Farewell Remarks from Temple Shaaray Tefila - May 29, 2015

(To view these remarks, you can click here and search for "Kabbalat Shabbat 5/29." The program honoring me in my farewell from Shaaray Tefila begins just before the 1:17:00 mark, and this speech below begins at about 2:08:00.)

Shabbat shalom. Thank you to Esther-Ann, Marna, Randi, Ruth, Heather, Sharon and Steven, Rosaly and Stuart, Hal and Jill, and Mindy for making this evening just perfect.

Thank you all so much for being here tonight. I’m honored and humbled and touched beyond words. But…I am a rabbi, after all, so there’s probably words anyway.

For nine years rabbinically, and probably more than that in my days as a teacher here in our religious school, I have stood at this lectern, on this hallowed bimah. And as I have looked out on scores of faces—faces of joy and gratitude, the ecstasy of celebration, rejuvenation and relief, pain and loss—I have gazed repeatedly and continuously at this wooden plate up here. It says Da lifnei mi atah omed, a phrase from the Talmud, which means, “Know before Whom you stand.” And of course, that means God.

I love that that sits here, as it fills me at once with both awe and comfort. Awe in knowing that when I stand here as shaliach tzibur, leading worship or giving a sermon or d’var Torah, I stand in the Presence of God, honored and humbled to do my part of God’s work. Comfort in knowing that God is with me – not just on this bimah, but wherever I go, whatever I say or do.

So I’ll begin by thanking God, before Whom I stand. For blessing me with the holy privilege of serving this community as rabbi. For endowing me with the gifts I have received, and for inspiring me to use them to further Your name in the world. For giving me the strength and courage to do what’s right, even when – especially when – it’s hardest to do so. And for the opportunity to do what I love, what is most fulfilling to my heart and my soul, every day of my life.

That phrase took on a different meaning a few years ago, when the Milich family generously commissioned and contributed the beautiful ark doors behind me. Not only has our sanctuary become even more awe-inspiring with the illustrations of the Ten Commandments on the sides of the aron, but it also forever altered the experience of standing in front of the ark, the frosted glass now both a window into our tradition, and a mirror of reflection. Now when I stand in that space, reading liturgy or listening to the cantors’ majestic voices, I stand not only before God, I stand literally before myself, confronted head-on with who I am, who I have become.

When my time as a teacher and then as a rabbinic intern came to a close, and I learned of the rabbinic opening here, to officially work with the incredible clergy team here, the choice really wasn’t much of a choice at all. This is where I had found and started to build my spiritual home, the first community in which I would set down rabbinic roots.

So I’d like to take a moment to thank Rabbi Stein. While my teaching experience here had been a positive one to be sure, the first and most significant reason I wanted to be here at Shaaray Tefila was because I knew that I wanted—really, needed—to have you, Jon, as my mentor. I knew that the rabbi and mensch who sat at the other end of the table of the HUC admissions interview would be the mentor sitting across from me at the table in your study. To learn from you, by word and by deed, to be challenged by you, pushed and motivated and inspired by you, was, without a doubt, top of the list of what brought me here, an experience even more enriching and rewarding than I had hoped it would be. So thank you, Rabbi Stein.  

The honor of serving this historic congregation was multiplied many times over by having a seat at the table with the All-Star team that is the senior staff of Shaaray Tefila. And that’s not any type of exaggeration. The decades of experience that I have gleaned from serving alongside so many of the best, most talented, recognized and respected of synagogue professionals is priceless. However corny it may sound, it is the truth that our staff is my second family, a collective rock of support I always know, no matter what else is going in our lives, loves, takes care of, and protects each other.

While time does not permit me to thank every individual member of the staff, I would be remiss if I didn’t especially thank those with whom I have worked most closely over the years. Rabbi Hirsch: Deborah, you are my bonus mentor, the mentor I didn’t get to choose, but would most certainly have, given the chance. From you I have learned how to zoom out, to take a step back and see as many different facets from as many different perspectives as possible, to appreciate the entirety and complexity of people with whole-hearted empathy, to see and maximize the positive in a situation. You have been the fearless captain of the SS Shaaray through unchartered, sometimes rocky, waters, and you have done valiantly.

Maria, it has been an honor and privilege to lead t’filot with you and your soaring voice, to have created and led High Holy Day worship from the new machzor, to have a friend to speak Hebrew with, and share the joys and challenges of parenting small children while serving a synagogue community. Thank you.

