Over the years that I have been privileged to lead this spiritual gathering, many of you have gotten to know me a bit, at the very least in terms of my service-leading style. As this community has continued to flourish, creating and strengthening relationships formed both within and beyond, you’ve grown accustomed to my approach to giving sermons. I come from the school of thought that says to start with something that gets your attention, something that invites you in from the get-go and says, “Come along for the ride.”
But that’s not going to happen tonight. Tonight there’s no anecdotes or stories, no jokes or movie quotes or song lyrics or commercial taglines. Tonight, on this Shabbat, the story of the Jewish people picks up in Egypt, as the epic battle between Moses and Pharaoh commences. We know, from our Passover seders, how it all goes down: Moses demands that Pharaoh free the Israelites, Pharaoh refuses, and what happens? Plagues. With each word of refusal from Pharaoh’s mouth, the plagues that God wreaks upon the Egyptian people increase in impact and severity. Which might make the first plague seem relatively insignificant, a sort-of leadoff plague, if you will. But it’s not. And what is that first plague upon Egypt, that first of God’s ultimate scare tactics aimed at Pharaoh and his people? Blood. Blood that courses through the Nile and overflows it, terrifying the Egyptians and leaving them without water to drink.
My friends, there is no cutesy story or humorous anecdote tonight because we, the citizens of this supposedly great nation, are inundated with that very same plague, the plague of blood. But, sadly, it’s not the first. This plague of blood is, instead, secondary, the result of the primary plague upon our country: the plague of guns.
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the rabbi had to eventually give a sermon in response to what happened just a few weeks ago in Newtown. And while that makes perfect sense, it’s actually not true. No, one of the saddest and worst parts of all of this for me is that I had circled this date on the calendar several months ago as a night that I would preach about gun violence. Long before Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School, I had marked tonight as a night I would broach this volatile topic. And why? Because two years ago this week, Jared Loughner marched through the parking lot of a Safeway supermarket in Arizona and fired a semi-automatic weapon on a constituent gathering of Representative Gabby Giffords, killing six, including nine-year-old Christina Green-Taylor, and wounding 19, with the Congresswoman somehow surviving, despite taking a bullet to the head at point-blank range.
Since then, since that fateful day, what has happened? What have we lived through, what have we been forced to bear witness to as a nation? In July, James Holmes clad himself in full bulletproof armor, a ballistic helmet, and a gas mask, and proceeded, under cover of tear gas grenades, to unload a 12-gauge shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle, and a Glock 22 handgun, killing 12 and wounding 58 more. Just two weeks later, white supremacist Wade Michael Page stormed a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six and wounding four more with a 9-mm semiautomatic pistol. And then, of course, Friday, December 14th, where 20 children and six adults had their lives callously ripped from them by bullets from two handguns and a .223 caliber rifle.
62 mass shootings in the past 30 years. 25 of them since 2006. In 49 of the 62, the weapons used were obtained 100% legally. Just some of the more than 30,000 people a year who die from gun violence. 30,000. And every time it happens, every time we are sent reeling into sadness and anger and frustration by these massacres—for, indeed there is no better word for what they are—what are we told?
We’re told, “Now is not the time to talk about gun control; it’s time for us to support the families of the victims.” We’re told, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” We’re told, “We need to be better at enforcing the laws that already exist rather than adding new ones.” We’re told, “It’s sad, it’s a tragedy, but guns are our Constitutionally guaranteed right.”
To those people I say: If now is not the time to talk about our obsession with guns, when is? Maybe they’re right, maybe it’s not now. Maybe it was in April of 2007 after the Virginia Tech massacre. Maybe it should have been in April of 1999 after the murders at Columbine by high school students. Maybe, just maybe, the time for the conversation, was in March the year before, fifteen years ago, when a 13-year-old and 11-year-old stole ten different kinds of guns and used them in a murderous ambush of their teachers and classmates.
If now is only the time to comfort the families and the communities, then, my friends, that is what we will be forced to do forever. If now is not the time to have these conversations, to use just an iota of common sense, if for nothing else, to make our schools, our community centers, our places for worship, safer for our children, then shame on us. Shame on us that we retreat behind the 2nd Amendment, when it clearly states the right to bear arms is for the sake of a “well-regulated militia.” Shame on us that the highest-ranking lawmakers and judges of our country somehow feel that the right to amass and fire dozens of rounds of ammunition with a single squeeze of the trigger falls under, and is thus protected by, that 2nd Amendment. Shame on us that so many in our country are fighting tooth-and-nail to keep open the loophole that allows people to purchase weapons at gun shows without so much as a simple criminal background check. Shame on us that so ingrained in our society is this love affair with guns that both presidential candidates avoided even tangentially addressing any of these questions for fear of losing votes. Shame on us that we needed to see the pictures, to hear the hopes and dreams and loves of 20 six- and seven-year-old children, now lying in little coffins underground, to wake us up from our self-induced slumber. Shame on us that the agony and tears of their parents’ worst nightmares now a devastating reality, one they will never have the chance to wake up from—shame on us that that’s what it took for our country to get serious about this issue, no, this plague upon us.
Our tradition is abundantly clear: Isaiah’s charge to remove the scourge of weapons among us rings ever true today, to “beat our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning-hooks.” Deuteronomy tells us, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” The Psalm tells us, “Turn from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.” And the Talmud tells us that saving just one life is like saving the whole world. If that’s true, and I believe it is, how much the more so to save 30,000.
So what can we do? Call your representatives in Congress. Call your Senators. Call the President. Write letters, write op-eds in the newspapers. Better yet, go see them at their offices. Your Congressmen and women all have local offices; go find them. Whatever is there for you to do, whatever Facebook or Twitter petition comes into your feed, do it, sign it, pass it on. It may not feel like much, but every little bit counts. Only when we turn the tide, when the voices of common sense and peace are louder and more unified than those of the selfish and the violent-minded, then and only then will we be able to scourge ourselves of this horrible plague. Only then will we make our country, our world, a little bit closer to achieving shalom, to achieving peace.
Because, as the great Hillel once said, “If not now, when?
AMEN.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Friday, January 4, 2013
So Much More Than Sh'mot - Reflections on Our First Ever Teen Exchange Program
This Shabbat begins the book of Sh’mot, the book we call Exodus. It is the seminal story of the Jewish people, of our freedom and redemption, the leaving of Egypt for the Promised Land of Israel. Two weeks ago yesterday, ten of our teenage chalutzim, or pioneers, along with Hope Chernak, Linda Minton, and myself, embarked on an Exodus of our own, the first ever Teen Exchange program between Shaaray Tefila and our partner congregation in Haifa, Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center. But Exodus is the Greek translation of Sh’mot. What it really means is “names.” And the sh’mot, the names of our chalutzim are Talia, Jordyn, Lauren, Lauren, Hannah, Samantha, Julia, Bernie, Jack, and Jack. Brave, adventurous souls, most of whom had never been to Israel at all, they had no idea what was in store for them.
And the honest answer is: neither did we. Sure, Hope and Rabbi Dagan and Lital and Rivi had worked for hours upon hours upon hours crafting an incredible itinerary. We knew that all of the activities planned all over Haifa, Jerusalem, Akko, Tzfat, and Tel Aviv would be wonderful. We had no doubt. But how would our teens connect with theirs? What if they didn’t connect at all? We literally had no idea what to expect.
