Compassion in a Field of Dreams

Shabbat Va’etchanan/Nachamu 5782  

I don’t know how many of you saw the Field of Dreams ballgame yesterday.  The idea comes from a classic film of that name from 1989, starring Kevin Costner, James Earl Jones, Burt Lancaster and Ray Liotta, which was in turn based on the 1982 novel Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella.  It’s a fantasy sports movie in which an Iowa farmer memorably plows up his cornfields because, a bat kol, a mystical divine voice tells him, “If you build it, he will come.”  The “he” in this story is not God or the messiah, but Shoeless Joe Jackson, a baseball great banned from the game for gambling and throwing the World Series at the height of his talent and fame.  The farmer does build it, against reason and economics, and Shoeless Joe and other long-dead ballplayers emerge and play on that field.

After “Field of Dreams” became a sports film classic, the owners of the Iowa farm where the field was built replanted the corn, while the owners of the farmhouse kept it as a draw for tourists and sold them souvenirs.  Niles brought me a t-shirt back from there this summer, knowing our shared love of baseball.  And so things remained for about 20 years; farms, with one farmhouse selling Field of Dreams’ souvenirs.

Then, about 10 years ago, the new purchasers of the farm where Hollywood shot much of the movie plowed under some of the corn and built a baseball stadium, framed by real cornfields, in Dyersville, Iowa.  Last year Major League baseball, which traffics in nostalgia as much as competition, produced the first Field of Dreams game, a regular season major league contest which naturally ended on a dramatic 9th inning game-winning home run into the surrounding cornfield.  Last night they repeated the game, with different teams playing; the game wasn’t quite as amazing as last year’s edition, but it was fun to watch, and captured the same magical feel of the original game, and of course the movie.  The Cubs, who are bad this year, beat the Reds, who are worse this year, but that didn’t actually matter at all; it was fun watching them in old-timey uniforms playing with a barn and farmhouse as a backdrop and all those rustling stalks of corn behind them.

Never mind the fact that only 2% of Americans actually work on farms these days.  The feeling was that this is how it all began, that this was the pure, original game created on fields in the heartland that links the generations of our nation together.  It was captured beautifully in those images.

Like other obsessed baseball fans, in preparation for the Field of Dreams game, I rewatched the Field of Dreams movie earlier this week.  The movie has held up well, the magical, mysterious, magisterial voice intoning, “If you build it, he will come”; it still works.

There is in the film version of Field of Dreams a neo-Biblical quality.  A divine, magical voice out of nowhere directs a simple human being in an Abrahamic way to do something no one in his right mind should be expected to do.  And then, when the guy does it, it all works out in ways no one could have anticipated.  Very much like Genesis and Exodus, really.

But watching the film again, I was struck by the second command the voice gives in the movie.  It tells the protagonist, Ray, to “Ease his pain.”  He doesn’t, at first, know whose pain he is to ease.  He doesn’t even know when or where he will find that person.  But again, he is led against logic and economics to set out on a mission to do just that, to ease the pain of another human being by helping him fulfill his own lost dream.  He is compelled by a superior power, or perhaps merely by a superior suggestion, to go out and do something directly to help a person who is suffering.  He is supposed to ease another’s pain.   

My friends, this Sabbath is called Shabbat Nachamu, which means the Sabbath of Consolation, and it always follows Tisha B’Av, the commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, as well as other days of great national tragedy for Jews.  The name for this Sabbath comes from the Haftarah chanted tomorrow morning, taken from the writings of the great prophet Second Isaiah, that begins with the words, Nachamu nachamu, ami—literally, “Be comforted, be comforted My people, says your God.”  Second Isaiah will supply all the Haftarot, the prophetic readings, for each Shabbat between now and Rosh HaShanah, over the next seven weeks, and every message is one of support and comfort for a people who has seen too much tragedy. 

For historical, literary, and spiritual purposes, it’s worth noting that the reason we call this prophet Second Isaiah is that he taught and prophesied after the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians, which took place in 586 BCE.  First Isaiah, author of the first 39 chapters of the book of the Bible called “Isaiah,” did his own preaching some 125 years earlier, when Assyria destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel and then threatened the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah. 

In truth, we don’t know the name of this prophet we call Second Isaiah, and the fact that his own poetic prophecy was included by the editors of the Bible with his earlier predecessor’s made it simpler to just call it all “Isaiah.”  Both were great writers and created beautiful, evocative poems on important Jewish religious themes.  But First Isaiah, or more realistically just “Isaiah,” was much more likely to preach about the coming deserved destruction of the sinful Israelite nation in the hope of bringing about reform and return to God and ethics, teshuvah, by the Jews of his era before punishment would be exacted. 

Second Isaiah, whatever his actual name, came along at a very different time.  His goal was something else: consoling a defeated nation of exiles whose homeland and temple had been totally destroyed.  These ancestors of ours had experienced great tragedy and were on the verge of collective deep depression.  That national misery, that absolute discouragement could easily have led to the disappearance of Judaism and the end of the nation of Israel forever.  It was Second Isaiah’s calling to help our people find hope at a time of despondency.  That he was effective in this work is testified to by the fact that we still chant his verses today, that his messages still bring hope and meaning in times of personal and national darkness.  

Second Isaiah provides a powerful lesson in the fact that not all prophets are Cassandras preaching destruction or the end of the world to an unrepentant people.  Some—admittedly just a few—bring something quite different.  Second Isaiah is the prince among these prophets: in place of condemnation, he brings consolation; in place of censure, solace.  In place of harshness, he brings hope.

One of the most beautiful phrases in Hebrew is the one that signifies compassion.  It is used throughout the Bible, and it is here at the beginning of our Haftarah of Consolation on this Shabbat of Consolation: Dabru al Lev Yerushalayim, it reads, literally, “speak to the heart of Jerusalem.”  Now, remember Jerusalem is destroyed at this point; the city is being used as a representation of the entire remaining peoplehood of Israel, the Jews.  That idiom, “speak to the heart,” is meant to convey comfort and understanding.  It is employed in a variety of places throughout the Tanakh, in which “speaking to the heart” expresses a connection that creates comfort.  And it teaches a beautiful lesson.   

At times of loss and destruction, how are we able to bring consolation?  The answer comes from that phrase, “speaking to the heart,” vayidaber al lev.  It means, essentially, connecting and conveying compassion and care.  It means letting someone we care about know that they are not alone, that their hearts are not suffering in isolation.  

What is compassion, then?  Is it simply empathy, making it clear that none of us is truly alone, helping a sufferer to feel cared about?  Or can it be even more?

Five years ago, during a trip to the Himalayas in northern India, I had the privilege of meeting the Dalai Lama.  While I heard him speak for a number of hours, his essential message was then, as it has been throughout his long and extraordinary career, about compassion.  According to the Dalai Lama, compassion is the highest form of human action, the greatest goal for any sentient being.  He has put it this way: "Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive… The whole purpose of religion is to facilitate love and compassion… Love and compassion are the true religions... Compassion and happiness are not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength… If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

Compassion, at its heart, is active.  It is more than simple empathy: it is taking action to relieve the suffering of others.  It is an ethical imperative to try to improve the situation, to try to fix the wrongs that cause the suffering.  In the words of that first Isaiah in last week’s Haftarah, compassion should motivate us to “Seek justice; relieve the oppressed; uphold the orphan’s rights; take up the widow’s cause.”  It is a powerful message: we can heal another’s pain not only by sitting with him or her or sharing that pain, but by working to change the injustices and inequities that cause that pain.

In Judaism, the concept of compassion is deeply connected with doing mitzvot, actively trying to fix the wrongs that cause sorrow.  We offer caring and hope, but our most effective means to console, to bring comfort, is not simply emotional or even personal.  It lies in the imperative to work to right the wrongs that caused such damage in the first place.  This, of course, can take many forms.  One of them might be to ease the pain of others—you know, to “ease his pain.”

It can be something as simple as bringing peanut butter to a food bank so parents can make sandwiches for their hungry children.  It can be fixing a broken sink for a neighbor or paying a bill they can’t afford.  It might be going to a hospital to visit a friend who is ill and lonely and offering a prayer for healing.  It could be seeing someone in hospice, and easing their course out of their terminal illness by assuring them that they can go.  It can be cooking a meal for someone who can’t do it for themselves.

It might be counseling a lost soul, holding the hand of a person struggling with fear, helping rebuild another’s weakened will.

It might be something joyful, like celebrating with a couple who have found love and companionship and happiness, ending their separateness in simcha. 

Compassion includes passion, which implies, in fact insists upon action: helping, doing, actively easing that pain, bringing not only solace but solutions.

On this Shabbat Nachamu, may our goal be not only to hear other people’s pain, not just to sympathize and show care—but to help others ease their own pain.  And then, perhaps, all of our dreams may become more real.

Jewish Love of Learning

Sermon, Shabbat Devarim-Hazon 5782

 This Shabbat we start chanting the final book of the Torah, Devarim, Deuteronomy.  The traditional name of this book is Mishnah Torah, which means “the repetition of the Torah,” reflecting the fact that Deuteronomy consists of three long speeches by Moses recapitulating everything that happened in the last three books.  If there is nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes teaches, there is definitely nothing new in the Torah of Deuteronomy.  The English name, Deuteronomy, taken from the Greek means something similar to the Jewish Mishnah Torah, Deutero Nomos, perhaps “Repeated Law” or “Second Law.”  That doesn’t sound very entertaining, does it?

And yet the book itself turns out to be gripping reading, compelling and interesting in ways that other parts of the Torah aren’t always.  Devarim is filled with new insights, moral and inspirational highlights that are powerful, motivating and elevating.  And Deuteronomy is also rich in pathos, with its ongoing theme of Moses’ God-decreed inability to enter the Promised Land. 

The Hebrew of Deuteronomy is also particularly notable.  It is sharper, more precise, fresher in its use of language than any other book of the Torah.  It is perhaps the most immediately quotable book the Torah if not the entire Tanakh, the Bible.  The Shma is here in Deuteronomy, and the Ve’ahavta, and the Ten Commandments are repeated here, but there is also Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof, pursue true justice, and uvacharta Chayim, “I set before you today life and death, blessing and curse, choose life!,” and “man does not live by bread alone” and so many other classic statements of Jewish belief and wisdom.  It’s great stuff, from the concise history of the Israelites listed in this week’s portion all the way through to the end with the death of Moses.

Perhaps what makes Deuteronomy a favorite book for rabbis is that it represents the concept of “Torah” in its literal meaning, teaching, the most completely of any of the five books.  I mean, Moses is supposed to be standing up there telling all of this to the Children of Israel, instructing them in how to live lives of goodness and blessing, how to truly serve God and   their people.  And teaching; well, by golly, that’s what we rabbis do for goodness sakes.  It is here in Deuteronomy that Moses earns the title Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our teacher, our rabbi, most fully.  Not bad work for a guy with a speech impediment.

Now I know that the Book of Deuteronomy almost certainly dates from the 7th century BCE, fully 500 years after Moses has died.  The Bible, in the book of 2nd Kings, tells us it that Devarim was “discovered” when King Josiah had the priests renovate and cleanse the Temple anew, and it was at that point that the public reading of Torah was first instituted.  But it doesn’t really matter whether this was a pious retelling of the story of the Israelites or the original text created in the time of Moses; it’s a brilliant piece of educational material, a great, gripping explanation of Judaism’s highest values and wisdom.  It’s a fantastic educational text.  And that gets us back to rabbis, and teaching.

I have a close friend, Alan, going all the way back to high school, who refers to my need to teach Judaism as an “addiction.”  Of course, the very word “rabbi” means, essentially, teacher, so there is something highly appropriate about that addiction, I suppose.  I do like almost everything about the process of teaching people Jewish subjects, seeing understanding and knowledge grow and develop.  That motivation—maybe it's a compulsion, even, as Alan suggests—is true in every area of Jewish learning, at nearly every level.  From watching a pre-school child learn to sing the Shma for the first time to discussing complex theological issues with sophisticated adults to exploring obscure mystical texts in community, I find the process of Jewish learning beautiful and fulfilling nearly always.  That’s true of my Too Jewish Radio Show as well, where we strive to entertain but also educate. 

Now, in my weekly role here at Beit Simcha I typically teach five different ongoing Adult Education Academy classes on various subjects, and at times I have taught as many as seven or eight.  The weekly adult classes range from Torah to history to Kabbalah mysticism to Mussar, Jewish self-improvement, to Hebrew.  Of course, I also teach bar and bat mitzvah students, Confirmation students, and Hebrew school students.  But it is in adult teaching that I get to explore new areas and express things most fully and, I hope clearly.

Typically, during the summer I have taken a break from some aspects of my day job as a congregational rabbi to recharge my intellectual batteries and deepen knowledge of various aspects of Judaism and, well, anything interesting.  That means that for, say, the month of July I don’t teach adult classes much.  But this summer, for the first time in a while, I didn’t really take that break.  Our Religious School was off for the past couple of months, so there was less instruction of kids to do, but I ended up teaching a full Adult Education Academy schedule over the summer, and even added some classes.  I also attended the Talmud class my wife, Sophie, has been teaching.  And next Wednesday I’ll start teaching a Mussar Group at the JCC.

It made for a different summer experience, of course, but it also reinforced my strongly motivated love of Jewish teaching.  There is something magical about the alchemical process of learning along with your students, and even when it is hot and you are tired, an incredible Jewish concept can leap off the page—or out of your Kindle or laptop—and fire your spiritual imagination. 

There is one exception to this personal rule of mine, the love of all Jewish learning, and that exception is near-heretical: I don’t really like learning or teaching Talmud very much.  That is a painful confession for a rabbi, hopefully not a truly terrible one, or a disqualification. 

Now Talmud—by which we generally mean the Babylonian Talmud, which was completed in today’s Iraq by great Jewish scholars over 1500 years ago—is the preeminent text of all Jewish learning.  It is the authoritative source for Jewish law, Halakha, and the greatest compendium of Jewish legal and legendary information ever assembled.  For Orthodox Jews Jewish learning and Talmud are nearly synonymous, and there are many people of every Jewish stream of religious observance and non-observance all around the world who begin each day by studying a Daf Yomi, a page—actually, it’s two pages—of Talmud every morning.  That includes my 96-year-old father and my own wife, among many others of all ages.  Sophie teaches such an engaging and well-prepared Talmud class that her students range in age from 23 to 85, and they are vital and connected throughout the class.  Sadly, except for me… 

I have studied a good amount of Talmud in my life: the entire tractates of Brachot, Blessings, and Sanhedrin, which deals primarily with capital offenses, as well as Kiddushin, about weddings, and lots of sections of tractates—that is, book-length discussions—on all the many holidays, on commercial transactions, and many other subjects.  I know Aramaic, the language of most of the Talmud, fairly well, mostly understand Talmudic reasoning, have explored some of the many commentaries on the Talmud—Rashi, of course, and others from ancient to modern—and always got top grades in seminary classes on Talmud; I even won the Talmud award there.  I have studied Talmud in ultra-Orthodox yeshivas in Jerusalem and at Chabad synagogues in California and at Reform movement study conferences and with Conservative rabbis, in chevrutah, and online, and in groups and so on.  I can successfully study Talmud, whatever that means.

But I have come to a conclusion: I just don’t enjoy studying Talmud, nor do I find it nearly as fulfilling as digging deeper into the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, or exploring Zohar, the greatest text of Jewish mysticism, or reading Jewish philosophy or novels or learning more Jewish history.  When studying Talmud the same thing always happens to me: I start out engaged and interested, exploring the text and the various winding ways of its arguments and its many seemingly random detours, its associative logic that leads it farther and farther afield.  And then, every single time, after about 40 minutes or so, I find my mind has completely wandered away and has no great interest in coming back home to the page of Talmud.   

Now, I also don’t want to read or study American legal codes or cases, which is why it’s good I never became yet another Jewish lawyer.

I’m quite sure this Talmudic aversion is simply a failing of mine that will be rectified in the world to come.  But until the Messiah arrives and that occurs, I will continue to love studying and teaching almost every aspect of Jewish learning, from Bible to liturgy to commentaries to music to poetry to archeology.  And I will quote Talmud where required and explain it as needed and respect Talmudic scholars and teachers and students, may God bless them and extend their lives in health. 

Now, this anti-Talmudic confession reminds me that I never tire of studying Torah, especially a book like Deuteronomy.  Because at its heart, Devarim, after our introductory section this week, teaches us remarkable life lessons, and holds exceptional moral truths.  And there also sections that seem outmoded and archaic?  Well, they become grist for the intellectual mill, a way to see how people, our ancestors, living in a different time struggled with complex ideas and situations that we address differently today.

I’m reminded of a concept in Judaism that teaches us that we should learn a little each day.  Our morning prayers are structured in such a way that early on we actually have a passage from Torah, another from Mishnah, and third from Gemarah so that we can fulfill this mitzvah almost automatically. 

But if there is one great lesson to take from Devarim, it is that the process of Jewish learning is a beautiful opportunity to keep our minds fresh, our hearts open, and our wisdom growing every day of our lives. Perhaps then, like Moses, we will be able in the fullness of our lives to continue to learn, and teach, and direct ourselves and others to the holiness that God seeks for us in this world.

Life is a Highway

Sermon Shabbat Matot-Masei 5782  

Do any you watch those streaming TV shows which always have cliffhanger endings?  You know, like Game of Thrones a couple of years ago, or Ozark last year, or Stranger Things, or Yellowstone, or Better Call Saul, or Outlander?  Those shows where each episode ends with the protagonists in grave danger, uncertainty abounding, and dramatic music plunging you into the final credits?

There’s a good reason those shows are so wildly popular.  They drag you into the next episode without giving you any time to think about what you actually should be doing instead of watching the next show…  You just have to see what will happen in the teaser before they let you skip the opening credits and you are back on the roller-coaster of drama and suspense.

I am here to tell you that this literary device is not a new thing, and it started in books and stories, not on video.  And we find it expressed vividly in this week’s Torah portions.

This Shabbat we complete reading the underrated Book of Numbers with the double parsha of Matot-Masei.  While there are five books in the Torah, and Bamidbar, Numbers, is just fourth of five, the end of the book completes the great 40-year journey of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery to the borders of the Promised Land.  The final book of the Torah, Devarim, Deuteronomy, while a fascinating and powerful text, is just a recapitulation of the events of the previous three books, a reinterpretation of the story told in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.  To paraphrase a later book of the Tanakh, there isn’t much new under the sun in Deuteronomy.  So, this double sedrah, Matot-Masei at the conclusion of Bamidbar, is a good time to assess the meaning of the journey of our people.

