A Rabbi's musings

White Fire on Black Flame (Part Three)

2011-04-02T07:29:00.000-07:00

Our Jewish path is constructed more from life’s experiences than its dictates. Our faith demands, as Edmund Fleg wrote, “no abdication of the mind”. The secret to our covenantal relationship is found in the imperfection of the Garden of Eden, which can only be made perfect with the introduction of choice and the exercise of free will.

Choice is important because it dictates how we approach the faith stories of our people. These stories are the warp and woof of our people and their written and oral transmission over time has empowered us through dark times and times of joy. The image of the sage surrounded by pupils or the doting grandfather or grandmother seated with their progeny is a well used one. The opportunity that one generation has to guide the next generation forward is essential in our Jewish journey.

I have spoken to families about this transmission from “Dor L’Dor…Generation to generation”. In our personal family stories, this act is most crucial. But its not enough to just share, we have to have had the conversation with one another so that the values which have guided our people will continue through the next generation. Again, it’s all about the choices we give.

As a parent, we give our children choices. Hopefully they will make the right choice. God, in the wilderness, gave the Israelites choices. It was "find faith in God or wander Godless through the world." Mitzvot or averot … commandments or transgressions. Again in Pirkei avot we find: One mitzvah leads to another and one transgression leads to another. Which path did God want us to choose?

Oftentimes, the choices that we are given lay deep within the text of our tradition. In fact, the Torah rarely provides us with options. In most situations, the options come as we engage the text for its ancient time and place and our own. We, like the great Talmudic sage Ben Bag Bag, “hafoch ba…turn it over and over again.” It is often felt that by looking afresh at the text from a different vantage point, we might discover some new nuance or gain some new insight that was hidden from us before.

Each time we read a text, if we are doing our study correctly, we will find some new kernel of wisdom that will bring us back for more. It is the depth of the choices that we have and our ability to interpret divine wisdom that I feel has empowered us in the 21st century. While I may be at odds with my more traditional colleagues (big surprise), I feel that the years of encounter has expanded our worldview and allowed us to grow our opinions on the topics that the Torah espouses. The distance of time has given us more food for thought and enabled stories like the one we explored already, greater significance in our lives.

This is indeed what was assumed or implied when the mystics approached the text. The mystical engagement with our written and oral traditions has long been a fascination of mine. Long before Madonna declared her love for mysticism and Kabbalah books began appearing like dime-store novels on book shelves at Barnes and Noble or Borders, I began a lifelong pursuit of knowledge through the pages of mystical texts.

When I was a college student trying to find my religious path, it was at a weekend conference at HUC in Cincinnati that I was introduced to Kabbalistic literature. Being a child steeped in the rational historical teachings of Reform Judaism, Kabbalah had no place in my religious education. In fact, I can honestly say that I never heard the word until I was 20 years old. Which would be ok if I held fast to the prohibition of studying it until I was 40. But the lure of this new thought caught this unsuspecting college student and I began what has become more than a quarter century of exploration and seeking.

In kabbalah I found a voice for my Judaism that moved beyond the simple reading of a biblical text and its simple interpretation. In my home congregation, as the Rabbi spoke these words, mostly in English, I was taken to that moment at Sinai where no bird chirped. It was as if God was speaking directly from our pulpit and directly to me. Never would I have questioned my rabbi or challenged the view he espoused. Kabbalah gave me a whole new set of sacred questions from which the text was silent and could only be answered by looking deeper than I ever had before.

White Fire on Black Flame (Part Two)

2011-03-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

In the Christian interpretation of Genesis, the Garden of Eden is where God's perfect plan went wrong, and Satan betrayed the human race. Satan (in the form of a snake) deceived Eve, the first woman, into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which God had commanded them not to eat from, "for when you eat of it you will surely die." Satan led Eve to believe that when she would eat the food that grew from the tree "your eyes would be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." She ate after convincing Adam to eat too, and their eyes were opened, "and they realized they were naked; so they sowed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves." God found out about them disobeying him, and forever banished them from his garden paradise, after bestowing pain and suffering to haunt all humans as a reminder to not disobey God.

In E.A Speiser’s volume on Genesis in the Anchor Bible series, he refers to this section of Torah as the “Fall of Man”. Original sin is part of the Doctrine of the Fall, which is the belief that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they 'fell' from perfection and brought evil into a perfect world.

For Christians, the fall is inseparable from redemption - the act by which Human souls are washed clean of the stain of original sin. Some Christians believe that the story of the fall and redemption is a story of two Adams, and sometimes refer to Christ as the "Second Adam". The first Adam sins and causes humanity to fall; the second Adam atones for that sin with his death and redeems humanity.

Christians believe that when Adam and Eve sinned in Eden and turned away from God they brought sin into the world and turned the whole human race away from God. The doctrine absolves God of responsibility for the evils that make our world imperfect by teaching that Adam and Eve introduced evil to a perfect world when they disobeyed him. Adam's sin not only brought sin into the world, but that it removed from humanity the gift that enabled people to be perfectly obedient to God.

In Genesis 3:5 and 3:6, sin enters the world. Along with sin, freewill enters the world. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

After this event, however, man does acquire free will. The story continues as Adam and Eve realize their nakedness and choose to cover themselves. Adam and Eve feel shame, and they choose to hide themselves from God when He is in the garden. Man now has free will. He can act on his own desires and, in theory, not have to listen to God anymore. The serpent says in verse five that Adam and Eve will know good and evil and that they will be like God because of it.

The pseudo-Jewish historian, Philo, discusses how the trees in the Garden of Eden are representative of the virtues that God places within the soul of man (Peters 119-121). The four rivers dividing the Eden are also representative of virtues. The rivers stand out because these virtues are the most essential, and they are used to provide a notion of what is good. The last part of Philo’s passage discusses how God’s wisdom is the source of these virtues.

So this leads us to the next topic, if Christianity finds that the exile from the garden represents a fall, because we defied God’s commands, how does Judaism deal with the event, especially as it gives rise to the concept of free will which Maimonides so greatly advocated.

I quote from that great theologian of the modern era, Frank Zappa.

"The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions."

So I looked in an old favorite tool of mine called the Hertz Pentateuch, a early form of the Plaut Torah commentary. In it we find this passage.

Chapter III in is one of the most beautiful in the Bible. It has been called the ‘pearl of Genesis’, and men read with wonder its profound psychology of temptation and conscience. With unsurpassable art, it shows the beginning, the progress and the culmination of temptation and the consequences of sin, It depicts the early tragedy in the life of each human soul—the loss of man’s happy, natural relation with God through deliberate disobedience of the voice of conscience, the voice of God. ‘Every man who knows his own heart, knows that the story is true; it is the story of his own fall. Adam [see * below] is man, and his story is ours’ (McFadyen).

Is the narrative literal or figurative, and is the Serpent an animal, a demon or merely the symbolic representation of Sin? Various have been the answers to these questions; and none of them are of cardinal importance to the Faith of the Jew. There is nothing in Judaism against the belief that the Bible attempts to convey deep truths of life and conduct by means of allegory. The Rabbis often taught by parable; and such method of instruction is, as is well known, the immemorial way among Oriental peoples. Eminent Jewish thinkers, like Maimonides and Nachmanides, have accordingly understood this chapter as a parable; and Saadyah regarded the Serpent as the personification of the sinful tendencies in man, the Yetzer hara, the Evil Imagination.

Two fundamental religious truths are reflected in this Chapter. One of them is the seriousness of sin. There is an everlasting distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil. There have always been voices—Serpent voices—deriding all moral do’s and dont’s, proclaiming instinct and inclination to be the truest guides to human happiness, and bluntly denying that any evil consequences follow defiance of God’s commands. This Chapter for all time warns mankind against these insidious and fateful voices. In the words of Isaiah it seems to say, ‘Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil: that put darkness for light, and light for darkness: that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes.’

The other vital teaching of this chapter is, Free will has been given to man, and it is in his power to work either with or against God. It is not the knowledge of evil, but the succumbing to it, which is deadly; man may see the forbidden fruit, he need not eat of it. Man himself can make or mar his destiny. In all ages and in all conditions, man has shown the power to resist the suggestions of sin and proved himself superior to the power of evil. And if a man stumbles and falls on the pathway of life, Judaism bids him rise again and seek the face of his Heavenly Father in humility, contrition and repentance. ‘If a man sin, what is his punishment?’ ask the Rabbis. The answer of the Prophet is, ‘The soul that sinned, it shall die’—the wages of sin is death. The answer of the Sage is, ‘Evil pursues the evil-doer—the wages of sin is sin. The answer of the Almighty is, ‘Let a man repent, and his sin will be forgiven him’—the wages of sin is repentance.

In my own approach to this story, I have found comfort in the thought that had God not wanted us to engage in the pursuit of knowledge, there would have been no need for the tree to exist. It has long been my feeling that the tree was there to inspire us to climb. So I called my brother, the attorney, who in looking in one of his law dictionary’s found the following definition of “attractive nuisance”.

Attractive Nuisance Doctrine. The doctrine is that person who has an instrumentality, agency, or condition upon his own premises, or who creates such condition on the premises of another, or in a public place, which may reasonably be apprehended to be a source of danger to children, is under a duty to take such precautions as a reasonably prudent man would take to prevent injury to children of tender years whom he knows to be accustomed to resort there, or who may, by reason of something there which may be expected to attract them, come there to play. (Black’s Law Dictionary)

So if God is indeed the owner of the garden and everything there is God’s creation and has a defined purpose according to the divine will, then the trees presence was either a taunt to humanity or an invitation. I, of course, believe the latter.

Why would God taunt humanity with such an enticing tree whose fruit was so fragrant and filled the garden with its scent? Such a view suggests the rabbinic view of the test, that God is constantly tempting and testing us to see how we respond. There is no trust, no commitment, no future in such a relationship. I feel that God knows what we will choose and gives us free will to define our relationship and through the challenges in our life, create the bonds that bring humanity and God closer to one another.

So the answer to the question; Fall or Leap, I think that it’s a leap towards a greater relationship that is only possible when we move beyond the wrote behaviors of the garden and into the fluid life of the world beyond the gates.

White fire on Black Flame (Part One)

2011-03-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

It begins in a garden. Call it Eden or whatever you wish. A Divine voice bellows from within. Life emerges and stakes its claim on the garden. Man and woman walk the garden. The text teaches that they were pure of thought and deed. The Divine voice instructs them; “From the trees of the garden you are free to eat; but as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it, you shall die.” Eternity was theirs as long as they followed the one rule. Ah, but temptation in the midst of the world. Every day they would gather what they needed circling the forbidden tree and wondering what its fruit would taste like.

In Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s wonderful book called “The Little Prince”, the prince who is a space traveler, encounters a planet where the only resident was a fox. The fox, who had encountered other beings before was afraid of the prince. He was fearful of being hunted as he had been before so he hid on the opposite side of this little planet. The prince saw the fox briefly. He saw his teeth and was afraid that the fox was ferocious and would attack him. He also hid on the other side of the planet.

They struck up a conversation wanting to know how to overcome their fears. The fox proffered a solution. Let us move a little closer each day until we can sit in each others presence without fear of the other. And so they did. Each day they become a little closer as their lives merged into one.

And so it was with Adam and Eve, each day moving their circle a little closer towards that tree in the midst of the garden. At first they could smell the sweetness of its fragrance. It filled the garden with an enticing aroma. And then they could feel its fruit, plump and rounded, the juice of its fruit dripping onto the ground below. And then the grasp and the gasp as Eve, fiercely brave, pulled the fruit from the branches. And the taste, as the sweet juice flowed over her hands and down her face as she bit into that forbidden fruit. And as she held her hands to Adam and he bit deeply into that sweetness, a shudder ran through them as awareness and knowledge flowed into their souls.

As we know, the next moment tells the tale as Eve and Adam discover themselves in the midst of the garden. Suddenly they are aware of each other in a way that had been hidden from them before. Seeing each other in this new light, passion was born and presence was acknowledged and they covered themselves to manage the new found feeling they had for each other.

It was at that moment of awareness that a voice called from the midst of the garden. The Holy Blessed One, who had brought them together and fashioned their world with its many colors and tastes and smells, called from the tree. Something had changed in the garden. There was a new sense permeating the creation that had been hidden before. Free will was born. Adam and Eve emerged from their hiding place, covered, with eyes averted from the voice and an awareness of their choice written all over their faces. The voice was displeased with their actions. They had broken the code. Their choice merged awareness and eternity into one. God should only have that power in the garden. So from that fountain of being in the midst of the garden came the punishment. No longer would Adam and Eve live for eternity. The fruit of the tree of life would no longer be theirs for the picking. Knowledge they had but no longer would they have it forever. And so they walked from that place in Eden towards their future, where the encounter with the Divine voice would need to be found.

One of my favorite poems

2011-03-25T07:27:00.000-07:00

Enjoy this poem. Please share it with those you love and live its message in your life.

HOPE
Carol Blackman

There are times when each of us is sick with the world
And life weighs upon us like a heavy boulder
We cannot imagine any good or happy thought
We sink further and deeper into the pit of our despair.

There are times when each of us feels sorely hurt
The very thing we loved the most has been taken away
We feel empty; we feel alone, we are afraid.

There are times when all justice has fled
We have been wronged, cheated, unfairly beaten down
How could like deal such inequities?
Why must our burdens be so severe?

These are moments all human beings share
When their hearts sink and their minds entertain the worst
Fears assail us all
We tremble and shake at problems facing us.

At these times a little voice from within us rouses us
Often waiting until we reach the very brink of despair
It tells us that we can indeed prevail
At first in nothing more than a whisper.

So soft at first that we can hardly hear it
But we listen and we begin to heed
“What’s it saying to me?” we mutter
and we bend our ear to catch is faint remarks.

And it tells us what we need to hear
from the tragedy or crisis that we feel
Our bodies are once more released
Our minds are turned to brighter thoughts.

This little voice abiding in each of us is – hope.
It is not logical or even reasonable
It is our heart telling our head what we cannot surrender
For to give in to the trials of life is to let them win over us.

From a whisper hope grows slowly
First in a moderate tone and finally to a roar
It supersedes fear, sorrow, and even despair
It gives us the courage to try again.

“Pick yourself up,” it demands
“Can’t you see that tomorrow has better things in store.”
and we begin to believe in ourselves, and we arise
To meet tomorrow a little stronger and more prepared.

“Try again! Try until you succeed,” it shouts.
and we forget our failures, our losses and all the blows we were dealt.
Hope offers us another chance to be what we dream
It insists that life is worthwhile and we are on the winning team.

Hope abides in each of us
Giving us the energy to survive
“Life is very good,” it assures us
“Carry on with your work, and you will be blessed.”

Bondage to Redemption (Conclusion)

2011-03-24T13:27:00.000-07:00

As Moses was drawn out of the water, so we are drawn out of our bondage. The story of the Exodus has particular poignance here in this time and place as we gather in the days before Pesach. From the Biblical view, bondage was a mainly physical struggle against oppression. But all of us can now see there was a spiritual component to that same bondage. For us, living three plus millennia since that moment on the mountain, we are far beyond the physical servitude of Egyptian slavery. Living in the first decade of the 21st century, we know well the pain of history and the struggles through time of our people in lands near and far. We have journeyed through oppression and exile, time and again overcoming the forces that would have destroyed us.

In the 60’s, our bondage was linked to the civil rights era and the struggle to free ourselves from its hold. In the 70’s we turned to Soviet Jewry and implored the USSR to let our people go. In the 80’s we turned our eyes towards the struggles of the Falasha in Elthiopia. Falasha no more we cried as we shed the tears once again of slavery. In the 90’s it was Kosovo, Chechnya, Bosnia and Rwanda. Our struggle has become the universal struggle. At the turn of the century we focused on the plight of the people in Darfur and those enslaved in Pakistan and Afghanistan, each needing a path to freedom and peace. Each decade marked by a new struggle, a new and more difficult bondage and a hopeful communal path to liberation and redemption. And what of this time? What is our struggle today?

I fear that we face a more difficult bondage today than ever before. We have bound ourselves to a tyrant more unrelenting than ever before. Our bondage is no longer physical, it is emotional and spiritual. It threatens to destroy everything we have built, all the monuments to our success in this world. It threatens our ability to respond to our own needs and to respond to so many need ones all over this broken planet earth. This latest threat to our freedom is of our own creation, much like the Golem that threatened Rabbi Yizchak in Poland.

We have bound ourselves to models of success and acquisition that have eroded our moral base and have given host to a myriad of social diseases. Many of us have watched over the past few years as all we had worked for and saved and invested was erased from the ledgers as the market fell further and further in on itself.

The Egypt in our lives is our own creating. The Haggadah cries that “In every generation, we are obligated to see ourselves as slaves on the path to redemption”. We see the slavery, what is the path to our redemption?

I am a relationship person. I avoid emails and phone calls for the face to face encounter with each other. Martin Buber sought to teach a philosophy of life built around the concept of covenantal dialogue. His view was that we have levels of relationships in our lives, casual and intimate. It is in the most intimate of relationships that we gain the deepest insight into our partners and ourselves. He called that an “I/Thou” moment. It is when we see our partner in relationship as something more than a distraction or a necessary tool in our own long march forward. An “I/Thou” moment happens when we can sense ourselves hanging on each others words and completing each others thoughts and sensing each others needs. Buber used the imagery of love in his language of relationship and he sought to teach us that if we can establish that kind of moment with another human being, we can surly mirror that relationship with our Divine partner, God.

