Reforming Judaism

Stop the Marriage Amendment

2011-05-20T16:14:00.001-05:00

I have spent the better part of the past two days at the Capitol in St. Paul rallying against the marriage amendment. It has passed the Minnesota Senate and waits only for a vote on the House floor. GOVERNOR DAYTON CANNOT VETO AN AMENDMENT PROPOSAL.

We have heard from supportive GOP leadership how critically important it is that we continue to be a presence at the Capitol to prevent enshrining hate in Minnesota's Constitution. WE CAN WIN THIS, BUT WE NEED YOU. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that the opposite of good is not evil; the opposite of good is indifference. PLEASE TAKE A STAND.

WE NEED YOU AT THE CAPITOL TONIGHT, THROUGH THE WEEKEND, AND ON MONDAY. Stay up-to-date through OutFront Minnesota's website and be at the Capitol as often as you can. Every minute counts.

Shabbat Shalom!

Friday the 13th

2011-05-13T16:37:00.002-05:00

It's been a bad week. But today is Friday the 13th and in my book, that's a good thing. (My mother was born on Friday the 13th. My brother came a day early on Thursday the 12th.) This week's Torah portion, Behar, contains the verse inscribed on the Liberty Bell: Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof Lev. XXV X. (Or, You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all of its inhabitants (Lev. 25:10).) There will, one day, be liberty and justice for all. It may take a lot of work, but it will happen.

Retribution and Restraint

2011-05-06T17:02:00.002-05:00

I was driving home from the Twin Cities community's Holocaust remembrance service last Sunday evening, listening to MSNBC on my satellite radio. All of a sudden, the broadcast was interrupted by an announcement that in 15 minutes, the President would be making a special announcement, but that the details of that announcement were unknown. I walked in the door at home and quickly tuned my television to the news so that I could see what was so urgent. An hour or so later, the nation and the world knew that a CIA operation in Pakistan had resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.

After the President had spoken, the news cameras turned to the crowds forming outside the White House, at Ground Zero, and at other locations around the country where Americans, many of them young adults, were celebrating America's victory. I, however, felt uneasy. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with the need to have protected ourselves by bringing the life of another to an end. Judaism demands that. In din ha-rodef, the law of the pursuer (Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 73a), we are told that after warning a would-be murderer, we are obligated to stop him, even if it results in his death. But I also thought of the midrash of our crossing the Sea of Reeds where the angels rejoiced at the deaths of the Egyptians and God reminded them that even the Egyptians were God's children. Later in the week, Rabbi Joe Black reminded me of the verse from Proverbs, "Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles" (Proverbs 24:17).

This week, in Parashat Emor, we are reminded of the Jewish law of capital punishment: "If anyone kills any human being, he shall be put to death. One who kills a beast shall make restutition for it: life for life. If anyone maims his fellow, as he has done so shall it be done to him: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The injury he inflicted on another shall be inflicted on him" (Leviticus 24:17-20). What I learned today, though, in preparing for tomorrow's Torah study at Temple Israel, is that an eye for an eye, in the Biblical law, was not one that promoted retribution, but rather restraint. In those days, one was likely to respond disproportionately to an injury or death and Torah seeks to limit our reaction, protecting our relationship with one another and by virtue of that, with God.

Was it too much for the U.S. military to have killed Osama bin Laden? No. But it is too much if we don't show proper restraint in our reaction to his death. As one 9/11 victim's survivor put it, this is a time for us to honor the memory of those whose lives were lost, not to celebrate the death of a mass murderer; he doesn't deserve that much recognition.

Judge Your Kin Fairly; Do Not Profit By the Blood of Your Fellow

2011-04-29T16:56:00.003-05:00

You shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor or show deference to the rich; judge your kin fairly. Do not deal basely with members of your people. Do not profit by the blood of your fellow: I am the Eternal. (Leviticus 19:15-16)

This afternoon, I sat in on a hearing of the Minnesota Senate Judiciary Committee, which was hearing testimony on a proposal to place an amendment on the ballot in Minnesota in 2012 legally restricting all marriage to one man and one woman. Unfortunately, the bill passed the committee and moves forward. There will likely be an same sex marriage ban amendment on the Minnesota ballot in 2012.

On my way back from the hearings, where I heard heartwarming, compelling, and emotional testimony from opponents to the legislation (not to mention misleading, hateful, and hurtful testimony from the proponents of the legislation), I was listening briefly to Science Friday, which featured Holly Tucker, author of Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution. Most of the piece that I caught focused on the advances of medicine regarding the circulatory system and the use of blood transfusions before science knew about blood types. One comment, though, caught me by surprise.

I had never really thought about the role of Jim Crow Laws in medicine. As it turns out, the Red Cross used to refuse donations from Black donors. And even once the Red Cross began accepted blood from Black donors, blood was segregated by race. In the 1930s, African American surgeon and hemotologist, Dr. Charles Drew, developed a method for preserving blood. "The American Red Cross enlisted Drew in 1941 to establish a blood bank program in the United States. That same year, the U. S. War Department declared, 'It is not advisable to collect and mix Caucasian and Negro blood indiscriminately for later administration to members of the military forces.'" It wasn't until 1949 that the U.S. Military stopped segregating blood.

Today, of course, men who have had sex with men since 1977 are prohibited from donating blood, even though research shows that the policy is antiquated and medically inaccurate.

In the 1940s, Black citizens who chose to donate blood were not judged fairly. In the Senate hearing today, an unfair decision was rendered and a minority is being unfairly judged. We know the cost of such discrimination and it's a price we shouldn't be willing to pay.

Tasting the Bitterness

2011-04-22T18:15:00.001-05:00

Last Friday night I wasn’t on the bimah because I was among two dozen Temple Israel participants – including our 9th graders, TIPTYites, and chaperones – taking part in A Night on the Street, an annual sleep-out for homelessness organized by Plymouth Church Neighborhood Foundation, an organization working to end homelessness in Minneapolis. (Check out a video of our experience here.) There are 2500 youth who experience homelessness in Minnesota each night. We were part of a group of 400 participants from dozens of faith communities around the Twin Cities Metro who attempted to sleep outside for a night in solidarity with these homeless youth. I say ‘attempted’ because this was the first time in my six years of participating in the event that we had to allow the participants inside Plymouth Congregational Church because of the weather. If you remember last Shabbat, we went to set up our cardboard box villages while snow and sleet were falling and woke up to a light blanket of snow. Though it wasn’t a lot – certainly not enough to warrant plowing or shoveling – it was enough to cause our cardboard boxes to cave in, snow and rain to drench our sleeping bags and clothing. The tarps that we had were practically useless.

I never actually made it into my box. We gathered as a Jewish community at the event around 11:00 at night, along with participants and staff from Shir Tikvah, to mark the beginning of Shabbat. We lit little electric candles, shared challah, and in place of Kiddush, we shared a word about what made the experience holy for each of us. By the time we wrapped up our Shabbat blessings, the boxes were already damp and some were starting to cave in. Most of the teens tried crawling under the snow-speckled tarps towards their cardboard boxes. One Shir Tikvah participant, Naomi, crawled in and out of her box maybe a half a dozen times before coming up to me and asking if she could go home. By the time her father arrived, Naomi was in tears because she felt that she wasn’t tough enough to stick it out. I told her she still had a story to tell, a way to explain a taste of what it must be like to have to live on the streets, when she wanted to convince others to help end youth homelessness.

Around 12:30 am, the leadership decided to unlock the church doors and allow the participants to choose to sleep in Jones Commons, the lobby at the church. In the seven years that the event has taken place, we’ve never opened the church before. We’ve slept through rain and temperatures just above freezing, but the weather has never been so bitter that we had to allow the participants to sleep inside. At this point, a number of the teens were either not yet in their snow-soaked boxes or had climbed out of them, wringing out their clothing and sleeping bags of the puddles that had formed while they tried to sleep. We let them know that the warm, dry church was available to them, but that it was being treated like an emergency shelter. If they chose to go inside, they had to go to sleep – no socializing, no talking. In the end, about three-quarters of the participants and staff ended up sleeping inside. Among the Temple Israel group, we had three staff and a few kids who made it through the night outside.

