Sermons of Rabbi Joel N. Abraham

Yom Kippur 5772 - Who Can But Prophesy?

2011-10-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

Yom Kippur 5772

Temple Sholom - 8 October 2011

“God says, ‘Cry aloud, do not hold back, let your voice resound like a shofar’”. [Isa. 58:1] So we read in the haftarah this morning. And yet, we do not cry out. We hold back. Our voices do not resound like the shofar. Why? Let us take our lessons this morning, from the text of our prophetic forbears.

Perhaps we do not know what to say. When we look at the classical texts of our prophets, most speak of Divine encounter, of God speaking directly to them and commanding them to speak. In our modern world, those who claim Divine revelation are viewed as either mad or, at best, dangerously partisan. Claims of prophecy are not a recommendation in our modern debate. Real answers demand logic, statistical proof, essays in the Atlantic or Op-Eds in the Wall Street Journal. We dismiss those who say they speak in God’s name. Yet, ironically, here we are this morning, with prayerbooks in our hands, seeking forgiveness from God in order to enter the New Year.

How can we know what to say without feeling that God’s will needs to revealed in thunder and smoke? Remember the lesson from Elijah [I Kings 19:11-13]:

And God said, “Go out and stand upon the mountain before God. And, behold, God passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke the rocks in pieces before God; but God was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake - a fire, but God was not in the fire. And after the fire - a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it it, he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out and stood in the entrance to the cave. And, behold, there came a voice to him.

Prophecy does not come from a thundering, external revelation, but rather a still, small voice within us that we can only hear if are ready to listen.

How, then, do we know when the voice that whispers to us what is right and what is wrong is true; that it is the voice of prophecy and not self-interest? There is no weakness in cribbing from our prophetic ancestors. If the answers seem to agree with the words of those prophets most revered in our tradition - be it Amos, Hosea, or Abraham Joshua Heschel - then that is a criteria by which we can judge.

Let us take an example - we inscribed the words of the prophet Micah on the outside wall of our Temple in Plainfield: [Micah 6:8] God has said, O human, what is good. And what does Adonai require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk with God in humility?” Are we speaking out for justice? Are we showing mercy, without regard for merit? Are we acting in humility or arrogance? These are the standards by which this very congregation has chosen to weigh its actions.

There is a reason that we in Reform Judaism call ourselves the inheritors of the prophetic tradition. Emerging from centuries of rote tradition, our Reform ancestors resonated with the words of Isaiah that we read this morning, that we as a movement have chosen to read at this most sacred moment in our calendar. Isaiah rejects ritual, if it acts as substitute for ethical actions. He cries out, [Isa. 5-7]

Is this the fast that I look for? A day of self-affliction? Bowing your head like a reed, and covering yourself with sackcloth and ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day acceptable to God? Is not this the fast that I look for: to unlock the shackles of injustice, to undo the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every cruel chain? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked, to clothe them, and never to hide yourself from your own kin?

We are Israel, if not prophets, then b’nei nvi’im - the descendants of prophets. We do not need rabbis to interpret these words in sermons to tell us how to apply prophecy to the real world. The words are self-explanatory. They resonate with the still, small voice within us. It is not that we do not know what is right, it is that we neglect to bring out these dusty old sayings and apply them to our modern choices. We live in a world obsessed by the mission statement. Good organizations read every thing they do in light of their mission. If it fits, do it - allocate the necessary resources, go forward. If it does not, then do not. That still, small voice, echoed by our classical prophets, is the mission statement of our Judaism. We need to examine what we do and do not do in its light.

So, now that we know what to say - or at least how to judge what we say in the light of our prophetic tradition, what is it that moves us from the personal to the public? A prophet is not a prophet if they only speak inside their own head. How do we gain the courage to speak out, to carry the prophetic mantle that is our inheritance?

Let us take a step back, before we gird our loins for battle, and review. Over the past ten days, we have examined the prophetic voice - what we have heard and what we find ourselves called to utter - for the sake of making a better world. We have found the prophetic voice within ourselves. We have braved the call to speak of what we must, even politics. We have decided to embrace fear as a motivator for our own speech. The time has come to address the fear that we have of speaking: the greatest fear that keeps us from being prophets.

Later this afternoon we will read the story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet. We might ask why the Bible seeks to preserve the story of a prophet who did not wish to prophesy? Now that we have acknowledged that we, too, are prophets, then an examination of Jonah’s journey, can help us to see why we are often reluctant to act in this role.

Jonah is called to prophesy by God - to speak to the non-Israelites in Nineveh, and give the traditional prophetic warning, that they have been wicked and restitution is on its way. Receiving the Divine command, Jonah gets up - and immediately flees in the opposite direction. God is forced to pursue Jonah - with storms and miraculous fish - until he accepts his responsibility, turns around, and speaks to the people of Nineveh. He does his prophetic duty, and the people repent and are spared. Jonah despairs and rails at God, “I knew it. You always give in. You are ‘endlessly merciful, patient, loving and true’. What is the point?”

We learn from Jonah that the greatest fear of the prophet is not failure, but success. The prophet does not want to speak. Speaking involves standing up and saying things that people do not want to hear: threatening them with dire consequences. What could be worse than foretelling doom and destruction - and having to live to see it carried out? And yet, success means that there is no proof of what the prophet has come to warn. As Jonah knew beforehand, faced with destruction, even the people of Nineveh turn from their ways and repent. Jonah is disappointed that Nineveh is not destroyed - and yet that is the proof that his prophecy has succeeded.

Why speak out, when there is no reward to the prophet? If you are not successful, if you are not believed and no one changes their ways, then you are both ridiculed and ineffective, forced to bear witness to events that you foretold, a Cassandra cursed with a gift of prescience. If you are successful, and people listen, and change their ways, then you have become a false prophet. All the forecast gloom and doom is averted and your word are forgotten. There may be personal satisfaction, but there is little glory.

Prophesy is a thankless job. No one is grateful for being told what to do - even less so, if the advice is right. But, being human is also a thankless job. There is no one patting us on the back and congratulating us for living. The rabbis said, mitzvah goreret mitzvah - the reward of doing one mitzvah is another mitzvah. Part of our humanity, our very nature, is that we are b’tzelem elohim - created in the Divine image. Knowing what we know, living as we do, we damage ourselves when we ignore that which is natural to us. We must speak out. We must work for justice and mercy.

Let us end with the words of the prophet Amos [Amos 3:3-8]:

Can two walk together, unless they be agreed? Will a lion roar in the forest, when he has no prey? Will a young lion cry out of his den, if he has taken nothing? Can a bird fall in a snare upon the earth, where there is no lure for it? Does a snare spring up from the earth, and have taken nothing at all? Shall a shofar be sounded in the city, and the people not be afraid? ... Surely Adonai, our God, will do nothing, without revealing the secret to God’s servants, the prophets. The lion has roared, who will not fear? Adonai, our God has spoken, who can but prophesy?

This is our task. We are the children of Israel, the descendants of prophets, human beings created in the Divine image. The still, small voice speaks within us. We are only true to ourselves if we speak up, if we engage our prophecy. We ask on this Yom Kippur day for forgiveness; we act in this year 5772 in order to merit it.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu.

Kol Nidrei 5772 - Fear is a Go(o)d Thing

2011-10-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

Kol Nidrei 5772

Temple Sholom - 8 October 2011

Behold this day is awesome and full of dread, so at least says the unetaneh tokef, which we will read and sing again tomorrow morning.

A funny thing happened on the way to Yom Kippur services this year. Last Shabbat, when Sandra Nussenfeld was giving the announcements, she wished everyone a good Yom Kippur. I jumped in and said, “No, it was not a good day, but ‘awesome and full of dread’”. And I meant it. I had an epiphany: Being a rabbi - and the son of a rabbi - I have never had a problem understanding the awesome and dreadful nature of the High HolyDays. Even the hosts of heaven are judged, not to mention the rabbi and his or her sermons. These are the few days in which the entire congregation is gathered together, so everything has more import. We’ve got to get just the right sermon, get all the dues in, put out all the important flyers, have the best Kol Nidrei speech. We get one chance all year, so we had better get it right.

But, I realized, outside the Temple offices and committee meetings, perhaps things aren’t quite as dire. The High HolyDays might even be, heaven forfend, something to look forward to - a time to see family, to spend some time in self-contemplation, to visit with old friends and fellow congregants, to feel good and dress nicely. I’m not sure you understand how earth-shattering this revelation was. “Day of fear and trembling” might need to be explained; might not be intuitive and visceral.

Wow.

The words of the liturgy speak it; the music sells it; the fasting and the long drawn-out day in prayer all point the way - this is not happy. We are not supposed to comfortable. We should feel uneasy. More, we should feel we are dangling over a precipice - with just a puff needed to send us hurtling to our doom. This should leave us desperately focused on our prayer and repentance - as a drowning person clings to a lifeline.

Why? Fear is a lousy motivator, we say. Nothing good ever came from fear. We believe in positive feedback, constructive criticism, love rather than chastisement.

Or do we? When we go to work, which we may love and find fulfillment in, do we finish what needs to be done because it feels like the right thing to do, or because we have to? “Have to” - or we will blow the deal, throw the case, miss the sale, lose our job? We give ourselves “deadlines” - think about that word, about where it came from, how it means “do or die”. In the end, we are motivated by consequences - hoping for those we desire, but acting to avoid those we do not.

We need look no farther than our current political arena to verify our belief in the narrative of doomsday. The only thing that seems to get our national legislators to even contemplate legislating is the dire consequences of an economic meltdown - such as the debt limit crisis this past summer, or the shutdown of the Federal government - threatened last week.

But what happens to the boy who cries wolf too many times? It is difficult to build up the adrenaline each time, over and over again. Enough already. Yeah, yeah, shut down the government, who cares? It is now October 7th, one full week past the beginning of the government’s fiscal year and not only is there not a budget in place, there is no thought of getting one until late November. Governmental shutdown is not enough? What about global financial meltdown? What about the US government defaulting on its debts? Each new crisis has to be bigger than the last, no matter how close the previous shave might have been. What are our national motivators? When I was growing up, there was the fear of nuclear war - supposedly prevented by the fear of mutually assured destruction. This generation is driven by the fear of Islamic extremists - of terrorism bringing destruction to our homeland. Perhaps it follows that even our fiscal debates need the tang of armageddon.

Even if we are not ready to entertain the possibility that fear may not be a bad thing, let us at least acknowledge that fear is a part of our everyday environment and even a useful tool. After all, fear of bad consequences serves us very well. If we are afraid we might get burned, we do not touch the stove or stick our finger in an electric socket. Because we fear that our house may catch on fire, we install smoke detectors. We have airbags in our cars. We take out insurance policies on our health, our homes, our cars, our lives. A healthy amount of fear we call wisdom, forethought, preparation.

To go a step further, fear often works to keep our community safe. While an individual might feel that they can safely control their car at excessive speeds, fear of a ticket or of the loss of the driving privilege, keeps most highway drivers within at least 10 miles of the speed limit. In Pirke Avot, Rabbi Chaninah said, “Pray for the welfare of the government, for without the fear of its authority, people would eat each other alive.” We might not admit that we keep from taking what is not ours because of a respect for others and their property, but rather because we are more concerned with being caught then doing the right thing from the beginning.

The prophetic voice is in the trope of fear. The prophet begins with the message that we have done wrong and the consequences are on the way. We are chastised for our failures and threatened with just punishment for our crimes. Only when we have accepted the equation are we shown the way out - repent and change our ways. Then, once again, God will forgive us.

But the prophets, too, had the problem of the boy who cried wolf. Our Biblical ancestors were scolded by Hosea, by Amos, by Isaiah - and each time, we saw the error of our ways and repented. Yet, in another generation, sometimes even with a decade, we had forgotten the lesson. Or, having never been punished, we began to disregard the warnings. Finally, came the prophet Jeremiah with a message that each of us who are parents or teachers have eventually had to give. “I’ve told you, and I’ve warned you and I’ve warned you. Now, you are going to be punished and there will be no reprieve.” The threatened consequences arrived, our Temple was destroyed; our nation scattered; our leaders sent into exile. For, if there is one thing that we should remember that is worse than fear, it is that which we are justly fearful of.

I am afraid that I cannot agree with the statement of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, that we have nothing to fear, but fear itself. Because when we no longer have that fear, we have the consequences. Ask the members of our congregation who can tell you that fear of unemployment is one thing, losing one’s livelihood is something altogether different. We fear homelessness, illness, loss of family - and while all these things might turn out to be not as bad as we had feared, they are certainly worse than the fear itself.

As human beings, we engage in a desperate gamble - that we will have enough time, enough resources, enough strength, to accomplish all that we wish. We make this bargain here, and this trade-off there. We care for ourselves and trust that the world, that society, will take care of itself. We donate what we think we can afford - of our money to political and social causes, of our time to issues of the day, of our energy and attention the things that cannot wait. We all act thus, and are surprised that there is no “them” who have acted to save us from our limited attention spans and our narrow self-interest.

Proverbs, chapter 9, verse ten tells us that t’chilat chochmah, yiryat Adonai - the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Let us then choose to be wise and to embrace our fear; to take advantage of this day of fear and trembling and of the opportunity it represents to motivate ourselves and our community. We should not be so jaded, so burned out, so calloused that even legitimate fear makes no impression upon us. We are but dust and ashes, but knowing how humble we begin, we have so much room to soar.

This will not be the only bimah in America where you will not hear, re-quoted again, the words of the recently deceased Steve Jobs from his 2005 Stamford commencement speech:

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something...almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.

I would, humbly, amend Jobs’ question from “would I want to do what I am about to do today” to “If I were to stand judgement on my life - balancing all the good and the bad over its duration - am I tipping the scale in the direction that I should?”

What are those things that, as we head into the year 5772, we should justifiably fear?

Was the previous generation the apex of the American experiment? Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum have just authored a book, taking off on one of President Obama’s theme in the last State of the Union, “That Used to Be Us”.

“As we were writing this book,” Friedman and Mandelbaum explain, “we found that when we shared the title with people, they would often nod ruefully and ask: ‘But does it have a happy ending?’ Our answer is that we can write a happy ending, but it is up to the country—to all of us—to determine whether it is fiction or nonfiction. We need to study harder, save more, spend less, invest wisely, and get back to the formula that made us successful as a country in every previous historical turn. What we need is not novel or foreign, but values, priorities, and practices embedded in our history and culture, applied time and again to propel us forward as a country. That is all part of our past. That used to be us and can be again—if we will it.”

As we asked last Friday morning, is this moment in the lifecycle of our planet the time when we look back and mark the beginning of the decline of humanity and its civilization? Al Gore closed his narration of the film, An Inconvenient Truth, with the lines, “Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now.”

Is this generation that will once more mark a Jewish exile and see another dream of a Jewish homeland destroyed - by enemies external or internal? Last year, Israeli filmmaker Yaron Kaftori created a 50 minute mock documentary called 2048, which imagines a future filmmaker looking back at Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008, from the perspective of the exiles of an Israel which no longer exists. In a Jerusalem Report article, Kaftori said, “[It] was never an issue for me... This country was always strong, it was always secure. [But now,] I feel like many other people, that we are headed in the wrong direction and we are threatening the demolition of our state. And it will not come from an external threat... We are a very divided state. There are so many groups of people – I don’t even know what to call them – who want different things. No one cares about each other.”

We rightly fear for our country, for our planet, for our families, for ourselves. This day, this moment right now, this day is full of dread because we are here to do nothing else but contemplate the consequences of our action and inaction. This day is awesome - and awe-inspiring - because it is not our last. It is another first moment to decide what we will do in the year to come. Whether we will face our legitimate fears and act on them, or continue to live in fear and hope everything will turn out all right.

Now is the time to be gripped by fear and trembling. Now is the time to hear and to be the prophetic voice. Now is the time to hear the shofar call. Now is the time pull ourselves back from the precipice and to do whatever is necessary to make the world all that we wish it to be.

L’shanah tovah tikatevu - may we take up the pens and write for all of us a better year.

RH Morn 5772 - Go Ahead - Talk Politics; It's the Prophetic Thing to Do

2011-09-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

Rosh haShanah Morning I 5772

Temple Sholom - 29 September 2011

We are struck this morning by two acts of personal engagement - Abraham who, at the request of God, takes his favorite son and heir to a far mountain to be offered up as a sacrifice; and Hannah, whose desperate plea for a child leads her to offer him up, before he is even born, in service to God. Hannah, who prays so passionately that the priest Eli suspects her of being drunk. Abraham, who himself binds his son, lifts him to the altar and raises the knife for slaughter. And there is something else that these two events have in common - they both feature a difficulty in communication. When Hannah tries to speak to her husband, Elkanah, about how difficult she finds the fact that she has not had a child, he dismisses her concerns, saying, “Do I not mean more to you then ten sons?” While her communication with God is successful, God’s supposed representative, the priest Eili, does not understand that she is praying, but thinks that she is drunk. Abraham, when asked by God to bring his son Isaac for a sacrifice, seems to sneak out early in the morning without speaking to his wife, and Isaac’s mother, Sarah. On the journey, as Isaac asks his father about what they are doing, “I see the fire and the knife, my father, but where is the ram for the sacrifice?”, Abraham can only evade and say that God will provide the sacrifice. There is no evidence of any words every again spoken between Abraham and Isaac, or even Abraham and Sarah, who dies right after the end of this story.

Our inter-familial conversations are often bounded by such silences - areas that we believe are minefields with dangerous consequences if we tread too far and step in the wrong place. Never talk about the Red Sox around Uncle Norm. Don’t even mention Grandma Annie’s meatloaf around your father, he hated it. Very often, we remember the prohibitions longer than the reasons. We become like the rabbis of the Talmud, who placed fences around the law - telling us not to mix milk and meat, let we inadvertently violate the Torah’s prohibition on boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. When we bring new people into the family conversation, we first carefully lay out the map with all its forbidden territories. As families grow and intermix, soon there is nothing to talk about about at all. And, above all, never talk politics.

Don’t talk about politics at family gatherings. Don’t talk about politics at the dinner table. Don’t talk about politics in school. Don’t talk about politics at work. Don’t talk politics in Temple - and, certainly, not from the bimah. Is it any wonder that our politicians can’t talk politics without yelling at each other? They don’t have any experience in doing so. If every time there is a possibility for a conversation between different viewpoints, we shut down the discussion, how do we learn to speak with those who disagree? Even worse, if we only discuss politics with those who share our views, how do we ever test our beliefs? How do we expand our views?

So, here we go, the Rabbi is going to talk politics from the bimah - and I dare you not to leave.

Interestingly enough, everyone else seems to have written this sermon for me already this year. In the Wall Street Journal last week, Tevi Troy, former Jewish liaison for the Bush White House, laid out his case against the “political sermon” in a reaction to President Obama’s Rosh haShanah call to American Rabbis. He said, in part:

Political sermonizing is a mistake for many reasons. First, the Holy Days are supposed to bring forth a universal message about the unity of the Jewish people, the importance of our shared religious tradition, and the need to rededicate ourselves to observance of the Torah in the year to come.

Then there's the risk of alienating part of the congregation. Even if you know that 70%-80% of your synagogue votes one way—and public opinion polls suggest that this may be the case in Conservative and Reform synagogues—why risk alienating the other 20%-30%? In many (or most) communities, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the only time certain congregants set foot in synagogue that year. Why risk driving them away with a message that could offend?

Furthermore, while it may appear easy to find support for left-wing political positions in the Torah and rabbinical sources, the truth is that the Jewish tradition doesn't give much guidance on the optimum level of marginal tax rates, Medicare restructuring, or food-stamp funding. To claim otherwise is to give false guidance.

The passages read aloud on the High Holidays each year are filled with the most important problems of the human condition, including Jonah's attempt to shirk his responsibilities, Hannah's desperate plea for a child, and God's testing of Abraham's faith with the binding of Isaac. All of these stories still resonate today, and skillful speakers can use them to guide congregants.

The mandate of religious leaders is to convey to their communities spiritual encouragement and the wisdom of the ages. For the other stuff, there's cable news.

Two responses followed rather immediately - the first on the Huffington Post from Rabbi Jill Jacobs, founder of Jewish Funds for Social Justice and currently executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights. She was referred to earlier in Troy’s piece and responded:

Rabbis (and ministers, priests, imams and others) should not -- ethically or legally -- tell their communities how to vote. But preaching about how to vote is not the same as preaching about what values and priorities ought to be embodied in health care policy. Preaching about how to vote is partisan. Preaching about health care, poverty and how we structure a just society is moral leadership.

There is no better time than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for rabbis to speak about the pressing issues of the moment. Troy characterizes these days as a time "to bring forth a universal message about the unity of the Jewish people, the importance of our shared religious tradition, and the need to rededicate ourselves to observance of the Torah in the year to come."...

Rabbis must bring the thousands of years of accumulated Jewish wisdom to bear on these issues. This is what it means to be a religious leader. A religious leader does not stick to "safe" topics like Jewish unity and ritual practice (though these have their place, too). A religious leader takes ethical stands on the hard issues of the moment -- and does so with integrity, with a strong basis in his or her religious tradition, and out of love and a passion for creating a more just world.

We do not need more partisan politics. But we are in desperate need of religious moral leadership.