Buber felt that we must, in order to thrive in the world of faith, focus our efforts on creating an intimacy with God. That it was through our relationship with God, in the most personal and profound way, that we could find the path to true living and sacred redemption. Redemption is found not by fleeing from ones bondage but by facing it with a partner for in that sacred partnership is found the strength to survive all bondage.

And so we are brought to the penultimate conclusion. Redemption is a Divine gift brought about only when the cries of our bondage can reach the highest heavens and the depths of our soul cry out for help. Redemption is possible only when the Divine relationship is in play, not when we have turned our back to our faith or relegated God to some casual position in our lives.

In the Exodus story, God finds the Israelites in their suffering because they never broke the covenant or gave up their faith. God was present in their lives and they turned daily for God to help. This active engagement in the Divine covenantal relationship added presence to their cries and passion to their voice and God’s answer was the greatest redemption ever experienced.

For us today, the question about our own deliverance from our own bondage moments hangs on the relationship we have built with God in our own lives. The market may rise and fall, oppression may once again rear its ugly head, bondages may come but our tradition teaches that there is always a sun rise after darkness. The key to seeing that sunrise is our faith in that Divine relationship that guides and sustains us in both good times and bad.

So like Lord Tennyson’s tree alone and exposed on a rocky crag, we stand most days battered by forces all around us. Resolute we stand because the roots of our “Aytz Hayim” – tree of life reach deep into the soil and create for us a stable and firm foundation of faith. Storms will come and go, life will deal us inequities, we may stumble and fall, but with our faith in God and our belief in the renewing relationship with God, we shall stand tall and grow.

Bondage to Redemption (Part Four)

2011-03-23T12:37:00.000-07:00

This is the essence of the Exodus narrative. It is focused on the desire of individuals and then a people to be pulled from a bondage that has held them captive towards a freedom that will allow them to be the “masters of their fate” as Henley wrote. Exodus begins mired in one more famine that has led our people to once again return to the fabled storehouses of Egypt. Maybe the first message should be that our future will not be found in the Kings and Queens, the Pharaohs and Princes of this world. It will only be found when we look beyond our base human needs for immediate gratification and focus on the path of life and the Human/Divine connection that we can forge.

Nevertheless, Exodus begins with a familiar note in history. A new king arose who did not know Joseph. Our storied past as the recorded saviors of the world had been forgotten. We were once again strangers in a strange land with practices and beliefs that challenged the leadership and the society. We were outcasts in a society that were it not for our accomplishments, would have ceased to exist generations earlier. A child is born into the world and is set on a path that would lead him and our people to glory. Through the usual accounting of pseudo-miracles, Moses, the Hebrew Child, suddenly finds himself the play thing of the daughter of Pharoah, the very man who ordered his drowning in the river. From the river he emerges, ma-sha-ch, drawn out as if to say according to our own customs that he has entered the mikvah of his time and emerged cleansed (of Egypt) and ready to forge a new spirituality.

Hayim Nachman Bialik, the great Hebrew poet, wrote these words which speak to the quiet eloquence of the man, Moses.

May my portion be among you,
ye meek of the world,
ye speechless of soul,
Who embroidered your lives in secret,
retiring in word and deed,
Hidden dreamers, small of speech, but great in glory…
Lords of the spirit, and you knew it not,…
artists of exquisite silence,
priests of the stillness of God…
you met, unchanged, all that befell you:
great things and mean, justice and wrong alike.
Softly, as if on tiptoe, did you pass along the paths of life,
Your hearts awake, your ears attentive,
your eyes ever watchful,

And such was the soft gentle message of his gift to our people. Softly, gently, as if on tiptoe we moved from the crucible of bondage in Egypt towards the redemptive freedom of Sinai.

But before we continue with this story, there is a story within that bears discovery. It centers on the collateral damage from our own journey through life. It marks us as unique amongst the creatures of the world. It is what defines us as a covenantal people and in it is a lesson for our lives today. We stand on the liminal, that moment between what was and what will be. For us to step forward there will be casualties. To return means giving up. So step we do, into the midst of the sea. Moses holds the staff out over the waters. I like to think that it was that staff taken from the bush he found in Sinai so many years prior. It has become an extension of him. Into that staff flows the spirit of this man and from it flows the providence of God. As he holds it aloft, the sea parts, exposing a sea bed dry and free of obstacles. And so following Moses we step forward. It is a long and difficult journey. Water splashes us on each side, it is our mikvah. The cleansing waters of the sea surround us and in many ways washes the past away. We are no longer who we were when we first stepped foot into those waters. We are dry, but the tears of joy run down our faces as a far bank appears just beyond the long column of people. Step by step we traverse the dry ground now soaked with the tears of our brothers and sisters. We left the tears of slavery behind to weep copious tears of joy at this moment.

But from behind, far behind those in the front of the line, dust swirls and horses pull at their bridles as the instruments of Pharaohs wrath charge forward. Their faces are filled with rage as they picture the first born of their households lying in shrouds surrounded by scores of crying women and children. They begin their murderous run past the cloud of God which blocked their way and down into the sea, ignoring the majesty of the moment. As they found their path to the sea bed, they caught sight of the last of the column, the weakest and slowest of the Israelites and they drew their swords and gnashed their teeth and readied themselves for the slaughter that would give them solace. But, before they could reach their targets, the walls of water on each side gave way and a tidal wave of water covered them and their horses and chariots. Weighed down by battle armor and unwilling to release their hold on their weapons and horses, down into the sea they plunged never to rise again.

The Israelites emerged on the far banks of the sea, winded and tired, and witness to the greatest act of divine intervention seen so far. The text tells us that Miriam and the women took their timbrels in their hands and danced to a song they sang about God’s deliverance. “Horse and rider God threw into the sea…” Over and over they sang. Could that be the message?

The rabbis recoiled at the joy shared at such a sobering moment. Yes the Israelites were saved, but at what cost. What was the real message here in the moment of greatest redemption? In the midrash, a Bat Kol (Divine Voice) called down from above in anger. Stop this dancing! Are not the Egyptians part of my created world? How dare you dance at the death of my creations! The ground shook and the dancer’s hearts skipped beats as the voice reverberated through the valley. People fell to their knees and covered their ears to mask the power of this voice. There is a deeper message here. Our redemption cannot and should not be at the expense of others. And when it happens, and we are free, we must not rejoice over those who are left behind or those who gave their lives for our future. Remember we must, and honor all creation with our lives.

Bondage to Redemption (Part Three)

2011-03-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

Did not the psalmist (Ps 126.5) write, “Those who sow in tears, will reap in joy”? Could not the operative idea be the path through which we turn the challenges of life into the moments of unique spirit? The imperative need during a fierce storm is not resignation but a strong sail that we can raise that will carry us away from the threatening waves.

Yes, the wind is real; the storm is real; life’s challenges are real. One cannot find asylum from these real struggles by turning tail and running away. The message of Jonah is just that. Fleeing will only delay and exacerbate the challenges. Standing toe to toe with them, can only lead to a brighter future. This message is clear. You have to want to sail. You have to raise a banner in order to confront life’s storms. No one knows which way the wind may blow or which direction you will be drawn, but raising the sail is the first step towards redemption. And this might become the most ennobling journey of your life.

Very early in my rabbinic career, I came across the poetry of William Ernest Henley. This British poet, critic and editor is a great illustration of a heroic soul that grew through life’s storms. As a child he caught tuberculosis and had a foot amputated. Much of his life seemed to struggle under the weight of the storms that pounded him. He was relegated to writing from his bed. A verse of his that has been etched into my mind is this:

It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Beethoven and Bach were deaf; Chopin continued to compose for 10 years while arthritis ravaged him. Person after person, beaten and battered by physical struggles and pain raised their sails in order to find calmer waters. They transformed their lives into shields against the storms that surrounded them. They were fashioned with a unique spark of life that built faith and hope when all seemed lost. They proved that the human spirit holds a remarkable luminescence, powerful enough to melt away the darkness and defeat the storms of life.

In our own tradition, there was one man who held that kind of hope for the future. He heard the cry of centuries of pain and suffering. He sensed the ground shudder while the restless souls of generations cried from beyond this world for rest. He emerged into the world with a conscience hidden from his grasp and as he matured, the sparks of that conscience lit his soul afire and he found himself standing before the reflected image of himself in that lonely, solitary bush growing out of a craggy rock. From that bush flowed words that would ring true to this day … “Shlach et Ami/Let my people go”. Go down, Moses, let my people go!

Bondage to Redemption (Part Two)

2011-03-19T11:19:00.000-07:00

The Exodus story is the most important story in our peoples past and present. The story is much more than the recollections we share sitting at our homes while munching on matzah. The story of Moses and the Israelites and the burning bush, must have impacted Tennyson for the bush in our story is forged in the fires of faith and watered with the tears of our people who sought refuge from the pain and struggle of their lives.

To take us back in time, Abraham that towering figure of Genesis who left all behind in search of a new home and a new connection to God, is pulled stage by stage from the wealth and security of his father’s home in Ur and then Haran, to the far desert reaches of the Fertile Crescent. He travels beyond the pale of settlement and finds himself caught in the “liminal”. That was the space between two worlds, the world of his father and the safety and security of family and the world of Egypt, where food was once again abundant. Keeping with the theme of you can never go back, Abraham presses forward towards Egypt, forever changing the course of human history and especially the history of his family and people.

Abraham enters Egypt with a reputation. Pharaoh encounters him and Sarai and through a series of unfortunate occurrences, ends up rewarding Abraham with great riches. What is most important here is that Abraham’s journey south begins the greatest story ever told and opens up the theme of from Bondage to Redemption.

So here we are in the moment. Abraham opened the door to Egypt and, like the proverbial Pandora’s Box, opened the gates of Egyptian Bondage. For the next 430 years or so, Egypt and Israelite hegemony become the buzz words through which generations of Talmudic and Biblical scholars would funnel the longings of our people. First for food, then for freedom, our people sought the guidance and direction of a higher power. Their hope found in the voice from a bush, solitary and lonely, burned but not consumed, hardened by nature, much like the tree of Tennyson’s youth and the staff, forged from its branches and watered with the cries of a people in search and in need.

Bondage to Redemption (Part One)

2011-03-19T09:12:00.000-07:00

In Tennyson’s, Idylls of the King he references a story of a lance fashioned from wood that was “storm strengthened on a windy height.” It came from a tree standing lone and solitary on a deserted mountain, battered and beaten by the winds furry. Summer and winter it stood strong against the fiery blasts of summer heat and the snow and ice of the winters chill. Ice and snow, wind and rain, all were beaten back by this most sturdy of trees. The roots held fast; their grasp triumphed over every condition that sought to uproot them.

Here we have an important parable for life. Storms rise, vent their fury over our lives and leave for certain their tell-tale scars. But they also leave behind an impenetrable strength born in the crucible of life and create qualities of strength unimaginable. Stored deep within us, often beyond our own understanding is a fountain of strength that when pushed to the limits of our own comprehension, reaches out and grasps hold of us and carries us through the storm.

We as a people are far beyond our Christian neighbors when they say “turn the other cheek.” Had we simply turned away in our darkest moments, our people hood might have left and our culture would have been sublimated into the general society, forever ending the Jewish journey of life. Rather, our approach to dark days and difficult times is told by the philosopher Philo when he writes that “Blessed are they to whom it is given to resist with superior strength the weight that would pull them down.” (Philo - Special Laws)

Not only do the quiet fruitful times of life make us grow. More often than not, our inner growth comes from the battles in life’s ordeals and disasters. Storms are a natural component of life on this planet. Similarly they are a part of our own personal journey as the storms of life rage against our security and safety. Whether we, like Tennyson, can fashion a lance from the storms of our life, or fall victim by our lack of defense depends on the quality of our spiritual resources and the faith stories and practices that we are able to muster to our aid.

On Tucson

2011-01-15T13:47:00.000-08:00

I am going to go back in time a bit. November 22, 1963. Many of you may remember what happened on that date. While the world was watching, a man with a gun took aim at the President of the United States and brought his promising life and America’s promise to an end. It was a Friday. My Rabbi, Robert Kahn, after shedding his many tears that day, wrote the sermon of his life. It was entitled, “Weep, Americans, Weep”.

On January 28, 1986, another Friday, the world watched in awe and then horror as the Shuttle Challenger began its long climb into the sky. 73 seconds into its journey, it burst apart sending our hopes and dreams crashing to the ground. I wrote a sermon that afternoon with tears in my eyes and hope in my heart that we could transcend the moment to remember the dream.

And here we are this Shabbat in the shadow of such a terrible tragedy in Arizona. I shall not follow the trend of many of my colleagues and use this moment to chastise some in our country. Remember at the holy days, we read a passage that says “some are guilty…all are responsible.” We are responsible, you and I as well and we are charged with a mission this Shabbat.

We need to be called to transcend politics in our response to the shootings in Arizona, lest the politics of our reactions to this tragedy turn us even further against one another. We need to honor the heroism demonstrated by so many ordinary people during this senseless and evil attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, which killed six people and wounded 14 others. We need to be called to use their example to find the best in all of us and become better people ourselves. We need to be called to end the ideological blame and battles that were already distracting us from learning the many lessons of this horrible event. We need to be called to make our public discourse better.

Why does it always seem to take something like this to move us, however briefly, toward civility and mutual understanding? Why is it usually in the worst of times that we step back, lower our voices and look for our common humanity?

The carnage in Arizona has stopped America in its tracks. We who disagree on politics and policy are not each other's enemies. We should have known that all along. Yet for whatever reason, it takes the darkest national moments for us to share a collective deep breath and question the way we have been talking to each other and treating each other.

Think back to another dark moment -- September 11, 2001-- to one moment in particular. Maybe you've forgotten it.

After the planes slammed into the towers in New York, after the plane crashed into the Pentagon, after the plane went down in that Pennsylvania field, something spontaneous and remarkable happened on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Members of Congress from both political parties -- men and women accustomed to arguing bitterly with each other, questioning each other's motives and undercutting each other's efforts -- stood shoulder to shoulder and sang. They lifted their voices, and all of those voices blended together as they sang "God Bless America."

For a brief moment it seemed that things might be on the verge of changing. That pettiness and smallness and rote vindictiveness might be put aside for the common good.

Not that everyone in the Congress, or everyone in the nation, would suddenly agree on every political matter. That will never happen, and it wouldn't be healthy if it did. But on that terrible day, we were jarred into recalling that we are one nation, and that the many fine and strong things that bind us should far outweigh the tiny things over which we tend to bark at each other.

The feelings of fellowship that were on display on the steps of the Capitol late on that September day were not to endure. The members of Congress who represent us went back to the old ways, as did most of the rest of us.

Why is it that only in the bad times do we recognize how much we depend on each other? This week there have been, in the Congress and beyond, many voices of uncommon understanding and compassion that have risen since the shots rang out at the Arizona grocery store. A consensus seems to be forming: We can do better.
It would be a shame if we were to forget that. Phil Jackson, the enormously successful basketball coach, has a theory that he likes to talk about both in public, and in quiet private conversations. He has made himself something of a student of the philosophies of the world, some of them modern, some of them ancient. One of them stands out enough that he chooses to verbalize it at certain times. He says that we should not look at a glass and regard it as half full. We should not look at a glass and regard it as half empty. Rather, Jackson says, we should look at the glass and imagine that it is already broken.

Why is it that only in the bad times do we recognize how much we depend on each other?

if we imagine the glass -- if we imagine life -- as being shattered before it really is, then we can remind ourselves to regard it as precious and to treat it with care and tenderness.

In the weeks and months that lie ahead, we may go back to our unremitting acrimony if history is any indication. When that happens -- when the national discourse turns consistently ugly and harsh again -- we would do well to recall these January days when the glass was smashed into pieces. And how, in our anguish, we reached for the best in ourselves and tried to recognize the best in others.

One of the most controversial and divisive figures in American political history once said something that, regardless of what you thought of him, should echo today. Richard Nixon, in his first inaugural address, said:

"To lower our voices would be a simple thing. In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words ... from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds, from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another -- until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices."

We won’t overcome oppression, division, hatred, and violence just by being nice and polite, or by making sure we don't get too passionate. Instead, hatred can only be overcome with the power of love, and violence can best be defeated by the boldness of nonviolence that is aimed at winning people over, rather than winning over them. Sometimes "civility" is the best we can do; but ultimately, our violent differences, and even our more serious disagreements, are most effectively and deeply responded to with love.

If any good at all is to come from the heartbreak in Arizona, we'll remember to listen to each other, even and especially when we are predisposed to disagree. And, amid our lowered voices, to learn.

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Thank you to many of the bloggers on the Huffington Post site who inspired these words. Write on!

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-11-24T14:46:00.000-08:00

A Prayer of Gratitude

We are grateful for eyes that can see and ponder, for taste buds that know the sensuous pleasures of eating and drinking, for hands that hold and touch and feel, for ears that can delight in music and the voice of a friend, for a nose that can smell the aroma of newly mown grass or delicious food, and can also breathe the air that gives us life.

We are grateful for the treasure of loved ones whose hearts of openness and acceptance have encouraged us to be who we are. We are grateful for their faithfulness, for standing by us when our weaknesses stood out glaringly, for being there when we were most in need and for delighting with us in our good days and our joyful seasons.