At our Seder tables this past Monday night, we read the instruction of Rabban Gamaliel who teaches us that if we have not discussed three things – the Passsover offering, the matzah, and the maror – then we have not fulfilled the purpose of the Seder. When we discuss the maror, the bitter herb, we learn the importance of experiencing life from the perspective of others. The Baskin Haggadah tells us, “[Maror] was eaten, they said, because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our people, as it is written: ‘With hard labor at mortar and brick and in all sorts of work in the field, with all the tasks ruthlessly imposed upon them’ (Exodus 1:14).” The Haggadah continues, B'chol dor va-dor chayav adam lir'ot et atzmo k'ilu hu yatza mi-mitzrayim, “In every generation, each of us should feel as though we ourselves had gone forth from Egypt.”

At first, it seems impossible for us to believe that God actually expects us to really believe that we, ourselves, had gone out of Egypt, that it is neither a story about our ancestors who experienced the Exodus nor even simply a story that never really happened. We should feel as though we ourselves had gone forth from Egypt. How do we begin to experience this feeling? At the Seder table of Wendy Schwartz, our Adult Learning Coordinator, handheld mirrors come out with fabric draped over the top, like a curtain, so that participants can see their reflections wearing what their Egyptian garb might have been. But this is only a start. That’s still just make-believe.

The first step to realizing that it was we who came out of Egypt is to realize, as Rabbi Neil Gillman (in My People’s Passover Haggadah) teaches, “the Exodus was not simply a historical event that happened once upon a time, way back when. Rather, it inhabits an eternal present; it is contemporaneous, it is happening today, to us” (vol. 2, p. 74). The first detail Rabbi Gillman offers is that the text does not say that each Jew is required to see himself as having come free from Egypt. Rather, the text reads, chayav adam, each adam, each person is obligated. “The liberation from Egypt has universal significance that extends way beyond Jewish history. He then emphasizes the word k'ilu, ‘as though.’ We are to see ourselves as though we came out of Egypt. Rabbi Gillman acknowledges that their may be some exaggeration in the statement, but what we do have to realize is that as each of us reads the statement, as I read the statement that I was freed from Egypt, what I have to realize is that “I might have been—an accident of birth located me where I am now in space and time, but I could have been born in another time and in another place” (vol. 2, p. 79).

This is inherently part of the experience that our teens, our staff, and I had last Friday night. We were fortunate enough to be able to experience a taste of the bitterness of homelessness, fully aware that our experience paled in comparison to the reality of homelessness, just as the sharp burn of the horseradish barely conveys the depth of pain that accompanied slavery in Egypt. We were privileged enough to call parents and get rides home to welcoming arms and warm beds. We were lucky enough to have church doors unlocked to us, not to mention sleeping bags and even cardboard boxes and tarps, which though they failed us, were more than many homeless youth have living on Minnesota’s streets. We felt vulnerable nonetheless and that reminded us that slavery is happening today, homelessness is happening today. It is not a story of generations past. It is a story of now and each person must see himself or herself as having experienced that kind of vulnerability if we are to recognize the how at risk others are.

The experience also reminded us and our teens that homelessness isn’t something that happens to those people. It could be any one of us. Any of us could find ourselves a paycheck away from a food shelf, from sleeping on a friends couch, or seeking cover from wind and cold in order to survive the night. And we, the privileged, are often unaware of how at risk we all are when others are at risk at all. Following the Haggadah’s demand that each of us sees ourselves as having been personally freed from Egypt, it reminds us of the value repeated more than any other in our Torah: remember that you were strangers in the land of Egypt. The Torah tells us, more often than any other commandment, not to wrong the widow, the orphan, or the stranger, because we know the feelings of the stranger, having been strangers in the land of Egypt.

Judaism demands that we recognize our common narrative with all of humankind, that we look out for the weakest members of society – in Biblical times they were the widow, the orphan, and the stranger; today, they are the homeless, the poor, and so many others – not only because it’s right, but because we have been in their shoes. In Judaism, it’s no longer about walking a mile in someone’s shoes before we judge them. In Judaism, we have already walked that walk. We must remember it and use it as the narrative that drives us to bring redemption to the world. As we celebrate this holiday of Passover we cannot simply remember our own experience of slavery and our journey to freedom and stop there. No, we must work towards the ultimate redemption that the Seder demands. L'shanah ha-ba'ah b'Yrushalayim, Next year in Jerusalem, is not about geography. It is a hope for the Jerusalem that they mystics envisioned, one that is the centerpiece of a world free from slavery, tyranny, and, indeed, homelessness. Chag Sameyach and Shabbat Shalom.

Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?

2011-04-15T15:00:00.000-05:00

Will there be an orange on your seder plate on Monday night? Whether or not an orange is present, you should know the real story of how the orange came to join the parsley, the charoset, and the horseradish. There's a pretty good chance that if you've been to a seder with an orange present, you've heard that the orange came to join the other ritual foods on the Passover table in solidarity with the role of women in Judaism and with Jewish feminism. You may even be familiar with the line, "A woman belongs on the bimah like an orange belongs on a seder plate." What you need to know is that that story simply isn't true. I know, I know, we may even doubt if the whole story of the Exodus is true, so what does it matter if we're telling the true story of the orange on the seder plate? Well, because whether or not the Exodus really ever happened, it still reminds us to use our experience as outsiders, outcasts, strangers to be sure that others don't feel separated. It still teaches us of our relationship with God and stirs our hope for a perfected world. Telling the wrong story about the orange actually serves against its original purpose. So, here goes. Brace yourself. This might feel a little bit like (cover your younger children's eyes and ears now) learning that the tooth fairy doesn't exist. Here's the real story of the orange on the seder plate, as documented at RitualWell.org and MyJewishLearning (written by Tamara Cohen), among other places:

One of the newer symbols to appear on many seder plates is the orange. This custom has been around since the 1980s. In the 1990s a story circulated that the orange on the seder plate was a symbol supporting woman rabbis. The following article traces the actual source of this symbol. Though many traditionalist Jews would shy away from adding something to the seder plate, others feel that such new customs reinforce the underlying themes of Passover--freedom and liberation--and bring a contemporary focus to the seder. Reprinted with permission from www.ritualwell.org.

In the early 1980s, while speaking at Oberlin College Hillel [the campus Jewish organization], Susannah Heschel, a well-known Jewish feminist scholar, was introduced to an early feminist Haggadah that suggested adding a crust of bread on the seder plate, as a sign of solidarity with Jewish lesbians (which was intended to convey the idea that there's as much room for a lesbian in Judaism as there is for a crust of bread on the seder plate).

Heschel felt that to put bread on the seder plate would be to accept that Jewish lesbians and gay men violate Judaism like hametz [leavened food] violates Passover. So at her next seder, she chose an orange as a symbol of inclusion of gays and lesbians and others who are marginalized within the Jewish community. She offered the orange as a symbol of the fruitfulness for all Jews when lesbians and gay men are contributing and active members of Jewish life.

In addition, each orange segment had a few seeds that had to be spit out--a gesture of spitting out, repudiating the homophobia of Judaism. While lecturing, Heschel often mentioned her custom as one of many feminist rituals that have been developed in the last 20 years. She writes, "Somehow, though, the typical patriarchal maneuver occurred: My idea of an orange and my intention of affirming lesbians and gay men were transformed. Now the story circulates that a man said to me that a woman belongs on the bimah [podium of a synagogue] as an orange on the seder plate. A woman's words are attributed to a man, and the affirmation of lesbians and gay men is erased. Isn't that precisely what's happened over the centuries to women's ideas?"

The problem with the newer - and inaccurate - version of the story of the orange on the seder plate, as Susannah Heschel points out, is that not only are lesbians and gay men excluded from Judaism by virtue of their being excluded in the new version of the story, but that the story intends to stand in solidarity with female rabbis, indeed with all Jewish women, and the voice of the woman - the actual woman, Susannah Heschel - is removed from the story, in contradiction with the story's alleged intention. Of course, Judaism has always changed and continues to change. But was we adapt tradition, adding new layers to it, making it more meaningful for us, we must broaden its scope, not narrow it. We must become more inclusive, not less. We must become more affirming and less restrictive. Now, if all of that was too academic for you, here's a lighter take on the matter:

Shabbat Shalom and Chag ha-Matzot Sameach, Happy Passover!

Houses and Holiness

2011-04-08T16:49:00.001-05:00

I've been keenly aware that I haven't posted anything in a while. I'd like simply to say that I have been busy, but that is all too common of an excuse. This afternoon, though, I have made a little time to post. Hopefully, it will continue more regularly in the near future. Besides being busy - I'll get to that in a minute - it's also harder to motivate myself to write when I give thought to the weekly parashah. A few weeks ago we began reading Vayikra, the book of Leviticus. If you know anything about Torah, you probably know that Leviticus is filled with sacrificial laws, ones that often seem far removed from a modern Jewish life.