On superficial examination, the Israelites have made enormous progress over the four decades covered in this book.  Early in Exodus our people were enslaved and remained human chattel for many generations.  The traditional count is 400 years of slavery, near the end of which a genocidal program was advanced by the Egyptian king, the pharaoh, to destroy us.  Moses was called by God and emerged as an effective revolutionary leader, assisted by his brother Aaron, and through God’s power the people of Israel were redeemed from slavery and given the gift of freedom.  After surviving an attempt to re-enslave them, the Israelites entered into a covenant, a contract with God at Mt. Sinai and were taught a way of life structured by moral law and ethical action, mitzvot.  They were progressively organized into a structured, mobile community, given social rules for successful human society, taught how to centralize religious worship in a unifying way, forged into a growing young national group, and directed towards what will become their own permanent homeland.

The nascent nation was then brought through a variety of challenging experiences, some imposed by outsiders, others the result of internal conflicts and struggles, and eventually arrived at the borders of their land-to-be as a strong, young, energetic, impressive people, organized and powerful.  It is a success story in a world in which few emerging nations, then as now, successfully make the transition from overthrowing oppression to building a positive, powerful, cohesive national identity.

Given the nature of this narrative of national identity formation and coherent peoplehood it is puzzling that the Torah breaks off the story here, just as the Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land of nationhood.  In other words, after all this drama, all the sturm und drang, we finally reach the borders of the land that will become Israel.  But before we can rejoice in the full redemption of the people creating a nation of their own in a land of their own, the story stops, and the journey is paused.  And not briefly paused, either; the entire Book of Deuteronomy is interposed, and we don’t find out just what it’s like to actually enter Erets Yisrael, the Land of Israel, until the Book of Joshua.  In fact, since the Torah concludes with the death of Moses at the end of Deuteronomy and the Book of Joshua isn’t even included in the Torah or in any regular, public reading cycle of Bible, we never really get to see the Israelites enter the Land of Israel. 

It is an unusual choice for our tradition to make.  It is as if we were taught the story of the American Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War but never told who won the war or how the nation turned out.  It is like following the entire World Cup soccer tournament, discovering the final was between, say, France and Croatia, and never discovering who won the crown.  It would be like watching the entire major league baseball season, all 162 games, and never finding out who won the World Series, or even who made it to the World Series.

So why does the Torah leave us at the borders of the Promised Land but never bring us in?

The easy answer is a familiar one: the journey is the destination.  Like Moses, who dies on Mt. Nebo in today’s Jordan without ever getting into Canaan, the Israelites don’t enter the Promised Land because we, their descendants, need to learn that it’s not the arriving the counts, but the journeying.  It’s not what we find when we get there but how we travel along the way that matters.  In this view, the long transit of the Sinai Desert is a metaphor for our own lives, an object lesson on just what it is that truly matters. 

As a familiar poem by Rabbi Alvin Fine puts it

“Birth is a beginning

And death a destination

But life is a journey:

From childhood to maturity and youth to age…

looking backward or ahead we see that victory lies

Not at some high place along the way

But in having made the journey, stage by stage/ a sacred pilgrimage.”

Like the Israelites, we are all on a journey, a life voyage, and how we grow and change and learn and develop, the adventures we experience along the way, the people we meet and befriend and love, the enemies and obstacles we overcome, these are all far more important than what seem on the surface to be our ultimate accomplishments. 

We will never enter the Promised Land at all.  We are not even supposed to do so.  What we are supposed to do, what we are taught by our Torah, here in Matot-Masei and elsewhere, is that the adventure is the journey itself, that our goals and accomplishments are in advancing that expedition, serving with honor, journeying well and courageously.

As Winston Churchill put it, “You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.”

This is not exactly a new message, although it was a lot newer when the Torah was written than it is now.  Still, it might be the essential message of all honest religious traditions: how we live, how we get there is far more important than where we are going. 

When my kids were in an elementary school chorus here in Tucson, they sang a setting of a pop song that was featured in the animated movie “Cars”; its lyrics were, “Life is a highway, I’m going to ride it all night long…”

Life is a highway, as it were, and we are going to ride it all our lives long… and who we really are is much more a function of the way we travel that highway than where we will ultimately park our car.

It reminds me of a joke about a couple of rock songs on that theme: “If there’s highway to hell, and only a stairway to heaven, it says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers.”  But perhaps I have taken a detour…

In any case, the idea that the Torah is teaching us by a kind of graceful omission, by a chosen form of cliffhanger, that it is the journey, not the destination, that truly matters, is beautiful.  As deeply connected as we feel to that Promised Land of Israel—and we are planning to go there in November of this year, God-willing—as important as the end-result is for any human accomplishment, we will likely spend much more time getting there than being there.  Even the word for Jewish law, Halakha, simple means “The Way,” the path we walk to achieve goodness in our lives.  The path, the road, the highway.

When we formed Beit Simcha back in 2018, we made a mutual commitment that we would seek to make this a true house of joy, a place where we enjoyed being together and working together and praying together and making music together and, of course, eating together—but also cleaning up together.  It was, and remains, exceedingly important to us that the process to be joyous and good, and that the things that aid that celebration of Judaism, and our community, will always be emphasized.  And that commitment has been a true blessing for us.

Look, we wouldn’t even have the Torah if we had not ultimately succeeded in conquering the Land of Israel and making it our own.  But over the long course of Jewish history since then we have learned, again and again, that how we travel this road, this path, this highway, makes all the difference in our lives, and in our people’s life.

May we find ways to celebrate our own travels in this world, and may we learn to fill each day with goodness and blessing, and so appreciate our own journey.

Passionate Judaism

Sermon, Parshat Pinchas 5782

I don’t know how many of you were raised in Classical Reform congregations, or experienced them in years past.  Almost all Reform synagogues were essentially Classical Reform in their liturgy, ritual, and music until the 1970’s, and if you attended Shabbat or the holidays or a life-cycle event at a Reform congregation from the 1890’s up to about 1974 you were very, very likely to experience a Classical Reform service.  In fact, in many parts of North America those Classical Reform services continued right up through the 1980’s, and there are still a few retro, anachronistic synagogues scattered around the continent that persist in making a Classical Reform experience their principal form of worship.

I am talking about services using the old Union Prayerbook, largely conducted in English, and based on responsive readings with a few musical anthems.  The only prayer texts typically offered in Hebrew included the Barchu, the Shema, the Kiddush, and the Kaddish.  A rabbi, who didn’t wear a yarmulke but did wear a black robe, would deliver a long, carefully reasoned sermon.  A stately organ would play, and there was frequently a mixed choir singing from somewhere invisible.  Many congregations took a financial offering at the conclusion of services, even on Shabbat.

Now Classical Reform Judaism had many wonderful qualities.  It was rational in nature, intellectually impressive, and never offended the intelligence of the congregation.  The English language employed in its prayerbook, the small blue Union Prayer Book, the old UPB, was elegant. My own grandfather edited the edition used by most congregations in the 1950s and 60s.  The UPB was like reading a Jewish version of Victorian prose and poetry, which was essentially what it was, most of it having been orginally composed in the 1890s.  Classical Reform Jewish music was reliably stately, homophonous, filled with heavy organ chords and sung in well-harmonized anthems that were clearly understandable: God is in His Holy Mountain, There Lives a God, Let us Adore the Ever-Living God.  People dressed predictably and formally. There was excellent decorum at services, with congregants showing up on time or even early, sitting quietly, rising when requested, sitting when told to do so, reading the words they were supposed to read and singing, sometimes, on cue. 

The rabbi spent many hours preparing a logical sermon that worked hard to sway the convictions of the congregation towards good purpose through reason.  The Oneg Shabbat was often elegant, with homemade treats and tea or coffee served in china cups.  The entire experience was predictable, pleasant, and usually quite peaceful.  And, well, rather Protestant in quality.

This brand of Reform Judaism flourished, in its way, for many decades.  But eventually the critique of it was that, for all of its strengths, the worship experience it presented was cold, rational, and dull.  There was very little warmth, less energy, and almost no emotional involvement.  The antique joke was that Reform Jews had become God’s Frozen People.  In part, the strongly rational nature of Classical Reform Judaism made it the enemy of religious passion.  If traditional services were filled with Hebrew prayers chanted by men, often energetically and fervently, with a certain chaos of people arriving and leaving, swaying and moving to the davening or even chatting with neighbors, Reform services were filled with the sonorous tones of the rabbi reading English, the musical swell of organ and choir and the not-very-passionate participation of a passive, orderly congregation.

Over time Reform Judaism changed dramatically, and eclectically.  You can find many congregations today that base their worship experience on sung and chanted Hebrew, use few or no responsive readings, and seek to carry the experience with vigorous congregational singing and contemplative meditation.  Some Progressive congregations have transformed their music into pop-oriented, English-based sets of camp songs, or even removed all prayerbooks and use video screens for what’s called “Visual Tefilah”—that started long before so many of us ended up on Facebook and Zoom screens—some congregations who dance during services, or have an extremely informal style that is its own orthodoxy. 

There are even some synagogues stuck in the faded orange-and-brown tones of the late 1970s and early ‘80s who use the Gates of Prayer siddur and the same music, a mix of Debbie Friedman, Ben Steinberg, and Joni Mitchell compositions, that they used when the rabbi or cantor completed his or her own education and stopped growing.   In effect, all are looking for what Classical Reform Judaism lacked: warmth. But they are also looking for religious passion. 

When many hundreds, even thousands of Reform Jews, overeducated, hyper-civilized, and superannuated as they are, rise up at biennial conventions and dance through giant ballrooms or auditoriums where Shabbat services are held, they affirm anew the resilient need we all have for something warm and, especially, something passionate in our religious experience.  By the way, they don’t usually dance very well.  No matter.

Cool, calm, rational Judaism just isn’t enough.  We need passion.  Or at least warmth.

I have a unique perspective on this because I was actually raised about 45% in the Conservative movement and 45% in the Reform movement, with another 10% in Orthodox shuls.  And I can tell you: Conservative Judaism wasn’t exactly a place to find religious passion either when I was growing up.  The services were a lot longer, all in Hebrew, and with less focus on decorum.  The cantor chanted, and chanted, and chanted.  Once in a great while the rabbi would interrupt to lead a responsive reading—usually a Psalm in archaic linguistic form.  Sometimes people sang along on the occasional congregational melodies.  People stood, then sat, then stood, then sat.  Then the Torah service ambled in, in all its semi-organized confusion, and often took a really long time.  And then the rabbi did a long sermon, which might or might not be good.  You know how rabbis’ sermons are…  And finally the announcements which were somehow even longer in Conservative than in Reform congregations and no more compelling.  Only after three hours or so were we released to head for the Kiddush.  Of course, lots of people avoided the issue by showing up an hour or even two hours late for services, in time for the sermon, Kaddish, Adon Olam, and the Kiddush

Orthodox services?  Um, let’s say they weren’t exactly lively themselves.  If it’s even conceivable, they were longer than the Conservative services, had exactly no English, seated the women away from the men, occasionally included some odd ritual I had never heard of, and somehow, the rabbi’s sermon was always about Israel, a place I had never been, of course.  That—the rabbi talking about Israel—was often, but not always also true in the Conservative services of my youth.  The Reform sermons in my youth seemed to be about the lettuce boycott, or racial issues, or the next presidential election, although sometimes they were actually about ideas.  I liked those sermons best.   

Look, let’s be honest: the religious experiences available in American synagogues in our youth, or at least mine, were not always exactly compelling.  And one word you could never use for Shabbat services of my youth: passionate.  They were surely not ever that, not in any of the shuls, congregations, synagogues, or temples of my youth or adolescence.

But the need for a form of religious expression that includes emotion and passion is real, and human, and present today.  It could not have been absent back then.  It is not exactly a new quest. 

The desire to connect with God passionately, and to unite with the human beings around us in fervent, energetic worship, is as old as religion, which means it is as old as humanity.  As I discovered on my sabbatical journey around the world back in 2015, the first major human structures ever built, 12,000 years ago, were temples for worship in today’s southern Turkey.  They were constructed by large teams of hunter-gatherers, 500 and more at a time, to allow for collective worship in a central site.  It is incredible to imagine the enormous effort needed to do this work, and the way that it banded together early human beings who lacked all the qualifications for civilization testifies to a deep and passionate need for holiness and community. 

Clearly the need for religious fervor and passion is the most ancient of our collective needs, and it still resonates today.  But what exactly is the role of ritual passion in Judaism?

This week’s portion of Pinchas, in combination with last week’s concluding section of Balak, explores this question in a fascinating way.  The Pinchas incident is the final one in a series of failed rebellions against the leadership of Moses and Aaron, and presents an extreme demonstrated lack of religious fidelity by the Israelites’ own leaders.  The disastrous actions of the princes of the people, who are just below Moses in the hierarchy of the Children of Israel, is stunning.  Only the passionate actions of the young priest Pinchas saves the Israelites from annihilation. 

Pinchas’ act of extreme violence is shocking, and his reward for doing this is shocking too. Instead of punishment Pinchas receives a brit Shalom, a covenant of peace, an eternal commitment that he and his descendants will be priests of the Holy One forever, honored and separated from the ordinary people and raised up to divine service.

In another sense, however, this is not so hard to understand.  For in his new role Pinchas, and his presumably hot-blooded descendants are prohibited from ever again carrying spears or going to war.  Instead, this jealous energy for God and the hot passion for the right, will be dedicated to religious service, avodah.  Not to war but to worship will the drive, determination, and fervor of Pinchas be directed.  His spear will be reforged into an incense censer, his sword into a menorah.  Redirected, instead of retribution he will have to develop a passion for prayer, and a covenantal commitment to peace.

In other words, although his act was needed at the time, it is now, and forever, going to be needed not for violence but for sacred service.

The lesson here is that the service of God requires emotional commitment and ardor, enthusiasm and zeal, equal to, even surpassing the kind of passion that leads to violence.  In fact, if that fervor is focused on worship it will be sublimated into the holiest of causes. 

The lesson is not just for Pinchas, and it applies not only to our ancient ancestors.  All Jews need to have some of Pinchas’ passion for God, in thought, prayer and ritual.  We have to find our own ability to serve God with all our hearts, souls, and strength, as the VeAhavta teaches. 

And when we, even those rational Jews with a legacy of infinite decorum, can do that then we will be able to bring about the true covenant of passionate, and compassionate peace.

May this be our will, on this Shabbat of Pinchas; and may this then become God’s will too.

A Disney Movie in the Book of Numbers

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon’s Sermon on Balak 5782

What does it mean when a Disney movie breaks out in the middle of the Torah?

Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers, begins with Torah portions that narrate various rebellions against the authority of the leaders of the people of Israel, Moses and Aaron.  These rebellions won’t end until the Israelites finally arrive at the very entrance to the Holy Land, Erets Yisrael, and I know this will shock you, but they continue even when we get to the Promised Land and take up residence there.  We are a fractious people, prone to arguments about everything, and according to Bamidbar we always were like that.  This whole book has mostly been a list of troubles we created for ourselves.

But then, suddenly, this week in the sedrah of Balak, in the midst of this litany of self-generated tzoris, we have a text so unusual the rabbis call it Sefer Bilam, “the Book of Balaam” as though it were a separate entity unrelated to the rest of Numbers, an extra book inserted into the middle of the Torah.  The Book of Balaam tells a very different sort of narrative, the tale of a pagan prophet hired by an enemy king who is supposed to curse the people of Israel but instead ends up blessing them on three separate occasions. 

The Book of Balaam is the kind of magical fable that Walt Disney would love.  It includes a jealous king, a brilliant pagan sorcerer, a talking donkey, gold treasure, reversals of fate, and three separate songs not yet composed for the animated screen by Alan Menken, or even by Lin Manuel Miranda.  All that’s missing is a pretty teenage girl heroine in need of rescue and you would have Frozen in the Middle East, or an early Canaanite version of Aladdin.  We could call it Maleficent in Moab or The Sorcerer’s Apostasy or even Encurso.  I can hear the earworm now: “We don’t talk about Balaam, no no no…”

Or, if you upgraded the rating of this portion of Balak to PG-17 and included the scenes of sexual license and extreme violence with the Midianite sacred prostitutes (priestesses) at the end of the parshah, you’d have a good episode of Game of Thrones or The Last Kingdom.  Just what is this crazy story doing in the Torah?

To recap, the actual tale we tell is that King Balak of Moab is terrified of the rising power of the invading Children of Israel.  He tries to hire the pagan prophet Balaam to curse the people of Israel, to cast an evil Voldermort-style spell on them to block their impending conquest of Moab.  Balaam agrees to do this for a very high price, more even than Max Scherzer is making with the Mets this year, accounting for inflation, but Balaam inserts a codicil in the contract: he insists he will only use the words God gives him.  Balak’s minions OK the deal, and Balaam sets out.

On the way to his new gig cursing the Israelites, Balaam’s own she-ass, his donkey, sees an angel with a flaming sword blocking the path, and forces Balaam to see it, too, by squashing his foot against a wall.  Balaam beats the donkey, which very unexpectedly objects out loud and begins speaking to him.  In keeping with cartoon standards, the donkey ends up sounding like a Jewish mother: “Haven’t I always carried you everywhere?  When have I ever, ever failed to be there for you?  Is one Nobel Prize too much to ask after all I’ve done for you?”  And so on.  Actually, the donkey doesn’t really say that last line, but you get the idea: the donkey can see the angel with the flaming sword, while Balaam cannot.  The prophet, the great seer, is blind to a reality his own ass can easily recognize.  In effect, any old ass can see what the great visionary can’t.

Now, about this talking donkey: as far as I can recall, the last animal in the Bible who spoke actual words to a human being was the serpent in the Garden of Eden who chatted up Eve.  If you recall, that didn’t end at all well, so Balaam now decides he’d better pay attention and behave, especially when the angel with the flaming sword tells him not to do or say anything God doesn’t specifically command.  It’s all very Disney, dramatic and slightly ridiculous, and at the end the angel, of course, disappears, poof. 

When Balaam arrives in Moab and meets the King—can’t you just picture the catchy little song as he arrives in the camp?  “Be our guest, be our guest, come please curse those Jewish pests”— and Balaam is led by Balak to his job cursing the Israelites, and taken to a high place to look down at their spreading population.  Balaam reaches down into his bag of sorcery tricks, pulls out his oracle bones and casts lots and does his mumbo-jumbo routine, and then to his own surprise finds that he is unable to curse Israel, and can only bless them.  He tries hard to do his worst but delivers instead a positive poem of praise to the Israelites.  Balaam is clearly under the kind of spell worthy of any magical fable, and the words that come out of his mouth are not hatred and curses, but blessings and generosity.

King Balak, his employer, is furious, and he tries to get Balaam to change his perspective on the matter.  The king moves this sorcerer around to different vantage points, but Balaam can only spout more and more fulsome blessings for Israel.  It’s an animated musical for sure by this time: Not one, not two, but three separate tunes about how great Israel is come pouring out of his eloquent mouth.  The third time is really the charm.  His final poem begins Ma Tovu Ohalecha Ya’akov mishkenotecha Yisrael, “How good are your tents Jacob, your dwellings Israel!” and that becomes the beginning of our morning services and the phrase we are supposed to say every time we enter a synagogue.  And it is created by a pagan sorcerer trying to summon up a curse. 