We are grateful for the eyes of faith, for believing in the presence of God, giving us hope in our darkest days, encouraging us to listen to our spirit’s hunger, and reminding us to trust in the blessings of God’s presence in our most empty days.

We are grateful for the ongoing process of becoming who we are, for the season within, for the great adventure of life that challenges and comforts us at one and the same time.

We are grateful for the messengers of God--people, events, written or spoken words--that came to us at just the right time and helped us to grow.

We are grateful for God calling us to work with our gifts, grateful that we can be of service and use our talents in a responsible and just way.

We are grateful that we have the basic necessities of life, that we have the means and the ability to hear the cries of the poor and to respond with our abundance.

We are grateful for the miracle of life, for the green of our earth, for the amazing grace of our history; we are grateful that we still have time to decide that fate of the world by our choices and our actions, grateful that we have it within our power to bring a divided world to peace.

Are the gates really closed?

2010-09-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

Well here we are. We have just emerged from the Holy Days. The Days of Awe are rapidly becoming a distant memory and we now move on into the Jewish year with hope and faith that the year ahead will be filled with blessing. WAIT! But I didn’t finish all that I had to do. There were still some people with who I needed to make amends. What about all the unfinished business. I can’t start the year yet. What do I do.

The sages teach that while the gates seem to close at the end of Neilah and the sound of the shofar seals them for another year, there is still time until the end of the festival of Sukkot to cross. In other words, “its not over until the Hallel sings”.

Why Sukkot?
Why is a Holy Day so much associated with joy also linked to the concept of repentance and forgiveness? This comes to us from Rabbeinu Yona, He was born in the late 12th century in Gerona, Spain. Rabbeinu Yonah is best known for his Sha'arei Teshuva, a work on ethics and repentance. In his work Sha'arei Teshuva points out that this joy is an integral part of repentance. There are two ways to repent:

1. Out of fear. The sinner comes to his senses and realizes that he will have to face the consequences of his shortcomings. He tries desperately to get out of having to "face the music" by repenting his sins. There is not necessarily any joy involved in the accomplishment of such repentance. It was not his sins themselves that upset such a penitent, it was their anticipated consequences. He may sincerely regret having committed his sins, but he would be even happier if he could have his cake and eat it too. If he could be shown how to sin with impunity he would gladly do so.

2. Out of love. The sinner is upset more by the fact that he lost his close connection with God through his sins than he is by the thought of the punishment. The loss of God's love and trust is the greatest possible punishment in his eyes. His repentance is an attempt to be restored to God's favor so that he might feel the power of God's love once again. When such repentance is accepted it is the cause of the greatest joy. Once again the penitent basks in the warmth of God's love. Once again he is God's favored child.

But not only does the joy of repentance alter the very nature and quality of the repentance itself, it also determines what that repentance can accomplish.

The first thing we do on Yom Kippur right after reading Kol Nidrei, is to publicly say the following verse: Forgive the entire congregation of the Children of Israel and the stranger amongst them; for the entire people sinned unintentionally. (Numbers 15:26).

Our aim on Yom Kippur is to reach the level of repentance out of fear so that all our transgressions can be viewed as unintentional. On Sukkot we aim higher. We aim for repentance out of love to turn our transgressions into merits aided by the joy of Sukkot.

Judgement
In the Talmud, Tractate Shabbat 31a, we are taught about the questions we will be asked in the world to come. While we do not judge others in this world, it is taught that we will be judged by God in the world to come.

Rava said, “When a man is led in to be judged in the world-to-come, he will
be asked 6 questions

Did you conduct your business with integrity?
Did you set yourself regular times to study the Torah?
Did you fulfill the mitzvah of begetting children?
Did you look forward to redemption?
Did you analyze the wisdom you acquired?
Did you draw proper conclusions from what you have observed?

Rava was a Babylonian amora in the fourth century of the Common Era. His actual name was Rabbi Abba bar Joseph bar Chama.. He died in the year 352.

These are important questions for us to consider as we draw this season of repentance to a close. But why all this seriousness on Holy Day that demands joy and celebration?

Why Joy?
Falling after Yom Kippur, Sukkot offers us the chance to rise from our prayers, contemplation and penitence to celebrate our inscription in the Book of Life for another year. So, we explain, during this holiday we joyously acknowledge being alive and life itself. We celebrate the cycles of the earth, of life, and of the Jewish holidays - from sadness to joy and back again, from quiet introspection to outward expressions and back again, and from dormancy to growth and back once again. In addition, the temporary nature of the sukkah reminds us of the impermanence of all that surrounds us and of life itself while grounding us in the knowledge that one thing endures - God.

"What could be more joyous than the abundance of the earth, life itself and our connection to God?" I ask. Sukkot anticipates the arrival of the Messianic Age. Mystics say all the nations will participate in the Feast of Tabernacles as an initiation of peace throughout the world, and then 'The Lord shall be One and His name shall be One."

The joy of Sukkot is the revelation and celebration of the essential connection with our Divine mission established on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Chassidic masters tell us that you can accomplish with simcha on Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah that which you can accomplish with tears on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

There is a time to weep and there is a time to celebrate. Just as healthy tears are not mere resignation and fear, but release and catharsis that sow the seeds of growth; so healthy joy is not escape and denial, but the celebration of what makes life worth living, and makes those that tragically died worth remembering. “Those that sow with tears, will reap in joy.”

On Sukkot we celebrate our connection with God. We dance and sing in unadulterated joy. It is not frivolous nor superficial joy. It is not jittery not distracting joy. It is the expression of genuine happiness from the essence of your being. We celebrate not because we are oblivious, but because we know that we will prevail.
The joy is an expression of our commitment to good, the celebration of hope.

This message of Sukkot is universal. We are taught that the Sukkot celebration has a profound effect on the nations of the world. Our joy and service during Sukkot has cosmic impact on the destiny of the world. The fate of the nations that was determined on Rosh Hashana begins to manifest in the days of Sukkot.

As enter these joyous days, we are given power to transcend our uncertainty, our fears and vulnerabilities. We can access a greater strength that gives us the reason and the power (cause) to celebrate. “The time of our rejoicing” – us together with G-d. We celebrate with G-d our Maker, G-d celebrates with us, His creatures.
Joy has some special energy that can help us now, more than ever. Joy has the power to transcend barriers (“simcha poretz geder”). When you dance with joy you break down walls and all forms of limits and constraints.

Joy unites people. Indeed, because joy cannot be celebrated alone, we are obligated to invite guests to our tables on Sukkot. We all sit together in one unifying Sukkah. We bind together the four species – Lulav (Palm branch), Etrog (Citron), Haddasim (Myrtle branches), Arovot (Willow branches) – representing all different personalities, teaching us that our diversity is our strength, it feeds our unity, each of us with our unique contribution to the greater good.

Let us gather together during these days of Sukkot and celebrate. Celebrate our lives and the gift we have been given today: To be strong and fight for our true beliefs of freedom. To seek wholeness and peace. To begin the world anew

Water Water Everywhere...And not a drop to drink

2010-06-28T14:14:00.000-07:00

We begin in Kadesh, there was no water for the community and the people assembled against Moses and Aaron. They said, 'Why did you bring us here in the wilderness to die? Why did you take us from Egypt in order to bring us to this evil place? There are no figs or wine or pomegranates. There is not even water to drink.'
Moses and Aaron went to the Tent of Appointed Meeting and fell on their faces. The glory of God appeared to them. God said to Moses, 'Take your staff and assemble the community. Then you and your brother Aaron speak to the rock before the people’s eyes. You shall then bring forth water from out of the rock for the people and their animals.'

Moses and Aaron then gathered the congregation before the rock and Moses said to them, 'Listen now, O rebels, shall we bring forth water for you from this rock?' Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock with his staff twice and abundant water came forth and the people and their animals drank.

God said to Moses and Aaron. 'Because you did not believe in Me to sanctify Me before the eyes of the sons of Israel, you shall not bring this community into the land the land I have given them.' They made a life altering choice or acted emotionally and changed the course of their own future.

This Torah portion, Hukkat, can be viewed as a narrative about the Jewish people and water. Water--in Hebrew, mayim--is mentioned 22 times. The portion begins with God's command to mix water with the ashes of a red cow for purification. Next, Miriam dies, and the well which provided the Israelites with water disappears. The Jewish people quarrel with Moses, complaining (Numbers 20:3), "There is no water to drink!" Moses and Aaron strike the rock and God brings forth water.

Next, Moses asks the Edomites to pass through their land, with a promise not to drink their water, or alternately, to buy it from them. Then the Jewish people travel by way of the Sea of Reeds--where God had split the sea for them--and on their desert journey complain again about lacking water. They arrive in modern-day Jordan and sing an exultant song about their appreciation to God for water. Finally, the Torah portion ends with them encamped on the eastern bank of the Jordan River.
What is God teaching us through the Torah's water narrative? The Jews' experiences with water in the desert can be understood as a spiritual training to cultivate appreciation for God's goodness. God takes the essential, tangible resource of water and gives it to us in environments where we do not have it.

We learn to appreciate water and to know Who really provides it through the process described here of taking water for granted, losing it, and then being given it by God. In an ultimate sense, water does not nourish us. God does. Water is one of the chief means by which God provides life to us every day. The see-saw experience of having water and then losing it is the means to develop the spiritual muscles of appreciating God.

Yet, always being on the positive side of having water leads a person to take it for granted. Today, piped water is incredibly convenient; it relieves us from carrying our water from streams and cisterns to our homes. Today, many of us tend to lack an appreciation of where water comes from, and we end up wasting it and polluting it. Where appreciation ends, misuse begins.

Environmental problems at their root are spiritual problems--they stem from a lack of awareness of the Source of all Existence. Once we come to that awareness, we can address environmental problems in very different ways. Since beneath every environmental problem is a spiritual problem, awaiting every environmental problem is a spiritual solution. Drop a stone in the pond and the ripples will reach far beyond you.

The Torah is our blueprint for spiritual living on this planet. It enables us to transform our daily, mundane ways into holy acts. If we can preserve our connection to God's sustaining power in our world of great abundance, we can transform our lives and the world in holy ways.

The great Sage of Talmudic times, Rabbi Tarfon, teaches that "The day is short, the work is much, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the Master is pressing." I might add: the climate is changing, the seas are rising, the glaciers are melting, and now the Gulf is filling up with oil.

We can address environmental issues at their roots if we live according to the Torah's call. And when we get at the roots, we're going to deal with many of the branches as well. When we finally embrace this path as a people, our spiritual problems masquerading as environmental problems will make their way down the drain. This world is God’s gift to us and we are its stewards. The news of the last two months from the Gulf might question our ability to steward the world righteously.
An online petition from the Summer Institute at Duke Divinity School's Center for Reconciliation urges Christians to observe an oil fast on Sunday (June 20), the two-month anniversary of the spill. The Sabbath observance includes abstaining from motor vehicles, adopting a local-food diet, and "reflecting on the aspects of our lives that are so entrenched in the oil economy that we cannot even quit them for one day."

Nature-based religions welcome this growing recognition that caring for the environment is a spiritual calling, and that the oil spill is "a wound in the earth." Selena Fox, a high priestess at Circle Sanctuary, a Wisconsin-based pagan resource Center said, she has been meditating and conducting outdoor prayers several times a day, lighting a pentacle of ritual candles to channel her energy toward five areas: stopping the leak, helping the cleanup, healing the impact, learning from the disaster, and hoping that people become more respectful of the circle of life.
Prayer is an important part of the response, particularly for distant viewers who feel helpless about the images of tarred beaches and frightened fishermen, said the Rev. Mitchell Hescox, president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, which is leading a prayer walk through Gulf Coast communities directly impacted by the spill. "The first thing we have to do is pray for the people, pray for the engineers and technicians who are trying to figure out how to stop this mess, then pray for the nation to find a way to find renewable and clean energy," he said.
In the Buddhist worldview, the livelihood of a human being must be based on one basic criterion -- do no harm. The more complex the economy of our world becomes -- and the more fragile its environment -- the more vital it is for individuals to personally adopt this ethical outlook and this way of living. When trapped in a system of quarterly profits and immediate demand, individuals of vision must take action and carve a legacy rather than wait for one to be written for them. How will our children, and their children, and their children generations beyond remember us if our greatest defining legacy is that given all the facts we had on the table about the environmental consequences of our actions and our lifestyles, we continued on as if nothing was wrong? Remember … Do No Harm…

But more than this, it means adopting the basic worldview that is the only real hope that humanity has -- the fundamental recognition of the fragility and interconnectedness of all life and the compassion for it that is a by-product of that recognition. Only when individuals commit to do no harm can corporations and governments follow suit. Only when you truly grasp that it is not in your best interest as a human being to put other life in harm's way can real change be made.
Finally, There is a midrash (Rabbinic commentary on the Bible) which Jewish environmentalists are fond of quoting:
“When God created the first human beings, God led them around the Garden of Eden and said: “Look at my works! See how beautiful they are—how excellent! For your sake I created them all. See to it that you do not spoil and destroy My world; for if you do, there will be no one else to repair it.” (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah, 1 on Ecclesiastes 7:13)

In our siddur, there is a prayer called Aleinu in which we ask that the world be soon perfected under the sovereignty of God (le-takein ‘olam be-malkhut Shaddai). Tikkun ‘olam, the perfecting or the repairing of the world, has become the major theme in modern Jewish social justice theology. It is usually expressed as an activity, which must be done by humans in partnership with God. It is an important concept in light of the task ahead in environmentalism. In our ignorance and our greed, we have damaged the world and silenced many of the voices of the choir of Creation. Now we must fix it. There is no one else to repair it but us

Every one of us is responsible for our own course in life, and each of us determines our own moral and ethical guidelines. Some of us accept the basic rules of religions without question. Others determine our own version of what is and what is not acceptable in order to help us sleep at night. No one -- yet -- is going to force us to adopt individual ethical and moral standards. It is up to each and every one of us.

Let us learn the lesson that God chose to teach about the gift we were given and our responsibility not only to preserve the gift for the generations to come, but respect and honor the giver with our daily actions.

Why are Jews Liberal?

2009-12-29T12:03:00.000-08:00

I began my day at 6:00 am at Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church serving Christmas breakfast to hundreds of homeless and disenfranchised families in Houston. Every year, for as long as I remember, it has been my tradition to find somewhere on Christmas and Easter to volunteer my time so that others, who celebrate these days, can take time to spend with their families. And, if possible, my wife and I have taken our children with us. They live such “blessed” lives and I want them to understand that they have an obligation, because of their blessings, to reach out to those who live without every day.

I am sharing this because of a recent lecture I attended with Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Law from Harvard University and Norman Podhoretz, Editor in Chief of Commentary Magazine. Norman recently published a book entitled “Why are Jews Liberal?” To set the stage, Norman Podhoretz began his illustrious career at Commentary strongly embedded in the heart and soul of the Democratic Party nearly 40 years ago. Commentary magazine which he founded was a clarion voice of the Jewish community as it advocated for the rights of the poor and impoverished in our towns and cities. He stood as a beacon of hope for the liberal agenda of the 1960’s and 1970’s. But his most recent book chronicles his transformation from a card carrying Democrat to a partner of the right and its unwavering support for Israel over and above all other political agendas. This transformation has led to the realignment of the political views of Commentary and a refocusing of its message to a very narrow, pro-Israel agenda.

Sharing the stage was Alan Dershowitz, a loud and clear liberal voice in the Jewish agenda. Dershowitz, a professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard and lawyer in many high profile cases, has written extensively on why he continues to partner with the left in his political and “religious” life while remaining staunchly pro-Israel. His book, The Case for Israel, cannot be challenged in its pro-Israel stance and his opposition to Arab claims is clear. Nevertheless, he remains a complicated political figure and chooses to avoid Podhoretz’s single issue stands.

That is the key to the argument. Are we as Jews, single issue voters or can we be more complicated on our views and therefore find different partnerships of values beyond the pro-Israel Christian right?

Podhoretz notes that since 1928, the average Jewish vote for the Democrat in presidential elections has been an amazing 75%—far higher than that of any other ethno-religious group. In the last election, it was 78% for Obama. Except for African Americans, who gave him 95% of their vote, Mr. Obama did far better with Jews than with any other ethnic or religious group. Thus the Jewish vote for him was 25 points higher than the 53% he scored with the electorate as a whole; 35 points higher than the 43% he scored with whites; 11 points higher than the 67% he scored with Hispanics; 33 points higher than the 45% he scored with Protestants; and 24 points higher than the 54% he scored with Catholics.

He thought that in 2008, things would have been different. The main reason was Israel. Despite some slippage in concern for Israel among American Jews, most of them were still telling pollsters that their votes would be strongly influenced by the positions of the two candidates on the Jewish state. Nevertheless, Mr. Obama beat Mr. McCain among Jewish voters by a staggering 57 points.

As the late Jewish scholar Milton Himmelfarb said in the 1950s: "Jews earn like Episcopalians"—then the most prosperous minority group in America—"and vote like Puerto Ricans," who were then the poorest. Why asks Dershowitz.

Jews remain far more heavily committed to the liberal agenda than any of their old ethno-religious New Deal partners. As the eminent sociologist Nathan Glazer has put it, "whatever the promptings of their economic interests," Jews have consistently supported "increased government spending, expanded benefits to the poor and lower classes, greater regulations on business, and the power of organized labor." As with these old political and economic questions, so with the newer issues being fought out in the culture wars today. On abortion, gay rights, school prayer, gun control and assisted suicide, the survey data show that Jews are by far the most liberal of any group in America.