And, today in the New Jersey Jewish News, editor Andrew Silow-Carroll strikes a similar note. Beginning with the example of Rabbi Joachim Prinz, escapee from Nazi Germany, and an early voice, here in New Jersey, against the rise of Naziism and for the Civil Rights movement, Silow-Caroll concludes:

I don’t turn to rabbis to tell me how to vote, but I do look to them to show me the ways Torah can inform all that we say and do. When it comes to politics, I am not asking rabbis to give me the right answer, but to help me ask the right questions. The rabbis’ challenge is to do this without turning the bima into a bully pulpit.

And if they can’t engage with questions of policy? That’s Judaism’s loss. As Prinz sermonized, “I was never able to conceive of religion, and certainly not of Judaism, as something that could continue to exist in splendid isolation.”

I would sum it up simply. I do not look for someone else to tell me what I should do because of their religion. Rather, I look to the Torah and to Jewish tradition to help me decide what my obligation is in the world - how I am to treat others, and how I expect to be treated. Quite obviously, this moral guidance will influence me in all the choices in my life - from what I purchase to whom I vote for. I do not look for the Torah to magically (perhaps using a secret numeric code) tell me which lever to pull, but rather set up the criteria by which I judge my options. As a rabbi, I agree with Andrew Silow-Carroll that a good sermon will engage the congregation in the right questions and point them to the texts of Judaism that may provide answers. I agree with Rabbi Jacobs that I am not here to stick to safe topics, lest some individuals in the congregation become uncomfortable (and more about this on Erev Yom Kippur). Finally, I agree with Tevi Troy that the point of a good sermon - High HolyDay or no, is to “bring forth... the importance of our shared religious tradition, and the need to rededicate ourselves to observance of the Torah in the year to come”. But, our shared religious tradition tells us over and over to remember that we were slaves in Egypt, and obedience to the Torah means that we cannot stand idly by while our neighbor bleeds. These are statements with political implications and to not say so from the bimah is to eviscerate our strong Jewish tradition.

But that is my prophetic role and, as we spoke about last night, you have just as important and compelling prophetic role as I do.

Now that you have been convinced that it is not only valid, but demanded that politics be spoken from the bimah, the next step is to convince you to speak politics yourself - at home, at work, on line, or wherever you converse. As Americans, we tend to shy away from difficult subjects. We do not speak about domestic violence in the Jewish community - but it happens, and ignoring it does not make it go away. In fact, we give shelter to abusers when we refuse to speak up. Not to set aside that domestic violence is a real and serious issue, but we do the same with politics. When we cede the field to demagogues, we lose the middle ground; the common ground where people of good faith can converse with each other and come to mutual agreement.

If we do not speak politics out loud and in public, our politicians become convinced that we do not care. Or, if we do care, we are not motivated enough to anything so active as voting our convictions. Should we be surprised if they only listen to those on the extremes? Who else is there to listen to if no one else speaks up? Here is a much ignored secret: Money does not elect politicians. In the end, money can be used to influence voters, but the only way to get elected, or re-elected, is to garner more votes than your opponent. We must let our representatives know that they are OUR representatives, whether we voted for them or no. We must assure them that we take an active interest in what they do, that we will hold them accountable for their actions and inaction, that they should be more concerned about constituents than party.

Would you like some concrete steps to take? Find out who represents you - in your county and the state legislature, as well as in Congress. Visit them when they are in their local offices. Let them know that you expect a note or e-mail every week telling you what they have done. Read it. Write back. Praise them when they have done things that you agree with, especially if you more often disagree. Tell them what you want to happen - if you prefer active collaboration and cooperation rather than posturing and deadlock. E-mail is easy; Facebook even easier - let them know that you are paying attention to what they do, that you have expectations that they listen to you - even if they disagree - and that you will vote according to your beliefs and your confidence in those you represent. Give them the perverse message that their short-term goal of re-election is incumbent on how they act on long-term priorities.

We should not be afraid to use our prophetic voices - in speaking to our representatives, relatives, friends, or colleagues. We can say, I feel this way because I was raised to believe that what is hateful to me, I should not do to others, as Hillel said; that I heard in synagogue that I am obliged to help even my enemy, if I see them struggling on the roadside. We can feel confident in expressing our opinion and its religious backing. In doing so, we are not attempting to convert them to our beliefs, but rather to help them understand our reasoning, where we come from, what motivates us to act the way that we do.

There is a rich text of prophetic tradition - not on only in our Tanach, but in all of our sacred Jewish texts - even in the prayerbook you hold in your hand. Yet, those words are dead lying on that page if we choose not to lift them up. If the only place that they are spoken is between these walls, once or twice a year, they will serve no purpose. The words exist to inspire - to travel past a rote repetition by our lips and to root in our minds, our hearts and souls. They cry out to be re-worked, re-stated, re-imagined, and re-formed by individuals in each generation - repeated by each of us to others. Do not allow yourself to say, it is not my job, someone else will do it - or no one else will. Do not say, if I speak I am only but one voice that will be lost in the wind - you may inspire others to speak up as well. We call ourselves the chosen people, we are all chosen.

One of our greatest prophets, Jeremiah, had the same doubts. He complained to God, who replied:

Before I formed you in the belly I knew you; and before you came forth out of the womb I sanctified you, and I ordained you a prophet to the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak; for I am a child. But the Lord said to me, Say not, I am a child; for you shall go to all to whom I shall send you, and whatever I command you you shall speak. Be not afraid of their faces; for I am with you to save you, said the Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have this day set you over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant. (Jeremiah 1:4-10)

In this new year, let us resolve not to doubt that each of us were also known and blessed, sanctified and ordained - chosen to be prophets, and that words that we find that rise from our hearts to our mouths, these, too, are words of prophecy.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu.

RH Eve 5772 - Would That All the People of Adonai Were Prophets

2011-09-28T20:08:00.001-07:00

Erev Rosh haShanah 5772

Temple Sholom - 29 September 2011

This Rosh haShanah, I feel a little bit like Penn and Teller, but without the atheism. Penn and Teller, for those of you not in on the secret, are a pair of non-magicians, a duo who perform by showing off exactly how their magic illusions are done. In that spirit, I would like to explain what I am going to do in these High HolyDay sermons - give you a peak behind the curtain, come forward and give my best performance, and then invite you backstage to see how it all works.

This year, in particular, I find myself compelled to speak with the prophetic voice - the voice that we preserve in our Bible to read in companionship with every Torah portion. Tomorrow morning, we will read the story of the prophet Samuel and the circumstances by which he was petitioned from God by his mother, Hannah, and later came to hear God. This story, of the sacrifice of an only child to God by a parent, stands against the story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son, Isaac. Next week, at Yom Kippur, we will read in the Torah about how each one of us stood at Sinai to enter into covenant with God, which will be tempered with Isaiah’s thundering denunciation of empty ritual without ethical behavior. On Yom Kippur afternoon, to the explanation of God’s command to be holy, we bring the story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet.

Each of these prophetic texts illuminate for us three different aspects of the role of the prophet in Judaism. Samuel teaches us about listening to the soft call of the Divine voice, and how to answer when we are called. Isaiah is the most powerful example of what we often identify as the prophetic voice - the thundering chastisement of hypocritical behavior, the demand for repentance and change, and the threat of punishment if that change is not made. Finally, Jonah shows us the human face of prophecy, the difficulty of confronting others and the fear of taking such a risk.

All of these are of course challenges for the modern sermonizer. I have sat in church and been jealous of the Baptist preacher who has prayed for God to speak through her, and then given a sermon of inspiration. Honestly, I could choose any one of a number of different subjects for these sermons. Which, however, would be right for this congregation, at this moment, in this place? Why do we hold this religious service - an attempt to connect ourselves more closely to whatever we consider the Divine - hostage and pause for fifteen or twenty minutes to listen to what the guy in the white robe has to say? Something that is both new and contemporary - never been heard before, and yet is timeless - carrying the weight of three thousand years of tradition. In some ways, it would be infinitely easier, if God were to write these sermons for me...

And yet, perhaps God has, and I just need to open the Book and read. Isn’t the message of Isaiah still relevant to us today? A former congregant has chastised me and several of my colleagues and our congregations for concerning ourselves on the High HolyDays with our own congregational fundraising when there are millions starving in Africa. Is this the fast that I have ordained? Is it not to feed the hungry? But, were I to thunder and rail and “go all Bible-thumping Old Testament” on you, would I find that threats and fear are the best way to engage a modern audience?

It is risky to stand up here and tell others what to do. There is the obvious risk - I could so offend you that members of the congregation would seek my resignation, or at the least, vociferously argue that I be reprimanded, or, perhaps, vote with their feet and ears by not returning to our congregational worship. There is also the more subtle risk - that despite an inspired eloquence and fervent message, nothing changes. All that sermonic energy leads to a handshake and a “Good sermon, Rabbi”, but no self-reflection, no action. That perhaps is the more telling risk - it is easier to give a sermon without an exhortation than have to face the fact that a message delivered with full devotion of heart and soul, still fails to move. Better not to try at all, perhaps.

This service begins with me, as your prayer leader, standing before the Ark in an act of public humility- “Behold, me of little merit”. And yet, with the strange reverse humility of Rabbinic Judaism, I am still standing in front of the congregation and saying it. There is an old joke about how one Yom Kippur, the Rabbi, in a furor of repentance, throws herself to the ground in front of the Ark and cries out, “O God, I am but dust and ashes.” Equally moved, the Cantor throws himself to the ground and says, “O God, I am but dust and ashes.” Carried away by the fervor evident on the bimah, the Temple President throws herself to the ground and also cries out, “I am but dust and ashes.” At which point the Rabbi and Cantor turn to each other and say, “Look who thinks she is but dust and ashes!”

So, why am I any better than any of you in the congregation, and why am I the one to stand up here and tell you what to do and how to behave? I am reminded of the words of the disgraced Korach, who demanded, “Are not the entire congregation of Israel holy? Does not God dwell among us?” The answer is, other than that you have chosen me to stand here and deliver this message to you, I have no more right than any of you to deliver it. That is why I am taking this opportunity to explain what I am doing and how I am doing it. For if I have no more right than you to speak up in a prophetic voice, then you have no less right, no less duty than I, to speak up as well.

The frustration of the prophet is not in the message, but in the need for having to deliver it. We are enjoyed by our Torah, in the book of Leviticus 19:17, from the Holiness Code that we will read on Yom Kippur afternoon,”You must indeed reprove your neighbor.” We are not only responsible for our own behavior, but we are commanded to be so self-righteous that we tell others what behavior we expect from them. Everyone should be a prophet - and the Rabbis had a saying that if all Israel were not prophets, we were at least b’nei nvi’im - the children of prophets. The truth is that we do judge others, but our society frowns upon us letting them know - whether for good or for ill. Is it fair that we talk about other people behind their back, but do not let them know directly what we would tell someone else about them?

Our goal for these High HolyDays is to become, not a nation of priests, but a congregation of prophets. Tomorrow morning, we will talk about the need to talk politics - not only from the bimah, but at our dinner tables and with our friends. On the second morning of Rosh haShanah, we will spend a little time seeing how we can bring be prophetic and bring the Divine into our own lives, through our trimester theme, the Jewish lifecycle. On Erev Yom Kippur, we will look straight in the eye of the fire and brimstone Hebrew prophet and think about why we seem to need a day that is “awesome and full of dread” to even begin a process of self-reflection. As we conclude our ten days of repentance, on Yom Kippur morning, we will stand with Jonah in the whale and under the gourd, and ask what it is we fear that keeps us from prophecy.

In the Book of Numbers, parashat B’ha’alotcha, Moses finally takes his father-in-law Yitro’s advice (which he gave way back before the Ten Commandments in Exodus) to delegate authority an appoint magistrates from each of the tribes to judge the people. Moses gathers all of the new judges together at the mishkan - the portable sanctuary in the wilderness, where God’s spirit descends upon them. Two of their number, Eldad and Medad, were still outside in the camp and not at the ceremony. But, at that moment, they are also filled with God’s spirit and begin to prophesy. A young man comes running up to Moses to report, and Joshua says that they must lock these untamed prophets away. Moses answers, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all of the people of Adonai were prophets and that Adonai would put the Divine spirit upon each of them!”

In this New Year, let us explore what it means to live up to Moses’s dream, and for all of us to be prophets.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu.

One of the Things You Need is Love

2010-09-18T11:59:00.000-07:00

Yom Kippur 5771

Temple Sholom – 18 September 2010

Over the past ten days, we have explored the idea of an annual Jewish “physical” – an examination of our spiritual selves and a prescription for going forward. On Erev Rosh haShanah, we got that card in the mail reminding us that it was time to schedule our appointment. On the morning of Rosh haShanah, we received the first of our three-part prescription – take some Torah and call me in the morning. Last night, we received the second part, exercise our prayer muscles. Following our Jewish appropriation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, which we have translated as Torah, avodah, and g’milut chasadim, this morning we look at the last piece, the one that we already feel called to do, to engage in acts ofg’milut chasadim.

If I were looking to plagiarize, or to reuse an old sermon, surely I would find that most of the sermons filling my files would have something to do with social justice. After all, I am a Reform rabbi, inheritor of the prophetic tradition which is so strongly stated in the haftarah from Isaiah that we just read. “Is not this the fast that I look for: to unlock the shackles of injustice, to undo the fetters of bondage, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every cruel chain? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into your house? When you see the naked, to clothe them, and never to hide yourself from your own kin?”[1]

Wow, listening to that quote, it seems that social justice is angry. Social justice is the voice of indignation, of righteous wrath at everything which is wrong with the world. We stand up for others rights. We march. We protest. We petition. We demand. We are zealous to make things better.

Perhaps, though, this is not g’milut chasadim – which we translate as “acts of loving kindness”. Certainly, social justice may begin in kindness, but it seems too strident to be gentle and loving. Love, perhaps, is something that we may need to take a deeper look at. Love may not be the passionate lust for a better world or the infatuation for a particular cause. Those may just be crushes. Real love is not in the instant of attraction, but in the long-term understanding of another – of accepting people not for who we want them to be, but who they truly are. After all, we love popular heroes, until they do something frail and human and we reject them. We do not have this reaction, this luxury, with our own kin. When our children, our parents, our spouses, or our friends make mistakes, or fail to live up to our ideal image of who they are, if we truly love them, then we do not patronize them by forgiving their failings, we readjust our understanding to see them as they truly are, not as we would have them be.

According to my wife, my mother gave her very good advice when we were first dating – and I share it with couples who come to me preparing to be married. She said that real love is not being in love all the time, but being willing to fall in love with someone over and over again. There are times when we are exasperated by those we love; when we are willing to give up. Love and commitment is when we take a deep breath, square our shoulders, and resolve to find a way to fall in love again. As I say to those couples, love is when after storming out at the end of a furious argument, we are secure knowing that we will turn around and make it right. (Perhaps it should be no surprise that the sequel to Eat, Pray, Love is entitled Committed.)

This love is what we mean by g’milut chasadim. Doing what is right though it frustrates us and those whom we are helping may not even notice, or seem ungrateful. G’milut chasadim is still maintaining that relationship, no matter what the obstacles.

This morning, let us look at three examples of love – warts and all, and what we can do to engage in this part of our prescription for a healthy Jewish life.

The first love is Israel. In each generation, we say that the relationship between Diaspora and Israeli Jews is at its lowest point ever, that we continue to grow farther apart; that we are estranged and do not understand one another. We reach the point when even speaking about our differences is irritating. This conflict, in the American Jewish community, is currently reflected in an institutional struggle. For many years, the voice of American Jewry in Washington was ceded to AIPAC – the American-Israel Public Affairs Committtee, which subtitles itself “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby”. Recently, because of the continued violence in the Middle East, and the stagnation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, a group of American Jews decided that AIPAC did not match its ideology of more nuanced support of Israel, and formed J-Street, subtitled “the Political Home for Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace Americans”. Each group criticizes the other. J-Street says that AIPAC is “Israel – right or wrong” and does not reflect the conflicted position of mainstream American Jewry. AIPAC says that J-Street is providing comfort to Israel’s enemies and weakening support for Israel in the US government. Both sides say that they are in favor of the peace process and a two-state solution (one for Israelis and one for Palestinians). Both say that the other is doing more harm than good.

This summer, I joined an organization called Rabbis for Israel. Formed by an American born, but now Israeli Progressive rabbi, Micky Boyden, Rabbis for Israel has since morphed into We Are for Israel, subtitled “Centrist Advocates for Realistic Peace”. What attracted me to the organization was not just that it found a middle ground between AIPAC and J-Street, but that it brought Israeli and Diaspora rabbis (and now others) together in supporting peace. One of Rabbi Boyden’s key points is that criticism from the Jewish community should be given inside the community, rather than aired in public. I agree that we should start there – and think that this coalition is uniquely positioned not mainly to get this message to the Israeli government, but to build common cause between Israeli and Diaspora Jews. And here’s how we return to love – Israelis often belittle comments from those living outside the state of Israel, because we are not running the same risks or paying the same price as those who live with their families on the front line. Diaspora Jews, living a world of democracy and very little threatening violence, fail to understand why Israel persists in acting in ways which the rest of the world can so easily condemn. We Are for Israel gives us space to work together, to share our common love of a Jewish state, whether we choose to live there or not. It allows Israelis to see not only that we care, but why we are so passionate, and allows us to ally with voices in Israel rather than about Israel.

The second love is freedom. Over the past decade, we in America – and throughout the world – have had our love of liberty brutally collide with our concerns for safety and security. In the name of safety, we have accepted long lines and intrusive searches when we travel, the loss of privacy in our communication and personal finance, the restriction of our public dialogue. Yet, we still cling to the ideals of our Constitution, whose freedoms we claim that we are trying to defend. We react suspiciously and immediately to certain words and concepts. When we hear “mosque” and “ground zero”, we picture people in robes and headscarves rejoicing as we mourn. In our love of freedom, we must take a moment to breathe. To remember that we were slaves in Egypt, that once the Roman Empire decreed that no new synagogues could be built, and we were left with no places to worship. Our Reform movement, through the words of its executive, Rabbi Eric Yoffie and our political arm, the Religious Action Center, have taken the lead in organizing discussions among religious leaders and making public statements about the proposed Cordoba Center.

This summer, I had the opportunity, vicariously through my wife, to be engaged with some of the work that the 92^nd Street Y is doing in New York. The Y’s mission is to showcase Jewish knowledge and culture to the wider world. Michelle was advising a start-up camp, Passport:NYC, created through an incubator grant of the Foundation for Jewish Camping. We spent a lovely Shabbat evening with the camp, at the Y, and saw how they built a Jewish Shabbat-observing community.

The mission of the 92^nd Y is relevant because it is not only the model for the Cordoba Center, but lay and professional leaders at the Y have been helping with this project since its inception. The idea of this Center is not for Muslims to have a space to worship, but for non-Muslims to see first-hand what Islam brings to our American and world culture. All of this tumult seems to be further proof that we need this center, so that we can learn more, and speak out of love and knowledge rather than ignorance and fear.

The third love is politics which, although banned from many family dinner tables, is a common topic of discussion nonetheless. Politics, as I have pointed out before, is the interaction between human beings. There is no way to build a society without political interaction. As Jews, we love dialogue and debate – it is the core of our Rabbinic Judaism as preserved in the Talmud. The whole enterprise of the second part of the Talmud, the g’marah, was to examine the disagreements of the mishnah – the first part, and to find the areas where there was common ground. The tagline of an old rabbinic story is that eilu v’eilu d’varim elohim chayim – these and those are words of the living God. What has made the American political scene so repellent is that it has lost this concept – that I may disagree with another’s ideas, but that they are still ideas worthy of debate. And, that discussion may lead to something neither of us might have come to on our own; that might not make either of us happy, but that does make things better.

We must once again extend our love beyond our own political agenda to a love of the political debate. We must embrace democracy, warts and all, which means that we not only have to listen to the arguments of others, but we have to pay attention as well, showing respect if, for nothing else, because they, too, have the same right to speak that we do.

There are many others of our loves where we could define our failures and map out ways we need to grow – in the preference we give to Haitian earthquake victims to those of the Pakistani flooding, in the focus on finding tax breaks for the middle class over the accelerating rise in poverty in the United States – but let us use this moment to lay out the general issue and take the year to investigate the specifics.

G’milut chasadim is truly not the easiest of our three-part prescription for Jewish health. We may actually find easier to focus on study and prayer than going beyond the abstract concept of social justice to the concrete of loving our actual neighbors. Yet, the tangible nature of these actions is what actually can mend our Jewish souls. An obsession with the abstract can lead to dislocation, frustration that with all our energy and effort, little changes. Taking a small piece, staying in the real, can let us participate in incremental change – something that we can hold on to.

It is no surprise that in our three-fold prescription for Jewish health, we have turned in different directions. Torah, and Jewish learning, is perhaps the most internal. We build up ourselves. Avodah – prayer – begins to direct us outward, so that we see the world as larger than our own limitations. G’milut chasadim – acts of lovingkindness – brings us into the world in a hands-on way. Together, said the rabbis, these three legs can make a place for us to support ourselves which cannot be shaken. Together, the three parts of this prescription can help us feel more stable. We are Jews because we have either been born so or have chosen this path somewhere in our lives. We have Judaism because it supports us in trying to be fully Jewish, fully human.

And now, the check-up is complete. As the sun sets this evening, we will head out of our spiritual physician’s office, relieved that we have escaped without too much bad news. We stop at the desk and pick up the scrip for our prescription. Now the state of our Jewish health lies in our hands. Will we put that scrip aside and fail to fill it? Will we, before we leave, set up our next appointment, to make sure that we will do our part to work in partnership for our Jewish health? At the end our n’ilah service, we sing of the gates that are open – gates of potential for our new year. We ask for the gates of righteousness, or understanding, of hope, of physical health. This year, let us open the gates to pursue Jewish health and let us resolve to enter, to fill our prescription, and to make 5771 a year of learning, of prayer, and of loving deeds.