I knew this week's Torah portion was Metzora, typically the second half of a double portion with Tazria. But this being a leap year in the Jewish calendar, it gets a week all to itself. In the midst of the Torah portion are the laws that tell you how to deal with an eruptive plague in your house (Lev. 14:34). The text tells us that if a plague breaks out in our house, the owner is instructed to go to the priest who will examine the house. After examining it, the priest will leave it alone for a week and return to see if the plague has spread. If it has spread, then the affected stones will be removed, replaced, and plaster will be added. This gets repeated again if the plague has spread, hopefully not resulting in needing to tear down the house. Ultimately, when the plague has been overcome, a sacrifice is offered. It involves the use of two birds, one that is sacrificed and a second that is set free.

So, how could all of this possibly be relevant? Well, my house is on the market as I prepare to leave Minneapolis and begin my tenure in Portland, Maine. There is a part of me, in reading the laws about a potentially afflicted house, that makes me cringe. Fortunately, my house is in great shape, passed the Truth in Housing inspection (not by a priest, but by a certified inspector!), and will make a lovely home for its next owner (sooner rather than later, I hope). On the other hand, the text gives me a sense of hope. There were systems in place as far back as before our arrival in the Promised Land to make sure that our houses were more than just structures, but homes that are defined by holiness. My house has certainly been that - a home, a holy place, a mikdash m'at, a miniature sanctuary. I hope it will soon be that for its next resident, too.

A Call to Action

2011-03-11T16:45:00.004-06:00

When Haiti was struck with an earthquake on January 12, 2010, Israel set up a field hospital to help the Haitian victims. When an earthquake hit Chile a year ago today, Israel was among the countries to respond. And when Japan was shaken with a devastating 8.9 magnitude earthquake today, Israel, again, heeds the call to action. According to Haaretz, "The Japanese consul in Israel, Mitoshiko Shinomya, told the Israeli news website Ynet that he was heartened by the Israeli government's offer of assistance. 'Israel officially offered its help an hour after the earthquake struck,' Shinomya said."

According to Haaretz, various rescue organizations in Israel will be deploying to Japan (after Shabbat) to assist in the rescue efforts. ZAKA International Rescue Unit, which originally began as an organization aimed at responding to terrorist attacks in Israel, now also deploys internationally to assist where, according to their website, where Jews or Israelis may be affected. Of course, there are Jews everywhere. IsraAid, as well, is organizing to send two teams of rescue personnel to Japan, provided they can figure out how to get there. The airports near the earthquake's epicenter are flooded; the airport in Tokyo is shut down.

Israel has among its charges the expectation to be a light to the nations. Even as there the world criticized Israel for her relationships with her neighbors, Israel still responds throughout the world, using her knowledge, resources, and drive to make the world a better place. The Jewish people, no less than Israel, are a people who are moved to action, caring not only for our Jewish community, but the world as a whole, too. This week's Torah portion, Vayikra, begins with a call, "The Eternal called Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting" (Leviticus 1:1). We, too, are called to action.

If you want to help make a difference in Japan, consider giving through the Joint Distribution Committee's Japan/Pacific Disaster Relief Fund or through the Jewish Federations of North America's Japan, Hawaii and the Pacific Relief Fund, both reputable Jewish organizations bringing to life God's call for us to be a light unto the nations.

Pillars of Cloud and Fire (Parashat P'kudei)

2011-03-04T16:52:00.002-06:00

By the end of this week's Torah portion, P'kudei, the Tabernacle has been completed. The past weeks that we have spent reading about the details of the materials of the Mishkan, their sources and implementation have come to a close and we should have our place where God can dwell within us. But at the very end of the Torah portion we read, "Over the Mishkan a cloud of the Eternal rested by day, and a fire would appear in the cloud by night, in view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys" (Exodus 40:38). It seems that even though we have completed this dwelling place for God, this sanctuary for God, we still need to be reminded of God's presence.

The pillar of cloud and fire has been with us since nearly the very beginning of Exodus, a symbol of God's presence and protection. It stood between us and the Egyptians, it guided us from one encampment to another. And now that we have the Mishkan, it takes up its place letting us know when to move and when not to move. The Mishkan is not enough. It is not enough for us to have a place to worship God, a place for God to dwell with us. We also need a tangible sense of God's presence, something we can see and maybe even feel, the column of cloud, the warmth of the fire. Today, it isn't as easy to see God's presence before us. We don't always know when it is time to move and when it is time to stay put. We must look deeper, into ourselves and into the world, to get these signals today.

Collective Bargaining and Collective Responsibility

2011-02-25T18:15:00.001-06:00

One hundred years ago one month from today, probably right around this time, a fire blazed at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. 146 immigrant workers’ lives were lost, most of them women averaging 19-years-old. The exit doors had been bolted shut allegedly to prevent workers from taking unnecessary breaks. When the fire broke out, there was nowhere to go. As Jo-Ann Mort writes, “March 25, 1911, became a Sabbath like no other. Scores of young immigrant Jewish women who couldn’t afford a day of rest went to work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a newfangled high-rise factory on the eighth, ninth and 10th floors of the Asch building, near Washington Square Park in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Their employers, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck — known throughout the burgeoning shmatte business as “the shirtwaist kings” — had managed to beat back unionization attempts by the fledgling International Ladies Garment Workers Union. This was the era when Jews were both owners and workers.”

First in Wisconsin, now also in Indiana and Ohio, protests and shutdowns abound as the right to collective bargaining is called into questions. Few would doubt that the changes that came about because of the Triangle Factory victims’ experience were a step in the wrong direction. But the conversation around collective bargaining today is a different one. It isn’t news to anyone that many states, including Minnesota, are in budget crises and have to find ways to balance the budget. Some would propose cutting spending. Others propose increasing revenue. The reality is that the solution probably lies somewhere in between. The proposed cuts in Governor Dayton’s budget fall short of the funds needed.

A budget is a moral document. Whether it is your household budget, a synagogue’s budget, or the government’s budget, a budget defines our values and priorities. Each year I get a report from my credit card on where I have spent my money over the past year. When I got my report last month, I was pleased to see that much of my spending last year benefited social justice causes and ethically and sustainably produced food, both values that I say I believe in and that my spending supports. In Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana, or even here in Minnesota, we have to ask if our state budgets uphold the values that we support. There is no doubt that both Governor Scott Walker and his supporters and labor unionists and those who support them want Wisconsin to succeed. The question is, what is their intention and are they going about it the right way. I’m not going to answer that question fromthe bimah. That’s for you to discuss.

What I am going to do is talk a bout how we answer that question. In this week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel, we continue reading about the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle in the wilderness. When the Mishkan was constructed, the text tells us that only those whose hearts moved them were to contribute to construction of the Mishkan. This contrasts the creation of the golden calf that had total participation from the Israelites while Moses was up on Mount Sinai talking to God. Why the difference? The Israelites gave of themselves for both the golden calf and for the Mishkan, but it appears as though more people were invested in creating the golden calf. We have to wonder why.

There is a possibility that they each gave to the creation of the golden calf because none of them knew where their money was going. But when they saw the result of their spending – it didn’t match their morals – they were less willing to give for the creation of the Mishkan, nervous about how their money would be used. Another possibility is tied right into the name of this week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel. Vayakhel comes from the Hebrew root qof-hay-lamed, which is the same root for the word kehillah, community.

There are two different types of community represented. The golden calf represents blind group solidarity. There is no sense of separate individuality. The people are a nameless, identity-less multitude. But when the Mishkan is created, Moses assembles the people – Vayakhel Moshe et-kol-adat b’nei Yisrael, Moses assembled the entire Israelite people – and addressed them as a community. He detailed the needs and then those who were willing gave to the cause.

The Mishkan is not the work of one person’s hands. Though one artisan, Bezalel, headed up the labor, it collectively involved the work of all of the Israelites. Each person had the opportunity to leave his or her mark on the structure. Tradition tells us that the women brought their copper mirrors to be used in the Mishkan. One would think that use of something that had previously been intended for vanity would have been an unwanted addition to this dwelling-place for God. Instead, the women’s willingness to dedicate one of their most prized possessions for one of their highest values, worshiping God, made their gift worthy. Their identities, and the identities of all of those who gave, remain central to the notion of the Mishkan. They created a sense of shared ownership, of collective responsibility.