Dershowitz countered that most American Jews sincerely believe that their liberalism, together with their commitment to the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle, stems from the teachings of Judaism and reflects the heritage of "Jewish values."

It is found in the stories of the Hebrew Bible, from the slave period which begins in this week’s Sidra to the pages of law in Leviticus that we as a people learned the need to care for others. It was through our immigrant experience coming here from Eastern Europe in the 1880s to America "the goldene medinah." We soon learned that there was no gold in the streets, as some may have imagined, which meant that we had to struggle, and struggle hard. But there was another, more precious kind of gold in America. There was freedom and there was opportunity. Blessed with these conditions, we children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these immigrants flourished—and not just in material terms—to an extent unmatched in the history of our people.

What is the Jewish message here? It’s probably somewhere in the middle. As Dershowitz notes, He wants strong Jewish Democrats and strong Jewish Republicans. He wants Jews to influence both sides of the coin and participate on both sides of the aisle. That way Israel will always have support. And while he has the ear of the President now, he wants to make sure that Jewish views are heard and our passion for social justice is given voice.

Pohoretz is passionate about his support for Israel. For him, Israel is the last survival issue for the Jewish people. In his view, without a strong and solid US support for Israel, our future as a people is threatened. While I don’t agree with his doomsday views, his partnership with the pro-Israel right like Pastor Hagee here in San Antonio cannot hurt, as long as Israel is the only partnership issue.

And I believe what was most important in this dialogue was the confirmation that Jews care and Jews matter and that as long as we remain the inheritors of our Biblical roots, we have an obligation to help. And so on this cusp of a new secular year and in the shadow of a very challenging year for many, let me close with this prayer.

Eloheinu vElohei avoteinu v’imoteinu, Our God and God of our ancestors, you bless us with abundance and prosperity for which we are truly grateful. With humility and respect, we acknowledge the people who work night and day so that we will have food on our tables, clothes on our bodies, care when ewe are sick, and many other services we may not even be aware of that make our lives better easier and more comfortable.

God of justice, we pray for the workers in the fields, in the factories, in the hospitals, hotels and office buildings. May their work be safe from danger and fear. May their labors sustain them and their families with equity and dignity.
God, forgive our ignorance that makes us blind to the plight of so many of our brothers and sisters. Make us aware of the struggles of all who are simply in search of their own shelter and security.

Eternal God, give us the strength and passion to work for a world in which there is no exploitation. Free us so that we might dedicate our hearts and lives to a vision of life with security, dignity, and sustainability for all people. Amen.

Your Attitude Makes the Difference

2009-10-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Lately one might say that life has been filled with many challenges. It is how you respond to the cards that you are dealt that determines the impact of the challenges we face. A friend of mine, Mike Segal, forwarded me the following. Rubel Shelly posted these words on his "Thought of the Day". You can find his thoughts at http://insightoftheday.com/. He is a Preacher and Professor of Religion and Philosophy in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Enjoy!

Many things about your life boil down to the hand you have been dealt. You can't change the fact that you were born in that place and with certain givens for your appearance, IQ, or physical skills. Education and training can open some doors for you, but they cannot change your past, make you taller and more athletic, or alter the fact that some people are unfair in the way they treat you.

In spite of the fact that all of us know that most of our life circumstances are beyond our control, we are all still tempted to fret and complain about things that cannot be changed. Of course they cause distress. They certainly put us at a disadvantage in certain contexts. They mustn't be allowed to define and limit us.

The people who do best with life move beyond the temptation to whine and feel sorry for themselves. They face the disappointment and move beyond it. They acknowledge the bad break and look for a way to turn it around. They work from a half-full rather than half-empty glass mindset.

These people have a different attitude than the defeatist and whiner. They have found a way to make lemonade from their lemons.

There is a section in John Baillie's A Diary of Private Prayer that reads . . .

Teach me, O God, so to use all the circumstances of my life today that they may bring forth in me the fruits of holiness rather than the fruits of sin.

Let me use disappointment as material for patience;

Let me use success as material for thankfulness;

Let me use suspense as material for perseverance;

Let me use danger as material for courage;

Let me use reproach as material for longsuffering;

Let me use praise as material for humility;

Let me use pleasures as material for temperance;

Let me use pains as material for endurance.

When a given day begins, countless things are headed your way over which you have no control. It may be bad weather or someone's bad temper, a deadline that won't budge or a client equally resistant to change. The one factor you can control through it all is your attitude toward them.

Your attitude today will make all the difference in everything that matters.

You've been recalled!

2009-09-08T06:16:00.000-07:00

I saw this on the web and thought that it might spark some comments. Enjoy!

ELUL RECALL NOTICE

Regardless of make or year, all units known as "human beings" are being recalled by the Manufacturer. This is due to a malfunction in the original prototype units code named "Adam" and "Eve" resulting in the reproduction of the same defect in all subsequent units. This defect is technically termed, "Serious Internal Non-morality," but more commonly known as "SIN."

Some of the symptoms of the SIN defect:
[a] Loss of direction
[b] Lack of peace and joy
[c] Depression
[d] Foul vocal emissions
[e] Selfishness
[f] Ingratitude
[g] Fearfulness
[h] Rebellion
[i] Jealousy

The Manufacturer is providing factory authorized repair service free of charge to correct the SIN defect.

The Repair Technician, Hashem, has most generously offered to bear the entire burden of the staggering cost of these repairs. To repeat, there is no fee required.

The number to call in for repair in all areas is: PRAYER.

Once connected, please upload the burden of SIN through the REPENTANCE procedure. Next, download ATONEMENT from the Repair Technician, Hashem, into the heart component of the human unit.. No matter how big or small the SIN defect is, Hashem will replace it with:

[a] Love
[b] Joy
[c] Peace
[d] Kindness
[e] Goodness
[f] Faithfulness
[g] Gentleness
[h] Patience
[I] Self-control

Please see the operating manual, TORAH, for further details on the use of these fixes. As an added upgrade, the Manufacturer has made available to all repaired units a facility enabling direct monitoring and assistance from the resident Maintenance Technician, Hashem. Repaired units need only make Him welcome and He will take up residence on the premises.

WARNING: Continuing to operate a human being unit without corrections voids the Manufacturer's warranty, exposes the unit to dangers and problems too numerous to list, and will ultimately result in the human unit being incinerated.
Thank you for your immediate attention.

Please assist by notifying others of this important recall notice.

I'm Back!

2009-08-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

Well, its been nearly three months since my last posting and my son in Israel reminded me of this recently. These three months have been filled with separation, moving and renewal. As my youngest now begins High School (which is hard to believe) and my middle one goes off to college (which is harder to fathom), I have taken some time to reflect on the deeper importance of the small things in life.

I mean, we are so focused on the big picture most of the time. I have taken great comfort in walks with my dog, playing Wii-fit with my girls, finding the right piece for the house, sipping a glass of wine on the balcony, etc... Yes, there is a looming big picture but sometimes you have to just think small. When the big picture seems overwhelming, taking the step back seems like the right thingto do.

That is what I think this year is about. It is the great pause in the life of a type A person. Sometimes the karma just catches up with us and we get too caugh up in the long range focus. So caught up that we loose focus and we begin to step over the little things that are equally important.

I have reflected alot on my purpose for this year. I think that this year is about self-expression or "torah l'shem shamayim". I think that I am supposed to just learn for myself, be a congregant (very hard for me) and try to expend my energy on the small things in life. Things like helping my kids move on in their lives and giving them all the tools they need to become successes.

My opportunity will come. I am sure of it. It took me a while to get to this point but I have now. Impatient though we are, this race for the rest of my life will be won with slow and steady searching for the essence of who I am and what I want for myself, family and community.

So I'm back. Check each week for more musings and ramblings...

A Message to all Confirmands...Young and Old

2009-05-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight commemorates our ancestors’ history- the transforming encounter at Sinai, fifty days after the Exodus from Egypt. The timeless memory of the receiving of the Ten Commandments at that time, inspired one of Reform Judaism’s most creative innovations, the ceremony of Confirmation. For Reform Jews, each new generation was challenged to symbolically make the ascent to Sinai, receive the Torah for themselves, and confirm their own commitment to our faith.

The Ten Commandments are revered by both Judaism and Christianity, as the moral foundation of our civilization. While the Torah employs ritual and ceremony as symbolic expressions of eternal and universal spiritual values, it is the underlying ethical principles that are paramount. This is no¬where more clearly reflected than in the Ten Commandments from which our students just read. In the ancient world these words were a radical and revolutionary leap forward in the history of humanity’s spiritual quest. For the first time, faith and ethics were integrated into an inseparable whole. The message of Sinai proclaimed for all time, Judaism’s fundamental idea that what the God of Israel ultimately demands of us is righteous and ethi¬cal living – compassion for the weak and needy - integrity in our dealings with others – and the pursuit of justice in society. It is so significant that of these ten mandates, singled out as the very essence of the entire Torah, only two are theological principles – proscribing idolatry and proclaiming God’s reality and unity as the sole liberating Force for human freedom. Only one of the commandments concerns ritual - the observance of the Sabbath – and yet even this commandment focuses on the underlying ethical di¬mension of a day of rest and spiritual renewal for all living things. All the rest of the Ten Commandments proclaim the imperative of ethical, just and caring relationships between human beings. Centuries later, the Prophet Micah would offer an even more concise summation of Judaism, when he taught that what God ultimately requires of us is “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly.”

This is, of course, the essence of the understanding of Reform Judaism that we continue to proclaim: a faith focused on ethical values and spiritual sensitivity, rather than on ritual or ceremony…a faith of freedom, rather than fanaticism. At this season of rebirth, we are called to renew our Confirmation vows…and together to ascend Sinai anew… receiving the Torah for ourselves - for our own time and place – exemplifying its sacred ideals in our lives.

So tonight, I have some public hopes for all of you that stem from this Sinai moment.

The first message to take from this is to be in conversation with the text. No one has yet written or proclaimed the last word. I want to challenge you to be a part of the ongoing dialogue and discussion about Torah. This is not the domain or purview of previous generations or elderly rabbis. It is yours. It is your heritage and therefore your responsibility to keep up the conversation. Think of a group of people in a circle playing hackey sack, where the point is not to drop the object, but to keep it going. That is your task. Keep it going.

Judaism demands that you think, that you process, that you reflect, that you study and struggle with the tradition and with your responses. From the role of the Talmud and text, we learn that life is not black or white, nor is it grey. Sometimes it is black and white, and maybe even grey, all simultaneously.

This year, whether you realized it or not, we studied Torah, Bible, The Oral Law, the Mishnah, Gemorrah, and Talmud. We read the Torah and then saw how the midrash elucidates, clarifies, and sometimes modifies the text. We looked at Responsa literature, and came to understand the need for a code of Jewish law. And with all this, we only scratched the surface.

I want to let you in on a secret. Promise me you won’t tell anyone. Let’s just say, when I attended Hebrew school, I was not the best pupil. But I came away from my religious school experience knowing two things – I realized how little I knew and more importantly, I had a thirst and strong desire to learn more.

My second message is a hope that you have gained an appreciation of how enormous our tradition is, how much more there is to learn, and hopefully by appreciating its relevance to your lives, you will obtain a desire to explore your heritage and to expand your knowledge of Judaism.

Next, I hope that you continue to maintain your Jewish relevance. Whether you are in a class with one other student or a hundred, your personal journey is the most important. While we place enormous importance on community and a minyan, the minyan is composed of individuals and each journey is essential to its success. Continue to explore ritual and its meaning and please, whether at camp or through BBYO and into college, continue to find personal expression is the rich and varied traditions of Judaism and its many opportunities for a spiritual encounter with God.

Our tradition celebrates life and living, and offers keys to understanding how to live a meaningful life. That is my greatest prayer, to keep Judaism alive. By studying its texts, by arguing about their meaning, by debating their applications, by experimenting with traditions, by encountering others in the journey, we are nourished by Judaism, and we create nourishment for others. Am Yisrael Chai … through you, the Jewish people live on!

Clay Balls

2009-05-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

A man was exploring caves by the Seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake. They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.

He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone!

Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure. He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he had just thrown it away!

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.

We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each and every one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask God to show us that person the way He sees them, then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.

May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay. May we see the people in our world as God sees them.

Pass this on to another Clay Ball. God Bless

The Blessings of Parenthood

2009-04-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Parashat Tazria
Lev. 12:1 – 13:59

One of the earliest lessons that the student of Torah learns is that there is no subject on which the Torah is silent. Here, in between verses filled with birth and ritual purity, lies the core of Jewish teaching on the importance of parenting and covenantal living. There is no act of Jewish living that is free from this focus on the personal and private covenant we establish with the Holy One of Blessing.

Often lost in this portion because of our modern sensibilities about the beauty of childbirth, is the importance of reestablishing and reengaging the covenantal relationship with the Creator of All. Here we have just become the creator of life. So that we do not become filled with the hubris of creators and distracted from the essential teaching of sacred literature, Torah quickly focuses us back onto the Creator of creators. Much like the shattering of a glass is meant to draw our attention back into the world at moment of highest celebration at a wedding, this portion draws us back into the true path of blessing, living with the Holy One as an ever-present force in our lives.

The greatest fear of the Torah seems to be the overwhelming draw of idolatry in a free world. Throughout the wanderings in the wilderness and into the conquest and establishment of the Temple period, idolatry was a constant drain on the collective energy of the Jewish people. Over and over again, we are admonished to live in covenant, to reject the temporal and pursue the Eternal, to lift ourselves above and seek relationship with the Almighty.

And so, in this moment of great personal creativity, when life blossoms forth and all seems right with the world, we are drawn by Torah to say a prayer, to cleanse ourselves and reestablish the lines of communication with our sacred guide who brought us all into the world and nurtured us on the journey.

As a Reform Jew, I have recoiled at passages like this in the past because of its seeming inconsistency in our lives today. We know that parenthood is a blessing and that bringing life into this world is a great mitzvah. The Torah seems to direct us to the issue of impurity. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a Jew trying to live out my own personal covenantal relationship with the Creator, knowing the importance that the Torah places on this relationship is empowering.

The Talmud recognizes this best in Niddah 31a when it suggests that there are three partners in the procreation of a person: the father, the mother and the Holy One of Blessing. While the parents create the body, it is the Holy One who, in breathing the ruah into the child, creates its soul. And just maybe that is why Parashat Tazria is here, to acknowledge to the world that we are all partners and that the blessing is in the relationship.

One Wish

2009-04-19T11:25:00.000-07:00

A Chassidic tale ...

A long time ago, in a small village of eastern Russia lived a simple Jewish man by the name of Itzik. Itzik feared God and spent his entire life devoted to the town’s synagogue. After his early morning work as a baker, and after some time with his wife and five children in the afternoon, and after studying some Jewish texts at dusk, Itzik would go to the synagogue to clean up, dust some shelves, straighten the books, and clear away papers. It was dark by the time he got there, but he lit some candles and went about his business. He wanted his synagogue - his shul - to be properly cleaned and looking nice - for it was God’s house.

One evening, when the sky was clear and the moon shone brightly, Itzik went over to the shul for some housekeeping. But on this night, he kept hearing a noise - it sounded like a moan or a faint cry - but he could not place where the sound was coming from. So he kept on working, and soon enough, he heard it again - a crying moan - only this time it was a little louder. Itzik looked around and saw nothing. Every few minutes the sound would come back and grow a little bit louder until during one particular cry - Itzik looked over at the ark - the holy ark - and he stepped closer and closer - and the sound grew louder and louder - and then Itzik saw a light appear from the cracks of the ark. And in a moment of panic, he rushed over and opened the ark doors, and there before him was a beaming white light - radiating from Torah scrolls - hovering in mid-air. And Itzik yelled out, “Who’s there? Who is this?” And just then, a soft voice came out from the ark, and said, “I am an angel, a messenger from God, the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob. I have come to offer you, Itzik, one wish.”

“A wish? What kind of wish? Why me?” And the angel responded softly, “the heavens have noticed how clean you keep the shul - you have made it your practice to keep the house of study and prayer so clean - and now, Itzik, you are being given one wish and one wish only - as a reward for your good heart. You may wish for anything you want - the choice is yours. I shall return tomorrow night, and you will tell me what you desire.” Poof - and just like that, the light disappeared and the noise went away. Itzik thought it might be some kind of dream, and he ran home to his wife and children - but he told no one of the encounter.

The rest of the night, he lay awake in bed deciding what his wish should be - he laid out the pros and the cons of each option. And all during the next day at work baking, while he was with his family, while he was studying text, he pondered his choices. When the sun went down, Itzik closed his books of study, picked up a broom, and began to clean the shul. Right on schedule, the moaning and crying began again - building to a fevered pitch - and when the light came forth form the cracks of the ark, Itzik opened the doors, and the angel again spoke forth from the light.

“Itzik,” said the angel, “what is your wish - what is it that you want for your reward?” And with a quivering voice, Itzik responded. “I have been thinking about this all night and all day and let me tell you - it has not been an easy choice. At first, I wanted to asked for money - lots of it - I could buy fancy clothes and donate a large sum to tzedakah. But then I thought about it, and I realized that although I am a simple baker, I have enough money to buy clothes and food for my family, we have a small but loving house, and I give to tzedakah anyway. I then realized that I should not ask for money, because although I am not rich, I am comfortable.