And so, Balaam ends up blessing the people of Israel in triplicate, seeing them—us—in all the Israelites’ beauty and integrity and talent and success, understanding that God has blessed them and will continue to bless them, appreciating the holiness of their covenant with God. 

After this climactic, theatrical moment the narrative follows a predictable path.  Soon after this cursing debacle Balak goes to war against the Israelites anyway, and is badly defeated by them.  Balaam goes back home, riding the same donkey off into the sunset, and everyone, or at least the Israelites, lives happily ever after in the Promised Land.  And then, having experienced this happy fairy tale, we can all sing one of those diabetically sugary infectious Disney tunes on the way out of the theater… “The Israelites, they are truly grand, the Israelites have a Promised Land, the sky’s blue and sunny, there is milk, there is honey, it’s a Jewish, Jewish land.”  You get the idea.

We have all been enjoying the wonderful world of Balaam, if you will.

Only that’s not how this story finishes.  After all, the world is not actually a Disney movie, and happily-ever-afters are fairly scarce in Jewish history.  Mind you, this is still the same people of Israel who constantly failed to follow God and practice Judaism, who consistently rebelled against Moses and Aaron.  Nearly every week in Numbers they will continue to walk a tightrope bordering on complete disaster, bouncing chaotically from crisis to crisis, from kvetching to slander to rebellion to full-on revolution to pagan apostasy to sex scandals.  The people of Israel, the Wandering Jews of Numbers, are more like a bad reality TV show than a powerful, growing nation coming into its own.  They are trouble, a grease fire just waiting to spread, the Kardashians in Canaan. 

Yet while Moses and Aaron have been pedaling full speed just to keep this group traveling in the same general direction, Balaam has been singing Israel’s praises in operatic hyperbole.  In spite of the political and social reality on the inside, to an outsider these Jews look spectacular.  There is a lesson here, and it is one that we Jews need to be reminded of today: our self-perception is often not in harmony with the way others see us.  Although we are used to viewing ourselves as the disputatious, argumentative, stiff-necked people we know that we truly are on the inside, the outside world sees us quite differently. 

We are now at a point where our public PR in the US is still just about the best it has ever been.  The contemporary perception of the Jewish community of America among non-Jews these days is that we are amazingly together, affluent, coordinated.  Our influence over the federal government, the so-called Israel Lobby, is considered overwhelming.  Other groups try to copy our successes.  Non-Jews want to marry our children.  We consistently are rated at the top of most admired religions in America.

Even the Anti-Semites, and they have been coming out of the sewers in far greater profusion in recent years than in quite a long time, are influenced by some weird sorcery, a kind of perverse alchemy.  They genuinely believe we Jews are so powerful that we control the economy and the press and social media and the government and Hollywood—well, OK, we do control Hollywood;  still, their websites and conspiracy theories are a kind of updated version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.   

And yet we ourselves spend so much time on infighting, and on agonizing over how we are supposedly disappearing, failing, how Israel is endangered.  To the outsiders we look great.  To ourselves?  We still look like, well, shlemiels.

The truth is that we Jews, and our Jewish communities, have incredible strengths and remarkable resources.  We are truly blessed—in Balaam’s words, how good are our homes, how beautiful our dwellings.  But we often have trouble seeing it, like the prophet whose donkey has better vision than he does.

All that’s really required of us American Jews today, is commitment to our religion and our practice, and some hope and optimism—or perhaps it’s just realism.  If we can have the courage of our accomplishments, our synagogue and our Jewish community will expand and grow and flourish, as Balaam predicted all those centuries ago.  We don’t need to agonize about our place in American society as loyal citizens.  We just need to be proud of our Jewish identities, and active as religious, committed, liberal Jews.

On this Shabbat of Balaam’s praise of Israel may we come to appreciate all we have, all we already are, and all that our amazing tradition offers us.  And may we then come to embrace our own Judaism and our community, and live fully, proudly, and cooperatively, as Jews.

Tanning, and Faith

Sermon Parshat Chukat 5782

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

 Our Congregation Beit Simcha has a peculiar relationship to tanning.  As you know, our good neighbor right next door is a tanning salon.  And in our previous location over on Oracle Road some of you may recall that when we rented the place it was almost literally filled with tanning booths, with a neon sign over them that read “Tanning” in bright letters.  Apparently, getting as much ultraviolet light—or is it infrared light?—was a high priority for people who came there, as it is apparently a high priority for people who come to our small corner of this large property.  I’m not sure what it says about Beit Simcha that we seem to be attracted like—dare I say it?—a moth to a light bulb to these tanning salons and booths.  I mean, we live in Tucson, Arizona, which has the greatest number of days of sun in America, and nearly the most in the world. Still, professional tanning establishments apparently flourish.  Which brings up the question of light.

We passed the summer solstice a couple of weeks ago, but we are still in a period of the year when sunrise is early and sunset late, long days of heat and especially, light.  Light in Jewish tradition is associated, first and foremost, with God.  The first words God speaks in the Torah are y’hi or, let there be light, and the opening section of Genesis is focused primarily on the distinctions and qualities of different manifestations of light: the lights of the day and the night, the various stars and the regularization of the distinction between light and darkness, light in its most primal form.  Light becomes, in Breisheet, in Genesis, a symbol of God’s presence in the universe, God’s ordering of the energy of the world into the elements that create structure and purpose.  As it says, God saw the light, and God saw that it was good.

There are many different words for light in Judaism: or, the all-purpose term; ziv, the divine emanation that comes from the Ein Sof, the mystical ideal of God, light energy without limitation; or Adonai, the glowing expression of God’s presence; and so on.  Each aspect of God’s influence in the world can actually be expressed as a form of light.  Light is not only central in Judaism; you could say that it lies at the heart of the Jewish understanding of God, and that each element of Jewish tradition embraces a different illuminated expression of the divine presence.  Light is good, and was created by God—but in a deeper sense, light is actually part of God.  In a way, when we see light, we see God.

So this time of great light should be, in its own way, a season of particular holiness.  These very long summer days lend themselves to a certain slowness, and that should give each of us the chance to appreciate just what we have, and what light means in our own lives.   

Here in Tucson we are particular experts on the subject of light.   Experiencing well over three hundred twenty sunny days a year we are likely to begin to take light for granted.  We even begin to object to it: another sunny day in the desert.  What else is new?  Perhaps it will rain soon, we certainly need it!

And yet these long days of summer have more meaning than that, for light is a gift.  Poet Michael Leunig writes beautifully of how light fills this season:

 We welcome summer and the glorious blessing of light.

We are rich with light; we are loved by the sun.

Let us empty our hearts into the brilliance.

Let us pour our darkness into the glorious, forgiving light.

For this loving abundance let us give thanks and offer our joy.

                  (Micheal Leunig, The Prayer Tree)

Now the flip side of these days of endless summer is that, in fact, we are already on the downside.  June 21st marked the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.  So even though the change is imperceptible, the truth is that days are actually getting shorter now.  That is, we are headed down the slope towards the dark days of December… and there’s nothing to slow or stop the slide for the next six months.  That’s right folks: we are rapidly moving from sun and light to darkness and shadow.  It’s all downhill from here, nothing but growing darkness and diminished light to come, until Chanukah comes to rebrighten things again. 

Like so much of life, you see, it’s all in how you look at it…  We are either enjoying the longest, brightest days of the year, or we are creeping, day by day, to that long dark night, our brief candle burning lower and lower.  It’s not light that is increasing, but darkness; not sunshine but night that is reaching out to capture us.

Which is true? 

Well, both of, course. But how you see this time of year depends very much on two things: context, and your own inclinations.  It’s either very light or getting darker; both are true, and both are legitimate ways to see the world.  But the results of adopting one view over the other can be quite different indeed.

We have an example of that in this week’s parshah of Chukat.  The start of this week’s Torah portion includes three disparate parts: the ritual of the red heifer, the parah adumah, the ashes of which formed the essential element used to cleanse the impurity of ritual contamination in Biblical times; second, the story of the death of Miriam, sister of Moses and Aaron; and third, the brief, dramatic tale of Moses’ striking a rock to draw forth water, instead of speaking to it as God has commanded, forfeiting his chance to go into the Promised Land.  The most powerful of these sections is this last one, describing the events of the waters of Meribah, where God oddly asks Moses to do something he has never before done in order to achieve a result he has gotten before by more direct means. 

It’s a short, strange story. There are many unanswered questions in the narrative: how many times has Moses, at this stage of his career, gotten water to flow for the people by whacking a rock?  Why does God ask him to talk to a rock instead of hit it?  What symbolism is buried in this short story that has such long-standing consequences for Moses, the greatest leader of our people?

At the time this fateful event takes place Moses has finally brought the people of Israel to the very borders of Erets Yisrael, the Promised Land of Israel.  He, and they, have just about made it.  After 40 years of wandering and loss, our ancestors are almost there.  It should be a great time for Moses. He has persevered and endured, brought his stubborn and rebellious flock mei’afeila l’orah, from darkness to light.  Now he should feel great, and have reached a point where he can really enjoy, sit back and kvell about how they have nearly made it. 

But instead of enjoying this moment in the sun, something goes wrong.  Faced with yet another crisis, Moses responds not by simply doing the things that bring goodness and blessing—and most importantly, will demonstrate his faith and leadership.  Instead, this time he acts out and smashes the rock.  Rather than seeking to show the people that God is filled to overflowing with power and mercy, God will provide for all their needs, in spite of the fact that they have continually questioned God the Divine Source has always come through—this time Moses simply shouts at the people “Here it comes, you rebels!” and swings his trusty staff and whacks the rock, hard, twice.

God can’t leave Moses out on a limb here, so water actually does flow.  But the die is cast: Moses can’t get into the Promised Land, and his act of serious rebellion marks him as a kind of tragic figure.  Our greatest leader failing to lead.  In other words, at a time of great light Moses sees only the growing darkness.

It’s interesting: it’s not as though Moses has been an unfailingly negative guy until now.  On the contrary, throughout the complex narrative of the Israelites’ wanderings, Moses has been the one who saw the good in the people of Israel, who sought to save them from God’s negative—and accurate—view of their failings.  But now, at the very gates of the Holy, Promised, Land, Moses own faith gives out.  After 40 years of insisting the sun was shining, he now discovers it’s getting dark outside.  Why?

I think the key to this paradox is found in the text.  The word for rock in Hebrew is tzur.  It’s a common enough word; but it is also used in a phrase that you may know, tzur Yisrael, the Rock of Israel, which is part of the Mi Chamocha prayer in the morning service.  And in that context tzur means something else: it means God. 

In other words, Moses striking out at this moment is not just Moses hitting instead of talking to a rock; it’s a very physical manifestation of a loss of faith.  A loss of faith in the people of Israel; a loss of faith in his own leadership; and, most centrally, a loss of faith in God.  Moses is striking out at God. 

You can, of course, make excuses for Moses.  His sister has just died.  He is certainly getting on in years.  Everyone he has known, the whole of the old generation, is just about gone.  It’s not easy serving the Jewish people for over 40 years.

But the heart of the matter is simple.  Moses has had a failure of belief.  He simply can’t bring himself to trust in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the One God who has consistently brought blessing and goodness—and light—to the people of Israel.

Faith is a strange concept, really.  It is, at heart, the triumph of belief over reason.  In Moses’ failure here we learn something simple, but powerful.

It is only this: that, at heart, light is God’s eternal gift to us.   The ability to see and appreciate and celebrate light is a blessing that can help define us.  We can, if we choose, embrace the light that comes, and understand it as an expression of the holiness that is everywhere in our world.  And when we begin to do that, we find illumination, and embrace it, and make our lives holy as well.  We do this by accepting God’s presence—by choosing not to strike the rock, not to deny the Tzur Yisrael, but to speak to it—that is, to talk to God, to pray, to argue, to sing, to worship.

For when we do that, we will surely feel God in our world.

The same thing is true for our own congregation, Beit Simcha: when we focus on what we can achieve and accomplish, we find we can accomplish anything, and do so with joy and light.

In this season of light, may we come to celebrate the goodness that is everywhere.  And may we come to mark that goodness with our thoughts and our actions.  For then we, too, will bring light.

Flags and Rebellion

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon’s Sermon on Korach 5782 

This Monday is the 4th of July, which makes this Independence Day Shabbat, I suppose.  This is a good Shabbat, Korach, for that celebratory experience, which I’ll explain in a little while.

Now growing up as a very patriotic American Jew, I always liked the 4th of July, the cookouts, ballgames and fireworks especially, and we used to hang up a large American flag in front of our house early in the morning on the 4th when I was little. 

Everybody did, and it didn’t demonstrate that you belonged to one particular political party or supported one or another candidate.  It was just what you did.  But I think we stopped doing that sometime during the Vietnam War. 

As I recall, nearly everyone on our block hung up an American flag on the 4th of July, and sometimes also on June 14th for Flag Day and some people did it on Memorial Day as well.  But some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s that stopped happening in our middle-class neighborhood in Los Angeles.  I think it was the net effect of a general disenchantment with inherited, reflexive patriotism.  It seems likely that it was a response of some kind to the race riots of the 60s—we lived pretty close to where the Watts Riots happened, and could see the smoke rising from the fires from our front porch.  It might have been the collective impact of the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King.  It certainly was effected by the Vietnam War and the protests against it, and then finally the whole saga of Watergate.  Putting up a flag on the 4th of July just didn’t feel the same way that it had to many people. 

I don’t remember any discussion about it, to be honest; I was just a kid, but we talked about things in my family; after all, we were Jewish.  But we didn’t talk about that. We just didn’t put up the flag one year and never started doing it again. 

It might be coincidental, but Paul Simon’s song, American Tune, written in 1972, around the time we quit putting up the flag on the 4th, captured the sense of disillusionment and discouragement that were much in the air during the 1970s:

“I don't know a soul who's not been battered
I don't have a friend who feels at ease
I don't know a dream that's not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it's all right, it's all right
We've lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we're traveling on
I wonder what’s gone wrong
I can't help but wonder what’s gone wrong.”

But that wasn’t the only sensibility in that song, or in the diluted patriotism of that period.  Paul Simon continues the song with a vision of his own soul liberated from his body in a dream, as in death, and continues:

I dreamed I was flying
High up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea
And I dreamed I was flying

We come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age's most uncertain hour
singing an American tune

All of which made me think about the place of Jews in American history and American experience.  Of course, most of us, like Paul Simon’s own Jewish ancestors, came sailing past that same Statue of Liberty on our way into the United States through Ellis Island.  That same statue has engraved upon it a poem written by Sephardic Jewish American author Emma Lazarus: Give me your tired, your poor…  A touching and powerful reminder that we have been the grateful recipients of the hospitality of this land, this nation built out of immigrants and refugees and the wretched refuse of every teeming shore on the planet.  

But we Jews started our American journey long before the Statue of Liberty was built or erected.  We have a deep and positive involvement from the earliest stages of American history, from colonial times to the Revolutionary War and the creation of the United States.  In a way, this seems like a more important subject to reflect on now than it has been for some time. 

We Jews have long viewed America as a unique nation of opportunity that guaranteed religious freedom from its’ founding, and we have flourished here in the United States as much as we ever have in any nation during our very long history as a people.  After suffering religious persecution at the hands of governments all around the world for literally thousands of years, it has been our privilege to enjoy true freedom here in the United States.  We have been blessed by the ability to create thriving, vibrant American Jewish life from colonial times to today.  America has truly been a golden land of acceptance and opportunity for Jews in so many ways for a very long time, and it remains so today during our Golden Age of Jews in America, in which so much is available to us.

There have been Jews in America since colonial times, and we have always been active participants in the creation of the institutions that make this country what it is.  At the time of the American revolution, that is 1776-1783, there were very few Jews living in what became the United States.  Out of a total population of perhaps 2.5 million people in 1776, there wesre 1500 Jews sprinkled around the 13 colonies.  There were active synagogues in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Newport, Rhode Island, Charleston, South Carolina and elsewhere, and about 150 Jews served in the American Army, ten percent of the total Jewish population and about 20% of the men.  That is higher than the proportion of non-Jews serving in Washington’s armies.

The first Jew ever elected to public office in America, Francis Salvador, was also one of the first patriots to die in battle for the Revolutionary Armies.  He was a South Carolina representative, killed August 1, 1776 fighting the Cherokees, allies of the British.  A number of other Jews served in the patriotic cause and achieved prominence fighting the British, including Mordechai Sheftall, David Franks, and Uriah P. Levy, who later became the first Jewish Commodore in the US Navy and the savior of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello home and estate.  Famously, Haym Salomon helped finance the colonial cause and patriot army during the darkest days of the war, and personally loaned most of his funds to impecunious Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. 

Jews have been deeply involved in the development and flourishing of America from its first days, and were actively involved as dedicated patriots throughout its formative period and through every development and crisis in US history.  During every major military conflict Jews volunteered in higher numbers than proportional to defend our country. This has been true of us whether we were born here, or moved here and adopted America and were accepted by her. 

Without going more deeply into American Jewish history, the facts are that Jews have been part and parcel of the fabric of American life throughout our nation’s 243 years of existence.  We have and remain deeply patriotic Americans in the best sense of that word, seeking always to see our nation live to its highest standards guaranteeing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to its citizens, seeking to light the lamp of justice and freedom of conscience and expression for our own people and the entire world.  Jews are proud to be an integral part of this compassionate nation that welcomes all who come seeking opportunity, who embrace the values that have made our country a magnet for the bright, enterprising and capable people of this entire world.  We relate to American exceptionalism, of being a nation founded on a new continent without the trappings of monarchy or aristocracy, a theoretically class-free society based on accomplishment, talent and effort.

And perhaps we Jews feel American because America was founded by people who challenged the status quo, upset the applecart, and sought to remake the world.  And there is something very Jewish about that.

In reading the Torah portion of Korach on 4th of July weekend you could be forgiven if you saw it as the kind or rebellion that presaged the one led by our Founding Fathers on this continent so many centuries later.  After all, Korach describes an attempted revolution led by a group of aristocrats against a related group of similar aristocrats.  Korach and his people were Levites, the same as Moses and Aaron are Levites.  They are from the privileged class.  That was also true of the leaders of the American revolution in 1776: George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock and James Madison and most of them were wealthy, privileged members of the best class, colonial versions of the titled people the British sent against them.    

But there was a difference: the founders of America rebelled but did not do so to make themselves great; they did so to bring freedom and opportunity to most people here, enslaved people and women excepted, of course.  That was not Korach’s motivation.

While we joke about the stereotype of two Jews having three opinions, the truth is that our heritage is a contentious one.  If we weren’t rebelling against God and Moses, we were fighting for control of the monarchy or against Philistines or Greeks or Romans.  And when actual armed insurrection was beyond us, we engaged in intellectual debates so intense that they bordered on warfare: from the endless, detailed, vigours Talmudic arguments to the political infighting of the Zionists to the Jewish socialists against the Jewish communists against the Jewish anarchists, there is a long and rich and highly developed Jewish tradition of what we might call Korach-ism.