But, after all the careful planning, to quote my favorite group Phish, “the trick was to surrender to the flow.” And from the moment we cleared customs and came through those sliding doors, there, waiting for us with balloons and signs and warm smiles and open arms, were most of the Israeli delegation. We learned their sh’mot, their names: Adi, Alice, Shir, Rinat, Noa, Rotem, Yuval, Noy, Yuval, Itay, Itamar, and Maayan. And then we got to know them, the people behind the names, their lives, their stories, their families, and how they came to be living in Israel, in Haifa. At the end of our first full day there, having spent the day in the Druze Village of Daliat El Carmel, we shared Havdalah with the students and their parents, all crowded cozily together in a small tea lounge. As it turns out, that Havdalah was more than just the separation between Shabbat and the rest of the week. It was, in fact, for all of us, a separation between the people we were when our plane landed at Ben-Gurion, and the people we were about to become.
Over the next ten days, we acquired a lifetime of knowledge—about ourselves, about each other, about what it really means to be part of the worldwide phenomenon that is the Jewish people. We established and deepened our own personal connections with the land and the holy sites that have bound Jews together for thousands of years. We learned that some things are universal, like shopping and Facebook and Doritos and terrible hip-hop and that hand-clapping game that I have no idea what it’s called. We learned that a lot of things are different, like the Knesset as compared to Congress, like the fact that anyone can sit in on a Supreme Court case, like what high school kids are thinking about and concerned with in the years immediately following high school. We learned that count-offs, in any language, are utterly useless. We learned that sweet talk and charm can get you an awful lot in the Machne Yehuda market of Jerusalem, for just a shekel, or even less. (Ask Bernie, he somehow came back to us with a fish head in a bag!) We learned that photobombing, the act of sneaking yourself into others’ pictures, is in fact a skill, dare I say, an art form, and one in which I am nearing levels of mastery. We learned that ten minutes following a full meal is exactly the time to begin looking towards the next time you’ll be eating, that Bamba and Bissli are addictive, and that Krembo, the Israeli version of a Mallomar, is even better than a Mallomar. (Sorry, Linda).
And yet, as wonderful and enriching as all of that knowledge is, that alone cannot conjure the magic of deep, intimate personal connections we were so blessed to witness among the students. Something else was at play, some invisible hand, and of course, for me, that’s God, making things happen in a way that is so, so much greater than the sum of the parts. And standing in front of the congregation at Ohel Avraham, the same exact place where I had stood just a year ago as part of a small delegation of dreamers, sharing words in lashon ha-kodesh, the holy language of Hebrew, and looking out over the interwoven, yet seamless tapestry of Israeli and American students, I was absolutely overwhelmed with emotions, and had to fight back tears throughout the rest of the evening. To have the opportunity to see our dreams come true, right before our very eyes, was something I will cherish in my heart for the rest of my life.
Before I conclude with the beautiful words written by one of our Israeli students, I need to say thank you. Thank you to the Israel Engagement Committee, for starting to dream some two years ago, and for choosing so wisely to partner up with Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center. Thank you to Linda for spending her winter vacation with a few adults and 22 teenagers, and for taking thousands of pictures. Thank you to our students, our brave chalutzim, for blazing the trail that we hope will be traveled by Shaaray Tefila teens for many, many years to come. And thank you, lastly, to Hope and Rabbi Gabby Dagan, Ohel Avraham’s amazing spiritual leader, and now a very very dear friend of mine. As I said in Haifa on that last Shabbat, I sometimes receive too much credit for this amazing adventure, simply because I’m the rabbi accompanying them. The truth is that none of this—and I do mean none of this—would have happened without Hope and Rabbi Dagan, who is with us tonight. Even though Hope couldn’t be here tonight, as she’s out of town celebrating her birthday, it’s so important that you know how wonderful she is.
Here are the words written by Adi Chen, a teen from the Israeli delegation, in a note for our whole group upon our leaving:
“Dear brothers and sisters, my new brothers and sisters,
I’m not a religious man, yet it’s quite amazing that I met you on the same Shabbat that Joseph gets to know his “lost brothers.” If we think about it we all are brothers and sisters, that life and events had separated us before, but this past week we got a chance to make a reunion of brothers and sisters. Only people who are brothers and sisters, as you are to me, could connect with each other and feel so close, so related, as we did this past week. Just yesterday, after the party, Jack M. told me that he feels he has known me so much more than a week. That is the essence of being sisters and brothers—to be connected without being physically together.
There is a song in Hebrew that is called Rikma Enoshit Ahat, which means “One Human Tissue.” We are all “one human tissue.” This week I began to learn about a different culture, and yet that you are kids just like me. The differences on the one hand, and the shared identity on the other hand, is amazing to me.
From now on, you are all part of my “human tissue”—different, yet the same.
It’s funny that the week you leave is the week that Israel (Jacob) leaves his children. I’m sure that you will be part of Israel forever and ever, and that wherever you will be, we will be for each other.
I say to you today only L’hitraot, meaning “we will see you again.” This is not goodbye!
Love you and already missing you all, my new family,
Adi Chen”
L’hitraot. “See you soon.” Not just in March, when it will be our turn to host our newfound Israeli family. But hopefully, the powerful connections forged on this sacred pilgrimage will inspire us to create and deepen our own relationships, with Israel and her people, for the rest of our lives.
AMEN.
And the honest answer is: neither did we. Sure, Hope and Rabbi Dagan and Lital and Rivi had worked for hours upon hours upon hours crafting an incredible itinerary. We knew that all of the activities planned all over Haifa, Jerusalem, Akko, Tzfat, and Tel Aviv would be wonderful. We had no doubt. But how would our teens connect with theirs? What if they didn’t connect at all? We literally had no idea what to expect.
But, after all the careful planning, to quote my favorite group Phish, “the trick was to surrender to the flow.” And from the moment we cleared customs and came through those sliding doors, there, waiting for us with balloons and signs and warm smiles and open arms, were most of the Israeli delegation. We learned their sh’mot, their names: Adi, Alice, Shir, Rinat, Noa, Rotem, Yuval, Noy, Yuval, Itay, Itamar, and Maayan. And then we got to know them, the people behind the names, their lives, their stories, their families, and how they came to be living in Israel, in Haifa. At the end of our first full day there, having spent the day in the Druze Village of Daliat El Carmel, we shared Havdalah with the students and their parents, all crowded cozily together in a small tea lounge. As it turns out, that Havdalah was more than just the separation between Shabbat and the rest of the week. It was, in fact, for all of us, a separation between the people we were when our plane landed at Ben-Gurion, and the people we were about to become.
Over the next ten days, we acquired a lifetime of knowledge—about ourselves, about each other, about what it really means to be part of the worldwide phenomenon that is the Jewish people. We established and deepened our own personal connections with the land and the holy sites that have bound Jews together for thousands of years. We learned that some things are universal, like shopping and Facebook and Doritos and terrible hip-hop and that hand-clapping game that I have no idea what it’s called. We learned that a lot of things are different, like the Knesset as compared to Congress, like the fact that anyone can sit in on a Supreme Court case, like what high school kids are thinking about and concerned with in the years immediately following high school. We learned that count-offs, in any language, are utterly useless. We learned that sweet talk and charm can get you an awful lot in the Machne Yehuda market of Jerusalem, for just a shekel, or even less. (Ask Bernie, he somehow came back to us with a fish head in a bag!) We learned that photobombing, the act of sneaking yourself into others’ pictures, is in fact a skill, dare I say, an art form, and one in which I am nearing levels of mastery. We learned that ten minutes following a full meal is exactly the time to begin looking towards the next time you’ll be eating, that Bamba and Bissli are addictive, and that Krembo, the Israeli version of a Mallomar, is even better than a Mallomar. (Sorry, Linda).