And then I was going to ask for fame. It would be nice to be famous - everyone would know who I am - and everyone would respect me. But fame is fleeting - and why do I need to be famous? I am needed here in this town, for my family, for the bakery, for the shul. I am happy being simple Itzik. And although no one knows me outside of this village, I am comfortable with that.

And then, I was thinking about asking for wisdom, but I spend every day reading the texts of our tradition. I grow in wisdom with every word on every page. And I love to study. If I was wise all of the sudden from this wish, what need would I have to study? I would miss that. And although I am not the smartest person in this village, I am comfortable with that.

And so, dear angel, I wish for nothing. I do not need money, or fame, or wisdom. I am comfortable with who I am and what I do. Since I do not need anything, I will not wish for anything. God has blessed me with all that I need. Thank you, but no thank you.”

At that very second, the angel went away, the light went out in the ark, and the moaning stopped. Itzik was proud of his decision. But as soon as he picked up his broom and began to sweep the floor, he heard another voice crying. But this time it was loud and it was not coming from the ark. He lit some candles in the sanctuary to give him more visibility, and he saw sitting in the back row was the rabbi - the wonderful rebbe - and he was crying. Startled, Itzik asked what the rabbi was doing there at this hour. The rabbi told him that he had witnessed the whole encounter Itzik had with the angel. Itzik stood upright, ready to be praised by the rebbe for his humility, but the rabbi kept on crying. Itzik asked the rabbi why he continued to cry, and the rabbi said, “Itzik, you were given a gift - any wish that you wanted - and it would be fulfilled from the high heavens - you could have wished for anything, and yet you refused and said you need nothing.” As the rabbis tears fell down his cheek, Itzik asked, “What was wrong with what I said?”

At that moment, the rabbi stood up and said, “Itzik, you could have wished for an end to hunger - and no one on this planet would go to bed without food tonight. You could have wished for an end to war - and it would have been granted - and nations would have beat their spears into pruning-hooks, they would have beat their swords into plow-shares - no one would ever die in a senseless war again. You could have wished for an end to all disease - no one would ever again die before their time. Itzik, you could have changed the world with your wish, and yet you only thought of yourself. So long as you were comfortable, you squandered a gift for all humanity. That is why I am crying. We lost a chance at improving our world because you were too comfortable. My heart is broken. I can only hope and pray that we have this kind of chance again.” And with that, the rabbi left the shul. Itzik thought about the rabbi’s words began to cry. And as the angels in heaven witnessed this, they too, began to cry, and their tears came down as rain upon the little village.

And so the angel, sensing the humility of the moment, called down once again. This time Itzik responded with his wish and all became right with the world. But you know the story. For what did he wish?

Living With Meaning

2009-04-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

How unlikely it is that Judaism exists at all! In an age of limitless choices, when Jews are free to mingle, marry, and move as they chose, what is striking is not how tepid Jewish life often is, but how vibrant it still remains. Just think about how busy most of our lives are, and how indistinguishable are our daily lives are from our neighbors. Yet the vast preponderance of Jews religious and secular, observant and not observant, attend services on the High Holy Days and seders at Passover, no matter when it falls. What this suggests is that we still feel addressed by our Judaism, still respond from our very depths, as though we were being called by something. And most of us respond to that bid by showing up.

Our willingness to attend, even sporadically, constitutes one of the miracles of Jewish survival. It is noteworthy because we don't have to respond there is no social compulsion to be Jewish. And it is noteworthy because Judaism constitutes an assertion that life has meaning, that what we do has significance. In an age of cynicism and secularism, the effort to connect however ambivalently to such a world view is an act of courage worthy of celebration. The continuing existence of Jews, and our enduring aspiration for Judaism comprises a supreme act of faith, in life, in each other, and in God.

That faithfulness is far from easy, and certainly is not inevitable. There is another, alluring, way to look at life: we might adopt the still popular view of the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece. They asserted that life has no meaning, a cosmic (and rather terrifying) coincidence. We happen to be born, just happen to live, and happen to die. That is the end of it, the sum total of human worth. With such an attitude, it is difficult not to conclude that there is little reason to arise in the morning, since all anyone says or does lacks any significance. There is no grand meaning. One cannot connect with anything bigger than ourselves. In such a skeptical view, life is an absurdity. Life becomes ridiculous, a pathetic joke, a way to torture people for a short period of time, before they are snuffed out forever.

Judaism has always taken such a cynical view seriously enough to oppose and to reject it. The traditions of the Torah insist that each of our deeds has meaning, purpose, and significance. We relate to something eternal, something of ultimate significance, of which we are creatures and with which we are partners. Our lives become significant to the extent that we join in that greater context of meaning, to the degree that we allow ourselves to become an embodiment of divine thought and an expression of God's word. That so many of us still show up is a witness to the power and scope of this transforming idea. We do, in some mysterious sense, affirm that our lives have meaning and purpose, and we wish to join and make sense of that significance. We Jews show up, as we have for millennia, to stand in God's presence, to stand in the presence of the Torah, and to join ourselves to something that extends far beyond our own finite lives.

The age old Jewish search for meaning still continues. Of interest, then is Judaism's response to a far more complex task: granted that our deeds matter, that there is significance and a purpose to our lives, how do we conduct our lives in such a way that reveals this pervasive meaningfulness in our deeds? What is it in human consciousness that alludes to purpose in creation?

All of us share three basic needs, one of which is connection. We all have a need to be connected to something beyond ourselves, to connect to each other. Being able to recognize a shared meaning provides a powerful link with other human beings. We all have that need for connection. We all have the need for the enrichment that comes from connections. While it might be possible to purchase a new set of candlesticks, those novelties can't possibly possess the resonance of one's great grandmother's Shabbat candlesticks. Connection to other people is an abiding and profound human need, allowing us to express our deepest humanity and to recognize that no one is ever truly alone. The wisdom and practice of Judaism provides for that fundamental need.

Another great human need is that of context: we need to feel a sense of purpose extending beyond our own immediate requirements. We flourish when we recognize that we belong to something larger, something that will last.

As a congregational rabbi, I have the privilege of addressing bar/bat mitzvah students and their families just before their special day. We meet in my Study and talk about their Sidra. Each time we sit together, I can't help thinking about how unlikely it is that an Israelite Prophet's words spoken 2,700 years ago in a small corner of the globe finds fulfillment in the trembling voice of a thirteen year old here in Akron. We listen to the words of ancient Israel's prophets and they are fulfilled through us, and through Jews everywhere. We feel addressed by them. It's hard to imagine a more compelling context in which to situate our lives and direct our souls. Context is the second profound human need, and it, too is profoundly satisfied in Judaism.

Yet another pervasive need is compassion. One of the most striking truths about human beings is that we all have the need to show love. Recent scientific studies have provided empirical support for that intuitive hunch: when researchers brought pets into old age homes, the health of the seniors improved. They found that loving contact could even extend their longevity. In that same study, congregational affiliation is a factor in extending life. Why is that? Because we all have a need to give love. All of us seek to share the warmth in our hearts with others

Our drive to share our love inspires both individual acts of kindness (gemillut hasadim) and collective efforts toward social justice (tzedek ve mishpat). While sending a dozen roses and signing a petition may appear to be distinctive expressions, both implement a profound urge to care for others. Both forms are the warp and woof of Jewish communal life. Ours is a religion that commands us to love our neighbors and to pursue justice.

Mitzvot, the sacred deeds of Judaism, are a way of taking those three needs connection, context, and compassion and of giving them form. We all feel the tug of these deep seated drives. There is an age old plan for how to live life with meaning, how to show that everything we do is significant and that every action can repair the world. Jews label those deeds "commandments" because we feel a calling, a summoning from deep within, urging us to shoulder the responsibility of living with purpose.

The Mitzvot, if you will, are God's tool box for building a better world. We provide the only hands God has in the world. So God needs each us to make the investment of soul, time, and energy, to learn about God's commandments and to implement them. And we need to do so to express our own fullest humanity.

Teaching a Jew to embrace our heritage is no different than encouraging a child to walk. Rather than allowing some posited conclusion to discourage engaging the process in the first place, we can encourage each other with each new venture in Jewish living. Every time we try out a new mitzvah, read a new Jewish book, or practice a familiar mitzvah in a more thorough fashion, we should hoot and holler as we would for that growing toddler. Spiritual steps are no less worthy encouragement.

Pikei Avot teaches, “zachar mitzvah mitzvah…The merit of a mitzvah is the mitzvah itself.” The more we can accomplish each day during our life is the gift we give to humanity and to God. It is the reward of the spirit and the promise upon which we build tomorrow. And it is through our relationship with God that we forge the strongest connections between others and ourselves.

Dominoes falling...

2009-03-23T09:05:00.000-07:00

Like dominoes they are falling. Since January of 2008, at least 120 newspapers have shut down their presses. One by one, these great giants of printing have given up on what was once the "fourth estate" (although I never really knew what were estates 1-3). I mourn the loss of ink stained fingers and piles of recyclable waste being replaced by websites and text messaged news.

I read the paper with a pair of scissors and books with a pen in my hand. I have all my books still. The ones from my college days sit right next to the ones I bought last week. Flipping through the pages there are notes and quotes and sermon ideas and even comments back to the author although they never will see them. I even found my copy of Orwell's 1984 with all my margin notes when my daughter was reading it for her High School lit. class. Oh, what memories those notes rekindled. Books are meant to be ingested over time, not merely deleted when we are done.

I want kids to have books that they own. I want books to be familiar and bring warmth to our hearts when we see the old dog eared pages and the marks we made when we read them the first time. The smell of books should permeate our homes, not just the smell of electronic wires and the dull buzz of a computer monitor. When I walk into a home, I look immediately at the shelves to see what's there. Only the most precious things are on the shelves. What's on your shelves?

I recently visited a relative in their home. It is a very familiar home and I grew up there, spending lots of time playing there as a child. It was always a warm home and this time was no exception. As I sat in the living room, which many would think was way too cluttered and distracting, I could not help notice that there were books everywhere. Its what I remembered as a child. There were always books and magazines and they were piled and stacked everywhere. I always felt comfortable there.

During my last visit to Barnes and Noble, the shelves seem emptier. I wandered about looking for something to read. I always leave with a selection of new titles for my library. This time I left empty handed. Is it because I could not find valuable literature or was the emptiness of the shelves telling me something that brought sadness to my heart?

Have we become a society of sound bites and bulleted news stories which we read at red lights on our PDA's? Soon our children will be more adept at creating power point presentations than research papers. So much we owe to the ability to read and write and retell a story. Are we marginalizing our children's ability to do that in our time as we watch the dominoes fall?

I don't want an electric reader!

Broken Open

2009-02-28T05:39:00.000-08:00

I have been reading this remarkable little book that was on the NY Times list this past week. It was written in 2005 by Elizabeth Lesser, a therapist and founder of a retreat center. The book is entitled “Broken Open”. It is about all the challenges we face in our lives, all the brokenness. Its about divorces and deaths, trouble with children or parents, its about job losses and working where you are unappreciated. Its about all of us and all our issues and I thought it would be a good subject for a comment.

Let’s begin with a story.
First, a vocabulary term. In Polish, the term for a piece of luggage is chimidunchik. It’s important to know this term for the story.

A man gets on a train. It’s crowded and there are very few seats. He spies a seat a few rows back and approached to claim it. As he neared, he saw that there was a suitcase on the seat and a man sitting next to it. He says: Excuse me, can you please move your chimidunchik so I may sit? There was no response. More people are getting on the train, the aisle is getting crowded and all the seats fill up. Again he asks, can you please move your chimidunchik? And again he was ignored. Normally a patient man, he gets very agitated for being ignored. He begins to shout. Chimidunchik, Chimidunchik! Can you move it now! And still no answer. So the man in a fit a rage, grabs the chimidunchik and throws it out the window of the moving train. Satisfied and somewhat exhausted, he sits in the now vacant seat and turns to the person there and ask him, Now what are you going to do! Nothing he replied, It was not my chimidunchik!

Now while we might have anticipated the slapstick ending to the story… the chimidunchik has greater meaning for us tonight. What I learned from this story is that everyone has their chimidunchik and many of us know it … but some of us do not. Everyone here has baggage. Some is light and we carry it well and effortlessly manipulate life so that our baggage doesn’t slow us down. Some of us deny that we even carry baggage. We, like the man on the train don’t own up to the baggage that follows us wherever we go. Still others are weighed down by the baggage they carry. The burden is so great that they are immobilized. Their burdens are heavy and they continue to grow and compound.

In looking at our own journey in Exodus, we can see how the baggage that our ancestors carried into the wilderness affected them. Now I am not speaking about the piles of gold and silver and precious materials that they took from the Egyptians. The text says this they carried almost burdenless as they moved from place to place. I am speaking about the years of brokenness and emotional bondage that many of them brought from Egypt. They carried the scars of servitude. They carried the memories of the generations who died in slavery and the countless broken prayers as they sought Divine deliverance. And as we know some of them carried false memories of the beautiful existence of their time in Egypt and longed to return. All of these, broken baggage carried like the bricks of the pyramids.

Some of them, I would say most, carried few burdens as they crossed the boundaries into the wilderness. Their steps were light; they sang and danced their way to freedom. Victor Frankl, a survivor of the Nazi death camps, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote a transformative passage on the way some of us respond to adversity. He survived that horror because he refused to allow the Nazi’s to take his soul. He called it the last of the human freedoms, the freedom to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. He said, when you exercise this freedom, when you choose to learn and grow from the weight of the world, you are putting your soul in charge of your life. You are hopeful, expansive and eternal. You are living for the deeper truth.

Those that carried weighty burdens, the pain of loss and the memories of shattered dreams and unanswered prayers, they were weighed down as they crossed the sea. They were wounded shattered shells of people whose lives were fading from them. They, more than the first group, carried the pain of slavery with them. And unlike Victor Frankl, their souls were compromised. They were not focused on the bigger picture. They could not see the pillar of fire as God led then into freedom. Yes, they would die in the wilderness, victims of cruel bondage. Free of the shackles of injustice but bound to the memories of their taskmasters.

The third group, those who memories were warped into believing in the beauty of Egyptian life could never move on. They carried the most with them. Their baggage weighted them down as they crossed the sea. They could not look forward into the divinely centered world that they were to inherit. Their head were turned looking longingly at the parade of idols they were forced to leave behind. Those that they carried with them, and to be sure they did, weighted them down so much that the horses could not move and the wagons could not roll. Not wishing to move on themselves, they carried their past as their future, forever to wallow in the muck and mire of their mind.

I was so taken by this story about the baggage we carry and the impact it has on our life that tonight I want to share with you what I believe is the core teaching from her book. It is called the Phoenix principle. Are you familiar with the mythical story of the Phoenix? The Egyptians called this bird the phoenix and believed that every 500 years; he renewed his quest for his true self. Knowing that a new way could only be found with the death of worn out habits, defenses, and beliefs; the Phoenix built a pyre of cinnamon and myrrh, sat in the flames and was burned to death. Then he rose from the ashes as a new being, a fusion of who he had been before and who he had become.

Lesser writes:
You and I are the Phoenix. We too can reproduce ourselves from the shattered pieces of a difficult time. Our lives ask us to die and be reborn every time we confront change – change within ourselves and change in our world. When we descend all the way down to the bottom of a loss, and dwell patiently, with an open heart, in the darkness and pain, we can bring back up with us the sweetness of life and the exhilaration of inner growth.

How many of us are struggling because of family loss, our own personal health issues, job struggles, the economic pressures? I would venture a guess that no one here is immune from these burdens. We have all seen our dreams shattered and our goals made more distant. And if not personally, we have witnessed someone else’s world come crashing down as we have stood by not knowing how to respond.

Is there a Jewish answer? Does our tradition speak to the story of the Phoenix? In other words, how far must we fall before we can rise. So much reliance on faith. In the darkest times, we must reach inward to our faith and in the same way that Victor Frankl rose from the ashes of the Shoah, so too can we rise from the ashes which we feel may surround us.

Jewish people have, in the words of our prayer book, “survived oppression and exile, time and again overcoming the forces that would have destroyed us.” The prophets of Israel, who often foretold of impending disasters far worse than anything we have experienced or face, gave repeated assurance that dark days would not last forever. “Comfort, oh comfort my people,” writes Isaiah. “[God] will slake your thirst in drought, and renew your body’s strength; you shall be like a watered garden, like an unfailing spring. Your people shall rebuild the ancient ruins and lay the foundations for ages to come…I will cause you to ride upon the high places of the earth, and I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father. This is the promise of the Eternal.” And the Psalmist assures us, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” And thus it has proven to be. Despite everything, Am Yisrael chai! The Jewish People lives!

We enjoy greater freedom, security, prosperity, and opportunity than any generations in Jewish history and we should never take those blessings for granted. No matter how much we may have lost, hopefully temporarily, we still have more than most of our ancestors dreamed of possessing.

The things of infinite value are not material; they are personal and spiritual. They are loving relationships, good health, the chance to pursue happiness and experience beauty and meaning, the privilege of being Jews and Americans. Most important of all, we must lift our eyes from our own troubles and devote ourselves to helping others, to light candles rather than curse the darkness. All around us and right near by, there are people who need our love, concern, and assistance. Some of them are exposed to the elements year round and involuntarily, not just briefly and by choice, and need our material support. Others simply need a helping hand or a friendly word. Ironically, when we concentrate on the problems of others, our own are lightened. Maybe that is the key here. The Phoenix doesn’t just rise from the ashes, it must be lifted. That’s what our ancestors learned in the wilderness, Torah could not just rise from the flames of the burning bush, it had to lifted and carried by generations of people willing to bind themselves to its teachings. We need one another to rise from the ashes and become whole again. No one can do it alone.

