(To listen to the sermon as it was delivered, please click here.)
I always feel bad for the dentist. The dentist gets a bum rap. No one looks forward to a visit to the dentist. No one gets excited or circles it on their calendar, or has a countdown to their semi-annual checkup. “Yay, I get a new toothbrush today!” “Woo-hoo, it’s time for my twice-a-year guilt trip about not flossing!” “Oh, how I love the sound of plaque being scraped from my teeth!” (Said no one.) Not that anyone really gets pumped for a visit to the doctor, either, but we all know: the dentist is in a different category of dread altogether.
And yet, as I had the unique pleasure of visiting Dr. Lana Goldman of Gentle Dental Associates in Park Slope earlier this week, I had a couple of mini-revelations.
As this was my first visit to Gentle Dental, I of course had to fill out the preliminary paperwork. You get through the obvious stuff, you give the person at the desk your cards for photocopying, etc. Then you get to the part with the fairly exhaustive list of ailments, conditions, behavioral tendencies. For some of these types of lists, they just want you to check the ones that apply to you. Other times, like this one, you have to answer each one of them, yes or no. Annoying? Perhaps. But I have to admit, I’m glad that they made me. And I’ll tell you why:
Perspective.
Let me explain.
We love to complain. Don’t we. We love to whine about all the stuff we have to do, all the stuff that’s going wrong, all the stuff that seems like obstacles delaying or preventing some sense of rest or happiness or sense of achievement. But then I was forced to look at every single variation following the words, “Do you have or have you had…” any of a dizzying number of diseases, syndromes, and chronic conditions. Aside from a very slight case of asthma that almost never really bothers me, and laughing at myself as I checked “rheumatoid arthritis,” as I have the knees of an 80-year-old man, I was only too thrilled to check off “no” for absolutely everything else. And then there was more internal laughing, coupled by a shaking of the head, as I thought about all of the silly things with which we are constantly pre-occupied. The shutdown of the subway cause it’s raining, or cause it’s not raining, or cause there’s too many people, or cause there’s not enough people. The internet at work going down so you can’t get something done. How my DVR likes to…just when…right…middle of a sentence. Even things a whole lot bigger than that. Like two years ago, as I drove into the city for our special Shabbat Unplugged over on the way Upper West Side and got into a car accident that was completely my fault. In my profuse apologies to the woman whose car I sideswiped, she said, “You know what? It’s really fine. It’s just a car. I have a son who’s been through a battle with cancer. You’re okay, I’m okay. This is not a big deal.”
Perspective. That was the first of my mini-revelations in the waiting room at Gentle Dental.
The second is trust. I don’t think we’re aware of just how much trust we place—and, by necessity, have to place—in the hands of people in our lives, people whom, most of the time, are virtually completely unknown to us. We trust the barista at Starbucks not just to make our drink to our liking, but also that the ingredients and machines used to make it are safe for us. We trust that our teachers, our camp counselors growing up, our co-workers, our political, religious, spiritual leaders, are who they say they are, that their credentials, their experience, their resumes, are accurate. We trust that our physicians and caretakers are telling us the truth with what they see in our charts, our x-rays and MRI’s, that they really do have our best interests at heart.
And then you think about your dentist, who stands over your open mouth a half-hour or more, using all kinds of instruments and tools and gunk, and that weird thing that sucks the saliva out of your mouth as your teeth are cleaned. At one point, for some phase of my cleaning, she needed me to close my eyes. And I did. Cause, what else am I gonna do? And as I closed my eyes for what felt like a pretty long time, I became acutely aware of the enormous trust I was placing, quite literally, in the hands of this little Ukrainian Jewish woman, whom I had met for the first time just minutes before.
So if all that is true—and I’m certain it is—how much trust is needed throughout every single day of our lives just to function, just to get by, then how much the more so with the relationships in our lives of a much greater intensity and intimacy, those with our family and our friends. We live in a world where trust is all-too-often seen as weakness, a scourge to be avoided, perceived as something that should appear on lists like on the medical forms, and then proudly checked “no.” I saw a shirt just yesterday that said, in enormous letters, “Don’t Trust Anyone,” with a picture of an AK-47 just underneath the words. That, unfortunately, is where all too many of us are at. Trust, in and of itself, simply cannot be trusted.