[1] Isaiah 58

Prayer - It's Not Easy

2010-09-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

Kol Nidrei 5771

Temple Sholom – 17 September 2010

So, a man goes to the doctor after having fallen on his wrist. He is in horrible pain and his wrist is swollen. The doctor takes an x-ray and gives him the bad news that his wrist is broken, but the good news that after six weeks in a cast, it should be as good as new. The man asks the doctor if he will be able to play golf after those six weeks. The doctor assures him that he will. The man then grins and says, “That’s great, because I never could before.”

During these Days of Awe, as we receive our prescription for a healthy Jewish life, we are like that patient. Looking honestly at our lives over the past year, we may be able to see where we are broken. God, as our spiritual doctor, has given us a prescription of t’shuvah, of repentance. We look forward to having finished that perhaps bitter course of treatment. We could ask God, “After these ten days, will I be able to pray?” God might answer, “I don’t know, could you pray before?”

I had a moment of sympathy for Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love, as she began to explain her relationship with God. The purpose of the memoir is to share her journey, and yet she knows that people who talk about their relationship with God often alienate those to whom they are speaking. Before attempting to do so, she acknowledges the difficulty of using language, often a tool of reason, to explain the divine. If the audience has such a relationship, then the conversation is already half over. If not, the odds of communicating over such a high barrier are almost insurmountable. She describes herself sobbing uncontrollably in her bathroom in the middle of the night. She has come to realize that she does not want to stay married to her husband. She is at a complete loss as to how to proceed, when she begins to pray to God. At some point, she suddenly stops sobbing. She receives what, for her, is the perfect divine message, “Liz, go back to bed.” Not an answer to her situation, but a caring piece of advice so that she will be able to confront the difficult decision when the time comes. In the end, she illustrates this epiphany not as a moment of religious conversion, but as the beginning of a religious conversation.[1]

The moment is an illustration of Gilbert’s theology, and an elegant and understandable explanation of one person’s expectation and fulfillment of a relationship with God. In her despair, prayer is the correct prescription. The effect of that prayer is a remedy to her suffering –not a cure, but something which will take away the pain and allow her to move toward healing.

In our metaphor of the High HolyDays as our annual spiritual check-up, we looked last week at Torah, at learning, as part of a prescription to good Jewish health. But, in the same way that our physician recommends to us not only a better diet, but also exercise, prayer is also a part of that prescription – and very like exercise in its discipline and application. Prayer becomes easier as we practice and make it a regular part of our daily regimen. In at least one way, however, prayer is very unlike exercise. When we are prescribed exercise, we generally agree with our doctor that it would be a good thing to exercise more often. We understand readily the benefits for our weight, our cardiovascular system, the general health of our body. What is difficult is finding the time to devote to exercise. We are not afraid to tell our friends or co-workers that we are taking up exercise – our society accepts such regimens as not only acceptable, but praises the person who may have a conversionary moment and become a disciple of physical training. Yet, in the day to day pursuit of our lives, finding time to exercise is difficult. We purchase gym memberships, register for classes, clean up our bikes, buy workout gear, but after a purposeful start, often end up with our elliptical machines used instead as hangers for clothes. We know that exercise is good; our community supports us in that activity; but we often fail in its execution ourselves.

To the contrary, prayer is easy to find time for. Personal prayer fits easily into the interstices in our lives. We can pray on the train or car during our morning commute. We can pray while riding the elevator. We can pray at our desks without anyone the wiser. We can even pray as we exercise. Yet, if we were to mention to our friends, family, or co-workers that we were developing a regimen of prayer, we fear that they might step away from us; label us as fanatics. Gilbert notes ironically that yoga, in India, is a religious discipline – a method of prayer.[2] In the United States, yoga has found acceptability as an exercise regimen. Even for those who may find the same value in yoga – the attuning of body to a relaxing mind; the chance to put things in balance – we are afraid to do anything but cloak the spiritual in the physical.

Oddly enough, it is quite easy to argue for the efficacy of prayer. There are many rational arguments about how stopping and taking time for self-reflection (as we do on these High HolyDays) can lower our stress, improve our productivity, and make us feel better about ourselves and our lives. There are studies about how cultivating an attitude of thankfulness can make us healthier and smooth our interactions with others. Twelve-step programs include a regular ritual of prayer to release addicts from the pressure of their addiction – and we have found no more successful treatment for addiction than such programs. Their adoption and popularization of Reinhold Niebuhr’s serenity prayer has spread throughout mainstream culture.

But… and again, I say but, engaging prayer for the rational sake of its proven benefits misses a vital point. I would compare it to the non-Jewish family who choose to send their child to the JCC pre-school because they offer a great education, are just around the block, and all their child’s friends go there. That family finds itself surprised when their child, a few months in, starts asking them to light Shabbat candles and celebrate Pesach with matzah. All the reasons and effects are there, but the core of it – what makes all those things come together, is a part of the package. For prayer, the core is a relationship with God. Praying can never be for the sake of prayer alone.

Now God is easy to dismiss with a straw man argument. We create a definition for God and then we shoot it down. It is analogous to our disdain for idolatry. We are all familiar with the midrash about Abraham and his father. The story goes that Terach owned an idol shop and one day, left his son Abraham in charge. Abraham, in his dawning understanding of God, takes a stick and smashes all the idols in the shop but for one. He puts the stick in that idol’s hand. When his father comes back and begins to chastise him, Abraham says that the big idol did it. Terach answers that such an act would be impossible for a stone idol. Abraham then counters that if the idol is not even as powerful as a human being, why would anyone worship it? The story is a lovely illustration of Abraham’s spiritual development, but it is a lousy argument against idolatry. Idolaters do not believe that their stone images are gods, but that they are physical representations of them. We are commanded, at the beginning of the Ten Commandments, not to make any images of that which is inconceivable in static, unchanging form. What is inconceivable in stone, clay, or precious metals, may also be larger than words or human ideas. Imagining that God is an old man with a beard writing in a big book can be just as much idolatry as a statue with the head of an elephant. The problem with either type of idolatry is that we are fooled into thinking that the limitations of the image are the definition of divinity. God is so much bigger than we can imagine. But, imagine we must, and so we construct metaphors to define and understand our relationship. We should not get trapped by confusing the metaphor with God.

How then do we proceed with this God piece? First, in a very zen-like manner, we have to get rid of our baggage. We have to let go of being afraid for others to know that we are seeking a relationship with the Divine. We have to let go of our fear of God – our fear that, if we try we might get something wrong and therefore are better not trying, rather than angering God. We have to find a way around the centrality of the image or metaphor in our relationship with God. As human beings, it seems that we are most comfortable with imagery. On these High HolyDays, we want to be forgiven, so we imagine God as a stern ruler and as a parent – a being with the awesome power to forgive (and protect us) no matter what we have done and a being who loves us unconditionally enough to give us what we may not deserve. Gilbert imagines her god as the fullest potential of herself – the wise woman who has experienced life and found a way to be content and enjoy. This image has its Jewish parallel. Our Torah states that we are created in the Divine image. If we turn that around, it means that God is a fuller, more realized version of ourselves. This idea runs close to the humanist idea that God is the goodness in all of us. There are ideas of God as mathematical perfection, the benign creator, the Gaea-like spirit that ties all of nature together. None of these ideas are wrong, but none of them are fully right. We move ourselves toward an acceptance of God, if not an understanding, when we realize that all of our conceptions may fall short, but can each be useful steps. The concept we have in Judaism is that of Godwrestling – the commitment to never being completely satisfied with either our relationship or image of God, but still struggling, as long as we live, with searching for that meaning.

Jewish prayer, the method which got us through this evening to this point, is a tried and true method of bringing us into relationship with God, if we are ready to give it credence and do the work. After all, exercise is work – “no pain, no gain”. Even yoga is work – no one falls into perfect meditation at their first class. Why shouldn’t prayer be work? We need not only to prepare ourselves for the exercise – bring ourselves to the right mood, but we also have to try to lift a little bit more each time. We may do that by picking one prayer each time to read in English and to try and find a personal connection to God imagined in that liturgical metaphor. We may do that by learning a new tune and pouring our hearts into singing. We may do that by struggling through the Hebrew and using the sounds of that ancient language to connect us to the searches of our spiritual ancestors. In any case, we should not expect the gifts of prayer to be dropped in our laps – we get more out of worship, the more we put in. The clue was there for us in the Hebrew all the time. The word for prayer isavodah. Originally it was the sacrifices in the Temple; later the word came to mean prayer – but in modern Hebrew it also means work, secular work. For us, in prayer, avodah is the sacred effort it takes to bring us from wherever we may be into relationship with God.

Now, with this understanding of prayer, with this comprehension of our prescription, let us honestly take a moment to look back over this evening, over these past ten days, and see if we have honestly engaged in prayer. Have we put the work in towards creating a relationship with God? Have we looked past the difficult metaphors of the text to find how the authors of these pleas expressed their longing for the Divine? Does their song resonate with us? What poem would we write to give voice to our inner selves?

In a moment, our student Cantor will invite us to contemplate this message through music. During that time, using the melody to carry you outside yourselves; try to engage in meaningful, personal prayer. Step past the words and reach out – listen to the voice inside yourself, feel the woven fabric of the community around you. As you fast from earthly food, taste what else your soul desires. Close your eyes, and take a moment to see what is going on inside your head and where that can take you. Our tradition tells us that the one who rises from prayer a better person, their prayer has been answered.

O Divine Inspiration, this year let us find the moments to stop and engage in meaningful relationship with You. Let us find the courage and strength to admit when we need help and to accept that help in the spirit in which it is offered. Help us to be supportive of the growth of others around us and to partner with You in answering their prayers. Inspire us to build strong communities to heal and repair our world. Allow us to find the gift that is within all of us to connect to that which is greater than ourselves. In faith, we say, amen.

[1] Eat, Pray, Love – chapter 4.

[2] Ibid., chapter 38.

Five Salient Points about Genesis

2010-09-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

Rosh haShanah II 5771

Temple Sholom – 10 September 2010

This year, our congregation is operating under a grant from the Legacy Heritage Foundation to re-imagine not only the education of our children, but our congregational learning and celebrations. We received this grant (as Susan said yesterday – one of only seven congregations in the world to do so, this year) to carry out a program which includes an innovative model of intergenerational education. Several congregations have created family learning models, where family members of all ages come together, usually on a Saturday morning, and worship and learn together. The side effect of this model, which is most often piloted in large synagogues, is the creation of two congregations – the “new” model, and the old. Our Board of Education realized that this separation ran contrary to the ideals of Temple Sholom, and instead came up with a trimester model. Families can participate in a family track for one trimester out of three, with their children in Sunday morning, grade based classes the other two. So that everyone would be learning the same material – whether in family track or not – we shifted around our curriculum to a four-year rotating model. Each trimester, everyone learns the same subject – at an appropriate level. Every four years, the cycle begins again. And, when we say everyone, we mean everyone. This model allows us to migrate our educational program across the entire congregation. From yesterday through the end of November, we will ALL be studying the book of Genesis – in Temple Topics articles, in mini-courses and electives in our Eitz Chayim program, through on-line study, at our congregational education day on October 17, or any of the three Saturday evening multigenerational Havdalah programs and potluck dinners. And, of course, through sermons like this one.

In the Reform tradition, when we celebrate the second day of Rosh haShanah, we read from the beginning of the Torah – the first portion of the book of Genesis, as we did this morning. Since that will be the subject of our study this trimester, this is a wonderful opportunity to look at five salient points of this book of the Torah that can help us put our study into perspective.

In examining the book of Genesis (or B’reishit in Hebrew), we notice that it has an overarching narrative, human characters, a self-consciously contradictory introduction, a developing relationship between God and humanity, and easily accessible stories with increasing depth upon deeper study.

The overarching narrative of the book of Genesis is very purposeful. The Torah exists to document the covenant between God and the people ofIsrael. This happens in the second book, Exodus, at Mount Sinai. However, in order to get to that historical moment, Genesis needs to take us from the creation of the world to how the future Israelite nation has ended up in Egypt. As we read this morning, Genesis begins with genesis – with creation. We trace the development of humanity from one person to many; through near destruction; through the rise of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants, ending with the story of Joseph – his rise to power and invitation of his family to settle in Egypt. Along the way, we also mention a covenant regarding the land of Israel that passes through the ancestral line of Abraham.

The characters in the Torah are fully human. In the main, they are not heroes or caricatures. Even Abraham has flaws. Twice in his life, he fears that a powerful ruler will take away his wife, Sarah, so he pretends that she is his sister. In each case, God intervenes to protect Sarah and remonstrates Abraham for not having enough faith in God. Jacob, who becomes our namesake Israel, is a trickster and has to learn what it feels like to be deceived. Still, he shows favoritism and causes extreme rivalry among his children. Unlike the heroes of other mythos, we can not only admire our Biblical characters, but they are within reach of our emulation. We can be like them when they do well and learn not to do like them when they do wrong.

The beginning of the Torah does what no explanatory text in its right mind should do. In addition to the story that we just read this morning – of an ordered creation of seven days, with humanity created on the sixth day, male and female together, the second chapter of the book gives a contradictory version – in which one male human being is created first – before anything else. All of creation is paraded before him and he cannot find a true partner. God then pulls him apart to create a fitting helpmeet. Having two completely different explanations of one event forces us to ask the question – why are they both here? Why not just pick one? The answer is that the text is telling us that each story has its own moral, each one is teaching us something different. The bigger lesson is that stories in this book are not meant to be taken as the only literal truth, but rather as offering lessons for us to find.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this book is the depiction of the maturing relationship between God and humanity. At the beginning, God is very hands on. God walks in the garden and interacts face to face with the first human beings. God personally closes the door of the ark for Noah. Abraham and God argue about God’s actions – and God listens and agrees with Abraham. But, like a parent allowing a child to mature, God begins to step back. God responds to Isaac and Rebekah, but does not visit. God speaks to Jacob directly, but only in dreams. As for Joseph, God gives him the ability to divine the meaning of metaphoric dreams.

The relationship develops in another way as well. God is directly disappointed in the beginning and acts immediately to punish – Adam and Eve for eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, wiping out almost all of humanity in the flood. With Abraham, God attempts to lay down rules through a covenant and, withSodom and Gemorah, punishes only the most guilty. God seems to step back and to let humanity make our own decisions and deal with the consequences ourselves.

Finally, although the stories of the Torah are easy to read and understand, further study yields much more depth and wisdom. As we noticed with the two stories of creation, each one seems easy to understand on its own, but put one against the other, we see complexities and different meanings. Throughout our history, most notably by the rabbis of the Midrashic period, we have pushed to see what is going on between the lines. Why is it that Abraham, seemingly all of a sudden, hears from God? Why is he ready to listen? What is the motivation of the anti-heroes in our text – of Esau, of Ishmael, even of Judah? Looking across the text, we see that God seems to favor the younger sons over the elder, in contrast with cultural norms – what is this trying to teach us?

The study of the Torah, of course, is a life-long, ever cycling Jewish curriculum. Every week, we read another piece. Every year we return with fresh insight. The next three months, we will study the book of Genesis – the self-consciously constructed narrative of our beginnings. This study of our human beginnings should help us understand ourselves as we work to bring ourselves into Jewish health in the coming year.

L’shanah tovah tikatevu.

RH Morn 5771 - Take One Torah, and Call Me in the Morning

2010-09-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

Rosh haShanah I 5771

Temple Sholom – 9 September 2010

This morning, on our quest to improve the health of our Judaism, to try and become “healthy” Jews, we are going to look first, not surprisingly, at Torah. If I wandered out into the congregation and started asking, “What is the most important thing in Judaism?”, I might get some people who talk about ethical behavior, some who mention Shabbat, some who even talk about their grandparents – but most people, after a little thought, would focus on the Torah. The Torah, which we take out and read from every week; which we cycle through every year, which each child, to show they are ready to be an adult in Judaism, must master a portion of – to read and chant, and to teach to the congregation. The Torah, the reason that we rise when we open the Ark, is the center of Judaism.

Here’s an illustration from a classic Jewish text – The Frisco Kid. If you don’t remember this 1979 movie starring Harrison Ford and Gene Wilder, allow me to refresh your memory. (If you haven’t seen it – find it on Netflix and watch it.) Gene Wilder plays the rabbinic student who the yeshivah elders in Poland think is the least likely to succeed. So, when the fledgling Jewish community of gold rush San Francisco asks for a rabbi and a Torah, they send him – it’s no loss. During his misadventures travelling across the pioneer era United States, he ends up captured by Native Americans. Curious about the Torah scroll that seems so important to the oddly dressed stranger, the medicine man of the tribe puts the rabbi to the test. He asks him several, escalating questions: Will you trade your horse for Torah? Your horse and your boots? And your clothes? And everything else you own? If I give you back Torah, will you purify yourself through fire? To each question, the rabbi answers, “Yes, of course.” After the trial by fire, the medicine man is so impressed that he frees the rabbi and his friend the cowboy, and they teach each other their native dances (which, of course, cause the rain to come and end the drought). Without his dedication to the Torah, the movie seems to say, the rabbi and his friend would have been killed. The Torah – and his faith in it – are truly lifesavers.

And how do we value the Torah? We all remember from five years ago, the pictures of Jews in boats floating into Gulf Coast synagogues flooded by Katrina to rescue the Torah scrolls. Every one of our B’nai Mitzvah students know – and fear – that the punishment for dropping the heavy Torah scroll is to fast for forty days. We, earlier this morning, took the Torah scroll out and around the whole congregation, while we reached out with our prayerbooks or tallitot to touch the scroll, to kiss it.

Yet, the Torah scroll itself is not what is sacred. Despite all the honor and effort that we put into the creation and maintenance of our Torah scrolls; despite the fantastic knowledge and dedication that goes into the scribal arts of caring for our Torah (which we will each get a chance to see and to learn about, in person, as our scribe, Neil Yerman, joins us on October 17 for our congregational education day – see fliers in the back), what is truly sacred, what has kept us as Jews alive, is the words inside the Torah – and, not just the words, but what they say to us. The Rabbis of the Talmud, the Sages known as Chazal – the Wise Ones of Blessed Memory, have aphorism after aphorism about the Torah.

Ben Bag Bag said, “Turn it, and turn it again, for everything is in it. Pore over it, grow old and gray over it. Do not budge from it. You can have no better guide for living than it.”[1] But it is not Torah itself that is so important, but talmud Torah – the study of Torah. As we read this morning in the eilu d’varim., after the listing of all the things that we should do without measure – visiting the sick, honoring father and mother, praying with sincerity, making peace where there is strife – v’talmud Torah k’neged kulam. We translate this phrase, in our Reform context as, “but the study of Torah is equal to them all, because it leads to them all.” But that is not what the phrase truly means. To the Sages, the study of Torah stands up against that list of good deeds –and is just as good as all of them put together.[2]

Some rabbinic quotes to illustrate the point: The study of Torah ranks above the building of the Temple; the study of Torah ranks above honoring father and mother; the study of Torah ranks above the saving of lives; Torah ranks above priesthood and royalty.[3] Hillel and Shammai, the Hannity and Colmes of the rabbinic period, who disagree on everything, both chime in. Shammai says, “Make your study of Torah a regular practice.”[4] Hillel says, “Do not say, ‘I will study when I have leisure.’ Perhaps you will never have leisure.[5]”, as well as his more famous line, “All the rest is commentary. Now go and learn it.”[6]

As in the Akiva story from last night, if we Jews are fish, then Torah is the water that we swim in.

Words of Torah are likened to waters: "Behold, let all who are thirsty, come to the waters" (Isa. 55:1). As waters reach from one end of the world to the other, so Torah reaches from one end of the world to the other. As waters give life to the world, so Torah gives life to the world. As waters are given without cost to the world, so is Torah given without cost to the world. As waters are given from heaven, so is Torah given from heaven. As waters are given to the accompaniment of powerful thunderings, so was Torah given to the accompaniment of powerful thunderings. As waters restore a man's spirit, so Torah restores a man's spirit. As waters cleanse a man from uncleanness, so Torah cleanses an unclean person from his uncleanness. As waters come down in myriads of drops and become a multitude of brooks, so are words of Torah; today a man learns two Halakhot, tomorrow two more, [and so on], until he becomes like a bubbling brook. As waters leave a high place and flow to a low place, so Torah leaves him whose opinion of himself is high and cleaves to him whose spirit is lowly. As water is not kept in vessels of silver or gold, but only in the cheapest of vessels, so Torah abides only in him who regards himself as lowly as an earthenware vessel. As when thirsty, a grown man is not ashamed to say to a child, "Let me have a drink of water," so in studying Torah an [unlearned] grown man should not be ashamed to say to a child, "Teach me a chapter," "Teach me a verse," "Teach me a word," even "Teach me a single letter." As with water, if one does not know how to swim in it, he will end by drowning, so with words of Torah: if one does not know how to swim in them and teach them, he will drown in the end.[7]

But enough metaphor, how does talmud Torah - the study of Torah, in the words of Rabbi Chananiah, help us practically?