Can the broken be made whole? Lesser writes these closing words:

Over and over we are broken on the shore of life. Our stubborn egos are knocked around, and our frightened hearts are broken open-not once, and not in predictable patterns, but in surprising ways and for as long as we live. The promise of being broken and the possibility of being opened are written into the contract of human life.

When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens to your heart, expands your understanding and leads you to freedom.

Finally, a prayer written by my colleague, Rabbi Mark Dov Shapiro:

A blessing/hope for all of us….
May God who has blessed our ancestors and brought them through times of uncertainty,
Support and help us in these days of uncertainty and concern.
May anxiety not overwhelm us.
May there be calm in our hearts.
May we be blessed with a sense of trust and confidence in tomorrow.
Let there be goodness and satisfaction in our lives.
May we find purpose and meaning through community, friends, and family.
Amen.

Evolution vs. Creatinism ... Darwin's 200th Birthday

2009-02-10T07:36:00.000-08:00

February 12, 2009 marks the 200th birhtday of Charles Darwin. About three years ago, out of a frustration with the infusion of religious pseudo-science into the classrooms of America's High Schools, a group of people came up with the idea of holding an "Evolution Sabbath" each year to bring into our reliigous communiities, the importance of scientific exploration.

The Evolution vs. Creation debate is often referred to as the "Great Debate." It's the emotion-packed question of "Origins" -- why, how, and where did everything come from? 20th century science has made the compelling discovery that, at some point, the universe began. Both sides of the Great Debate now agree that the universe has not existed eternally. However, this is where the agreement ends. As far as the "why" and "how" of the "origin event," this is where the division and contention begin.

There are two basic theories in this Great Debate. The first is the historical default - the Creation Model of Origins. This theory maintains that the intricate design permeating all things implies a Designer. This model is biblically based. The second theory is a more recent, scientific explanation - the Evolution Model of Origins. This theory postulates that the intricate design permeating all things is a product of random chance and excessive time. Darwin's book on the "Orign of Species" is one of the leading sources on this model.

Evolutionists theorize that the universe, with all that it contains (space, time, matter and energy), exploded from nothing. For Evolutionists, the ultimate question of Origins remains unsolved. Creationists believe the universe was designed to be complex by an Intelligent Designer. Hence the rub and the conflict...

My Torah study "chevre" know that this debate is a "pursuit of wind" in that there is always a before. Even the mystics understand that there was a before moment prior to the "Bereshit" in Genesis. Call it the Designer or the Prime Mover or God...there is a power in the universe that brings forth the universe.

I guess I made my choice...Sorry Darwin...Happy Birthday!

Another Post on Israel - Words to Washington

2009-01-14T09:02:00.000-08:00

For the past three years, Israel has lived under an increasing barrage of rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. More than 80 missiles landed on a single day. Israel’s first responsibility, like that of any nation, is to protect her citizens. The military action that Israel launched was clearly intended to do just that.

Israel’s action is as tragic as it is necessary and predictable. While I mourn the loss of life, no democratic nation in the world would permit a hostile force on its border to target its civilian centers with constant missile attacks. Israel has demonstrated extraordinary restraint as nearly 8000 rockets have been launched at Israel’s cities in the last 8 years. When Israel withdrew every civilian and soldier from Gaza in 2005, the attacks did not stop for a single day.

I believe that military action must always be the last resort. But more and more Israeli cities are now in range of Hamas’ rocket-firing army of terror, and we know that the traumatized children of Sderot and neighboring towns can no longer be expected to live in constant fear.
Hamas chose to end the existing cease-fire. Hamas has cynically chosen to use Palestinian civilians as cover for its military operations. Hamas openly declares its commitment to destroy Israel. Hamas, therefore, must bear responsibility for the bloodshed. Hamas, and only Hamas, can make the decision to move beyond this bloody conflict by stopping, once and for all, all attacks on Israel from the territory it controls.

As usual, Israel's critics are quick to denounce the Jewish state for its actions. How easy it is for critics to ignore what led to the current military action: Population centers in southern Israel have been the target of over 10,000 rockets, as well as thousands of mortar shells, fired by Hamas and other organizations since 2000. The first Grad/Katyusha strike on Ashdod took place on December 28. There had been no formal cease fire between Israel and Hamas, but only an informal six-month tahadiya (lull) during which 215 rockets were launched at Israel. On December 21, Hamas unilaterally announced that the lull had ended.

While one must always be sensitive to the deaths of innocent civilians, one must also ask what any civilized nation would and must do to defend its citizens from missile and rocket attacks. One can only wonder what the United States would do, for example, if terrorists in Mexico indiscriminately fired missiles toward cities in Texas. The charge that Israel uses disproportionate force keeps resurfacing whenever it has to defend its citizens from non-state terrorist organizations and the rocket attacks they perpetuate. Alan Dershowitz noted two years ago: "Proportion must be defined by reference to the threat proposed by an enemy and not by the harm it has produced." Waiting for a Hamas rocket to fall on an Israeli school, he notes, would put Israel in the position of allowing "its enemies to play Russian Roulette with its children".

Any loss of civilian life is regrettable. No one in Israel rejoices when such casualties occur. In fact, Israel has in the past cancelled military operations over concern for the loss of civilian lives. However, when an operation is legitimate and there are civilian casualties despite best efforts to avoid them, the ultimate responsibility lies with Hamas. As Michael Walzer said in 2006, "When Palestinian militants launch rocket attacks from civilian areas, they are themselves responsible".
In 1983, I was living in Israel and studying when the first war in Lebanon began. As a strong supporter of Israel, my first reaction was to offer my aid in defending the country from terror. I was proud of my service for Israel and I continue to be concerned for her safety and security. In fact, next month, my 20 year old son will move to Israel for a year to volunteer on a Kibbutz and give some of his time and sweat to his spiritual homeland. I pray each day that he will be safe and secure in a land for which our faith and people have sacrificed so much for.

Thankly, the government of the United States has been a voice of reason in responding to Israel’s actions. I appreciate our leadership in Congress and their renewal of support for Israel and I hope that the Palestinian leadership will wake up and demand an end to missile fire and return to the path of peace that began in Annapolis. I also hope that Congress will continue its efforts to bring an end to the Middle East conflict. Peace cannot happen without the support and involvement of the US. Finally, I pray that the Palestinian people will strengthen the hand of all who are prepared to make peace a reality.

War in Gaza

2009-01-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

Wading into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dangerous work. It is an exceptionally charged issue, with both sides capable of as much passion as you'll experience in discussing a foreign policy dispute. Personally, I have been shocked and unnerved at some of the venom unleashed in the comments. I can't help but think that if only people read up on the history of the conflict, they would see that things aren't as black-and-white as their fire-breathing comments would have you believe.

It is important to understand that threats to Israel's survival are not theoretical. From the moment of the country's formation in 1948 to the present day, it has been surrounded by hostile neighbors who have wanted to see its destruction and used force to bring such an outcome about. Israel was attacked by neighboring nations in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973. The country's seizure of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 occurred in this context. More recently, Israel has had to withstand suicide bombings, in which Palestinian terrorists would kill and wound innocent civilians inside Israel.

In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, dismantling all of its settlements and evicting its settlers, some by force. Palestinians proceeded in elections to put into power the terrorist group Hamas, which does not recognize the right of Israel to exist. With Israel gone from Gaza, Hamas seized on the opportunity to launch attacks from Gaza on civilian populations in Israel, firing more than 4,500 rockets and mortars into Israel since 2005. And Hamas used civilian areas as cover for the launching points for its attacks.

A little more than six months ago, Egypt brokered a cease fire between Israel and Hamas. The truce ended on December 19, and it was Hamas, not Israel, that refused to extend it. In fact, The current attacks began before the cease-fire agreement expired. In the last six weeks, Hamas has fired more than 400 missiles into Israel, including 40 Qassam rockets and mortars since December 19.

With Hamas attacking Israel, and with Hamas unwilling to extend the truce, Israel responded with the current offensive. And there are certainly views on both sides of the conflict and even the Jewish community can be split on the offensive.

I want to share with you some words of a friend of mine. Rabbi Donnel Hartman from the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel wrote these words in light of the recent offensive in Gaza.

"It is difficult - very difficult - for parents today to send our children to war. Some might see this as a great weakness; they believe that the future of Israel in this neighborhood requires that we return to the old ethos. I see the new ethos as the source of strength and a worthy and powerful foundation for the future of Israel. "It is good to live for one's country." We, like our parents and grandparents, are willing to pay the utmost price for the viability and survival of our country. And we know that survival is dependent on the strength of our will. Yet, at the same time, we can taste something else. We don’t believe that war and death are inevitable. We have begun to lay foundations in which mere survival is not the ultimate end, but rather the content and quality of our lives. It gives expression to the new and larger vision and expectation that we Israelis now have for our country - to contribute through living. As a result, as we begin the operation in Gaza, as a father I am disturbed and pained. I am a citizen. As a citizen of this beautiful country I know and believe that at the foundation of our and indeed every society lies an unquestionable loyalty that each citizen must have toward each other. We will survive and indeed achieve our ultimate aspirations only to the extent that every citizen knows that their individual difficulties are the country's difficulties. Their pain is the country's pain. Loyalty is not simply a gift that citizens bestow upon each other, but rather it is the building block of society itself. I know that we must do everything in our power to change the current unjust and impossible status quo that allows terrorists in Gaza to lob mortars and missiles at will upon our fellow citizens. It is our responsibility to each other as fellow citizens to try military means, as well, so long as we remember the limitations inherent within the use of these means. As a citizen I not only support but feel that a military response in Gaza is the deepest representation of our loyalty and responsibility to each other. Herein lays my dilemma and my pain. I am a father and a citizen. At one moment one identity prevails and at other times, the other prevails. I pray for the safety of my child, and the children of my family and my friends, and I pray for the well-being of all our citizens. I cannot give up either identity; I cannot, nor would I want to. In the tension which so many of us feel lies the future growth and greatness of our country. I, and other fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, spouses and grandparents - all citizens and lovers of Israel, find ourselves in an impossible dilemma. We are fearful yet proud. Fearful yet proud."

Has Israel always acted correctly? Of course not. I dare you to show me a country that has conducted itself perfectly all the time. We don’t have to look so far here. I am all for a two-state solution. But both states have to respect the right of the other to exist, and nothing in Hamas's actions has demonstrated that it is in any way willing to take part in such an arrangement. Hamas wants a one-state solution, and that one state is not Israel. And how is it that Hamas, a terrorist organization that refused to extend the truce and fired rockets at civilians on a daily basis, gets so much sympathy, with Israel condemned for defending itself? In a vacuum, there is no defense for Hamas in this situation.

Hopefully, in the not too distant future, Palestinians will rally behind moderate, non-corrupt leadership, and a fair two-state solution will be hammered out under which both of the countries' citizens can live in peace and prosperity. But until that day comes, as long as the Palestinian people throw their lot in with terrorists like Hamas, who, in their name, attack civilian targets in Israel, a two-state solution cannot be put in place, and the Palestinian people will have to bear the consequences of their leaders' actions.

In an ideal world, a military action like the Israeli offensive in Gaza would never happen. No person of conscience can truly look at what is going on there and not feel sad. But at the same time, the Hamas bombing of Israeli civilians is equally disturbing, and there is no obvious alternative available to Israel to defend its citizens. It feels unfair to me when people take Israel to task without placing any significant blame on Hamas.

The writer Cervantes said: “When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams - -this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all - -to see life as it is and not as it should be.”
My prayer on this cusp of the new year is that the madness of Cervantes — the madness of dreaming for a better world, the madness of seeing life as it should be — will prevail over the madness of the never ending conflict in the middle east and that a life filled with peace and security will be the prize we win in 2009.

Tragedy in Mumbai

2008-12-02T10:50:00.001-08:00

I don't know about you but thanksgiving seemed a little darker this year with the news that came out of Mumbai, India. A well planned and executed terror attack on a seemingly unsuspecting city left hundreds dead or wounded and created another potential catalyst for an increase in the cycle of violence between two countries that already don't trust each other.

When I was a lowly college student working on my degree in Nuclear Policy, one of the senarios we developed for a Nuclear War simulation called "Firebreaks" involved a nuclear confrontation between Pakistan and India. In the 1970's, it was already assumed that the next major conflict would happen there. There have been tensions for decades and yet, scenes like we saw last week, tend to fan the flames of hatred even more.

The images today of that 2 year old boy crying for his mother while surrounded in the synagogue in Mumbai tell the story of this tragedy. He will never reallyknow his parents and his grandparents, who will have the priviledge of raising him, will also have the constant pain of their own child's death at the hands of terrorists.

The hundreds who are scarred from this will feel for years to come the effects of terror on the mind. And the world will remember these days as dark and ominous clouds continue to roll in from those who chose the barrel of a gun over dialogue and discourse.

Yes, as we sat at our thanksgiving tables eating from our bounty, we needed to be reminded of that passover phrase ... 'until all are free, none are free'.

A Prayer for Kristallnacht and Darfur

2008-11-07T10:56:00.000-08:00

This prayer was specially written for the Akron Jewish Community Kristallnacht commemoration by Rabbi David Lipper by intertwining prayers for Darfur written by Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Archbishop William of Canterbury; Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra, Chairman of the Interfaith Relations Committee of the Muslim Council of Britain; and the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks of Great Britain.

A Prayer for Peace

God of Mercy and Compassion, this afternoon we pray for the people of Europe who were terrorized and forced from their homes. Our pain is still fresh after 70 years of life. But these days have taught us to gather our broken shards and mold them into a new vision of the world in which we live. May it become a world of wholeness and peace.

We also pray for the people of Darfur who have been terrorized and forced from their homes - for those who have fled to refugee camps, and who still live in fear" and "for the children of Darfur, especially those who face a frightening world without one or both of their parents - may they be protected and comforted." (Archbishop Tutu)

Today we pray for the innocent people who were dragged into war 70 years ago. They woke one day in peace, and ended that day in terror. May the innocents cease their suffering as the memories of tragedies past continue to grow in our minds eye.

We "pray for those whose lives are lived on the margins of nations and who suffer from the wars that others fight around them, "for the warring factions, that they may see themselves under the gaze of God and under the gaze of those who suffer, for the work of peacekeepers, negotiators and the humanitarian organizations, that security may prevail" (Archbishop William of Canterbury).

On this day of Broken Glass, when the images in our minds go to unspeakable things, we pray for the courage and energy to turn our suffering into salvation. We pray for a world united and whole. We seek a place where the lion can lie with the lamb and a babe can play over an adders den. Where nation will not lift up sword against any other nation and we will have peace.

Today we turn to You, God, "to alleviate the oppression and end the atrocities and pray that the killing stops, the bloodshed ends, that women and children are safe and healthy and happy and "to give the people of Darfur back their homes, their families, their communities, their humanity, and their hope and dreams for the future" (Sheikh Ibrahim Mogra).

And finally we pray to You, God, to send peace to the people of Kristallnacht and "peace to the people of Darfur, to hear the cry of the victims, the bereaved, the injured, and all those who live their days in fear, to rouse the hearts of the leaders of the world, and to put an end to the bloodshed, the violence, the rape, the starvation, and the terror, that has ravaged and endangered an entire population" (Dr. Jonathan Sacks).

AMEN.

Go to http://www.savedarfur.com/ for ways to help.

A tear in my eye and hope in my soul

2008-11-05T09:30:00.001-08:00

Last evening as the results poured in from all over the country my heart was racing. Could it be true? Did the country really respond to the message of Barak Obama? It seems that the constant work of thousands upon thousands of people, to really make this a country "of the people and by the people" has paid off. And to top it all, we elected the first African American to such an elevated role in our country.

We will never be the same, thank God. The message delivered over 40 years ago on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial has come true..."Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

So, as I sat with my daughters watching history unfold before their eyes, I was a proud father. First, at the interest all my kids had in this election. From my son's voting for the very first time, to my youngest daughter's personal engagement in the electoral process to my soon to be HS grad who has read every political article she could find. This is not an indifferent generation. They care. They count. They will change the world.

Second, I was proud because for the first time in my life, I feel that I can say that I fulfilled the Kenyan proverb which I have held so dear that the world was not bequeathed by my ancestors, it was loaned to me by my children. After last night I feel we can say that we have given our children a world with greater promise and hope. The audacity of it all...

Last night, or early this morning, I was proud. Proud to be a part of a country that could step outside of our past to seize this moment. I am a proud American and I feel that last night was a rebirth of the American spirit.

"My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty"

Happy Sukkot

2008-10-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

A quote for the Sukkot Season:

My wonderful wife came across this quote. She thought that I should share it. I agree. How much more the world would seem if we simply followed this truth.

"Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit."
Henry David Thoreau

Yom Kippur Morning - Repairing our Relationships

2008-10-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

Holidays and Holy Days are mountains in time. They are moments when some are able to acquire a deeper understanding of life and what life requires of us. On this sacred day, as we climb above the clamor and the pettiness of daily life, we hope to reach a vantage point from which life is viewed differently. We can see how many hours of our life were spent nursing grievances. Perched upon these mountains, we often become wiser. Insults, disappointments, and hurts we’ve suffered appear smaller. These sacred times are the substance of life. They teach us, as Benjamin Disraeli said, “life is too short to be small.” From the top of these mountains, we see more clearly that life is too short to be unforgiving.