And yet, as wonderful and enriching as all of that knowledge is, that alone cannot conjure the magic of deep, intimate personal connections we were so blessed to witness among the students. Something else was at play, some invisible hand, and of course, for me, that’s God, making things happen in a way that is so, so much greater than the sum of the parts. And standing in front of the congregation at Ohel Avraham, the same exact place where I had stood just a year ago as part of a small delegation of dreamers, sharing words in lashon ha-kodesh, the holy language of Hebrew, and looking out over the interwoven, yet seamless tapestry of Israeli and American students, I was absolutely overwhelmed with emotions, and had to fight back tears throughout the rest of the evening. To have the opportunity to see our dreams come true, right before our very eyes, was something I will cherish in my heart for the rest of my life.
Before I conclude with the beautiful words written by one of our Israeli students, I need to say thank you. Thank you to the Israel Engagement Committee, for starting to dream some two years ago, and for choosing so wisely to partner up with Ohel Avraham and the Leo Baeck Education Center. Thank you to Linda for spending her winter vacation with a few adults and 22 teenagers, and for taking thousands of pictures. Thank you to our students, our brave chalutzim, for blazing the trail that we hope will be traveled by Shaaray Tefila teens for many, many years to come. And thank you, lastly, to Hope and Rabbi Gabby Dagan, Ohel Avraham’s amazing spiritual leader, and now a very very dear friend of mine. As I said in Haifa on that last Shabbat, I sometimes receive too much credit for this amazing adventure, simply because I’m the rabbi accompanying them. The truth is that none of this—and I do mean none of this—would have happened without Hope and Rabbi Dagan, who is with us tonight. Even though Hope couldn’t be here tonight, as she’s out of town celebrating her birthday, it’s so important that you know how wonderful she is.
Here are the words written by Adi Chen, a teen from the Israeli delegation, in a note for our whole group upon our leaving:
“Dear brothers and sisters, my new brothers and sisters,
I’m not a religious man, yet it’s quite amazing that I met you on the same Shabbat that Joseph gets to know his “lost brothers.” If we think about it we all are brothers and sisters, that life and events had separated us before, but this past week we got a chance to make a reunion of brothers and sisters. Only people who are brothers and sisters, as you are to me, could connect with each other and feel so close, so related, as we did this past week. Just yesterday, after the party, Jack M. told me that he feels he has known me so much more than a week. That is the essence of being sisters and brothers—to be connected without being physically together.
There is a song in Hebrew that is called Rikma Enoshit Ahat, which means “One Human Tissue.” We are all “one human tissue.” This week I began to learn about a different culture, and yet that you are kids just like me. The differences on the one hand, and the shared identity on the other hand, is amazing to me.
From now on, you are all part of my “human tissue”—different, yet the same.
It’s funny that the week you leave is the week that Israel (Jacob) leaves his children. I’m sure that you will be part of Israel forever and ever, and that wherever you will be, we will be for each other.
I say to you today only L’hitraot, meaning “we will see you again.” This is not goodbye!
Love you and already missing you all, my new family,
Adi Chen”
L’hitraot. “See you soon.” Not just in March, when it will be our turn to host our newfound Israeli family. But hopefully, the powerful connections forged on this sacred pilgrimage will inspire us to create and deepen our own relationships, with Israel and her people, for the rest of our lives.
AMEN.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Israel and the Struggle Within - Vayishlach 5773
Truth be told: I never got into wrestling. It was just never for me. No disrespect to those of you who did or perhaps still do. I had friends growing up who would come into school on Tuesday chomping at the bit to unpack all the drama of Monday Night Raw. A close friend of my brother’s would always play Jeopardy on the computer with us using the name Ric Flair. And my cousin David, as a little boy, would refer to his younger brother Jacob as Jake the Snake, while adoring, as he would say it, “Bwutus the Barber Beefcake.”
So I get it. I get the appeal as kind of a soap opera for men and boys. But it’s not for me.
The one time a year where I get into wrestling is this week. It’s this week on the Jewish calendar where we read one of the most well-known passages in all of Torah, in Parashat Vayishlach. It has been twenty years since Jacob last saw his twin brother Esau, when Jacob and his mother Rebekah conspired to steal from Esau the innermost blessing of their father Isaac. Not the first time Jacob increases his gains at his brother’s expense, Esau is a crushed and broken man, who vows to kill Jacob once their father dies.
And now, it is the night before the brothers are to see each other for the first time since that fateful day twenty years earlier. They each have brought with them all of their families, all of their servants, all of their soldiers, all of their sheep and cattle and belongings. Uncertain of Esau’s intentions, of whether he still bears on his shoulders the weight of that terrible, yet justifiable grudge, Jacob lays down to sleep by himself near the Jabbok River. But he doesn’t sleep much. Instead, we read that “a man wrestled with him until the rise of dawn.” Talk about a steel cage match; Monday Night Raw is only three hours! And it would have gone on even longer. The man says to Jacob, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But Jacob refuses, saying, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Learning Jacob’s name, the man says, “No more shall you be called Jacob, but Yisrael, Israel, for you have struggled with God and with human beings, and you have prevailed.”
This is it. This is the moment where we, as the Jewish people, get our name. We are bnei Yisrael, the children of Israel. The land promised to our ancestors as a holy land, a land flowing with milk and honey, is Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. And, of course, the modern Jewish state on that land, M’dinat Yisrael, takes its name from this story as well.
So you can imagine how recent events in that part of the world have added new layers to this powerful, seminal moment from our Torah. In the three weeks since we last gathered together, the government of Israel decided enough was enough, that 12 years and more than 12,000 long-range rockets fired upon its citizens, upon its men, women, and children, could no longer be tolerated. And so Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense, a series of intricate military strikes on the storehouses of Hamas’s weapons and ammunition, as well as those masterminding and executing these terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
On the one hand, let me say this: I fully and completely support Israel’s right to defend herself and her citizens, just as I would support that same right for any nation of the world. If right now, here in New York City, we were being assailed by dozens of rockets fired from a specific location we knew, by people we had identified as terrorists bent on our destruction, do you think people here would simply turn the other cheek and let it go for 12 days, let alone 12 years? Not a chance. Imagine several times a week hearing sirens go off in your town, disrupting your attempts at making a living, your children’s schooling, your infants’ daycare, allowing you and your family, in some places, just 15 seconds to get to the nearest shelter. Imagine the onset of facial twitches and tics caused by the blare of those sirens, a post-traumatic stress disorder that never goes away because of each day’s fresh trauma, teenagers who wet their beds because over a decade of fleeing rocket attacks to a shelter has so stunted their growth that they are developmentally equivalent to toddlers. Would you want your government to sit back and do nothing beyond just hoping and praying that, somehow, it all just blows over? No. Way. Yet, in a display of astounding hypocrisy, that is exactly what so much of the world expects Israel to do. And by the way, it should be noted that Israelis, famous for not being able to agree on much of anything, were overwhelmingly in favor of this operation, to the tune of almost 90 percent.
On the other hand, there is the ever-important question underlying it all: will this help Israel make peace? Is this, in the long run, the right move? Or is the current pattern of rockets-rockets-IDF operation-cease-fire one that will beleaguer Israelis and Palestinians for years to come? After all, as my favorite music group says, “If you can heal the symptoms, but not affect the cause, you can’t heal the symptoms.” Is Israel trying to heal the symptoms without going to the heart of the issue? Will anything really be accomplished if we can’t move beyond the status quo? How can there be progress while fingers are endlessly pointed, where each side paints the other as unwilling to negotiate at best and the spawn of evil at worst?
The answer? I don’t know. But perhaps the first Israel can help us out. See, the Rabbis wanted to know, like we do: just who is this man who wrestles with Jacob? Is it some sort of messenger of God? Is it the guardian angel of Esau? Esau himself? Maybe Jacob’s entreaty to be blessed hints that it’s his father Isaac, from whom he stole the blessing meant for Esau. Maybe it’s a dream in which he grapples with all of these ghosts of his checkered past conflated into one daunting opponent.
