Israel, Constitutions and Listening

Shabbat Va’etchanan/Nachamu 5783 

Perhaps the most classic of all synagogue jokes tells the story of the rabbi who takes a new pulpit, and discovers that the congregation has a difference of opinion on how you are supposed to say the Shema.  When they come to the central prayer of monotheism, half the congregation stands, while the other half sits.  The first week that’s fine, but the next week people begin to argue when they come to the Shema about whether to sit or stand, the following week they actually start to come to blows.  The new rabbi is desperate to resolve this situation before it gets any worse, so he asks for the name of the oldest member of the congregation, the one who’s been there the longest.  “That’s Mr. Goldberg,” he is told, “He is 102 years old, and he lives in the Jewish Home for the Aged.  But he was here at the beginning.”  The rabbi goes to visit Mr. Goldberg.

“Mr. Goldberg, tell me,” says the new rabbi, “When you first started the shul, did everyone stand for the Shema?”

Goldberg answers, “That, that I don’t remember.”

“Ah,” says the rabbi, “We are getting somewhere!  So the congregation all sat for the Shema?”

But Goldberg answers, “That, that I don’t remember.”

“Oy,” says the rabbi, “Mr. Goldberg, please try to remember!  It’s very important.  Whenever we come to the Shema half the people sit and half the people stand.  And then they start shouting at each other, and even fighting!”

And Goldberg replies, “That—that, I remember!”

I thought about that joke as I prepared for this Shabbat, not only because this is Shabbat Va’etchanan, when we have the text of the Shema in our Torah reading, but also because of what’s happening now in Israel.  My friends, ever since the beginning of the effort the Netanyahu government had been making to cut the powers of the judiciary in Israel, and the rise of the huge protest movement in response, I have been telling you that things were not as dire as they seemed in the press, and that Israel would find a compromise way out of this mess.  I regret that the passing this past week of the first stage of that quote-unquote “Judicial Reform” process leads me now to believe otherwise.

To recap, as soon as the right-wing Likud-led Netanyahu government took power in December of 2022, Bibi Netanyahu announced a sweeping program of what he called “judicial reform” that would nearly eliminate the power of the Israeli Supreme Court to limit or reverse illegal actions taken by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, or the government ministries.  This balance of power, the only structural aspect of balance in the Israeli governmental system, had existed since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.  Since Israel has no formal Constitution, the Supreme Court provided the checks-and-balances integral to a democratic state.

Now, when Netanyahu was running for Prime Minister—again—last year he made no mention of “judicial reform” as a key aspect of his incoming program.  In fact, the close election that brought him back to power, and the narrow coalition of right-wing and religious parties that gave the government its 62-58 margin of support, was primarily based on the usual Israeli public’s concern over security, bitachon.  Netanyahu is always seen as a safe option when Israel feels threatened, either by terrorist attacks from Gaza or the West Bank, or by foreign powers, such as Iran’s nuclear aspirations.  During Israel’s sixth national election in five years there was nothing in Likud rhetoric to suggest that attacking the judiciary was a principal motivation of the coalition, or that creating a national political crisis was a goal.

Virtually as soon as he returned to the Prime Minister’s office—Netanyahu had previously been in power twice, for a couple of years in the late 1990s and then for 12 straight years—in the last days of 2022 Bibi suddenly proposed sweeping changes to the Israeli governing system.  Those bills, which he produced all at once, would gut the system of judicial review, severely limit the power of the Supreme Court to invalidate any laws, and essentially end any systemic checks-and-balances and any limitations on the power of the executive to do whatever it wanted.

How would that work?  It goes back, in part, to the issue of a Constitution.

I apologize for the lesson in civics, but a constitution is a document that mandates the system used for governing a nation.  It can be modified over time, an important but difficult process, but most of the time it sets up the way laws are made, enforced and reviewed.  In some countries, like the US, there are two separate, elected bodies that vote on legislation—that’s called bicameral—while in other nations, like France, there is just one, usually called a Parliament, a system known as unicameral.  There is always an executive, headed by an elected President or Prime Minister, who leads a bureaucracy that implements and enforces the laws made by the legislature.  Foreign policy is typically more in the hands of the executive branch, but the legislative branch has significant input over this as well, particularly because it has to vote on most or all expenditures.

Every democratic nation has some sort of judicial oversight of the process of making and enforcing laws.  That is, as a way of making certain the ideals and rules in the constitution or other governing documents of the nation are implemented properly and not violated, a set of courts has the authority to rule a law passed by the legislature is not legal, or to stop the executive from acting in ways that violate the Constitution.  We are familiar with this process in America, and it works a bit differently in every other democracy, but there is always this three-part process: the legislature makes the law, the executive implements the law, and the judiciary reviews and oversees the whole process to make sure it’s all, well, kosher.

Now, most democracies have a constitution: the US has one, France has one, Italy has one, Australia has one, and so on, and that’s helpful in this process.  The highest court—usually the Supreme Court—has the power to say that laws or actions by the president or prime minister don’t follow the constitution and are invalid and are thrown out.  Having a constitution does not guarantee you have a democracy, however: many autocracies have beautiful constitutions, including dictatorial regimes like Russia, Cuba, China, Iran, and Syria.  A lovely written constitution that isn’t implemented to protect human rights isn’t worth the parchment its written on.

Now in a democratic nation without a constitution the process of governing is quite similar to a nation with a constitution; it’s just that the basic laws that oversee everything are not in one codified document.  Israel, perhaps unfortunately, doesn’t have a constitution.  That doesn’t make it undemocratic.  There are a number of important democracies that don’t have a written constitution: England, Canada, New Zealand and Sweden are among them, and democracy works quite well in all of them, thank you very much, without a constitution.

However—and it’s a big however—because Israel has what are called Basic Laws and does not have a constitution, the judiciary’s ability to oversee the legality of the actions of the government are not enshrined in a semi-sacred document.  That means that when the government wants to change the rules of how the nation is governed it’s not as difficult as challenging a constitution.  And because the Prime Minister, in Israel’s parliamentary system, is the head of a coalition of parties that have the majority of seats in the Knesset, the executive and legislative functions are more or less in the hands of one guy.

Here in America, if President Biden decided he wanted to pack the Supreme Court to stop it from invalidating things he supported, he’d need a Constitutional Amendment to do it—that is, he’d have to change the Constitution, which requires not just a majority vote of both houses of Congress but a two-thirds vote of both, followed by a ratification process that would have three fourths of the state legislatures voting separately to approve the Amendment.  Any US Constitutional Amendment therefore needs massive public support to pass.

But in Israel, where the Basic Laws are the standing version of a constitution, in order to change something as foundational as the oversight of the Supreme Court over laws and policies, you just need a majority of the Knesset—61 votes out of 120.  That means that once your coalition government is formed after the election you can, theoretically, put through massive changes without much of a majority at all. 

In the current situation, Netanyahu’s government coalition has a narrow majority of the Knesset; just 64-56, but a majority.  However, the election that brought them to power just eight months ago did not contain a whiff of the idea of remaking Israel’s basic governing system so that the Prime Minister would have far more control and the Supreme Court far less control.  When Bibi Netanyahu proposed sweeping changes he catalyzed a huge protest movement in Israel that has only grown stronger over time.  Polls in Israel show a large majority of the population oppose the so-called judicial reform plan: just 25% of Israelis support it, while if an election were to be held today the Likud coalition would drop from its current 64 seats, a majority, to just 52 seats, a clear minority.  Netanyahu’s approval ratings have fallen to 38% positive. 

If you don’t believe polls, the massive, persistent, nation-wide demonstrations against judicial reform testify to huge public disapproval of the direction all this is taking.

Last week, the first phase of “judicial reform”, the coup against the Supreme Court, passed the Knesset.  The vote was 64-0, reflecting the fact that all of Netanyahu’s coalition held together and the unified opposition boycotted the vote as an undemocratic assault on the system of Israeli democracy.  Interestingly, the Supreme Court itself could invalidate the new law limiting its own powers, but seems unlikely to do more than narrowly limit parts of it.  After all, the Supreme Court is a legal body that reflects the values and ethics of all of Israel’s laws and traditions.  It is likely to act with typical restraint—unlike Netanyahu’s Knesset coalition.

In the wake of the passage of this first law there was international consternation among other democratic nations, including the US.  Perhaps more crucially, Moody’s immediately downgraded Israel’s credit rating, and the Tel Aviv stock market plunged. 

Judicial reform, aka the coup d’etas against the Israeli Supreme Court, is bad for Israel on many levels: it creates an undemocratic image of a highly democratic country, equating Netanyahu with dictators like Orban in Hungary and Edrogan in Turkey.  It is bad for Israel’s economy, creating the impression that democracy itself is being destroyed and that’s bad for business.  It is bad for Israel’s security, as a mass refusal of reservists to serve is causing readiness issues for the Air Force and the IDF in general.  And it is terrible for Israel’s public climate of respect and Jewish unity.

So why is all this happening?  In part, because Bibi Netanyahu does not want to go to jail for corruption.  In part, because extreme right-wing settlers want to be able to co-opt land and build settlements on Arab property.  In part, because groups in the current Israeli government with a preference for authoritarianism, religious and otherwise, and a distrust and even hatred of republican processes and liberal democracy are pushing for more control and domination.

We can’t control events in Israel from here.  Please understand that Israelis are, at heart, a highly pragmatic people.  They are Jews who get things done in their own idiosyncratic way.  But this judicial coup is genuinely bad for the country in every way.

My hope—I mean, Hatikvah means “the hope”—is that this protest movement will genuinely galvanize a new consensus in Israeli politics that changes the country into a better, healthier, more authentic expression of Jewish values.  That’s how democracy, at its best, works: by giving the highest hopes and dreams of people the opportunity to thrive, to be nurtured into fruition, not thwarted and stomped on by authoritarians.

We will wait and see what happens next.  But we are personally worried about the current direction of politics, and policies, in Israel.

Now, the fact that this first stage in dismantling the judiciary’s authority came the day before Tisha B’Av demonstrates that the current Israeli government has no appreciation for irony.  But that this Shabbat is Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath of consolation or comfort might give us some hope.

Our people has surely seen much worse events in the course of our long history than this first bill undermining the Supreme Court’s authority in Israel.  And we have a remarkable ability to rise from difficult times to find a new, better path.  Our prayers on this Shabbat Nachamu are that the Israeli public, and its government, find a way out of this mess speedily and soon.  After all, they are smart, practical people.  If they could overcome Arab armies, and boycotts, and economic distress to become the successful modern nation they are today, they can surely overcome their government’s mistakes.  And they can learn to listen to their own people.

Soup and the Promised Land

Sermon Shabbat Hazon 5783 Parshat Devarim

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

There is a famous old soup joke that we Jews tell. A restaurant customer calls over the waiter and says to him, “Waiter, taste my soup.”  The waiter says, “Look sir, is there something wrong with it?  Is it cold?”  And the customer says, “Taste the soup.”  The waiter says, “Is it too salty, perhaps?”   And the customer says, “Taste the soup.”  The waiter says, “Is it too watery?”  And the customer says, “Taste the soup.” The waiter is now getting a little annoyed.  “Is the flavor off?  What’s wrong with the soup?”  But the customer just says, “Taste the soup.”  Finally, in frustration the waiter says, “Alright already, fine, sir, I’ll taste the soup.”  The waiter looks around the table and says, “So where’s the spoon?”  And the customer says, “Aha!”

It’s a great joke, a true classic.  But my favorite soup joke goes like this: a customer is ordering food in a kosher restaurant, and he asks for the borscht.  But the waiter says, “No, don’t get that; order something else, that’s so awful even the flies won't go near it.”  So, the customer says, “What do you recommend?”  And the waiter says, “Get the chicken soup with matzah balls.” And when the chicken soup with matzah balls arrives the man assures the waiter that it’s delicious.

A customer at the next table hears this conversation between the waiter and the guy who tried to order the borscht, and when it’s his turn he orders the split pea soup.  But the waiter gives him the same story, “Don’t order that, it’s terrible, even the flies won’t go near it.”  So, this customer, too, asks the waiter to recommend something else, and he says, “Get the barley soup.” But when the barley soup arrives it’s terrible, chaloshes.

"Hey, waiter,” the customer demands, “Why didn't you tell me to order the chicken soup?"

"Because," the waiter replies, "you didn't order the borscht."

I love this story, one of the classic Jewish jokes that probably only works in our culture and might just be better in Yiddish.  It reminds me of the ways in which we so often find ourselves missing the mark and even failing at things through a kind of process of disconnection. 

Without seeking too much wisdom in an old joke, the problem lies in what we seek as opposed to what we need, or more accurately what we ask for as opposed to what we really want.  You see, if that customer had only known that if he ordered the borscht—which was terrible—instead of the pea soup—which was also terrible—he would have gotten the matzah ball soup, which was great, instead of the barley soup, which was terrible.  In other words, if he had only asked for the right wrong thing he would have gotten the right right thing.  Or something like that.

To make it a little clearer, think about Moses at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion of Devarim, the start of the Book of Deuteronomy.  He has spent the past 40 years trying to get the people of Israel into the Promised Land, and to honest about it, trying to get himself into the Promised Land.  And now he knows he simply isn’t going to be allowed to get in.  God has decreed that he will be able to bring this fractious group of Jews right up to the border, and they will be allowed to enter and conquer and inherit this beautiful land of Israel.  But he himself will have to lay down his burden on the mountains at the boundary of the land. 

And so, Moses launches into a long set of speeches that compose the Book of Devarim, Deuteronomy.  He reminds the people of their last 40 years of travels, trials and travails.  He urges them to remember “the days of old,” challenges them with their failings, urges them to follow the commandments.  Moses tells them—not for the first time and certainly not for the last time—that he himself can’t go into the Promised Land in large part because their inability to be good finally goaded him into the mistake that made him ineligible for entry into Canaan.

And as Deuteronomy works its way out over the next few weeks, Moses will make it clear that all he really wants at this point in his life is to go into Canaan, to see with his own eyes his people inherit their own beautiful land.  He wants to know that his legacy is secure, that the yerushah, the inheritance of his people, is established.  He wants to see it with his own aged eyes.

In other words, Moses keeps asking for what he cannot have.  And he keeps kvetching about not having it.

But the funny part about all of this is that if Moses is concerned about his legacy, well, it is already well established.  He is actually seeking something that he will never achieve, entry into the Promised Land—but if only he asked for what he really wants, even needs, which is the regard of posterity, the establishment of the people of Israel in the land of Israel, his own status as the most important Jew in all of history, well then, he would realize that he already has what he really needs.

It’s like this: if instead of asking for the barley soup he would just ask for the borscht, he would end up with what he really needs, which turns out to be chicken soup with matzah balls…

Now to leave soup completely—“Finally,” you say, “rabbi; enough with the soup… it’s too hot for soup now anyway!”—what Deuteronomy will ultimately teach us is something remarkable.  We often seek what we think we want when what we really need is close at hand.

As the Rolling Stones once put it, you can’t always get what you want but you just might find you get what you need…

Moses never will enter the Promised Land.  But in reality, he has been traveling in the promised land for a long time.  It is the quality of the journey, the sacredness of the transit, that he never quite learns to appreciate.  He has had an unprecedented and unequalled career as leader.  He has accomplished so much!  We just wish he realized that, and that it was enough for him.

We may be able to learn something critical from Moses, and from God, over the weeks to come when we will be reading this amazing book.  Often, we seek things we don’t have simply because others have them.  And as we seek them, we neglect what we already have, and what we should value for its own qualities.  The blessings we enjoy now are always so much easier to forget than the things we think we desire.

It's ingrained in our American culture, of course.  If you have a nice house, you are told that you should wish you had a better one.  If you own a good car, you are convinced by advertising that there is a fancier, more advanced, preferable one out there.  The articles on your news feed teach that you can always be thinner, better looking, happier if you only purchase another item, try another diet, move to a better place, adopt a new program of behaviors.  Everyone on Facebook looks like they are having a better time than you are, and you should try to be more like them… 

Of course, that’s not true in any objective sense; none of it is real.  We each have many things in our own lives that we should learn to appreciate, to celebrate, to enjoy while we have them.  We have people who love us, friends who respect us, lives worth living. 