Maybe that works for the mob boss on TV, the CSI detective in her interrogations, the CIA operative undercover in a foreign country. But it definitely doesn’t work for us. No way. Not if we want to live meaningful, purposeful, enriched, full, beautiful lives. While our trust should be earned and carefully, thoughtfully given, never lightly tossed about, we have to realize that trust is at the very core of what makes life worth living. It’s how we truly, deeply connect with others, how we see and maximize the beauty of the world and the life bestowed upon us for who knows how long. Yes, we’ve all gotten burned, our trust betrayed—in love, in friendship, in school or in work. Yes, we’ve all felt the pointed sting, the mixture of anger, sadness and foolishness coursing through every part of us. But the answer can’t be to shut it off, to make trust a commodity we can no longer afford, to bury it for good, out of the reach of others, for fear of getting hurt again. It can’t be. Because if we do, that anger, that sadness, that foolishness will only grow and grow quickly, until we find ourselves utterly alone, hating the world and everyone in it. Because love without trust is a three-legged chair. And even the mob boss, even the detective, even the undercover operative, have to trust someone at some point.
Perspective and trust. They’re at the core of our lives, and at the core of this week’s Torah portion, Shlach L’cha, where Moses is commanded to send 12 spies—one from each tribe—into the land of Israel to see what it’s like, what grows there, and who the current inhabitants are. All twelve agree that that land “indeed flows with milk and honey, [and is] an exceedingly good land.” But ten of the twelve are afraid, doubtful of their ability, even with God’s help, to come into possession of the land sworn to them. And they spread that fear, that doubt, among the Israelites, like a virus of despair, until the people once again revolt against Moses’ leadership. Only Caleb and Joshua are return with words of positivity and faith, that perhaps it is a daunting task after all, but that with God and with each other, it can and will happen. Only Caleb and Joshua have the perspective to zoom out, to look down the road and see the bigger picture. And only Caleb and Joshua have the trust, the faith—in God and in their fellow human beings—to know that, as we read in our liturgy earlier, “the only we to get from here to there is by joining hands, marching together.”
So I pray, on this Shabbat, that we will be like Joshua and Caleb. I pray that we can have a healthy perspective in our lives; to not sweat the small stuff, at least not any more than we need to; to know in our hearts what really matters in life, what really imbues it with meaning and value, are our relationships with our loved ones. And to know, to appreciate, that what lies at the core of any and every single meaningful relationship in our lives, every single connection through which we see the beauty of God’s world and our lives, is trust.
AMEN.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Saturday, May 4, 2013
B'har, Nachshon, & Jason Collins
To hear my sermon from Friday, May 3rd, please click the link below:
https://www.myrecordbox.com/s/recording/5161/b70d45882a99f09080ac86de5a1518ea
https://www.myrecordbox.com/s/recording/5161/b70d45882a99f09080ac86de5a1518ea
Friday, February 22, 2013
Fighting the Darkness - T'tzaveh 5773
“Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller.”
Darkness. It is paralyzing, fearful, terrifying. We can’t see, we can’t be seen. We are at our most vulnerable, unprotected. It’s the basis of our horror movies, our campfire ghost stories, our haunted houses.
It is no wonder, then, that darkness is a plague upon Egypt. And if we see the Ten Plagues as a progression in intensity and terror, the fact that it’s the ninth of ten speaks volumes about us and our fears. The text says that this plague didn’t include the Jews, that though “people could not see on another, and for three days no one could move about, all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings.”
But many of our sages and commentators beg to differ. They say the darkness did include the Jews. But the difference between them was how they handled it. For the Egyptians, we read in the text, lo kamu ish mitachtav, literally nobody even got off their tushes to help each other. They were paralyzed and just sat still, defeated, waiting for the light to return. The Israelites, on the other hand, probably just as scared as the Egyptians, struggled through the darkness to check on each other, to see if their families and friends and neighbors were okay. And so the light they enjoyed, say the commentators, was more existential, that, though the darkness was just the same, they did the best they could to get through it.
Darkness. It is scary stuff, in every sense of the word—metaphorically, figuratively, literally. And as we sit here, in the thick of a cold, bitter winter, we know that this is the darkest time of year.