The truth is that leading the Jewish people has never been an easy task—important, rewarding, ethically essential, but never easy.

So why do it?  Perhaps the answer is also to be found in our Torah portion.  Not so much in the desire we may have to see our enemies swallowed up whole by the earth before everyone’s eyes, although that is an attraction.  No, it is in the understanding, as Korach ultimately confirms, that everyone is holy in this community of priests, but that legitimate, principled, selfless leadership is also absolutely necessary in order for us to achieve that holiness.  We need direction, and organization, and the practical details of everyday functionality to be taken care of so that we might grow spiritually in holiness.  

That is, there is a significant difference between argument and insurrection for the sake of ego, striving to make ourselves feel more important, and argument and investigation for the sake of truth, trying with genuine dedication to make things better for everyone.  As our tradition teaches us, there are different ways of disagreeing. 

What distinguishes Moses from those who rebel against him, like Korach, is his humble desire to do God’s will, and to further the cause of oneness and sanctity in this world.  What he teaches us is that conflicts are not the goal—it is what happens after the resolution of that conflict that defines us and establishes our reputations in this world.

If we are true Jews of principle, we will have legitimate disagreements, and confront serious challenges.  We may even, if you will, take down our flags from time to time.  But it is our ability to accept those differences, sometimes lose the arguments, and nonetheless continue to work hard together to serve God with commitment and passion that really matters.

May the Holy One bless us all, each of us, with the wisdom to know that our path lies not with Korach and rebellion for its own sake, not with revolt for our ego’s sake, but with Moses, and a humility based on our commitments to the highest of purposes.  And may we always act in this way, and so truly serve God.

Israel, Presidents and Spies

Sermon for Shlach Lecha 5782

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

Leadership is a funny thing, especially in the Jewish world.  Of course, leading a people known primarily for being stiff-necked and opinionated is no bargain—not that that applies to our congregation, of course, thank God.  But nonetheless, there is a certain challenge inherent in trying to be even nominally in charge of any group of Jews, something like herding cats.  To paraphrase what Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir supposedly once said to President Lyndon Johnson, it’s like being president of a group of presidents.  Everyone in the group is pretty sure they know what to do and how to do it, and if you yourself have any inkling that you’ve got a better way, you’re probably deluded in every way: your Jewish constituents will happily tell you that your way is worse, not better, and besides, who would listen to you if you were right in the first place?

Not that I’ve had any experience with this, personally, of course…

I was thinking about Golda Meir a little this last week, because Israel is on my mind and in the news.  I know that most of the focus this week has been on the US Supreme Court and its reversal of Roe v Wade, officially announced today after the decision was leaked a couple of weeks ago.  And there has been news from the US Senate of compromise on the first national legislation to even attempt to address gun violence in 28 years.  But I am a rabbi, this is a synagogue, and one other important event took place this week 7,500 miles away, and that too matters.  I’ll get to that in a moment.  First, Golda Meir.

Golda Meir, of course, is the now near-legendary Israeli Prime Minister who held office from 1969-1974.  She was instrumental in bringing American Jewish support to the Yishuv, the pre-State Jewish settlement in British Mandatory Israel, and later in leading the country through dramatic and traumatic times.  She is still the only woman Prime Minister of Israel—I don’t believe the US has had a woman president yet—and she said many things we still like to quote, from that one about presidents to more serious reflections, such as “There were be peace between Jews and Arabs when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us,” and “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children.  We cannot forgive the Arabs for making our children kill their children.”

Golda Meir came up a few months ago when Ukraine President Volodomyr Zelensky was addressing the Knesset by video.  Golda Meir was born in Kiev, Ukraine, when it was part of the Russian Czarist Empire, in 1898, and Zelensky quoted her saying, 'We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.'

I was thinking about this, but especially that quote about being the president of a country full of presidents, when I started to prepare my sermon for parshat Shlach Lecha this week.  You see, in looking back to last year’s Shabbat Shlach Lecha, I discovered that exactly one Jewish year ago I was noting that Israel had a new government, the first one that didn’t include Bibi Netanyahu as Prime Minister in 12 years.  As I said at the time, “The coalition that was agreed to at the very last hour—actually, the last half hour before the mandate to form a new government would have expired—is a remarkable and unwieldy amalgamation of parties across the entire Israeli political spectrum from the far right to the far left…

“What unites all of these most unlikely allies into one monumentally unlikely coalition government?  Well, they all hate Bibi Netanyahu and want him out of the prime ministership.  He has been there too long, betrayed far too many political promises to pretty much everyone in Israeli politics, and his corruption trials have hung over the head of the Israeli government literally for years.  By my count, about 20 of the 61 seats in this coalition are held by people who used to support, or work for, Netanyhu and now hate his guts.  Sometimes the personal transcends the political.  And of course, all Israelis are heartily sick of national elections every six months for the past two years in which the composition of the Knesset is rearranged but nothing much changes.

“Still, this Israeli government is composed of super far right parties, very far left parties, Jews, Arabs, everybody, and it’s hard to envision how it can possibly work.  If this happened in America, it would be like Bernie Sanders and Matt Gaetz in the same coalition government… with, say, Mitt Romney and Nancy Pelosi and Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren and Susan Collins and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez. 

“In any case, I certainly wish the newly formed Israeli government luck; it will need it, even to hold together for long once Bibi isn’t there to band them all together against him.”

And then I predicted that if the government lasted longer than a year, well, we would all need to believe in miracles again.  Which is again, a paraphrase of Golda Meir, who said, “In Israel, to be a realist, you need to believe in miracles.”

So guess what?  The coalition government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennet lasted, well, just one week more than a year…  I guess we all can agree on the miracle thing, right?

Actually, the government fell because of a stunningly cynical political manipulation by Bibi Netanyahu—why does that sound like such a low bar to achieve these days?—in which he persuaded his own Likud Party members to vote against a routine measure that they fully support politically and ideologically in order to force the coalition government to fall.  It worked, the coalition government of Bennet is out, and the beat goes on.

Israel will now have a three-month respite while they prepare for elections around the High Holy Days, the fifth national election in three years.  Ya’ir Lapid, the deputy Prime Minister will become caretaker Prime Minister; a takeh metziah as we say in Yiddish.  And then, more elections, more politicking, and so on and so on.  And the hyper-democracy of Israel continues.

You know, there are many places in the world with a deep deficit of credible democracy. Every single nation in the Arab world, for example, lacks democracy and representative government, plus Russia, China, Turkey, Cuba, much of Africa, and many other autocracies all around the globe.  On the other hand, Israel seems to be positively addicted to elections of late, and sometimes you really do need a little stability.

But still, on the whole, Israel seems to continue to grow, develop, prosper and advance in nearly every way in spite of this trouble at the top.  So… I suppose the good news is that Israel is basically doing just fine in spite of its election addiction issues, and the fact that a nation full of presidents, or prime ministers, is never going to be easy to manage.  In fact, Israel is a fabulous place to visit, and our new plan is have our Beit Simcha trip to Israel in November of this year.  I can’t wait!

Which reminds me of this week’s Torah portion, again, and espionage, the main subject of our parshah.  I’m sure that there are all kinds of tests available today for determining who makes a good subject for intelligence work and who just can’t pull it off.   In spite of the oft-repeated slander that the definition of an oxymoron is military intelligence, no doubt armed services and civilian agencies have lots of ways of figuring out who is good at this stuff and who isn’t. 

In fact, this process goes back a very long way. There are actually a series of spy stories in the Bible, and there are different ways to determine the best kind of person to employ in this work.  But when you are trying this out for the first time you are liable to make a few mistakes.  And so it seems in our portion of Shlach Lecha.

The commandment given at the start of Shlach Lecha is purely practical.  God commands Moses to send men to scout out the land of Canaan and see if it is suitable for the Israelites to invade and occupy.  Each tribe is to be represented by one man, ish echad, and each of these is to be a prince of the people, a nasi.  That creates a scout group of 12 men. Well, let’s be honest; these are not scouts, but in the classic use of the term, spies.  A spying pack of 12 guys is sent, with some ceremony, to explore the land soon to be known as Israel.

I have always wondered about God’s thinking, and the methods God commands Moses to employ in our Torah portion.  What is called for here is close scouting of an alien and enemy-filled land, a land flowing with milk and honey but also full of Canaanite tribes and towns and armies.  Who is best suited to such a mission?  What do you think of when you picture a spy?

If your beau ideal of a spy is James Bond or Mata Hari, glamorous, dramatic types, then this is the group for you.  Twelve dashing young men, leaders of their people, princes of the blood, a virtual Rat Pack of glamorous types, an Ocean’s 12 of the best and brightest.  These men—all men, naturally, in those days—are known by name and reputation.  They are all from illustrious families and hold high office.  These illustrious young gentlemen are no doubt feeling full of themselves for having been selected for this important mission.  It’s all very exciting.  What an opportunity!  How thrilling!

Moses gives them instructions that are practical and thorough.  “Go up and see the Negev Desert and the mountains, see what kind of country it is; Are the people strong or weak, few or many?  Is the country they live in good or bad, are the cities open or fortified with walls?  Is the land productive and rich, or is it barren and thin?  Are there forests or not?  Be sure to bring back some of its fruit.”

In other words, go and spy it all out, see if it is productive, and see if we can capture it.  And this band of wealthy brothers sets off.

In retrospect, this wasn’t the ideal way to go about this task.  Let’s see, we are trying to find out the truth about the country we are exploring, to ascertain its military strength, to see what it’s really like.  And so, under God’s instruction, we send out one more than a football team full of prep-school guys from Ivy League colleges with titles and fancy clothes, and instruct them to bring back souvenirs.  I’m sure none of the Canaanites noticed that group wandering around the land.

It’s like sending a pack of US Senators to secretly spy out an alien land.  Actually, we do exactly that when we send those fact-finding missions overseas, the junkets our elected leaders are so fond of going on.  Those kinds of missions do find out facts, but the facts they tend to find out are just exactly the facts that the people of the land want them to find out. 

So it proves to be with these m’raglim, these spies.  They learn the land is good, beautiful and productive but they also manage to be convinced that the Canaanite tribes, small enclaves of clans really, are some sort of giant set of military nation-states filled with mighty monsters and warriors.  We should just leave them be, these princes of the people conclude; they are too many and too mighty for us!  We felt like grasshoppers next to them!

The fascinating part of all this is the question of just why God chose to use the people who are designated as nasi, “raised up”, high and mighty for intelligence work.  Because if you really want to find out just how a society works, and where the bodies are buried, the right way to do it is probably not to send an ostentatious group of fancy-pants officials to troupe about stealing grapes and gaping at the residents en masse.  No, the right way to spy out a land is by sending an anonymous looking guy or two to wander around looking unimportant, talking to locals at bars and brothels, and finding out just what the people really are all about. 

As it turns out, that’s just what Joshua himself does a generation later in the Haftarah we will chant tomorrow.  The two spies Joshua chooses aren’t even named in the Bible, and they slip unannounced into the major city of their enemies and go directly to the house of Rahab the harlot.  That’s how you find out the real facts about a country.

My good friend, the late Harold Bongarten, may his memory be a blessing, did exactly this kind of work during World War II, slipping behind German lines and pretending to be a returning soldier wandering around France.  Harold was short, chubby, and charming, had a broad smile and a kind manner, and was easy to underestimate.  He sent back a series of reports that helped the Allies know who to trust and who to arrest in each town as they recaptured it from the Nazis.

The lessons of this story of the spies are complex and rich.  But surely one lesson is about how we must approach things ourselves as Jews.  For the original m’raglim came to their mission with pride and arrogance.  They were the princes of the people, after all.  They had a high standing and knew the best way to do things.  They probably never got their hands dirty.  And, of course, they failed miserably.  You know, everyone was literally a president…

In a way, when we Jews come to services, we are a little bit like the m’raglim, secure in our smarts, sure of our knowledge and status. That makes it a slightly unlikely that we can recognize the spiritual experiences available to us if we were just a little less full of ourselves.

Perhaps what God needs from us Jews is not the pedigrees of the elite, but the hearts of the humble.  What Judaism, and Jewish community, requires is not the stature of the elect but the openness of the ordinary woman and man.  What allows us to reach holiness is not superiority but sincerity.

If we approach God, our own promised land, as simple human beings, then the secret fastness of the divine spirit, the comfort and support that comes from God, will be revealed, and opened to us.  And then our own mission, as Jews, will be fulfilled for everyone’s good.

May this become our will, and thus our blessing.  Ken Yehi Ratson.

Bring the Light

Sermon Parshat Beha’alotecha 5782

This week features the longest days of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, with the summer solstice coming up this Tuesday, on June 21st.  There are Jewish holidays associated with each of the equinoxes, spring in March and autumn in September, and the winter solstice in December.  But there is no Jewish sun-related holiday in June.  This demonstrates some interesting things about Judaism, and about all religion.

Judaism, unlike other ancient religions, views God as Creator of the natural universe.  Rather than seeing the sun and moon as gods, or the stars and planets as independent entities, we have always understood the entirety of nature as being the result of God initiating creation.  You can call this a religious form of the Big Bang Theory, if you like; I tend to think of it that way.  God began all creation out of nothing, Creation ex Nihilo, and the central idea is simply that the sun, moon, planets, stars, galaxies, and other celestial entities revolve and rotate and expand or contract in ways initiated by God’s original act of creation.  These heavenly bodies aren’t seen as bearing any astrological magic, they don’t impact our lives directly through some spiritual or mystical process, but are simply objects created by God. 

But we Jews have always been influenced by the surrounding cultures in which we lived, and we have often utilized some of the ideas others have found relevant and important.  We just use them to demonstrate the central idea of one God, and God’s role forming and shaping the entirety of the universe.

In nearly every culture in the world the place of the sun in the sky has been of interest, and often a central focus of religious practice as well.  In Egypt, the sun god Ra was a central deity, as was Aton, the solar disk. Mesopotamians worshipped Shamash, the sun god, whose name became the word for sun in Hebrew, shemesh.  Other peoples worshipped the sun too, and many created special rituals and monumental religious places dedicated to the solar cycle, from Stonehenge in Britain to the Temple of the Sun in Beijing to the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan near Mexico City. 

Because of the predictable quality of the solar year, nearly every region and people on earth has ritual holidays associated with the dates when days were shortest and nights longest—the winter solstice, as well as days longest and nights shortest—the summer solstice—and the dates when the days and nights were of equal duration, the spring and fall equinoxes.   Those holidays had various names and rites, from the Babylonian Nisanu spring festival to the Midsummer day in Scandinavia to the fall festival in Vietnam and China to the Roman Saturnalia that was transformed into Christmas. 

Judaism developed rituals and holidays around these solstices and equinoxes too: Passover, near the vernal equinox in spring, is our chag haAviv, our springtime holiday of freedom.  Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, and Sukkot, our harvest festival, occur around the fall equinox.  And in winter, of course, Chanukah, our festival of lights, comes at the darkest time of year near the winter solstice.  Even though we don’t acknowledge any special religious significance to the cycles of the sun—our Jewish calendar, of course, is based on the moon—we still manage to cover three of the four special solar times with important festivals.  These holidays are officially unrelated to sun-worship, but in keeping with a Jewish genius for adopting customs of other traditions we utilize them to advance Jewish ideas and values.

We Jews do this for the key spring, fall, and winter dates but not for the Summer Solstice, this coming week.  It seems slightly odd that we connect to the other three crucial periods of the year for solar religiosity, while on the one day of the year that seems most likely to inspire religious connection we do bubkis, nothing.

Perhaps we don’t do anything for the summer solstice precisely because it was such an important element for many ancient religious traditions.  In Israel, the Essenes, an ascetic Jewish religious group active during the 1st century CE, were the only sect to use a solar calendar, rather the lunar one. At the time, nearly 2000 years ago, Essenes were one of about 24 different Jewish religious sectarian groups in Israel.  Archaeologists found that the largest room of the ruins at Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered) was a sun temple.  This Tuesday, at the time of the summer solstice, the rays of the setting sun will shine at the angle of 286 degrees along the building's longitudinal axis, and illuminate its eastern wall. The room is oriented at exactly the same angle as the Egyptian shrines dedicated to the sun gods. Two ancient authorities -- the historian Josephus and the philosopher Philo of Alexandria -- wrote that the Essenes were sun worshipers, and here we have the evidence.

In a world thus permeated by the glow of sun worshippers, Judaism thus found itself in a position in which it needed to avoid establishing anything that could become a catalyst for more solar devotion.  And so, no Summer Solstice celebrations for us this week, and no special dedications on behalf of solar devotionals.

But the days are sure long now, and filled with light.  Which leads to another thought about light.

This week we read the Torah portion of Beha’alotecha, the third parsha in the Book of Numbers.  In Beha’alotecha the command is given for the greatest symbol of Judaism ever created, the menorah, the candelabrum that comes to symbolize everything meaningful about Jewish inspiration and ritual.  Is the menorah the becomes the chief image of Jewish life for over three thousand years, the menorah that is the official state symbol of Medinat Yisrael, the state of Israel, the menorah that is the most important visual representation of what Judaism is all about. 

The seven-branched Menorah represents, in a picture, everything that is meaningful about Judaism for millennia.  The oldest Jewish tombstones we have are decorated with menorahs.  In the remarkable collection of ancient Jewish objects that you can find in the Vatican in Rome, for example, there are dozens of images of menorahs.  No wonder Israel made it the symbol of the state, the most modern and meaningful expression of Jewish life today.

Now I know that the so-called Star of David, the Magein David, is the picture everyone has in her or his mind about what really represents Judaism.  But the Star of David is actually a Johnny-come-lately.  It has only been used for perhaps 700 years as a Jewish symbol at all.  For much more of Jewish history it has been the menorah that matters.

That menorah is lit in our Torah portion of Beha’altoecha this week to prove the presence of God, the symbolic daily representation of God’s presence in our midst that really represents what is holy and brilliant about Judaism.  The Menorah was the 7-branched light lit in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and then the Temple in Jerusalem, as the sign of God’s eternal presence. When it was lit, God was there.

Now we are all familiar with the Chanukah menorah, the 9 candled lamp that that we tend to think of as a “menorah”.  Actually, that is not a menorah, really, but a Chanukiah, a specific kind of lamp.  The Chanukiah, while a much older symbol of Judaism than the Magein David, the star of David, is still kind of newish—less than 2200 years old, 1000 years younger than the menorah itself.  

The lamp we have here in Beha’alotecha is the 7 branched menorah that was the central symbol of Judaism, the one you can see being carried off by Roman soldiers on the Arch of Titus in Rome.