The community worked towards a collective vision, but not at the cost of the parts and people that made up that community. In Pirke Avot (2:2), Rabban Gamaliel teaches that all those who work for the community do so with a spiritual motive, working with the community. The question in Wisconsin, in Ohio, in Indiana, in any place where we create a budget, is whether or not we are acting with a spiritual motive. Do our actions and our budgets reflect our values and morals? Do we blindly participate and put our own pursuits ahead of the community or are we inspired by our values and seek to bring God’s presence into our community? We can only hope that we consider our place in our communities and act with a spiritual motive creating a mishkan in our own time, a dwelling-place for God in our lives.

Shabbat Shalom.

Intention Matters: God, Moses, the Israelites and the Infamous Golden Calf

2011-02-17T22:57:00.000-06:00

The golden calf is probably one of the best known examples of idolatry. But what were the Israelites really up to and why was Moses able to convince God to renounce the punishment planned for the Israelites for creating the golden calf? My theory? The Israelites weren't actually trying to replace God.

When Aaron makes the golden calf and takes it out of its mold, the Israelites declare, "This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!" (Exodus 32:4) Rashbam rhetorically asks if the Israelites could have actually been so foolish as to think that the calf that they had just created had actually brought them out of Egypt. He teaches that the Israelites might have thought that God's spirit was able to speak through the calf, which we know wasn't happening. Nahmanides concurs with Rashbam and goes one step further to say that it isn't the Israelites who couldn't be so foolish, but instead, us. If we believe that the gold that had previously been in the Israelites' ears could have possibly brought them out of Egypt.

So, if the Israelites couldn't have possibly believed that the golden calf they had just commissioned had brought them out of Egypt, and if we can't believe that it's possible, either, then why do the Israelites declare that it had and what is their real motive?

At the beginning of the narrative, we see that it wasn't God that the Israelites missed. It was Moses. The text tells us, "When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, 'Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt--we do not know what has happened to him'" (Exodus 32:1).

The people weren't replacing God; they were replacing Moses. In their relationship with God, Moses serves as an intermediary on behalf of the Israelites. The only logical replacement in this relationship is to replace Moses with the golden calf, not God. They wanted the golden calf to serve as an intermediary on their behalf with God, because Moses, who brought them from the land of Egypt had gone missing.

This, perhaps, justifies why God ultimately renounces the punishment intended for the Israelites. God knows their intention (though it takes some persuading by Moses). It also explains why Moses was so angry when he found out what the Israelites were up to.

So, this infamous story about idolatry in the wilderness actually shows us that intention matters. Even when we make a huge mistake (like creating an idol!), our intention matters and can sway the way that others think of us.

"Is this burning an eternal flame?"

2011-02-11T15:42:00.003-06:00

This week's Torah portion, Tetzaveh, begins with the following words: Command the people of Israel to bring to you pure oil of pressed olives for the light, to keep a lamp burning continually (Exodus 27:20). These last few words, "a lamp burning continually," in Hebrew read ner tamid. Those words might be familiar to you. The Eternal Light (not to be confused with 1989 hit single, Eternal Flame) is that light at the front of just about every synagogue's sanctuary. It is the symbol of God's presence in our communities and in our lives. While God commands the ner tamid, it is not there because God needs it. It is there because we need to be reminded of God's presence. We rely on our senses to know things. With a God we cannot actively see, we needed something to remind us of God's presence in our lives.

In his book, The Gates of the Forest by Elie Wiesel, he tells a story of the Baal Shem Tov. When the Baal Shem Tov saw trouble for the Jewish community, he would go to a certain place in the forest and meditate. When he found the location, he would light a fire, say a special prayer, and a miracle would occur. The looming crisis would dissolve and the people would be safe. Many years later, the Maggid of Mezritch, a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov, found himself and the Jewish community in a similar predicament, he would go to the same place in the forest as his teacher. Though he did not know how to light the special fire, he did know the prayer and he would recite it. Still, even without the fire, a miracle would happen and the community would be safe. More time passed and another generation came along. The rabbi of that generation would go to the special place in the forest, though he knew neither how to light the fire, nor recite the prayer. He would just hope that God would find his being in the right place sufficient. Somehow it was and the Jewish community would again be safe. More time passed and eventually the task of saving the community fell on Rabbi Israel of Ryzhyn. He, however, did not know the place, the prayer, or how to light the fire. Instead, he sat in his chair, rested his head in his hands, and hoped that recalling the story of the Baal Shem Tov would be enough to save the community. According to the story, it was enough. But it isn't for me.

It isn't enough for us just to tell the story, just to remember that in some distant place, someone else knew what to do and so we just have to remember that something else was done. No. We need to step up. We need to re-learn how to light the fire, how to recite the words, and where to go to put them to action. What this story fails to teach us is another lesson of the Baal Shem Tov. Considering the ner tamid, the Baal Shem Tov also taught: Your heart is the altar. Whatever your work, let a spark of the holy fire remain within you, and fan it into a flame.

So maybe The Bangles weren't so far off:
Close your eyes, give me your hand, darling.
Do you feel my heart beating, do you understand?
Do you feel the same, am I only dreaming?
Is this burning an eternal flame?
The ner tamid, the Eternal Light that reminds us of God's presence is also a call to action. It's not enough for us to bear witness to God's presence in our lives. We must turn that feeling into action and spread the light that is within each and every one of us, the spark of the Divine that links us to one another and to God.

Hope and Pray

2011-02-04T18:15:00.000-06:00

A friend forwarded me an email yesterday about the situation in Egypt. I am sure some of you have seen it, too. “Dear Egypt,” it read, “Please don’t destroy the Pyramids. We will not rebuild them. Sincerely, The Jews.” But the revolution in Egypt is a bigger deal for Judaism than the status of the pyramids that our people may or may not have built millennia ago. The uprising in Egypt has real impact on the State of Israel and on the United States, and on our place in the world as Americans and as Jews.

As you probably know, the situation in Egypt is moving faster than anyone can keep up and still, we don’t know what the outcome might be. In a piece for The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler outlines three possible scenarios in Egypt by turning to historical parallels. Could Egypt face “an eerie repeat of the 1979 revolution?” Will there be a transition to democracy like Indonesia in 1998? Or does Egypt face something in between, like “the initial outcome of the Romanian revolution of 1989?”

The Iran scenario, few would argue, is the worst case scenario for Israel, for the United States, even for Egypt. The Iranian revolution was originally led by moderates, a broad swath of the Iranian population seeking to depose Iran’s Shah, a leader, who like Mubarak, “was an anchor of U.S. power in the Middle East who maintained relations with Israel.” But when he was thrown out of government, the Islamist leadership of the long-exiled Ayatollah seized power, smothering the movement that had brought about the revolution. If this were to happen, Egypt would likely stop cooperating with Israel, especially in regards to Hamas. The Egyptian efforts to secure the border with Israel and prevent military supplies from entering Gaza would all but end. Hamas, could rapidly re-arm and its military power could allow for missiles to reach as far as Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport.

“This parallel is imperfect – there is no Egyptian spiritual or religious leader living in Paris awaiting a triumphant return to Cairo.” But the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement that, though it originated in Egypt, “has long been an illegal but semi-tolerated force in Egyptian politics.” It could be poised to fill the power vacuum that exists in Egypt. Former State Department official Leslie Gelb says, “If they do gain control, it’s going to be almost impossible for the people to take it back.”

The second scenario, Indonesia’s transition to democracy, could be a model for the best possible outcome. “In 1998, President Suharto’s 32 years of authoritarian rule came to an end. He was another longtime U.S. ally whose departure was deeply feared by the White House. But in the end, the world’s most populous Muslim country made a messy and long transition to democracy – and remained a key partner of the United States.” For Israel, the best way for this scenario to play out might be for Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman to be elected to power with true democracy so that peace with Israel could be preserved. The parallels between this scenario and Egypt are greater. Like Indonesia, Egypt has a relatively secular tradition, a strong military that, at least until now, has refused to repress protestors, “and an uprising led by a mix of youth and civic society.”

The Romanian revolution is more of a middle-of-the-road scenario. Not ideal, but not catastrophic either. In 1989, Romanian revolutionaries overthrew their dictator and assassinated him. “But within months, the military and Communist elite had engineered their survival, with the designated president…winning 85 percent of the vote in a May 1990 election.” Unfortunately, the government continued to control the media and elections were still manipulated. The driving force in making the Romanian revolution a success in the long run was their desire to become a member of NATO and the European Union, options that aren’t present for Egypt. For Israel, this scenario could be ‘good enough’ if Suleiman were to be elected and if there were a few cosmetic reforms that would give the illusion of change.