Look, Moses was, quite literally, the greatest Jewish leader in history.  Wouldn’t it be nice if he realized that was, indeed, enough of a life’s accomplishment?  He brought our people from abject slavery to religious and political success.  Would it be so hard for him to just sit back and enjoy it?

This Shabbat is called Shabbat Hazon, which means “the Sabbath of Vision” and its name is taken from the Haftarah for tomorrow.  It always precedes the commemoration of Tisha B’Av, the 9th of Av, a mournful day of remembrance of destruction and loss.  Certainly, in Jewish history, there is plenty of loss to recall. 

But perhaps we can see this Sabbath of Vision through a different lens tonight.  You see, we live in a country in which we exercise our Judaism freely and openly.  It’s hot outside now, but we also live in a beautiful place here in Tucson that we can enjoy even in the middle of summer.  We each have goodness in our lives to appreciate and celebrate. We have people to embrace, a congregation to participate in, love to give and receive.      

My friends, try to discern, over these coming weeks in which we will read the great book of Deuteronomy, what it is you really need, and what it will take for you to realize just how precious this world can be for you as it is now, without magical thinking or radical changes in your own life.  Whether or not you get the right kind of soup.

Because then, unlike Moses, you may come to recognize your own Promised Land in the life you have now.

Is Life a Highway, Really?

Sermon Shabbat Matot-Masei 5783

This week we complete the Book of Numbers with the double parsha of Matot-Masei.  While there are five books in the Torah, and Bamidbar, Numbers, is just the fourth of five, the end of the book really completes the great journey of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery to the borders of the Promised Land.  The final book of the Torah, Devarim, Deuteronomy, while it is a fascinating and very 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.  There isn’t much new under the sun in Deuteronomy.  So, this sedrah, Matot-Masei at the conclusion of Bamidbar is a good time to assess the meaning of the journey of our people.

On a superficial examination the people of Israel have made enormous progress over the 40 years covered in these books.  Early in Exodus our people are enslaved and remain human chattel for many generations.  The traditional count is 400 years of slavery, near the end of which a genocidal program is advanced by the Egyptian king to destroy us.  Moses is called by God and emerges as an effective revolutionary leader, assisted by his brother Aaron, and through God’s power the people of Israel are redeemed from slavery and given the gift of freedom.  After surviving an attempt to re-enslave them, the Israelites enter a covenant, a contract with God at Mt. Sinai, and are taught a way of life structured by moral law and ethical action, mitzvot.  They are progressively organized into a structured, mobile community, are given social rules for successful human society, taught how to centralize religious worship in a unifying way, and forged into a growing young national group, and directed towards their own homeland.

The nascent nation is then brought through a variety of challenging experiences, some imposed from outside opponents, others the result of internal conflicts and struggles, and eventually arrive 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 the formation of national identity 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, we reach the borders of the land that will become Israel, but before we can rejoice as our people is brought to the full redemption of 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 included in the Torah or any regular reading cycle, we never really see the Israelites get into 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 Declaration of Independence and the American Revolutionary War but never were told who won the war.  It is like following the entire World Cup soccer tournament, discovering the final was between the Argentina and France, and never learning who won the crown.

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, we don’t enter the Promised Land because we need to learn that it’s not the arriving that counts, but journeying, not what we find when we get there but how we travel along the way.  This 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, are 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 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.

Or as Winston Churchill, “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.  In fact, 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.  Life is a highway, as it were, and we are going to ride it all life-long… and who we really are is much more a function of the way that we travel that highway than where we garage our car.

Or something like that.  I mean, that is the point, right?  It doesn’t really matter where we end up, but how we get there, no?

To be honest, sometimes I’m not so sure about that.  I don’t know how many of you enjoy attending graduation ceremonies, but I once had the unenviable responsibility of attending, in a one-week period, nine different graduation ceremonies.  Let me rephrase that: one year I had the delightful privilege of attending, in a one-week period, nine different graduation ceremonies.  I believe my favorite moment in all of them was hearing a fine high school musician sing a medley of all the favorite graduation tunes of recent years as though they were, essentially, one song.  “Another fork stuck in the road/ as we go on we remember all the times we had together/ I’ll remember you/you’ll never walk alone/kiss today goodbye and point me towards tomorrow/I hope you had the time of your life” and so on.  It highlighted the essential cliché, true but trite, of the fact that when we arrive at moments of great accomplishment what we realize is how precious the journey has been, how much we love our friends who have travelled with us, how we have grown and changed over the time we have been journeying.  Etc.  Yaddah yaddah yaddah…

Look, it’s true that, as Matot-Masei makes clear, the journey shaped us as a people, for better and for worse.  How we get there makes us who we are.

But doesn’t it also matter a great deal what we do when we get to the Promised Land?  I mean, what if we manage to reach our goal, and we’ve had a great trip and all, but we don’t act in good ways that build holiness into our lives and our world?  What if we fail to take the steps we need to take to create a better, holier life? 

Certainly, the journey matters, and in particular, how we act and treat each other along the way. And whenever we get to what we perceive of as our own promised land, the work we do when get where we want to be is just as important.  The goal is not to rest on our laurels, to congratulate ourselves on how well we have done getting there.  The ultimate purpose, which our ancestors ultimately come to understand, is to move into that Promised Land and create a life, and institutions, that best express our values and ideals.

You see, life may well be a highway.  But it’s not just how we get there—it’s what we do after we get there that also really counts.  The message is to travel well: but also to make it matter when you get there.

So, over this final Shabbat of Numbers, may we think not only about how we have progressed to this point in our lives, but how we can make the place we are now into something truly special, good, and holy.

From Portugal to Here

Sermon Parshat Pinchas 5783

As many of you know, I’ve just returned from a visit to Portugal, a country that was new to me.  At last count, I’ve traveled to some 50 different countries over the years, a small number compared to some people but still, that’s a lot of places.  But until now I’ve never been to Portugal before. A close friend got married last weekend on the island of Madeira, in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast, and since it was necessary to fly to Lisbon to get to Madeira it provided a good excuse to explore an interesting new country.

While it may have been new to me, Portugal is not a new country for my family, or at least not for some of my long-ago ancestors.  You see, one branch of my dad’s side of the family lived in Portugal, and probably Spain before that.  Their name was del Banco.  In the year 1496, under pressure from the King and Queen of Spain, who had expelled all Spanish Jews in 1492, King Manuel I expelled all Jews from Portugal.  The new law of 1496 required all Jews either to convert to Christianity or leave the country, and so my ancestors the del Bancos emigrated from Lisbon, going first to the Italian peninsula.  They later moved from there to the Rhineland area of Germany where they married into a German Jewish family, the Reinharts.  Both the Reinharts and the del Bancos eventually immigrated to America in the 1840s, the Reinharts settling first in Portland, Oregon, and later mostly moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, while the del Bancos went first to Ohio.  Three del Bancos, my distant cousins, served in the Union Army during the Civil War; one of them, one of the first Jewish chaplains permitted in the US military, died when the steamship he was on was torpedoed returning from occupied Vicksburg, where he had led High Holy Day services in 1864.  And then, like so many other immigrant Jewish families, our family spread out all over the United States.

All of that personal history means that when I explored Portugal it was in fact returning to a country in which some of my ancestors lived over 500 years ago. Admittedly, I am probably only about 1/64th Sephardic Jew—the Portugese Jews were Sephardim of course—but that small part of me originated in Portugal.  So while it was not exactly a homecoming as such, it was interesting to see just how it felt to wander around Lisbon and Porto that corner of the Iberian Peninsula.

You know, I once did one of those commercial genetic DNA tests that are supposed to tell you your biological origins, where your ancestors came from in great detail.  It was the kind of test that tells you that you are 43% Irish, 12% Scottish, 28% from Ghana, 4% Neanderthal and so on.  I was hoping for some detailed conclusions about exactly where my people came from originally.  But when my DNA test came back it gave only the conclusion that I am “100% European Jewish.”  Great.  As if that was something we didn’t already know... 

Still, it was interesting to see just where some of my antecedents lived over five centuries ago, before again becoming wandering Jews.

In any event, Portugal in 2023 is a lovely country, and Lisbon a particularly attractive and enjoyable city.  They tell you often that it is the second oldest European capital city, after only Athens, and was founded centuries before Rome.  Portugal has been Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Goth, Muslim, and Catholic, controlled by dukes, emperors, caliphs, kings, dictators, and presidents. 

While there were likely Jews present in the urban landscape occupied today by Lisbon, and elsewhere in what later became Portugal, the most significant Jewish community in Portugal’s history arrived with, or shortly after the Muslim conquest of el-Andalus in the Middle Ages.  From the 8th century until the Christian Reconquista forced out the last Muslims in the late 15th century Jews mostly flourished in the area of Portugal.  In particular, during the great age of Portugese exploration that resulted in the first global colonial empire, Jews were actively engaged in the commerce that made Portugal incredibly successful and wealthy, particularly the spice trade with Africa, India and the Far East.  Jews were active in the textile industry of the day—we might call it the shmattah business—and helped finance and insure the voyages of the great Portugese navigators and explorers, who sailed with commerce on their minds.

Initially, King Manuel, an effective and enlightened monarch for his day, tried to shield the Jews of Portugal from the forced conversions and expulsions his Spanish big brother neighbors were brutally enforcing on their own Jews.  In fact, in 1495 he liberalized many of the laws the restricted and limited Jewish participation in society.  But then he wanted to marry a Castilian princess and cement an alliance with Spain—and part of the price of the arrangement was that he had to expel or convert all of Portugal’s Jews.  He had no desire to lose the productive, literate, and loyal Jewish community that formed perhaps 20% of his population.  And so, in a blanket move, he decreed that all Jews in Portugal were officially converted to Catholicism, whether they liked it or not.  Many Jews went along with this superficial conversion.  Others could not stomach the hypocrisy, and left for other lands: the Ottoman Empire, Italy, even the New World.

But while my distant ancestors fled conversion in 1496, many Jews remained behind and publicly pretended to be Catholics while practicing their Judaism in secret.  The Inquisition sought to expose, torture, and execute these “New Christians,” but the persecution was not universally successful.  That meant that even more brutal methods were tried.  In April 1506, during a period of drought and famine and following a horrifying anti-Jewish sermon on a Sunday in the Church of Sao Domingos, someone said they had seen a miraculous light shining from a statue of Jesus.  The crowd began to agitate against the New Christians, a few were caught and horribly killed, and then mobs began to search for, locate, torture and murder New Christians, who were widely suspected of being secret Jews.  No doubt many were. 

In the end, thousands of New Christians were murdered. 

King Manuel was furious at the breakdown in public order, perhaps more so than the destruction of the New Christians and secret Jews.  He enforced extreme punishment on the rioters, closed the church for a while, and executed the Dominican friars who had encouraged the massacre.

But the damage was done, and many more New Christians—conversos, Marranos, choose your term—fled Portugal.  Essentially, within a decade or two, the great Jewish community of Portugal was gone, reinvented in places like Amsterdam, Curacao, Recife, and North America, where Portugese Sephardic synagogues flourished, and some still remain.

Today there is a monument outside that church in Lisbon, Sao Domingos, remembering the great sin of the Massacre of Lisbon.  Locals say that the later disasters that afflicted that church—its collapse during Sunday services in the great earthquake of 1755, killing most of its worshippers, a terrible fire again on a Sunday in 1959—were punishment for the Massacre of Lisbon.

You can still see signs of Jewish life in the past in Lisbon—a Rua Judiaria, a Jew street next to what used to be the major synagogue of the Jewish Quarter which was taken over and turned into another Catholic Church after 1496. 

There are remarkable stories about prominent Portugese Jews who managed their way around the persecutions of the Inquisition and expulsions, including the exceptional Dona Gracia Mendes in the 1500s.  A wealthy New Christian widow protected many Jews from persecution and lived regally, but peripatetically in Lisbon, Antwerp, Venice, Ferrara and finally Constantinople, always a step ahead of the Inquisition.   Truly a wandering Jew.  And the success of the Portugese age of exploration, the so-called Golden Age of a small country on the farthest western edge of the European continent conquering an enormous empire and becoming fabulously wealthy doing so, was do in no small part to its energetic and supremely competent Jewish minority.

But those intriguing signs of Jewish influence from a distant past, while evocative, do not testify to a vibrant Jewish life today.  Yes, there are many Jewish expats living in Portugal now, and enjoying it.  I met some from England and Israel and America.  But this is not a recapturing of the great Sephardic heritage of the past, nor is it an affirmation of a vital Jewish community there today.  Rather, it is a small taste of what was once a great part of the Jewish world.

The truth is that the Jewish communities that matter today are those that offer warm congregations of Jewish prayer and learning, where children are educated and reach maturity, where new and exciting learning and growth are taking place right now.  You can travel around the world and find fascinating and wonderful aspects of Jewish life nearly anywhere.  But what you discover, over time and distance, is that the most compelling Jewish stories are being written now, in the ways in which we build our own communities of prayer, study, social justice and practice.

Just so our portion of Pinchas reminds us to observe our Shabbatot and holidays with meaning and beauty, in the places where we are not persecuted, and where we have the freedom to be Jews openly and with devotion today.

May we always remember to do so.

Bald Truths: How Rebellion Teaches us About Leadership

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon’s Sermon on Korach 5783

Korach chronicles the greatest rebellion in the entire Torah, the palace revolt of the Levite Korach and his 400 followers against the divinely ordained leadership of his fellow Levites, Moses and Aaron.  As so often seems to be the case, we Jews are our own worst enemies.  The result of this insurrection is disastrous, at least for the rebels.  The earth opens and Korach and all of his misguided followers are swallowed up, never to be heard from again. 

By tradition, the rebellion of Korach is the absolute worst revolt of its sort in Jewish history.  But this is hardly the first rebellion of the Israelites against Moses’ leadership, and it is certainly also not the last.  In a couple of weeks, the Torah portion of Pinchas will conclude yet another episode of an insider revolution, that one solved by the point of a spear.  And the rebellions against Moses and God have been pretty continuous: the criticism on the very shore of the Red Sea, the Golden Calf episode, the intense unhappiness of the Children of Israel throughout their peregrinations in the desert right up to last week’s story of the failed spies in Shlach L’cha.  Our ancestors had a very bad habit of constantly being dissatisfied and continuously trying to overthrow the proper order of things.  Whoever was in charge always got the brunt of the criticism and the lion’s share of the hostility.

In fact, that tendency has remained a particularly Jewish one throughout our long history.  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 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 tradition of Korach-ism.

Since Korach is considered to be the worst of all of these, I wondered if there is any clue in the Hebrew of his name.  The Hebrew root, the Korach, has a few other meanings.  One is to cut or shear things, to slice.  Certainly rebellion is intended as a cutting gesture.  Another meaning of Kuf reish chet is ice or cold, like Kerach—to chill or freeze, again a kind of reflection of emotional distance and hostility.  Put those together, to cut and to make cold and you come up with… well, cold cuts.  Very Jewish. 

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon’s Sermon on Korach 5783

Korach chronicles the greatest rebellion in the entire Torah, the palace revolt of the Levite Korach and his 400 followers against the divinely ordained leadership of his fellow Levites, Moses and Aaron.  As so often seems to be the case, we Jews are our own worst enemies.  The result of this insurrection is disastrous, at least for the rebels.  The earth opens and Korach and all of his misguided followers are swallowed up, never to be heard from again. 