It was William Blake who wrote that, ‘great things happen when men and mountains meet.” If that mountain is a mountain in time, then our encounter has the potential of uplifting us, transforming us, and bringing something great and wonderful into our lives.

For many years I have had this book real close to my desk. I have loaned it out very sparingly because I have found its message too compelling to let go for too long. A colleague of mine, Rabbi Charles Klein, wrote a book called “How to forgive when you can’t forget”. Isn’t that our biggest problem? We want to forgive people, but when we look at them the acid in our stomach churns, our blood pressure rises, the old hurts return.

Too infrequently do we see the tears of reconciliation. Far more often, we see the emptiness or the tears of people we all know. They are the tears because there is a void in their lives too painful to be dismissed. And they are the tears of the powerful and famous who have the world at their fingertips, but live with an emptiness in the heart. Have we not all watched interviews of people blessed with so much in life? And yet, in moments of candor, as the discussion focuses on their family life, you hear their voices crack and you see their eyes well up with tears as they speak of the estrangement from a loved one.

Rabbi Klein relates an article that appeared in a “Dear Abby” column many years ago. Clearly the person writing was seeking something we might be familiar with.

“Wouldn’t it be terrific if a special day would be set aside to reach out and make amends? We would call it ‘Reconciliation Day.’ Everyone would vow to write a letter or make a phone call-and mend a strained or broken relationship. It would also be the day on which we would all agree to accept the olive branch extended by a former friend. This day could be the starting point. We could go on from here to heal the wounds in our hearts and rejoice in a brand new beginning.”

Maybe this writer would have been happy to hear of Yom Kippur, a day set aside for all these activities. Wouldn’t it be the most meaningful day every were we to turn to the people, just in this room, that we have harmed and hold out that olive branch and say those words of reconciliation. We could bare our souls and open our hearts.

Did you see the movie “The Bucket List”? If you have not, then you must. I feel that it is one of the most important movies of our time. Not to ruin the film if you haven’t seen it, Morgan Freeman is an auto mechanic diagnosed with cancer and Jack Nicholson is a financier who owns the hospital that Freeman is in. Nicholson then discovers he has cancer and the two of them are put in the same room. They begin to share between treatments their desires for the end of their lives and they create a list of things they must do before they die. Reconciliation was on the list. At the end of the film, after all the reparte’ between Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman was over, the most important line said was “his eyes were closed and his heart was wide open.” On Rosh Hashanah I prayed that our eyes would be open this year. Today we pray for open hearts. Open Hearts. Go see the film.

A story in the Talmud tells of one rabbi who sent his students out to observe the world. He wanted them to leave the study hall and take note of the qualities of character which were most praiseworthy among people. When the students returned to the academy, they shared the results of what they had observed. The rabbi was most pleased with the student who said possessing a good heart is the most praiseworthy trait of character.

What is a good heart? It is a heart that can feel the anguish of another who desires to be forgiven. A good heart is one that is compassionate enough to respond with love and tenderness, even when the dictates of justice might suggest otherwise. When we look for a humane response from another person, we plead, “Have a heart.” We look to the heart, hoping that a person will be moved enough to overlook a wrong, and be compassionate enough to feel another’s anguish.

My faith speaks of a God that does not write people off. Patiently, God waits for people, not counting the number of times they have failed in the past. With love God waits, believing that people can transcend themselves and that their tomorrow can be different from their yesterday.

This philosophy is found in the story of a man who was preparing for the approach of the High Holy Days. An acquaintance, who was also something of a skeptic, asked why he was going through the routine of repenting for all his sins if, year after year, he only commits them all over again. The man replied saying, “You’re right. From year to year, I repent and succumb to many of the same sins for which I’ve repented. But each year, I believe that maybe this will be the year that I will change.”

Rabbi Klein also related this story in his book.
A young boy was flying his kite. The kite went higher and higher until it could no longer be seen. A passerby saw the young boy holding a string and asked him what he was doing. The boy replied, “I’m flying a kite.” The man was now perplexed for he saw no kite. And so he asked, “How do you know the kite is up there?” The boy responded by saying, “I can feel it tugging at me.”

When we feel a tugging force pulling us toward someone that we have been separated from, it is time to consider reconciliation. The pulling we feel is a force that can take us beyond our anger and enable us to leave the bitterness in our past. Allowing ourselves to give in to this force puts us on the road to restoring a relationship.

Ecclesiastes analyzed life and observed, “There is a time for rending and a time for joining together, a time for silence and a time to speak, a time for hostility and a time for peace.” After bonds have been severed by anger, there is a time to reunite those who belong together. After silence has intruded where once there was words, there comes a time to speak. And after reprisal and retaliation, there comes a time for people to create peace.

Far from being an act of weakness or a gesture of capitulation, reconciliation is a gift we give ourselves even as we offer it to someone else. It permits us to bid farewell to the thoughts which, when replayed in our minds, cast a darkness over our lives. Tomorrow never looks so good as it does to those who have released themselves from the awesome power of the past.

Reconciliation is an act of real love. This kind of love understands that disappointment and hurt are inevitable and that they can be the occasion for growth. Real love is found where people live with awareness that, above all else, there is a treasured connection that binds them together. This connection is strong enough to survive hurt, precious enough to warrant our compassion in judgment, and more powerful than anger.

Oh to be sure, we have our doubts. Are the words of reconciliation merely a string a syllables strung together so that we are pacified in our wounds or is there heart and soul behind them? Are we so cynical that we can’t expect change, even when change seems so far off.

Finally one of my favorite stories…
A king had a precious diamond. There was no diamond like it in all the kingdom. The king was so proud of this diamond that he had a special display box made for it and a special polishing rag and each day the king would take the stone out of the box and polish it so that it shined more brightly than ever. But alas, one day while the king was polishing the diamond, it slipped from his hands and fell to the stone floor. It sustained a very deep and penetrating scratch. This King was bereft. He called for craftsmen from all over to repair the diamond and remove the scratch but no one could. It was too deep and could not be removed without cutting away some of the diamond. The king wept. After some time a craftsman came from a far way land and asked for an audience with the king. He said that he could restore the diamonds but it would take some time. After many days there was a knock on the palace door. The king came running, anxious to see the diamond. Before the craftsman handed over the diamond he said: Sometimes the scars we receive are deeper than we can ever imagine, but the real test is what we can turn them into. And with that he handed over the stone to the King. A smile soon appeared as the king saw the new diamond. For the craftsman had turned the scratch into a rose. Healing had begun.

And this, my friends, is why we are here today, not to seek forgiveness for the grand sins for which we are not guilty, but for the simple ones. The ones we do all too often without even thinking that have torn our relationships, that have brought sadness into our families, that have severed friendships and brought darkness into our lives. That is why we spend this day here…to right those wrongs, to repair and return and renew our lives. We are hear to turn our scars into flowers and to open our hearts to one another.

May we each find the courage and strength on this day of return to reach out to those from whom we are distanced and seek reconciliation and renewal. May our eyes be lifted and our hearts be opened to this possibility. Amen.

The Binding of Isaac - Tifkach Ayneinu (Open our Eyes)

2008-10-06T07:45:00.000-07:00

The mist was rising ever slowly from the damp ground as Abraham and Issac approached the base of the strange mountain. They had been travelling for three days. Abraham was drawn to this place. Isaac was his passenger, an unaware partner in a terrifying journey. As they approached the rocky crag, there was an eerie calm. There were no sounds, not an animal moved. You could hear each heart beat as they approached. The echo of each step vibrated off the face of the rock. Were they alone?

The task was to make a sacrifice. Abraham had told Isaac that was the goal. They had left days ago to make this possible for God. Abraham knew what was at stake. Isaac was unsure. Faith or future. Those were the two choices. Which to choose. The ramifications of each choice were life altering.

Isaac knew that something greater was on his father’s mind. Few words were spoken along this part of the journey. And Abraham had ordered the servants to stay back. How strange given the work needed to build and altar and prepare a sacrifice. But there was no animal to slaughter. Where was the sacrifice father? Who is the offering? Where is this God to whom you march?

They climbed the rocks. Wood and fire and knife in hand. They came to the summit and still no animal for sacrifice. Does awareness set in for Isaac? Can he see the terror in his father’s eyes? Slowly, methodically Abraham built a mound and arranged the rocks for an altar. Isaac helped, remarkably at peace with what he imagined would happen. Suddenly a flash, a rope, tieing of hands, laying of wood, the bearing of a neck, a raising of a knife and a voice booming from nowhere! Abraham, Abraham!

Such a powerful story we read each year on this day of the New Year. The concept of personal sacrifice fills our lives at this time of year. The message is all about growth and change and the encounter with our past so that we can move on into the New Year. Like the Israelites of old, we stand gazing at the promised land that lay just beyond our reach. The only way we can grasp it is to make whole our past so that we can move towards our future. This is the theme of these holy days and the message of its liturgy.

And so we are Abraham and we are Isaac, both parent and child, leading and being led towards some precipice. Do we have something to offer? Is our heart in the right place? Can we bring together our faith and our future? On this first day of this new year, do we have something to give to make this year better than the last.

Rabbi Hayyim of Zans used to tell this parable: Once a king’s son sinned against his father, the king. His father expelled him from his house. So long as the prince was near the palace, people knew he was the king’s son. They befriended him and gave him food and drink. But as he traveled farther into his father’s realm, no one knew him, and he had nothing to eat. He began to sell his clothing to buy food, and he hired himself out as a shepherd. As a shepherd, he needed nothing. He would sit in the hills, tending his flocks and singing all day. He forgot that he was the king’s son.

Now it was the custom of shepherds to make themselves small roofs of straw to keep out the rain. But the king’s son could not even afford to buy straw. So he did what was customary in those times – when the king made his annual circuit through the provinces, subjects could petition the king for relief. So the shepherd wrote a note, asking for a small straw roof. The king recognized his son’s handwriting, and was saddened to think how low his son had fallen that he had forgotten that he was a king’s son, and felt only the lack of a straw roof. Rabbi Hayyim concluded: “It is the same way with our people: we have forgotten that we are children of the king, and what we really lack.”

It’s not a conventional ending. If this were just some new age story about the value of pastoral simplicity, the prince’s way of being would receive only praise. But that’s not the message here – the prince’s forgetfulness is not valued. He has fallen short of his potential. He yearns only for a straw roof – he has forgotten what he can be.

It is what Rabbi Dannel Schwartz calls “the trance of ordinary life.” He tells the story of Senator David Rice Atchison. When President-elect Zachary Taylor refused to be inaugurated on the scheduled date of March 4, 1850 because it was a Sunday and the Christian Sabbath, he moved his inauguration to the next day. This would leave the nation without a president for 24 hours, because Taylor’s predecessor, President James Polk, was leaving office as scheduled on Sunday at noon. The rules of succession left Senator Atchison in line to be president for that one day. Unfortunately, Atchison, fond of food and drink, overdid things at the inauguration parties on Saturday night and into the wee hours of the next day, and left strict instructions not to be awakened at all on Sunday. By the time he woke up, it was Monday afternoon. He had slept through his entire presidency.

We forget that we are the children of the king. We sleep through great possibility. It may be more a result of our busy-ness than our laziness, but we are in a trance nonetheless. We forget that though not always great ourselves, we are connected to a greatness beyond ourselves, the potential that God gives us to yearn for far more than a roof over our heads or even a new i-Phone.

We forget that we are the sons and daughters of royalty, and that we should have spiritual and ethical ambitions to match our noble lineage. We forget whenever we release ourselves from the responsibility to use our gifts to bring healing to God’s world. The problems are too big we say – I am but a poor shepherd in the hills. Darfur is too far away – Iraq is a quagmire – poverty is inevitable – Israel will always be at war – racism is ineradicable. I wish I could have coffee with a friend who is hurting, but I’m just too stressed to take on anybody else’s tzurus right now. I know the new kid in school could really use a new friend. But I’m just a shepherd. I can’t do anything about it.

And it’s no less true closer to home: in the relationships that shape our lives and our days. We convince ourselves that we can’t be any kinder, or more compassionate, or less angry, or more understanding. But we come to Temple during these holy days to challenge a year’s worth of resignation, a year’s worth of underestimating our own power and potential, a year’s worth of missing the mountain before our very eyes. We spend a year forgetting that we are children of the Holy One – or worse, we treat ourselves as princes and princesses, but only in the sense of thinking what we are entitled to, not what we are capable of. But then come these days of awe and their emphasis on God’s sovereignty. Well guess what – if God is sovereign, then we are children of the sovereign, with all of the dignity and possibility and promise that our relationship brings.

Rabbi Hayyim is not asking the shepherd to be flawless. What Rabbi Hayyim laments is not the shepherd’s failure to be perfect, but his failure to want to be more than he is. Maybe all Abraham wants is for Isaac to become more than he appears to be.

We are here because we are flawed, and because we possess the radical freedom to be better. It is the freedom that rejects the tyranny of the status quo, the freedom that in a quiet moment in the sanctuary pushes back gently against our fear of being different than we are. True, our freedom is neither absolute nor unbounded. It exists in the context of our own mortality, of physical limitation, of the reality of the different strengths implanted within different human beings. But precisely within those limitations, we are created in the image of God, the children of the Holy One, with a reach we too often fail to realize. In the words of Rabbi William Cutter, “We live with a circumference around us, inspired to reach for more, in pursuit of God.” We should praise the shepherd for his lack of material greed – but we should be cautioned by his low estimation of the impact his own life can have.

Tifkach eyneynu, adonai eloheinu – open our eyes, dear God, even when the world seems a living hell – when the smoke is blinding and real screams compete with the angel’s voice – when bombs land in Israel, when hatchets fly in Darfur, when soldiers come home in caskets, when people starve to death on our city streets, wherever terror strikes. Especially then, help us to see the power of one human deed, of one humane act. Help us to spend less time lamenting what we lack. Help us to use what we have for good.

Open our eyes to our own humble possibilities for holiness. Help us see the mountain that rises before our eyes. Help us see the sacrifice that we must make and the hope-filled lives that it creates.

Tifkach eyneynu, adonai elohienu – in this new year 5769, open our eyes, dear God - to all the desert cries, to all the mountains of potential, to the urgency of our promise and the greatness of our responsibility. We are children of the Holy One. Bless us as You blessed Abraham and Isaac - with courage and with vision and with hope. In a new year bright with Your goodness and blessing – give us Your blessing!

Amen.

On the road again

2008-08-29T10:14:00.000-07:00

There is a different view of the country from a car than a plane. As the ground sails past you at 30,000 feet, all you see are the outlines of farmland and cities. At night, you may see the glow of thousands of lights in population centers. By day, the occasional highway connecting people to one another. In a car, you see thousands of faces, some filled with anticipation about their destination, others filled with sadness or longing for the people they have left. There are the people with little patience who ride up behind you like some NASCAR driver hoping to beat you to some imaginary finish and there are those with too much patience who clog up these highway arteries with no sense that there are other cars on the road.

Last week I drove, first with Benjamin, from Akron to Houston to San Antonio. It was time for him to move into his dorm. All told, it was a shade under 1500 miles. No we didn’t do it all in one day. Our goal was to make reasonable driving days and see parts of the country. And yes, to get his car down there for him to use this year at school. We traveled through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas. Tennessee is kind of the mid point of the trip so we decided to stop outside of Memphis for the night.

It is amazing what you see when you drive. The faces of people in their cars, some smiling, some not, some singing, some stoic. There are parts of our country that seem so non-descript filled with farms and animals and the occasional home. There are large cities and small towns and the roadside villages of hotels and fast food restaurants that pop up every few miles.

I think most amazing was the parade of big trucks filled with goods for a consuming world, which traveled down the road at all hours of day or night. Like an Olympic dance, they moved in and off the highway seeking their destinations. And while we complain about the high costs of goods and fuel, there seems to be no shortage of either.

All this is lost when viewed from a plane. And while the trip to Houston would have taken 3 hours instead of the 16 hours of driving, so much is lost in our desire for speed. You have heard me, time and again, bemoan the need for instant gratification in our world. It’s the child in the back seat who as we pull away from our homes on a trip begins to immediately ask the question…”Are we there yet?”

Driving teaches a great lesson. It is one of patience. In our rush, get to the point, existence, we often loose sight of the vistas of life. In fact, that may be one of the reasons for this Shabbat’s torah lessons.

This week, we read from Torah the continuation of Moses’ charge to the Israelites. And in fact, this week’s lesson is all about patience and courage, two very fleeting values in today’s world. It is also about not forgetting the past and not succumbing to the world which we are about to inherit.

It opens with that famous setting in which we are told that God has given us choices to pursue in life. We can choose the path of blessings or curses. God places before us two mountains, one lush and green and filled with blessing – Mt. Gerezim and one barren and rocky and cursed – Mt. Ebal. We have to choose.

The midrash then comments that the Israelites wanted to pass on their choice, they decided to walk between the two mountains. God then blocked our path. We have to choose which path we will follow … no sitting on the fence. So we chose to offer the blessings on Mt. Gerezim.