However things play out in the long run, one thing is true now for Israel. Israelis feel more vulnerable about security. For over thirty years, Israel has not had to significantly worry about its southern border with the Arab world’s most populous nation. Though our peace with Egypt has been described as a 'cold peace,' it has been an asset for both countries. Until now, Israel in particular has no longer had to contemplate a two- or three-front war.

All of that might change. Israel may need to expand its military force along the Israeli-Egyptian border, siphoning money away from other needs in Israel. It is surprising how little Israel has figured into Egypt’s uprising. And this is a good thing. There have been a few random moments of attention on Israel – an effigy of Mubarak wearing a star of David, a sign calling on an end to Israel – but by and large, the protestors have focused their attention internally. They want political freedom and they want jobs. These are goals with which we can all identify. If and how they accomplish these goals, though, is another question.

We do not know how the story in Egypt will end. Neither do the Egyptians. All we can do is wait. It will take generations to really understand how today plays out for the Egyptian people. In our cycle of Torah readings, we are in the midst of our own liberation story. Only a short while ago we fled, dissatisfied by the life that we had in Egypt. We struggled to change our situation and ultimately, we found ourselves in the wilderness, unsure of our future. We needed a strong leader. There was riff-raff among us, the erev rav, the mixed multitude that left Egypt with us. And there were lots of agendas, lots of people struggling for power and control. In the future, we’ll see the rebellion of Korach and a challenge of Moses’ and Aaron’s leadership. We’ll see Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah, the daughters of Zelophehad, challenge the laws of inheritance bringing greater equality among the Israelite men and women. This week, we read the details of the construction of the Tabernacle, which tradition teaches us God had us build not because God needed it, but because we were feeling lost and needed a place to worship God.

In our transitional moment, which lasts a generation in the wilderness, at least, we seek a strong leader who can make sure the people’s needs are a priority. Our text tells us that the Tabernacle was constructed with gifts brought by every person whose heart moved him or her to be involved. Every giver that wanted to offer a gift had to be included, no matter how big or small the gift. Every voice that wanted to speak had to be heard. Only a leader who could respect the rights of the individual and simultaneously make the community’s needs a priority would succeed. The Israelites in this week’s Torah portion, in the weeks and even months ahead, do not yet know how it will all turn out. The Egyptians of today, protesting, uprising, leading a revolution, do not yet know how their narrative will end, either. All we could do in the wilderness was to hope and pray for a leader strong enough to guide us through that incredibly powerful, transitional moment. All that we can do alongside modern day Egypt and its neighbors, especially Israel, is to hope and pray for a leader strong enough to include the voices of every Egyptian, to keep the people’s best interest at heart, and to lead Egypt to a successful and peaceful future. Ken y’hi ratzon, may it be God’s will.

"The Best Kind of Action is Social Action"

2011-01-28T15:26:00.006-06:00

I've just arrived in Washington, DC with some of my Confirmation students to participate in L'Taken, the youth lobbying conference of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Over the course of the next four days, my students will learn about issues of social justice from a Jewish perspective, worship with hundreds of other teens from across the United States, and on Monday, they will be lobbying their U.S. Senators and Representatives on issues that are important to them.

This week's Torah portion, Mishpatim, outlines a whole host of laws about the ways in which we interact with one another. We learn about the laws of theft and of lost property and of our obligation to the weakest members of our societies. One of my favorite pieces in the text is Exodus 23:4-5, where Torah teaches us, "When you encounter your enemy's ox or ass wandering, you must take it back to him. When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden and would refrain from raising it, you must nevertheless raise it with him."

The text doesn't just tell us to return lost property, but it reminds us to return the lost property of our enemies. It doesn't tell us to do things for others, lifting their animals under their burdens, but to lift it with our enemies. There are many times when we don't see eye to eye with others, where we see them as enemies and are threatened by them, either in reality or in perception. What Torah teaches us in this moment is that when we engage with our enemies, however hard that might be, we create real opportunities for dialogue and maybe even friendship.

Over the next four days, my students will wrestle with difficult issues of social justice. They will challenge themselves in what they know about the world and their power to bring about change. They will turn their learning and reflection into action on Monday and actually make real steps to make the world a better place. At the same time, half way around the world, Egypt is in turmoil. We may view Egypt as a friend - of Israel, of the United States - and we may fear that what lies ahead may make an enemy of our friend. However the turmoil in Egypt resolves itself, we must remind ourselves to continue to engage with one another because without communication there can be no relationship. And without relationship there can be no peace.

The Peace Corps, Tikkun Olam, and Seeing Each Other's Faces

2011-01-21T18:15:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy. As a teen and young adult, I had an unusual fascination with JFK and his family. I have always been intrigued with understanding the impact that the Kennedy family had on what my own responsibilities were as an American citizen. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." We are well familiar with this often quoted line from JFK's Inaugural Address. There always seemed to me a natural fit between the Reform Jewish values of social justice and tikkun olam, and Kennedy's insistance that "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." Perhaps that is why shortly after the Reform movement created the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, we presented President Kennedy with a Torah scroll.

JFK went beyond rhetoric. He helped to create opportunities for a nation to improve itself and improve the world. One of these was the Peace Corps. In essence, the Peace Corps was created to bring to fruition JFK's inaugural declaration: "Let the word go forth that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans... To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break th bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves."

Upon creating the Peace Corps, President Kennedy named Shriver its first director. This week, we lost one of the leaders of one of those opportunities. On Tuesday, Sarge Shriver, JFK's brother-in-law, died. Sarge Shriver "took on some of the toughest issues in the public sphere with optimism and commitment -- poverty, race, unemployment, and access to justice." Through his own faith, his Catholicism, Shriver believed that we, as human beings, need to meet one another's needs, to be better people. "He saw caring as 'the cure'" to the ills of society.

In an address to Yale University graduates in 1994, Sarge Shriver challenged the students to step away from their own reflections in the mirror and to focus on the world around them. "Break your mirrors!!! Yes indeed -- shatter the glass. In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. Learn more about the face of your neighbor and less about your own." The Chasidic tradition teaches a similar message.

There was once a man named Abraham. He had a little store and earned just enough to take care of his family. He was neither poor nor rich, but simply got by and helped others when he could. One typical day, he stood in the doorway of his store, hoping for business, making conversation with passers-by, and welcoming guests. He encountered a stranger, someone who wasn't regularly in his village. Intent upon taking care of others, Abraham offered the stranger a bite to eat, something to drink and a place to put up his feet. What Abraham didn't know was that this stranger was no ordinary stranger. He was the rebbe from another village who was passing through on his way to a wedding.

The rebbe's visit to Abraham's store made him the destination in town. All of a sudden, business was booming and he was quickly becoming rich. He built a brand new house, filled it with wonderful things, and hired servants to care for him and his family. The people of the town quickly realized how he'd changed, how he didn't focus on caring for others anymore. The rebbe paid him a visit.

Immediately, the rebbe saw the change in Abraham's house, the fancy rugs, the artwork, and the most elegant mirror you'd ever seen. "Quite a change!" pointed out the rebbe, calling Abraham before the mirror. "What do you see when you look in the mirror?" asked the rebbe. Of course, Abraham could see himself and his possessions reflected back at him, nothing more. Then the rebbe called Abraham to the window, opened the curtains, and again asked him what he could see. Now, Abraham could see the people of his town. And he could tell the rebbe about each of them; he knew them all.

The rebbe pointed out to Abraham that a mirror and a window are virtually the same, both just a piece of glass. The only difference is that the mirror is coated with silver on one side so that instead of seeing through it, you only see your own reflection. Abraham realized that he'd been spending so much time only focusing on himself. He'd stopped looking out the window of his house into the faces of others. To remind himself of his responsibility to learn more about the faces of others and less about his own, Abraham scraped away the silver at the corners of his mirror so there'd always be a reminder to look out his window more often.

This was the kind of message that Sarge Shriver wanted to send. We cannot only be focused on ourselves. Also, we can't do it all alone. One of Shriver's visions for the Peace Corps was that it would be a program constantly filled with new talent and new ideas, new faces. He imposed "'The Five Year Rule,' requiring all staff to work at the Peace Corps for a limit of five years, [insuring] that the agency does not become stagnant." As an in-law to the Kennedys, Shriver quickly took on the role of "best supporting actor," someone behind the scenes, often out of the spotlight, making the magic happen.