By tradition, the rebellion of Korach is the absolute worst revolt of its sort in Jewish history.  But this is hardly the first rebellion of the Israelites against Moses’ leadership, and it is certainly also not the last.  In a couple of weeks, the Torah portion of Pinchas will conclude yet another episode of an insider revolution, that one solved by the point of a spear.  And the rebellions against Moses and God have been pretty continuous: the criticism on the very shore of the Red Sea, the Golden Calf episode, the intense unhappiness of the Children of Israel throughout their peregrinations in the desert right up to last week’s story of the failed spies in Shlach L’cha.  Our ancestors had a very bad habit of constantly being dissatisfied and continuously trying to overthrow the proper order of things.  Whoever was in charge always got the brunt of the criticism and the lion’s share of the hostility.

In fact, that tendency has remained a particularly Jewish one throughout our long history.  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 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 tradition of Korach-ism.

Since Korach is considered to be the worst of all of these, I wondered if there is any clue in the Hebrew of his name.  The Hebrew root, the Korach, has a few other meanings.  One is to cut or shear things, to slice.  Certainly rebellion is intended as a cutting gesture.  Another meaning of Kuf reish chet is ice or cold, like Kerach—to chill or freeze, again a kind of reflection of emotional distance and hostility.  Put those together, to cut and to make cold and you come up with… well, cold cuts.  Very Jewish. 

My favorite korach translation of the Hebrew is that it has the meaning, “baldness, Karei’ach” which seems to indicate that a lack of hair is potentially untrustworthy… my apologies, on behalf of the Hebrew language, to all bald people who resent this assertion.  In defense, I must say that some of my best friends are bald.  And my father.

There is no word about whether this relates to comb-overs, or to bad hairpieces marking their possessors as being intrinsically duplicitous.  Perhaps.

Midrash gives us another kind of clue.  Korach is considered to have been a very wealthy man, a kind of Jewish Croesus, the Rothschild, the Bill Gates, the Mark Zuckerberg, the Elon Musk of the Sinai Desert Israelites.  There is a Hebrew slang term, otzrot Korach, the treasures of Korach, which basically means someone is filthy rich.  Somehow his wealth is associated with the tendency to revel in rebellion.  Super-rich people as uber-powerful revolutionaries, believing they are infallible and the smartest people in every room, seeking to overturn the established order and put themselves in charge?  Sounds a little bit familiar, doesn’t it? 

So, let’s see now: the word Korach teachs us that rebellion against God’s appointed leaders comes from a coldness of heart and a desire to cut, reflects a paucity of the insulating calm of hair—or perhaps just bad hair—and it is inflamed by the financial means to support true rebellion.  Odd and very interesting.

The truth is that leading the Jewish people has never been an easy task—important, rewarding, ethically essential, but never, ever easy.  If it is true that it is shver tzu zain a Yid, hard to be a Jew, it is even harder to be a Jewish leader.  And so I wonder: why would intelligent, caring, reasonable Jews wish to take on this responsibility?  What is there about the opportunity to make this commitment that attracts talented people with other things to do in life to spend time and effort in this contentious arena?  Why would someone wish to engage in the constant give and take, the automatic Jewish flow of criticism and critique that aims itself at any and every leader of substance and integrity?

Perhaps the answer is also to be found in our Torah portion.  Not so much in the desire 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 may be holy in this community of priests, but that legitimate, principled, selfless leadership is absolutely necessary in order for us to achieve that holiness.  We Jews need direction, and organization, and the practical details of everyday functionality to be taken care of so that we can grow spiritually in holiness. 

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.  It is our ability to accept those differences, sometimes lose the arguments, and nonetheless continue to work together to serve God with commitment and passion, and further the destiny of our communities and our people.

So whether or not we have hair, whether or not we have cold or warm personalities, whether we are sharp or dull, even, and whether or not we completely agree, if we are to be true followers of Moses, and God, we always must find a way to work together for the greater good.  It’s a fabulous lesson.

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, 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.

There is no word about whether this relates to comb-overs, or to bad hairpieces marking their possessors as being intrinsically duplicitous.  Perhaps.

Midrash gives us another kind of clue.  Korach is considered to have been a very wealthy man, a kind of Jewish Croesus, the Rothschild, the Bill Gates, the Mark Zuckerberg, the Elon Musk of the Sinai Desert Israelites.  There is a Hebrew slang term, otzrot Korach, the treasures of Korach, which basically means someone is filthy rich.  Somehow his wealth is associated with the tendency to revel in rebellion.  Super-rich people as uber-powerful revolutionaries, believing they are infallible and the smartest people in every room, seeking to overturn the established order and put themselves in charge?  Sounds a little bit familiar, doesn’t it? 

So, let’s see now: the word Korach teachs us that rebellion against God’s appointed leaders comes from a coldness of heart and a desire to cut, reflects a paucity of the insulating calm of hair—or perhaps just bad hair—and it is inflamed by the financial means to support true rebellion.  Odd and very interesting.

The truth is that leading the Jewish people has never been an easy task—important, rewarding, ethically essential, but never, ever easy.  If it is true that it is shver tzu zain a Yid, hard to be a Jew, it is even harder to be a Jewish leader.  And so I wonder: why would intelligent, caring, reasonable Jews wish to take on this responsibility?  What is there about the opportunity to make this commitment that attracts talented people with other things to do in life to spend time and effort in this contentious arena?  Why would someone wish to engage in the constant give and take, the automatic Jewish flow of criticism and critique that aims itself at any and every leader of substance and integrity?

Perhaps the answer is also to be found in our Torah portion.  Not so much in the desire 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 may be holy in this community of priests, but that legitimate, principled, selfless leadership is absolutely necessary in order for us to achieve that holiness.  We Jews need direction, and organization, and the practical details of everyday functionality to be taken care of so that we can grow spiritually in holiness. 

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.  It is our ability to accept those differences, sometimes lose the arguments, and nonetheless continue to work together to serve God with commitment and passion, and further the destiny of our communities and our people.

So whether or not we have hair, whether or not we have cold or warm personalities, whether we are sharp or dull, even, and whether or not we completely agree, if we are to be true followers of Moses, and God, we always must find a way to work together for the greater good.  It’s a fabulous lesson.

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, 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.

The Right Kind of Spy

Sermon for Shlach Lecha 5783

June 16, 2023

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

In competitive rowing there are nine people in the boat, including the captain of the shell, who is called a coxswain or cox and gives the stroke commands.

The story goes that the Chabad House at Oxford challenged the Oxford University oarsmen to a rowing contest, but quickly discovered that the Oxford crew was twice as fast as they were.  So the Lubavitch captain sent a spy across to Oxford to find out why and how. A few hours later the spy returned.  “Nuh,” said the Chabad captain, “tell us everything.”

“Well,” said the spy, “They do everything the other way round to us.”

“Explain,” demanded the captain.

“It's simple,” said the spy, “They've got eight men rowing and one man shouting!”

This little joke has relevance for this week’s Torah portion of Shelach Lecha, for two reasons.  First, the need for more people to row, and fewer to shout, is always important in Jewish circles.  But secondly, and more importantly, the question of what makes for a good spy and just where you find the professional qualities necessary for doing espionage work are central to our parshah and can teach us important things about ourselves and our own quest for meaning. 

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,” both the armed services and the civilian agencies entrusted with espionage 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 used to determine the best kind of person to employ in this work.  But when you are trying this spying business out for the first time you are liable to make a few mistakes.  And so it seems in our portion of Shlach Lecha this week.

The commandment given at the start of Shlach Lecha is purely practical.  God commands Moses to send forth 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 at all, but in the classic use of the term they are spies.  A spying pack of 12 guys is now sent off, 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 a close scouting of an alien and enemy-filled land, a land flowing with milk and honey but also full of Canaanite tribes, towns and armies.  Who would be 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 identified by name and reputation.  The most famous of them, Hosea, is actually Moses’ top aid.  The others come from illustrious families and hold high office.  To add to the drama of the coming mission, Moses even changes the name of their most prominent member, Hosea, to Joshua.  Name changes always signify something portentous in the Torah.  This is no exception; his new name means, “God will save.” 

These illustrious young gentlemen are no doubt feeling pretty full of themselves for having been selected for this important mission.  It’s all very exciting.  What an opportunity!  How thrilling!

And then Moses gives instructions which 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?  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.

Perhaps, 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 of prep-school guys from good colleges with titles and fancy clothes and instruct them to bring back souvenirs to boot.  I’m sure none of the Canaanites noticed that group…

It’s rather 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, those senatorial junkets that 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 with these m’raglim, these spies.  They learn that the land is good and beautiful and productive—how could they miss that?—but they also manage to be convinced that the diverse Canaanite tribes, small enclaves of clans really, are some sort of giant 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!

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”, the 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 the locals at bars and brothels, and finding out just what the people really are all about. 

In fact, that’s exactly what Joshua himself does a generation later in the Haftarah that we will chant tomorrow.  The two spies Joshua chooses aren’t even named in the Bible, and instead of going off as a kind of expeditionary force 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 the situation.

Armies are always discovering this in wartime, by the way.  Back in the American Civil War the Union had a genuinely terrible time with its intelligence work for most of the war.  They kept sending out tall, handsome, well-educated, nicely groomed, sophisticated young men to scout the land, men like the sons of admirals and generals and Senators – one of them, Ulrich Dahglren, was the darling of Washington society and was said to have manners as “soft as a cat’s”—and the southerners kept catching them and hanging them.  After a few years of this they finally caught on, and by the later stages of the war they were sending out undersized, anonymous, scrawny little cavalrymen who brought back all kinds of secrets. 

My good friend Harold Bongarten, of blessed memory, did this kind of work during World War II, slipping behind German lines and pretending to be a returning German soldier wandering around France.  Harold was not tall or dramatic looking, had an easy smile and a kind manner, and he was constantly underestimated, which he counted on and exploited with great charm.  He spoke German fluently, and he sent back a series of reports that helped the Allies know whom to trust and whom to arrest in each town as they recaptured it.  And then he quietly and anonymously moved on ahead of the armies to the next town.  And he was never caught.

So why is this relevant in a religious sense? 

You see, the lessons of this story of the spies is 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 a certain sense of arrogance.  They were the princes of the people, after all.  They had high standing and knew the best way to do things.  And, of course, they failed miserably.

We modern, sophisticated, educated adults come to our mission as Jews in a rather similar way.  We, too, consider ourselves to be pretty important.  We know all sorts of things, and we have achievements in the world that testify to our accomplishments and abilities.  We have self-pride and confidence.  If we seek to find God and holiness from this perspective, we, too, will fail.

I think that is what I love most about our congregation, Beit Simcha.  No one, in my experience here, thinks that they are too important to help move chairs, or pack and carry boxes, or pitch in doing whatever needs doing.  This is true from the oldest to the youngest, and from the president to the newest member.  Whatever our status is outside of our shul, here we all seem to approach doing things with genuine humility.

And that is more than appropriate for Jews.  In fact, it is perhaps the essential lesson of Shlach Lecha, and pivotal to our religion.

For it is not out of confidence or arrogance that we must approach the Divine; it is out of humility and simplicity.  What God needs is not the pedigrees of the elite, but the hearts of the humble.  What Judaism requires is not the stature of the elect but the open honesty of the ordinary woman and man.  What allows us to reach towards heaven and connect with God is the ability to come to terms with our own limits, our humanity, our humility.  To drop pretenses, and approach God without our badges of rank or pretentions of importance.

We see that in the Haftarah for this week’s portion, the story of the spies that Joshua sent into the land of Canaan when the Israelites finally succeeded in conquering the Holy Land in the next generation.  They were crucial players in that victory.  But we don’t even learn their names in the Bible.  They are just guys, anonymous Jews who made possible our entry into Israel.

You see, we too must approach God, our own promised land, with simplicity and humility, as honest, unassuming human beings.  If we can do that, then the secret fastness of the divine spirit may be revealed and opened to us.  And then our own mission, as Jews, will be fulfilled for our good, and everyone’s good. May this become our will, and thus our blessing.  Ken Yehi Ratson.

Blessings

Blessings

Sermon Shabbat Naso 5783, 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 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 often 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 actually 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 rationally 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 “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 appears to be 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 an event—no one wants a sermon or even a radio show monologue 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 the Book of Numbers, “May God bless you and keep you…”  And the honoree’s aggrieved countenance relaxed, and things were better. 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 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 being given a blessing by a rabbi or clergyperson of another kind 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.  Hoo-ha.

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, have Levites wash your hands, 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 spooky, beautiful and unique.  And when people hide their eyes, and those of their children during the blessing, they do so as though God’s very presence was shining from us kohanim, as though we really were intrinsically superior beings, closer to God.

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 royal family, each can, and should, wear the keter kehuna the crown of priesthood.  We truly are the inheritors, spiritually, of this mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh, the kingdom of priests, members of the holy people.

And that blessing, that simple, three-part blessing, confers 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.

50 Words for Learning

Sermon Shabbat Shavu’ot 5783

There is a popular myth that Eskimos have 50 different names for snow.  British singer Kate Bush even titled one of her albums, “50 Words for Snow.”  In fact, there are many words in Aleut, Inuit and other Eskimo languages for snow, reasonable considering their environment; it certainly snows a lot up there in the still-frozen north.  Even more dramatically, the native peoples of Norway, Sweden and Finland, the Sami peoples, use languages that have perhaps 180 snow- and ice-related words and as many as 300 different words for types of snow.  Each of the words for snow has a somewhat different meaning, distinguishing differences in the type, intensity and even the shape of the ice crystals in the snow.  Most of us hot weather habitués would not be able to delineate even a fraction of those distinctions.

But based on the weather predictions for the next week, we probably should have at least 50 words for “hot” here in Tucson…

If Eskimos and Samis know snow, we Jews, instead, have a plethora of words for education, and nearly all of our sacred texts are named for a variation of learning or teaching. The word Torah means, literally, instruction.  The words for the great texts of Jewish law, the Mishnah and Gemara and the Talmud that encompasses them, mean, respectively, memorized learning, completed learning, and just, well, learning.  The name for the great text of Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, means, “to enlighten.”   The term “rabbi” translates to master teacher.  The word for parents, Horim, means instructors.  Knowledge is Da’at, from the word Yadah, knowing.  Seichel means intelligence, used for both learning and teaching.  A meivin is one who understands and can therefore teach others.  Even the holiday of Chanukah comes from the word chinuch, which means education.  And so on.  Learning and teaching are the essential concepts of our tradition.

We see this in folk wisdom as well.  There is an old Jewish joke from the days when the Rothschild family was the standard for wealth in the world.  The Rothschilds were the Warren Buffets, the Bill Gates, the Jeff Bezos’ of the world for 200 years.  A guy says to his friend, “If I were Rothschild, I’d be richer than Rothschild.”  And his friend says, “Richer than Rothschild?  How would you be richer than Rothschild?”  And he answers, “Because I’d do a little teaching on the side.”

While the stereotype for a Jewish professional today is doctor or lawyer or accountant, the truth is that the most Jewish job of all is teacher.  Since learning in Judaism is so central, the job of teaching is critically important, the paradigmatic Jewish activity.

Which makes this holiday of Shavu’ot a unique opportunity to explore just what it means to do Jewish learning.  Last night we set out lots of cheesecake and other goodies to eat, brewed coffee, conducted a short Shvu’os festival evening service and then started studying.  The Tikun Leil Shavu’ot, the study session the night of Shvu’os is a Jewish education marathon. The idea is Torah Lishma, learning truly for its own sake because in Judaism learning in and of itself is virtuous.

And of course, in a Jewish family, children are supposed to all excel in school.  When I was a kid if I brought home a report card with 5 A’s and one A-, or God-forbid a B+, the first thing my mom or dad would say was, “What happened with the A-?”  I was the third child out of four in my family.  By the time I came along the formula was simple: if you got all A’s you were taken for a special meal with mom and dad.  If not, no special meal.  Not only learning, but excelling at learning was expected.  I suspect many of you had similar experiences growing up.

But why is that true?  What is there about knowledge that makes it so inherently valuable to Jews?