So too is it a dark time for the Israelites at this point in our Torah. But theirs is a spiritual darkness, the hangover of doubt following the triumphant leaving of Egypt, the victory over their oppressors at the Sea of Reeds. So now, in their spiritual wilderness, our ancestors are getting the very detailed instructions for building the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary, so that God may dwell with them wherever they may go.
Along comes Parashat T’tzaveh, and the very first verse of the portion is this: “Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives lama’or, l’ha’alot ner tamid.”
This is a special moment for us as the Jewish people, because this is where the concept of the ner tamid comes from. This is why virtually every sanctuary ever no matter where it sits, no matter which direction it faces, they all have an Eternal Light.
But while we all love and appreciate the custom of ner tamid, the single light representing constant hope and, for some of us, the unwavering Presence of God, it is most probably a mistranslation. It is not an Eternal Flame (sorry, Bangles fans), but really a light to be kindled regularly.
I point that out not to burst your ner tamid bubble or to be the wet blanket to your eternal flame. But I think there’s a pretty big distinction there, and it’s important that we take note of it. Because, see, kindled regularly” rather than “eternal light” acknowledges what we all know to be true. Lights are going to go out—in our hearts, our souls, our spirits. Over the course of our lives, no matter how cheerful, optimistic, happy-go-lucky we may be in general, there is no way to avoid it, there will be darkness. So when the darkness comes, there are two questions to ask ourselves:
The first one is: what do we do in the darkness? Do we feel sorry for ourselves, do we mope? Do we endlessly lament what could’ve been, what should’ve been? Do we spend our time being angry at the darkness, blaming ourselves or pointing the finger all around at anyone but ourselves as the cause? Do we sit on our butts like the Egyptians and wait for someone, something else to dig us out? Or do we turn inward to find light, to work on ourselves, to better ourselves, to reach for the light within and beyond ourselves to make our world brighter?
The second question is: how? How do we rekindle the flame? How do we get out of this darkness? Where does the spark come from? To whom, to what do we turn to get the lights back on, to get back on our feet and start moving forward again?
Perhaps a clue to answers to both is B'tzal'el. B’tzal’el is, simply put, the man. He is singled out by God to be chief architect, designer, jeweler, mason, you name it, for the Mishkan. He is essentially the Bob Vila of the Tabernacle.
And the verse that introduces us to him says the following: Va’amale oto ruach Elohim b’chochmah, uvit’vunah, uv’da’at, uv’chol m’lachah, usually translated in a context of being the skilled specialist he apparently is, that God “has endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft.” A more literal translation, which I prefer here, says this: God “has filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, as well as physical labor.”
God has filled him with this, whatever it is, so that this divine spirit, this gift of God he possesses does not ever desert him, even in the most difficult moments. And what is it? What is that wisdom, that understanding, that knowledge?
Maybe the secret is in his very name: B’tzalel. If we look closely at his name, and we break up into parts, his name says the following: B’tzal, “in the shadows,” El, “God is there.”
And God is that light we seek; the light that will carry us through the hardest moments, the ones we think and fear will never end. It’s in the arms of a needed embrace from a loved one. It’s in the warm eyes, the listening ears of a friend. It’s in the voice that says “I’m sorry you’re going through this. But I know you. I love you. And I know you’re going to be okay.”
It’s there, in the shadows. But only if we make ourselves open to it. Only if we allow ourselves to be scared, to be vulnerable, and to share it, call it out and name it. And only then can we move forward into the light. After all, as the great poet Leonard Cohen once wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. That’s how the light gets in.”
My friends, on this Shabbat I pray that the moments of darkness in our lives are few and far between, that our days be filled with light and joy. But when those moments come, as inevitably they will, when darkness encircles us and our hope begins to drain away, may we find strength in ourselves to face our fears and our vulnerabilities head-on; strength in each other, in the love and sympathy and support that we simply cannot live without. And may we know, through that strength, even in the darkest depths of sadness and despair, b’tzal-el, even in the shadows, there is God.
AMEN.
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood
And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse's shell
The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom
And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller.”
Darkness. It is paralyzing, fearful, terrifying. We can’t see, we can’t be seen. We are at our most vulnerable, unprotected. It’s the basis of our horror movies, our campfire ghost stories, our haunted houses.