So you should be asking yourself an important question by now:  just why are we talking about a 7-branched menorah?  After all, we don’t actually use such a menorah in any Jewish rituals at all today.  It is an archaic symbol, something so out of date that, with all our many rituals and candle lightings and brachot and services, we don’t even have one single rite in which we use a 7 branched menorah for anything.  That symbol has become meaningless.

Which is important.  Because no matter how central the menorah was to our people’s history and symbolism, no matter how much it represented God’s inspirational presence in our midst, it is now, in matter of fact, meaningless to Jews.

Why is that?

Because we didn’t use it. After the Temple was destroyed for the last time we never again lit a 7-branched menorah for any ritual purpose.  And so, it just doesn’t matter.

We do keep it around, as a memento of our great past history.  But it isn’t something you would want to buy in a gift shop, or give for a bar mitzvah or confirmation gift. 

And why not?

Because there is no practical use for it.  A 7 branched menorah is like an outdated computer or useless old cellphone today.  No real meaning.

Now, why is this relevant tonight?

Because that menorah truly can serve one important practical purpose.  Just as our Judaism serves an important practical purpose.

In a basic way, that golden menorah was a way to keep track of the days of the week—a new light was added each day from Sunday through Friday until, finally, all seven branches shone on the holiest of days, Shabbat. 

Each day, we added a bit more light.  Each day, our ancestors added to the illumination of God’s holiness.  Each day they remembered to bring just a bit more brilliance into their lives.

If we can remember to do the same—to add a bit of extra light into our lives each day—then perhaps we, too, will find holiness in our own lives, and reach closer to God.

Be’ha’alotecha instructs us to light the menorah in the holiest place, commands us to bring illumination, to add light to the world.  We Jews have always believed this is our truest task, to brighten the darkness of cruel or thoughtless societies.  There was an entire Jewish movement, the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment in the 19th century, that believed that intellectual honesty and integrity and openness could help bring more light to the dark places on our globe, could inspire us to grow in goodness, holiness, and responsibility.

So too, today, in a society and a world where darkness seems to spread unchecked, it is our role to bring light even into these superlong days, to seek to brink the illumination of care, love and integrity into our world, to brighten everything through our own example.

So may it prove to be for each of us this week.

A Great Blessing Indeed

Sermon Shabbat Naso 5782, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

You may remember this gesture from a re-run of the famous TV show Star Trek, or one of the many movies they have made based on that show.  Spock, the Vulcan Science Officer on the Starship Enterprise, raises his hands and with his fingers shaped into a kind of extended “W” format says in his rich baritone voice, “Live long and prosper.” 

That gesture was not originally designed by a TV director, writer or showrunner, not even the redoubtable Gene Rodenberry, creator of Star Trek.  It is actually the ancient sign of the Kohanim, the high priests, used since the days of the Temple in Jerusalem as part of the traditional blessing bestowed on the people during the ceremony of birkat kohanim, called duchenen in Yiddish.  The story behind it appearing as a feature of Star Trek is that Leonard Nimoy, who gained fame playing Spock, was asked to come up with a physical gesture of farewell that a Vulcan would use.  Nimoy grew up an Orthodox Jew in Boston, and he himself was a kohein.  He immediately thought of forming his hands into a Shin, symbolic of Shadai, an ancient name of God, and added the Biblical-sounding phrase, “Live long and prosper.”  That’s not far from the way most people have understood the priestly blessing, which asks God for physical health and safety and material sustenance.  And so a primal Jewish blessing was transformed into an otherworldly invocation.

Leonard Nimoy was a fascinating guy, with a rich and complicated Jewish heritage.  As a boy he had such a good singing voice that he was one of the meshor’rim, the singers in his shul’s choir, and he impressed people so much at his bar mitzvah that he was asked to reprise it the next week at another temple.  As his also Jewish co-star on Star Trek, William Shatner, said, "He is still the only man I know whose voice was two bar mitzvahs good!"

In popular culture, the great Canadian-Jewish troubadour, Leonard Cohen, concluded a concert in Ramat Gan, Israel about fifteen years ago by raising his hands in the traditional gesture and reciting the Birkat Kohanim, learned in his own Orthodox youth in Montreal.

As the child of a Kohein myself, I used to practice that gesture as a kid by stretching my fingers on the seat back of the chair in front of me.  I wasn’t sure of the exact way the ritual of blessing the people was performed for a very good reason: in the Conservative and Reform synagogues in which I grew up it wasn’t done.  They didn't duchen, that is, have the kohanim, the descendants of Aaron the High Priest, do the weird, antique ritual at all.

In fact, even in Orthodox synagogues outside of Israel the Birkat Kohanim with its full ritual is usually only performed on the three pilgrimage festivals, Pesach, Shavu’ot and Sukkot.  I first had the opportunity to participate in duchenen when I was 16 years old, on a trip to Israel with my parents.  It was over the holiday of Passover, and my father and brother and I went to the Kotel in Jerusalem, where thousands of people had gathered for the festival prayers.  When the time came for the Birkat Kohanim, for the priests to offer the three-part blessing to the assembled throngs of people, hundreds of Kohanim had gathered at the Kotel.  We all faced the Western Wall, covered our heads with our tallises, and chanted the blessing enabling us to sanctify the people with the blessings of Aaron.  And then we turned and raised our hands in that shin gesture and chanted the words of the blessing, and the stirring, modal melody that accompanied them, over the assembled congregation. 

When you do this blessing, people are supposed to hide their faces from you, as in that moment, theoretically, you as a kohein take on the same divine illumination that suffused Aaron when he gave these blessings, much like the aura that radiated from Moses face after communing with God.  The men opposite us covered their faces with their tallitot.  But one little boy peeked out from under his father’s talis, and my dad always recalls watching his father’s hand circling around and covering the boy’s eyes…

An artist named Rachel Farbiarz describes watching this priestly experience at her own temple growing up: “At a specified time in the service, the community’s kohanim discreetly excused themselves to perform their preparatory ablutions. The faint sound of the priests’ shuffling was followed by a call-to-attention—Koh-Haahh-Neeeem!–summoning them to their posts before the ark. The men of the congregation gathered their children and their children’s children under the prayer shawls they had drawn over their heads.

“The kohanim faced them, cloaked too in their billowing shawls. Their arms outstretched, their fingers extended and conjoined in the cultic v-shape, the priests swayed and chanted the blessing–distending its syllables, trilling its notes. Only after the kohanim finished the blessing did the face-off of masquerading ghosts end: Modestly, the priests turned their backs to the congregation and took down their shawls, unveiling themselves before the ark.

“I actually was not supposed to have witnessed any of this. All of us, kohanim and congregation alike, were to have had our eyes closed or averted downward, to shield ourselves from the awesome power that emanated from between the kohanim’s fingers. I have always suspected though that we protected ourselves not only from the Divine, but also from something very human: the tendency to turn an act of blessing into an act that invests one group with power at the expense of the other.”

Which raises a question that I, too, struggled with this past week: why can only some people confer blessings?

How many times have you been in a service or at a life-cycle celebration and heard the rabbi or cantor intone or chant or sing, “Yvarechecha Adonai v’yishmerecha, May God bless you and keep you…”  But did you ever think about whether the person officiating really had some special ability to bless people that other human beings don’t have?

Which raises the further question: just what is a blessing in today’s world?

At its most basic level, a blessing is a kind of gift being given by one person to another.  We use this colloquially to mean anything good that happens to us, or even a person who helps us—“my mother’s nurse is a true blessing” or “that child has been a blessing to us”—but in its most typical, pure, narrow form a blessing is a way to convey divine favor from the giver to the recipient.  When one person blesses another, he or she is passing on something that is, in actuality, not really his or hers to give: the one giving the blessing is acting as a kind of conduit for God.  When you give a blessing, you are conveying a gift from God to another person. 

In Jewish tradition, blessings are often given by a parent to a child.  Each Friday night at the Shabbat table, in a ritual that we do publicly here at Congregation Beit Simcha but which you are also supposed to do at home, fathers and mothers bless their children, using that formula that goes back millennia: “May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh, may God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.”  And some parents then add the priestly blessing, “May God bless and keep you, May God’s presence illuminate you and be kind to you, May God’s presence turn to you and give you peace.”  This is generally experienced, I think, as a form of parental love being conveyed, rather than an actual gift of divine favor.  Dad or mom is showing how much they care for each child, placing a hand on his or her head, touching them and offering a wish for goodness for them.

In other words, it’s a lovely gesture, a beautiful one, sweet and caring and nurturing.  But I’m not sure how many Jewish parents or children think that something divine is being directly conveyed.  I mean, in my experience, very few Jewish children think their parents are God…  and none after about age 5.  Certainly, no teenagers think that way.

But if parental blessing makes sense in a human way, what are we to make of the public offering of blessing by a religious leader?  The idea that one person—any person—has the capacity to bring special favor to us through his or her personal action, which is the idea behind a priest or rabbi or minister or imam “giving a blessing” seems archaic, out of date.  There was certainly a time when the common understanding was that a person who held a ritual role literally brought God’s presence to the person being blessed.  But in today’s world, when religious training is essentially academic—learn the content of these books, listen to lectures, study a subject and demonstrate proficiency—the notion that there is something mystically powerful that the representative of a religious tradition alone can convey is a relic of a past age.  And, frankly, it demonstrates a bit of arrogance on the part of the clergyperson doing the blessing, as if to say, “Only I can give this blessing from God to you.”

And yet…

I recall a fundraising event at a congregation I was serving.  It was the standard sort of function put together for such a purpose by synagogues and other organizations: a prominent person is honored, his or her friends are asked to donate to a tribute book and host tables for a significant donation, and funds are raised for the organization.  The program included a video tribute to the person and his accomplishments, speeches by community leaders and family members, and a banquet-style meal.  And then I, as the rabbi, was to say some words of tribute.

It was clear that the organizers—prominent members of my congregation at the time—did not want the evening to be “too Jewish.”  This was a purely secular tribute to a person who didn’t attend synagogue much and did most of his volunteering at other organizations, but he was a good man and a member, and I was the rabbi.  I might only see him twice a year—Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, unless he skipped one—but I still had the responsibility to connect this fundraising gig with Judaism. 

I think the time I was allotted to do this on the hour-long program was listed in bold as, “Rabbi Cohon talks—2 minutes.” I have never spoken long at such events—no one wants a sermon at a tribute dinner—and I didn’t then.  But when I finished my remarks, and started to leave the podium, I noticed something amiss.  The honoree was clearly distressed.  The organizer rushed up to me, and grabbing my arm whispered in my ear, “He wants to know what happened to the blessing?” 

And so I re-ascended the dais and called him and his family up, and I asked everyone to rise, and I lifted up my arms and shaped each hand into the form of a Shin, symbolic of Shadai, the most ancient name of God, and I chanted and intoned those ancient words from Naso, “May God bless you and keep you…”  And the honoree’s disappointed countenance relaxed. I had given him his blessing.

Looking back, I know why I was so surprised.  The whole evening had been devoid of religious feeling or ceremony, from the cocktails flowing freely at the opening reception to the jazz played by the hired band to the lame jokes and less-than-moving speeches and tributes during the program itself.  And then, suddenly, it became clear that being blessed mattered very much to this very successful but apparently religiously uninvolved man. And that the rabbi had to be the one to give him that blessing.

I’m still not sure that a Kohein, a priestly descendant, or a rabbi or any religious figure has a special power to invoke the deity or bring divine favor or somehow schlep God into the room in a unique way.  To me, God is always present, and God’s blessings flow when we work to make them happen.  But there definitely remains something in many people’s consciousness that testifies that a blessing given by a rabbi or other clergy is special, a sacred gift that only religious figures can offer.  In a sense, I hope that they are right and I am wrong…

Look, I was born a kohein.  As the old joke has it, my father was a kohein, my grandfather was a kohein, and by golly I wanted to be a kohein too.  So I got to be one, and learned to make the magical sign with my fingers, the shin of blessing. Mazal Tov.

I like being a kohein, getting called up first to the Torah on occasion, and when I happen to be in a shul that duchens and conducts the old-fashioned priestly blessing publicly I like going up and being part of it.  It’s a cool ritual: you take off your shoes, the Levites wash your hands, you cover yourself in a big talis while the congregation hides its eyes, chant the weird and powerful call-and-response melody of the blessings with the cantor.  It’s slightly spooky, beautiful, unique.  And when people hide their eyes during the blessing, they do so as though God’s very presence was shining from us kohanim, as though we really were conduits of divine energy.

But what makes a Kohein any holier than anyone else?  In Temple times Kohanim had to live a different lifestyle, couldn’t farm or go to war, had limits on their marriage prospects, were trained from early in life for Temple service, and lived the rites of sanctity every day.  But realistically, kohanim today can be observant or not, ritually adept or not, good people or not.  It’s a roll of the dice.  So why preserve this ancient ritual? 

Perhaps it’s for a very, very simple reason.  You see, it’s not just Kohanim who have a hereditary role.  Judaism is all of our inheritance, it’s in our DNA, whatever our theoretical tribe, Kohein, Levi, Yisrael, whether born Jewish or having adopted this sacred trust by choice. 

The real purpose of it is to remind us that we are all part of a sacred inheritance, that we each are members of the true religiously royal family, that we each can, and should, wear the keter kehuna the crown of priesthood.  We truly are the inheritors, spiritually, of what we are told earlier in the Torah, part of this mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh, the kingdom of priests, members of the holy people that is responsible to live lives at a higher moral level.

And that Birkat Kohanim, that simple, three-part blessing, may confer on each of us a little bit of that holiness.  So may it be: May God bless you and grace you.  May the light of God’s presence shine on you and illuminate you; may God’s presence turn to you and give you peace.

Everyone Counts

Shabbat Bamidbar 5782 Sermon

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

If you have ever closely read our Torah portion this week, then you know that in most ways Bamidbar is a stupendously dull portion, one of the least superficially interesting Torah portions of the entire year.  After all, it’s nothing more than a series of lists, a counting, a census of people.  How many were in the tribe of Reuben, head by head, one by one, age twenty and over, all able to go out to war?  46,500.  How many were in the tribe of Shimon, head by head, one by one, age twenty and over, all able to go out to war?  59,300.  How many in the tribe of Gad, Judah, Issachar, Zevulun, Ephraim, Menasseh, Benjamin, Dan, Asher, Naphtali, head by head, one by one, age twenty and over, all able to go out to war, on and on, thousands upon thousands, all counted one at a time?  Numbers and numbers and numbers, added together, a Torah portion only an accountant could love. 

No wonder there are so many Jewish CPAs.

But then, on closer examination, Bamidbar looks—well, even less intriguing.  Details about the arrangement of the camping sites of the tribes.  Minutiae relating to the census.  Nothing with the vaguest whiff of interest or challenge or meaning.  Nothing fun at all. 

In fact, when you come right down to it, most of Bamidbar looks a whole lot like the regulations for the establishment of a census.  Count each and every person carefully, total them up, move on to the next area or region.  Each and every single individual is tallied.  A good process for the statisticians, but what can it possibly mean to us?

In an interesting sidelight of history, one of the first duties of the United States government under the new Constitution, ratified back in 1789—the Constitution we still use, “We The People” and all that—one of the first duties on the US government was to take a census of the population, by state.  Every qualified individual in the entire country was to be counted once every decade.  Each person had to be recorded and tallied, carefully and regularly. 

This is still done, of course, and the results of the decennial census help determine everything from congressional representation to the allocation of federal funding.  Each American is counted regularly.  This tradition is so strong that even when more efficient means of tabulating populations are developed—scientific sampling, for example—the resistance is fierce.  We actually prefer to be counted in the old, archaic way, and generally speaking we still do a good job of it, in spite of the best efforts of politically motivated idiots who don’t want everyone actually counted.  The US census still really matters, and it is done, on the whole, quite well indeed.

But in the larger sense, in a nation of 340 million people, how much does one single person really matter?  There are so very many Americans; we lost 1 million people or so in the Coronavirus pandemic, an incredible tragedy—and yet, there still remain about 340 million.  And moving beyond the national, there are so many people here on earth today, nearly 8 billion people on this planet.  That’s quite a lot.  How important is it really to count everyone?

To put it another way, how much could one human life really matter? 

There are many philosophies that assert that people only matter in the collective.  They are called Socialism or Marxism; nowadays there are other variations, such as Communitarianism.  In these understandings, people only really matter as part of an aggregate whole, a member of the people’s collective, when they belong to the larger entity of which they are an otherwise insignificant member.

On the other side of the argument, in authoritarian regimes like Russia, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia or Hungary, it seems as though the only person who really matters is the dictator in charge at the moment.  Each individual only has significance in relationship to how she or he serves the president, prime minister, king, or dictator at the top of the pyramid.

Or perhaps it’s a small group of exceptional people who make a difference, not the whole group.  What is it I read once?  “It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of the zeros.” (Robert Heinlein, Glory Road, p. 277)  The sum total isn’t what matters at all; it’s the top individuals who have real impact and who stand up and deserve to be counted.  It’s the few who should be counted.

That’s not, however, the message that Bamidbar is trying to convey in this week’s accounting-influenced portion.

Judaism has always believed that each and every human life has meaning, is holy, because each of us can truly change the world.  That is, we have to count everyone—everyone—to be sure that we are considering the human value, the tzelem Elohim, the image of God encapsulated in each person.

Consider, if you will, an oddity in the text of our Siddur.  In most prayerbooks the Shema is written as it is in the book of Deuteronomy in the Torah, with the large ayin at the end of the word Shema and a large dalet at the end of the word Echad.  If you don’t believe me, turn to pages 34 and 35 in your prayerbooks.  There it is: Shema with a large ayin, echad with a large dalet.  Curious, no?

There are many interpretations as to why the ayin and dalet of these two words of our most important prayer—our must important Jewish idea of all, monotheism—are written it this way.  But the most famous, and most powerful, says that the two letters, near the beginning and at the end of the Shema, actually form a word: Eid, in Hebrew, which means witness.  The midrash tells us that the Shema itself—the holiest statement of Jewish belief, God is one—is meaningless unless we each are witnesses to its truth.  Only when each one of us accepts this phenomenal concept do we begin to understand Judaism, or indeed all ethics.  We each matter.  Everyone counts.

We will hear this same concept again tomorrow night and Sunday on the holiday of Shavu’ot, which commemorates receiving the Ten Commandments at Sinai.  After counting out each day of the 49 from Passover to Shavuot, counting the Omer—another Jewish accounting process raised to the status of holiness—we will learn that in Jewish tradition, every single Israelite human being alive stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai and heard God’s word.  And not only every Jewish human being alive back then, some 3250 years ago, but every human being not yet born, every Jew ever to be, stood at Sinai as well and experienced God’s presence.  We all, each of us, have importance because we all, each of us, stood at Sinai.

Bamidbar teaches this lesson in a much more basic way, and perhaps in an even more important way.  Because Bamidbar, this system of counting, reminds us that we each matter to our people, our nation, and, most importantly, to our God.