In this week's Torah portion, we encounter Jethro, Moses' father-in-law. When Jethro witnesses Moses' handling all of the people's questions and inquiries by himself, Jethro warns him. Jethro takes note of the endless line of Israelites seeking advice and asks Moses why he sits alone trying to take care of the people's needs all by himself. When Moses tries to insist that the people need him, Jethro tells him he will surely wear himself out. He advises his son-in-law to delegate responsibility and create a legal system so that Moses can share the burden. Jethro isn't only concerned with Moses' well-being, but also with the nation's well-being. it is only if he changes the way that he does things that the people will be able to eventually enter the land in peace.

Sarge Shriver taught, "No free market can ever replace free human services rendered by one free human being to another human being. A 'good society' is the result of billions of such acts." There was a lot that needed fixing in Moses' time. There is a lot that needs fixing now, too. "Too many families live in poverty; too many children are stuck in underperforming schools and too many American cynically believe we can't fix what's broken." But we can fix what's broken, when break the mirror, or even just scratch the silver off the back of it, look more into the faces of others and less at our own reflections, and share in the responsbility of making the world a better place.

Waffling at the Water's Edge

2011-01-14T16:38:00.002-06:00

This week is Shabbat Shirah, which gets its name from the Torah reading assigned to this week, the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and shirat hayam, the song at the sea. The Haftarah for this Shabbat comes from the Book of Judges and includes Deborah's song. As the Israelites left Egypt, with the Egyptian army in hot pursuit, they found themselves between a rock and a hard place, well, actually, between an army and the water, with nowhere to go.

According to one midrash (BT Sotah 36b-37a), as the Israelites stood at the edge of the water they began fighting. The midrash first claims that they each fought about who would get to go first, each wanting to be the first one in the water. But Rabbi Judah corrects Rabbi Meir and tells him that that was not what happened. Instead, the tribes were fighting because none wanted to go into the water first. All of a sudden, Nachshon son of Amminadab jumped forward and was the first to go into the sea. Nachshon is honored for his quick action, for jumping in and doing something when everyone else was just arguing.

In the meantime, the midrash continues, Moses was standing by the shore of the sea praying at great length. God interrupts Moses and says, "While you're busy praying at great length, have you not noticed that My people are about to drown in the sea." God tells Moses not to pray, but to call the people to action.

This all reminds me of a poem I encountered years ago. I don't know its source.

This is a little story about four people named
Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done
and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody's job.

Everybody thought that Anybody could do it,
but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody
when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

This cute little poem, which I think I first encountered in high school, reminds us to be the kind of people who jump in when things need to get done. There is a time for discussion and a time for praying, but there is also a time for action. Nachshon son of Amminadab knew this. We should too.

"And you shall be a blessing..." Debbie Friedman, zt"l, May the memory of the righteous be a blessing

2011-01-09T16:01:00.005-06:00

In November 1995, I attended the UAHC Biennial Convention in Atlanta and stayed with our close family friends, the Borths. Their granddaughter had recently been born and was in NICU, if I remember correctly, with heart issues. I visited her in the hospital and then went on to the convention, where in a worship service with thousands of other Reform Jews, I sang Debbie Friedman's Mi Shebeirach, a prayer for healing and cried into the shoulder of a friend.

On a cold February 14, 1996, I drove home from a peer leadership program at my high school to find out that my Aunt Liz had died. My father asked me to pick up my brother from Boy Scouts. I rolled down the windows of my car, frigid air letting me know I was alive, and listened to Debbie Friedman's L'chi Lach on repeat on my way to pick up Adam and probably on the way home, too. Its words, "and you shall be a blessing," comforted me.

During the summer of 1997, while on staff at Kutz Camp, my friend Emily taught me sign language to Debbie Friedman's L'chi Lach and Oseh Shalom, which I would use a few years later at Debbie Friedman concerts in Birmingham, Alabama and in Jacksonville, Florida, when Debbie would call me up on stage to sign alongside her. Later that summer, while on a day off, a group of staff and I showed up at Debbie Friedman's apartment. (I remembered her address from when she'd announced it from the stage at Biennial Convention in 1995.) She graciously welcomed us in, crazy teenagers that we were, spoke to us about her inspiration and her music, offered to order us lunch, and then walked us to the subway with her dog, Farfel.

This morning, Debbie Friedman died in her late 50s in Orange County, California. As Rabbi Daniel Freedlander said, "By creating a whole new genre of Jewish music, Debbie was able to reintroduce authentic Jewish spirituality." My own Jewish identity, my connection to worship, and the relationship I have with God stand on the foundation of Debbie Friedman's music and the impact she has had in my spiritual life. Her words and melodies will forever be a part of Judaism.

To her family and loved ones, we say, HaMakom y'nacheim etchem b'toch sha'ar avlei tziyon virushalayim, May God console you among all who mourn in Zion and Jerusalem. Of her we say, zecher tzadikim livracha, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing.

In Every Generation

2011-01-07T16:31:00.003-06:00

We are on the cusp of freedom. Well, in the Torah reading cycle, anyway. This week, in Parashat Bo, God carries out the final plagues against Egypt and next week, on Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song, we will cross the Sea of Reeds, with Pharaoh's army in hot pursuit. Our Torah portion teaches us to explain the Passover rituals: "And you shall explain to your child on that day, 'It is because of what the Eternal did for me when I went free from Egypt'" (Exodus 13:8). In the Talmud (B. Pesachim 116b), the rabbis look at this verse and say בְּכָל דּור וָדור חַיּיב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת עַצְמוֹ כְּאִילוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם (b'chol dor va-dor chayav adam lir'ot et atzmo k'ilu hu yatza mi-mitzrayim), In every generation a person is obligated to look at himself or herself as though he or she personally departed from Egypt. When we celebrate Passover and our freedom, we are not celebrating something that someone else before us experienced. Instead, the rabbis demand that we understand that it is our own liberation from bondage that we are celebrating.

In her version of Im Ein Ani Li, Debbie Friedman links Hillel's words from Pirke Avot 1:14 (If I am not for myself who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?) to the words from Pesachim 116b. In doing so, Debbie Friedman reminds us of our obligation to take care of the needs of others not only because it is the right thing to do, but because we, ourselves, have been the downtrodden, not our ancestors, but us. It is because of the fact that God brought us out of Egypt that we celebrate Passover and Debbie Friedman teaches, with her music, that the debt we owe God for having redeemed us demands that we stand up not only for ourselves, but for others, as well.

This week, Debbie Friedman was hospitalized in Orange County, California for pneumonia. As I am writing this, she is in a medically induced coma, in critical condition. Debbie was in the 1967 Confirmation class at Mount Zion Temple in St. Paul, Minnesota and later went on to become one of the leading musicians of Reform Judaism. Her music framed my Jewish identity in my teen years, helping me celebrate and comforting me. There have been calls for congregations and individuals to join in singing Debbie Friedman's Mi Shebeirach, sending prayers of healing her way. The lyrics can be found here.

How to Succeed at Resolutions Without Really Trying (or at Least Taking It Slowly)

2010-12-31T18:15:00.002-06:00

A few year’s ago on an episode of Prairie Home Companion that fell on the weekend around Rosh Hashanah, Garrison Keillor wished his Jewish listeners a happy new year and then told everyone else that they’d just have to make do with the year they still had for a few more months. In last year’s January/February Temple Israel Hakol, I wrote about the Jewish significance of tonight’s New Year’s Eve, in light of the one we celebrated a few months ago. I won’t go into those details here, but I will acknowledge, like I did then, that New Year’s Day still has significance for us as people who operate not only under the Jewish calendar, but also the Gregorian calendar.

I try to make my New Year’s resolutions leading up to the 1st of Tishrei, not the 1st of January, but I can’t help but be reflective at this time of year, as well. The changes I make this time of year are sometimes more mundane than the ones I tried to initiate a few months ago, eating better, exercising more, the usual. At the same time, I’m keenly aware that New Year’s resolutions don’t stick.

In a study done by a British psychologist about the effectiveness of New Year’s resolutions, it was revealed that only about 1 in 5 people actually keep their resolutions. What he discovered was that most of the people who failed to keep their resolutions went about it all wrong. They focused on the negative, the downside of not achieving their goals. They pasted pictures of skinny people on their refrigerators or relied on willpower alone. Of those that succeeded, the common thread was that they had broken their goal into smaller steps and rewarded themselves along the way. Rather than focusing on the bad stuff, they focused on the benefits of success.