But what I believe, what I see when I read this text, is that the man with whom Jacob struggles so passionately is none other than Jacob himself. At this crossroads of his life, both figuratively and literally, Jacob is blessed with the opportunity to reflect upon his life until now, to put himself and his deeds on trial, so to speak. His wrestling is a coming to terms with the motivations behind and the results of his actions—good, bad, and everything in between. It’s an honest and thorough evaluation of who he’s been, who he is, and who he hopes to be, in which everything is on the table and nothing is hidden away. And while he comes away physically injured, walking with a limp, we read in the verses immediately following the beautiful reunion with Esau that Jacob arrived in Shechem, the next city of his journey, shalem—whole, intact, complete, and at peace.
And so I pray that it is for us: for the State of Israel and her people to struggle amongst themselves and with their neighbors to eventually achieve a true and lasting peace. But also for all of us, all of b’nei Yisrael, the children of Israel, to learn from our shared namesake, and remember, no matter how vehemently we may disagree on the paths to peace, no matter how heated our debates and arguments may be, that it stems from the passion and fervor and love for Israel that we all share, that common bond we all feel to the depths of our hearts and souls. And I pray that, like Jacob becoming Israel, each of us, all of us, will be strengthened by the struggle, within and without, so that we arrive at our destination shalem—whole, intact, and at peace, with ourselves, with our community, and with our neighbors.
AMEN.
So I get it. I get the appeal as kind of a soap opera for men and boys. But it’s not for me.
The one time a year where I get into wrestling is this week. It’s this week on the Jewish calendar where we read one of the most well-known passages in all of Torah, in Parashat Vayishlach. It has been twenty years since Jacob last saw his twin brother Esau, when Jacob and his mother Rebekah conspired to steal from Esau the innermost blessing of their father Isaac. Not the first time Jacob increases his gains at his brother’s expense, Esau is a crushed and broken man, who vows to kill Jacob once their father dies.
And now, it is the night before the brothers are to see each other for the first time since that fateful day twenty years earlier. They each have brought with them all of their families, all of their servants, all of their soldiers, all of their sheep and cattle and belongings. Uncertain of Esau’s intentions, of whether he still bears on his shoulders the weight of that terrible, yet justifiable grudge, Jacob lays down to sleep by himself near the Jabbok River. But he doesn’t sleep much. Instead, we read that “a man wrestled with him until the rise of dawn.” Talk about a steel cage match; Monday Night Raw is only three hours! And it would have gone on even longer. The man says to Jacob, “Let me go, for dawn is breaking.” But Jacob refuses, saying, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” Learning Jacob’s name, the man says, “No more shall you be called Jacob, but Yisrael, Israel, for you have struggled with God and with human beings, and you have prevailed.”
This is it. This is the moment where we, as the Jewish people, get our name. We are bnei Yisrael, the children of Israel. The land promised to our ancestors as a holy land, a land flowing with milk and honey, is Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. And, of course, the modern Jewish state on that land, M’dinat Yisrael, takes its name from this story as well.
So you can imagine how recent events in that part of the world have added new layers to this powerful, seminal moment from our Torah. In the three weeks since we last gathered together, the government of Israel decided enough was enough, that 12 years and more than 12,000 long-range rockets fired upon its citizens, upon its men, women, and children, could no longer be tolerated. And so Israel launched Operation Pillar of Defense, a series of intricate military strikes on the storehouses of Hamas’s weapons and ammunition, as well as those masterminding and executing these terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
On the one hand, let me say this: I fully and completely support Israel’s right to defend herself and her citizens, just as I would support that same right for any nation of the world. If right now, here in New York City, we were being assailed by dozens of rockets fired from a specific location we knew, by people we had identified as terrorists bent on our destruction, do you think people here would simply turn the other cheek and let it go for 12 days, let alone 12 years? Not a chance. Imagine several times a week hearing sirens go off in your town, disrupting your attempts at making a living, your children’s schooling, your infants’ daycare, allowing you and your family, in some places, just 15 seconds to get to the nearest shelter. Imagine the onset of facial twitches and tics caused by the blare of those sirens, a post-traumatic stress disorder that never goes away because of each day’s fresh trauma, teenagers who wet their beds because over a decade of fleeing rocket attacks to a shelter has so stunted their growth that they are developmentally equivalent to toddlers. Would you want your government to sit back and do nothing beyond just hoping and praying that, somehow, it all just blows over? No. Way. Yet, in a display of astounding hypocrisy, that is exactly what so much of the world expects Israel to do. And by the way, it should be noted that Israelis, famous for not being able to agree on much of anything, were overwhelmingly in favor of this operation, to the tune of almost 90 percent.
On the other hand, there is the ever-important question underlying it all: will this help Israel make peace? Is this, in the long run, the right move? Or is the current pattern of rockets-rockets-IDF operation-cease-fire one that will beleaguer Israelis and Palestinians for years to come? After all, as my favorite music group says, “If you can heal the symptoms, but not affect the cause, you can’t heal the symptoms.” Is Israel trying to heal the symptoms without going to the heart of the issue? Will anything really be accomplished if we can’t move beyond the status quo? How can there be progress while fingers are endlessly pointed, where each side paints the other as unwilling to negotiate at best and the spawn of evil at worst?
The answer? I don’t know. But perhaps the first Israel can help us out. See, the Rabbis wanted to know, like we do: just who is this man who wrestles with Jacob? Is it some sort of messenger of God? Is it the guardian angel of Esau? Esau himself? Maybe Jacob’s entreaty to be blessed hints that it’s his father Isaac, from whom he stole the blessing meant for Esau. Maybe it’s a dream in which he grapples with all of these ghosts of his checkered past conflated into one daunting opponent.
But what I believe, what I see when I read this text, is that the man with whom Jacob struggles so passionately is none other than Jacob himself. At this crossroads of his life, both figuratively and literally, Jacob is blessed with the opportunity to reflect upon his life until now, to put himself and his deeds on trial, so to speak. His wrestling is a coming to terms with the motivations behind and the results of his actions—good, bad, and everything in between. It’s an honest and thorough evaluation of who he’s been, who he is, and who he hopes to be, in which everything is on the table and nothing is hidden away. And while he comes away physically injured, walking with a limp, we read in the verses immediately following the beautiful reunion with Esau that Jacob arrived in Shechem, the next city of his journey, shalem—whole, intact, complete, and at peace.
And so I pray that it is for us: for the State of Israel and her people to struggle amongst themselves and with their neighbors to eventually achieve a true and lasting peace. But also for all of us, all of b’nei Yisrael, the children of Israel, to learn from our shared namesake, and remember, no matter how vehemently we may disagree on the paths to peace, no matter how heated our debates and arguments may be, that it stems from the passion and fervor and love for Israel that we all share, that common bond we all feel to the depths of our hearts and souls. And I pray that, like Jacob becoming Israel, each of us, all of us, will be strengthened by the struggle, within and without, so that we arrive at our destination shalem—whole, intact, and at peace, with ourselves, with our community, and with our neighbors.
AMEN.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Supplication for Days of War
In light of the current situation of Israel and Gaza, I wanted to share these beautiful words of prayer composed by an Israeli colleague.
"A Supplication (Tachanun) for Days of War"
By Rabbi Yoram Mazur
Our God, Who blessed our Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and our Matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, bless the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and all those defenders of our people who stand on guard. Protect them and save them from all distress and anguish and grant blessing upon all the deeds of their hands. Hear our prayer and their prayer and save them.
Send Your blessing upon Your people, Lord of all worlds, to concerned mothers and pained fathers, to citizens who are banished from their homes and to children who have ceased their play. Show Your compassion for the sake of schoolchildren who sit in bomb shelters. Please remember us favorably, grant us Your salvation, and offer us Your mercy, for in You we trust.