It is no wonder, then, that darkness is a plague upon Egypt. And if we see the Ten Plagues as a progression in intensity and terror, the fact that it’s the ninth of ten speaks volumes about us and our fears. The text says that this plague didn’t include the Jews, that though “people could not see on another, and for three days no one could move about, all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings.”
But many of our sages and commentators beg to differ. They say the darkness did include the Jews. But the difference between them was how they handled it. For the Egyptians, we read in the text, lo kamu ish mitachtav, literally nobody even got off their tushes to help each other. They were paralyzed and just sat still, defeated, waiting for the light to return. The Israelites, on the other hand, probably just as scared as the Egyptians, struggled through the darkness to check on each other, to see if their families and friends and neighbors were okay. And so the light they enjoyed, say the commentators, was more existential, that, though the darkness was just the same, they did the best they could to get through it.
Darkness. It is scary stuff, in every sense of the word—metaphorically, figuratively, literally. And as we sit here, in the thick of a cold, bitter winter, we know that this is the darkest time of year.
So too is it a dark time for the Israelites at this point in our Torah. But theirs is a spiritual darkness, the hangover of doubt following the triumphant leaving of Egypt, the victory over their oppressors at the Sea of Reeds. So now, in their spiritual wilderness, our ancestors are getting the very detailed instructions for building the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary, so that God may dwell with them wherever they may go.
Along comes Parashat T’tzaveh, and the very first verse of the portion is this: “Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives lama’or, l’ha’alot ner tamid.”
This is a special moment for us as the Jewish people, because this is where the concept of the ner tamid comes from. This is why virtually every sanctuary ever no matter where it sits, no matter which direction it faces, they all have an Eternal Light.
But while we all love and appreciate the custom of ner tamid, the single light representing constant hope and, for some of us, the unwavering Presence of God, it is most probably a mistranslation. It is not an Eternal Flame (sorry, Bangles fans), but really a light to be kindled regularly.
I point that out not to burst your ner tamid bubble or to be the wet blanket to your eternal flame. But I think there’s a pretty big distinction there, and it’s important that we take note of it. Because, see, kindled regularly” rather than “eternal light” acknowledges what we all know to be true. Lights are going to go out—in our hearts, our souls, our spirits. Over the course of our lives, no matter how cheerful, optimistic, happy-go-lucky we may be in general, there is no way to avoid it, there will be darkness. So when the darkness comes, there are two questions to ask ourselves:
The first one is: what do we do in the darkness? Do we feel sorry for ourselves, do we mope? Do we endlessly lament what could’ve been, what should’ve been? Do we spend our time being angry at the darkness, blaming ourselves or pointing the finger all around at anyone but ourselves as the cause? Do we sit on our butts like the Egyptians and wait for someone, something else to dig us out? Or do we turn inward to find light, to work on ourselves, to better ourselves, to reach for the light within and beyond ourselves to make our world brighter?
The second question is: how? How do we rekindle the flame? How do we get out of this darkness? Where does the spark come from? To whom, to what do we turn to get the lights back on, to get back on our feet and start moving forward again?
Perhaps a clue to answers to both is B'tzal'el. B’tzal’el is, simply put, the man. He is singled out by God to be chief architect, designer, jeweler, mason, you name it, for the Mishkan. He is essentially the Bob Vila of the Tabernacle.
And the verse that introduces us to him says the following: Va’amale oto ruach Elohim b’chochmah, uvit’vunah, uv’da’at, uv’chol m’lachah, usually translated in a context of being the skilled specialist he apparently is, that God “has endowed him with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every kind of craft.” A more literal translation, which I prefer here, says this: God “has filled him with the spirit of God, with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, as well as physical labor.”
God has filled him with this, whatever it is, so that this divine spirit, this gift of God he possesses does not ever desert him, even in the most difficult moments. And what is it? What is that wisdom, that understanding, that knowledge?
Maybe the secret is in his very name: B’tzalel. If we look closely at his name, and we break up into parts, his name says the following: B’tzal, “in the shadows,” El, “God is there.”