Todd, we started together as interns, fell in love with this community and joined its full-time ranks in successive years, and I am proud to have been the clergy continuity throughout the many changes in the congregation throughout our time. Thank you for being not only a terrific clergy partner, but a good friend and a trusted confidant, even despite my being a Phillies and Eagles fan.

Mindy, thank you for your vision and your passion, your love of and dedication to creating a new generation –all ages included – of connected, learned Jews. You are an inspiration not just to our families, but to your colleagues as well. Thank you for your friendship, your humor, your sharp wit, and your honesty. It is no wonder that you served the National Association of Temple Educators as their president, and honored just a few weeks ago with your doctorate from HUC.

And Hope, my partner in crime—in leading our students on life-changing excursions; creating a partnership and Teen Exchange program with our family in Haifa that is the envy of every congregation; in being the social media team of Shaaray Tefila, with endless pop culture references only we understand; thank you for a meaningful and always entertaining relationship, both professionally and personally.    

In our time together, I have become a rabbi, a husband, a father. While many of our colleagues have an allergic reaction to the concept of a calling, I never have. I felt called to be a rabbi long before I was even conscious of it, an innate, indescribable sense that, while there were many paths I could have chosen, this was the one for me, and I carry that with me every single day of my life.

So I’d like to thank my parents, whose shining examples of how to be a good person, a rabbi, a partner in marriage, and a parent has always and continues to light the way for me. Thank you for your endless, unconditional love and support, your sage wisdom, your friendship, for being there with me and for me through all of the ups and downs that have led us to this moment. Thank you to my brother Adam, for being the genetic yin to my yang, for getting all of my stupid movie quotes and shtick that has come to drive my parents mad, and for always being a terrific listener and the greatest cheerleader I could have as a brother.

What I didn’t know until it happened is that I would come to feel that same sense of calling, of ultimate destiny, to be a husband to Tali, and a father to my sweet boys, Jonah and Gabriel. Tal, thank you for being so so much more than my better half; for keeping me balanced, for knowing when to comfort and when to challenge me; for pushing me to be the best rabbi, husband, father, friend, and person I can be; for knowing me better than any soul in the world and still loving me anyway. You are my rock, my companion, my best friend. I love you more than words can say. Go Team Strom.  

And to know before whom I stand means that I stand—humbled, honored, and awestruck—before all of you. It is you who have blessed me over and over again: by welcoming me into this congregation with open arms; to have allowed me to be part of your lives; to have celebrated with you the moments of joy and success and accomplishment; to have stood by your side to comfort and guide you through moments of pain and sadness and loss; to have felt the warmth of your trust and confidence in sharing your lives with me. It is you, the families of Shaaray Tefila, who have played such a crucial role in making me the rabbi that I am today, a rabbi ready to spread my wings and take all that I have learned here and bring it to a new congregation.

The phrase from our tradition that sums up everything for me is just two Hebrew words from the 23^rd Psalm: Kosi r’vayah: “My cup runneth over.” And so I raise my cup of life to you, to all of you, as this isn’t a celebration of me, but a celebration of all of us together.

L’chaim. Thank you so much.

What's Your T'rumah? - 5775

(To hear an audio recording of this sermon as delivered at Shabbat Unplugged with JeTSeT at Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City, please click here.)

Rigging the Game - Bo 5775

(To hear this sermon as it was delivered at Shabbat Unplugged with JeTSeT at Temple Shaaray Tefila of New York City, please click here.)

I like sports. Most of you know that about me by now, to be sure. I like sports because, once the matchups are set, the competitors in place, nothing is scripted. Nothing is predetermined. The game is the same, the rules are the same for all involved, the competitors literally and figuratively stand on a level playing field. There may be a favorite, there may be an underdog, but none of that matters once the game begins. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, the team or athlete who performs the best, whose efforts merit the greatest results within the framework, rules, and score-keeping of the game, will win. That’s why we love sports. Sports comprise perhaps the only arena of life in which success is based entirely on performance. Not your background or the neighborhood you grew up in. Not where you went to school or who your daddy is or who you know in all the right places. Victory is based on performance. Period, paragraph. And in that regard, the world of sports, in its ideal sense, is a world in which justice is consistently served; blind, as she is famously depicted, to the competitors, weighing only their deeds and misdeeds on an unknowing scale.