Please, merciful God, set Your mercy upon us, and remember Your covenant, with Abraham our father, Your beloved. Spread Your shelter of peace upon the seed of Ishmael the son of Hagar and upon the children of Isaac the son of Sarah, and may the prophecy inspired by the verses in Zechariah 8:12-13, ‘But what shall be sown will prosper – The vine shall produce its fruit, the ground shall produce its yield, and the skies shall provide their moisture. I will bestow all these things upon all of them … and you shall become a blessing, have no fear,' be established for them and for us, and let us say, Amen.
"A Supplication (Tachanun) for Days of War"
By Rabbi Yoram Mazur
Our God, Who blessed our Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and our Matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah, bless the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces and all those defenders of our people who stand on guard. Protect them and save them from all distress and anguish and grant blessing upon all the deeds of their hands. Hear our prayer and their prayer and save them.
Send Your blessing upon Your people, Lord of all worlds, to concerned mothers and pained fathers, to citizens who are banished from their homes and to children who have ceased their play. Show Your compassion for the sake of schoolchildren who sit in bomb shelters. Please remember us favorably, grant us Your salvation, and offer us Your mercy, for in You we trust.
Please, merciful God, set Your mercy upon us, and remember Your covenant, with Abraham our father, Your beloved. Spread Your shelter of peace upon the seed of Ishmael the son of Hagar and upon the children of Isaac the son of Sarah, and may the prophecy inspired by the verses in Zechariah 8:12-13, ‘But what shall be sown will prosper – The vine shall produce its fruit, the ground shall produce its yield, and the skies shall provide their moisture. I will bestow all these things upon all of them … and you shall become a blessing, have no fear,' be established for them and for us, and let us say, Amen.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Getting Racy - B'ha'alot'cha 5772
C. It’s for “cookie.” It’s good enough for me.
Ok. It’s not just “good enough.” It’s good. I love me some cookies. Not sure who these people are who think there’s a point beyond which we’re too old for milk and cookies before bed. But whoever they are, they’re wrong. And when I channel my inner Cookie Monster, my favorites, without a doubt, are Oreos and black-and-white cookies. When I eat an Oreo, I’m not one to twist it open or anything like that; the perfection of the Oreo lies in it being so much greater than the sum of its parts, so why mess with that? And yet, when it comes to black-and-white cookies, I choose, like the Offspring, to “keep ‘em separated.” Since I prefer the white side to the black, I eat the black first, and enjoy the white side last.
So does that make me a racist? Maybe. Maybe how I eat an Oreo represents a forward-thinking, melting-pot-esque, integrationist perspective, while the way I eat a black-and-white cookie renders me more Strom Thurmond than Rabbi Strom. I don’t know. But I do know that I spent a lot less time this week wondering if I’m a white-icing supremacist, and a lot more time struggling with the ugliness of real racism.
And where was I first confronted with it? In the Times? The Nightly News with Brian Williams? Did I catch The Help on Netflix or Driving Miss Daisy on cable? No. Try the Torah. Try Miriam. Try Aaron.
You see, tucked away at the end of B’ha’alot’cha, this week’s parashah, is an episode many of us choose to look past. Overcome with jealousy for their brother Moses, none other than Miriam and Aaron themselves start talking some serious smack, writing checks with their mouths that their prophetic skills can’t cash. They “spoke against Moses,” we read, “because of the Cushite woman he had married, [exclaiming], ‘He married a Cushite woman!’” For speaking out, Miriam is stricken with snow-white scales on her flesh, until Moses intercedes, praying, El na r’fa na la, “O God, pray heal her.”
As the Cushites were dark-skinned Africans, likely from the area now known as Sudan, what we have here, it seems to me and many others, is unabashed bigotry. The scales on Miriam’s skin, then, are symbolic of a much deeper affliction: that of racism.
You might think I’m taking the Torah verses out of context, or stretching them to fit my message here. I’m not. And the proof, unfortunately, lies in Israeli culture today. The same word used derogatively right here in our parasha is exactly the same word used in modern Hebrew as a racial epithet towards immigrants and refugees to Israel from Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. So Miriam and Aaron may as well have called her the n-word, because for all intents and purposes, that’s exactly what they did.
And you think we would have learned by now. You’d have hoped things have changed over, say, a few thousand years. But if you’ve been watching what’s been going on in Israel the last couple of weeks, you know that it hasn’t. Not much at least. As the tensions have been rising for years between long-time residents of the poorer neighborhoods of Tel Aviv and the clustering of refugees in those same neighborhoods, racism continues to rear its ugly head once again. A demonstration from a few weeks ago turned violent, the huddled masses incited by politicians and speakers, including but not limited to Knesset member Miri Regev calling the refugees “a cancer in our body.” The result of the demonstration? A mob that smashed windows and attacked bystanders. And it’s still going on right now. Earlier this week three African refugees were hospitalized after their apartment was torched, leaving the words “Get out of the neighborhood” graffiti’d on the door.
This isn’t Germany or England. This isn’t the former Soviet Union. This isn’t Iran or Pakistan. This is Israel. The democracy of the Middle East, the beacon of hope for a troubled region. This is Tel Aviv, the modern, progressive, vibrant symbol of Israeli life. Instead, "appalling," "horrendous," and "terrifying" are the words that come to mind.
But perhaps we are throwing stones across the world from our American glass houses. After all, we are still reeling from the shooting of Trayvon Martin just a few short months ago. Though the story of what actually happened remains unclear to date, what is clear is the fragile nerve it touched upon, for so many people on all parts of every sociopolitical spectrum. What is clear is that if our country’s reactions to Martin’s killing were some kind of barometer or litmus test on where we stand in regard to race relations, I'm afraid we failed.
Right here in New York City, we have the NYPD’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy, where 84 percent of those stopped were black or Latino, though they comprise 23 and 29 percent of the city population respectively. The NYPD claims the policy keeps weapons off the streets, but as weapons were recovered in only 1 percent of the stops, we have the obligation to ask if something else is at play here.
So what do we do? The honest answer is: I don’t know. But perhaps the beginning of an answer lies in the same section of this week’s Torah portion. Defending Moses to his brother and sister, God says to them, “When prophets of the Eternal arise among you, I make Myself known to them in a vision, I speak with them in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted throughout my household. With him I speak directly, mouth-to-mouth, face-to-face, and he beholds the likeness of the Eternal.”
When we see the person in front of us as a living, breathing person, with hopes and thoughts and dreams all their own, with whom we can speak directly, face-to-face, and not as an image, a vision, something other than a human being, it is then that we can find holiness, a spark of the divine within, in everyone, completely irrespective of the color of their skin. Then, and only then, will we be healed of the affliction of racism, just as Miriam was healed of the scales on her skin.
So I pray:
El na r’fa na lanu. O God, pray, heal us.
AMEN.
Ok. It’s not just “good enough.” It’s good. I love me some cookies. Not sure who these people are who think there’s a point beyond which we’re too old for milk and cookies before bed. But whoever they are, they’re wrong. And when I channel my inner Cookie Monster, my favorites, without a doubt, are Oreos and black-and-white cookies. When I eat an Oreo, I’m not one to twist it open or anything like that; the perfection of the Oreo lies in it being so much greater than the sum of its parts, so why mess with that? And yet, when it comes to black-and-white cookies, I choose, like the Offspring, to “keep ‘em separated.” Since I prefer the white side to the black, I eat the black first, and enjoy the white side last.