He who takes words of Torah to heart will be relieved of anxieties about war, anxieties about famine, anxieties about foolish preoccupations, anxieties about unchastity, anxieties about the impulse to evil, anxieties about craving another man's wife, anxieties about trifles, and anxieties about the yoke of flesh and blood. For in the book of Psalms, it is written by David, king of Israel, "The precepts of the Lord are right, a joy to the heart," etc. (Ps. 19:9). But he who does not take words of Torah to heart will be burdened by anxieties about war, anxieties about famine, anxieties about foolish preoccupations, anxieties about unchastity, anxieties about the impulse to evil, anxieties about craving another man's wife, anxieties about trifles, and anxieties about the yoke of flesh and blood.[8]

Yet, who has time for this study? When would we possibly “take the words of Torah to heart”, without seeming like religious fanatics?

Let us take a few examples from the trimester theme of Genesis that we will study as a congregation through November:

Remember for yourself a moment of rage. Not the ordinary rage when you are cut off on the highway, but the almost blinding rage when you have had to physically restrain yourself from striking out. A rage, perhaps born of frustration, of jealousy, directed at a sibling or parent, or dear friend. Somehow out of the blue, the actions of those we love, for no fault on their part, brings us to a seething boil. Why do we not strike out? What is the consequence that stays our hand? The Torah tells us a story of that unthinking anger and, in the story of Cain and Abel, we see the result of a momentary loss of control. Cain kills Abel. God calls him to account, “The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” Cain is ashamed. We see that killing one person, acting in anger, can have consequences of almost destroying the whole world, with Cain in exile and Abel no longer present to carry on the next generation. So, the extreme example, read year after year, gives us a picture of the need for restraint, the danger of our smaller acts.

Perhaps we are jealous and in a situation where we know that someone who is undeserving seems to reap all the benefits that not only do we deserve, but for which we are better suited. In our workplace, we maneuver to restore what is rightfully ours, through whatever means necessary. By guile and cunning, we emerge victorious. But, as we read the story of Jacob and Esau, we hear Esau’s pathetic cry to his father Isaac, upon realizing he has not only given away his birthright, but lost his blessing. “Do you not have another blessing for me, father? Is there nothing remaining for me?” We are taken out of our own selfish frame of reference and reminded, “What is hateful to you, do not do to another.”

But talmud Torah does not rest in the five books of Moses alone. We not only find wisdom in the rest of the Bible, in the aphorisms of the Sages in the Pirke Avot, in the philosophy of Maimonides, Spinoza, in the moral study of the mussar, in the stories of the Hasids, but there is value to studying ourselves and our practices, in finding meaning – now and again – in how we are Jewish.

None of us here this morning would deny the value of taking time for self-reflection, of finding a moment to breathe and take stock of our lives. Yet, is that why we are here this morning? Are we driven rather by the expectations of parents and grandparents, possibly no longer with us? By what we do to show our children? Do we read the words on the pages of the prayerbook as something that brings us closer to the time when we can leave, or as questions posed directly to each of us? Do we know enough about why we eat a round challah with raisins that it is worth the schlep to the bakery, or is it just for the remembered taste? Why apples? Why honey? Why is the shofar never made from a cow’s horn? Why do we chant with different melodies? Why don’t we eat on Yom Kippur? What else should we be doing and not doing?

Who has time for all these questions? We might say: I learned everything that I needed to know about Judaism when I was younger. Nothing has changed in Judaism since then. Why would the fact that I have changed mean that I need to look again; to look deeper; to allow the words of Torah to enter my heart, to quench my thirst?

Who has time to exercise? Who has time to read? Do we learn in order to grow? Or only to keep our heads above water? If your job requires continuing education, shouldn’t your life?

As we said last night, the structure for these sermons is taken from Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love. In the first section of the book, she travels toItaly and focuses on eating. It is not hard to imagine a rabbinic metaphor about how the Torah sustains and nourishes us like food. However, Gilbert’s point in “Eat” is not sustenance, but joy. She eats with abandon in order to restore joy to her life.

Our Jewish study should not be about sustenance, about consuming what healthy foods that we need to save our Jewish souls. Our Jewish study should have spice and flavor. We should taste the different cuisines – finding out which we like and which we could leave. Good Jewish study can be eclectic – like a multicultural buffet. It can also have depth, like the mastery of a cuisine that we come to explore and love. We learn not only what to order and what to eat, but how to prepare it ourselves.

We offer many opportunities for study here at Temple Sholom. Last year, we re-imagined our lifelong Jewish learning into Eitz Chayim – the tree of life which is a metaphor for the Torah. Each of us is on a journey – perhaps to keep one step ahead of our children’s education; perhaps to become an adult Bar or Bat Mitzvah; perhaps to learn what made Judaism so important to our grandparents; or to recall or relearn things we forgot from long ago. Our Eitz Chayimprogram offers basic classes and more esoteric electives that can fit in your personal journey. This past year, the Temple received a Legacy Heritage grant to re-imagine our intergenerational education and congregational celebrations. Families in the religious school are given the option of taking one trimester to study in our “family track” – which includes service attendance, at home learning, and multi-generational Saturday evening learning. Members of the congregation are expected not only to join in those multigenerational havdalah programs, but also to study the trimester theme in classes, articles in the Temple Topics, sermons, and on-line opportunities. Each year will have three trimester themes, rotating on a four year cycle. Today, we began our study of the book of Genesis. December begins study of the history of the Biblical period. In March, we switch to looking at the many ways of imagining and understanding God.

Toward the end of The Frisco Kid, the young rabbinic student has delivered the Torah to the San Francisco congregation and quit being a rabbi. His cowboy companion has found him and is trying to persuade him that he is a great rabbi. The cowboy talks about the incident when, during a gunfight, the rabbi dove into the fire to save the Torah scroll. With an anguished cry, the rabbi calls out – that is why I am not a good rabbi. When a human being was in danger, I cared more about a piece of paper than a person.

If all we do with the Torah is venerate its physical presence in the Ark, then we are not being good Jews either. We must not only take the scroll out of theArk, but take its words into our heart – and the words of Torah are more than the 80,000 which we read through each year, but the sum of Jewish knowledge that has come from our people’s millennia of interaction with the Divine and each other.

Last night, we received a postcard reminding us to schedule our annual Jewish physical. This morning, here is the first of our three part prescription. Just as medical wisdom advises us –as adults - to take an aspirin each day to improve our blood flow, so, too, Jewish wisdom advises that we take a little bite of Torah, every day.

As we enter the new year, let us resolve to take our Jewish health seriously. Each day, we are different from the day before. As we grow and change, let us resolve to grow and change Jewishly, as well. Let us embrace and enjoy Jewish learning as a path to that growth.

L’shanah tovah u’limudi – to a good and studious new year.

[1] Book of Legends, Torah, Section 8 (Avot 5:25)

[2] Ibid. Section 7 (Pe 1:1)

[3] Ibid. Section 9 (B. Meg 16b; B. Er 63b; Avot 6:6)

[4] Ibid. Section 39 (Avot 1:15)

[5] Ibid. Section 42 (Avot 2:4)

[6] Ibid. Hillel the Elder, Section 15 (B. Shab 30b-31a)

[7] Ibid. Torah, Section 22 (Song R. 1:2, #3; MTeh 1:18; Sif Deut., #48)

[8] Ibid. Section 10 ()

RH Eve 5771: Time for the Annual Check-Up

2010-09-08T19:24:00.000-07:00

Erev Rosh haShanah 5771

Temple Sholom – 8 September 2010

The good news, perhaps, for you, this erev Rosh haShanah, is that this is a two-story sermon: two stories for the price of one sermon, as a reward for leaving the family table and making your way to services this evening.

The first story is one of my father’s favorites, the tale of the wandering maggid, or storyteller. The maggid was well-known for giving incredible sermons. One day, he came to a town and, after astounding the locals with his homiletic expertise, he sat down to enjoy the Sabbath lunch they provided. After the meal, one of the townsfolk asked him the secret of his success. “How is it,” she asked, “that every week, with a new portion of the Torah, you are able to come up with such meaningful drashot on the Torah?” “Well,” said the maggid, perhaps because the meal had been so good, “I will tell you my secret. Each week, I get up to give my dvar Torah and, before starting, I take off my glasses. I take out my handkerchief and begin to polish the lenses. While I am polishing, I drop the glasses. At that moment, I curse, ‘May the earth open up and swallow you, like Korach.’ Then I say, ‘And speaking of Korach…’ and proceed to give my one excellent sermon on parashat Korach, whether it is the portion that week or not.”

One would not be surprised to know that one of the great Rabbinic temptations of this time of year, when there is such pressure to give a “good” sermon, and so much else to do and prepare, is to go back into the files and find a winner from years past and give it over again. Rabbinic inboxes are flooded with services and websites that offer tested and true “killer” sermons, guaranteed to knock the congregation dead. When my father was still working in New Zealand, I used to joke that I waited until he delivered his sermon there and, if it went well, sixteen hours later, I could use it half-way around the world on a different crowd.

Sometimes, in the despair of High HolyDay preparation, one might even be tempted to wonder if the same sermon given last year could be given again and whether anyone would notice. After all, it is easy to rationalize. Judaism has been around for quite some time. The truths of Judaism are eternal. There has been no appreciable change in our religion since last year. What was true then is true now and the message of the High HolyDays is the same as it has always been. We read the Torah again and again every year, why not read the same sermon?

We often call this process of teshuvah or repentance by another Hebrew phrase – cheshbon nefesh –an accounting or check of the soul. I know colleagues who not only take the spiritual side of this process seriously, but also the physical side. They use Elul – the month that proceeds Rosh haShanah –not only to begin the soul check of repentance, but also to schedule doctors’ and dentist’s appointments to maintain the health of their body. Let us, for a moment, turn the tables. Imagine how irate we might be upon entering a doctor’s office to immediately hear the same advice that we heard the previous visit. We would insist upon an examination – that the doctor consider our reflexes, temperature, appearance and blood pressure, take samples and have them evaluated, ask us about how we have been feeling, look over our chart – before letting us know whether we are healthy, or what steps we may need to take to preserve or improve our health. Now it is true, because of various circumstances, that our physician may give us the same advice – lose some weight, eat less salt and fatty foods and more green vegetables, stop smoking, exercise more – but that repetition is due not to the doctor’s failure of imagination, but our failure to follow those instructions from past visits.

Judaism, I would argue, is no different. Why is it then, that though we expect a different sermon every year, we don’t demand the examination; we don’t follow the prescription? Whether the rabbi stands in the place of Jewish primary care professional, or we take responsibility for our Jewish health on ourselves, why shouldn’t we take our Jewish pulse; examine our Jewish reflexes and temperature; take some tests to see if our internal Jewish organs are operating in a healthy manner?

Today you are receiving the equivalent of that postcard in the mail that reminds you to set up your annual physical. You have been invited to the doctor’s office. You are free to follow up with a specialist (Your rabbi, for example, would be happy to make an appointment.) or to do some research on the web and follow this prescription on your own.

Elizabeth Gilbert (not the one confirmed in this congregation) details her journey of spiritual and physical recovery after a difficult divorce in the book Eat, Pray, Love. Gilbert’s journey takes her to Italy, to India, and to Indonesia, which she narrates and journals as she details her recovery. While Gilbert is a Christian who finds her spirituality in yoga and the food she eats is Italian, there is a strange Jewish parallel. Again, the Talmudic sages created a list of three things which can not only support the world, but can form the basis – a prescription if you will – for a healthy Jewish life – Torah, avodah, and g’milut chasadim.[1] Avodah is the worship of God: sacrifice in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem, but now – prayer. G’milut chasadim we translate as acts of loving kindness. That’s “pray” and “love”, but what about “eat”?

There is a Talmudic story attributed to Rabbi Akiva, who lived during the difficult persecutions by the Romans. He was asked by his disciples why he kept on studying and teaching, risking the penalty of death, when he could save himself – and all his Jewish knowledge – by giving up the Torah. Akiva explains through a parable about a fox and some fish. The fox, walking by a stream, sees schools of fish darting about the water and asks, “What are you fleeing?” The fish reply that they are fleeing the nets and traps set out by human beings. The fox then makes an offer, “Why don’t you come out here on dry land. You could avoid the traps and I will protect you.” The fish reply, “Although they call you the cleverest of animals, you are a fool. Here, in the water, we may be afraid for our lives, but at least we can breathe. Out there, we might not be afraid, but we would not survive long enough to enjoy it.”[2]

The Torah is the sustenance of our Judaism. Tomorrow morning, we will explore that first prescription for our Jewish health. At Kol Nidrei, on Erev Yom Kippur, we will discuss prayer, and how, regardless of our personal theology, it is an important part of making a healthy Jewish life. Finally, on Yom Kippur morning, we will look at how we express our love through g’milut chasadim and how that exercise can help us maintain our health. Eat – Torah; Pray – avodah; Love – g’milut chasadim.

Before we embark on this self-examination and course of treatment, we need to answer the question – why should I be concerned about my Jewish health? Financial health allows me to provide for myself and my family; engage in activities that I have planned and dreamed about; and perhaps leave a gift to those whom I care about. Physical health gives me the time to experience my life and those around me, to be able to learn and grow, and the strength to be able to take care of myself and others. Mental health allows me to interact in society, to wisely balance decisions, to judge reality from fantasy. What does Jewish health get me?

All this – and more: When in full Jewish health, we provide not only for our personal well-being, but for the moral legacy that we leave not only to our children, but to the world as a whole. When in full Jewish health, we are able to find the strength and purpose in our actions. When in full Jewish health, we are able to make decisions that fit who we are and who we aspire to be. Further, Jewish health, experienced in community, gives us others with whom to share our joys and receive support in our sorrows. We are strengthened by what we share, which returns to us, tenfold, when most needed. When in full Jewish health, we react to the confusion in life, not with sure answers, but at least with the ability to seek out solutions that ring true to us. When in full Jewish health, we can look back over our past year and see the road we have taken, with missteps and wrong turns, but traveling generally in one direction. When in full Jewish health, we can take this moment to stop, look forward, and see the outlines of a path to follow in the days to come.

This idea – of Jewish health – is accessible to all of us here this evening - although not everyone may fit the traditional definition of Jew. Some of us were born Jewish; some were not. Some have made a full commitment to go through the rituals to call themselves Jewish. Some have worked hard to create Jewish homes, to raise children in the Jewish tradition. Some have an affiliation to Judaism, through a spouse or partner, or may have just felt a calling to be here on this day. On this Rosh haShanah, the invitation is extended to all of us – to join in this process of self-examination; to engage in a Jewish “physical exam”; and to take a prescription toward Jewish health.

At this time each year, one of the things that we pray for is a year of continued or better health for ourselves and our loved ones. This year, let us extend that to our Jewish health. Let us engage in that process; let us work to make ourselves more healthy; let us enjoy the benefits of that spiritual prescription.

L’shanah tovah, m’tukah u’briuti – to a good, sweet, and healthy year.

[1] Book of Legends, Torah, Section 1 (Avot 1:2)

[2] Ibid. Parables, Section 9 (B. Ber 61b; Yalkut, Va-et'hannan,#837)

A Common Call

2010-01-17T19:00:00.001-08:00

“A Common Call”

Fanwood Presbyterian Church – 17 January 2010

Thank you to the members of the Fanwood Presbyterian Church and to Pastor Jahnke for inviting me, once more, to speak to you during your Sunday worship. I suppose, having done this now several times, I can admit that, for me, this is not only an opportunity for me to share my knowledge with you, but also for me to learn more about your beliefs and motivations. My congregation and I, because of this congregation’s generous hospitality, have not only found a home in Fanwood – a place to keep our congregation alive and even growing, but also a challenge to learn – much more intimately – how others hear, interpret, and implement the word of God.

One of the processes that we have watched your congregation go through, over the past seven years, is the process of self-examination and transition of the pastoral call. I will tell you that, for me, the idea of a “call” or calling has always been problematic. And yet, for your church body, the idea of a call is intrinsic to the nature not only of the relationship between church body and clergy, but of the operation of the church. As it says on the Church Leadership Connection portion of the PCUSA website:

As Presbyterians we believe that pastors and congregations are brought together through a call from God. It is a relationship established not primarily for the benefit of one or both of the parties but for the purpose of service in the ministry of Jesus Christ. God has endowed both the leader and the people with particular gifts and experiences that, when brought together, provide the resources for effective ministry. This relationship is confirmed as the pastor, the church, and the presbytery all say "yes" to the call. This three-way partnership is acted out throughout the pastoral vacancy process.

I can tell you this morning that we, as Jews, are more uncomfortable with this term, “call”. Growing up, I remember a story that my father told about his time as a chaplain in the US Army. Another chaplain, who (prior to his chaplaincy) had been serving in the Navy, told the story of how he received the call one night, standing on the deck of a ship, when God called him to serve as a chaplain. He asked my father when had he received his call, and my father had no answer. In my life, I was working at the Jewish Community Center of Reading, Pennsylvania, when I decided to apply to Hebrew Union College (the seminary for Reform Judaism) and become a congregational rabbi. One of my co-workers, who happened not to be Jewish, told me how wonderful it was that I had received the call. I said thank you, but really had no answer. I reflected on this consternation a few years later, when I gave my senior sermon at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. I sent a survey to my classmates and the faculty asking them if they felt that they had received a call, the results of which I included in my sermon.

Perhaps, the difference is just that of language. As to that, the Presbyterian Church, in a document called “Calling a Pastor” asks, “Isn’t the pastoral call process just church language for a personnel search?” The answer is a resounding, “No. The pastoral call process is guided by Jesus Christ, the head of the church, who provides you with all that you need to be the church.”

Perhaps the difference lies in a text that your church recommends for study on the process of call and which we read in my congregation a week and a half ago, from Exodus, chapter 3: 1-12:

(1) Now Moshe was shepherding the flock of Yitro his father-in-law, priest of Midyan. He led the flock behind the wilderness ad he came to the mount of God, to Horev. (2) And YHVH’s messenger was seen by him in the flame of a fire out of the midst of a bush. He saw: Here the bush is burning with fire, and the bush is not consumed! (3) Moshe said: Now let me turn aside that I may see this great sight – why the bush does not burn up! (4) When YHVH saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the midst of the bush, God said: Moses! Moses! He said: Here I am.

Traditionally, the Rabbis have seen this response of Moses – in Hebrew hineyni – to be the proper response to a call from God. Hineyni means more than, “Here I am”, but further, “Here I am, ready to do what you ask.” The sages of the Talmud point to other uses of this phrase – Abraham uses this term during the Akeidah, the story of the near sacrifice of Isaac – to answer both God and his son. Jacob answers thus to his father, when he comes to receive the blessing, and Joseph answers Jacob thus when he is sent to find the peace of his brothers. Samuel is instructed to so answer God when he is first called to prophecy.

And yet, although Moses has answered that he is ready, it is only seven verses later, after God has explained what is wanted, that Moses replies, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, that I should bring the Children of Israel out of Egypt?” Thus begins a give and take between God and Moses, where Moses argues that he is not right for this call and God informs him that he is. The argument ends, not through Moses being persuaded, but by God calling an end to the discussion by fiat.

As I explained to my congregation on that Friday night, an essential part of the Jewish call is that uncertainty – indicating either natural humility, the need to overcome reluctance, or even denial. Even in the case where Moses is standing on holy ground, in the presence of a miracle, hearing directly the voice of God, he doubts the call. How much the moreso that we, in our own lives, often find it difficult to acknowledge our call?

On that Friday evening, I also spoke about the first part of the verses that I read above – how it comes to be that God decides to speak to Moses. It is only after God sees that Moses has turned aside to see the miraculous bush that burns unconsumed that God knows that Moses is ready to hear the call. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner talks about what this says about Moses. The casual observer would notice a bush on fire, but how much concentrated observation does it take to realize that the bush continues to burn, but is not consumed? How much more to decide that this great sight is a wonder that must be investigated? Rabbi Kushner opines that the bush was always there – the call constantly offered. It took Moses, being in the right frame of mind, having become a person who could notice such things as a miracle, to be ready to receive the call.

My purpose this morning, however, is not to examine what calls us as individuals to action, but what calls us as a congregation. In the portion that we read on Friday night, the second of the book of Exodus, we read of the call that God issues to the Israelite people as a whole. In Exodus, chapter 6, verses 6 and 7:

(6) Therefore, say to the Children of Israel, I am YHVH; I will bring you out from beneath the burdens of Egypt, I will rescue you from servitude to them, I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, with great (acts of) judgment; (7) I will take you for me as a people, and I will be for you as a God and you shall know that I am YHVH your God, who brings you out from beneath the burdens of Egypt.

Needless to say, the following verses show the same reluctance to believe in the call that Moses showed earlier to his individual call. And, in fact, that reticence is seen throughout the Exodus story, as the people often ask Moses why he brought them out of Egypt only to die in the desert. In those moments of doubt, they attack not God, but imagine that Moses is the one whose call they follow. They doubt that they are truly called. They forget what they have seen – the miracles and portents that God revealed to them in the Exodus from Egypt, at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the travels across the wilderness.

So, we see that it is all to human to ask the question, “Who, me?” rather than answer, “Here I am.” We see that there are two parts to each call – we must ourselves be ready to receive the call, and we must overcome our reluctance and self-doubt to acknowledge the responsibility to answer hineyni.

Tomorrow, we mark the birthday of one of the most outstanding men to receive a call in our recent history. Pastor Jahnke and I were at St. John’s Baptist Church last Sunday for our annual community commemoration of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. in common worship. The speaker reminded us of Dr. King’s reluctance to his call, of his desire to be minister to his own congregation, but his acceptance of his role in national leadership, as a thundering prophet, a conscience to our nation.