And that is why I get so upset, so angry, when people cheat. I know – believe me, I do – that sports are for entertainment. I know that sports are not a matter of life and death; that sports don’t feed the hungry, or build homes for the homeless, or cure cancer. I know how so many of us dismiss sports as a frivolous waste of time and energy and money, and perhaps, at the end of the day, there’s a point to that. Even some athletes themselves see a sliver of that perspective, like running back Arian Foster, who tweets about there being so much more to life than just football, and quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who this week proclaimed publicly that he highly doubts God cares at all about football games and their outcomes. But for millions, if not billions, of people worldwide, sports are sacred—a necessary, if only momentary, escape from a world where judgments, evaluations, and performance assessments are not always so balanced and unbiased.

That world was tainted once again this week, with allegations against Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, star quarterback and coach of the New England Patriots, respectively, of deliberately under-inflating footballs used for last Sunday’s AFC Championship game in Foxboro, Massachusetts, where nothing less than a trip to the Super Bowl was on the line. That may sound silly, especially to those of you who already find sports in general to be so; it may sound funny, as it becomes another opportunity for self-applauding journalists to name another scandal with “-gate” as the suffix, even though it makes zero sense to do so, and displays even less creativity. It may not even have had the desired impact, as stat-heads will point out that Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback, actually did better in the second half, once the footballs were re-inflated to the correct pressure. But let me tell you why I don’t find this funny or silly in the slightest.

Little girls and boys whose worlds stop on Sundays to don their heroes’ jerseys, the hearts within them rising and falling with each moment of triumph or disappointment, defending their idols to their friends at school during the week. Their fathers and mothers who grew up doing the same, still wearing jerseys as grown adults, sharing precious hours of emotional bonding that somehow transcend time and space and the age difference between them. The women and men who spend hundreds, sometimes thousands, of their hard-earned dollars to experience the thrill and excitement of actually being there, attending a live sporting event, to be amidst and a part of the roars and groans of the crowd, not merely witnesses from the comfort of their couch. The vendors and maintenance staff and ticket-takers and stadium officials, all for whom their livelihood is entirely dependent upon the product on the field being what it purports to be, that is to say, authentic and professional, in every sense of the word.

When athletes cheat, when coaches and managers flagrantly trample upon the rules and regulations, whose very purpose is the fairness and equality so sorely lacking in virtually every other venue of life, these are the people who really get cheated. These are the folks who are robbed, both literally and figuratively, while the wool is pulled over their eyes. These are the men and women, boys and girls, whose hearts are broken by the very people they look up to, heroes they strive to be like on their best days and who give them hope on their worst. The cheater messes with people’s lives, either because he’s so self-consumed as to be oblivious to the needs of others, or egomaniacal and narcissistic to the point of simply not giving a damn for anyone else.

Because choosing to cheat, deciding which rules are beneath you, which ones you’re exempt from because you’re somehow special, different from everyone else, you are playing God. And no one gets to play God but God. And even when God plays God, sometimes, for many of us, even that can be too much.

What happens in Bo, this week’s parasha, is exactly that. For me, this is one of the most intriguing and difficult passages in all of Torah. It picks up in the middle of the epic theological throwdown between God and Pharaoh, beginning with the famous episode of Moses’ staff becoming a serpent, and that even when the Egyptian magicians are able to do the same, the serpent of Moses’ staff swallows that of the Egyptians’. There, and for each of the first five plagues upon Egypt—turning the Nile to blood, the frogs, lice, insects, and pestilence—we read that no sooner had each marvel dissipated than Pharaoh’s “heart hardened” or he “became stubborn” and he went back on his word.

But something fascinating happens with the sixth plague, that of inflammation and boils. Here, for the first time, we read Vay’chazek Adonai et lev par’oh, that “God hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not heed [Moses and Aaron].” Not Pharaoh “hardening his own heart.” Not Pharaoh “becoming stubborn.” God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. God makes it so that Pharaoh will not accede to the demands placed before him. A small difference; yet, all the difference in the world. And perhaps before we’ve even noticed it, and the next plague of hail has come and gone, the language reverts, and once again, Pharaoh’s heart hardens on its own.