There is a value to this, of course, that goes beyond the theological or even the political. It is a psychological quality, a sense that if every one of us truly matters to God, and to our people of Israel, our Jewish nation, we are never truly alone.  We really do count.

I was listening to music last night and a song from the musical Dear Evan Hansen came on; the most popular song from that adolescent-focused Tony and Emmy-winning show: “You Will Be Found.”  Its theme is simple, really: when you feel alone and abandoned, like no one ever notices you, like you don’t matter at all, it’s simply not true.  As the lyric promises, “When you are broken on the ground—you will be found.”

On this Shabbat, may we each find our own way to recognize that holiness in ourselves, and in every single person we encounter.  And may we seek to build a society dedicated to recognizing that sacredness, to making certain that everyone counts.

True Jewish Heritage

Sermon Shabbat Emor 5782

Apparently May is Jewish Heritage Month in America, something I didn’t actually know until I read it this week.  This commemoration has been a thing since 2006, when it was started as a belated way of celebrating the 350th Anniversary of American Judaism, which actually took place in 2004.  Jewish Heritage Month was proclaimed by Congress in 2005, and in 2006 it was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush. 

For this year’s celebration, President Joe Biden said that “The story of America was written, in part, by Jewish Americans who, through their words and actions, embraced the opportunity and responsibility of citizenship knowing full well that democracy is not born, nor sustained, by accident.  Inspired by Jewish American communal leadership, our Nation’s first President pledged that our Government will “give to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”  Inspired by Jewish American poetry, our shores have welcomed millions with the words “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.”  Throughout our country’s history, Jewish Americans have proudly served our Nation in uniform, in elected office, and on our Nation’s highest courts.  They have made enormous contributions to America’s cultural, scientific, artistic, and intellectual life, and they have marched, petitioned, and boarded buses to demand civil and political rights for all — from women’s rights to voting rights to workers’ rights.”

High-minded words indeed, and accurate.  Jews have played a central role in much of American history and development, and we continue to contribute tremendously to American life.

Still, I think I would be more excited about this American-Jewish Heritage Month if I hadn’t looked up just how many National Heritage Months our US Congress had already proclaimed.  You probably were unaware of the fact that there are currently national heritage months for Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Asian-Pacific Americans, Haitian-Americans, Native Americans, as well as Caribbean-Americans.  For some reason, German-Americans only merit a single day on the calendar, not a whole month, but since Germans are very efficient that’s probably all they need.  For us Jews, who are far messier, I think a month may not prove fully sufficient… in addition, of course, we also have Black History Month and Women’s History Month. 

When you start looking at all the commemorations and holidays proclaimed by our federal government you begin to think that the Jewish calendar’s plethora of festivals isn’t really so over the top:  there are actually 46 special months recognized by American presidential proclamation—46 special months when there are only 12 months in the year; only the government could manage that arithmetic!—as well as 20 special weeks and 47 special days recognized by presidential proclamation.  This even makes the Catholic saints’ day calendar, which has had many more centuries to develop, seem kind of reasonable.

Just this month our American-Jewish Heritage Month is shared with Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Haitian Heritage Month, South Asian Heritage Month, Older Americans Month, National Physical Fitness and Sports Month, National Foster Care Month, and Mental Health Awareness Month.  At least I can understand sharing May with Mental Health Awareness Month—after all, we Jews invented psychology, once called “the Jewish science,” with Sigmund Freud as the principal creative force.  And I am married to a psychologist, and Beit Simcha’s president is a psychologist.  We should be very mentally healthy around here.

Some of my other favorite special American periods of national time include National Financial Literacy Month, National Cybersecurity Month, and the ever-popular National Critical Infrastructure Protection Month, all real winners in the excitement category. But who can fail to celebrate National Dairy Goat Awareness Week with appropriate festivities? 

I was, however, distressed to learn that we no longer regularly celebrate another presidentially proclaimed holiday, National Catfish Day… But I was pleased to discover that today is National Apple Pie Day.

Now for all the excesses of publicly proclaimed special American months, weeks and days, the idea that certain periods of the year should be celebrated resonates with Jews quite naturally.  In this week’s portion of Emor, which Allan will chant tomorrow, all the Biblical holidays, from Shabbat through Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur to Pesach, Shavu’ot and Sukkot are enumerated, including the seven weeks/50 days counting of the Omer that we ritually fulfilled earlier tonight.  Each of these holy days are explicated with their timing, rationale, and ritual observances. 

And of course, in addition to the many festivals spelled out in Emor, a number of other Jewish holidays have been added to the calendar over the more than 2000 years since the Torah was completed.  We have added a slew of other holidays and commemorations: Purim, Hanukkah, Tu Bishvat, Tisha B’Av, Simchat Torah, Lag Ba’omer, Yom HaAtzm’aut, Yom HaShoah, and Yom Yerushalayim among other special times that make the Jewish ritual calendar both rich and complex.  So, in a way, if you follow and observe the many Jewish holy days every month can seem like Jewish Heritage month.

In any case, May is indeed National Jewish American Heritage Month, and since we have been around here in America for 368 years now, ever since the first group of refugees from Brazil landed in New Amsterdam, and in an era when people now think that bagels are a purely American baked good it’s worth noting that our contributions to American society are extensive and go well beyond the culinary.  But it is wise to highlight both the contributions Jews have made and continue to make to America, and the challenges we face today. 

As President Biden’s proclamation continued, “Today, we continue to strive to live up to our founding ideals.  As the scourge of white supremacy and antisemitic violence rises, we remain committed to ensuring that hate has no safe harbor.  That is why we have created new laws that give us more tools to combat hate crimes; developed the first-ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism; provided assistance to religious organizations, places of worship, and nonprofits to protect their facilities and members; and named a new Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.  We will use the full force of our judicial system to confront bigotry and antisemitism wherever and whenever it surfaces.”

The proclamation concludes ringingly, “The Jewish American story, and the story of our Nation as a whole, is fueled by faith, resilience, and hope.  It is a story defined by a firm belief in possibilities, the resolve to make real the promise of America for all Americans, and a commitment to perfecting our Union, heeding the timeless words of Rabbi Tarfon, the first-century scholar who taught ‘It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.’”

All true enough.  So go ahead and feel especially proud to be an American-Jew for the rest of this month of May—and, of course, find a way to celebrate by doing things that are actually and actively Jewish, like attending Shabbat services, as you are doing tonight, or studying Torah, or taking classes, or enjoying Allan’s bar mitzvah tomorrow or coming to our big Shavu’ot celebration on Saturday night, June 4th.

Because something worth celebrating in one month of the year is well worth taking active pride in all the other months, too. 

Scapegoats

Sermon Parshat Acharei-Mot 5782

Do you know the two Yiddish words, Schlemiel and Schlemazel?  They are similar, of course, but they convey slightly different meanings.  Both a schlemiel and a schlimazel are, well, losers, but there is a subtle difference between the two words.  To clarify, a schlemiel is someone who spills his entire bowl of hot soup on the guy next to him.  The schlimazel is the one he spills the soup on.

I was thinking about that important Yiddish linguistic distinction while reading this week’s Torah portion of Acharei Mot, because it is in the beginning of this portion that we get what might be the most important example of a ritual version of the shlemazel in all of Jewish tradition.

This famous section of Acharei Mot describes the rituals of Yom Kippur, and the way we atone for our collective sins.  The most notable part of this ancient practice is the way that the High Priest, the leading religious figure of antiquity, transfers the guilt of the entire people of Israel to a poor innocent goat, sending it out into the wilderness to carry the iniquity of the nation away.  This marks the invention of the function of the scapegoat, the sacrificial goat who is not actually sacrificed, but instead is preserved to wander the wastelands on the fringes of the Promised Land, carrying its permanent burden of the errors and evils of others into eternal semi-exile.

Of course, our society has accepted this term, scapegoat, for anyone who is blamed for the wrongdoing of others and sent off to suffer a dismal fate for the crimes and misdemeanors of others, usually higher ups.  That scapegoat term from right here in Leviticus has received such universal acceptance that those who foul up and are blamed for losses in sports, fairly or otherwise, for many years have been called simply the “goat” of a lost World Series or Super Bowl or NBA Championship; the “scape” part was dropped in the sports world’s usage.

In recent years a new sports term has come along, oddly, the “GOAT”, in our craze for acronyms, standing for “Greatest Of All Time”.  It is applied and argued about, who is the “GOAT”, the greatest quarterback, pitcher, basketball player, hockey goalie, and so on.  There is an irony to this; apparently the scapegoat remains damned, but the GOAT is now actually a hero. 

The idea of a scapegoat accepting the sins of his betters and becoming the fall guy—by the way, there is a section in the Talmud that says that the scapegoat wasn’t just sent off to wander but was actually pushed off a cliff, making the scapegoat also the fall guy, I suppose—has become universal in our society.  The truth is that when people at the top of a company, or a government, or a social organization get into trouble it’s handy indeed to have someone further down the pecking order to blame.  What was that term that became popular during the Watergate scandal?  Plausible deniability?  If you can just blame someone further down the food chain for what went wrong, well, perhaps you can simply skate past the scandal with minimal damage.

I’ve been listening to a podcast the past few months when I go cycling called “American Scandal.”  It’s put together and narrated by a successful podcaster named Lindsay Graham—not that Lindsay Graham, a different guy altogether—and it chronicles a wide array of national scandals that range both geographically and chronologically.  The scandals on this show come in many varieties: political, economic, environmental, military, religious, bureaucratic, sexual, commercial, musical, obscenity, and on and on, and since they have recorded some 40 seasons of these scandals—some are just a few episodes; others take as many as 6 shows to complete—after a while you get a good sense of how these things work.  While sometimes the scandals depict bad events that led to some sort of justice being done and the perpetrators punished and the damage restored or at least compensated, more often than not the guilty parties in these scandals manage to transfer the righteous punishment to someone down the line; that is, they dump it on, you know, a scapegoat.  Sometimes the scapegoat takes all the blame, and sometimes the true perpetrators eventually find a way to pardon even the scapegoat.

While I like this “American Scandal” series and have learned a great deal about famous controversial events I thought I knew well, and even more about some events I didn’t know existed, I must admit that after a while it can be, well, depressing to realize that so many of these scandals resulted in the guilty escaping punishment and innocent people suffering.  And of course, quite frequently—nearly always—some poor schnook became the scapegoat for the failings of a system or a person or a nation or an institution.  A lot of the scapegoats in these scandals actually become schlemazels, abandoned and blamed by the very organizations and people they helped reach their seedy heights.

Clearly, that was never the intent of the Leviticus ritual for Yom Kippur.  After all, the Day of Atonement was one in which collective responsibility for the good of society was shared by all Israelites, in which the greatest and the humblest both were required to atone for sin seek forgiveness, not dump their mistakes on the nearest likely candidate for schlimazelhood.  The symbolic goat was just one aspect of this day of self-examination, self-reflection, self-abnegation.  We were immersed in the idea of responsibility for own actions, not the culture of passing the buck to a likely loser. 

So what do we learn from Acharei Mot and that poor wandering goat in the Wilderness?  Is the scapegoat just an older version of the chad gadyo, the only kid my father bought for two zuzim in the Pesach Seder who gets bitten by the cat, who is eaten by the dog who is beaten by the stick that is burned by the fire, etc. etc., low animal on the totem pole always getting the worst of it from above?

Perhaps the most important function of religion is to assure us that eventually God will restore justice to unjust situations, will find a way to balance the inequities we see in our own lives and in our society.  The Jewish God, in particular, is a God of Justice, insisting that ultimately it is both our responsibility, and God’s, to create   Looking around at the world we live in, as our ancestors must have done, does not yield a rosy picture of justice fulfilled on a planet teeming with righteousness and goodness.

The scapegoat, by allowing the Israelites to be relieved of the sins they had committed, literally helped free them of the burden of seeing an unjust world and believing they had caused it.  It allowed them to let go of their sins of the previous year and permitted them to enter the newish year with clean hands and pure heart, at least officially.

By the way, the English term for this goat, scapegoat, is said to come from famed Bible translator William Tyndale, who called it the “escapegoat” because it avoided the fate of its partner goat who was slaughtered and offered to God.  It took on the sins of the people, but remained alive and headed off to the hills, as goats are wont to do.  “Escapegoat” became “scapegoat” forever.

What are we to make of the scapegoat now?  Of course, we know that it is often easier to seek to blame another for one’s own failings, and to redistribute blame towards an innocent instead of accepting responsibility.  Psychologically, it is far easier to shunt misdeeds and errors off on another than to carry the burden oneself.  This tendency to avoid responsibility is certainly human, and normal.  Who wants to walk around with the guilt of the world, or even of our own mistakes, on your own back when you can blame it on someone, or something, else?

The scapegoat, sent off to Azazel in Acharei Mot on Yom Kippur, directed to wander the wilderness bearing its sinful burden, served a most useful purpose.  It allowed our ancestors to let go of the weighty detritus of their own failings and gave them the opportunity to begin again free of that painful baggage.

So what should we use in place of this Azazel scapegoat today?  The last of these poor animals went off into the Judean Desert nearly 2000 years ago.  You would think that we would have figured out a better way to handle things than dumping our problems on a scapegoat.

How are we contemporary Jews to handle our own burden of sin and error?

Of course, some of us still employ scapegoats to take on the responsibility for our own mistakes.  Our parents didn’t love us enough: we were misled by our spouses; we were pressured by our employers, or employees, or our neighbors; we cut corners because bad guys run the world and we don’t want to play into their hands.

Doing good can be hard.  Blaming others is easy.

I would suggest that we are in fact fortunate that Judaism abandoned the scapegoat motif so long ago.  Instead of a magical transfer of guilt to a goat, we instead took on the responsibility of resolving our own issues directly.  It was up to us—it is up to us—to seek to fix those damages we create in our own lives and in our world.  No High Priest can transfer out sins and errors to a helpless animal and send our guilt off into the wilderness.  We must seek out the people we have injured and make amends.  We must see the world’s damages and try to repair them. 

In a world that has so many challenges—brutal invasive wars, global warming, paralyzing political polarization, and the eternal scapegoating of minorities—among them, of course, Jews—it is up to us to address those challenges.  It is our responsibility, not that goat’s, to right the wrongs and restore justice.  In our own lives, and in our world.  May we learn from Acharei Mot to do so speedily, and soon.   

Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden

Sermon, Shabbat Final Day Passover 5782

As you may know by now, there are four different names for the holiday of Passover.  The first name is Pesach, of course, the festival of the paschal lamb that recognizes the blood on the doorpost that signaled to the angel of death to leap over our Israelite homes; the Pesach offering was the sacrificial roast we ate on the first night of Passover in days of the Tabernacle and Temple.  The second name is Chag HaMatzot, the festival of the unleavened flavor-free bread, Matzah, baked in haste and flat and easily packed and digested with difficulty.  The third name for this holiday is Zman Cheiruteinu, the season of our freedom, central theme of this great and universal freedom festival. 

But fourth there is that oldest name of all, Chag haAviv, the springtime holiday, commemorating this loveliest time of year, when the earth bursts forth with life and blossom and all the world can seem like a glorious garden.  By tradition, spring is the season of hope, the rebirth of belief in the goodness of God and of God’s green world.  It’s not that hope can’t blossom at any time and in any weather, but the green grass, warm, pollen-filled days, and the rich embracing feel of the air of spring are somehow all hopeful in their own ways.  Spring is, of course, the time when life seems new, fresh, dreamlike; in short, washed in the lovely shades of bright spring flowers and bursting green growth.  As poet Christina Rosetti put it, “There is no time like Spring, when life’s alive in everything.”

For the first time in my life, we held our home Seder this year outdoors, on the green lawn of our backyard, surrounded by flowers and trees and enjoying a perfect spring evening.  It was a great way to enjoy Pesach during this hospitable time of year in Tucson, and it gave a very different meaning to the springtime festival.  No longer was it a matter of extrapolating the season from a few sprigs of green parsley on a plate or in saltwater—instead we were surrounded by the beauty of nature, and thank God the weather generously cooperated with a truly glorious spring night under the full moon and stars.  It was a magical night, Seder al fresco.  Instead of the front door, we opened the garden gate for Elijah the Prophet.  Barring weather complications, I think we will always hold home seders outdoors in the future, even it makes hiding the afikomen a little more complicated. 

To further the springtime theme, Sophie and I went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens today to celebrate the Chag HaAviv and see their wonderful little butterfly exhibit.  It is possible that there is nothing more lovely in the natural world than fluttering butterflies and flittering moths, and there are something like 100 of them in the enclosed greenhouse at the Botanical Gardens.  They range in size all the way up to the huge and beautiful Atlas Moth, with a 12-inch wingspan of intricate design, and there are butterflies of all shapes and sizes, one with amazingly deep-colored blue wings that are a quiet brown on the underside.  These moths and butterflies live for only a few weeks, sometimes less, but they are quite wonderful to behold indeed.

And there is one further garden motif to enjoy on this holiday.  Tomorrow, on the Final Day of Passover Shabbat, we also read a special selection in addition to our Torah and Haftarah readings.  It’s in the last section of the Hebrew Bible, the Ketuvim, and it’s called the Song of Songs, Shir haShirim.

The Song of Songs is the ultimate love poem of the Bible, a beautiful and complex hymn to human, physical love unequaled in Western religious literature. Shir haShirim asher liShlomo… “The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s—kiss me with the kisses of your mouth” it begins, and then it gets really hot.  It is a nearly post-modern text in which the voice changes with every chapter and within every chapter.  You aren’t always sure who is speaking—one man?  A woman?  Two women?  A group?  And you aren’t always sure to whom the gorgeous love poetry is addressed.  It’s a rich, swirling tapestry of love and desire.

A perfect text for the springtime of the year, when we are told that young people’s, and not so young people’s, hearts turn to thoughts of love and life renewed and begun.  Shir HaShirim includes many images and metaphors of springtime growth and blossoming.  There are lush descriptions of lillies and apple trees, of cedars and roses, of figs hanging from trees and heavy clusters of grapes drooping on vines.  Buds appear, pomegranates bloom, doves coo, flowers waft sweet fragrances everywhere.  The Song of Songs is literally a garden of love, and the garden motif is used repeatedly throughout; a young woman is a garden; the king has a garden filled with delights; a young lover has a garden filled with flowers that he plucks.

Biblical scholar Phyllis Trible has written movingly about Song of Songs. She says that if the Garden of Eden is paradise lost, then Song of Songs is paradise found: “… it portrays Paradise in this world, rediscovered through love.”

But the Song of Songs is more even than that.  It is a celebration of the gift that God has given us to love freely and with our bodies as well as our souls. In married human love Judaism sees an opportunity for joy and holiness, for sanctifying life through physical and emotional fulfillment. 