So does that make me a racist? Maybe. Maybe how I eat an Oreo represents a forward-thinking, melting-pot-esque, integrationist perspective, while the way I eat a black-and-white cookie renders me more Strom Thurmond than Rabbi Strom. I don’t know. But I do know that I spent a lot less time this week wondering if I’m a white-icing supremacist, and a lot more time struggling with the ugliness of real racism.
And where was I first confronted with it? In the Times? The Nightly News with Brian Williams? Did I catch The Help on Netflix or Driving Miss Daisy on cable? No. Try the Torah. Try Miriam. Try Aaron.
You see, tucked away at the end of B’ha’alot’cha, this week’s parashah, is an episode many of us choose to look past. Overcome with jealousy for their brother Moses, none other than Miriam and Aaron themselves start talking some serious smack, writing checks with their mouths that their prophetic skills can’t cash. They “spoke against Moses,” we read, “because of the Cushite woman he had married, [exclaiming], ‘He married a Cushite woman!’” For speaking out, Miriam is stricken with snow-white scales on her flesh, until Moses intercedes, praying, El na r’fa na la, “O God, pray heal her.”
As the Cushites were dark-skinned Africans, likely from the area now known as Sudan, what we have here, it seems to me and many others, is unabashed bigotry. The scales on Miriam’s skin, then, are symbolic of a much deeper affliction: that of racism.
You might think I’m taking the Torah verses out of context, or stretching them to fit my message here. I’m not. And the proof, unfortunately, lies in Israeli culture today. The same word used derogatively right here in our parasha is exactly the same word used in modern Hebrew as a racial epithet towards immigrants and refugees to Israel from Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. So Miriam and Aaron may as well have called her the n-word, because for all intents and purposes, that’s exactly what they did.
And you think we would have learned by now. You’d have hoped things have changed over, say, a few thousand years. But if you’ve been watching what’s been going on in Israel the last couple of weeks, you know that it hasn’t. Not much at least. As the tensions have been rising for years between long-time residents of the poorer neighborhoods of Tel Aviv and the clustering of refugees in those same neighborhoods, racism continues to rear its ugly head once again. A demonstration from a few weeks ago turned violent, the huddled masses incited by politicians and speakers, including but not limited to Knesset member Miri Regev calling the refugees “a cancer in our body.” The result of the demonstration? A mob that smashed windows and attacked bystanders. And it’s still going on right now. Earlier this week three African refugees were hospitalized after their apartment was torched, leaving the words “Get out of the neighborhood” graffiti’d on the door.
This isn’t Germany or England. This isn’t the former Soviet Union. This isn’t Iran or Pakistan. This is Israel. The democracy of the Middle East, the beacon of hope for a troubled region. This is Tel Aviv, the modern, progressive, vibrant symbol of Israeli life. Instead, "appalling," "horrendous," and "terrifying" are the words that come to mind.
But perhaps we are throwing stones across the world from our American glass houses. After all, we are still reeling from the shooting of Trayvon Martin just a few short months ago. Though the story of what actually happened remains unclear to date, what is clear is the fragile nerve it touched upon, for so many people on all parts of every sociopolitical spectrum. What is clear is that if our country’s reactions to Martin’s killing were some kind of barometer or litmus test on where we stand in regard to race relations, I'm afraid we failed.
Right here in New York City, we have the NYPD’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy, where 84 percent of those stopped were black or Latino, though they comprise 23 and 29 percent of the city population respectively. The NYPD claims the policy keeps weapons off the streets, but as weapons were recovered in only 1 percent of the stops, we have the obligation to ask if something else is at play here.
So what do we do? The honest answer is: I don’t know. But perhaps the beginning of an answer lies in the same section of this week’s Torah portion. Defending Moses to his brother and sister, God says to them, “When prophets of the Eternal arise among you, I make Myself known to them in a vision, I speak with them in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted throughout my household. With him I speak directly, mouth-to-mouth, face-to-face, and he beholds the likeness of the Eternal.”
When we see the person in front of us as a living, breathing person, with hopes and thoughts and dreams all their own, with whom we can speak directly, face-to-face, and not as an image, a vision, something other than a human being, it is then that we can find holiness, a spark of the divine within, in everyone, completely irrespective of the color of their skin. Then, and only then, will we be healed of the affliction of racism, just as Miriam was healed of the scales on her skin.
So I pray:
El na r’fa na lanu. O God, pray, heal us.
AMEN.
Friday, February 24, 2012
Seeing Eye To Eye - T'rumah 5772
You probably don’t know this about me, but I’m basically blind. Probably not legally, but I don’t actually know for sure. Maybe I’m exaggerating slightly. But only slightly. With the possible exception of my father, from whom I clearly got this, I am the most near-sighted person I know. Right now I’m wearing contact lenses that are minus-8.5 and minus-10, while most of the rest of the myopic crowd hovers somewhere between 1 and 3, maybe 4 if it’s really bad. And I hate my glasses. I mean, I hate my glasses. My featherweight lenses, the absolute lightest lens available when I bought them, are still as thick as ice cubes, so that I wonder if they would actually weigh my face down if they were of the normal kind. And whenever I wear them, there’s an insecure part of me that travels right back in time to elementary and middle school, when the typical “four-eyes” and “nerd” and “geek” and all of their mean-spirited relatives were thrown at me with upsetting regularity. I got the gift of contact lenses just before my bar mitzvah and, if you’ll pardon the pun, I haven’t looked back since. I pretty much avoid wearing my glasses in public at all costs. In fact, I’m guessing that virtually no one in this room has ever seen me wearing them. And now you know why.
So you can imagine my mixed reaction when I was reading through the amNY, my free paper of choice, and I came across this article. See, Google will soon be coming out with a special pair of glasses. According to the description, it is essentially an uber-smart-phone device, and the onslaught of information it deems relevant to what you’re looking at will suddenly appear perfectly in your line of vision, perhaps overhead, perhaps on the sidewalk in front of you. Wanna know where the nearest pizza place is and how to get there? Directions, distance, and arrows will magically appear in your lens, and within minutes you’ll be folding up that perfect slice. See a book or a shirt or a pair of jeans you like and you want to compare prices before you buy it there? Miniature screens will open up, as though from the corner of your eye, and you’ll know almost instantly if you should get it there or somewhere else.
I get it. If we’re already doing some or most of these things using our phones, looking down or away from where we probably should be, this would, in theory, cover all of those bases in the periphery, so that we can still walk to where we’re going. And plus, I have to admit, the technology of the whole thing sounds pretty awesome. You think about the changes our grandparents have seen in the way the world works over the course of their lifetime, and then you think about the world our children are being born into, it absolutely boggles the mind.
But there’s a problem here. And it’s a big one.
It’s not technology itself. It’s easy to hurl the blame squarely and entirely on the “evil machines.” Because if that’s the problem, then the answer’s even easier: just turn it all off. Unplug yourself from your electronics. But deep down we know that’s just not true. A recent article in the Atlantic cut right to the heart of the matter, saying that, while we think the solution is to try to divorce ourselves completely from our devices, if only for small pockets of time, that is, at best, an avoidance tactic for the modern world. The peace of mind we may achieve is short-lived and ultimately of little significance because, for better or worse, to be a functioning member of society requires our being plugged in, even when we make the concerted effort on vacation to be “off the grid.” Rather, what we need to do is to focus ourselves, to be purposeful in our use of technology, for the mental welfare of ourselves and our families.
So technology’s not the problem. It’s a matter of what we use those advances for, what we as humanity choose to do with this newfound and seemingly infinite power we’ve discovered. And like with any measure of power, the choices we make with it ultimately reflect back on us as a society.