At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Va’era, God hears the moaning of the Israelites, who are being held in bondage by Egypt. Moses is told that God remembers the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and promises to bring the Israelites into the Promised Land. God tells Moses to let the Israelites know that God will free the Israelites and deliver them from bondage, redeeming them and taking them as God’s people. But when Moses relays this message to the Israelites, the text tells us that they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.

Within just a few short verses, we witness the Israelites’ crying out for help and then, when help comes, deciding that they can’t do it; they are overwhelmed. Sounds a little like how we handle our resolutions! And when we make resolutions and break them, we find ourselves feeling dispirited and despondent, like the Israelites.

So, why do the Israelites all of a sudden withdraw their bemoaning. And why can’t we follow through on our resolutions? What might the two of these have in common? It might be all about willpower. Apparently, our prefrontal cortex is responsible for willpower, but it’s not the only thing that part of our brain handles. It also keeps us focused, handles short-term memory, and solves abstract problems. In an experiment at Stanford University, scientists discovered that people given seven-digit numbers to memorize were twice as likely to choose a slice of chocolate cake over a bowl of fruit salad, compared to people who were given two-digit numbers to memorize. Those extra digits overloaded the cognitive part of the brain making it harder to resist a decadent dessert! Our willpower is so weak that it can be overcome by an overload in our experiences. No wonder that extra cookie, another slice of pizza, or an extra helping of mashed potatoes are so tempting after a hard day at work.

Well, the Israelites’ experience was similar. According to Nahmanides, it’s not that the Israelites didn’t believe Moses when he came to tell them about God’s plan to save them. Instead, it’s that they were incapable of listening because of how crushed their spirits were because of their labor. They hardly wanted to live any longer, even though they knew that relief would come. Ibn Ezra agrees, saying that the Israelites were powerless to listen because of how dispirited they had become because of their exile and bondage.

So, how do they get past this moment? How do we see our resolutions come to fruition? It’s in our ability to distract ourselves from what’s attempting to set us off course. In an another experiment – you may have seen one like this – where four-year-olds were placed in front of a marshmallow and told if they could wait 20 minutes to eat it, they’d get another one, the children that could distract themselves from the marshmallow were the ones who succeeded. Some sang songs, others played with their shoelaces, some pretended the marshmallow was a cloud. They knew their willpower was weak, so instead of focusing on the marshmallow, they shifted the spotlight.

Ultimately, God helps the Israelites do the same thing. Moses and Aaron appear before Pharaoh demanding the Israelites’ freedom. But before they appear, God tells Moses that God will harden Pharaoh’s heart and make Pharaoh not want to let them go. This has always been a difficult moment in the text for me. Why would God make it harder for the Israelites to go? Well, if they tried to take it on all at once – like how we sometimes try to take on our resolutions with an all-or-nothing attitude – perhaps they would have quit before they’d reached the Sea of Reeds. Instead, God gets them out in small steps, one plague at a time, slowly motivating them and propelling them towards freedom with incremental progress. God teaches them, as we can learn about the resolutions we might put into place tomorrow morning, that when we are tempted to change course, hunkering down and convincing ourselves we can do it all at once isn’t the way to go. Instead, we have to shift our focus, reward the small victories, and keep our eye on the prize.

Chinese Food on Christmas, an Age-Old Tradition

2010-12-24T16:49:00.003-06:00

Do you know what you get if you subtract the Chinese year, 4708, from the Jewish year, 5771?

No, not 1063. You get the number of years Jews had to go without Chinese food.

This year will be the first Christmas in many, many years that I will not be having a traditional Jewish Christmas dinner: Chinese food. I even tried to have Chinese food for lunch today, but the place I'd chosen had gone out of business.

So, where'd all this Chinese food on Christmas come from? In reading Galit Breen's Minnesota Mamaleh: So What DO Jews Do On Christmas?, I found a link to Hanna Raskin's So, Why Do Jews Eat Chinese Food at Christmas? Hanna Raskin wrote her Master's thesis on the relationship between Jews and Chinese food. I was surprised to learn that Jews' eating Chinese food (not only on Christmas, but in general), was not an experience of our affinity for Asian cuisine, but rather because of our proximity to the Chinese community. Not in Biblical times, but in New York. Thinking about it, I realized Raskin was totally right. The Lower East Side, the quintessential Jewish neighborhood of the last two centuries in New York, the place where so many of us can trace our Jewish roots, borders Chinatown. While I don't agree with Raskin's point that Chinese food is kosher-ish, because the meat is so finely chopped that it's hardly recognizable at treif, I do agree with the rest of her points.

She points out that chop suey was a sophisticated dish in its heyday. Eating it meant you were part of American culture. Also, in Chinese restaurants, Jews look like white people; so, while there was persecution of Jewish communities elsewhere, in a Chinese restaurant, Jews got to be just like everyone else. As New York Jewish culture spread throughout the rest of the country, so did the custom of eating Chinese food, especially on Christmas, even for those Jews who didn't have ancestors who'd lived on the Lower East Side.

So, whether or not you choose to celebrate Jewish Christmas with a traditional meal of Chinese food, have a Shabbat Shalom/Merry Christmas and remember, pork isn't kosher, unless it's in Chinese food.

Is God a Bully?

2010-12-17T14:24:00.005-06:00

I am on my way to NFTY CANOe's Winter Kallah, where this year's theme is bullying. The regional boards, teens from Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin, have decided in response to the heightened awareness of bullying in our society, to provide their peers with appropriate Jewish responses to bullying and ways to be more inclusive. As I've been thinking about the theme, I began wondering, "Is God a bully?"

According to Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus, bullying is the repeated behavior of intentionally inflicting "injury or discomfort upon another person, through physical contact, through words or in other ways." This definitely sounds like God's reaction to the Israelites' and others' behavior throughout Torah: following the incident with the golden calf, when the Israelites complain about having left Egypt, and God's reaction to Sodom and Gomorrah, to name a few. In each of these three moments, humankind has to intercede to stop God's behavior. Moses steps in at the first two and Abraham in the third.

In the narrative of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham begs God not to destroy the cities if there are even 50 righteous people present. God agrees, but the cities lack even 50 righteous people. Abraham bargains God down to 45, to 40, 30, 20, and even to 10. Still, God destroys the cities. Why does Abraham stop before getting to 1 and why is God still willing to destroy the cities?

According to a midrash in Tractate Sanhedrin 109b, the people of Sodom had a bed on which the would make visitors lie down. Anyone too tall for the bed would have his limbs cut off to fit the bed. Anyone who was too short for the bed would be stretched, breaking his limbs to make him fit. The people of Sodom refused to tolerate anyone who was different from them. God, we see, is not the bully, but instead stands up to bullies to defend the victims, those who are bullied for not being just like everyone else.

In this week's Torah portion, Vayechi, Joseph's brothers become fearful following their father Jacob's death. They are afraid that now Joseph will seek revenge on them for all the wrong they did to him and their father won't be there to protect them. In the end, Joseph tells them that though they meant him harm, God was looking out for Joseph and made sure things turned out well. We might wish God would have interceded and stopped Joseph's brothers, but we can find comfort in Joseph's confidence in God's presence on his behalf.

So, is God a bully? In short, no. Sometimes God steps in to actively protect the bullied. Sometimes the bullied can sense God's presence in the midst of tragedy. We have the power - and the sacred obligation - to bridge the gap.

A Time for Trust and Belonging

2010-12-03T15:06:00.003-06:00

While listening to MPR the other day, I heard the newscaster share the notion that we sing the same songs at various times of the year - holidays, birthdays, celebrations, even funerals - and that this repetition, year after year, of the same melodies, gives us a sense of trust and belonging. The comment was part of an introduction to a story on Christmas carols. I was feeling lucky to have been arriving at my destination at that moment so that I wouldn't have to listen to the Christmas carols in the segment. I immediately began thinking, though, why it is that I find Christmas carols, of all the Christmas-related onslaught, to be the most irritating. Then, I thought about the newscaster's comment. Christmas carols provide a sense of trust and belonging - that is, if you belong. That was it. The carols, the garland, the sparkling trees in the center of every shopping mall across America, the commercials, all evoke a sense of belonging if you belong to the tradition they represent. But I don't. I am grateful, as I blogged last year, that during the days of Chanukah, XM radio provides us with Radio Hanukkah as an escape from Christmas carols.