Back to driving…its kind of like Google maps. You can drag your route all over the map and pick different roads. Each one comes with its own challenges and benefits. The trip is shorter or longer depending on your choices. But when push comes to shove and you have to choose, you have to decide on your path and stick to it.

On my return from Texas I drove by myself. The moments of solitude in the car were broken up by the occasional public radio station I could pick up or the mish mash of tunes I had loaded into my IPOD. The vistas were the same, the faces were more familiar, this time the rains came and washed the road of its travelers. The greatest challenge was the 10 miles of bumper to bumper traffic in Nashville. Fewer smiling faces on that stretch of the road and a lot of lane changing to get 10 more feet ahead in the traffic.

Driving you do see the world differently.

So from a Wednesday to a Monday, over 3,000 miles were traveled. Not much when you compare the travels of the Israelites. Their journey changed a slave culture into a community and mobilized a society to move mountains. As we near the precipice of the Promised Land, let me conclude with a reading from our Siddur

Standing on the parted shores of history
We still believe what we were taught
Before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot;

That wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt
That there is a better place, a promised land;
That the winding way to that promise
Passes through the wilderness.

That there is no way to get from here to there
Except by joining hands, marching
Together.

The 6 hours that I will never get back - Patience

2008-07-30T08:59:00.000-07:00

I am not a great shopper. I know what I want and I tend to go to the store where I know it will be. I usually do the research in advance. Time is important to me and spending time "window shopping" is not something that I do well.

I have been trying to buy a new laptop computer. My old one died recently. Luckily I was able to retrieve all my documents which are now sitting on a hard drive awaiting their new home. I know what I want. I did the research and thanks to a gift, I had some gift cards to aid in my purchase.

And so I went on line to Dell computers to make my instant purchase. I knew what I wanted. I had the funds ready. How hard could this be? Well what transpired was an exercise in corporate futility. Such a debacle.

It is amazing how such a technologically advanced industry could maintain such archaic and antiquated business practices that would prevent someone with resources to make a purchase. Such was (and still is) my experience with this purchase. No less than 6 hours on the phone over a 6 day period of time and I still do not have a computer ordered.

What has happened in our society that has relegated customer service to a new all time low? In pursuit of profit margins and globalization, we have made it, in our technologically advanced world, more difficult to function than every before.

Now it is a bit ironic that I write this on a blog in cyberspace, but I feel that I am not alone in this conundrum. If you have had such an experience, where customer service has gone out the window, please share it with me and others.

Hopefully, one day I will have a new laptop on which to respond.

Parashat Balak

2008-07-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

Who is a Prophet?

In this weeks Parasha, we meet Balaam, the non-Israelite prophet who is recruited by King Balak to prophesy the demise of the Israelites. Balak, fearful because of Israel's recent military successes, sends for Balaam, a prophet famous for his ability to invoke powerful curses. When first approached, Balaam declines. When Balak's messengers return, God, sensing Balaam's desire to go, permits him to do so with the caveat that he only speak God's words. During the journey, Balaam's donkey sees an angel with its sword drawn standing in the path, causing it to veer off the path, press against the wall of a narrow passageway, and finally lie down. On each occasion, Balaam strikes the donkey to get her to move. The donkey speaks, challenging Balaam to explain his behavior. Only then is Balaam allowed to see the angel that stands in the path threatening him. God reiterates to Balaam that he must speak only what God communicates.

Balak welcomes Balaam with great fanfare and brings him to a mountaintop where seven altars and offerings for each have been prepared. To Balak's great chagrin, Balaam asserts that he can only speak the words God commands. The same scene is played out two more times. While giving his third oracle, Balaam proclaims the famous verse, "How fair are your tents, O Jacob, your dwellings, O Israel." Balak, enraged by Balaam's words, sends him away. Before his departure, Balaam offers one final oracle against Israel's enemies during which he curses Moab, the ultimate irony for Balak.

Prophecy is that experience in which a person receives a message from G-d. This message can be for him personally, another person, or a glimpse of something on a larger scale, such as the national visions of the Biblical Prophets. If a person receives a message that contradicts the words of the Torah, that "prophecy" is a lie. It could be that the person somehow has been deceived, usually by his own imagination.

Today the world is full of these people. Many people are searching for spirituality, and the pitfalls are numerous, with the New Age Movement and other avenues to the seekers of "enlightenment". The Biblical prophet is meant to keep people on task. To make the Torah the guide of our personal journey. When we read the Torah we should reflect on the meaning of the words. If they seem to be talking straight to him or her, touching our heart right where we live, then this is because the Torah is living truth. The words are eternal words of G-d for the human soul. They speak directly to that soul and touch in a way that no other words can. This is a type of prophecy. On that level, we can all be prophets.

Judaism was never meant to be a dry, unfulfilling religion. Judaism is the religion that heard the voice of G-d at Sinai. We were created collectively to be the vessel of God’s message of light and hope to the world. This involves, and requires of each of us, a personal relationship with God in order to perfect this "Light Unto the Nations" that Israel is called by the Prophets. This personal relationship is not only possible, but is the spiritual heritage--the birthright—of every Jew.
In his book The Prophets, Abraham Joshua Heschel describes the unique aspect of the Jewish prophets as compared to other similar figures. Whereas other nations have soothsayers and diviners who attempt to discover the will of their gods, according to Heschel the Hebrew prophets are characterized by their experience of what he calls theotropism — God turning towards humanity. Heschel argues for the view of Hebrew prophets as receivers of the "Divine Pathos," of the wrath and sorrow of God over his nation. He writes:
"Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profane riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet's words. "

So as Balaam opened his mouth, to change the course of Torah history, God frustrated his speech so that from the curse came blessing. Imagine that the words we utter can either curse or bless. This shabbat, we learn the power of words and the message that once they have left our mouths, they cannot be withdrawn. There is no delete key in a conversation.

As Jane Goodall said in a 2005 interview about her work with communication and chimpanzees;
“I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate. Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they’re equally as good at reconciliation. They make an appeasing gesture--reaching out a hand, crouching, giving little cries of fear or sadness. Then, very often, the aggressor will reach out and pat or reassure--offer an embrace or something like that--and the victim relaxes, and it is over. When humans get these sudden outbursts of anger, we add words to the mix. And as you’ve probably experienced, it is much harder to forget a word than it is a slap. Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around. So even if you can make up, the words come back.”

So this Shabbat, let us guard our words and remember Balaam’s experience. Once spoken they cannot be returned, words echo for an eternity. Be watchful, seek holiness in everything.

Shabbat Shalom

Is Zohan Good for the Jews?

2008-06-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

I don’t see a lot of movies in the theatre. Maybe it’s the fact that going to the movies today requires a trip to the atm. Maybe its because there is not a lot of good stuff out there. But I was intrigued by the latest Adam Sandler film, Don’t Mess with the Zohan. The trailers were hard to miss: Adam Sandler leaping from rooftops, catching terrorists' bullets with his bare hands, and going all "Crouching Tiger" on some bad guys. It was Sandler as an Israeli Mossad agent wunderkind whose fondest dream was to leave the high-intensity world of international intrigue and the cycle of violence in the Middle East and become a hairdresser at the Paul Mitchell salon in New York City.

He resists his parent’s plea to go to New York and join the family electronics business. As we know, every Israeli in this country is in the electronics business and, as the movie shows, not very reputable. When he shares his dream, they brand him as gay and squash his dream. The gay bashing in the movie was a big problem. Nevertheless, Sandler finds his way to New York and begins the journey to fulfill his dream.

He lands in a part of New York where there is a street with Israelis on one side and Palestinians on the other. And the shop where he finds a job cutting hair is owned by a Palestinian woman who, remarkably, is fleeing from the cycle of violence that led Sandler towards his goal.

Every stereotype of the Arab/Israeli conflict emerges in the film. Bad accents, bad fashion, and bad behavior combine to give this a “west side story” kind of feel. And of course, when a evil developer pits one side against the other, the story comes full circle Arabs and Israelis join together to fight this evil.

Sandler gets some aspects of Israeliness right, but the accent is horribly off--more Italian than Israeli--and the overall result is like a mash-up of every Israeli stereotype known to man. Zohan is a killer with bad fashion sense; a secret agent who likes wearing Mariah Carey t-shirts to kick some terrorist butt. He looks and sounds more like a parody, or a broad sketch, of an Israeli than the real thing: sandals and cutoff jeans; a bushy goatee and Jew fro; tortured English grammar; and an insistent, ringing chorus of "no, no, no" that punctuates his conversation.

Sandler's Zohan is the latest in a fairly lengthy line of Hollywood depictions of Israelis. Remember blue-eyed, sandy-haired Paul Newman as the brawny, heroic Ari Ben-Canaan in Exodus. Or Kirk Douglas in Cast a Giant Shadow as a half-American, half-Israeli hero. Playing Mickey Marcus, the Jewish American army officer whose astute guidance helped the Israeli army triumph in the 1948 war, Douglas (himself Jewish, born Issur Danielovitch) exuded the same radiant glow that Newman had.

Richard Dreyfuss played Yonatan Netanyahu, and Anthony Hopkins was Yitzhak Rabin, and Burt Lancaster was Shimon Peres in 1976's television movie Victory at Entebbe (which had the added pleasure of Elizabeth Taylor in a small role). It was also a goldmine of ludicrous accents, hairstyles, and wardrobes. The unbuttoned white shirts and copious chest hair of the Israeli politicians were particularly notable in their unintentionally parodic silliness.

In 2005, Steven Spielberg's Munich appeared. Even here, Munich retained the stunt-casting, "that-guy-couldn’t-possibly-be-Jewish" feel, with James Bond, Daniel Craig as a South African explosives expert. Eric Bana was more serviceable as Avner, an ex-Mossad agent turned global vigilante, but finally Spielberg's film, in small doses, went with the most audacious Hollywood casting decision of all: having Israeli actors depict themselves.

So the question that is asked after every one of these horrible stereotypical movies hits the screen is “is it good for the Jews”.

Zohan deals humorously with the Arab Israeli conflict by moving it from the streets of the west bank to the field of a “hacky sack” tournament and then into the streets of New York City. Can Arabs and Jews live side by side. The movie’s answer is yes. It also suggests that there is evil in the world and that those who perpetrate evil do not distinguish between cultures.

I do not know yet if Zohan is good for us. I know that I laughed at much of it, which is good. I also recoiled at some of the stereotypes and I questioned others.

Nevertheless, in the blogosphere, where much has been written, the general consensus is that while the movie was marginal, the message was good. Coexistence is a great value and but Arabs and Israelis who have seen the movie, relished that as a Hollywood message for the 21st century.

Bring On The Flow Of Blessing!

2008-06-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

Parashat Shelach - Lecha

A King plants a tree in his garden. Rain may fall and water them; the ground may be wet and provide them with moisture. Yet still he has to water them from the well. This parable appears in "Sefer Habahir" ‑‑ a kabbalistic text attributed to Rabbi Nehunya ben Hakanah of the first century ‑ to explain the nature of divine blessing. The parable hints that blessing is the influence that encourages the trees to thrive and bear fruit; it also stresses the active role of man in bringing blessing.
This Shabbat speaks to the heart of blessing. God promises us is that if we follow the commandments and lead a good and decent life, we will be given the strength to overcome our problems. It is our attitude to our problems which makes the difference.
There are basically four ways, to my way of thinking, that a person can live life. A person can be self‑centered, an advocate of actuated, self‑improvement, self‑motivated, etc. The only problem with this way of life is that it ends up being selfish, and being selfish is not a special or unique thing. Anybody can be selfish. It does not lead to any feelings of being needed or wanted. Selfishness can deteriorate quickly into the pursuit of highs, to alcoholism and drugs.
The second way we have of looking at life is the desire to control, to master. This type of philosophy, though, leads a person to become lonely and alienated. This type of person is not trusted by others. They know that all he is interested in doing is manipulating. There is also no real personal interaction. The person ends up isolated, alone, and alienated.
The third way of looking at life is to look for security, to always lead life out of fear. This type of life leads a person to want to draw walls around himself and become an impregnable fortress, like Howard Hughes, who was so afraid of bacteria. It is a life in which a person loses all courage and hides himself.
The fourth way of looking at life is looking at life as a challenge. God has created you to do a particular task or job. Your life has meaning because only you can do that job. You are needed. You have to live in order to fulfill your task. Only you can be the best parent to your children. Only you can be the best support and help to your parents, especially in their old age. Only you can fulfill different tasks in the community, which need to be done. Many people say, "Oh, they don't need me. Other people will take care of the schools and synagogues." This is not so, my friends. There are many synagogues and Jewish schools in the United States, which have been boarded up, which have closed because not enough people felt they were needed. There are tasks in life that only we can do, and no matter what the obstacles, what thee problems, we can overcome and fulfill the tasks we know we need to do. Each one of us recognizes this. People, when they no longer feel needed or wanted, shrivel up and die. Many people, when they retire, do not last very long, and others, when their spouse dies, quickly die too. We all need to have meaning in life. We all need to know that we are needed.
Viktor E. Frankl, the psychiatrist who lived through the concentration camp experience, said, "The will to meaning is the great force in human life. "When each of us knows we are needed and wanted, then we can overcome all suffering and obstacles. We can turn them into challenges.
Our Torah portion this Shabbat lays the choices right before us ... blessing and curse ... pick your path. We can imagine two closed doors. And the answer lay right before our very eyes. No one can determine for us which path we may walk ... Even Rabbi Akiva understood that it must be an individual response.
Problems do confront us. We do suffer in life. We, though, should never give up. If we look at our problems as challenges to overcome, to perform the tasks that only we can perform, then we will be able to overcome all our suffering. Our suffering will not cause us to give up. We will never give up. We will continue in spite of everything. Not only will our attitude of never giving up help us; it will also serve as an example to others to never give up.
I am reminded of the beautiful Chasidic story they tell about a rebbe that was taken by his Chassidim to see a train. He had never seen a train before. They brought him to the station, and there, a steam engine was huffing and puffing and belching smoke and pulling 30 cars behind it. The Chassidim turned to their rebbe and said, "What do you think about it?" The rebbe answered, "It is very interesting. Here one hot car is pulling 30 cold cars. Once person with enthusiasm and courage can pull along many others who lack the strength." Our example of never giving up not only helps us: it helps others.
And so the choice is clear ... Choose Life that you may live and prosper in the land. If we walk the path of blessing ... we will bring blessing upon ourselves and others ... if we choose that other path ... life will be full of slings and arrows. Follow, as Torah says, the dreamers of dreams and the vision of the righteous and faithful. Judaism always rewards the active participant with many blessings, life, health, and happiness.

In the Stillness of the Desert

2008-06-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

Shabbat Bamidbar

In the Book of Numbers, we emerge from behind the veil of sacrifice and re-enter the Exodus journey. From the first steps out of Egypt, we find ourselves in a wilderness of our own choosing. For the Rabbis, the desert, the wilderness is actually a desirable place to be--very different than what the English words perhaps imply. In our parlance, the words conjure images of desolation and helplessness. In the Rabbis' view, however, the desert is a place where we can see more clearly, unencumbered by other distractions. The desert reflects freedom and uncluttered vision, allowing us to take stock of our lives and ourselves in an environment devoid of outside pressures.

There is much to be gained by a walk in the desert. By removing all distractions that prevent us from really seeing who we are, we can become more focused and driven. Even the midrash bears this out when it asks the pertinent question and offers an answer. “Why was the Torah given in the desert? Anyone who does not make himself ownerless, like the desert, cannot acquire the Torah." Making oneself “ownerless” does not speak as much to the idea of an individual being owned by another, but rather the manner in which one views himself.

An individual who is "full of him/herself" will have difficulty accepting and following the directives of virtually any outside authority figure. Being out in the desert powerfully contributes to an individual's sensibility that his or her existence is relatively insignificant when compared to the grandiose scale of Creation.

Historically, the desert has been a place that has attracted visionaries and groups of individuals who felt that the materialism and corruption of urban societies prevented them from communing with God and developing their spiritual capacities.

The Torah suggests that God orchestrated the Jews' going into the desert because, the atmosphere created in such desolate and lonely surroundings would be extremely conducive for the entire nation to abandon their Egyptian past and would inspire them to create the powerful relationship with the Creator of the Universe.

The Book of Numbers charts the 38 year course of the Jewish people from Bondage to Redemption. In the stillness of the desert, we can become whomever we choose. Torah directs us down the path towards choosing faith and relationship. As the pages of this next book in our journey opens before us, may we journey towards our goal, guided by the Holy One of Blessing.

A Forespice of Paradise

2008-06-13T12:38:00.000-07:00

Shabbat Behaalotcha

Have you ever wondered what the "manna" in this weeks Parasha was like? I mean the rabbinic tradition glorifies its taste by comparing it to honey mixed with coriander seeds. Can you imagine the image of this falling from the sky and the Israelites wallowing in the dust of the desert as they collected it?

I believe that the manna was far from physical. The taste was an activated memory of their Jewish souls back to the time before Egypt. Once in the wilderness, removed from slavery, the Israelites could feel their deeply imbedded Jewish selves as descendents of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sara, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel emerge. The sweetness of their memories were to be their sustenance in the wilderness and remove the more human pangs of hunger which would drive them back to Egypt.

As the commentator, "Kedushat Levi" taught, the manna was more than physical, it was spiritual. As the Israelites opened themselves to the wilderness, they were sated by the manna which filled their souls with sweetness. It was just like the drop of honey the Melamid places on the Hebrew letters as a child learns them. Food for the soul.