And God is that light we seek; the light that will carry us through the hardest moments, the ones we think and fear will never end. It’s in the arms of a needed embrace from a loved one. It’s in the warm eyes, the listening ears of a friend. It’s in the voice that says “I’m sorry you’re going through this. But I know you. I love you. And I know you’re going to be okay.”
It’s there, in the shadows. But only if we make ourselves open to it. Only if we allow ourselves to be scared, to be vulnerable, and to share it, call it out and name it. And only then can we move forward into the light. After all, as the great poet Leonard Cohen once wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. That’s how the light gets in.”
My friends, on this Shabbat I pray that the moments of darkness in our lives are few and far between, that our days be filled with light and joy. But when those moments come, as inevitably they will, when darkness encircles us and our hope begins to drain away, may we find strength in ourselves to face our fears and our vulnerabilities head-on; strength in each other, in the love and sympathy and support that we simply cannot live without. And may we know, through that strength, even in the darkest depths of sadness and despair, b’tzal-el, even in the shadows, there is God.
AMEN.
Friday, February 1, 2013
The Dirtiest Word - Yitro 5773
I’m warning you now. I’m going to begin tonight with a dirty word. It may shock you. It may upset you. It’s upset many a person throughout time. But I’m going to say it anyway. You ready? You sure? Okay. Here goes:
God.
There, I said it. God. You all thought I was going to utter some nasty four-letter word, didn’t you. I may not be the brightest bulb. But I’m not that stupid.
And yet, for some of us—perhaps many of us—that three-letter word, “God,” is actually quite a bit more disturbing than any of those curse words. And what I want to know is: why? Why is it that we can talk about anything we want in today’s society—anything: money, sex, drugs, violence, people’s private lives and innermost secrets and intimate details that somehow appear daily on the front page of every newspaper we see—why is everything fair game for discussion except God?
And why am I thinking about God so much this week? I could answer the question glibly, saying that, well, it’s my job to think about God. And while that is definitely true for myself to the point of being obvious, even as I say that aloud, I know that I have many, many colleagues who feel the same way about that dirty G-word, men and women in this holy work who wouldn’t broach the topic, publicly or privately, with a ten-foot pole.
Beyond that, however, there are a couple of reasons that God is especially in the front of my mind this week. One is that a few of you over the past couple of weeks have shared with me the January 6th op-ed from the Times entitled “The Blessings of Atheism,” with the tagline reading something to the effect of, “We atheists need to stand up for what we believe.”
Now, I must confess. The idea of atheists standing up for what they believe made me laugh at first. It smacked of self-contradiction, like the scene from Stranger Than Fiction, where Will Ferrell’s IRS agent is questioning Maggie Gyllenhaal. After explaining to him the detailed rationale for paying most, but not all of her taxes, the following conversation takes place:
“Miss Pascal, what you're describing is anarchy. Are you an anarchist?”
“You mean, am I a member of...”
“An anarchist group, yes.”
“Anarchists have a group?”
“I believe so, sure.”
“They assemble?”
“I don't know.”
At which point she leans in close to him and says:
“Wouldn't that completely defeat the purpose?”
So you’ll forgive me if that’s what came to mind when seeing the topic of atheists standing for what they believe. But I am very glad I read the piece. For one thing, I found myself in surprise agreement at the frustration felt upon hearing the phrase, “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” of which author Susan Jacoby says, “[when] translated from psychobabble, can mean just about anything.” True that, as they say. I don’t know if I’ll ever be sure as to what that means.
But I was greatly agitated by her central thesis, which was, essentially, this: that atheism is the best way for people to focus on and emphasize the here-and-now, because affiliating with a faith group and, particularly, believing in God, somehow precludes us from doing so. Her assumption is that those who believe in a higher power also necessarily believe in an afterlife, and as such, are not adequately attentive to what’s going on in front of our eyes, specifically in response to the grieving, the bereft in our community. And while that may be true for many of our Christian brothers and sisters, my friends, it is not true for us. While it may deeply upset her, as it does me, to endure such hollow, ultimately meaningless and useless explanations as their loved one “being in a better place,” or how “God must have His reasons” or “somehow needed him or her in Heaven” to those who have suffered through tragic loss, her logic is flawed. It’s flawed because hers is a blanket statement, a generalization that does not apply equally across the board. The truth is everything she espouses in this piece—to be here, to be now, to focus on the only life we know for sure, especially in comforting the mourners in our midst—is completely, 100% consistent with Judaism and Jewish teaching. The Sages of our tradition, detailed as they were, almost to a flaw, were incredibly vague on notions of Olam Ha-ba, the World to Come. And, in my opinion, this is no accident. Even these men, certain as they were in their convictions on virtually everything, were okay with their uncertainty here. There is no dogma about life after death, about heaven or hell or purgatory, no tenets to which every Jew must subscribe, no company line or stock answer to recite. They’re vague because, at the end of the day, who really knows? They didn’t. And at least they knew they didn’t.