But lest we think this is some error in the text, grammatical or otherwise, lest we desire so deeply to give God the benefit of the doubt here, the very first words of Parashat Bo make God’s intentions crystal clear. “Then the Eternal One said to Moses,” we read, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your children and of your children’s children how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them—in order that you may know that I am the Eternal.””

So there it is. God is rigging the game. God is saying, in essence, “I’m the One making all of this happen. I’m the One pulling all the strings here, so that I will win, and I will win big.” And then, as we all know well, that’s exactly what God does. The locusts come, the locusts go, and God again hardens Pharaoh’s heart. The darkness comes, the darkness goes, and God again hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Moses issues the imminent threat of the death of the first-born sons of Egypt and God says to him, “Pharaoh will not heed you, in order that My marvels may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” When his and every Egyptian first-born son lies dead at the feet of their fathers, then and only then does Pharaoh finally give in. Why? Why all this and the detailed instructions for the Passover celebration? Because “with a mighty hand the Eternal freed us from Egypt.” Because God is the champion. God is the winner of the Super Bowl of Super Bowls. And God’s making sure that you never, ever forget it.

God gets to play God. And we can like it, dislike it, struggle with it, be squeamish about it. But that’s God. And that’s the God of our ancestors, the way they wanted us to know and remember Him. But we don’t. We don’t get to play God, and we should never do so. Because when we do, when we decide that we’re above it all and we rig the game—in sports, in school, in work, in politics or our personal lives—it betrays some of the ugliest, most harmful, and most destructive elements within the human character. And that, my friends, is not what God intended us to be.

Let us strive to find the best within ourselves, every single day of our lives. Let us be inspired by figures in our lives for their accomplishments, for their work ethic, for their passions and charisma, for the dedication they demonstrate in their respective fields, and the determination to follow through. Let us be moved and empowered to accentuate those same qualities within ourselves, to actualize and maximize them, with integrity, dignity, and respect—for ourselves and each other. Because, at the end of the day, that is, I believe, what God ultimately wants from us. And, at our best, I pray, that is what we want, and expect, from ourselves.

AMEN.

These Are the Names - Sh'mot 5775

(To watch this sermon as it was delivered at Temple Shaaray Tefila of Manhattan, please click here and find the service for Kabbalat Shabbat 1/9. Sermon begins just after the 1:03:00 mark.)

Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. “These are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household.”

Thus begins the second book of Torah, the book we call in English “Exodus,” the book we call in Hebrew Sh’mot. But Sh’mot doesn’t mean Exodus. It doesn’t mean “going out” or “going down” or “leaving.” Sh’mot means “names.”

Amelia Boynton, Andrew Young, James Bevel, and John Lewis; Bayard Rustin, Annie Lee Cooper, and James Orange; Reverends Ralph Abernathy, Hosea Williams, and Frederick Reese; and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.

These are the names of the children of Israel who marched through their own Mitzrayim, their own Egypt, risking their lives and the lives of their families, to fight for their very freedom, to demand their rights as citizens of this country of ours, rights famously deemed “inalienable” by the framers of our Constitution. Nothing more, nothing less.

And on that fateful day, 50 years ago this March, a little girl, just 11 years old, found her place in the lines in Selma, on the north side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, and in doing so, took her place in American history. Her name is Joanne Bland. Some of you here tonight have had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting Ms. Bland, on one of our Civil Rights Trips to Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham. I had long known of Joanne—how inspirational she is, of her tireless work in educating a new generation on the Civil Rights Movement, of her dedication to the work we still need to do together. This past Monday evening, thanks to Hope Chernak, our Director of Informal Education, Shaaray Tefila had the privilege of a private screening of the powerful new film, Selma, and Joanne was our special guest.

Though she had had the opportunity to see the movie earlier, she had chosen to experience it for the first time with us, with a community that she has fallen in love with, and who most certainly has fallen in love with her. And though she and I were only meeting for the first time on Monday night, our connection was instant, deep, and so wonderfully familiar, as though we had known each other our entire lives. We both just knew that this was only the beginning of a meaningful and spiritual connection, one that transcends whatever differences she and I may have on the surface. And when the images and sounds of Bloody Sunday filled our eyes and ears, it was still so real, so vivid, so raw for Joanne 50 years later that she was sobbing and shaking uncontrollably, even having to step out of the theater for a few minutes to let it out and try to regain some semblance of composure.