This may seem so obvious that it can easily be parodied—in the movie Animal House what was the motto of Faber College?  “Knowledge is Good?”—but actually it’s not really so obvious as all that, nor is the idea that learning is the central value a universally shared concept, either in other religious traditions or in politics or society.  In Christianity, for example, the central principle and highest value is faith, not knowledge. In Islam the greatest goal is submission to the will of God.  In Buddhism enlightenment can just as surely come from experience as knowledge.  Even among the Chasidim, like Chabad, the appeal is to the simple story and the basic act, the mitzvah and the maiseh, rather than the great depth of the learning.

Although many religious traditions emphasize the virtue of scholarship, there have been plenty of times when religions actually suppressed literacy in the interest of heightening faith.  Do you know why medieval cathedrals had such fabulous stained-glass windows?  It’s because those images told the stories of the Bible in ways the illiterate population, rich and poor alike, could understand, since they couldn’t actually read the text of the Bible for themselves.  There were extremely important kings and emperors who were totally illiterate: Charlemagne, for example, and Genghis Khan.  In fact, in America for a long-time schooling was considered an extravagance, a foppish concern of the wealthy that distracted from farming or ranching or being a mechanic or settling and expanding the nation.  Abraham Lincoln had perhaps three years of organized schooling in his whole life; his father certainly didn’t believe in it when he was growing up, and so he became an auto-didact, a self-taught scholar of great accomplishment.  But it wasn’t because his society encouraged that direction; not at all. 

Even today there are many people, even those in very high places, who don’t think of education or knowledge as inherently valuable. Our American society demonstrates its appreciation for professions by rewarding them financially.  Yet teachers are among the most poorly paid of all professions, aren’t they?  So perhaps education isn’t so wonderful after all.

Another way of looking at it is that there are other values than education.  While this would be a hard sell to make to most Jewish parents—I grew up thinking college was like high school, you automatically went after 12th grade—there are many virtues in the world, and lots of them don’t come out of a classroom or book or even a website.  Faith, loyalty, honesty, integrity, courage, generosity, love, altruism, initiative, persistence, kindness, patience, fairness, justice, even creativity—it is not at all clear that these can be taught by a teacher in an academic setting.     

Immanuel Kant said, "Virtue is the moral strength of the will in obeying the dictates of duty.”  But the people that have virtue don’t usually think about Kant when they are doing good, and may not even know who Kant was.  But in truth that doesn’t matter, does it?  They are virtuous anyway.  And of course, while learning can advance society and civilization tremendously, sometimes it just doesn’t. The best-educated country in world in the 1930s, with the greatest institutions of higher learning, was Germany.  Nazi Germany.

If this is all true, why do we Jews love learning so very much, and push our kids so hard to become scholars?  And why do we treasure libraries full of books and constantly teach, and have a Tikun Leil Shavu’ot to prove that even learning can be taken to excess?

The answer comes from two areas.  The first is the way that we Jews learn.  The ideal of course is not what is happening right now: it is not sitting here listening while the rabbi, or anyone instructs you on what to do.  Our model is not the lecture, nor even the sermon.  It is hands-on, interactive and dynamic.  It is learning by engagement: reading, thinking, analyzing and probing, and then arguing about a subject until we feel that we know it, it has become ours, and we have explored its possible interpretations fully.  Only by using our minds actively, by wrestling with a subject the way that Jacob wrestled with God in becoming Israel, only then are we really doing Jewish learning properly.  That is what Torah LiShma really means: literally learning for its own sake, but figuratively learning for our own sake, learning to sharpen and hone our minds and spirits.  This kind of education helps us to become engaged, intelligent, aware critical thinkers.  That, in itself, is considered a virtue in Judaism. 

But although we love to focus on learning, the truth is that it is not enough to learn.  There are other virtues of equal or perhaps greater importance, believe it or not, in our religion.  And Judaism addresses these as well.

In the morning prayer just before the Shema, the Ahavah Rabbah, there is a passage that explains what we are commanded to do with the Torah, this learning document and teaching impetus, with which God has gifted us.  What are we supposed to do with the words of Torah? Lilmod ul’lameid, lishmor v’la’asot the prayer reads.  We are commanded to learn and to teach, to observe and to do. 

That is, we learn and we teach, of course, but we do so in order to observe and preserve, to keep the structure of Judaism.  And we learn and teach in order to be able to do the mitzvot.  First, because until you know what the mitzvot are, you cannot possibly do them, which means you have to learn them and see how they are applied.  And secondly, because the good that comes from Torah, and from learning Torah, only comes when you actually do the things the Torah asks of you.

And so on this festival of Shavu’ot, this z’man matan torateinu, the time when we were given our great teaching, we unite in study, in learning and teaching.  We do so in order to unite as a community.  And we do so to allow those imperatives of Torah, those commandments, those mitzvot, to guide and shape our lives in good and meaningful ways.

It is those words of Torah that drive us to help refugees; it is those words of Torah that teach us to care for the earth; it is those words of Torah that help us see the people around us, here, tonight as a community based in learning and compassion and love.  It is those words of Torah that lead us to care for the sick, help the bereaved, celebrate with the bride and groom and bar and bat mitzvah.  It is those words that we learn that remind us to give Tzedakah, to help with the needs of the synagogue and the community.  It is those words that, yes, bring us early to the house of study.  And it is those words of Torah that lead us to seek to perfect the world through this sacred learning.

May your study of Torah always be sweet, rich and good and may your insights into our tradition continue to be fresh and inspired.  And may we all be blessed with lives of great Jewish learning, and of deeds inspired by that learning.

Dream Dreams

Graduation Address, Marana High School 2023, Rabbi Sam Cohon

Congregation Beit Simcha

To the impressive graduates of Marana High School’s 2023 Class, your dedicated teachers, your conscientious administrators, and your very proud parents, grandparents, siblings and friends, I offer a mazal tov, the Hebrew words for congratulations.  Mazal Tov is something we Jews say at all moments of accomplishment in life, and graduating from high school is surely one of the signal times to offer it to deserving baccalaureate recipients, to commencement-tarians.  So, again, mazal tov!      

Literally, mazal tov means “good luck”, or “may you be gifted with good fortune,” or perhaps even “May you be graced with God’s favor.”  And while you have each worked hard to reach this great day of achievement, it never hurts to have a little good luck or good fortune, or even Divine help given to you.  So, indeed, mazal tov!    

It was a while ago, of course, but I vividly remember speaking at my own high school graduation.  I even recall the beginning of that speech: “Four years ago I entered high school a nervous, insecure 9th grader, with no real idea of what direction I wanted to go in life.  Today I stand before you as a nervous, insecure 12th grader, with no real idea of what direction I want to go in life.”

Look, I’m sure that there are some of you here who believe that you know exactly where you are going and what you are going to do in the future, and I hope that you find that predetermined course in life to be both fulfilling and valuable.  It’s never bad to have a plan for your life, and even better when it works out. 

But I am also sure that most of you, no matter how bright and successful you have been so far, no matter how much energy or ambition you have, most of you still don’t really know what you want to accomplish in life.  That is also fine—and perhaps realistic.  For you can love a subject or a profession at the age of 18 and still find that there is a great deal out there in the world to discover.  It’s OK—in fact, normal, and healthy—to choose and change your professional and even personal goals a few times when you are young. 

I mean, isn’t that the point of being young?  Having the opportunity to explore this amazing world, to encounter new and different ideas and cultures, and integrate those experiences into your own lives in a positive way.  Youth is a time to dream, to travel, to journey to see just what you might become and how you can find your own place in society.  It is when you try-on various versions of your dreams, when you see which ones fit and which ones you may need to discard so that you can pursue other, better dreams. 

You will be told today not to let go of your dreams, because dreams matter.  In truth, dreams matter most when we turn them into reality.  That means we have to be pursuing the right dreams, doesn’t it?  So, on this wonderful day of celebration, I encourage you to do a little dream chasing—and do so until you find out which dreams really should belong to you.  As the founder of modern Zionism, Theodore Herzl, said, “If you will it, it is no dream.”  But that’s only true if you pursue dreams that both fit you and that you can fulfill.  And that means trying some on that don’t turn out to be the right ones.  So keep working on those dreams—and when you find the right ones, make them into reality.  Judaism is a religion of pragmatic idealism: dream, but find ways to make the best of those dreams happen. 

My friends, your graduation marks both an ending, and a beginning, the completion of your high school education and school life, and the commencement of a new part of your life, when you are truly young adults.  It is the hope of all of us here today, we older adults, that this is not the end of your education, but just a way-station on a lifelong journey of learning.

In our Jewish tradition, there is a tremendous emphasis on education, which is called Torah.  Education is highly valued and considered a fundamental pillar of our faith.  We Jews place great emphasis on the pursuit of knowledge and understanding as a path towards personal growth, wisdom, and the betterment of the world, helping us seek to perfect this often imperfect and endangered planet.  Throughout your high school years, you have been fortunate to receive an education that empowers you with knowledge, critical thinking skills, and the ability to shape your own futures.  It has prepared you for higher education, for continuing to gain in professional skills and broadening your understanding.

However, education is not solely about acquiring facts and figures. It is about nurturing your character, values, and compassion. Judaism teaches us the importance of Tikkun Olam, the concept of repairing and healing the world. It reminds us of our responsibility to make a positive impact, to stand up for justice, to advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves. As you leave the structure of high school, Judaism encourages you to strive always to seek to create a world that is more just, compassionate, and inclusive.

To be honest, real education is very much about learning what you don’t know.  I have a confession to make: When I was 18 years old, the age of most of you, I was quite sure that I knew, well, everything. Every year since then I have come to realize that I know less and less. 

This is what education turns out to really be about: learning what you don’t know.  And understanding that living a valuable and meaningful life does not require knowing everything.  It means knowing how to learn, how to work hard, and how to grow in those areas that will help you fulfill the best and most valuable of those dreams.

Your graduation is a time to celebrate your achievements and look forward to the future.  Enjoy the moment, embrace the excitement, and be proud of all that you have accomplished.  And remember that the world needs you to be open to continuing to grow, and learn, always, so that you can fulfill those dreams.

There is a blessing we use in Judaism for every joyous new occasion of accomplishment.  It is called the Shehecheyanu, and it goes like this:

Baruch Ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha’Olam, Shehecheyanu v’Kiyimanu v’Higiyanu lazman hazeh: We bless You, God, Ruler of the universe, who gives us life, sustains us, and brings us to this wonderful time.

And so, to all you graduates of 2023: Congratulations and Mazal Tov! 

Jewish Accounting for God

Shabbat Bamidbar 5783 Sermon

Shabbat Shalom.  You all may remember the late, great comedian Jackie Mason’s description of what every Jewish mother wants for her son: to become a doctor, of course.  If he’s not too bright—a lawyer.  If he’s really not gifted intellectually—an accountant.  Well, this week’s Torah portion is designed for just that eventuality.  It’s a sedrah only a CPA could truly love.

In spite of Barbara’s brilliant analysis of our parshah this week, 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 who are 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 who are 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 who are 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.

On closer examination, it looks—well, even less intriguing.  More details about the arrangement of the camp.  More minutiae relating to the census.  Nothing with the vaguest whiff of interest or challenge or meaning. 

In fact, when you come right down to it, it 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?  Does the annual reading of Bamidbar explain why there are so many Jewish CPA’s?

In an interesting sidelight of history, one of the first duties of the United States government under the new Constitution—the one we still use—was to take a census of the population, by state.  Every qualified individual in the entire country was to be counted once very decade.  Each person had to be recorded and tallied 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, most recently in 2020.  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 don’t miss your own census request for information—they'll come looking for you!

So how much does one human life matter?  There are so many of us here on earth today, perhaps 8 billion people on this planet.  How much could one human life really matter?  There are philosophies afoot today that assert that people only matter in the collective.  They used to be called Socialism or Marxism; nowadays there are other variations, such as the Communitarianism of Amitai Etzioni.  But Judaism has always believed that each and every human life has meaning, is holy, because each of us can truly change the world.

Consider, if you will, an oddity in the text of our Siddur.  In most prayer books 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 prayer books.  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 are witnesses to its truth.  Only when we accept 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 in six days or so 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 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.

That is a particularly powerful idea, knowing that each individual has meaning, that everyone’s individual achievements matter.  Because whether or not we reach our fullest potential, we need to know that we each matter to our families, to our communities, to our world.

Bamidbar teaches this lesson in a much more basic way.  Because this system of counting, reminds us that we each matter to our people, our nation, and, most importantly, to our God.  Just as each and every member has meaning to our congregation; just as each citizen, every living being created in the image of God, must matter in our society. 

And just as Bamidbar teaches us that we each matter to God, every one of us.

In the Jewish view of the world it is the individual who can make the greatest difference, who has the capacity to change the world, to create goodness and sanctity.  It the single person, each one of us, who can bring blessing.  And every one of us brings his or her own blessings, has her or his own accomplishments.

On this Shabbat, may we find our own way to recognize holiness in each person we encounter.  And may we seek to build a society dedicated to recognizing that sacredness and providing universal respect for every one of us.

Mountains and Congregations

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon’s Sermon, Shabbat BeHar-Bechukotai 5783

A little old lady from Brooklyn, Mrs. Goldberg, calls her travel agent and asks to book a flight to a small village high in the mountains of Nepal.

“Oh,” the travel agent says. “That’s much too difficult a journey for you. Why don’t I arrange a week for you at a nice beach resort in Florida?”

“No,” says the woman, “It has to be to the highest mountains of Nepal.”

So the travel agent books her a flight to Kathmandu. When she arrives and tells the authorities she intends to visit the small village in the mountains, they also try to talk her out of it. “You’ll need to hire a Sherpa crew to get you there, and the climb is very treacherous.”

“No, I must go there. There’s a holy man I need to see.”

So, shaking their heads, they stamp her passport and let her in, and she hires a Sherpa crew. The Sherpas are dubious but climb high in the mountains with Mrs. Goldberg, and finally get her to the village where the holy man lives. There’s a long line outside in the snow waiting to see the holy man.

The little old lady takes her place in line, and the others waiting beseech her to go back home. “It takes days of standing in this cold and windy line before you get to see the holy man,” they explain. “And then when you get to see him, you are allowed to say only three words.”

“That’s OK,” she replied. “I must see him.”

She perseveres and lasts three days and nights before entering the holy man’s hut. He asks her why she has come, and says she may only reply using three words. And so, finally, she stands before him and says, in a loud voice: “Sheldon, come home!”

I love that joke, and what it implies about how far we may go, and how high in the mountains, only to discover that we are still who we always were... And that it may not be the mountain that matters after all.

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This particular Shabbat, Behar, the Torah portion named for a mountain, reminds us that there is something sacred about a kehillah, a congregation gathered together in Jewish prayer. Synagogues are a unique affirmation of community, and true community has unfortunately become an unusual occurrence in our American society these days. Perhaps because we seem to have become such a fractious, polarized country it is more necessary than it has ever been to gather across all boundary lines and join in prayer, song, study and most importantly community. When we participate together in services at Beit Simcha, work together to improve our society through religious action, study Torah and create a shul that teaches and inspires our children and challenges us to live to our highest ideals, we are doing holy work that defies easy categorization. It is hard to explain precisely what we mean by Jewish community—but we know it when we experience it, and we know that it is extraordinarily important.

And we also know that it is just what we Jews have been doing for over two thousand years, and why we have been able to continue as an eternal people. It has allowed us not only to survive but to thrive, evolve and grow everywhere and anywhere in the world. Including, of course, in these foothills below the Catalina Mountains.

Every synagogue, every Jewish community is different, of course. Yet there is a common denominator for each and every one. And that is what our Torah portion this week addresses, although it does so in a curious way.

Behar begins with the statement “Vayidaber Adonai el Moshe beHar Sinai, God spoke to Moses at Mt. Sinai,” an apparently unambiguous phrase: God, through Moses, gave all these commandments to us at Mt. Sinai. Well and good. These rules of holiness and personal conduct must have all been commanded at Mt. Sinai.