This week we read Parashat Yitro, famous, of course, for Aseret Ha-Dibrot, the Ten Commandments, the first of which is simply this: “I the Eternal am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.”
Doesn’t seem like much of a commandment, does it? Okay, fine. So it could be helpful to realize that a better translation of Aseret Ha-Dibrot would be “The Ten Utterances,” as this first one seems more a statement than a commandment. Or maybe it is a commandment. Maybe it’s a statement of the given, tacitly understood as what we are all to believe.
Or maybe it’s this, one of my favorite phrases, taken from a not-so-G-rated scene in the 2000 film Boiler Room:
Act as if.
It’s true, no one knows for sure either way. I know that with my experiences, the way I’ve come to see my life and the world over time, that it might come a bit easier for me than for others, and that I’m as convinced as I think a person can be that there is, in fact, a God. But I don’t know. No one does. And that statement is just as true for both sides of the timeless debate, and everything in between. We just don’t know. And who would dare to be so arrogant as to say that they did? That’s why the word “atheist” bothers me, in all honesty. How can anyone truly know, with perfect infallibility, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there is no God, that God for sure does not exist?
The truth is, whether we consider ourselves believers or not, we’re all agnostic. We may, at best, think we have it figured out for ourselves in a way that makes sense to us, in whatever direction that may be. But we all have doubts. And as my teacher Dr. Kravitz used to say, “Out of certainty comes doubt, but out of doubt only comes certainty.”
Act as if.
And for us, that means act as if there’s a God. Act as if there’s a Being who created the universe and everything, everyone in it. Act as if there is a spark of that God in every living thing, in every human being. Act as if there may be some kind of World to Come, some heavenly reward for our good deeds here, but know in your heart that you don’t know for sure, and that, ultimately, it’s irrelevant. Because to be a Jew who believes in God means that we are all the more focused on this life, this world, the only one we know for sure, and the people that make this one life something special, something sacred.
Act as if there’s a God. And maybe, just maybe, our lives will be that much more meaningful in the end.
AMEN.
God.
There, I said it. God. You all thought I was going to utter some nasty four-letter word, didn’t you. I may not be the brightest bulb. But I’m not that stupid.
And yet, for some of us—perhaps many of us—that three-letter word, “God,” is actually quite a bit more disturbing than any of those curse words. And what I want to know is: why? Why is it that we can talk about anything we want in today’s society—anything: money, sex, drugs, violence, people’s private lives and innermost secrets and intimate details that somehow appear daily on the front page of every newspaper we see—why is everything fair game for discussion except God?
And why am I thinking about God so much this week? I could answer the question glibly, saying that, well, it’s my job to think about God. And while that is definitely true for myself to the point of being obvious, even as I say that aloud, I know that I have many, many colleagues who feel the same way about that dirty G-word, men and women in this holy work who wouldn’t broach the topic, publicly or privately, with a ten-foot pole.
Beyond that, however, there are a couple of reasons that God is especially in the front of my mind this week. One is that a few of you over the past couple of weeks have shared with me the January 6th op-ed from the Times entitled “The Blessings of Atheism,” with the tagline reading something to the effect of, “We atheists need to stand up for what we believe.”
Now, I must confess. The idea of atheists standing up for what they believe made me laugh at first. It smacked of self-contradiction, like the scene from Stranger Than Fiction, where Will Ferrell’s IRS agent is questioning Maggie Gyllenhaal. After explaining to him the detailed rationale for paying most, but not all of her taxes, the following conversation takes place:
“Miss Pascal, what you're describing is anarchy. Are you an anarchist?”
“You mean, am I a member of...”
