of their character. In 1963 few could have imagined such a different reality could be realized within a lifetime.

Hatred, racism, antisemitism still exist; in some corners they even thrive, but we have traveled far. The civil rights dream is not yet fully real but we are so much better because we dreamed. During some days even dreaming is an act of courage! Sure we have to keep working harder to repair a great many things. But we traveled this far because of a dream. That is what must always be held before our eyes. We must keep dreaming. That is the answer.

And finally there is the dream of peace that we must continue to speak of. We don’t dismiss it because of a week marred by unspeakable evils. I admit, on this day this dream could not seem more distant. After this week the dream of peace cannot seem more elusive. What is the person of faith to do? Abandon dreaming? Abandon speaking of visions of a better tomorrow? Never! We continue to sing for peace.

Faith is the stubborn response to human frailty, to human flaws, and to the world’s imperfections. We do not ignore reality. Instead we refuse to be defeated by it. We continue to sing; we continue to dream.

The prophet Isaiah declared:

Let us go up to the Mount of the Lord,
To the House of the God of Jacob;
That He may instruct us in His ways,
And that we may walk in His paths.”
For instruction shall come forth from Zion,
The word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
Thus God will judge among the nations
And arbitrate for the many peoples,
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks:
Nation shall not take up
Sword against nation;
They shall never again know war. (Isaiah 2)

Part of the answer to our times, the response of faith is to dream. We restore hope by dreaming. We continue to sing: “Nation shall not take up sword against nation. They shall never again know war!”

Vaera, Terrorism and the Hardened Heart

This past week was a painful and harrowing week. The attacks in Paris at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher supermarket remind us once again of terrorism’s reach. In this age of terror the daily routine of going to a supermarket and what should be the uneventful drawing of cartoons become courageous. Ordinary, everyday acts, become acts of bravery.

What do we do? We muster our courage and steel our hearts by saying that it could never happen here. We say, “Paris was heading in this direction.” Or, “I don’t frequent places that are likely to be attacked?” Make no mistake. Shopping at the local kosher butcher is no more dangerous than the frequenting of the nearby Whole Foods. Terrorism instills fear in its randomness.

While terrorism may appear to be directed at harming lives its greatest danger is how it attacks the heart. And it is within the heart that we can achieve victory. Here is how the heart must respond.

First we must come to recognize that there is unmitigated evil in this world. Much of it comes from radical Islam. Calling our current struggle a war against terror is unhelpful. Terrorism is a tactic. It is not an ideology. Just as we once waged war against Nazism so must we battle Islamism. We must therefore wage a war of ideas against this ideology of hate.

Our military and police can prevent attacks and stop the advance for example of ISIS and Al Qaeda, but the war will be won in our hearts. And so we must hold fast to our commitment to a pluralistic society. We must continue to preach the democratic ideal that competing beliefs can not only coexist but also give rise to beauties that we might be unable to see if only surrounded by like-minded believers. In difference, and disagreement, holiness can be realized.

We must not harden our hearts against Muslims or those who are different. The ideas of pluralism and openness are what make us great. This is part of the allure of Paris. Holding such freedoms forever in our hearts is the first response.

The second is also a matter of the heart. We must never lose hope. Hope is the root of faith. Judaism continues to believe that tomorrow can be better than today. Despite the world’s tribulations we defiantly believe that it can be redeemed. The world can be made better.

For two thousand years our people, for example, refused to let go of the hope that one day we would return to our ancient land. Every summer I for one reassert that hope when I board a plane to travel to Jerusalem. Today’s Jerusalem is a modern city built on an ancient hope. That is what our faith is made of.

We waited a long time for the realization of this dream. We witnessed some of the darkest years history ever witnessed. Still hope remained secreted within our hearts.

This is our faith. No matter how vicious evil becomes hope will triumph. “I believe in perfect faith in the Messiah’s coming. And even though the Messiah is delayed, I will continue to wait every day.” One day the idea that harmony will exist in the midst of differently held, and even competing, beliefs will rule the day.

That is a battle of the heart.

This week my heart grows hard. It becomes increasingly inured to death and pain, terror and fanaticism. It responds with statements of distance, “It can’t happen here.”

“The Lord said to Moses: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart…” (Exodus 7:3)

Can my heart traverse the distance? Can my heart achieve victory?