Yet earlier in Leviticus the text makes it clear that God actually gave most of these commandments not at Mt. Sinai itself, but in the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, the Ohel Mo’eid, the Tent of Meeting, as the people wandered around the Sinai Desert. In fact, according to the evidence of the Torah itself, the whole book of Leviticus was given after we left Sinai and began our journey to the Promised Land. Never mind that most Bible scholars believe Leviticus was composed several centuries later, when there was

already a Temple in Jerusalem and a priesthood serving it regularly—on a mountain, indeed the Temple Mount, but not Mt. Sinai. Either way, much later.

Clearly, as our portion begins the Israelites aren’t still at Mt. Sinai at all and haven’t been there for a while. What gives? Why say that the mitzvot, the commandments were all given to us by God at Sinai when it isn’t factually true? Is this just an issue of alternative interpretations—dare I say it, alternative facts?

This question troubles the rabbinic commentators, who believe that the Torah never wastes a phrase, and certainly never makes a mistake. The rabbis’ rather brilliant answer teaches us a profound truth about ourselves, our synagogues and our communities—and maybe even a bit about mountains.

According to the commentators, all the commandments theoretically given b’Har Sinai, at Mt. Sinai, are actually given miSinai, from Sinai—with the metaphoric authority of Sinai. That is, Mt. Sinai is not just a geographical location, no matter how important, and it is not a simple matter of a place at all. It is much more than that, something both broader and deeper.

Mt. Sinai is a sacred idea, a holy concept. For wherever we learn and do mitzvot, whenever we complete good acts, do tzedakah, observe religious rituals with sanctity and meaning, study Torah, pray together with sincerity and work to perfect the world through tikun olam, wherever and whenever we strive to make the world a holier, more Jewish place—well, then we are standing at Mt. Sinai.

Almost literally, as committed Jews we take Mt. Sinai with us into our communities, our congregations, and so bring God’s very presence into the world. It’s a powerful message indeed. And that is just as true whether we are standing at the foot of Mt. Sinai or in the foothills of the Catalinas. As long as we gather in a congregation, as long as we are creating true Jewish community of study, prayer and religious action we are standing at Sinai.

In other words, it’s like the old Yiddish proverb: “Mountains do not come together. People do.” It’s not the mountain that matters; it’s us.

But before we conclude that way, a word about mountains. I must admit, I like mountains very much, and have spent time among them, sometimes hiking up them, sometimes skiing down them, occasionally first one and then the other. And mountains have always held an important place in Jewish tradition. We sang a Psalm earlier tonight, Psalm 121, Esa ainai el heharim, I lift up my eyes to the mountains from where my help comes, one of many Psalms and prayers that center on the mountains. Various mountains feature prominently throughout Biblical and ancient Jewish history. Among the many heights ascended in the Tanakh are two mountains that rise above all others spiritually and are truly central to Jewish tradition: the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which remains both focal and controversial today, and Mt. Sinai. We’ll talk about the Temple Mount another time. But tonight, a little more about Mt. Sinai.

I have a personal story about visiting Mt. Sinai.  Six years ago, during a sabbatical, I traveled on a journey to all of the holiest places on earth in a bit less than three months, visiting the greatest sacred sites of every major religion. Perhaps the most important place I wanted to see, on a personal level, was Mt. Sinai, or at least the place most people believe was the traditional location of Mt. Sinai. It’s 140 miles from Sharm el Sheikh in the southeastern part of the Sinai Desert, in Egypt, a place called Jebel Musa in Arabic. I decided I would hike up Mt. Sinai on the Shabbat when we traditionally read the Ten Commandments in synagogue, Shabbat Yitro, and ascending it overnight I would chant those Ten Statements in Hebrew at dawn.

The full story of my journey to the mountaintop that day included nearly as many twists and turns as the Biblical narrative of our ancestors’ travels to the same place. As it turned out, it involved a convoy of military vehicles escorting our mini-bus—and others—to protect us from terrorist attack, long delays and confusing instructions, lack of water and organization and the oddities and insecurities that can accompany travel in the Middle East. Eventually, very short of sleep and water and food, tired from the climb up the 7500-foot peak, I had the rare experience of standing in what is truly an awesome place, the top of Mt. Sinai, watching rose-fingered dawn spread from jagged peak to peak across that stark and amazing wilderness. And I chanted the Ten Commandments in Hebrew—from my iphone app, of course—while around me people were reciting the Koran or singing Christian hymns or meditating. It was weird, and gorgeous, and moving, a once-in-lifetime experience.

And yet, the truth is that as intense as that memory is, as extraordinary as it felt at the time, that wasn’t really the most powerful part of Jewish religious experience. In our tradition, being at what might actually have been Mt. Sinai was not as significant as being here tonight, in community, kehillah, seeking God and Torah and holiness and justice in a synagogue. This experience matters more because it requires the daily action that brings Judaism into the world in practical, meaningful ways.

But just what is this amorphous thing, community, kehillah, and what does Judaism teach us about that? And what does it have to do with Sinai?

As you know, we are now in the period of the Counting of the Omer, the time between Passover and Shavu’ot when we remember the ways our ancestors prepared themselves to experience receiving the Ten Commandments, and in a larger sense, the Torah at Mt. Sinai. These seven weeks between the festival of freedom and the holiday of covenant are a time in the ritual calendar when we look at our own lives and see how we might better reflect our own Jewish values in our daily experience. It is a time when we have the opportunity to see if our institutions can become better, stronger and more vital, can bring us together in more meaningful and holier ways.

In other words, this is the time to think about how we build further on our strong community, how we develop our synagogue in ways that create greater learning, spirituality and justice. It is here that we seek to bring the feeling of that sacred mountain into our daily lives in real, practical ways. Because it is here where we have the opportunity to decide how we are to make our lives and our actions reflect the values given to us so long ago, symbolically at least, on that mountain.

The Kotzker Rebbe was once asked: “Why is Shavuot called z’man matan Torah 'The Time that the Torah was Given,' rather than 'The time the Torah was Received?’” He answered: “The giving took place on one day, but the receiving takes place at all times.” Receiving Torah—that is up to us, on this Shabbat and every day.

You see, Mt. Sinai was only great once. But the tradition that was created, and the synagogue, the institution responsible for teaching and making real that tradition, for creating true community based upon it—that can be great any time. Any time we gather together for sincere prayer. Any time we learn together, teach together, create justice together, seek to heal the world together. When we create our own home for Torah, meaning, holiness.

On this Shabbat of Behar-Bechukotai, may we learn that extraordinary lesson, and continue to live it in our synagogue. Ken Yehi Ratson. So may it be God’s will—and more importantly, ours. Shabbat Shalom.

Rabbi Baruch J. Cohon’s Sermon Parshat Emor 5783 on the Occasion of his 97th Birthday

Shabbat Shalom, and my thanks to you my friends at Beit Simcha for the honor of this evening.

This week we read the Sedrah entitled "Emor" --  where Moses is commanded to "Tell the sons of Aaron."  What is he to tell them?  Their duties as Cohanim, priests, which include offering ritual sacrifices, and also their family relations and daily conduct.  And the section "Emor" includes basic events and principles of Jewish life that apply to all of us.  Like the days we celebrate.

Maybe you heard about the fellow who decided to become an atheist.  He left his family's house of worship and turned his back on religion.  But then a few weeks later, he came back.

"You changed your mind?" they asked him. "How come?"

"Atheists have no holidays."

Our Torah reading outlines the Jewish calendar, which provides our annual cycle of holidays both serious and upbeat, and all sanctified by faith.  Indeed Judaism as a way of life is closely connected with the calendar.  That connection goes back to our origins.  Moses reminded us that we left Egypt in the spring month.  Count 49 days -- 7 weeks from the Exodus, and on the 50th day we reach Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah -- our Constitution -- and we become a nation.   Here in Chapter 23 of Leviticus we find the dates of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Succoth -- New Year, Day of Atonement, and the Harvest Festival, all in the fall.

And why is New Year's Day observed on the first day of the seventh month?  Precisely because Nisan, the month that includes Passover, is the month of freedom, and is specifically designated as the first month of the year in the very account of the Exodus.  The Talmud's tractate Rosh Hashana lists four "New Year’s days" every year: one for kings, one for numbering years, one for planting trees, and one for tithes.  In our urban culture, of course, we limit our ceremonial New Year to the first of Tishri, the 7th month.  That is the day we change the number of the year.

As we all know, the Jewish calendar, like the Chinese, is based on the moon.  354 days per year on average, instead of the 365 of the solar calendar.  That causes considerable variety in how Jewish holidays compare with those of our neighbors.  For example, in 2011 and 2019 Hanukkah coincided with Christmas.  In 2013 it coincided with Thanksgiving.

Seven times in every 19 years, the Jewish calendar adds a month during the spring, forming a leap year that resolves the lunar-solar difference.  An ancient scholar named Shmuel, who headed the academy is a Babylonian town called Nehardeya, was responsible for developing much of the calendar used today.  The Talmud describes Shmuel as a man who knew the orbits of the planets as well as he knew the streets of Nehardeya.  This self-taught astronomer laid the groundwork for a system that gives Jews the world over the opportunity to celebrate their holidays at the same time.  In the days of much slower communications, they had to add a day to the holiday if they lived outside of Israel, to make sure they were all observing the occasion together.   Hence we still have a Second Day of many festivals, in traditional Diaspora communities but not in Israel.  A notable exception to this rule is Rosh Hashana itself, the New Year, which is observed for two days in Israel too.  There, the second day is not called Yom tov sheyni shel goluyos -- "second holiday of exile", but the two days are called Yoma arikhta -- "one long day.”  One more opportunity to hear the call of the Shofar!

With all its complex history, the Jewish calendar constitutes a sacred schedule giving us colorful special days that add meaning to all the grey weekdays of our lives.

Personally, of course, I feel a special connection to "Emor" because I chanted this section at my own Bar Mitzvah.  That was a long time ago, but the message of this reading rings just as strongly in my ears today as it  did in 1939.  That was the year of my Bar Mitzvah in Red Bank, New Jersey.  For many of us, Bar Mitzvah is still a great occasion.  Caden Dunn, who took part in services here tonight, will celebrate his Bar Mitzvah next week.  We all look forward to that.  And why is it important?  Is it the day of full maturity -- at age 13?  No.  But it is the day when we accept responsibility as Jetiws, for the Mitzvos.  Mitvos are usually translated "commandments."  How many commandments to we have?  Not 10.  What we call the "10 Commandments" are not called Mitzvos in Hebrew.   They are called Aseres haDibros -- the Ten Statements, the solemn principles of human conduct that inspire all the hundreds of specific Mitzvos in Jewish life. This reading, Emor, introduces us to some of them.

Two short sentences give all the laws their basis.  At the end of Chapter 22, verse 31 says: "Keep My commandments and do them; I am G-d."  And verse 32 adds: "Do not profane My holy name, and I will be sanctified among the Israelites; I am G-d who sanctifies you."  Here are Divinely inspired rules that, if we follow, enable us to achieve Kiddush haShem -- sanctifying the Divine name.  Violating those rules amounts to Khilllul haShem -- profaning that name.  

Violations can take many forms, some more obvious than others.  For example, our Torah instructs us to use true measurements -- of weight, length, value of coins -- all must be accurate.  Prevent cheating.  In legal disputes, we are cautioned to "do just justly."  Tricking a witness in a trial, or manufacturing evidence against a litigant -- even if you deeply believe him guilty -- is unfair and therefore prohibited.  In family affairs, acceptable conduct has countless Mitzvos to be observed, including the rights and duties of wife and husband to each other, and of all to the care of ill and dead family members.

Crime and punishment get dealt with in this section too.  "One who wounds or kills your animal shall pay for the damage.  One who kills a human shall die."  But a capital conviction takes two reliable eyewitnesses, who warned the killer.

Violating a principle of conduct in business, particularly when dealing with Gentiles, can bring serious trouble to the entire community.  Our enemies come up with plenty of false charges to support their actions against us.  We must not provide them with legitimate cause.  In this connection, the Hertz commentary quotes the story of the fellow in the boat drilling a hole under his seat.  It's only under his seat, but all will drown.  A Jewish crook can give an open door to anti-Semites.  That is definitely Khillul haShem -- profaning the Divine name.

And what about the opposite?  Suppose we are doing right?  Inquisitors demanded "Convert or die."  Nazis and jihadis offer no alternative: "Kill the Jews!"  Their victims are mourned with the righteous.  

All important is not death but life.  Living in a way that sanctifies the name of the G-d we worship involves fulfilling Mitzvos, from observing the occasions of our calendar to how we interact with other human beings both Jewish and Gentile.  How we live our daily lives makes us aware of our Mitzvos.  Carrying them out builds our character.  Do we deal honestly in business?  Do we respect our elders?  Do we teach our children Torah?  Do we help the poor?  Do we support just causes?  That kind of life brings  Kiddush haShem -- sanctifying G-d's name.  That behavior can bring Kiddush hakhayyim -- sanctifying life.  Torah offers us practical help to sanctify our lives.

The Psalm that closes our morning prayers on Sunday, the first weekday, asks: "Who will climb G-d's mountain and stand in that holy place?  One who has clean hands and a pure heart....and has not sworn deceitfully."  

Today and every day, this week and every week, let the words of Emor remind us of our choice: profane life or sanctify it.  Let’s live the mitzvos, and bring joy and holiness to our lives and those around us.  Let’s all try to sanctify it!

How We Create Our Holy Congregation

Sermon Parshat Acharei Mot-Kedoshim 5783

With the advent of the internet and its daily overdose of information, nowadays you can learn how to do almost anything just from watching a YouTube video. 

Want to know how to erect a barbed wire fence?  Watch a YouTube video.  Need to build your own septic system?  Watch a YouTube video.  Trying to learn to dance the skanky leg?  Watch a YouTube video.  Want to make baked Alaska?  Watch a YouTube video.  Wish to sing opera?  Watch a YouTube video.  Seek to pilot a jet airplane?  Watch a YouTube video.  Have to deliver a baby in the back seat of an Uber ride?  You got it: watch a YouTube video.

But for one thing there is, as yet, no YouTube video available.  I know this because I looked for it this week.  There is no YouTube video for the commandment given at the very beginning of the second of our double Torah portion this week, Kedoshim.

Kedoshim begins memorably: “You shall be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy.  Kedoshim tih’yu, ki kadosh Adonai Eloheichem…”

But what does it mean to be holy?  And how are we to go about being it?

Frankly, that’s a good question, especially today. 

There are YouTube videos on how to light Shabbat candles, how to lead a Passover Seder, how to sing the blessing for the Omer, and even on how to chant Torah.  But there is no YouTube video that can teach you how to “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am Holy.”

And so we 21st century Jews need to try to figure this out for ourselves. 

The first issue that arises is just who it is that gets to make things holy.  The obvious answer is that it is God who does so, for God is holy; as the prophet Isaiah said in a passage we sing every Shabbat and weekday morning in the Kedushah, the prayer of sanctification, “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is filled with God’s glory.”  But since we are not privileged to have God around pointing out what it is that we are supposed to personally do to be holy, we need to rely on our own devices to determine what in our own lives is truly sacred.  And not just on our electronic devices, not even the ones that are broadcasting this service right now, to do so.

In general, even in this secular age, we think that some things are intrinsically holy, that certain objects or people or places are especially imbued with the quality of sacredness.  I have journeyed literally around the world in search of holiness, seeking places of sacredness on six of the seven continents.  I have climbed many a sacred mountain, bathed in various holy waters, explored sanctified caves, toured wonderful churches, mosques, temples, stupas, shrines and great ruins of the highest holiness. All have been, and mostly still are, considered to be deeply sacred, exalted, exceptionally special.  Many have been sacred to a series of different religions and observant people over the centuries and millennia, changing hands and gods but always retaining the aura of holiness.  These places are holy, Kadosh, and being there feels like a fulfillment of some kind of Kedoshim. 