“An anarchist group, yes.”
“Anarchists have a group?”
“I believe so, sure.”
“They assemble?”
“I don't know.”
At which point she leans in close to him and says:
“Wouldn't that completely defeat the purpose?”
So you’ll forgive me if that’s what came to mind when seeing the topic of atheists standing for what they believe. But I am very glad I read the piece. For one thing, I found myself in surprise agreement at the frustration felt upon hearing the phrase, “I’m spiritual, but not religious,” of which author Susan Jacoby says, “[when] translated from psychobabble, can mean just about anything.” True that, as they say. I don’t know if I’ll ever be sure as to what that means.
But I was greatly agitated by her central thesis, which was, essentially, this: that atheism is the best way for people to focus on and emphasize the here-and-now, because affiliating with a faith group and, particularly, believing in God, somehow precludes us from doing so. Her assumption is that those who believe in a higher power also necessarily believe in an afterlife, and as such, are not adequately attentive to what’s going on in front of our eyes, specifically in response to the grieving, the bereft in our community. And while that may be true for many of our Christian brothers and sisters, my friends, it is not true for us. While it may deeply upset her, as it does me, to endure such hollow, ultimately meaningless and useless explanations as their loved one “being in a better place,” or how “God must have His reasons” or “somehow needed him or her in Heaven” to those who have suffered through tragic loss, her logic is flawed. It’s flawed because hers is a blanket statement, a generalization that does not apply equally across the board. The truth is everything she espouses in this piece—to be here, to be now, to focus on the only life we know for sure, especially in comforting the mourners in our midst—is completely, 100% consistent with Judaism and Jewish teaching. The Sages of our tradition, detailed as they were, almost to a flaw, were incredibly vague on notions of Olam Ha-ba, the World to Come. And, in my opinion, this is no accident. Even these men, certain as they were in their convictions on virtually everything, were okay with their uncertainty here. There is no dogma about life after death, about heaven or hell or purgatory, no tenets to which every Jew must subscribe, no company line or stock answer to recite. They’re vague because, at the end of the day, who really knows? They didn’t. And at least they knew they didn’t.
This week we read Parashat Yitro, famous, of course, for Aseret Ha-Dibrot, the Ten Commandments, the first of which is simply this: “I the Eternal am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.”
Doesn’t seem like much of a commandment, does it? Okay, fine. So it could be helpful to realize that a better translation of Aseret Ha-Dibrot would be “The Ten Utterances,” as this first one seems more a statement than a commandment. Or maybe it is a commandment. Maybe it’s a statement of the given, tacitly understood as what we are all to believe.
Or maybe it’s this, one of my favorite phrases, taken from a not-so-G-rated scene in the 2000 film Boiler Room:
Act as if.
It’s true, no one knows for sure either way. I know that with my experiences, the way I’ve come to see my life and the world over time, that it might come a bit easier for me than for others, and that I’m as convinced as I think a person can be that there is, in fact, a God. But I don’t know. No one does. And that statement is just as true for both sides of the timeless debate, and everything in between. We just don’t know. And who would dare to be so arrogant as to say that they did? That’s why the word “atheist” bothers me, in all honesty. How can anyone truly know, with perfect infallibility, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that there is no God, that God for sure does not exist?
The truth is, whether we consider ourselves believers or not, we’re all agnostic. We may, at best, think we have it figured out for ourselves in a way that makes sense to us, in whatever direction that may be. But we all have doubts. And as my teacher Dr. Kravitz used to say, “Out of certainty comes doubt, but out of doubt only comes certainty.”
Act as if.
And for us, that means act as if there’s a God. Act as if there’s a Being who created the universe and everything, everyone in it. Act as if there is a spark of that God in every living thing, in every human being. Act as if there may be some kind of World to Come, some heavenly reward for our good deeds here, but know in your heart that you don’t know for sure, and that, ultimately, it’s irrelevant. Because to be a Jew who believes in God means that we are all the more focused on this life, this world, the only one we know for sure, and the people that make this one life something special, something sacred.
Act as if there’s a God. And maybe, just maybe, our lives will be that much more meaningful in the end.
AMEN.
Friday, January 11, 2013
The Plague Upon Our House - Va'era 5773
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.
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 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)