As she returned to her seat in front of Hope and me, I took her hand and held it strong, saying everything I needed to say without saying a word, and knowing just by feeling it that she understood every sentiment. I have to tell you: seeing this film through my own eyes and almost literally through Joanne’s as well was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. And when the lights came up, fresh tears still flowing down so many of our cheeks, I knew that it was going to be just too hard in that moment for Joanne to stand in front of the nearly 200 people there and answer questions. She and I came together in a moment of embrace that I know I will feel and carry with me for the rest of my life. As the credits rolled, and John Legend’s beautiful voice sang the words, “One day when the glory comes, it will be ours, it will be ours,” I was overcome with emotion that coursed through me and pouring from me like a divine spring, touched as I was by the myriad ways our faith, our heritage call upon us today to continue that same march begun by so many brave souls 50 years ago.

Our tradition is clear: in Genesis, in the creation of humanity, we are told unequivocally, even twice in the same verse vayivra Elohim et ha-adam b’tzalmo, “And God created the human in God’s image,” b’tzelem Elohim bara oto, “in the image of God were they created.” Certainly we are proud of what we as Jews are uniquely able to offer the world that no other people can, but we are missing the point entirely when our only focus is on ourselves. And in Leviticus we read, “Lo ta’amod al dam rei’echa,” commonly translated, “You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.” If every single person is created in the image of God, and every single person has a spark of the divine within him or her, then the dam rei’echa, the blood of our neighbors being spilled, figuratively or literally, as we saw in the film and have seen in recent months in our country, that is a cry that cannot fall on deaf ears, certainly not in the Jewish community. This is not an African-American issue; this is not a white issue; it’s not a Jewish, Christian, or Muslim issue; it is a human issue, because civil rights are human rights, and that concerns all of us. And if it doesn’t, then it should. At least 36 times the Torah warns us, commands us not to oppress the stranger, and why? Because you yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt. You – yes YOU – know what it’s like to be a stranger, an outcast, the other, treated as less than, and you are forbidden from doing that to any other person on God’s earth. In another rare instance of repeated words, Deuteronomy tells us, Tzedek tzedek tirdof, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” that injustice anywhere, against anyone, is an injustice right here, right in front of our faces, against all of us; that wherever there is a man or woman being judged by the color of their skin, the God to whom they pray, the culture with which they identify, rather than by the content of their character, that which God endowed them with, that is a crime against every single one of us.

My friends, we have come so far since those volatile days five decades ago. And yet, well we know, as we look around us in America, when we watch the nightly news, we know there is still so much work to be done. Though the courageous marchers from Selma to Birmingham busted down barriers to make the path more accessible, how well we are aware that we have miles and miles to go before we sleep. Mi Chamocha, the prayer we traditionally recite every day, is not just a song of praise, words of thanks to God for freeing our people from the slavery, the indignity we endured for hundreds of years. They are undoubtedly that, and yet they are so much more. Mi Chamocha is a reminder, a wake-up call confronting us head-on with the fact we so often choose to ignore: that there is still racism, injustice, hatred that plagues our world. And we cannot, we must not, abide that. We cannot stand on the sidelines and allow these things to happen to our brothers and our sisters, wherever they may be. And though the pursuit of justice and dignity towards all humankind may not be complete in our own day, though we may not get to see such true equality with our own eyes, Pirke Avot says it doesn’t matter. Lo alecha ham’la’cha ligmor, the famous text tells us, it’s not necessarily upon you to finish the work, v’lo atah ben-chorin l’hibateil mimenah, but you are never, and will never be, free to desist from it, to throw in the towel and say, “It’s too much. I give up.”

As we enter a new book of Torah, the book of Sh’mot, of names; as we stand at the dawn of a new secular year, and as we are just one week from honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, a legacy so bound up with all that we cherish as Jews and as Americans, let us be inspired by him, by Joanne Bland, by the men and women of all ages and races and faiths who put their lives on the line so that no one will be treated as the stranger, as the other, and oppressed as such. Let us re-commit ourselves to tikkun olam, to repairing a still-broken world, by honoring the tzelem Elohim, the image of God in every single human being on earth. And let us do so today. Not “one day.” Not someday soon. Today.

“The arc of the universe is long,” Dr. King said, “but it bends towards justice.”

Let us bend that arc, again and again, until there is truly liberty and justice for all.

AMEN.