And I’m no different than anyone else. I won’t lie: I’m a huge fan of my iPhone. One of our friends over for the Super Bowl wonders aloud how old Madonna is or where Tom Brady went to college? I’ll ask Siri. I’m out at a bar and that Gorillaz song comes on but I’m drawing a blank on the actual title, I open Shazam, hold my phone up to the speaker, and seconds later it reminds me that, for whatever reason, the song’s called “Clint Eastwood.” I’m sitting on the couch with Tali, watching television, but trying to stay clued in to what’s “trending,” finding interesting articles, sound bites, or trivia along the way. After all, how do you think I saw that Atlantic article in the first place? I have certain text alerts from ESPN, so as I was at home today, writing this sermon, at 12:56, I get a text saying that Ryan Braun will address the media at 1:00, and that I should tune in to watch. And you know what? I did.
So what does this invention, this pair of GoogleGlasses, say about us?
It says that we, as human beings, are completely insatiable. It says we are information-hungry, to the point of starvation, and it’s all stuff we need to know right now, because pausing to prioritize, would simply be a waste of time. It says our individual curiosity, the random question that pops up in our mind that we can’t immediately let go of, has to be resolved immediately, because it trumps whatever moment, whatever personal connection, is happening, or could be happening at that point in time.
And that’s the problem. Whether it’s iPhones, Blackberrys, Droids, whatever. The issue is that we make them extensions of ourselves, rather than merely incredibly capable and helpful tools. And when we do that, we make it all about ourselves. We see the world through something like Googleglasses, so that the world is a bubble with us and our wants at the center, and everything else—most notably personal connection with other human beings—is tossed aside, x’d out like the distraction of a pop-up advertisement.
In this week’s portion, Parashat T’rumah, the Israelites are given the initial instructions for building the Mishkan, the portable synagogue for the wanderings of the desert, and the first sanctuary in our history. And in what is probably my all-time favorite piece of Torah, we read the details of how the cover of the Ark of the Pact—the front of basically the holiest chamber that has ever existed for the Jewish people—is to be made. God says, “Make one cherub at one end and another cherub at the other end, and have their wings spread out above, shielding the cover. They shall confront each other, both of them face-to-face with the other." They're not looking up, they're not looking out at you. They're looking at each other. "There, from above the cover, from the exact place right between the faces of the cherubim, there will I meet with you.”
Being with each other in the moment, meeting on a deep, intimate level with another person, looking him or her in the eye and feeling that undeniable, almost mystical sense of connection—that, my friends, is the stuff of life. That is why God created us and, ultimately, why we are here in the first place: to use our eyes, to use our glasses, not to further our individual selves, but to look deep and look hard to see what really matters. And that, at the end of the day, is our relationship, our connection, with each other.
AMEN.
So you can imagine my mixed reaction when I was reading through the amNY, my free paper of choice, and I came across this article. See, Google will soon be coming out with a special pair of glasses. According to the description, it is essentially an uber-smart-phone device, and the onslaught of information it deems relevant to what you’re looking at will suddenly appear perfectly in your line of vision, perhaps overhead, perhaps on the sidewalk in front of you. Wanna know where the nearest pizza place is and how to get there? Directions, distance, and arrows will magically appear in your lens, and within minutes you’ll be folding up that perfect slice. See a book or a shirt or a pair of jeans you like and you want to compare prices before you buy it there? Miniature screens will open up, as though from the corner of your eye, and you’ll know almost instantly if you should get it there or somewhere else.
I get it. If we’re already doing some or most of these things using our phones, looking down or away from where we probably should be, this would, in theory, cover all of those bases in the periphery, so that we can still walk to where we’re going. And plus, I have to admit, the technology of the whole thing sounds pretty awesome. You think about the changes our grandparents have seen in the way the world works over the course of their lifetime, and then you think about the world our children are being born into, it absolutely boggles the mind.
But there’s a problem here. And it’s a big one.
It’s not technology itself. It’s easy to hurl the blame squarely and entirely on the “evil machines.” Because if that’s the problem, then the answer’s even easier: just turn it all off. Unplug yourself from your electronics. But deep down we know that’s just not true. A recent article in the Atlantic cut right to the heart of the matter, saying that, while we think the solution is to try to divorce ourselves completely from our devices, if only for small pockets of time, that is, at best, an avoidance tactic for the modern world. The peace of mind we may achieve is short-lived and ultimately of little significance because, for better or worse, to be a functioning member of society requires our being plugged in, even when we make the concerted effort on vacation to be “off the grid.” Rather, what we need to do is to focus ourselves, to be purposeful in our use of technology, for the mental welfare of ourselves and our families.
So technology’s not the problem. It’s a matter of what we use those advances for, what we as humanity choose to do with this newfound and seemingly infinite power we’ve discovered. And like with any measure of power, the choices we make with it ultimately reflect back on us as a society.
And I’m no different than anyone else. I won’t lie: I’m a huge fan of my iPhone. One of our friends over for the Super Bowl wonders aloud how old Madonna is or where Tom Brady went to college? I’ll ask Siri. I’m out at a bar and that Gorillaz song comes on but I’m drawing a blank on the actual title, I open Shazam, hold my phone up to the speaker, and seconds later it reminds me that, for whatever reason, the song’s called “Clint Eastwood.” I’m sitting on the couch with Tali, watching television, but trying to stay clued in to what’s “trending,” finding interesting articles, sound bites, or trivia along the way. After all, how do you think I saw that Atlantic article in the first place? I have certain text alerts from ESPN, so as I was at home today, writing this sermon, at 12:56, I get a text saying that Ryan Braun will address the media at 1:00, and that I should tune in to watch. And you know what? I did.
So what does this invention, this pair of GoogleGlasses, say about us?
It says that we, as human beings, are completely insatiable. It says we are information-hungry, to the point of starvation, and it’s all stuff we need to know right now, because pausing to prioritize, would simply be a waste of time. It says our individual curiosity, the random question that pops up in our mind that we can’t immediately let go of, has to be resolved immediately, because it trumps whatever moment, whatever personal connection, is happening, or could be happening at that point in time.
And that’s the problem. Whether it’s iPhones, Blackberrys, Droids, whatever. The issue is that we make them extensions of ourselves, rather than merely incredibly capable and helpful tools. And when we do that, we make it all about ourselves. We see the world through something like Googleglasses, so that the world is a bubble with us and our wants at the center, and everything else—most notably personal connection with other human beings—is tossed aside, x’d out like the distraction of a pop-up advertisement.
In this week’s portion, Parashat T’rumah, the Israelites are given the initial instructions for building the Mishkan, the portable synagogue for the wanderings of the desert, and the first sanctuary in our history. And in what is probably my all-time favorite piece of Torah, we read the details of how the cover of the Ark of the Pact—the front of basically the holiest chamber that has ever existed for the Jewish people—is to be made. God says, “Make one cherub at one end and another cherub at the other end, and have their wings spread out above, shielding the cover. They shall confront each other, both of them face-to-face with the other." They're not looking up, they're not looking out at you. They're looking at each other. "There, from above the cover, from the exact place right between the faces of the cherubim, there will I meet with you.”
Being with each other in the moment, meeting on a deep, intimate level with another person, looking him or her in the eye and feeling that undeniable, almost mystical sense of connection—that, my friends, is the stuff of life. That is why God created us and, ultimately, why we are here in the first place: to use our eyes, to use our glasses, not to further our individual selves, but to look deep and look hard to see what really matters. And that, at the end of the day, is our relationship, our connection, with each other.