Today, it is appropriate to ask ourselves whether, like the bush that Moses saw, the call given to Dr. King, still burns unconsumed. In matters of racial injustice, we have come a long way, but we realize that one black man in the White House does not yet signify equality for all men, women, and children, still suffering from discrimination. We remember that Dr. King was killed in Memphis not while he was speaking against racial discrimination, but when he was speaking for the economic rights of the sanitation workers. As Dr. King said in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And we know, as sure as Moses saw that bush in the wilderness, that there is suffering and injustice going on right now in Haiti.

This past Friday, Pastor Jahnke offered to my congregation, words from the prophet Isaiah. These words, he explained, brought us from the process of lament – of mourning for loss, to a call for action. In return for that message, I would offer the structure of the Jewish mourning process for how we can answer the call of our Haitian brothers and sisters.

I often say that Jewish mourning rituals are the easiest of Jewish customs to explain to us as modern, psychologically educated moderns. Judaism says that first, when we are confronted with death, we must first act as is proper toward their physical remains. In Judaism, we bury as soon as practicably possible. At the burial, there is a moment – I will not say of closure – but of transition, when each person gathered at the funeral is asked to place a shovelful of dirt on the coffin. This hard to hear thunk of earth meeting wood tells us that we have done what is necessary for their physical remains and the time has come to turn to comforting those who have been left behind.

The first seven days to follow the funeral – called shivah – are when we are expected to do the most for the bereaved. So that they need not leave the house, we are expected not only to bring food, but to provide comforting presence. The custom is not to greet the bereaved – not ot ask them to act as hosts, but to be there, ready to share memories, to accept grief. The next period – the thirty days following the funeral – called shloshim – are a time for the bereaved to begin to get out into the world, to start to resume their life, but not yet to go to entertainment or celebrations. Our role is still to provide comfort, but as needed. Finally, the traditional mourning period ends after one year, when the bereaved, who have come each day or week to the synagogue to say the mourners’ prayer together, are ready to resume their lives. The loss is still with them, but they are challenged to take that with them, accept it as a part of their lives.

The devastating loss of the country of Haiti magnifies the individual losses. To whom shall the stricken look for comfort? Our calling, our job, is to step in now to help. Overriding almost all Jewish law is the concept of pikuach nefesh – the saving of a life. Even before the rites of bereavement, we must act to preserve the lives of the survivors. Second, we must move toward burial of the dead. Only then can we help the survivors begin to cope with their grief. Our first actions should not be of demand – rather of presence and comfort. After a suitable period of time, only then can we help them begin to move back into the world, understanding that their world has been shaken. Finally, we cannot forget the people of Haiti after a week, a month, or even a year. We understand that this call is a responsibility to maintain our support, as our President has said, as long as we are needed.

The call is out there. The bush burns unconsumed. We are the ones who must turn aside to answer hineyni – here I am. We may have our doubts. We may think that we are not the best ones to fulfill this task. Those doubts are ours to own and conquer.

For words of encouragement to answer this call, we look to the quote from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., chosen to guide tomorrow’s national day of service:

Everybody can be great because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

Right now, let us say hineyni and answer the call from Haiti. Tomorrow, let us join with all of Fanwood and Scotch Plains and answer the call of Dr. King at our MLK Day of Service. Each and every day going forward, let us resolve to see that bush burning unconsumed, to turn aside, and to say, hineyni – I am here and am ready to do what You will.

And Now - What Do You Believe?

2009-09-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

Yom Kippur 5770
Temple Sholom – 28 September 2009

There is a story that my wife likes to tell about the Exodus from Egypt. She tells it much better than I – with a repeated refrain and all the children joining in – but I shall endeavor to do my best:

The time came when the waters of the sea parted and the Israelites began their escape from Pharoah’s armies on dry land. Toward the end of the column of former slaves were Shmueil and Yoram, who hadn’t been excited by any of this Exodus activity. They had been fairly midlevel slaves in Egypt and had gotten by keeping their heads down and doing what they were told. When Moses confronted Pharoah, there were those who were hopeful that God would finally rescue them from their slavery. Shmueil and Yoram paid no attention. They kept their heads down. They did what they were told. When all the Israelites packed their belongings and headed into the desert, Shmueil and Yoram realized that they might be left alone, so they packed their goods and followed. Mostly, they kept their heads down and talked only to each other. They did not notice the plagues. They did not notice the pillar of cloud or the pillar of fire that God had brought to lead them to freedom. As they walked, they did not see the Egyptian armies behind them, all they saw was their feet. All around, their fellow Israelites marveled at the walls of water on each side; on the fish swimming above them. Yoram and Shmueil kept their heads down, did what they were told and complained about the mud. On the other side, as the waters closed over the Egyptian armies, Miriam and Moses led the people in a song of rejoicing, but Shmueil and Yoram just kept their heads down and never looked up to see the miracles around them.

Today is not a day to keep our heads down and do what we are told. Despite the fact that we humble ourselves before God, that we seek to show our obedience to God’s law with our atonement, we are specifically reminded that we must keep our heads up by the Torah portion that we have just read. Atem Nitzavim – we are told: You are standing. We are reminded, on this day of all days, that we were standing with our heads held high as a (newly) free people when we entered into covenant with God. Further, this portion validates our personal autonomy in saying with two different metaphors that the Torah is not over the sea, nor up in the heavens. Rather, it is in our hearts and our mouths, that we may do it. The Torah has been given to us, now it is our responsibility to transform word into action.

Belief has that power to transform all that we do – for good or for ill. It is belief in a cause that changes the soldier from killer to defender – of liberty, of the right - and sometimes back again. How often in our nation have we seen the difference that it makes in our military, to our citizens, when we feel that what our nation is doing is right, and we believe in it, and when we feel that we have lost our way, our belief has failed, and there is no justice in what we do? It is firm belief in one’s own position, to the exclusion of all others, that enables one side to demonize the other as a demagogue, as socialist, as Nazi.

Belief has that power – it has led not only to intolerance, but to violence; not only to disregard, but to outright hostility and murder. Generation after generation, we as Jews have seen this lesson: not only in regards to ourselves, but to others around the world, even today. Who better, then, to understand the limitations of belief, to rescue belief from the one-sided, to stand up and say, “I believe in the commonality of all human beings and that each individual must recognize themselves in the other”?

At a curious time in our nation’s history, Edward R. Murrow asked Americans what they believed. After the mobilization of the national will during World War II and as the nation began to find itself engaged in a different struggle – against Communism at home and abroad, Murrow went to Americans – prominent and everyday – and asked them to compose a short essay, no more than 500 words, “a statement of personal beliefs”. Recently, National Public Radio partnered with the This I Believe organization to once again ask this question, answered in oral form, publicized on website and over the radio. How American a project – to discover what the nation believes not by dictating from the top, but by assembling all the different and diverse beliefs of the citizenry – a grassroots survey, a sociological study – to get to the heart of what we all believe.

I imagined, from the beginning of this sermon series, that we would take a moment to do the same ourselves. Our ushers will now be passing out 3x5 cards and pencils and I would like each and every one of us to take a moment to contribute to what we believe as a congregation. At the top of the card, write two words – “I believe”. Then, sit and think for a moment. In a sentence or two, what is one thing that you believe – about yourself, about the nature of humanity, about the world we live in, about our roles, about the God you may or may not believe in. If you wish, put your name at the bottom of the card. We will collect all of the cards and transcribe our beliefs onto the website that I have been constructing for this sermon. If your name is on the card, your name will appear by your belief statement. If your name is not listed, it will be posted anonymously. If you think of something later, we will make directions available to the website, so you can add further thoughts.

Meanwhile, while you are thinking and writing, I will read some of the belief statements - some of the creeds - which we have examined over the past ten days, as well as some newer statements:

[See other texts.]

Thank you.

When we reach the end of our ten days of repentance, we breathe a sigh of relief. Whatever it has been that we have been dreading – be it the fasting, the preparation of the sermons, the relatives and friends and all the food that needed to be prepared – all of that is winding its way toward conclusion. Not only because we have been forgiven by an all-powerful God do we sigh in relief, but also because we have finished our self-reflection. Life is so much easier when we keep our heads down and only focus on each step. There is much more difficulty in stopping where we are and lifting our heads to look around, to decide whether we are moving in the right direction, or to acknowledge that we have gone astray. In our busy world, we have allowed ourselves no time to stop and breathe, and so no time for self-reflection. How often do we find ourselves with twenty-four hours to think only about who we are, where we have come from, where we want to go, and what we need to do to get there? That is the gift of these High HolyDays, of this Yom Kippur – a full day of time out, sitting in our own corners, together, figuring out what we have done wrong and not being allowed to get up, or to eat, until we have resolved how to make things better.

Perhaps we can lift our heads up, just for this moment. For the rest of this day of self-reflection, let us take advantage of this opportunity. Let us examine what we believe and what we do, and find a way to bring both together. And, after the sun has set, let us find where that might lead us – to setting aside Shabbat as a weekly time for self-reflection; to finding more time to spend with family and friends; to recommitting our time and our assets toward social justice projects; to an engagement in the national debate about healthcare; to a reassessment of our careers and a new goal for our lives. What you choose to do with your life should come from the core of your beliefs. Take this moment to re-align yourself, to use the compass of your belief to steer the course of your life.

In this way, we work to fulfill our potential as human beings. In this way, we continue the work of creation. In this way, we bring justice into the world and mercy. In this way, we take seriously the heritage that has been passed down to us from generation after generation. In this way, we use this Day of Atonement to its maximum effect in changing our own lives. In this way, we are more fully Jews and more fully human beings.

I believe, with a perfect faith, that we can change the world for the better. I believe, with a perfect faith, that this year 5770, and this day – Yom Kippur, is the best time to start.

G’mar chatimah tovah – and so we sign ourselves for a good year in the book of life.

Background Texts for YK Morn 5770

2009-09-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

Background Creedal Statements for Personal Beliefs

Adon Olam
You are our Eternal God, who reigned before any being had yet been created; when all was done according to Your will, already You were Ruler. And after all ceases to be, still You will rule in solitary majesty; You were, are, and will be in glory. And You are One; none other can compare to or consort with the Eternal. You are without beginning, without end. To You belong power and dominion. And You are my God, my living Redeemer, my Rock in times of trouble and distress. You are my Banner and my Refuge, my Benefactor when I call on You. Into Your hands I entrust my spirit, when I sleep and when I wake, and with my spirit my body also; the Eternal is with me, I will not fear.

Maimonides 13 Principles (from the OU)
THE RAMBAM'S THIRTEEN PRINCIPLES OF JEWISH FAITH

1. I believe with perfect faith that God is the Creator and Ruler of all things. He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.

2. I believe with perfect faith that God is One. There is no unity that is in any way like God’s. God alone is our God God was, God is, and God will be.

3. I believe with perfect faith that God does not have a body. physical concepts do not apply to God. There is nothing whatsoever that resembles God at all.

4. I believe with perfect faith that God is first and last.

5. I believe with perfect faith that it is only proper to pray to God. One may not pray to anyone or anything else.

6. I believe with perfect faith that all the words of the prophets are true.

7. I believe with perfect faith that the prophecy of Moses is absolutely true. God was the chief of all prophets, both before and after God.

8. I believe with perfect faith that the entire Torah that we now have is that which was given to Moses.

9. I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be changed, and that there will never be another given by God.

10. I believe with perfect faith that God knows all of man's deeds and thoughts. It is thus written (Psalm 33:15), "God has molded every heart together, God understands what each one does."

11. I believe with perfect faith that God rewards those who keep God’s commandments, and punishes those who transgress God.

12. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah. How long it takes, I will await God’s coming every day.

13. I believe with perfect faith that the dead will be brought back to life when God wills it to happen.

From the Charleston Reform Community of Israelites:
Article 7.— "I believe with perfect faith that the laws of God as delivered by Moses in the Ten Commandments are the only true foundation of piety towards the Almighty, and of morality among human beings."
Article 8.—"I believe with a perfect faith, that morality is essentially connected with religion, and that good faith towards all mankind is among the most acceptable offerings to the Deity."
Article 10.—"I believe with a perfect faith that the Creator (blessed be his name) is the only true Redeemer of all God’s children, and that God will spread the worship of God’s name over the whole earth."

Eric Yoffie, Reform Judaism Summer 2008, What is Reform Judaism?
Reform Jews are committed to a Judaism that changes and adapts to the needs of the day.
Reform Jews are committed to the absolute equality of women in all areas of Jewish life.
Reform Jews are committed to social justice.
Reform Jews are committed to the principle of inclusion, not exclusion.
Reform Jews are committed to a true partnership between the rabbinate and the laity.

Edmond Fleg - Porqoui Je Suis Juif
I am a Jew because, born of Israel and having lost her, I have felt her live again in me, more living than myself.
I am a Jew because, born of Israel and having regained her, I wish her to live after me, more living than in myself.
I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands of me no abdication of the mind.
I am a Jew because the faith of Israel requires of me all the devotion of my heart.
I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps.
I am a Jew because at every time when despair cries out, the Jew hopes.
I am a Jew because the word of Israel is the oldest and the newest.
I am a Jew because the promise of Israel is the universal promise.
I am a Jew because, for Israel, the world is not yet completed; humanity is completing it.
I am a Jew because, above the nations and Israel, Israel places humanity and its Unity.
I am a Jew because above humanity, image of the divine Unity, Israel places the divine Unity, and its divinity.

Rabbi Joel N. Abraham, High HolyDay Sermons 5770:
I believe with a perfect faith that ideas must be struggled with, rather than blindly accepted or blithely rejected.
I believe with a perfect faith that Judaism has and will continue to change as society progresses toward a Messianic age.
I believe with a perfect faith that what makes us Jewish is our commitment to use what has come before to see the world anew.
I am a Jew because I accept that which I believe Judaism demands of me.

I Am a Jew Because...

2009-09-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

Kol Nidrei 5770
Temple Sholom – 27 September 2009

I am a Jew because, born of Israel and having lost her, I have felt her live again in me, more living than myself.
I am a Jew because, born of Israel and having regained her, I wish her to live after me, more living than in myself.
I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands of me no abdication of the mind.
I am a Jew because the faith of Israel requires of me all the devotion of my heart.
I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps.
I am a Jew because at every time when despair cries out, the Jew hopes.
I am a Jew because the word of Israel is the oldest and the newest.
I am a Jew because the promise of Israel if the universal promise.
I am a Jew because, for Israel, the world is not yet completed; men are completing it.
I am a Jew because, above the nations and Israel, Israel places man and his Unity.
I am a Jew because above man, image of the divine Unity, Israel places the divine Unity, and its divinity. Edmond Fleg

Over these High HolyDays, we have been examining the idea of creed – a series of statements detailing the agreed upon beliefs of a particular group. On Erev Rosh haShanah, we discovered how important it is to have a defined set of beliefs in order to find and make purpose of our lives. On Rosh haShanah morning, we discussed whether a religious creed necessitated a specific definition of God and began to outline the points of a modern Reform creed. This evening, as we stand mesmerized by the plea of our ancestors set to music, it is appropriate to look back into the last century to the poetic words of Edmond Fleg.

Edmond Fleg was born in Geneva in 1874 to a French Jewish family. Feeling stifled by the hypocrisy of his Jewish upbringing he, like many other college students, began a search for a different truth. However, despite his curiosity, the reality of the Dreyfus Affair – the same scandal of a French Jewish officer falsely accused of treason that inspired Theodor Herzl to found modern Zionism – made him turn back not only to Judaism, but to a new understanding of how he and the world had been shaped by his religion. In 1928, Fleg wrote a book, ostensibly to his unborn grandchildren, entitled “Pourquoi Je Suis Juif” or “Why I Am a Jew”. The book was translated into English in 1933 with a forward by none other than Stephen S. Wise, the founder of the Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. In this book, Fleg not only lays out his personal journey, but makes the argument as to why Judaism should continue into the succeeding generations. As part of his explanation, Fleg, a lyricist and poet, created what may be one of the most beautiful creedal statements in modern Judaism. Let us take up Fleg’s creed and examine each plank – not in its historical context for his life, but how its challenge rings true to us today. Can we state with the same fervor, “I am a Jew because…”?

I am a Jew because, born of Israel and having lost her, I have felt her live again in me, more living than myself.
We struggle for legitimacy in a world in which the new is extolled and the old forgotten. It is not a cop-out, nor a failure of imagination to draw strength from the history that our tradition holds. If we truly believe in a Darwinian survival of the fittest, then surely some regard is due to Judaism for having lasted these 3,000 years?

I am a Jew because, born of Israel and having regained her, I wish her to live after me, more living than in myself.
The tie that we feel that bonds us to so many generations gone before, pushes us to look forward as well. If we are but one link in shalshelet hakabbalah - the chain of Jewish tradition, then we are connecting past and future – that which lives on in us will continue when we no longer live.

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands of me no abdication of the mind.
How powerful a faith that not only allows its adherents to question, but demands it! The model of our Talmudic scholars, the millennia old tradition of honoring scholarship and debate compels us not to separate reason from faith, but to bring all the tools of our skeptical minds to the practice AND beliefs of our ancestors.

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel requires of me all the devotion of my heart.
What purpose would a faith have if it rested only in the mind? In addition to the reason that we must bring – the counterbalance is God’s middat rachamim – aspect of mercy to God’s middat din – aspect of justice. We must engage our emotions and feelings as well. As in the v’ahavta – we love God not only with all our heart, with all our head, with all that we have.

I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps.
“Remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” We do not relive our historical Exodus each year to show how powerful our God is, but rather to instill in each and every generation an empathetic response for those who are still in chains. We reach out to others not solely because our law tells us it is the right thing to do, but because we know how wrong it is, feeling each lash on our own flesh.

I am a Jew because at every time when despair cries out, the Jew hopes.
So, too, the eternal message of redemption. The mi chamocha in each service – morning and evening – is not to stoke a gratitude for past deliverance, but to remind that salvation is needed in each generation and, as it has occurred in the past, it is possible in the present, it will happen again in the future. The story of our people that came together when our ancestors huddled by the rivers of Babylon was the hope that the waters would again part and, firm and dry, the path to the Promised Land would emerge.

I am a Jew because the word of Israel is the oldest and the newest.
The difference between experience and wisdom is in its application. Words that seem of a distant era in our texts will lie there dead upon the page, until we breathe the life of new interpretation into them. Perhaps, as Holdheim taught, the Talmud was right for its time, and we are right for our own – but we are only right if we re-read what we have written.

I am a Jew because the promise of Israel if the universal promise.
We Jews are not the only people to dream of freedom, of our own land, of living in peace and prosperity. In those very places where we seek to live out those dreams, we would do best to remember that for everyone to live under their vine and fig tree, then none shall make them afraid.

I am a Jew because, for Israel, the world is not yet completed; men are completing it.
How easy to believe that the treasure entrusted to us by history need only be locked up and kept safe. How much more perilous to imagine that we must risk bringing that treasure into the light and use it as a tool to dig, to hammer, to chisel, and to build. There is a purpose to creation – which was not created solely for our benefit. Rather the reverse, we are what is required to finish what was begun without us.

I am a Jew because, above the nations and Israel, Israel places man and his Unity.
We are created in the Divine image, each of us containing a portion of that breath blown into the first human nostril. That image rests not in one race, one family, or one religion, but in many scattered pieces only brought together by our common efforts. If the whole puzzle is beyond our comprehension; its completion out of our hands, we must still struggle with our own corner and do our part.

I am a Jew because above man, image of the divine Unity, Israel places the divine Unity, and its divinity.
And beyond us, there is something more - something more than the generations to come, than the ideals that we share, than the hopes that tie us together. As we believe in that greater Oneness, we strengthen ourselves, we find purpose, we gain life.
O how inspiring and, O how clear the poetic words that we read in our prayerbook. O how easy and O how expected it is that we leave those words on the printed page where they lie. Words of challenge, words of belief are much more easily accepted when sitting and listening and so much harder to pick up when we are standing and doing.
Remember the metaphor – our deeds are written in the Book of Life. Each act that we do, or fail to do, tells our story. We are judged never by our intentions, but by our actions. The legacy that we leave cannot be that we meant to do our best, but rather that we lived up to the challenges that were set for us.
Pourquoi je suis juif – why it is that I am a Jew. It is an acknowledgment that in our modern world, it is so easy not to be a Jew, to ignore the tradition of our ancestors, to lay down that heavy burden, to walk away from 3,000 years of history so often marred by sorrow. I am not a Jew, you are not a Jew, solely by the accident of birth, or even by the religious ritual that brought you into this faith. I am a Jew because I accept that which I believe Judaism demands of me. I am a Jew because I accept that which I believe Judaism demands of me.
So many parts to this statement: That I must actively accept - take upon myself being a Bar or Bat Mitzvah – one responsible for the obligations of Judaism; That Judaism makes demands – more than just recipes, accents, or stories that I do not only take, but am required to give; That I must believe, that somewhere deep down inside and out in public I must acknowledge that there is something beyond myself that ties me to the others – in this room, performing this same ritual as the sun sets around the planet.
I am a Jew because – because my parents made me go to religious school; because my grandfather would plotz if I wasn’t; because it says so on my passport; because my mother is Jewish; because my father is Jewish; because I like bagels and lox; because I just want to have a party for my Bat Mitzvah; because I have to have some moral system – none of that is enough. Answer for yourself, but find an answer – I am a Jew because there is something in this ancient tradition, born new in each generation, that forces me to live a better life than I would left to myself, that compels me to engage in the world and to leave it a better place that I found it.
Each New Year, we are washed clean and born anew. Who are we in this new year? Who will we be? What will we bring to 5770 that we can share as we look back from 5771? Yom Kippur is not a time to close the book on the past, but rather to open the book of the future – to stare at that blank page and imagine what might be written. As we go forward into this new year, as we prepare this chapter in our lives, let us resolve to act purposefully, to see the possibilities and to meet them. Let us resolve to believe – not only in ourselves, but in what we can do, together.
I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands of me no abdication of the mind.
L’shanah tovah – to a year of good.