What a great, and sexy, gift in this verdant time of year…

But let us return, if you will, back to that idea of the garden, of the rich growth and absolute vitality of the natural world in this glorious season.  For spring is a reminder to all of us that we have a moral obligation to this good earth.  Adam was given the task of tending and nurturing the garden first, lovdah ul’shomrah, to serve it and to guard it, in Genesis. He failed in his initial task, perhaps, but that obligation, to be stewards of this earth, remains for us, his descendants, to protect it for our own children, our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. 

You know, in the renewed hustle and bustle of this slightly post-pandemic world, when our concerns range from war in Ukraine to inflation at home to a fractured politics to acts of terror and Anti-Semitism, it is easy to lose sight of our responsibility to this earth we share.  But the reality is that our first task as human beings is to take care of our home planet, to prevent its destruction and pollution and ravaging by our own acts of selfishness and error.

Global warming didn’t stop when we spent the last few years focused on Coronavirus—although the sharp drop in human activity actually slowed it for a year or so—and it certainly isn’t stopping for high gas prices or Putin’s brutal war of aggression.  We need to remind ourselves now, and always, that this garden we enjoy can be destroyed not just with a bang but through a plethora of simple human mistakes, of people, us, refusing to change simple habits and bullheadedly insisting that our own minor comforts take precedence over long-term disaster.

I was thinking about an old song today, written in the 1960s by Joni Mitchell, over 50 years ago.  Its words seem right on track for today, again—or rather, still:

Well, I came upon a child of God

He was walking along the road

And I asked him, Tell me, where are you going

This he told me

Got to get back to the land and set my soul free

We are stardust, we are golden

We are billion year old carbon

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

Well, then can I roam beside you?

I have come to lose the smog,

And I feel myself a cog in somethin' turning

And maybe it's the time of year

Yes and maybe it's the time of man

And I don't know who I am

But life is for learning

We are stardust, we are golden

We are billion year old carbon

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes

Riding shotgun in the sky,

Turning into butterflies

Above our nation

We are stardust, we are golden

We are caught in the devil’s bargain

And we got to get ourselves back to the garden

If there is one more lesson to take from the Passover holiday this year, it is this: the Chag HaAviv reminds us that springtime is a gift, that this gorgeous, precious earth is a gift, and now is our time to save ourselves, and our own descendants, from the destruction of this sacred planet which we have been given.  We have been given a beautiful, holy place.  As Shir HaShirim enjoins us, B’rach Dodi—hurry, beloved.  For now is the time to act to protect and preserve this, God’s garden, our garden.

The First Month?

Sermon Shabbat Tazria-HaChodesh 5782

When does the year begin?  This should be a basic, elementary question that any reasonably bright child could answer easily.  We learn our months by the time we move from pre-school to kindergarten, just after we learn the days of the week.  Yet even the answer to this simple question—when do we start our year?—can take on peculiar trajectories in Judaism.

“This month is the first month of the year” begins the special maftir Torah reading for Shabbat HaChodesh, the Sabbath that celebrates the beginning of the Hebrew calendar month of Nisan which falls tonight and tomorrow with Rosh Chodesh Nisan.  Since the Jewish year as we know it today begins in the fall with Rosh HaShanah, this declaration in Exodus requires a bit of explanation.  How can this be the first month of the year if the year doesn’t start for another six months?  Isn’t that the same as declaring that July 1st is actually New Year’s Day 2023?

The answer tells us quite a bit about the way our religion evolved. 

All annual calendars are based on astronomical calculation, either the visible cycles of the moon or that of the sun or, occasionally, the stars.  Some calendars combine lunar and solar aspects to reach a kind of heavenly compromise.  But the calendars we have today—the Gregorian one we use in America and Europe and most countries, the Jewish calendar, the Chinese calendar, the Muslim calendar and so on—are all based in one way or another on visible features in the sky and the flow of seasons that come from those cyclical variations.  

Now the beginning of the calendar year is essentially an arbitrary choice, just like deciding when year “1” will be.  As a society or ruler, you have to choose: do you start your year with the shortest day or the longest?  Or do you choose the time when the land is sprouting new life everywhere?  Or perhaps you begin the new year after harvest time, during a period of gratitude and plenty?  Or do you base your New Year’s Day on some historical event or religious experience and count the days and months from there?

Throughout human history, including during the time of the events of the Hebrew Bible, most societies decided the year began in the spring.  People were entirely dependent on the fertility of the land, and spring heralded the time when things began to grow: trees filled with leaves and blossoms, grain started its climb from the earth, herd animals gave birth.  The ancient Sumerians, whome most historians believe to have created the very first civilization of all, celebrated their Akitu barley-sowing New Year’s festival on the first day of the first month of spring.  That springtime month for them, and for their Babylonian and Assyrian successors, was called “Nisanu,” essentially identical to our own Hebrew name for this month, Nisan.      

The other and actually, the older Jewish name for this month, Aviv, simply means “spring” in Hebrew.  It’s no accident that our own great Chag ha’Aviv, the springtime festival of Passover, starts this month.  This time of year was the obvious choice, when the earth God has given us demonstrates its incredible generative power.  And so, the Torah tells us that this month is the first month of year, very much in keeping with the practices of the even more ancient civilizations of the Middle East.  The first month, the rosh Chodashim, is therefore Nisan.

But what are we to make of the fact that while the Torah tells us that this is the first month, in our current Hebrew calendar it’s the 7th month of the year?  How does one become seven?

There may be a practical reason for that; Judaism is, after all, pragmatic idealism, and we have adapted often in our long history to changing conditions.  It may simply be that after we established ourselves in the land of Israel we became more settled and eventually less dependent on the largesse of the natural world that God had created.  We focused on the established rituals of a settled people, and the collective communal experience of purging sin, error and guilt became ever more significant.  Perhaps it was simply that people living in cities had so much more opportunity for sin than the rural country folk we were at first in Israel…  In any case, the release from sin that typified the period of the fall High Holy Days made Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur increasingly more significant, the time of year when our soul’s journey is central. 

The spring month of Nisan, and its great growth festival of freedom, still mattered, of course, and it was likely still considered to be a kind of equally important “new year.”  But the new year for the monarchy was established as taking place at Rosh HaShanah, not Nisan, on the first of Tishrei.  That became the date when we changed years, officially, even if Nisan remained the first month.

But when we were expelled from our land and forced to wander the earth, the first-day-of-spring holiday celebrating agricultural growth became significantly less important.  The Passover message of freedom mattered most—of course,  it still matters profoundly—but it was no longer considered “the new year festival.”  That was now clearly Rosh HaShanah. 

The rabbis of the Talmud associated other great events with the 1st of Tishrei, too—the creation of the world, culminating in the creation of the first human beings, was also assigned by attribution to the 1st of Tishrei—I mean, none of the rabbis who came up with that were actually present when Adam and Eve were brought into the world, so it has to be by attribution—which made Rosh HaShanah into “HaYom Harat Olam”, the day of the world or universe’s birth, the birthday of the world.  And in the time of the Temple in Jerusalem, Rosh HaShanah was also the date when taxes were due, the 10% tithe assessed on almost all produce and most animals, making it kind of the April 15th of Biblical Judaism.  Tishrei 1 also became the date for beginning sabbatical years and jubilee years, although the Torah actually commands that the Jubilee, at least, was supposed to begin on Yom Kippur, not Rosh HaShanah.

The Talmud also tells us of two other new years, by the way, one of which we still celebrate—Tu BiShvat, the new year for trees in the winter—and one of which we don’t, the first of Elul, just a month before Rosh HaShanah, when our ancestors used to pay their cattle taxes.

Much later, in the Middle Ages, yet another new year was added, even if we don’t all think about it that way: Simchat Torah, the new year for Torah, when we finish chanting the Torah with the end of Deuteronomy and start all over again with Genesis.  Is that five new years each and every year?  That would be a little too much, no?

So, if we haven’t confused you enough yet, let’s go back to what makes this particular new year, the ancient one of the first of Nisan, special still today.  Rosh Chodesh Nisan, the first of Nisan, tonight and tomorrow, is an annual reminder of the beginning of the month of spring, which automatically had to be associated with Pesach, the springtime Chag HaAviv, the festival of spring.  It is an ancestral memory of this special month of growth and new life, and it retains three vital messages for us.

The first is that we have a responsibility to be good stewards for the natural world that God has gifted us.  It is up to us to preserve the planet we have been given, to prevent its destruction through thoughtless and selfish misuse.  In an era of global warming, when we can see the threat to the very survival of our species on this God-granted earth as a real possibility, we have a Jewish responsibility to address this danger and to protect the natural world.

The second message is just as important.  As the proverb tells us, we must count each day so that we can make each day count.  Living our lives in a meaningful, even holy way requires that we work to make every day valuable and even sacred. 

And the third lesson is likely the greatest one.  It is this: in this season of fresh growth and budding nature, we can take hope and energy from the vibrant, vital natural world of Nisan.  On this Shabbat of Aviv, of spring, we, too, can begin again in a season of fresh energy and eternal hope. 

May this first month of the year, however we think about it, be a month of joy and goodness for you, for our people Israel, and for this troubled world.

Created in the Image:

“The Bread of Life” prayer at Multi-Faith Service 3 24 2022

As you know, the US Senate recently passed a bill mandating daylight savings time all year.  Now, for us here in Arizona, this is rather amusing; it apparently means our stubborn insistence on refusing to spring forward and fall back has been right all these years when people everywhere else in America made fun of us.  So there: we Arizonans were right all along about Daylight Savings Time! 

But my friends, the debate about just when morning should begin is not a new one.  In fact, there is a beautiful story in the Babylonian Talmud, the great Jewish source of law and lore that was completed in the 5th century.  I first learned this passage from an Episcopal rector doing interfaith work years ago, and later looked it up in the original Aramaic.  This is the story:

There is a great debate in the Talmud about just when Jews are supposed to say morning prayers.  These prayers, the Shma, affirming the oneness of God, must be said after sunrise, when night has ended, dawn arrives, and morning has come.  The Talmudic discussion is about what that means, just exactly when night has ended, and morning has come.  One rabbi says that morning has come when a person can tell a black thread from a white thread—which doesn’t take much light.  Another rabbi argues that this is too lenient a standard, and night is over, and dawn has arrived, when a person can tell a blue thread from a green thread, a much harder standard.

After much discussion, the answer is given: the dark night is over, dawn has arrived and morning has come when we can look upon the face of another human being - and see there the image of God, the tzelem Elohim.  

I love that story.  The dark night is over and morning begins when we can look on the face of another human being and see there the image of God.  Whatever color, denomination, nationality, race, gender, height, shape.  Each human being is created in the image—if only we are enlightened enough to see it there.

I’d like to add one more element to this beautiful idea.  For when we join with our neighbors and break bread together, when we can participate with them in that most basic of all human activities, eating the very bread of life that keeps us whole, we are more than seeing them as fellow creations of God.  We are also reaching across all those artificial boundary lines that separate us, and sharing an experience that connects us in that most basic of ways.  And if we can do that, well, then we are on a path of friendship and mutual understanding and support and good.

The Jewish prayer for bread is both simple and paradoxical.  It says, “Blessed are You God, Ruler of the Universe, who brought forth bread from the earth.”  Yet we know that bread is a joint project of human cultivation and the divinely given natural world.  There are no bread trees—only planting and cultivating wheat, harvesting, milling, and baking.  That is, the most basic Jewish food prayer highlights our covenantal connection to the One God.  Anything we do is accomplished in partnership, with God and with our fellow human beings.

And so, I offer this short prayer: Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha’olam, Hamotzi Lechem min Ha’aretz—we bless You, God, Ruler of the Universe, who allows us, through our work, to make bread from Your earth, so we can share it with all other people, all made in the image of God.

Silence and Action

Sermon Parshat Shemini 5782

There is a classic Jewish joke.  One friend says to another, “My rabbi is so brilliant he can talk for an hour on any subject.”

And his friend answers, “My rabbi is so brilliant he can speak for two hours on no subject.”

Jews talk and talk; and rabbis, in particular, really talk. But you know, sometimes this Jewish tendency to talk is an impediment.  Sometimes Jews, even rabbis, need not to speak.

The Tzartkover Rebbe often stood in silence instead of preaching.  When asked why, he replied to his disciples, "There are seventy ways of reciting the Torah.  One of them is through silence."

Our portion of Shemini this week reaches an early and brutal climax in the story of Nadav and Avihu, the two eldest sons of Aaron the High Priest.  Early in our parshah these young men are shockingly killed for offering eish zarah, strange fire to God.  On the eighth day of their inauguration into the Priesthood, they are suddenly killed by God.

In our portion, Aaron is notified of the death of his children.  The Torah continues, "Then Moses said to Aaron, This is what the Lord spoke saying, ‘Bikrovai ekadesh v’al pnai ha’am ekaveid, vayidom Aharon: Through those that are near to Me I will be sanctified, and before all the people I will be glorified; and Aaron was silent."  (Leviticus 10:3)

That silence is fascinating.  It is the only record we have of Aaron’s response to this devastating event.  That’s all we get: he is silent.

We humans fill the universe with words.  Jews especially are famous for talking through everything.  In end, when all is said and done, much more is said than done. 

Yet speech is important.  It is through speech that we most closely imitate God, Who created the world with words.  Every aspect of the creation of the universe in Genesis begins with the phrase, “And God spoke”, usually Vayomer Adonai. 

Yet speech is not always appropriate.  As we learn from the book of Ecclesiastes, "To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven ... A time for silence and a time to speak."   (Ecclesiastes 3:1,7)

After the death of Nadav and Avihu, Moses tries to comfort his brother, Aaron, saying, "This is what the Lord spoke saying, through those near to me will I be sanctified."  Aaron hears the words but does not react.  All he can do is be silent.  Moses tries to help with words, but Aaron does not need words at that point.  Sometimes the proper reaction to tragedy is silence.

In the book of Job, the protagonist, Job, suffers a number of grievous losses - his wealth, his children, his health.  His wife finally tells Job, "Curse God and die," get it over with, but Job replies, "Should we accept only good and not evil?"  (Job 2:10) His three friends come to comfort him.  But they sit in silence next to him for seven days, waiting for Job to speak first.  From this we learn the Jewish tradition that when visiting a shiva home, visitors are supposed to remain silent until the mourners speak first.  Silence is appropriate in the face of great grief.

In the Bible, Job calls on God to appear before him and justify God’s actions. At the end of the book God appears before Job and engages in a long soliloquy.  "Who is this who darkens counsel, speaking without knowledge? ...  Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?  Speak if you have understanding."  (Job 38:2,4) Job listens to God's words, and says, "Indeed I spoke without understanding, Of things beyond me, which I did not know... Therefore, I recant and relent, being but dust and ashes."  (Job 42:3,6) Job finally speaks—and regrets it.  In truth, silence would have been the appropriate response.

We have seen tragedy in the world many times—terrorist killings, horrifying war in Ukraine and Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria, pandemic deaths in New York and California and here in Tucson, random shootings all over our nation.  As Jews, we are always looking for words to explain or soften the tragedy.  We are such a talkative people who seemingly don’t know how to be silent; two Jews, three opinions, and many, many words.  Our lives are filled with words—verbal, written, electronic; TV, radio, email, text, Facebook, Twitter.  Words everywhere and always.  Even sermons.

Nonetheless, I cannot help but believe that sometimes silence is wiser in the face of tragedy.  Like Job, we humans cannot truly understand the ways of God. 

In our Middle School Religious School curriculum, we study Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Ancestors in the Mishnah.  Shimon ben Gamliel, the son of another great scholar, says, “All my days I have grown up among the wise.  I have found nothing to be of better service than silence… not learning but doing is the central object; and whoever is profuse of words literally causes sin.”

In our Beit Simcha Mussar Study Group, one of the Midot, the moral qualities that shape our character that we studied was silence.  I thought I might have the class sit silently for 90 minutes to explore the concept, but I wasn’t quite able to make myself do it… we had a fascinating discussion about silence, which sounds like a contradiction in terms, but highlighted just how important silence can be.  And in our upcoming community Mussar study programs we will undoubtedly also explore this idea.

Certainly, we Jews talk a lot.  But when sadness hits, it is not the time to discuss theology.  Words about God's justice are scant comfort to the bereaved and the injured.  Moses' words brought little solace to his brother Aaron following his tragic loss.

There is a time to speak and a time for silence.

But where words cannot help, sometimes actions can. 

When people in our own community are struggling, bereaved, ill, frightened, sad, there is something we can do.  When people are terrified by deadly illness, there are times when simple silent presence is the best thing we can do.  When refugees need food, clothing and shelter, reassurance can come, but not from words.  We can do something more.

That something is embodied in a passage in our Siddur, taken from the Mishnah: it reads, “These are the things that are beyond measure: honoring father and mother, acts of loving kindness, welcoming guests, visiting the sick, comforting the bereaved, accompanying the dead for burial, helping bride and groom celebrate, coming early to the temple to study Torah and to teach children Torah, helping the stranger.”

It’s these acts—not words but acts—that help most in times of deep distress, in moments of fear and loneliness.  It is these primary Jewish acts that may allow us to heal those who are most deeply injured. 

Moses may not have had the right words for his brother’s loss.  But he was present, and brought healing in that primary way, just by being there.  We don’t actually need to have the right words always either.  Silent action, being there for people—even on FaceTime or email or text or phone or Zoom, or by donating to help refugees—can say far more than speeches.

On this week of Parshat Shemini may we commit ourselves to this enterprise of helping those most in need, to being present any way we can for those we can help.  And then our words, and most importantly our actions, will truly have meaning.  And then perhaps, when things are most challenging, we will be able to provide comfort, and healing.

The Happiness Quotient

Sermon Parshat Tzav 5782

You probably didn’t know it, but March 20th, this Sunday, is International Happiness Day.  It turns out that it comes a couple of days after Purim this year, which also coincided with St. Patrick’s Day—now that’s a nice combination! 

So, who here even knew there was an International Happiness Day?  But if there is one, frankly it should fall around Purim every year.  Anyway, in honor of International Happiness Day the results of the most recent study on happiness in America were released and they were disappointing, if not entirely surprising.  This happiness survey determined that Americans are now officially as unhappy as we have ever been.  That is, more Americans now classify themselves as unhappy than ever before. 

In 2022 we, as a society, are unhappier than we were during the Great Depression or after Pearl Harbor or during the Vietnam War or Watergate or after 9/11 or during the subprime mortgage Great Recession. 

And that doesn’t really make sense, does it?  Things have often been much worse by measurable standards than they are now, but we are, right now, collectively, really not happy.  In spite of Purim and Spring Fling and Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day, in spite of the weather being glorious and the wildflowers plentiful, with all the springtime reasons to be glad, in spite of near-full employment and perhaps the end of the pandemic, and living in a time of incredible technological achievement and relative wealth, we apparently aren’t enjoying life much at all.

If decades should have nicknames, like the Gay Nineties or the Roaring Twenties or the Swinging 60s or the Me Decade, then this could be the Traumatic Twenties or the perhaps Depressed Decade. 