Ok, rabbi, brilliant.  So God is holy.  And certain specific places are especially filled with God’s holiness.  We have solved it!

Only not so fast.  At least not for Jews.  You see, the Hebrew word for holiness, kadosh, comes from the word hekdesh, something set apart.  That is, in our own tradition, there is nothing intrinsically holy about holy things.  We simply set apart ordinary objects and so touch them with sanctity. Kadosh, sacred or holy, comes from a root word that simply means “set-aside” or “distinct.”  In Biblical Hebrew, hekdeish was the part of the produce of the land reserved for the use of the priests in the days when the Temple stood in Jerusalem.  Hekdesh was grain, mostly, like the barley of our Omer offering in this period of the year, but it might be cattle or sheep or chickens or vegetables or fruit or oil or wine or any other natural product that has been officially dedicated for the sole use of the priests, either Levites or Kohanim, the regular or higher priests, and for the support of the Temple. 

The produce itself—the wheat or dove or grapes or ram—was actually identical to the rest of the produce of the field or farm or vineyard or herd that it came from.  It wasn’t intrinsically sacred.  It was just regular old stuff until the person giving it decided that this portion of his or her work was going to be given to the Temple and the priests.  It was the gift of giving it for the purpose of creating holiness that actually made it holy.  In fact, you could sell the produce and give money instead and it was still hekdesh, still kadosh, still sacred.

The magic, the spirituality, the sacredness, was not in the item—or even in the place—but in the way that the individual person worked to create holiness, the ways in which he or she deliberately solicited sanctity. 

Holiness in Judaism was, from the beginning, a shared process, a covenant we have with God to make things, and people, holier.  I’ll give you another little example, one of my favorites.  Is a sheepskin holy?  Well, no, not in and of itself.  You can make a coat out of it—particularly if you are an Australian—and use it to keep warm in winter.  If you are from California, as I am, then you know that the proper use of sheepskins is as seat covers for Mustang convertibles.  They keep the seat cool and protect the leather seat from the endless summer sun and the salt air of the coast.  Nice to sit on.  Nothing holy there. 

So a sheepskin is not a particularly holy object.  But if you take that same sheepskin and clean the wool off of it, and properly scrape it, pretty soon you have parchment.  Still not holy.  Many political treaties used to written on parchment, and soon violated, after all.  And some graduation certificates are still written on parchment, or will be when have public graduation ceremonies again.  Now, however, if you take that parchment, and using special ink made with a 1600 year-old formula and you reverently write upon it the words of the Torah, from Genesis through Deuteronomy, and if you take that sheepskin and sew it onto and roll it on two wooden handles, and cover it over with a special garment, a kind of ephod, pretty soon you have a Torah.  And now every Jew will agree—and it’s very hard to get every Jew to agree to anything—every Jew will agree that the sheepskin has somehow become a Torah, and now it is clearly holy.

In general, you see, the creation of holiness is a partnership, a kind of joint project, between human beings and God.  While God provides the inspiration, the ideal of holiness and perfection, we are the ones who choose to imbue certain objects, like Torahs, like candle tables and arks of the Torah and Torah podiums on bimas, with holiness.  And we are also the ones who help to choose the people who will become holy.

In this context, I was thinking about how a congregation becomes holy.  A formal name for a synagogue—any shul, of course, but certainly this special Congregation Beit Simcha—is called a Kehilah kedoshah, a holy congregation.  It is a holy congregation because we join together in this sanctuary for prayer, and to hear Torah and Bible, to do festival observances, and to sing sacred music and seek to elevate our spirits.  It is a holy congregation because we study Torah and become bar and bat mitzvah and are confirmed and grow in the depth and breadth of our learning.  It is a holy congregation because we educate and inspire our children here.  It is a holy congregation because we visit the sick, and comfort the bereaved, and bury the dead, and celebrate with brides and grooms and new parents and grandparents.  It is a holy congregation because we help the homeless and the hungry, counsel the confused and wounded, welcome the stranger and the refugee, lead the community in addressing its issues. 

But it is mostly—perhaps completely—a holy congregation because you make it so.  It is your participation and partnership in this covenantal relationship with God and Beit Simcha that make this extraordinary place truly holy. It is your contributions of talent and energy, of spirit and, yes, tangible gifts that create our holy home here, our sacred place and sanctified community.

It is you who help to fulfill the commandment, the mitzvah of Kedoshim.

On this Shabbat, may you be inspired to deepen your shared work of covenant.  May you try to create even more holiness here.

When we do these small acts of covenant, we are able to affirm that we have managed, in our own human ways, to be holy… as God is holy.  To affirm the covenant, the partnership that allows our lives to be touched with sanctity.  Here in our own Temple, through our own work.

Ken Yehi Ratson.  May this be God’s will.  But, mostly—may this be the way we do our own sacred work.

A Growing-Up Country

Sermon Shabbat Tazria-Metzora, Israel’s 75th Birthday

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ

This week we celebrate Israel’s 75th Anniversary, a big birthday for a still-young country.  It’s probably only after a nation reaches 100 years old and still has the same system of government that you can truly stop talking about how young it is.  There are certain things a nation needs to work out over time, and no matter how quickly it develops and advances—and Israel has made astonishing progress in this fairly short period of 75 years—it’s only after the passage of a couple of full generations that things truly settle in.

Israel has changed dramatically over the seven and half decades of its existence as a modern nation.  The Israel of 1948 had about 600,000 residents.  That is fewer people than live in three of Israel’s metropolitan areas now, and the population has grown to 9.7 million people, including 7.2 million Jews, roughly half the Jewish population of the entire world.  The absorption of immigrant Jews from all over the world has been astonishing; in its three quarters of a century Israel has absorbed many more immigrants than it had as original citizens by a factor of 10.  If America in the 75 years since World War II had successfully integrated 300 million immigrants instead of the 30 million who have actually arrived here it would approximate Israel’s ability to accept immigrants.

In 1948, the new nation of Israel was, frankly, a poor country, and it remained so throughout the 1950s, 60s, 70s and even 80s.  It was a 2nd World kind of country well into the 1990s when the economy dramatically expanded, but today it is decidedly a first-world nation, similar to Italy or Spain in its living standards.  Israel’s status as “Start-Up Nation” is well earned, as the Israeli high-tech sector is acknowledged throughout the world as a center of innovation and economic development.  It is also on the leading edge of medical technologies and treatments, and Israel may be the world’s most advanced country in strategic and technological water resource use and development, as well as desert agriculture and solar power.  Israel has become a regional economic powerhouse, on the level of highly developed European nations.  It is the envy of its Middle Eastern neighbors.

Militarily, for three decades the nascent Jewish nation was under existential threat of destruction.  That was true from 1947’s UN Partition Plan until the Camp David Accords in the late 1970s, which meant that until then any war could be one that led to Israel’s annihilation and the murder of all the Jews living there—and there were four such wars, each of which ended with Israel victorious but always at a high price.  But with peace treaties with Egypt and eventually Jordan, and of course the incredible development of the Israeli military and intelligence organizations, as well as the various industries and government entities associated with them, Israel has never been more secure militarily that is now.  

Diplomatically, Israel was incredibly isolated throughout most of its early history.  The UN might have legally created the country—the first it ever voted to form, and still one of only a small handful that have been internationally invented by the UN—but Israel was a pawn in the Cold War battle between the US and Soviet Union for decades.  From the 1940s to the 1970s and 80s the Arab League boycott of Israel was in force, and it only lost its economic teeth during the Oslo Process of the 1990s.  Its disappearance certainly helped with the Israeli economic surge of the 1990s and 2000s, fueled by the new treaties with Arabs and the rapid pace of investment and development in Israel.   With the Abraham Accords just a couple of years ago Israel’s integration into the international community has never been more developed.  While far from completely welcomed diplomatically, Israel is more widely accepted and influential than it has ever been.

And one small fact that emerged from our Religious School learning about Israel: do you know how many Olympic Gold Medals Israelis have won?  That number is 3—not a huge number, but not bad for a tiny country that forms 1/10 of 1% of the world’s population.  But do you know how many Nobel Prizes Israelis have won?  13!  Any country where there are 13 Nobel Laureates and only 3 Olympic gold medalists certainly has at least most of its values in the right places.

Politically, how is Israel doing?  Isn’t it tearing itself apart over political and religious divisions now?  Isn’t it on the verge of a widely predicted civil war?

Well, no, not at all.  Israel is experiencing widespread peaceful protests over a key political issue, the independence of its judiciary and the limits on executive authority.  Like open, liberal, orderly societies it has a vibrant free press and great tradition of vigorous public debate and protest, and these are being exercised every day.  But it is nowhere near civil war, or anything like it.  For a 75 years-young nation it is doing just what it should do, hashing out important issues publicly and peacefully—if loudly.

Are there problems in Israel? Sure.  The Palestinian issue is not going away anytime soon, and after 55 years the West Bank is no more fully integrated into Israel than the Gaza Strip was before Israel walked away from it under Ariel Sharon.  There is growing economic inequality in a nation that started out socialist and egalitarian.  There is undoubtedly a religious-secular divide, and an ultra-Orthodox/Chareidi vs everyone else divide, too.  There is some political corruption—imagine that; we would never see that in the United States!—the cost of living is very high, and my goodness they have a traffic problem in all major cities. Terrorism is always a disturbing threat, although it directly impacts very few people, and the level of stress in Israeli society is just as high as you would expect in a Jewish country.  And Israeli politics is pretty crazy—which coming from an American in 2023 is saying something.

On balance?  Israel is doing amazingly well and should absolutely be celebrated!

Look, before we reached a century our own United States fought a brutal Civil War that killed 15% of all the young men in the country.  Brutal human slavery was legal, widespread and flourishing in America until we were nearly 90 years old.  And of course, when America turned 75 years old women still couldn’t vote or own property or hold public office—that lasted another 70 years—and the original owners of the continent, Native Americans, were being herded like cattle onto “reservations” and hunted, starved, and massacred.  As America turned 100 years old, Jim Crow laws were being established all across the South, turning Blacks into, at best, second-class citizens, while Chinese immigrants were ruthlessly exploited and brutalized.  When we turned 125 years old, strike-breaking in America usually resulted in the massacre of many striking workers, child labor was ubiquitous, and American cities were almost literally cesspools of congestion, pollution and disease. 

We grew up as a nation, and for all of our weirdness and social challenges, we fixed a lot of those horrible problems.  Israel will fix its problems, too, as they are nowhere near as hard as the problems it has already overcome so magnificently.

It’s an amazing country, and Jews everywhere should be proud of it, especially this week.  Frankly, all people today should be proud of it and aspire to achieve what Israel has created in just 75 years.

We are Jews; we will find things to both celebrate and criticize in everything, including Israel.  That’s as it should be; no one, and nothing, is perfect, and that’s certainly true of nations.  But this week, we should all take a moment to enjoy what the only Jewish nation on the planet has produced in just three-quarters of a century of extraordinary life: a positive gift to an often ungrateful world of a vibrant, super-energetic democracy, a scientific and creative arts center of vitality that continues to develop and mature.  Mazal Tov to our own Jewish country; may it continue to mature and grow up, with our love and support.

Silence and Action

Sermon Shemini 5783

 We Jews are talkers.  We are, in fact, among the most famous talkers in all of history. We are a people renowned for our words, and our leaders are legendary for their verbosity.  Even Moses, a man with a speech impediment who protests that he is a man of few words, manages to orate the entire Book of Deuteronomy, supposedly in one long sermon.

There is a reason we are lawyers, comedians, entertainers, and public speakers of all kinds.  We truly have a tremendous oral tradition.

Rabbis, of course, are no exception.  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 that he can speak for two hours on no subject.”

But sometimes speech is actually an impediment.  Sometimes, even rabbis, and religious leaders, 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.  Near the beginning of our parshah, these young men are killed suddenly and shockingly 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.

You know, 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 Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Ukraine and Sudan, pandemic deaths in New York and California and here in Tucson, random shootings all over our nation, terrorist attacks in the West Bank and Jerusalem.  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 recently concluded 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. 

We do 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 a new and deadly illness, there are times when simple silent presence is the best thing we can do.  Or something more.

That something is embodied in a passage in our Sidur, 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.

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 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 some healing in that primary way, just by being there.  We don’t actually need to have the right words either, for silent action, being there for people—even on FaceTime or email or text or phone or Zoom—can say far more than speeches.

On this Shabbat 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.

Across 5 Passovers

Sermon Shabbat Passover 5783 

This is the 5th Passover we have experienced at Congregation Beit Simcha, and each has been unique, and extremely different from the preceding Pesach chagim.  This year, just two nights ago, we had 100 guests for a wonderful First Seder right here, with our incredibly gracious hosts from Church of the Apostles joining us for a truly extraordinary experience.  There were many highlights.  One of them came during the 4 Questions, when I asked people to say or chant them in various languages.  Shira Klayman asked if I had them in Arabic, the language of her Iraqi and Indian Jewish forebearers.  I have a book, given to me long ago by a good friend and congregant, Gladys Hanfling of blessed memory, that has the 4 Questions in 400 different languages.  Shira and I quickly scanned through the book, and eventually found them in Arabic—specifically, in Iraqi Jewish Arabic, and on the same page was a photo of her mother Rahel Musleah, an expert in Indian Jewish music.  She had given the authors the translation… amazing.  But perhaps the best moment for me came when Sidney Finkel, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor from Poland, came up with his friends Bruce and Anastasha Lynn and told me, “This is the best Pesach Seder I have ever been to!”  Now that’s something: he is 91 years old and has been to many, many seders.  High praise indeed. 

Each Pesach in the life of our still-young congregation has been extremely different from the preceding one—and all the preceding ones.  Last year, in 2022, the first night of Passover happened to arrive on Friday night, while our lovely Congregational Seder was held Saturday night, Second night of Pesach.  It was in our Ina Road location, where we were located for nearly three years, but it was our first truly post-pandemic Pesach, with over 80 people attending.  That Seder occurred just two months after Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, and Ukraine was on everyone’s mind, emphasizing as it did the fact that freedom often must be fought for.

Two years ago, in 2021, our Passover was arranged in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, when we celebrated “Apart/Together”, and set up pre-made Passover meals and seder elements and kosher wine that people could pick up, made by Louise Stone and Catalina Caterers, and then join us online for our fancy professionally pre-recorded Seder.  Like everything in pandemic times, it was complicated, but for us, that year, it worked. 

Three years ago, in 2020 we were forced to cancel our Beit Simcha Congregational Seder just two weeks before it was to be held; everyone had to cancel public seders that year when the orders came down from the White House to avoid any gathering with as many as 10 people in the midst of the pre-vaccination COVID-19 mess.  My dad and I created, in short order, a Facebook Seder that was one of the very first such offerings online, and about 1000 people attended.  Who knew then just how important these remote offerings would prove to be?

And four years ago, way back in 2019—remember those pre-pandemic days, so long ago?—we held our very first Beit Simcha Seder with 100 guests in attendance at our Skyline and Campbell location.  It was created out of love and with great energy, as we figured out how to do a Congregational Seder together for the very first time.  The Seder went well right up to the point where we sent the kids out to open the door for Eliyahu HaNavi, Elijah the Prophet—and there was a baby rattlesnake waiting.  We kept the doors shut, called a snake handler, and named the rattler Eliyahu haNachash, Elijah the Snake.  A Seder no one could possibly forget.

Somehow, no two Pesach Seders here at Beit Simcha have been at all alike, even though we had the same rabbi and used the same Haggadot… Each was held in a different location.  Each was truly a different night, as Seder is supposed to be.  After all, the purpose of a Pesach Seder is to make you question all the rituals and rites you are performing.  What could be more Jewish than doing that as the best way to learn the great lesson of liberation from slavery?

I must add that each of these Passovers, even the strained and rushed 2020 pandemic Pesach, has been a remarkable learning experience.  As we grow and mature as a congregation, we also have retained the incredible volunteer energy that is so central to our identity as a congregation. When we need help, and we ask for it, people come forward with enthusiasm and talent to create great things.