A Creed without God?

2009-09-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

Rosh haShanah Morning I 5770
Temple Sholom – 19 September 2009

There is a midrash told about our patriarch Jacob. Jacob, also known as Israel, was concerned that the rivalry between his children that had resulted in Joseph’s being sold into slavery in Egypt, might re-emerge after his death. On his deathbed, Jacob gathered his sons together for one final lesson. He asked them each to go out and find a stick and bring it back to him. When they returned, he asked them if they could each try to break their sticks which, very easily, they could. He then sent them out for a second stick. When they returned, he had them tie all twelve sticks together in a bundle. He again asked them if they could try to break their sticks. Though each one tried, the strength of the sticks together was too much for them to break. Realizing what their father was trying to teach them, they tried to reassure him, saying together, “Listen, Dad, our God is the One that you call yod-hey-vav-hey, and we know that is the only God out there.” In the Hebrew it read, “Sh’ma, Yisraeil, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai echad.” – also translated as “Here, O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is one.” Together the brothers recited the oldest creedal statement in Judaism – that they were bound together by their monotheism and belief in the same God.

Those of you raised in other streams of Judaism might have wondered why, contrary to Orthodox and Conservative practice, which is to sit down after the Bar’chu, we Reform Jews remain standing from before the Bar’chu through the Sh’ma. Actually, the original Reform practice was to sit down after the Bar’chu and to rise again for the Sh’ma. The Sh’ma became, in classical Reform parlance, the “watchword of our faith” – the secret oath only for the initiates of Judaism; the Pledge of Allegiance for our modern religion. No matter what else we might say or do, no matter what else we might believe, we re-makers of Judaism could stand together affirming that we believed in the God we called Adonai, and that that God was unitary and unique.

So, in our investigation of a Reform creed – a stated set of beliefs that we could all articulate together – we should start with the Sh’ma. How much, however, do we feel bound together by a common belief in the same God? Although it might even be true, that were we to examine our theological beliefs, we might find many things in common, we are uncomfortable even imagining what god our neighbor might believe in, let alone talking about it. We all imagine that our ideas of the Divine are unique and that others would not understand. Further, we do not want to know what or how others might believe in God as we fear their belief might lead to an attempt at persuasion. We fear the cult. We joke about “drinking the Kool-Aid.” How odd that we sit together in a room in a religious service and are quite happy that we do not share the same God.

But yet, perhaps there is something about that belief – about that approach to the Divine – that does unite us in faith. After all, we are self-named Yisraeil: a word which, according to our sacred scripture, means the one who struggles with God and humanity, with the Divine and with the mortal. If we cannot agree on the result of the search, perhaps we do agree on the investigation.

In the seventh issue of the first volume (October 1843) of The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, Nathaniel Levin begins a series on the history of the Jewish community of Charleston. In issue number nine (December 1843), Levin speaks of the foundation of the Reform Community of Israelites – often cited as a founder of Reform Judaism in America - and makes the following note about their creed:
The most peculiar part of their ritual is the ten articles of faith adopted by the society, which emanated from enlarged, liberal, and enlightened views, for it was optional with any member of the society, either to believe, or reject them; for in the preface to their volume is this remarkable passage: "Let each one believe or reject what his heart and understanding (at once humbled and enlightened by divine goodness) may rationally dictate to be believed or rejected."

To restate, before they even elaborate their creed – the catechism of beliefs that each member must hold sacred to be a part of the group - they not only allow dissent, but command followers to believe, instead, what their reason leads them to.

What more could one want in a Reform creed? The RCI (as they are known by historians) missed the boat by leaving this statement in their preamble. Their creedal statements – about God, about the primacy of Torah – are interesting, but this statement – this commitment to rational inquiry is what they truly believed – and the rest may just be basis for discussion. I admire the idea - that the creed is there not to be accepted without thought, but as the starting point for an on-going dialogue. To phrase this in creedal language, “I believe with a perfect faith that ideas must be struggled with, rather than blindly accepted or blithely rejected.”

Now, we can move on to creating a Reform creed that is more about what one believes than what one believes in. We can create a creedal statement that allows for those convinced of a personal god, as well as those more skeptical. We agree not on the form that divinity takes, but that we struggle with the concept of the Divine. This formulation is not so bizarre to our modern ears. We take for granted a belief in free speech – not in the particular speech of any individual or group, but we believe in the right of all members of society to speak as they will, whether we agree with them or not. This belief is a foundation of our democratic system – a belief not in some specific precept, but a confidence that allowing a diversity of precepts is what most benefits our society.

Another concept that our Reform creed must encompass is change. Outside of the United States, we and our co-religionists are identified as Progressive Judaism. While Reform Jews might argue that our history is consistent all the way back to Abraham, we only became self-aware of the changing nature of Judaism after the wissenschaft des judentums – the scientific study of Judaism that came out of post-Enlightenment Jewry. Looking at Jewish history, wissenschaft scholars noted that Judaism had been influenced by the cultures around it, and that it had changed, and continued to change and develop. For them, Jews suddenly allowed to participate in their surrounding culture, it was an affirmation that they had chosen the right path. It illuminated the way for the next generation, who self-consciously took the reins of a Reform Judaism. To put this idea in creedal form, we might say, “I believe with a perfect faith that Judaism has and will continue to change as society progresses toward a Messianic age.”

But change alone for the sake of change was not the ideal of the wissenshaft scholars. Noticing that Judaism had changed over time was only the beginning. The science came in as these scholars attempted to find what had not changed, what were the core beliefs that linked one iteration of Judaism to the next, one generation of Jews to the next. What was it that connected Abraham’s personal relationship with God to Moses’ covenant in the desert to the prophetic world of the First Temple in Jerusalem? The exile in Babylon to the text-based religion of the Second Temple? The Rabbinic world of Talmud and Midrash with the Ashkenazic and Sephardi cultures of Europe, Asia, and Africa? What was the core of Judaism, when all the outside influences were peeled away?

One way to discover those core values was to go back in time, to a moment when, they believed, Judaism was more pure – less adulterated by outside cultures. We can go back to a moment in early Jewish history, one we read about just this morning, where our first ancestor, Abraham, is given a test of faith. God takes the one reward that Abraham has been waiting so long for – Isaac, standing in for Abraham’s descendants numbering as the stars in the sky, and asks for it back. God’s question is simple – do you love me for me or for what I can give you? According to our text, Abraham passes the test by offering up his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Although we can empathize with the doubt that leads one partner to continually test the other, we also know we also know that such behavior can weaken rather than strengthen the relationship.

What have we learned about the core of Judaism from this example? That our relationship with God has had its doubts from the beginning? The problem is that different interpretations of even this simple story can lead to different understandings. Perhaps then, looking back at our wissenschaft forebears, we can see that the value lies not only in the answer, but in the process as well. While Judaism may be a progressive religion – changing in each and every age, it is also self-consciously a historical religion – not only conscious of the changes, but determined to find the root of even the most modern of innovations in millennia old text. We take out the Torah each week for this very reason. We seek to understand the world around us through a 3,000 year old lens, refitted by each generation into a new set of frames. Here our covenantal language might say, “I believe with a perfect faith that what makes us Jewish is our commitment to use what has come before to see the world anew.”

Let us take stock for a moment and see how far we have come in developing our new creed:
I believe with a perfect faith that ideas must be struggled with, rather than blindly accepted or blithely rejected.
I believe with a perfect faith that Judaism has and will continue to change as society progresses toward a Messianic age.
I believe with a perfect faith that what makes us Jewish is our commitment to use what has come before to see the world anew.

A good start – three sticks that when bundled together are much tougher to break; a tripod that can stand on its own yet allow us to begin to see what other areas we might be needed – the role of community and peoplehood, respect for others and their beliefs, notions about children and future generations. In a few days, each of us will have the opportunity to add our own words, but, for now, let us realize that such work is best down slowly, one step at a time.

In our midrash, Jacob seems not so concerned about whether or not his children will have a relationship with God – moreso that they will have a relationship with each other. Yet, their answer is about God. There is power in the idea that each of us are created in the Divine image; that there is something of the holy in all of us. This belief allows us to reach beyond the personal to admit admiration of the other – for they hold that which we long for. If we imagine God to be the perfection of our ideals, then knowing that our ideals exist tangibly – even if only a small part – in another human being brings us all together.

A final note about God as the perfection of our ideals – as we spoke about last night, we have often taken for granted the songs that come at the end of our service. These closing songs are often creedal statements. Yidgal and Adon Olam, which we looked at yesterday, are theological statements about God. This morning’s closing song is in English and, although one of my favorites, is sometimes viewed as too “churchy”. A reminder, Reform Judaism moved to the vernacular so that we would not only enjoy the melodies that we sing, but also understand the meaning of the lyrics. As we sing “All the World” this morning, listen to the very Reform ideals in each line. Imagine that the moment described in this hymn is the Messianic age and the God whom all will come to serve is that perfection of our ideals, rather than an old man on a throne. All the World then becomes a creedal statement about the world that we hope to create – a world where our ideals become reality and prophetic voice of social justice is fulfilled.

In this year to come, let us all seek to find our ideals in other human beings. Let us find a way to bring those tiny sparks of the Divine together. Let us find the courage to make the world into that better place that we all imagine – and sing about together.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu – may we take up the task to write for ourselves and others, a good year.

A Religion of Deed, Not of Creed?

2009-09-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

Erev Rosh haShanah 5770
Temple Sholom – 18 September 2009

Once upon a time, begins this story – as many stories do, there was a queen with four children. As she knew that it was expected that someday, one of them would rule after her, she contrived an experiment to learn what type of rulers they might make. She gathered her four children together in the throne room and gave each one a grain of rice, saying that this grain of rice held the secret to being a wise and just ruler. She told her children that she would bring them back to find out what they had learned from that secret.

Several years later, the queen brought the four children together again. She asked her eldest daughter, “Tell me, dear, what did you do with your grain of rice?” The eldest daughter said that she realized how precious was this grain of rice and she covered it in gold, mounted it on a marble stand, and placed it in a crystal case on her mantle for all to see. The queen turned to her oldest son and asked, “What is it that you have done with your grain of rice?” The oldest son said that he had realized how valuable this grain of rice was and he had wrapped it carefully in silk and placed it in a locked box which he stored under his bed, safe from all who might take it. The queen turned to the youngest son, who was looking sheepish and asked, “My precious son, what did you do with your grain of rice?” After an uncomfortable moment, the younger son finally admitted that he had thrown the grain of rice away, figuring that, as he had just done on the way over, he could get another grain of rice from the kitchen if it became necessary. Finally, the queen turned to her youngest daughter and asked, “What have you done with the grain of rice that I gave to you, my little one?” The youngest daughter answered that she no longer had that grain of rice. “But what did you do with it, my daughter?” the queen prodded. The youngest daughter said that she had taken the grain of rice and planted it and each season she took a portion of the crop for food and a portion to replant. She pointed out the window at the rice fields reaching to the horizon. “There,” she said, “is what I did with my grain of rice.”

As all good stories are metaphors, let us imagine that the grain of rice given by the Queen is Judaism. The eldest daughter is the Orthodox Jew, who takes the laws and precepts of Judaism and wraps them in a layer of gold, preserving it under glass and raising it high for all to see. The eldest son is the Conservative Jew, who takes the traditions of Judaism and safeguards them in a box – perhaps not always putting them on display, but nonetheless preserving them. The youngest son is the cultural Jew, who can take or leave any particular custom or ritual, certain that if they are ever wanted, they can be easily found. The youngest daughter is the Reform Jew, who makes of the history and practices of Judaism a living thing – growing and expanding and finding new and fertile fields in each and every generation.

But for us, to learn a lesson from this story, we need to know exactly what is our grain of rice. What is the kernel of our Judaism? What is the seed which, when planted, will sustain us and future generations?

This past year, I was selected by the STAR foundation to participate in the fourth cohort of their “Good to Great” Rabbis. Rabbis from different movements are brought together, sometime after the tenth year as a rabbi, to take a moment to pause and reflect, to refresh and retool and reinvigorate our rabbinates. At the beginning of a retreat this past June, we were told that “great” Rabbis dreamed big dreams and to imagine what our big dream might be. I will save revealing that dream for another time, but soon after this retreat, I tried to imagine how we together as a congregation might align ourselves on the same road to the same dream. The image came to me of us all standing, perhaps on Erev Rosh haShanah, reciting together a statement of our beliefs, of our Reform Judaism. In service to this image, I began a study of creed in Reform Judaism (which I have journaled on www.reformcreed.blogspot.com), the results of which I would like to share with you.

Our grain of rice, the kernel of our Judaism, is not one ritual or another, one practice or prayer, but what we believe together. What brings us together under this roof, on this evening, is something that we have either dared not to utter aloud, or have read together without paying any heed. These High HolyDays we will explore together what beliefs we hold in common, what makes us a congregation.

In doing so, we must acknowledge that we are flying in the face of modern self-reflective Jewish scholarship. In discussing the place of belief in Judaism, most scholars start with the words of Milton Steinberg from his seminal 1965 work, Basic Judaism. “By its nature, then, Judaism is averse to formal creeds which of necessity limit and restrain thought.” (p.35) Judaism, it is said, is a religion of deeds, not creed. We are expected to do – to pray, to perform certain mitzvot, to eat or not eat certain foods. What we believe is irrelevant, how we act is most important. After all, that is the freedom that has allowed us to accept such radically different theologians as Martin Buber and Mordechai Kaplan under the umbrella of acceptable Jewish thought.

Yet, let us turn back to Steinberg, who laid out the case in this manner:
For the past one hundred and fifty years [two hundred years, now] a quiet debate has been going on among Jewish theologians over the question: Are there dogmas in Judaism? Does it have a set of beliefs, authoritatively formulated, which the individual Jew must accept if he [sic] wishes to be a communicant in good standing in the Jewish religion? (p. 31)

Can we, placing the word "Reform" before each citation of Jewish or Judaism, take this as a challenge to ourselves: Is there a set of beliefs, authoritatively formulated, which the individual Reform Jew must accept if s/he wishes to be a communicant in good standing in the Reform Jewish religion (or better yet "a good Reform Jew")?

What about “informed choice”? Is that a belief sufficient upon which to rest a religious movement? Must creedal statements focus on the Divine, or can we construct a more earthly based belief system? Tomorrow morning, we will look at the role of theology and whether or not a creed can be based in process rather than content. On Kol Nidrei, we will focus on a well-crafted poetic creedal statement to examine the necessity for our religion to match our beliefs. Finally, on Yom Kippur morning, we will have a chance to explore our own beliefs – to share what bring you and I together in this sacred space.

Before closing this evening, it is necessary to address the question of why a conscious formulation of beliefs might even be useful, let alone vital to our living healthy and fulfilled lives. Let us imagine a moment of crisis. For us human beings, we can be thrown into crisis by either of two types of failures – a failure of circumstance or a failure of belief. A failure of circumstance can be the loss of a job, sudden physical disability, or an unanticipated financial reversal. A failure of circumstance can place us in crisis, when that which we have relied upon or expected is no longer there and we must change our expectations or be swept away. A failure of belief can have the same result. Day after day of doing the same job can lead to a loss of commitment, until one day, we can no longer put forth the energy needed, no longer muster the spark to move forward. Relationships, long-term projects, dreams – all can founder with a failure of belief. Failing the one – belief or circumstance – the other can give us the strength to weather a crisis, or even just to cope. Belief – in ourselves, in our wisdom and expertise, in our chosen career or partner – is what helps us find direction when we are at sea. Belief is our core answer to the question, “Why?” and the more that we have developed and articulated our belief system, the better we are able to steer our own courses and answer the questions that beset us.

Finally, a note about covert creedal statements: When he served on the Religious Practices committee, former Temple President Mort Rutenberg would explain that services should end on an up note, with the entire congregation standing and singing together, motivated to action upon leaving the sanctuary. This idea fits with the nature of most of our traditional closing songs. The service is structured so at the end, we stand and sing together that which we believe. What has been lost is not the power of those words, but our understanding of them. Reform Judaism, in earlier years, replaced Hebrew songs with English, so that, as we sang together, we would understand what we were declaiming. In our recent swing toward more Hebrew, we sing the same songs, but know not what we say. Yigdal and Adon Olam – the latter will close our service this evening – are creedal statements. They are expressions of theology in which we define the God in whom we believe and the trust and expectations we have thereof. These words of faith are meant to be a reinforcement of what we have stated in our serve and serve to strengthen and comfort us as we leave.

As we take this time to re-examine our actions over the past year, to look back on the deeds that we have performed, let us also take these ten days of repentance to examine our faith and beliefs. Let us see if we have lived up to our ideals. Let us take the time to bring the vague moral feelings of our conscience into sharper focus, that we may use them as a moral compass as we steer through the challenges of the year ahead. May this be a year that is good and sweet not by chance alone, but by our own earnest efforts to shape the world as our Judaism tells us it should be shaped. Let us gather together next year to see not one grain of rice preserved, but a whole field planted with the seeds of our belief.

L’shanah tovah u’metukah t’kateivu – may the writing of this year of our lives be sweet and good.

Atem Nitzavim haYom Kulchem

2009-09-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

Shabbat Nitzavim 5769 - Installation of Officers and Trustees

Temple Sholom – 11 September 2009

Earlier this evening, the officers and trustees of Temple Sholom stood before you, the congregation that entrusted them to leadership, and accepted the responsibility of fulfilling our ideals of what Temple Sholom can be, of building a thriving congregation, of maintaining the haimische community that we strive to be. Over the past year, our president, Steve Saltzman, asked the previous Trustees and officers to share their own personal journeys – how it was they ended up in this congregation, at this moment, in this role. What was most interesting about the stories was not only the many different experiences and backgrounds in our congregation’s board, but rather what they found the most important moment that they, now in hindsight, had brought them there. Some shared stories of a personal relationship with Judaism – either from childhood or rediscovered as an adult. Some spoke about interactions with members of this congregation – clergy or lay leader – who said or did something that made this congregation become something they cared about. Many talked about the surprise in being in a position of leadership, not realizing until they tried to put the story together how they ended moving from one position to another, learning more about the congregation, caring more, taking on more responsibility.

The story of our lives only becomes a narrative in hindsight. Only when we look back over where we have been can we see the choices that led us in this way rather than that, resulted in forming us as the individuals we are today. In the moment, one decision seems as haphazard as the next – only in perspective can we see where we have come. In this week’s portion, Moses attempts the near impossible – to give an entire people, as individuals – that moment of hindsight, before they have moved forward, before they have crossed the Jordan. Atem nitzavim ha-yom kulchem – “You stand this day, all of you”. This moment which you are experiencing, is a moment of great import. What you are doing now will determine who you will be in the future.

Occasionally, we have the foresight to see such moments in our lives, as we experience them. Some of us, eight years ago, could tell that the impact of those airplanes would be felt beyond lower Manhattan and the Pentagon, beyond a field in Pennsylvania, and that how we viewed the world – and how the world would view us – would be drastically different going forward.

Some had the foresight. Many did not. Most did not believe what their eyes saw. Even in shock and horror, we hoped that – after the grief – life would go on as before. Only now, when sitting at the dinner table with my children who have never walked on an airplane without a security check, who do not know the skyline of New York with its symbolic twin towers, can we see how life has changed.

Realizing in the moment the power of any given moment is difficult to do. I remember listening to All Things Considered in late spring, 1989. Tongue-in-cheek, a reporter was interviewing people on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, asking them how they were marking the moment when the Cold War ended. They asked one father pushing a stroller whether he would wake up his sleeping child, so he could remember the moment later in life. The father laughed. And yet, that moment in 1989 was as good as any other in which the Cold War did end, when the way that we had understood the world for almost 40 years had disappeared.

At that moment in time, standing together, Moses marks the moment not only for all those standing there – men, women and children, down to the water-carrier and the woodbearer – but also all those not there that day. This moment of standing is one of great import not only for those individuals, not only for the Israelite nation, but for all of us Jews, forever. In that moment, in the acceptance of covenant with God, in the decision to cross over into the Promised Land, our history was written – and we live the results every day.

What a gift – to know which moments are the standouts in our history and which will flow on, forgotten in the mists of time. How can we live our lives so as to weigh the importance of each choice, and yet move in any direction, not paralyzed by indecision? Today, we have a moment as a congregation – this Board will lead us forward on a journey set in motion years before. They will take us one, or two, or maybe even ten steps closer to our new home. Let us decide, right now, this day, that this moment will be one that we can look back on as a choice in where we were going, as a milestone in the nearly 100 years of our congregation. Let us resolve it and then go out and do the work to make it so. Let us then be able to look back and have it said about us, “Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem – and you were standing here this day – all of you..”