What’s gone so wrong?  Why don’t we seem to be enjoying our lives as much as we used to, or should?

There are a few reasons for this.  The first is perhaps the most obvious: we are constantly being told that we should be outraged and angry about what’s going on in the world.  We hear this nonstop from media outlets and certain prominent politicians.  Everyone is out to get us, we are told: the left—if you are on the right—or the right—if you are on the left—is totally corrupt and evil and filled with terrible ideas and schemes to destroy everything you hold dear.  The world is going to hell in a handbasket, as the old cliché would have it, and dang it, we have to do something about it right now!  Like be furious.  Or depressed.  And certainly unhappy.

Even formerly sane publications and websites have adopted this yellow journalism standard, because everyone imitates everyone else in this world, and nothing gets more attention in our society than hostile screaming. 

There are good reasons to object to many things that are happening in our national scene at any time, of course.  But the way these topics—some serious and complex and even dangerous, others merely distractions—are handled, as though they required maximum fury and outrage to even discuss them, does not help.  And it contributes to the unhappiness in our society. 

For most of us, this flood of augmented anger creates a sense of general unease and discomfort, even distress, emotions that certainly can prevent happiness.  Even though most sane individuals discount the more sensationalist and extreme claims and attitudes, there is a kind of cumulative effect, a deleterious impact on our state of mind.  And all that free-floating anger leads to a steady erosion of trust in everything, and in almost all of our national institutions. 

Of course, for those people who are not well moored, whose relationships with others are limited or damaged, these kinds of radical provocations are actually believed.  And they fester, and tragically they are sometimes acted upon.  Most of the time they just show up as hostile posts online, or random acts of anti-Muslim or Anti-Semitic or racist behavior: vandalism, or shouted epithets or the like.

But sometimes all that amplified hostility, all those spores of projected hatred, reach someone on the margins of society in whom they take root.  And then you get a massacre like Christchurch, or the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, or the Baptist Church in Texas or the AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Or perhaps, then you invade Ukraine.     

The second area that causes serious challenges to our happiness is the increasing alienation many of us have from other people engendered by our devotion to our technology.  Some of that is caused by our addiction to our communications devices, the tremendous amount of time we spend engaged with our screens: phones, tablets, laptops and computers, even smart watches.  You cannot fully function in this world without accessing internet devices to some degree, and the latest studies show that people who don’t use smartphones or advanced devices at all are actually not happy.  But those same studies show that people who use them the most are also quite unhappy.  The happiest people are those who use their devices no more than an hour or so a day.  Fascinating: when we think we are connecting to other people through social media we are actually diminishing our sense of truly connecting.

I’ll never forget one Valentine’s Day evening I spent in a restaurant; everyone around our table on this theoretically romantic night was eating an expensive fancy dinner with their dates—while simultaneously engaged in texting, posting on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or just communicating with other people who were not their dates.  It was startling and made me wonder just what joy could come from that experience, and how those relationships were being deepened, if at all.

The third piece to this happiness problem is one of dedication.  That is, our society has moved away from commitment to community organizations and affiliations, and we have become increasingly isolated.  Almost twenty years ago Robert Putnam, a great sociologist of America—and a Conservative Jew and past guest of mine on the Too Jewish Radio Show—wrote a book called Bowling Alone.  It documented an America in which people increasingly did not join organizations and often participated in activities solo, no longer connected to the traditional religious and social entities that once bounded and enriched their lives.  Typical, regular experiences like praying together, making music together, working together to better society, even doing sports together were fading.  We were, well, bowling alone.

I’m not sure that I have the solution to this happiness crisis, except to say that the things that truly make us happy—family, friends, a warm and active synagogue, celebrating festivals, exercise, springtime weather—are the things we need to work to build up and enhance and celebrate.  And the things that make us angry or hostile or unhinged we need, wherever possible, to avoid.  Our lives are better when we live and work together for the good of all, not when we act out our ugliest impulses and most hostile tendencies.  And not when we isolate ourselves from others.

I can’t promise a happier society will prevent future violence against innocents or fix this complicated world.  But I do firmly believe that it’s time we chose a different course than the one that has been making us miserable for a while now.  And that course is one of mutual support, commitment and joy, of communal connection and commitment.

The whole Book of Leviticus, and our Torah portion of Tzav, focuses on the way our ancestors worshipped God through animal sacrifices, korbanot.  For the past 1900 years, since the destruction of the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem, prayer and study, and acts of charity and repentance, have replaced sacrifice, communal acts to better ourselves, and our world.  These are all ways we open ourselves to God and diminish our emphasis on the self. 

Sacrifice in the Torah was a way to accept not that smaller lives could be given over for the sake of our more important lives.  Instead, it was a method to connect us to the fact that our own existence is holy only when we offer ourselves to God in community.  By giving up something—a bit of our self-importance, our isolation, our anger, our technological addiction—we can give our lives meaning and sanctity.

And if we do so here, in our own synagogue, we have the chance to do so in our larger society.  And then perhaps next year International Happiness Day can be celebrated as a time of increasing joy and goodness.

Arguing for God and Unity

Sermon Parshat Vayikra 5782

One of the most distinctive qualities of Jews everywhere in the world has always been our ability to disagree and remain in dialogue.  That is, we argue but stick together.  Jewish families are typically loud, contentious, and verbally energetic.  Jewish organizations are active, engaged, and often contentious.  But we have an ability, after thousands of years of overcoming adversity, to pull together in spite of our many, many differences.  Most of the time.

I was reflecting on this fact of Jewish life the last few days.  In truth, both in our homes and in our organizational life, we often sound like we are engaged in something closer to courtroom combat than the loving and harmonious lives that we aspire to living.  This friction is something typical of every Jewish group I have ever had the privilege of being a part of, and to someone not initiated into the verbal thrust-and-parry natural to Jews it can seem that there is real animosity when the situation is quite different than that at heart.  It’s just that in Jewish life everyone considers himself or herself to be an expert on, well, everything, and when you get more than one maven in a room at the same time he or she is each certain to be certain that they are right about everything, or at least whatever it is you are talking about at the moment.

This verbal vigor is a great shock to those not raised in loud Jewish homes, and it inevitably leads some people to conclude that Jews are the most difficult, contentious lot ever formed by God.  And that’s not counting how it is to be part of a Jewish organization or organizational leadership, which frequently seems a great deal like herding cats… 

But the real point is not that we Jews can argue; everyone knows that.  It’s that in spite of these arguments we are able to overcome our differences and work together to accomplish really great things.  And that underneath the dispute of the moment we fully understand that we are not really fully breiges with anyone, that we intend to remain in conversation and dialogue and community no matter what we may say in the heat of the moment.  Real Jewish identity means understanding that we can disagree and yet remain connected. 

I’m not celebrating the contentious quality of Jewish life, but simply noting that it is a fact—and that it also camouflages a more essential unity that undergirds the whole of the Jewish community.  We might appear not to like each other very much in the moment, but we know that ultimately we are all in this together.  We are one people, one large, dysfunctional family that may have its challenges and certainly its conflicts but that sticks together, particularly when the going gets rough.  And boy, right now, the going is getting rough…

The Talmud has two famous sayings on this subject.  The first is from the Mishnah, the first great code of Jewish law, in Pirkei Avot, the ethical greatest hits of our tradition: kol machloket l’shem shamayim sofah l’hitkayem, v’she’einah l’shem shamayim, lo sofah l’hitkayem it says, any argument fought for the sake of heaven, will endure, but an argument not for the sake of heaven will not last.  That is, a conflict in which both parties are motivated to find the best course to serve God will create enduring and positive results.  But a conflict not fought for the sake of heaven, that is engaged into further ego and self-interest will not create enduring or positive results.  When we argue in order to determine the truly best course we are simply trying to figure out how best to serve God.  When we are arguing to prove how great we ourselves think we are, we are not serving God, and those efforts are destined to fail.

And the second great quote is kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh, every Jew is responsible for every other Jew.  That means that in times serious and sober or celebratory and joyous we all have an obligation to each other.  When a Jew is in difficult circumstances, we must respond by working to assist them.  When members of our people are physically endangered it is our obligation to rescue them.  And when a Jew celebrates, we all celebrate with her or him.

Kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh: each member of the peoplehood of Israel is obligated to every other.  What could be clearer?

But it is when we remember both of these Talmudic teachings then our arguments will, ultimately, lead us to goodness and unity.  In a way, they become arguments to find God, rather than arguments to try to exalt ourselves.  And according to Jewish tradition, that is exactly what God asks of us: to seek to find God by attempting, always, to find the right course.  We can, and will, disagree on this; we remain Jews, of course.  But we must do so with an understanding that we are united in our desire to find the proper path, not to attack or destroy one another.

Our Torah portion this week, Vayikra, the beginning of the Book of Leviticus, highlights this in an interesting way.  It begins with the Vayikra el Moshe, Vayidabeir Adonai Eilav mei’ohel mo’eid, which means, “He called to Moses, God spoke to him out of the tent of meeting…” This is an odd formulation, since first God calls to Moses, then God speaks to him.  Why the double verbs here?  Why the duplication?

Rashi, the great 12th century French commentator, says that, "Every time God spoke to Moses, he was welcomed by this calling which was a term of endearment. It was the same language used by the ministering angels for they too, 'called one to the other...' (Isaiah). And the voice went to Moses alone for Israel was unable to hear the sound... Everything God said to Moses for thirty-eight years was for the sake of [the whole people of] Israel.”

That is, the word Vayikra means God may have called to Moses intimately, as God would call a close relative, but the words were not intended solely for Moses.  In fact, they were designed to unify the whole people of Israel.  That was ultimately the purpose of the rituals of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, the model for every temple ever constructed in Jewish history, including this one.  The purpose is to bring all Jews together as one, with all their differences.

God's work was to try and keep Israel in order; similarly, Moses's calling was to promote the cause of Israel and not his personal relationship with the Holy One.

When God calls Moses to their meetings, God does so with love, saying that these people are your responsibility, but my tone is directed toward them through you. You, Moses, embody this generation in all they represent. I, God, speak to you for the primary purpose of building one nation from this disparate group.

God’s call here in Vayikra is not for the ego of one, but for the unity of the whole people.  We are meant to be together, to support one another with respect.  Differences of opinion are not a call to break up the sanctity of the sanctuary.  They are an impetus to seek, and find, the greater underlying whole.

When we Jews do this, we have the potential to help the rest of the world do this as well.  And then no challenge, no matter how frightening it may seem, cannot be overcome.

On this Shabbat of Vayikra, may we each hear God’s call in this way.  And may all of our differences be only for the sake of heaven.

Wild West and Ukraine

Sermon on Rodeo Shabbat, Vayakhel 5782

My friends, I had prepared a fun sermon for tonight, remembering the very real presence of Jews in so many parts of the wild west, including 19th century Jewish mayors of Tucson, the Jewish version of the Boot Hill Cemetery in nearby Tombstone, the important role that Jewish pioneers, trappers, mountain-men, miners, merchants, and entrepreneurs played throughout the Wild and not-so-Wild West.  I was prepared to tell you about some of my own relatives, who had stores in the gold country of California, but also about Wyatt Earp’s Jewish common-law-wife Josephine Marcus, about mining towns like Seligman, Arizona, and the Seligman and Guggenheim families who built railroads and mines that helped open up the Arizona Territory.  I was going to talk about Jacob Isaacson, who founded the town we now know as Nogales, straddling the border with Mexico so no one had to pay import taxes on any transaction, and the way Levi Strauss and his partner Jacob Davis put rivets into jeans and created western wear. 

I was planning on sharing stories of Jewish outlaws and lawmen, of peddlers and soldiers, of Jewish cowboys and ranchers and schoolteachers in the backcountry of Oregon—that would be my own grandmother—and all about the actual men and women who built Jewish life here in the heart of the western desert, and in the western mountains and on its rivers and coastlines.  It’s a fun and fascinating story, worth singing ballads about and writing history books and novels and making films about, too.  And since this is Rodeo Shabbat here in Tucson, Arizona, one of the original great cowtowns of the west and home to many a lawman and outlaw, it seemed like the perfect Friday night to tell that tale.    

I have often wondered why the Western is such a perennial favorite of filmmakers.  Westerns go in and out of fashion, of course, but eventually they always come back, in one form or another.  It it’s not movies like Stagecoach or High Noon or The Oxbow Incident or The Good the Bad and the Ugly or Tombstone or Silverado or the Unforgiven or True Grit, then it’s TV series from The Cisco Kid to Bonanza to The Big Valley to Deadwood to Yellowstone.  What is it that we find so satisfying about westerns?

I believe a big part of it is that there is, in nearly every Western, a climactic scene in which the good guys win, or at least die trying.  They always take out the villain, in the end, and justice, a rude form of justice but justice nonetheless, is seen to triumph.  Sure, some good guys go down, and it’s a rough climax, always, but in that shootout at high noon the guy in the black hat finally takes a fall.

Well, my friends, it turns out that this is a strange time to be celebrating Rodeo Shabbat.  The Russian invasion of Ukraine is reaching Kyiv even as we meet for services tonight, a full-scale, unprovoked land war in Europe exploding as an act of pure aggression by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.  People are dying right now all across Ukraine.  Russia has command of the air and is attacking everywhere in the country.  Ukraine is fighting back, and there will be guerilla actions as well against the Russians, but Putin has invaded his neighbor with overwhelming force.

And there is not likely to be any sheriff wading into the main street of that brutal act of war and calling out the bad guy, Vladimir Putin, as black a black hat as we have on the world stage today.  It doesn’t work that way in international affairs.  There is no OK Corral shootout to end this horrific attack, this baseless invasion of a weaker neighbor.  We shouldn’t expect the cavalry to come riding in, or John Wayne or Clint Eastwood to show up with a Colt or a Winchester and save the outnumbered, outgunned, overmatched Ukrainians when the local Russian bullies have jet fighters and missiles.

When Russia invaded the Crimea and took it away from Ukraine almost eight years ago, the world responded with tepid disapproval.  After all, there were many ethnic Russians in Crimea, it had been colonized by Catherine the Great in the 18th century, really it could just be part of Russia.  And Russia has nuclear weapons, and Russia is so close to Crimea, and war is horrible, so what can we really do? 

But you see, when a bully wins by simply bullying others he or she learns an important lesson: she or he can just keep right on bullying without fear of real consequences.  I’m afraid that this is just another step in a chain of aggression that Putin has planned.  And I’m also afraid that if the west doesn’t do more than impose some economic sanctions this process of re-empiring Russia will continue.

We have seen dictatorial aggression before.  There are no innocent bystanders when a person like Putin is on the loose, sharing friendship with fellow totalitarian dictators like Xi in China, who watch just how far the west will go to protect democracy, political integrity, and freedom of the press and conscience. 

I’m going to share now a letter that I received just three hours ago from a rabbinic colleague, written by a Russian co-worker of his son in a multi-national company.  I will preserve the anonymity of the author and the employee, but otherwise read what he sent from Moscow this afternoon:

Team, friends and colleagues in Ukraine, in the US, and other locations.

Over the past two days, I've spoken with many members of the Russian team, and I can say with confidence that I speak on their behalf now.

First and foremost, my thoughts are with everyone in Ukraine right now, in particular with our friends and colleagues [names omitted here].  I am concerned for their safety and well-being as well as that of their families, and I am saddened to hear of the measures they've had to personally take to protect themselves.

Second, I am deeply worried, shocked, and concerned by Russia's aggression against Ukraine.  This is a black page in Russian history.  I personally have never felt so ashamed for my country.  The past few days have been incredibly difficult to focus as I think about our team there.  I am overwhelmed with bewilderment, guilt and remorse.  I feel responsibility as a citizen of Russia, and I feel that every Russian citizen should as well.  It's our government.  It's our army.  We can't just completely distance ourselves from this.

Yet, I feel powerless to stop it.

Unfortunately, Putin's Russia today is not a country of freedom where everyone can openly express their feelings or elect their government.  We do not have free and fair elections, and even the act of protesting is dangerous.  Police beat, arrest, and sentence people to prison for only speaking out against the government.  A year ago, I joined such a protest myself.  After my wife registered with one of the opposition groups, the police came to our house and threatened us.  Even large protests are unlikely to help, as the government just ignores the voice of people, knowing that they can't lose an election.  Within the past year, leaders of groups and political parties that oppose Putin have been either imprisoned or forced to move abroad.  Courts are corrupt.  Fair trials do not exist.  We've seen young people imprisoned [just] for posting dissident messages on social media.

Russia today is a dictatorship.  We live in a police state where free speech is non-existent.  That dictatorship is propped up by widespread propaganda.  There is no independent media here, so many who live here are completely misinformed as to the truth.  Elections are nothing more than theater, with opposition candidates banned from participating.  As an ordinary citizen, I feel powerless to change the situation in this country and to stand up to our government in any way that doesn't involve violence.

Russia is also my homeland.  It is a beautiful country with great people, a wonderful culture, beautiful cities and nature, and a rich history.  I was born in Moscow and have lived in this unique and amazing city for the past 35 years.  I love Russia as a country.  And I hope as the world looks on at us today, they separate the country from the state – the government.  As Garry Kasparov once put it: "Every country has its own mafia, and only in Russia [dpes] the mafia have its own country."

I wish the streets were full of massive anti-war protests right now.  Some brave people, including friends of mine, actually gathered on the streets yesterday to protest, but that was quickly suppressed by police before a critical mass accumulated.  Over 1700 people were arrested, and some may be sent to prison.

When you see me working at my job, and not rising up against my government, I ask you not to see it as a lack of support for my friends and colleagues and their country.  "Shame," "anger," and "powerlessness" are the three words I've heard the most within my circles in social media, from friends and family, yesterday and today, even from those who don't usually speak about politics.

I can't begin to express how sad and concerned I am for our Ukrainian colleagues right now and for their families and friends.  I sincerely hope this insanity will end soon, and I wish there was a way I could provide some tangible support instead of just saying these words.

As many in Russia do, I have personal connections to Ukraine.  My surname is Ukrainian, and my great grandparents via my father's line were from Ukraine.

Peace and safety in Ukraine must be the world's top priority today, no matter what the circumstances are.

This is not my way; I say "no" to it, and I am deeply sorry for it.

Please take care.  All my thoughts are with Ukraine and our friends and colleagues there.

Perhaps it is time, on this Rodeo Shabbat, to assess what the western ideal of freedom really means, and just how far we will go to assure that others can experience it.  Perhaps it is time for us to associate our regional ideals, expressed in books and film and TV, that no one has the right to bully and dominate his or her people, and certainly not other, innocent peoples who just happen to live nearby.  Perhaps it’s time for us to ask our own leaders to live up to these western ideals now, before it again becomes too late and our world gets dominated by corrupt authoritarians and tyrannical autocrats.

Because if we can do that now, well, then maybe next Rodeo Shabbat we can rejoice more fully in the heritage we lay claim to.