AMEN.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Kicking It Upstairs - Mishpatim 5772
As I was studying this week’s parashah, Mishpatim, I found myself thinking of Christo-phah. Remember Christo-phah? Not Christopher. Christo-phah. If you’re asking, “Christo-phah who?” then the answer’s no, meaning you probably weren’t a big fan of the Sopranos. But in any event, Christo-phah is a wiseguy, a soldier working his way up through the Mafioso crime family headed by his uncle Tony. And as a soldier, slogging his way through the day-to-day operations of the family, Christo-phah has a big problem. He starts to resent the fact that he’s doing so much of the work, yet getting very little of the reward. He is embittered when the capos rack up restaurant and bar tabs in the thousands of dollars and he’s stuck footing the bill. Even knowing that that’s the system, that that’s just how it works, that if and when he makes it up the ladder, he will be on the receiving end of the hierarchy, this awareness does nothing to blunt his resentment. Christo-phah wants the goodies for himself. He doesn’t want to kick it upstairs.
And that’s what they call it: kicking it upstairs. You see it in Godfather, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, and the Sopranos. The concept of remembering who came before you, who put in the work and paid their dues to sit where they sit, at the head of the table, and to remember why they’re there in the first place, is not such a bad thing, removed, of course, from the Mafia context. At the end of the day, I’m guessing that a lot of the organizations and businesses in which we work and spend so much of our lives function in a similar manner.
So if that’s true, if that concept makes sense to us with regards to human beings, shouldn’t it be all the more so with God?
The Torah says “yes.” Over and over again. And we find it here, among the many laws and ordinances prescribed in Parashat Mishpatim. In Exodus 22:28 and 29 we read, “You shall not put off the skimming of the first yield of your vats. You shall give Me the male first-born among your children. You shall do the same with your cattle and your flocks; seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to Me."
While modern scholars may be uncertain as to the execution of this mitzvah, the underlying concept is crystal clear. And that concept is of such significance that it appears, in various permutations, dozens of times throughout the Torah. We might easily dismiss it, throw it on the heap of biblical commandments and constructs we conveniently consider “outdated.” But this one, to be sure, is anything but.
Your first child, first calves of the herd, first lambs of the flock, first fruits and grains of the harvest, even, as we see here, the first yield of your vats—all of it, we kick upstairs. Why? Because it doesn’t matter how hard we’ve worked to farm the land, or take care of the cattle and the sheep; it doesn’t matter how well we did with our report or case or presentation or lesson. Sure, we may have done the work on the ground, on the front lines, so to speak. But who is it that makes all of it possible? Who miraculously created the entire world and everything in it, most especially the extraordinarily talented human being? That’s right: God! Adonai Eloheinu, Ribono shel olam, the Alpha, the Omega, the Master of the Universe, known to some of my rabbinic classmates as Sweet Holy Ha-Shem. And not one kind, important word we say, not one good deed we’ve done for ourselves or others, not one triumphant moment we’ve shared or experienced—absolutely none of it would ever have occurred if it weren’t for God. Even if you call yourself an atheist, or you don’t like using the word “God,” I sincerely doubt that you really take all of the credit for the things you do well, and naturally at that. At least I hope you don’t. Because if you really think about it, those skills and talents that seem to have come from within you, that more often than not simply cannot be taught in a classroom or a seminar, they point to something beyond our physical selves, something that accounts for their existence, regardless of what you choose to call it.
And that’s how it is for me. I confess that Tali hates it when I occasionally come home from teaching or giving a sermon and I say something like “I think I did well tonight” or “I feel really great about how that went.” But for me, while I certainly feel it’s important to have a sense of self-worth and self-esteem, I’m okay saying those things because they’re not really about me. They are, ultimately, a tribute to God. At the end of the day, I chalk it all up to the Holy One, the Source of any talents and gifts with which I have been blessed.
More than that, I can’t tell you how often, in just these first few years of my rabbinate, that I’ve found myself in challenging, deeply intense conversations with many of you—about life and death and illness touching your lives, things you’re struggling with that keep you up at night—where I just don’t know what words I can possibly offer to be of help or guidance. Yet, somehow, some way, something comes out of me. And somehow, time and time again, it’s just right, and people will tell me later that I said just the thing they wanted and, more importantly, most needed to hear.
My friends, that’s not me. That’s ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, coming over me, speaking through me. And without that, without God, I am nothing but dust and ashes. Without God, what I achieve in this world amounts to precious little.
So unlike Christo-phah, I have no problem kicking it upstairs. And maybe, just maybe, you won’t either.
SHABBAT SHALOM.
And that’s what they call it: kicking it upstairs. You see it in Godfather, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, and the Sopranos. The concept of remembering who came before you, who put in the work and paid their dues to sit where they sit, at the head of the table, and to remember why they’re there in the first place, is not such a bad thing, removed, of course, from the Mafia context. At the end of the day, I’m guessing that a lot of the organizations and businesses in which we work and spend so much of our lives function in a similar manner.
So if that’s true, if that concept makes sense to us with regards to human beings, shouldn’t it be all the more so with God?
The Torah says “yes.” Over and over again. And we find it here, among the many laws and ordinances prescribed in Parashat Mishpatim. In Exodus 22:28 and 29 we read, “You shall not put off the skimming of the first yield of your vats. You shall give Me the male first-born among your children. You shall do the same with your cattle and your flocks; seven days it shall remain with its mother; on the eighth day you shall give it to Me."
While modern scholars may be uncertain as to the execution of this mitzvah, the underlying concept is crystal clear. And that concept is of such significance that it appears, in various permutations, dozens of times throughout the Torah. We might easily dismiss it, throw it on the heap of biblical commandments and constructs we conveniently consider “outdated.” But this one, to be sure, is anything but.
Your first child, first calves of the herd, first lambs of the flock, first fruits and grains of the harvest, even, as we see here, the first yield of your vats—all of it, we kick upstairs. Why? Because it doesn’t matter how hard we’ve worked to farm the land, or take care of the cattle and the sheep; it doesn’t matter how well we did with our report or case or presentation or lesson. Sure, we may have done the work on the ground, on the front lines, so to speak. But who is it that makes all of it possible? Who miraculously created the entire world and everything in it, most especially the extraordinarily talented human being? That’s right: God! Adonai Eloheinu, Ribono shel olam, the Alpha, the Omega, the Master of the Universe, known to some of my rabbinic classmates as Sweet Holy Ha-Shem. And not one kind, important word we say, not one good deed we’ve done for ourselves or others, not one triumphant moment we’ve shared or experienced—absolutely none of it would ever have occurred if it weren’t for God. Even if you call yourself an atheist, or you don’t like using the word “God,” I sincerely doubt that you really take all of the credit for the things you do well, and naturally at that. At least I hope you don’t. Because if you really think about it, those skills and talents that seem to have come from within you, that more often than not simply cannot be taught in a classroom or a seminar, they point to something beyond our physical selves, something that accounts for their existence, regardless of what you choose to call it.
And that’s how it is for me. I confess that Tali hates it when I occasionally come home from teaching or giving a sermon and I say something like “I think I did well tonight” or “I feel really great about how that went.” But for me, while I certainly feel it’s important to have a sense of self-worth and self-esteem, I’m okay saying those things because they’re not really about me. They are, ultimately, a tribute to God. At the end of the day, I chalk it all up to the Holy One, the Source of any talents and gifts with which I have been blessed.
More than that, I can’t tell you how often, in just these first few years of my rabbinate, that I’ve found myself in challenging, deeply intense conversations with many of you—about life and death and illness touching your lives, things you’re struggling with that keep you up at night—where I just don’t know what words I can possibly offer to be of help or guidance. Yet, somehow, some way, something comes out of me. And somehow, time and time again, it’s just right, and people will tell me later that I said just the thing they wanted and, more importantly, most needed to hear.
My friends, that’s not me. That’s ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, coming over me, speaking through me. And without that, without God, I am nothing but dust and ashes. Without God, what I achieve in this world amounts to precious little.
So unlike Christo-phah, I have no problem kicking it upstairs. And maybe, just maybe, you won’t either.
SHABBAT SHALOM.
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