Installation of Cantor Darcie Naomi Sharlein - Shabbat Chayei Sarah 5769 Temple Emanu-El – Oak Park, Michigan – 21 November 2008

2008-11-22T20:00:00.000-08:00

First of all, I would like to thank Rabbi Klein and Temple Emanu-El for inviting me to finally make it outside the Detroit airport and see a little of Michigan. I will admit to flying over the area before Darcie came – on my way to Cincinnati – just to check it out. Detroit actually has a great significance in my family. My grandparents met here, and would often travel up from Cincinnati for weekend trips. My mother’s father was raised in Cincinnati, but my mother’s mother had moved from New York to a farm in Windsor, Ontario and I remember her telling stories about crossing over on the ferry to meet my grandfather, who was working here.

Rabbi Klein asked me to speak a little about the importance of music in Judaism and the role of the Cantor in Reform Judaism. Cantor Sharlein, who had the pleasure of standing next to me for three years, knows how ironic it is for me to teach about music, but she is probably happier that I am speaking about this tradition, rather than providing examples. Vocal training was not one of the roles that I played in her Cantorial education.

Music, of course, goes as far back as our people, as far back as Miriam picking up her timbrel and leading the women in the song of the sea that we still as the Mi Chamocha. If Miriam was the first Cantor, the role was abandoned by women for many generations (excepting perhaps the judge Deborah) as the male Levites took up the chorus in the Temple in Jerusalem – singing the Psalms that today we usually read and then try to set to music. After the destruction of the Temple, when instrumental music was dropped as a sign of civic mourning, Judaism developed an a cappella repertoire of different modes for different services and holidays – the system of nusach; and of course the trop system for the memorization and chanting of sacred text. Our non-liturgical music was always influenced by the cultures that surrounded us, but never so self-consciously as with the birth of Reform Judaism in Germany. Our forbears recognized that music, as well as words, could serve to elevate the soul, to bring community together, and to inspire with meaning. Reform Cantors and composers truly “sang a new song unto God” as they adapted classical forms to the new liturgy and old texts. It is only in the past sixty years that the professionalization of the Reform Cantorate by Hebrew Union College’s School of Sacred Music has spread these masters of song and inspiration throughout our North American communities.

But it is odd for me to explain Jewish music to you when you have already welcomed one of my teachers to your congregation. Better than give you a history of the Reform Cantorate, I can tell you what working with student Cantors has meant to me and to my congregation – what we hope to teach and what we receive in return.

At Temple Sholom, we take the responsibility of training student Cantors for the Reform movement very seriously. There is a huge benefit to us. In a congregation much too small to require (or afford) the services of a full-time invested Cantor, we nevertheless get to see the best that our movement has to offer, and hopefully, give them a place to find the experience they need. We work hard to provide an environment that will persuade one of these busy students to brave the difficult trek across the Hudson into the wilds of New Jersey. In return for providing them with B’nei Mitzvah students, a volunteer choir, a regular Shabbat congregation, and Rabbi and staff to train on, we share the excitement and joy of their new discoveries in hazzanut. We sometimes get to see small failures as well; we sometimes hear tunes that we would not quite pick on our own; but all in all we seem to do quite well by the bargain. Last night my daughter Avital said that it was sad that we took in student Cantors, got to know and love them, and then they go away. But it is a great source of pride to the congregation and to myself when our former student Cantors are invested and leave to find pulpits of their own. I bring with me the greetings and best wishes of virtually every member of Temple Sholom – not just for Cantor Sharlein, but for this congregation (and also a warning – if you don’t treat her nicely, they’ll send me back) for whom we were helping her prepare. We are happy that Darcie and Jeff have found a home here and that she has found a Rabbi who is probably a better fencer than the last one; although we were a little concerned about the Hawaiian shirts.

This week’s Torah portion is Chayyei Sarah and in it, Abraham sends his trusty servant Eleazar to find a bride for his son Isaac. Eleazar is concerned that he will not pick the correct woman and so he asks God to help. He informs God that he will pick the woman who brings water not only to him but, without asking, for his camels as well. The first woman that he meets is Rebekah; she offers him and his camels water; and she eventually returns with him to Isaac. In that spirit, we trust that you have found Darcie Naomi Sharlein to be as generous as Rebekah and will find as we did, that she readily gives more than one knows to ask.

I remember at Shabbat Sharlein, the service at which we honored our newly minted Cantor, she spoke about an important liturgical moment in our Shabbat service. At the end of each service, with the congregation standing around us, Cantor Sharlein and I invoke the priestly benediction from the book of Numbers. The Cantor would chant the Hebrew, which I would translate. For the first two verses, Cantor Sharlein would sing alone but, as she stretched into the third verse, the congregation would join in and everyone would be singing by the final “shalom”. In words that spoke a much of her Cantorial presence as our congregation, she told us that she felt that the congregation was blessing her as she was blessing them.

With that in mind, as I stand here for Temple Sholom and with Temple Emanu-El, I invite Cantor Darcie Naomi Sharlein to come and be blessed with the three-fold benediction of the Torah.

Yom Kippur Morning 5769 Temple Sholom – 9 October 2008

2008-10-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

There is a story about a congregation on Yom Kippur. After the long day of praying and fasting, the service was reaching its conclusion at N’ilah. On the bimah, the Rabbi reached the portion of the service, where standing before the open Ark, the custom was to prostrate oneself before God. As the Rabbi fell to the floor, she cried out, “I am but dust and ashes!” The Cantor, also involved in the liturgy of the service, cast himself upon the synagogue floor and sang out, “I am but dust and ashes!” Overcome with the power of the holiday, moved by the prayers and music, and contemplating her own mortal soul, the President of the congregation threw herself on the floor next to the Rabbi and Cantor and cried out, “I am but dust and ashes!” Seeing this behavior, the Rabbi quietly nudged the Cantor and said in a somewhat condescending tone, “Look who thinks she’s but dust and ashes!”

Humility has always been a difficult value in Judaism. The Rabbis quoted humility as one of Moses’ most important traits – and yet, he was the one who lifted his hands to part the waters, climbed the mountain to speak with God, thundered against the people, and thought only God directly could lead the people better than he. Although humility was given lip service by the Rabbis of the Talmud – in that they insisted that every teaching they had learned included the name of its teacher, rather than their own – other stories and disputes showed how big their egos really were.

How is it then that one can “walk humbly with Thy God”? As Jews, we are ever sensitive to the way that we are viewed by others, even as we are seen as arrogant in calling ourselves “the chosen people”. To say that we walk with God seems to be the ultimate presumption – we do not walk where you walk, we walk with God. How indeed can we do such an elevated act “humbly”?

Dichotomy is also a value in Judaism. Not only did the Rabbis believe in the conflict between strict justice and tender mercy, as we have seen over the past two sermons, they also believed (as quoted in Pirke Avot) that everything was predetermined AND that human beings have free will. There are many times when Judaism not only acknowledges the mutually exclusive, but celebrates it.

Rabbi Bunim of Pshis'cha said that everyone should have two pockets. Written on a scrap of paper in one pocket should be: "I am but dust and ashes." Written on a scrap in the other should be: "The world was created for my sake." At certain times, we must reach into one pocket; at other times, into the other. The secret of correct living comes from knowing when to reach into which.

Perhaps when we are on our way to work or school, or heading out on an important errand, and every other driver on the road, or rider of the subway or train is an obstacle keeping us from where we need to go, we need to remember that we are but dust and ashes.

Perhaps when we sit at our desks and imagine that the work we do is futile, that even the act of bringing home a paycheck is but a meaningless exercise in the recirculation of currency through the hands of the government and our local utilities, we need to remember that the world was created for our sake.

There are times when we focus only on our own needs, when we minimize the desires of others; when we think that the miraculous fact of our own existence is a unique moment in the history of time and that our desires and wants, our ideas and creations, are much more important than the wishes, needs or desires of those around us; when we imagine that the sun, moon and the stars revolve around the axis of our own existence. These are the times that we must remember that we need to bring ourselves back to earth, to remember that the world existed before us and will continue after – that we are but dust and ashes.

There are times when we feel that all of our actions pass unnoticed, even by those we love; when we feel taken for granted by those with whom we interact; when the vast multitude of problems and even people spread over our planet overwhelms us; when the actions, cares or needs of one individual among billions seem to disappear in the roar and tumult of civilization. These are the times that we must remember that we are a unique individual, the end result of millions of distinct events and an ultimate product of creation.

When we sit in our seats at Yom Kippur and count up all those who have slighted us, rather than those we have slighted, we need to remember that we are but dust and ashes.

When imagine that our sins and failings are so much greater than those seated around us, we need to remember that the world was created for our sake.

When we pull out our checkbooks, and think about how much of a tax deduction we can get instead of how much our donation will be of help, we need to remember that we are but dust and ashes.

When we despair of making a difference in the lives of others, and therefore fail to engage in acts of tikkun olam, we need to remember that the world was created for our sake.

When we stand in the voting booth and consider only candidates of our own kind and vote only for our own self-interest, we need to remember that we are but dust and ashes.

When we fail to exercise our democratic right to choose our government, because our vote is only one among millions, we need to remember that the world was created for our sake.

When we allow politicians to play on our fears, pander to the needs of our self-interest groups, and denigrate those of others, we need to remember that we are but dust and ashes.

When we assume that government is the work of others, that someone else is better suited to work to solve the problems of our society, we need to remember that the world was created for our sake.

When we buy bigger and bigger cars, keep the air conditioning in our home running at sixty-eight degrees for twenty-four hours a day, purchase and discard and purchase and discard, we need to remember that we are but dust and ashes.

When we imagine that our water usage, our electricity consumption, our garbage is but a small slice of a much larger pie and reducing that slice will have little effect on the world, we need to remember that the world was created for our sake.

Each and every time that we consider ourselves as an excuse to ignore others, we must remember that we are but dust and ashes. Each and every time that we allow others to belittle us and cast us aside, we must remember that the world was created for our sake.

This Yom Kippur, these two pockets are both a comfort and a challenge. If we are but dust and ashes, so too is everyone else. The vast works that we contemplate as pinnacles of our generation, are yesterday’s news to the next. If that fact casts us into despondence, remember that no one else has ever lived this life and contemplated such wonders as we can today.

We need not worry that we are as good a leader as Moses, as wise as Solomon, as learned as Hillel, or even as great as Zusya. We are each of us unique and can only be held to the standard that we can attain. That, too, is a comfort and a challenge. The joys that we will experience in our own lives – in moments of celebration with family and friends, in times of pride in our work, in flashes of sudden astonishment and wonder, in periods of calm reflection – are ours and ours alone; never to be repeated in this earth. Yet, there is a commonality in our mortality. The drive to give back a better world than we received, to pass on something to the next generation, to build immortality with our own hands is something we all hold in common and dream together.

As we read on the second day of Rosh haShanah, the story of creation in chapter one of Genesis has humanity created on the sixth day. Why then, ask the sages, was the human being created last? According to one commentary, because human beings are the pinnacle of creation – the best is always saved for last. According to another, to keep our all too human egos in check – so that if we became too presumptuous, we could be reminded that even the gnat preceded us in the order of creation.

With such conflicting messages, we ask: Why then were we created at all?

In the book of Micah, chapter 6, verse 8, the following advice is given: God has told you, O Mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God – words inscribed on the outside of wall of Temple Sholom in Plainfield.

If only life were that simple – that God would write exactly what we needed to do in three foot high letters on the wall.

And, yet, it can be. We, as a congregation, chose to take those words from our tradition and make them the standard by which we judge our congregation and the lives of our members. We have chosen to do justly – to hold the world to a higher standard and to commit ourselves to working to make that standard a reality for all who live on earth. We have chosen to love mercy – not only to offer comfort and undeserved benevolence, but to graciously receive mercy from others and to allow others to benefit from what we may be able to give. In doing these things, we have chosen to walk humbly with our God – to see that we have a mighty example to follow, that we are not afraid to dream big, but to acknowledge in our humanity that this is a shared task – across racial and ethnic lines, across socio-economic and national ties, across generations. One for which we must work together, for which we need help.

We know, fellow mortals, what it is that God requires of us, how the Divine spark within us urges that we behave. But there is a difference between the knowing and the doing. As we enter this new year, as we expect our sins to be wiped clean from our slates, as we imagine what we will say about ourselves one year from now, let us resolve to be the best that we can be, to live up to what we believe we are commanded – to do justly, to love mercy and, in all, to walk humbly with our God.

L’shanah tovah.

Kol Nidrei 5769 Temple Sholom – 8 October 2008

2008-10-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

God has told you, O Mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Thy God.

Last week, this story introduced the balance that the Rabbis imagined between two opposing forces in the world – justice and mercy. To the Rabbis, even God has these two aspects: midat din – the aspect of judgment and midat rachamim – the aspect of mercy.

As we discussed on Rosh haShanah, these are the themes that our liturgy explores on these days of repentance. The prayer that we read and sing over and over again is – Avinu, Malkeinu – Avinu, the merciful parent; Malkeinu – the just ruler. We are caught on these High HolyDays between these two poles. We acknowledge that for there to be justice in the world, we must make right what we have done wrong. We know, however – as we say over and over again – that a truly just accounting would be terrible for us and we pray for mercy. Last week, we noted that justice is often difficult and thought of as harsh. Mercy, it seems, comes more naturally to us.

In Biblical Hebrew, there are many words which are translated into English as mercy. The first is rachamim. The word is derived from the root reish, chet, mem – or rechem – which is related to the womb. This idea of mercy is one of connectedness – the tenderness that a mother has to a child – an automatic sympathetic reaction that we may have upon seeing something weak and in distress; that which, perhaps, causes us to root for the underdog.

The second word often translated as mercy is chein. Chein is also sometimes translated as grace – the benevolence of a kind deed with no prior relationship between the actors. It is very difficult to ask for grace, because it is given out without concern for deservedness or relationship; an act without expectation of return.

Somewhere in between, and yet altogether different, is the word which is used in the Micah quote above – chesed. We most often encounter the word chesed in the related term g’milut chasadim, which is often translated as deeds of lovingkindness. Lovingkindess, which is not really a word in English, was created as a translation of this Hebrew term chesed. Like rachamim, but unlike chein, chesed is based in a connection. Nelson Glueck, the noted archeologist and former president of Hebrew Union College, explained that chesed was based on a covenantal relationship. However, unlike rachamim but like chein, there is no expectation of chesed, no prior action which can bring it about. Chesed, therefore, is an act of unexpected benevolence toward someone who shares a covenantal relationship, but has done nothing to deserve (or not deserve) any reward.

You see now why chesed is the appropriate term for us to study on this Kol Nidrei. We began our worship this evening with a plea for such mercy. We acknowledged to God that we would be making all types of oaths in the year to come, which we would not end up keeping. Despite the fact that God has established a covenantal relationship with us, specifically in the Ten Commandments, reminding us not to make false oaths, we presume upon our relationship to ask for forgiveness, not only before we have broken the oath, but before we have even made it. Another word for seeking chesed from God might be chutzpah.

Chesed is the theme for Yom Kippur. In our abject self-awareness, we know that there are so many things that we have done that we should not have done. We know that our attempts at repentance have often been half-hearted. We know that in many cases, we have returned to behavior that we have regretted before the words of apology have even parted our lips. If we are honest with ourselves, faced with this realization that we are little deserving of atonement, we instead, plead for God’s mercy – for chesed – that we may be forgiven, despite our failings.

Chesed is also the theme of our national debate. Again, if we are truly honest with ourselves, we would acknowledge that there is no one else to blame for the current economic debacle then we ourselves. Barring a small amount of fraud, we were the ones who sought out mortgages that we could not afford to pay off, betting that rates would go lower or we would sell before the rates adjusted upward. We were the ones who used our homes as investments, siphoning off more money through refinancing, never thinking that our borrowing would outpace the value of our homes. We were the ones who bought into the idea that the stock market had a new paradigm, that the Dow was showing a never-ending bull market. We believed that our bonuses would only increase; that we could continue to amass as much credit card debt as we were offered; that all those warnings on our investments about “no guarantee that assets will increase in value” was protective boilerplate. We were the ones who allowed, even encouraged, our government to let the invisible hand of the markets safeguard our own self-interest.

We are left only to beseech chesed. We cannot, in all good conscience, say that justice demands that the government fix a problem we were complicit in creating. Instead, we, with our mortgages, brokerage accounts, and retirement savings, must throw ourselves upon the mercy of our government – asking for what we do not deserve, but, oh so desperately, need.

Micah reminds us to do justice, but to love mercy. Often, it is easier to do mercy than justice. Justice demands that we see both sides of the issue, that we do what may be personally difficult. Mercy is so much easier. We see a problem, someone in trouble, and we reach out, as much as we can, to help. Mercy asks for no value judgments, no moral pronouncements, nor even any thought of outcomes, just the action in the moment. Yet, we are not commanded to do mercy.

Seeking mercy is also something that we do without being commanded. Although there may be a cost in personal pride in asking for what is undeserved, we certainly do so all the time – whether in praying, briefly, for a light to turn green so we can arrive a little closer to on time, to buying a lottery ticket – asking for mercy, for a benefit which we have not moral right to claim, is as human as hope. And yet, we are commanded to seek justice not mercy.

We are not commanded to recognize mercy, to praise mercy, to give thanks for mercy – none of these actions are what Micah says that God demands of us. Rather, we are to love mercy – an act which may be more difficult than any or all of the above. What does it mean to love mercy? How do we enter into an emotional relationship with a quality, with a type of action? Why do we need to love mercy?

We need to love mercy to act mercifully – to be able to give to others before we are asked is to love mercy. There is a place for us to seek out justice in this world, but we should be acting mercifully before there is even a need to confront injustice.

We need to love mercy to ask for mercy – because we are often embarrassed to ask for ourselves, to admit that we are in need of something that we do not deserve, that we cannot pay back. So much easier to demand what is ours, to blame others and to find scapegoats, rather to than to humble ourselves and admit that we are in need.

We need to love mercy to receive mercy from others – as difficult as it may be to give with good grace, we often find it even harder to receive so. We find it difficult to be thankful, to be able to acknowledge a gift and to not burden ourselves with indebtedness.

Rabbi Judah said, The world endures because of three things: rivalry, lust, and mercy. The Rabbis acknowledged that sometimes our baser needs were what got us out of bed in the morning, gave us the excitement to work or to build, or challenged us to do better. However, they knew that there must be a balance there as well. A world that is composed only of ambition and greed is not a good place to live, and will not long survive. Along with those drives and equally important is the drive to mercy.

Rabbi Eliezer (in Sukkot 49b) taught that, “Deeds of lovingkindness [gemilut chesed] are greater even than tzedakah. Tzedakah can be done only towards the poor; but lovingkindness can be directed towards the rich and poor alike. Tzedakah is done with money; chesed with time or money. Tzedakah is only for the living; chesed can be shown to the living or the dead.”

In the year to come, let us try to love chesed – to go beyond justice to mercy, to give and to receive mercy with good grace, and to create a world that is comforts us both with the strong assurance of justice and the soft cushion of mercy.

L’shanah tovah.

Rosh haShanah Morning II 5769 Temple Sholom – 1 October 2008

2008-10-01T11:52:00.000-07:00

God has told you, O Mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Thy God.

Perhaps, in full disclosure, it should be admitted that this sermon, for the second morning of Rosh haShanah, is not the easiest one to write. I learned from my father the idea of an overarching sermonic theme that covers the High HolyDays – beginning with an introduction on Erev Rosh haShanah, and concluding on the morning of Yom Kippur. Hopefully, the fact that one sermon builds on the next reinforces the idea that attendance at each service – morning and evening – is expected. The structure lends itself to certain rhetorical devices; one of which is using a quote to anchor the theme. This year, we are focusing on the quote above – the fuller text of the words from Micah that were inscribed on the outer wall of our home in Plainfield. One might notice, however, that the quote ends with three clauses – do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with Thy God. Erev Rosh haShanah was the introduction to the theme, yesterday morning dealt with justice, Kol Nidrei will discuss loving mercy, and Yom Kippur morning will conclude with walking humbly with Thy God. That does not leave much for the bonus day of Rosh haShanah.

At this point, it may be useful to look at the medieval Rabbinic concept of Pardes. Pardes is related to the word Paradise, but it is also an acronym for the four ways which the Rabbis imagined one could find meaning in a Biblical text. The first letter – pey – stands for p’shat – the simple meaning of the text in a straightforward reading. The second letter – reish – stands for remez – or hint, leading to an allegorical understanding. The third letter dalet – stands for d’rash – explication or a comparative meaning often using other texts. The fourth letter samech – stands for sod – or the secret meaning of the text, most often found in the mystical text, the Zohar.

Since we will have exhausted the p’shat meaning of the text, our second day of Rosh haShanah allows us to delve deeper into the text. Let us take a midrashic approach and go back to the beginning of the quote: God has told you, O Mortal, what is good. The text tells us that God has already told us what is good. Therefore, all we need to do is to look back in the text to find out exactly where God told us what is good, and then illuminate a further meaning of this text.

The Bible is a large document, and there are many uses of the world tov, but a hint at the beginning of the text is that God uses the term adam – which we translate as human being. Of course, the first time that this word is used is in the portion that we read this morning – b’reishit. Not surprisingly, since this portion is the first of the Torah, it also marks the first usage of the word tov – or good. (This was further brought forth in a study with the Tuesday commentary class where we looked at the first use of lo tov – not good, to refer to the single human being without a fit partner.) The word is used many times in regards to creation. A cursory look would indicate that God decides each step of creation is tov or good. A more in-depth look not only reveals areas that are not called “good”, but also when good is used after a particular part of creation, rather than that of the whole day. Let us take a closer look at what is good, and draw some conclusions thereby.