And now, as we truly look forward to a permanent home and no longer being wandering Jews in the desert, we are able to use the lessons we have learned about the best way to make Pesach resonate for every member of our congregation and community.  I believe we will always retain that spirit of dedication that has enabled our congregation to grow and develop in our four and a half years of history, and our Jewish people to survive and thrive for so many more years—and many centuries—of our history.

There is one theme of Pesach, the zman cheiruteinu, that I’d like to highlight tonight.  It’s not an obvious aspect of a holiday in which we celebrate liberation from oppression and seek freedom for all who remain oppressed in our world.  It might not occur to you that a festival of freedom, when we sing about throwing off the chains of bondage, would even contain this element.  And yet it is there from the beginning.

When Moses first approaches the Pharaoh and asks him, famously, to “Let my people go,” he has a specific request: God says, “Let My people go for a three-day festival in the desert to worship Me.”  That is, the initial ask is not for total freedom, but for the opportunity to go out into the wilderness and serve God.  In fact, the Hebrew word for religious service, avodah, is the same as the word for work.  God, through Moses, is asking the enslaving power to allow the Israelites to go and work for God.

Of course, Pharaoh refuses.  He sees any such loosening of the bonds of servitude to him as a threat; the Israelites will be serving a different master, God.  That simply cannot be permitted.  And indeed, it could prove to be a prelude to the ultimate liberation of the whole people of Israel.  Still, the initial challenge is simply that the Israelites will be serving another master.  It is not that they will be completely free of all responsibility.  It is that they will have acknowledged a greater authority than the pseudo-god-king of Egypt. 

Pharaoh’s refusal leads to the famous passage that underlies the entire structure of the Seder: the four promises of freedom in Exodus 13.  They are v’hotzaytee, I will bring you out of Egypt; v’heetzaltee, I will save you from the brutal bonds of slavery; v’go’altee, I will redeem you on the shores of the Red Sea; and finally, v’lakachti Li l’am I will take you to Me to be My people. 

Those first three promises are about liberation and salvation.  But the fourth promise is actually about entering into a form of service—a word that is closely linked to servitude—to God.  None of us is truly free of all responsibilities, nor are we free of the duties we owe to one another.  It is this element that transforms a simple message—“Let My People Go!”—into a religious one, a moral one, a meaningful one.  “Let My people go so that they may serve Me, God.”  Let My people be free of service to a human tyrant so that they may enter into a covenant of ethics, meaning and beauty.  So that they, the Israelites, the Jews, may fully be able to act with meaning and holiness in their daily lives.  That they may find in true service to God a higher purpose for their very existence.

What is it that Bob Dylan said?  You got to serve somebody.

Perhaps what these five Passovers have taught us here at Beit Simcha is that our role is to serve, to give of ourselves so that we may each value and appreciate this community we have created, and give our Judaism meaning, purpose and beauty.

Chag Samei’ach, my friends—may we all celebrate this Passover fully, and join together next year in another unique festival.

Getting Rid of the Chamets

 Sermon, Shabbat HaGadol

Some congregants would no doubt prefer that we used the Eastern European model of how the rabbis used to preach at Shabbat services. 

Where so many of our ancestors came from in the “Old Country,” it was not common for the rabbi to preach a sermon every week.  In fact, in most congregations the rabbi preached just two sermons a year: one on Shabbat Shuvah, between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, and one on Shabbat HaGadol, the Sabbath prior to Passover.  Being a traditional place, the subject of these two sermons was always fixed.  On Shabbat Shuvah the rabbi preached on repentance, Teshuvah, a highly appropriate subject for that time of year.  And on Shabbat HaGadol, this great Sabbath, he preached on the subject of chamets, the leavened products that must be removed from our homes this week in preparation for the celebration of the Passover that begins next Wednesday night.

It is easy to understand why a rabbi would preach about Teshuvah, the moral return that is so central to our entire being as Jews.  That subject of course remains focal for everyone who has ever erred in any part of his or her lives, which is basically all of us.  But the subject of chamets seems less referable today.

Chamets, in the technical sense, means any kind of bread-like product and anything that has been adulterated or contaminated with leavened materials. 

Removing chamets and making homes kosher for Pesach is a kind of annual agony for anyone who keeps even moderately kosher.  First you have to remove from your house all the obvious chamets, any food product that might be leavened or have leavening in it, or even any grain product at all that is not explicitly kosher for Passover.  Next you have to clean everything carefully, including all the nooks and crannies where any chamets might be hiding. Then you have to remove all dishes and cookware that are made of a porous material and which cannot be used for Passover, even though they are kosher for the rest of the year.  Then you have to clean where they were. They you have to clean the counters and stoves, and boil in hot water anything you might want to use on Passover that isn’t porous but might have come in contact with chamets.  And only then can you bring in all the Passover plates and cookware, and start the major preparations necessary for the Seder and the week of meals.   Just talking about it is making some people here uncomfortable, I am certain… including me.

Frankly, you can make a case that the entire reason Reform Judaism started was so people would not have to clean their homes for Passover.  Look, even devoutly Orthodox Jews have some resistance when the subject of Pesach cleaning comes up. 

There is an old story that illustrates this.

Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a king who had a Jewish advisor. The king relied so much on the wisdom of his Jewish advisor that one day he decided to elevate him to head advisor. After it was announced, the other advisors objected. After all, "It was bad enough," the other advisors complained, "just to sit in counsel with a Jew". But to allow a Jew to lord it over them was just too much to bear.

Being a compassionate ruler, the King agreed with them, and ordered the Jew to convert. What could the Jew do? He had to obey his King.

As soon as the act was done, the Jew felt great remorse for this terrible decision. As days became weeks, his remorse turned to despondency, and as months passed, his mental depression took its toll on his physical health.

He became weaker and weaker. Finally, he could stand it no longer. His mind was made up. He burst in on the king and cried, "I was born a Jew and a Jew I must be. Do what you want with me, but I can no longer deny my faith."

The King was very surprised. He had no idea that the Jew felt so strongly about it. "Well, if that is how you feel," he said, "then the other advisors will just have to learn to live with it. Your counsel is much too important to me to do without. Go and be a Jew again!" he said.

The Jew felt elated. He hurried home to tell the good news to his family. He felt the strength surge back into his body as he ran, Finally, he burst into the house and called out to his wife. "Rifka, Rifka, we can be Jews again, we can be Jews again!"

His wife glared back at him angrily and said, "You couldn't wait until AFTER Pesach??"

In fact, some Jews dislike Passover preparations so much that they choose to go away for the holiday to an all-kosher institution to avoid this agony of observance.  

17 years ago this coming week, during a sabbatical year, most of my own family planned just such a Passover week.  I took my then three children, all still very young back then, with me and we flew to New York, and then drove up to the Catskill Mountains—once known as “the Jewish Alps”—to spend Passover at a resort there with my parents and siblings and their families. 

You see, there are tour groups that take over a resort property for the holiday of Pesach and make it completely kosher for the festival.  For these Passover retreats, the tour operators bring in an entire team of mashgiachs, rabbis trained in supervising food preparation, and basically turn the resort into a kind of Kosher for Passover cruise ship, with all the elaborate preparations of Pesach done for you by the tour group.  You can see these “let us make Passover for you!” ads featuring places in Phoenix, New York, and even Italy.

If you have ever made a house kosher for Passover you know how appealing it would be to have someone—anyone—else do it for you, no matter how expensive or how far you would have to travel.

Being on sabbatical that year meant that it was one of the few Passovers of my life when I could actually let someone else do it all for me, and experience this Pesach-resort phenomenon first-hand.  When my parents graciously invited us to go to the Catskills that year, we accepted.  And there was one truly unique and highly exciting part of the whole experience. 

To set the scene, ‘twas the night before the seder and all through the house—er, sorry.  It was the night before Seder and we had just settled into our clearly kosher hotel room and completed my children’s bedtime rituals when the hotel fire alarm went off.  I called the front desk to see if this was a test or some kind of malfunction, and they told me to evacuate immediately.  So I got the kids into shoes and coats, grabbed my cellphone and car keys, and we all headed out into the hotel corridor, where people were running towards the exits.  We walked out one exit door that a-7- year-old Gabe opened and saw flames shooting up into the air from the building’s roof—clearly not a false alarm or a drill going on now!—turned around and went back through the building to another exit and got out the front, along with lots of other guests, and headed to the parking lot—it’s the safest place to be in a fire, a large concrete space with no burnable elements.  And then we watched the fire, which had begun in the bakery, spread throughout the main building. 

Eventually, 40 fire trucks arrived from all over Sullivan County, New York.  They couldn’t do much but contain the fire to the central building, but all the elaborate preparations were clearly not going to result in a kosher for Passover resort, or a seder the next night—or, for that matter, a place for us to sleep that night.  So, I took my family to a motel in the nearby town of Liberty wearing the clothes on our back and carrying nothing in our hands.  We came back the next morning to find that our stuff had been packed up by hotel employees and was all safe and sound, and we carried that away in plastic bags.

The tour operator, meantime, having been first told of the fire by my dad after I called him in Los Angeles on my cellphone, rearranged everything by mid-morning, and we guests were relocated to another hotel, the Nevele, about 40 minutes away, where the same program was in place.  I collected our baggage from the ruins of the Villa Roma, and ultimately we arrived as refugees at the new hotel a little tired but in one piece, with all of our stuff, and no one too much the worse for the experience.  Thank God that no one was hurt in the fire.  Had it taken place the next night, when the hotel would have been packed and its main dining rooms crowded for seder, it would have been truly catastrophic.  But it turned out OK.

I guess that was the greatest example of serious burning of chamets ever…

I have to admit that this wild night could not have been timed more thematically for any Jew, let alone a rabbi, to experience.  After all, what is Passover but the remembrance of leaving in a rush in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on your back?  And what could be a more explicit Pesach experience than to feel like a refugee, carrying your bags on your shoulder as you lead your children by the hand? 

And what could have possibly been a more appropriate place to spend the night before the beginning of the Festival of Freedom than a town called, I kid you not, Liberty?

Sometimes we need a major shock like that to bring us to the realization of what matters most in life, to allow us to remove the overlay of stuff that we accumulate over time and which prevents us from realizing just what is most important.  When we are confronted with a true emergency, we come to understand what matters in our lives: family, physical safety, and freedom, for example.

Emergencies help us understand what is truly chamets in our lives, and what isn’t.  Emergencies like fires the night before Pesach. 

I heard a fine sermon once on chamets, from a professor of mine at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, the inimitable Talmud teacher Steve Pasamenek, alav hashalom.  Professor Pasamanek was a character—in addition to teaching Talmud he worked as a volunteer at the Sheriff’s Department talking potential suicides off roofs, and he would sometimes bring his County-issued gun to class with him, an unusual decoration in a very liberal and anti-gun Reform rabbinical seminary.

Anyway, just before Passover Dr. Pasamanek’s sermon was on chamets—the need to remove it from our homes, cleaning up the mess that we sometimes allow to accumulate over the year.  But his greater message was that we also need to be vigilant about the way chamets infects and ameliorates our ideals and goals.  We start out in life with ideas about what we stand for, and before too long we find that what we stand for becomes adulterated with the complex infections and adulterations and ameliorations of the world around us—chamets.  Our job at the time of Pesach is to remove that chamets from our lives, allowing us to return to the finest and most ethical versions of ourselves that we can be.

To cut out all the adulteration, to cleanse our homes and our souls of the contamination that has so insidiously insinuated itself into our lives.

And to rediscover what truly matters in life: freedom, family, safety from harm.  It is these which we also must value at this traumatic time of challenge right now, these which we must balance against one another at times, sacrificing some personal freedom for the greater good of safety from harm, all of us seeking to protect our families.  And one more value: the value of faith and belief, of commitment to those beliefs, of living life every day in a way that demonstrates our ideals.

It is these values that Passover reminds us of annually.  And, paradoxically perhaps, it is that removal of chamets that allows us to celebrate a truly great Shabbat, and a wonderful festival of Pesach.

May you be blessed, on this Shabbat HaGadol with the ability to remove chamets from your own lives.  And may this lead, next week, to a Passover of freedom and of true peace.

What We Live For

Shabbat Vayikra 5783

As a senior rabbinic student, approaching ordination, I remember delivering a sermon at Hebrew Union College on this week’s portion.  At that time, I was really beginning to wonder just what would happen to us after semichah the formal process of being ordained, still practiced today, in which an older, experienced rabbi lays his or her hands on the head of the student who is now becoming a rabbi and conveys authority on him or her. 

This week's Torah portion gave us rabbinical students our first clue.  In the beginning of Vayikra we are told how the process would work: first, the prospective musmach, the designee, is brought to the door of the sanctuary, up close before God; next the highest religious authority, the High Priest, the Chancellor of the seminary, if you will, of the Torah, samach yado al rosh, ceremonially lays one of his hands upon the head, and performs s'michah, the laying on of hands.  And then, immediately afterwards, he whips out a razor-sharp knife v'shachat oto—and ritually slaughters it.  Right here in Vayikra, the clouds obscuring our future had been parted: First ordination-- then, kaddish.

Now this same sequence occurs eight different times in our parshah, and each time it works identically.  Semicha is followed immediately by sh'chitah-- first, hands are put on the head, and then-- bloodbath! Instant slaughter, vayismach oto-- v'shachat oto; a form of Biblical fatal attraction.  It's like one of those horror movies with Jason in it where you just know the teenager shouldn't go into that dark room.  In walks the candidate, the hand goes on the head, and—you know it’s coming, the priest knows its coming, Jason knows its coming, only the poor musmach doesn't see the razor-sharp knife in the other hand.

Of course, Vayikra is talking about laying hands on animal sacrifices, not rabbinic students.  While there are similarities—the same powerlessness, the same confusion, the same glazed look in the eye—the differences are more significant.  This is not the exalted, symbolic ordination ritual of rabbis, passing the shalshelet hakabbalah, the religious tradition from one generation to another.  This is butchering animals.  Obviously, semichah came to mean rabbinic ordination much, much later; in the Torah it has nothing to do with it!  What a ludicrous comparison!

But is it?  Samach means to place a hand upon, to support, and to uphold.  In fact, the word samach implies that the musmach is now able to uphold others, to lift them up.  In the gevurot that we chant in every Amidah we bless God as somech noflim, one who lifts up the fallen.  In the Torah itself, in Devarim, Joshua is said to be filled with the spirit of wisdom ki samach Moshe et yadav alav; because Moses placed his hand upon him, he was raised to wisdom; ibn Ezra even says that smichah conveys the ru'ach Adonai, the very spirit of God.  Yet here in Vayikra this fine, supportive word is linked in strange combination with slaughter and death.  The tie between upholding and killing, between supporting and slaughtering, is real, and it is disturbing.  If the word semichah always led to sh'chitah, why was it used later for rabbinic ordination?  What do holiness and death have to do with each other? 

Clearly, our ancestors, both priests and people, took animal sacrifice most seriously.  This was, quite simply, a matter of life and death.  Getting close to God, touching the hem of God's holiness, standing in the very presence of this awesome God who could kill or heal in a nanosecond-- this is not casual religion.  They believed profoundly, deeply, passionately that God was right here, that their lives depended on God's acceptance of their offering.  Death was always a distinct possibility, and every detail mattered: the clothing, the timing, the words, the offering—the laying on of hands.  Samach also means connection; our ancestors were intimately connected with the most frightening, awesome power that ever was, and what they did made all the difference.

In sacrifice and death they truly connected to the Source of all life.  What an incredible idea!  Even the Hebrew words are from the same root: yakriv—karov—Korban: to come close to God we must ritually kill.