The first use of the word tov is during the first day. In the first act of creation, God speaks and says, “Let there be light.” There is light – and God then sees that the light is good. The light, and not the darkness is good. Both the fact that the light is good, and the fact that the light is necessary to see what is good tells us that inherent in being able to judge what is good is the ability to see; to discern one thing from another.

On the second day, which includes the creation of the sky and the heavens, the word tov is not used. On the third day, the word tov is used twice - first, when God creates dry land from the waters, and secondly when the earth brings forth vegetation – plants and trees of every kind that include within themselves the seeds to reproduce. Here we learn that there is good in potential – the earth which is about to bring forth life, and the plants that can reproduce.

On the fourth day, God creates the lights in the heavens – stars, sun and moon. These are not declared good until after God gives them a role – to separate light from darkness, to rule over the day and night. From here we learn that there is good in order and regulation.

On the fifth day, the seas and skies are filled with fish, birds and insects – a complete variety of life. From this we learn that difference and diversity are good.

On the sixth day, God first says good after creating all the diverse land animals – this is good. No less than the plants and trees, the birds, fish and insects – the land animals are also good. From this we learn that equality is good. God does not say it is good after creating the human being – rather only after having assigned a job to humanity – to be responsible for all of creation, after having shown the created beings where they fit in the food chain, only then does God look back over ALL of creation and say that it is very good. Hopefully, from this, we as human beings learn that humility is good, that it is very good to know that we are but part of a larger creation.

So, a midrashic reading of creation teaches us what is good: to discern one thing from another, to have potential to grow, to have order and regulation, to have diversity and equality, and to know our place in creation.

Perhaps we can end with another reminder of what is good from the Psalms – Hinei ma tov, u mah na’im, shevet achim gam yachad. How good it is, and how pleaseant, when we can sit together as family, as one.

L’shanah tovah.

Rosh haShanah Morning 5769 Temple Sholom – 30 September 2008

2008-09-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

There is a Rabbinic story about a poor man. He lives next door to a very rich woman who owns, among her many possessions, flocks and flocks of sheep. The poor man and his family are hungry. They do not have food to put on the table. In the depths of his despair, the poor man steals one of the rich woman’s sheep to feed his wife and children. He is caught and taken before a judge. As all of the particulars of the case are well-known, the judge moves to sentencing. The people of the town beseech the judge to show leniency. After all, the rich woman might not have even noticed the loss of one sheep. The poor man was only trying to feed his family. The judge looks sternly at the crowd and says, “None of that matters. The Torah tells us not to incline in judgment toward the rich or the poor. Theft is theft and must be punished. The sheep must be returned to the rich woman and the poor man must pay the fine of three times the value of the sheep.” A murmur goes through the crowd. “Now,” says the judge, “the verdict is set. Justice has been served. Now, all of you who cared so much for the poor man, let us take up a collection to pay his fine.”

The Rabbis use this story to illustrate two important aspects of God that they often found in conflict: midat din – the aspect of judgment and midat rachamim – the aspect of mercy. For the world to be in balance, God had to be just. But a truly just God would be unbearable, and so there had to be an equal part of mercy. The Rabbis go further. They imagine that God created many different worlds before getting to the one we now inhabit. One world was ruled by justice alone… and it could not survive. Another was ruled completely by mercy… it, too, could not stand.

These are the themes that our liturgy explores on these days of repentance. The prayer that we just read and sang in front of the Ark – Avinu, Malkeinu – Avinu, the merciful parent; Malkeinu – the just ruler. We are caught on these High HolyDays between these two poles. We acknowledge that for there to be justice in the world, we must make right what we have done wrong. We know, however – as we say over and over again – that a truly just accounting would be terrible for us and we hope for mercy.

Today, on Rosh haShanah, as we begin the ten days of repentance and move on our journey toward atonement, we must look at ourselves honestly. We must see ourselves weighed on the scales of justice. Only then, do we believe that next week, at Yom Kippur, we will have the right to beseech mercy.

God has told you, O Mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Thy God.”

Justice is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, we expect things to be fair. We expect good actions to be rewarded and bad ones to be punished – certainly the deeds of others, if not our own. However, if we expect the world to be fair, then Judaism tells us that we must act justly. The Torah tells us again and again that we must treat the stranger the same as the citizen; the poor the same as the rich; the widow and orphan as those with families to protect them.

In our own lives, these actions may take some forethought, some self-examination. We may have to stop ourselves when we act with distrust toward the person who is not from our neighborhood, our own socio-economic class, our comfort zone, not of our own race or religion or family model. We have to be conscious not to give more credence to those who have more money or power, or have their words printed in newspapers or quoted on TV. More broadly, we have to think of the consequences that our actions may have on the lives of others.

But, in Judaism, the idea of justice goes further than acting in a just manner. We are commanded to pursue justice – tzedek, tzedek tirdof says Deuteronomy 16:20. Pursuing justice means that we are not only passively responsible for our own actions, but that we are required to seek redress for injustices done by others to others, especially those done in our name. We are required to think beyond the label on our clothing that gives washing instructions to what the implications are of where the garment was made, and by whom. We are required to go beyond looking at the ingredients of our food to determine our allergies or the number of calories to discover not only the impact of its production on the land, but on the laborers who brought it forth, trucked or flew it to our grocery, and prepared it for our purchase. If we drive another ten miles to find a store where we pay ten percent less for an item, we must realize what impact that will have on our local merchants, what the reasons are that similar goods can be offered more cheaply, and what impact that has on the workers in the store and in the factory.

We are commanded to pursue justice – beyond those actions for which we may have even a limited culpability, there are injustices which may continue through our failure to speak and to act out. Poverty exists in this world; families go hungry and homeless in our own cities, and while we may have done nothing to cause these personal crises, there is much we can do not only to help those in extremis, but to create a society that acts supportively before such radical intervention is needed. Justice is the yardstick by which we measure our government. We must hold our representatives – legislative and executive… and even judicial to the same standard that the Torah holds us. Does the law apply equally to the rich and the poor? Do the same opportunities exist for those of every race and background? Is our voice heard in the halls of power, whether or not we can employ an advocate with access to the ears of the mighty? Can we honestly say that the stranger, the widow, the orphan – the unprotected have the same rights that we expect for ourselves?

We know what it is that God demands of us. If we truly imagine that we exist on this earth not to grab for all that we can reach, but to help make the world we have inherited into a better place for those to whom we leave it, then we cannot but strive for justice. We fight ourselves when we mute the evening news, skip to the sports pages in the newspaper, or turn our eyes away from the homeless in the street. We know – that within us which we would call human, what makes us in the image of the Divine knows instinctively – that to ignore, to walk past, to compartmentalize what is not our problem, is wrong. When face to face with injustice, when looking discrimination in the eye, we know what is wrong… and yet we make the effort to turn our faces, to close our eyes.

These are harsh truths, but truths that are easy to see one moment and forget in the next. We feel bad. There is a momentary pang. Then we forgive ourselves and move on. Only today, only over the next ten days, are we forced by our Judaism to confront each small injustice and chastise ourselves for what we have allowed to happen.

When we are called to account, when there is a judgment – by God or by our own natures – we know that each time that we stayed silent will weigh in the balance. It is hard to act justly in the moment, but harder still to confront what we could have done, who we could have been, when the opportunity has passed. There are two purposes for t’shuvah – for our yearly focus on repentance. The first, of course, is to actually make right what we have done wrong in the past. However, if that were the sole purpose, our New Year would be a sad time of self-recrimination, filled with blame and not hope. The second purpose of t’shuvah is know better how to proceed in the future. If each year, we chastise ourselves for the same sins, we have not taken the opportunity to grow, to better ourselves.

Today, as we begin the process, we must examine ourselves in the harsh light of justice – have we done all that we could to balance the inequities in our world? Only after such a sober reflection, and a rededication to doing better, can we begin to move on in hope, to set the verdict and close the case. Only then can we move on to mercy.

There are many things in this world that are beyond our control. We do not need the events of the past few weeks, of yesterday, to remind us of that. There are, however, things that we can control and how we treat others is chief among those. Justice is an absolute standard. We are not called to be just as good as the people around us, or even a little bit better. We are compelled to judge our own actions by a standard of justice. In a time when so much may be out of our control, we can take comfort that we have acted rightly, done all we could to bring justice into the world.

God has told you, O Mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with Thy God.”

Justice is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, we expect things to be fair. We expect good actions to be rewarded and bad ones to be punished. However, if we expect the world to be fair, then Judaism tells us that we must act justly.

L’shanah tovah.

Rosh haShanah Evening 5769 - Temple Sholom – 29 September 2008

2008-09-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

One day, when Rabbi Zusya was on his deathbed, his disciples saw that he was trembling. They asked him, “Rebbe, why are you trembling?” He answered that he was trembling in anticipation of his upcoming judgment before the Heavenly Court. “But, Rebbe,” his disciples asked, “you have been as wise as Solomon, what have you to fear?” “I am not afraid,” replied Rabbi Zusya, “that God will ask me why I have not been as great as Solomon.” “Rebbe,” they continued, “you have been as patient and humble as Hillel, what have you to fear?” “I am not afraid,” replied Rabbi Zusya, “that God will ask me why I have not been as great as Hillel.” “Rebbe,” his disciples pleaded, “you spoke the word of God as clearly as Moses, what do you have to fear?” “I am not afraid,” replied Rabbi Zusya, “that God will ask me why I have not been as great as Moses.” “Then,” asked his disciples, “why do you tremble?” “I am afraid,” he said, “that God will ask me why I have not been as great as Zusya.”

Trying to determine exactly what God wants us of us has been a pastime not only of Judaism, but of most of the world’s religions. Often, we try to find answers in the heroes and role models of our tradition. Is it comforting that we do not need to be like Hillel or Moses? Or are we faced with a more difficult challenge in knowing what it means to live up to our own potential, to be the best Zusya that we can be?

In the book of Micah, chapter 6, verse 8, the following advice is given: God has told you, O Mortal, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk modestly with your God. (JPS) or as we chiseled into the wall of our building in Plainfield, “Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.”

If only life were that simple – that God would write exactly what we needed to do in three foot high letters on the wall.

My classmate and colleague, Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer e-mailed me the other day to ask me for a phone number at which he could reach me in an hour. He had a joke, he said, that he had to tell me aloud. I will try to relay it to you in his voice.

It seems that Sol was minding his own business one day, when he hears a voice. Sol, you see, was not in the habit of hearing voices. In fact, this was the first time that he had ever done so. The voice says to him, “Sol: Tomorrow – don’t park where you usually park.” Not surprisingly, Sol says, “What?” The voice replies, “You know where you always park?” “Yeah”, says Sol. “Don’t park there tomorrow.” “Why?” says Sol. “Just don’t park there,” says the voice.

So, the next day, Sol drives to his favorite deli for a coffee and is almost ready to park in his usual spot, when he remembers the voice. He drives a little further and parks in a different spot. Sure enough, while Sol is enjoying his morning coffee, he hears a great screeching and crashing. He runs to the window and sees that a cement truck has plowed right through the spot where he usually parks.

Just then, Sol hears the voice again. “Sol,” it says. “Go to Atlantic City. Go to the roulette wheel. Put $100 on the number 7.” Sol hesitates only for a moment, gets in his car, parked a few spots down, and heads right for Atlantic City. He doesn’t pause when he gets to the casinos, goes in the first door he sees, and puts $100 on number 7. Sure enough, the wheel spins, the ball lands on seven, and Sol is a winner.

The voice returns, “Sol, take all the money that you can get your hands on; take everything you have, and head over to the blackjack table.” Sol goes to the window, takes his credit cards, his ATM card, and cashes everything in for chips. He heads to the high stakes single-deck blackjack table, where he takes a seat. He puts all his chips on the line. The dealer smiles and deals Sol a nine and an eight – making seventeen. The dealer has one card down and shows a six. Sol knows the odds – if the down card is a ten or a face card, the dealer will have to take another card – and will probably go over 21 and lose. Even if the dealer has an Ace and has to stick, Sol ties. He figures he’s got it in the bag and he relaxes a little bit. Then the voice says, “Sol, take a card.” Sol says to the voice, “What do you mean? The dealer is showing a six. I’ve got seventeen. I’m not taking a card.” The voice says, “Sol, take a card.” “OK,” says Sol, “give me a card.” The dealer turns over an Ace – Sol has eighteen. The voice says, “Sol, take a card.” By now a crowd has begun to gather. They see Sol, with the big pile of chips, the eighteen and the dealer’s six, and he’s arguing with himself. “Sol, take a card.” “OK,” says Sol, “give me a card.” The dealer turns over another Ace – Sol has nineteen. The voice says, “Sol, take a card.” The crowd murmurs. Sol starts to argue, “That’s two Aces, anything over a two and I lose!” “Sol, take a card.” “OK,” says Sol, “I’ll take another card.” The dealer reaches for the deck – another ace. Sol has twenty. The voice – “Sol, take a card.” Sol is quite frantic. “That’s three aces. There is only one more in the deck. There’s no way that I can lose if I stand pat. Why would I take another card?” “Sol, take a card.” “OK,” sighs Sol, “give me another card.” The crowd is dead silent. The dealer’s hand shakes as the next card is turned over – the fourth ace. “Wow,” says the voice, “what are the odds of that happening?”

My friend, Rabbi Mayer, runs an alternative institution and website called “Religion-Outside-the-Box”. In many ways, this joke is very emblematic of who he is and his message. Sol does not even know that he is searching for direction. When he finds it, he is doubtful. Even when that direction is proven, Sol still argues. Even though the direction proves right in the end – the joke ends on a note of skepticism. If the voice was God, what was God’s purpose in bringing Sol along?

As funny as the joke may be – or not, humor can often shed light on issues that in a regular discussion might become uncomfortable. Recently, I have been asked if my High HolyDay sermons will “tell people what Judaism says to do.” From the bimah, reciting a list of things to do may seem easy, but whether people will listen – that is what really matters. And what makes all the difference in the listening is the authority of the voice. Not only does the congregation need to believe that what the Rabbi says is actually based in Jewish authority, but the question hangs all the more on what authority Judaism has on that individual.

You know, O mortal, what God wants of you.

For many, the difficulty is in knowing what God wants. How do we know that the Torah was written by God? How do we know that the text we have today is an accurate reflection of the original Hebrew? How do we know that what we read out of the text is the meaning that God intended? How do we know that God intended words written for an audience three-thousand years ago to be equally applicable in our modern society? For these people, even if it would be nice to hear in this moment a voice that would clarify the issues, bring things up to modern times, and detail specific actions, that voice would more likely be attributed to mental illness than to God.

For some, the difficulty is not in knowing what God wants, but in caring at all; in even acknowledging a God or a Divine authority. “What does God want of me?” is a meaningless question, if I have not taken the time to hammer out a personal belief in God (or as my friend Brian titles his new book, How To Find Out What (The) God (Of Your Understanding) Wants From You.) As he puts it, somewhat whimsically, “Although people constantly hope to see a miracle that will give them the answers and direction they're searching for -- it hardly ever works that way. (The) God (of your understanding) is not going to break character with your understanding of God --otherwise, (the) God (of your understanding) wouldn't be the God of your understanding. So, if you don't believe that God would or could speak to you out of flaming shrubbery, you probably won't experience that type of revelation...”

Here is the challenge for you this evening and over the next ten days. Before you decide what it may be that God expects of you – and to accept or reject that expectation based on whether it fits with your current thinking and morality – you need to find a God whose authority you will accept. That God may be the so-called Old Testament God of fire and brimstone, who writes down every deed, and will exact justice in the fullness of time; that God may be the still, small voice of your conscience that whispers to you of right and wrong; that God may be the Prime Mover who set the universe in motion and then sat back to watch what develops and has no individualized instruction; that God may be the interpersonal connection recognized in Buber’s I-Thou relationship; that God may actively demand you to be in partnership, in covenant in repairing the world; that God may hold you to account in the world to come or let the fruits of your deeds return to you in this world; that God may be to whom you cry out in the night; or the Painter behind the wonder of the rainbow.

In any case, and in each and every case, before I can tell you exactly what it may be that God wants of you; you have to decide that you care, that what God wants matters to you. You have to decide that the God that you believe in (or even do not completely disbelieve in) has an expectation of you, or, that your vision of the Divine compels you toward a certain behavioral pattern. That in some way – formal or informal – there is a measurement – the ideal Zusya against which Zusya can mark his progress, unique for each individual, unique for you.

Over the next ten days, if you will enter into this covenant with me, we will explore exactly what it means to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Tomorrow, on Rosh haShanah morning, we will face the stern truths of justice – of right and wrong. Next week on Kol Nidrei, the evening of Yom Kippur, we will embrace mercy and try to understand what it means to give what we so want to receive. On Yom Kippur morning, we will deal with the difficulty of both being humble and walking with God. But that will only take up fifteen to twenty minutes of your time at each service. During the other two hours, during the rest of the service – as the music plays and you read or listen to each prayer in Hebrew or English – take the necessary amount of time to wrestle with your idea of God. Dust off the drawer into which you have comfortably tucked your personal theology, and bring it out into the mature light of day. Ask the question of yourself, who or what has given me purpose on this earth, has made my creation more than a random act. And, if that existence is to have a purpose, how do I fashion my life to fulfill it.

The struggle will not be a short one, but wrestling with God is no new idea for the Jew. As you sit in your seat, joining with the other members of the congregation in prayer and self-examination, you link yourself with congregations all over the world, with congregations forward and backward in time. And God, whoever He or She may be or not be, will be looking down, or out, or over or through – and smiling. And Zusya will have nothing to tremble about.

L’shanah tovah.

On Government - Shabbat Ki Teitzei 5768 (9/12/08)

2008-09-12T20:00:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, while I was listening to the speeches at the Democratic national convention in Denver, I heard what seemed to be very Jewish words – very similar to words that I have said – issue from the mouth of one of the speakers. That speaker was the African-American governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, quoting a Congressional Representative who has self-identified as a left-handed gay Jew, Barney Frank. Governor Patrick said, “‘[G]overnment,’ as Barney Frank likes to say, ‘is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.’”

As we have said a number of times, the book of Deuteronomy is Moses’ last chance to instill in the new Israelite nation the values that he and God hope they will carry with them as they build their new country over the Jordan River. The structure of that final message – this whole book – is very instructive. The book begins with a retelling of their history so far – focusing on where God has been helpful, where the people have strayed from God’s will, and what the consequences of those actions have been. Moses will end his sermon with ha’azinu – a poem which drives the lesson home in fervid images and metered prose. In the middle – where we are now – Moses returns again and again to the specific acts and moral compasses that will build the correct Israelite society. Rabbi Gunther Plaut, the editor of the commentary from which the sheet in your hands is taken, calls this section, “The Social Weal” – the laws and customs that will bind society together in a certain manner.

In what may be a good omen, both the student Cantor and I chose the same portion to look at this week – she to chant and I to d’rash on. These are commandments that deal with more than the specific acts they condemn and extend to more than individual action:

You shall not abuse a needy and destitute laborer – whether a fellow Israelite or a stranger in one of the communities of your land. [Verse 14] These words apply not only to our ancestors, but to us as well. They are the reason that last week the Central Conference of American Rabbis joined with the Conservative movement’s Heshker Tzedek in declaring that the meat produced by Agriprocessors is not kosher, no matter whether the slaughtering process is halachikly correct or no, because it is not kosher to treat workers in such a way, to take advantage of children, to abuse the needy and destitute.

Each one of the verses that we read this evening – and those before and those after – are not only guidelines for how we as individuals treat others but, more importantly, guidelines for the society that we would create. “‘[G]overnment,’ as Barney Frank likes to say, ‘is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.’” We create a society to do those things which we cannot with our own two hands accomplish. We cannot build roads to span this country with a shovel and rake. We cannot control the passage of airplanes across our skies with flashlights. We cannot feed those who hunger hundreds of miles away with the food from our own refrigerators. We cannot protect our shores from invasion with a shotgun and box of shells. We are dependent on the goodwill of our neighbors; on the fact that those neighbors, banded together, pay money to hire a police force to enforce the laws that we send others to state and national capitals to draft. We trust that the checks we write, the cards we use, even the cash money will be exchanged for full value because of the faith and credit of the United States government.

These values, these guidelines for building a more just society, are the very ones that we must use in making judgments about the things we choose to do together. It is no less true in our congregation than in our country. We call our Temple Board members “trustees” – in some manner because we trust that they will manage and govern the institution that we have come to rely on. We hope that they will espouse our values in the way we treat our employees, in the decisions that impact other congregants, in the building that we choose to build. Sometimes, we expect them to call us to higher ideals – to lead us in helping the homeless and feeding the hungry, forgetting that we chose them to help us do our jobs, not to do the jobs for us.

This evening, we have installed our latest in a 95 year series of Trustees and officers. Some of them have served before, some will continue to serve and serve again. We hope that they take this responsibility seriously – to help us do the things we choose to do together. The secret, however, is that they will do so, only insomuch as we choose do with them. Temple Sholom is not a place where we delegate our authority and hire people to fulfill our responsibilities. Rather, this congregation is a place where we have to sometimes set up for services, bake the cookies for oneg, fold the Temple Topics to be mailed, and build the Sukkah when Sukkot rolls around. This evening, let us not only install our new government, but re-instill in ourselves the commitment to work to make this community one that lives up to the ideals of Deuteronomy. For, as Moses reminds us, “always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt” and with that injunction that we were once oppressed, God reminds us to fulfill these commandments, lest we not merit that miraculous redemption. To paraphrase a quote, our Temple is simply the name that we give the place where we come together to do things Jewishly; our congregation is simply the name that we give to the Jewish life that we live together.