This is not just true in Vayikra.  In fact, death and God are interwoven in the tapestry of Jewish tradition.  Death and holiness interlock, embrace, intimately intertwine.  Sacrifice becomes saintliness.  In the eileh ezkereh Martyrology on Yom Kippur we speak of the great rabbis slaughtered by the Romans with sacrificial words like zevach and olah, sacrificial words from Leviticus.  When we pray for the souls of the martyrs of our people, we poetically describe them as korbanot, sacrifices to God.  We proclaim that they died al kidush hashem, for the sanctification of the sacred Name.  Death becomes holiness, and holiness leads to death. 

We have no Jewish dia de los muertos, no Day of the Dead, no Dance of Death.  But at the center of our Torah, in the middle of the concentric circles of Genesis and Deuteronomy, of Exodus and Numbers, right smack in the thematic ground zero of our holiest text is the instruction of the kohanim and priests explaining all about the sacrifices.  Here at the living heart of the Torah we talk mostly about administering death.

Now, to contemporary Jews there is something sinister and crude in all this gore and sacrifice.  Industrial society has removed us from daily encounter with blood or death.  Chicken comes wrapped in plastic; Cows are an entirely different entity from steak.  We don't know from butchering and sh'chitah, and this makes us a little squeamish about blood, you and I.  We can handle all the pseudo-gore contained in the ketchup packets of ultraviolent Quentin Tarantino films but tell us about pulling the gizzard out of a chicken or how to cut out and burn the lobe of a sheep's liver, and we become distinctly uncomfortable.

Worse than that, these korbanot are profoundly irrelevant to us and to the way we worship our deity, sitting solemnly in rooms full of "sacred space", with our carefully updated liturgies and our climate-controlled comfort.  Even more so when we are watching Shabbat services on our laptops on Facebook or Zoom from the comfort of our homes.  Religion has become a brief, antiseptic, social congregating, a hermetically sealed moment of safely spiritual experience.  And perhaps in virtual experience, less even than that: a background video program to watch or ignore as we do other things.

But that's not what it was to our ancestors; and, if we take Leviticus seriously, if we get the message of this central book Vayikra, it cannot remain so for us, either.  

It's that linkage of death and holiness that we need to look at, to stare straight into its unpleasant face.  In modern society the idea that you would die for a belief is bizarre, even insane.  Even the notion that you would die for any other person is pretty repugnant in a therapeutic world.  But Vayikra raises the question anyway: what would you die for?  For what reason or purpose or person or idea would you be willing to give up your life?

Unlike the centuries of our ancestors for whom this was an everyday dilemma, we don't really think it will ever come down to dying for our beliefs.  We all pray that we will never have to join the Jewish martyrs of the millennia.  But my question is not an introduction to Holocaust memories or Antisemitic stories.  I'm asking because, as Jewish philosopher Steven Schwarzschild said, until we know what we would die for we cannot truly know what it is that we live for. 

So just what would you die for?  How can we truly know what it is that calls to our souls, that stakes its claim upon our very existence? 

The opening word of our portion tells us: Vayikra, and God called.  In the Torah, it is God's call that brings us out of our own confusion and loneliness; it is God's call that brings us to stare our mortality in the face, to touch and feel it, to release a little bit of ourselves, our denial of mortality, and gain a great gift: to know through that encounter what it is we care about and what it is we live for. 

This Leviticus story is not just about priests or even rabbis.  In Exodus, semichah is done by the kohanim, but our text here is addressed to adam, to every single human being.  Each and every one of us, male and female, has the responsibility of getting up close and personal with our God, staring death in the face, determining what really matters to us, and choosing to live for that.  No one else may do this for us, not priest nor rabbi, not parent or teacher. 

We each must make this commitment personally; and this commitment applies to every aspect of life, not just the ritual moments.  It is true for the intimacy of our private lives, for the offerings of the heart and self that emerge from our own, personal choice to come near to God. 

The great medieval poet and philosopher Judah Halevi describes the sacrifices as an olam katan, a world in miniature; for us, it is these decisions that make our lives, and our personal relationships, into a sacred olam katan of our families, our friendships, and our chosen paths.

Deciding what it is that truly matters to us can be a daunting prospect.  Thinking about our own death, and valuing something beyond our own, finite, life, forces us to admit that our existence is not the most important thing in the world.  It means surrendering a portion of our ego, allowing that there is a greater value in the world even than our own survival. 

There are many beautiful interpretations of why the last letter of the first word of our portion, Vayikra, is written with a small alef.  The Chasidic rebbe, Simcha Bunem, explains that it highlights the modesty of Moses: though called to come up closer to God than any other human being, Moses retained his humility.  The alef of his ani remained small, diminished.  It was his modesty that left room, within his soul, for God.  I think that the humility of the small alef is also a clue; change the last letter of vayikra to the next Hebrew letter, bet, and you arrive at vayikrav, and he came near; change the vocalization and it becomes vayakriv, and he sacrificed.  It is all one; through God's call we are brought near, sacrifice our independence from commitment, and learn the purpose of our lives.  Vayikra, God's call, is to a life lived fully, completely, modestly.

And that, I believe, is what Vayikra is trying to get at all along: all this talk of referred death, of substitute sacrifice, is designed to force us to place full value on our own lives.  It's a way to force to consciousness just what it is that really matters in our lives.  What is sacrificed before the altar here, what we must bring before God willingly and kill with our own hand, is our liberty to lead an unexamined life.  Vayikra insists that it is not enough to float through life without knowing why; in exchange for the sacrifice of that false freedom, it offers meaning and value and holiness.

As Samson Raphael Hirsch says, "the Sanctuary of God's Torah demands the full complete life with nothing left out, nothing missing, and promises in exchange a rich, full life in which even death and pain lose their sting."  It is within that commitment, to your God, to your mate, to your lover, to your children, that you will find that the samach has been changed to same'ach, that the hand upon your head has become joy within your heart.  Today, we pray, God, that you bring us to face our mortality, to sacrifice our empty isolation, and to commit to lives dedicated to sanctifying what we love.  For when we know what we might die for, we know how we must choose to live.

Why Do We Need a Sanctuary?

Sermon Vayakhel-Pekudei 5783

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha

Ayelet Claire Cohon’s Babynaming

What a special night this is for our family, and for our congregation, and I am so grateful for all the many gifts that we have received from all of you.  It is such a blessing to have my father Rabbi Baruch and son Boaz and grandson Ezra, Boaz’s family Catherine and Valentina and Isaac, and through the magic of Facebook broadcasting our son Gabriel and daughter Cipora, and my siblings, Rachel the amazingly helpful Deborah, as well as friends spread about the country here tonight online as well.  My friend Alan Lieban, who has shared so many life-cycle events with me over our friendship since high school days is here from Los Angeles, too.  Such a simcha here at Beit Simcha!

I am also so grateful to Sophie’s wonderful family, and the way they have jumped in completely helpfully during Ayelet’s early life: Kathy and SD Khalsa, and Ester and Jay Leutenberg have been rocks in our sometimes unsteady and definitely unslept weeks. 

The only objection I have is that in spite of my many invitations they have chosen to skip coming over for the 2am-6am shifts at night…

Speaking of late nights, I haven’t done this in a while, but I was watching Saturday Night Live during one of Ayelet Claire’s late evening, um, concerts recently.  Saturday Night Live has become one of the longest-running television shows in American history, headed for its 50th Anniversary soon.  That’s remarkable to think about, since it began as a subversive, counter-cultural comedic program that aired in the middle of the night when no one was supposed to be watching.  Lorne Michaels, who created it, of course is Jewish, and he’s still producing it as the conclusion of season 48 comes up. 

While Saturday Night Live hasn’t always been great, a few of its routines have become part of our permanent cultural memory.  Weekend Update’s smarmy take on the week’s news, John Belushi’s various Samurai routines, Eddie Murphy’s Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood, and Adam Sandler’s Operaman sketch—and of course his Hanukkah Song started on SNL.  And, in keeping with the theme of babynaming tonight, can anyone who saw it ever forget the amazing fake commercial for a car whose ride was so smooth that a mohel was brought in to perform a bris in the back seat while it was rolling along?  A great moment in popular culture as Jews became more and more mainstream in America. 

Now I recall, in particular, a comedic routine from a fake Catholic priest on SNL, the remarkable Father Guido Sarducci, that he called the five-minute university. The idea, he said, was to teach you in five minutes what the average college graduate remembers five years after he or she graduates.  For example, at the 5 minute university if you studied Spanish he would teach you the question, “Como Esta Usted?” and the answer was “Muy Bien.”  As he said, if you took two years of college Spanish that’s all you’d remember five years later.

For Economics, he would teach you the phrase, “Supply and Demand.”  That’s it, all you’d remember five years after you graduate.

And of course, fake Priest Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University would have a Theology Department.  There he would teach the answer to the question: Where is God?  The answer: “God is everywhere.”  Why?  Because “God likes You.”  A combination of religious theology and Disney.

Now that routine comes to mind whenever we read a Torah portion focused on the creation of a central shrine for worshipping God.  I mean, if God is truly everywhere, why do we need a Tabernacle at all?

I mean if God is everywhere, which all monotheistic religions believe, why is it better to come to some building or shrine to offer up our prayers?  Why can’t we just go for a hike or walk on a beach or just say what we need to say wherever we happen to be?

It’s a valid question.  The truth is, we can of course pray to God anywhere we are, and at any time of day or night.  If God exists, and God is listening, what premium is placed on going to a temple, shul or synagogue and offering up prayers there instead of in our kitchen or den or in our cars?

The answer is that of course we can pray to God anywhere and at any time.  The purpose of a sanctuary, a place dedicated to prayer and service to God, is to provide a beautiful, unique location for the community to gather in prayer.  It is also the way we give those who wish to seek God, and holiness a special place to join their voices with others who are also looking for meaning and purpose. 

Assemble the people, Moses is told in our Torah portion of Vayakhel-Pekudei, gather them together so that they might worship Me.  And so it happens.  

You know, that first Tabernacle in the Wilderness, we are told, was built from the Terumah, the freewill offerings of the multitude of Israelites, gifts they gave in order to create a magnificently special place for God’s spirit to connect with us.  Both the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem were regarded as the most fabulous buildings that existed in their day in the world.  But what made them so special was not the gold and silver, not the elegantly embroidered fabrics, not the giant bronze and copper basins or the magnificent altar or the huge pillars.  What made these sanctuaries central to the life of our people was the simple fact that in these holy places, created through the best efforts of the most talented carpenters, jewelers, metalworkers, artists, craftspeople and weavers to create a gorgeous place, what made them special after all that incredible work was that the divine presence, the Shechinah, the literal sense of God being there, was clear to all. 

This was where you could find God most intensely, and most consistently.  This was the place to connect to the holy One, to unify with what is eternal and sacred and ineffably magnificent.  This was where you went to apologize for your mistakes, to celebrate wonderful festivals, to join in true community with other people like you, and unlike you, in holiness and purpose.

Of course, you could talk to God in your kitchen, or barn, or in the fields or orchards, or on a city street somewhere.  But if you really wanted to sense God’s presence the Temple was where you needed to be.

That same truth exists for us today.  Yes, we can pray to God anywhere—at home, at work, in a restaurant, in a car, on a bus or plane or even on a bicycle.  But if we want to feel that presence of God, to experience true holiness, we must do so in community in a sacred place. 

And the very best of these places help raise our hearts and minds and lives to a newer, higher level.  That’s what a great synagogue can do, at its best.  And its best is what we must always strive for—our ancestors certainly did, as we see in the Torah portions.  But it’s also what we must do, for now it’s on us to try to accomplish what they did.

Asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham we were told recently in the Torah portion of Terumah, build Me a sanctuary and I will dwell among you—that’s a pledge that things can always be made good, that we are always able to come into grace and blessing, if we build that temple.  God will be in our midst, always, and that we can find God best in community in a holy place.  In our own temple, our sanctuary, our place for the Shechinah to dwell.

Of course, God is everywhere; thank you, Father Sarducci.  But if you want to access the spirit of Divine blessing, if you have the desire to experience true community of purpose, and prayer, to reach to the highest level that exists—well then you need a true sanctuary.  To pray together; to mourn together; to learn together; and perhaps most of all, to join together in life-cycle celebrations like tonight.

As our Torah portions affirm, and as the long sweep of Jewish history attests, and as we hope to be able to confirm soon for our own congregation: we need a temple of our own. 

May we find that place of holiness and blessing, and join together there, always, in community and in prayers of thanksgiving and peace and, especially, great joy.

Ken Yehi Ratson.

Swords into Plowshares

Swords into Plowshares, Multi-Faith Service March 16, 2023

At the NW Celebration of Unity and Prayer

Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha

There are a number of beautiful blessings in Judaism highlighting the incredible value and virtue of peace.  In our evening prayers we say the paragraph Shalom Rav, which calls God the great Monarch of peace; in the morning we say Sim Shalom, please God give peace, goodness and blessing, compassion and forgiveness to us and all Your people.  In our afternoon prayers, depending on which Jews you are talking about—after all, we are known for our ability to argue—we say one or the other of those prayers, while at the end of every central devotional experience, our Amidah, our standing personal prayers, we say, “Make peace on earth, God, as You do in the heavens, Oseh Shalom, great Maker of peace.”

A wonderful blessing in our tradition reads, “Peace to all, those near and far, complete peace, peace forever.”  It is an incredibly powerful, hopeful benediction.

Unfortunately, looking at the long, bloodstained history of humanity might lead a person to conclude that as a species we homo sapiens are actually incredibly bad at peace, and we are simply unable to avoid violent conflict.  No wonder we pray so often and so hard for God to give us peace; we are unable to create it for ourselves.

The sad fact of human civilization is that a war is almost always going on somewhere, and sometimes everywhere, in the world, and that the number of years in which this planet has been free of war is very few.  One calculation I found says that of the 3400 years of recorded human history only 250 years have been free of a documented war—that is, once every 15 years or so we have a year without a war.  To be honest, that seems wildly optimistic.  In my lifetime I cannot recall a single year in which warfare has not been waged somewhere on the globe. 

Tonight, as we gather to proclaim our shared belief that we should follow the words of the great prophet First Isaiah and beat our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks, our Abrams tanks and armored vehicles into riding lawnmowers, our AKs and ARs into rakes and hoes, we know how distant that vision must seem.  We cannot miss that a terrible, brutal war is grinding on in Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine, that there are civil wars and distinctly uncivil wars in Nogorno-Karabakh and in Myanmar and in Yemen and in Ethiopia and Somalia and Eritrea.  If we are going to actually accomplish this great goal of eliminating all the swords, well, we have a long way to go.  And heaven knows, we will need all the help from God we can get.

Ah, but as another great Jewish teaching tells us, it is not up to us to finish this essential work—nor are we free to desist from doing it.  Because if we are ever going to reach that magnificent ideal, an ideal of a world in which peace truly reigns over all of us, then we are going to have to start by beating a few swords into plowshares, by ending some of the conflicts and distancings that separate us from our fellow human beings, and eventually bring us into the kind of violent conflicts that do so much to damage our world.

You see, it’s not to say that we have the chutzpah to believe that we alone can fulfill these words of Isaiah’s; it’s that we must have the chutzpah, the courage and gall to say that it is possible to make changes, to beat at least a few spears into gardening implements, to stop shooting each other and to choose to seek to know one another and embrace each other instead.

It is notable that right after Isaiah says that bit about beating swords into plowshares and so on, he says, “Come let us walk in the light of the Lord; let us reason together.”  That’s really our task: to move from conflict and anger towards understanding and respect, to choose to walk together in openness and honesty, without hostility towards difference.

You know, plows and pruning hooks and even riding lawnmowers are not about doing things the easy way. They require hard work, and the gardens we cultivate using them need to constantly be maintained.  So it is with peace.  We must make the choice to act for peace, and do so in the spirit of a tradition that asks God to grant us not just the gift of peace, but the strength, fortitude and endurance to work for peace.

And then, one day—may it only happen in our own day—if we work that garden using our new implements, we may perhaps be able to truly say, Shalom Shalom, lerachok v’lekarov: peace, peace, to those far and near.

May it be Your will, God—and more importantly, may it be ours.