But worse than being surrounded by Christmas carols was the article that my friend Rory shared with me. In his piece for SmartMoney, Kelli Grant suggests that, "Even if you’re not celebrating Hannukah, there’s a good reason to wrap up your holiday shopping before the last light on the menorah goes out." Her thesis is that because the American population that celebrates Chanukah (She claims it's 5%, though most statistics argue that the Jewish population in the United States is a mere 2%.) will boost stores' November sales by 3% to 4%, "retail analysts say an early Hanukkah could spell trouble for Christmas shoppers: Thanks to consumers’ extra holiday spending in late November, retailers may cut back on big discounts in December."

You read that correctly: Because of the Jewish population in America (you decide if it's 5% or 2%), Christmas shoppers will suffer. The Jewish population will cause the Christmas shoppers' sales to be cut short, costing non-Jews more money. At least, that's what Grant argues.

Both Chanukah and Christmas are holidays connected to the winter solstice, a time when the days are at their shortest, light is diminished, and we need greater hope and greater light. Perhaps we can accomplish this best by seeing how our celebrations help one another, creating trust and belonging, not by cutting one another down.

Chag urim samei'ach! Happy Chanukah!

"The Seat" and Other Solutions to Sibling Rivalry

2010-11-19T16:09:00.002-06:00

My brother and I always got along growing up, to the best of my recollection. Maybe he would disagree. But I don't think so. I can't remember a time when we really fought about anything. We had peaceful solutions to any conflict, some perhaps a little abnormal, but we always found a way to resolve our differences. I think one of the best gimmicks we devised was "the seat." When our parents got new sectional sofas, they placed the six pieces in pairs. Two were at the back of the arrangement, facing the fireplace. The other two pairs faced inward - with all six around a coffee table - with their backs on the side walls of the family room. On one side, one of the pieces sat about 4 feet away from the television. This was the seat. It came with the privilege both of being able to be closest to the television and also was situated right next to one of the vents, providing the perfect supply of air conditioning or heating.

I imagine that most siblings would have fought over 'the seat.' There would have been mad dashes to get there first, brothers shoved out of the way, and sisters thrown to the floor. But not at our house. Adam and I devised a system, a set of rules that governed who got 'the seat.' (My brother tells me that I was like a third parent for him growing up; I may have devised the rules and forced them upon him, but you'd have to check with him to be certain.) There were two simple rules:

1) Each day, we would alternate who got 'the seat.'
2) If your birthday fell on a day on which you wouldn't have gotten 'the seat,' the alternation would switch so you would have 'the seat' on your birthday.

I don't think the system ever failed. This, however, wasn't the case with Jacob and Esau. If you remember two weeks ago, in Parashat Tol'dot, Jacob steals the birthright from his brother, Esau, and then steals their father's blessing, too. But this week, the brothers have worked through (some of) their differences and reunite after a long estrangement.

In Genesis 33, the brothers reunite. Jacob arrives with his wives, his maidservants, and all of his children. Esau arrives with four hundred men, ready to engage in battle. When Esau sees Jacob with his family, he runs to greet his brother and, weeping, kisses him. (Last year, I discussed the rabbis' concern about Esau's sincerity and intention in the moment of his embrace with Jacob. This year, I'd like to assume he was well intentioned. There's nothing in the text that really indicates he wasn't.) When Esau asks Jacob why he's brought the whole family along, Jacob tells him he wants to please his brother. Jacob offers Esau gifts, which Esau refuses. "I have enough, my brother; let what you have remain yours," Esau tells Jacob.

The two argue back and forth for a while, but ultimately, Esau tells Jacob he doesn't have to offer gifts to make up for their difficult past, but Jacob insists. When the time comes to move along, Esau, in a moment that I think demonstrates his sincerity, offers to travel at Jacob's pace. Jacob has his family, including small children, and his livestock, all of whom cannot travel as quickly as Esau's army. In this moment of compassion, Esau affirms his intention to walk alongside Jacob, something they might not have ever done before. When Jacob insists that Esau go ahead, that his family would slow down Esau, Esau offers some of his men to protect Jacob and his family. Later in the parashah, Esau and Jacob are present when their father dies and, together, they bury him.

In spite of their lifelong estrangement, in spite of the ways they treated each other in the past, Jacob and Esau find a way to walk side by side and to recreate their bond to one another. No one's relationship with his or her sibling is perfect. There will be conflict, there will be times when our differences overpower us. Still, Jacob and Esau teach us that there are always opportunities to stand (or sit) side by side, if we just take advantage of those opportunities.

Ufaratzta - Spread Peace in Every Direction

2010-11-12T14:41:00.007-06:00

In the midst of Jacob's dream, after he sees angels ascending and descending a ladder that reaches heaven, God tells him that his descendants will be like the dust of the earth, spreading out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south, ופרצת ימה וקדמה וצפנה ונגבה (Genesis 28:14). These words make up a song, Ufaratzta, that I learned as a participant at the Reform movement's youth leadership summer camp, Kutz Camp, from Cantor Ellen Dreskin. The song, apparently, was written by Avi Maslo. I always knew how the words translated, but never really thought about what they meant in my understanding of Judaism. Let's unpack the meaning of the words:

ימה, yamah: towards the Mediterranean sea, to the west;

קדמה, keidmah: towards the early part of the day, to the east;

צפנה, tzafonah: towards the hidden, to the north;

נגבה, negbah: towards the Negev desert, to the south.

These aren't just words that tell us that Jacob's descendants will spread out in all directions, but specifically that they will fill what we come to understand as the Land of Israel, as the Hebrew Bible sees it. It's all well and good if we believe, today, that the people Israel should inhabit all of the land from east to west, from north to south, but I am one who believes that if the State of Israel is to remain democratic and Jewish, we need to find a peaceful, two-state solution with the Palestinians.

So, then, what do we make of God's words spoken to Jacob? Are they meant to be understood literally? Do they have a different message for us today, with our awareness of the reality in Israel and with her neighbors? I hadn't really given much thought to the meaning behind the words of Ufaratzta until yesterday morning when I was reminded of another version of Ufaratzta, one by Noam Katz, that re-interprets the words in a modern context. You can hear the song here:

In his version, Noam Katz uses the Hebrew as the chorus, but re-interprets the meaning of the words in the way he translates them in the verses of the song:

May you... may you always try to inspire.
May you... may you always try to reach higher and higher.
May you bring your goodness and may you bring peace.
May you spread it from the west to the east.
May you spread it from the north to the south.

May you... may you be a light that shines the way.
May you... may you be a blessing each and every day.
May you let the laughter and love increase.
May you spread it from the west to the east.
May you spread it from the north to the south.

Instead of a vision of manifest destiny, Noam Katz teaches us that it isn't spreading ourselves east and west, north and south, that God intends. Instead, God expects us to inspire others and elevate ourselves to a place where we bring laughter and love, goodness and peace into a world in much need of those blessings and more.

When You Cut One Finger, the Whole Hand Hurts

2010-11-05T16:00:00.004-05:00

My great-grandmother was a mother of eight children. Her three oldest children were daughters born to my great-grandfather's first wife, who died when her daughters were 1, 3, and 5 years old. My great-grandmother raised Jeanette, Francis, and Ruth as though they were her own daughters, along with her five children, including my grandmother. Whenever asked which of her children she loved the most - a potentially explosive question given her blended family - my great-grandmother would always reply with a comment along the lines of, "When you cut one finger, the whole hand hurts." (I hope my family will forgive me if I didn't get the quotation quite right.) What I think she meant was that if she loved any of her children less than the others, they would all have suffered.

I am fortunate that my great-grandmother was one of my ancestors. Isaac and Rebekah, however, could have used her wisdom. This week's Torah portion, Tol'dot, tells us of the birth of Isaac and Rebekah's twins, Jacob and Esau. Jacob was the gentle one, loved more by their mother, Rachel. He spent his time with her at home. Esau, the rugged one, loved more their father Isaac, hunted game and spent his time in the great outdoors. When it comes time for Isaac, on his deathbed, to bestow a blessing on his older son, Rebekah steps in to help her beloved son steal Esau's blessing. She dresses him in a goat skin and passes him off as his hairier brother. Jacob tricks his blinding father and steals his brother's blessing.

We often forget about what happens next (Gen. 27:30-40). Esau returns from the field with the game that Isaac has requested, ready to nourish his dying father. When he sets the food before his father and asks to receive his blessing, Isaac lets him know that Jacob has stolen his blessing. It is then that my heart goes out to Esau, that I wish that my great-grandmother had been there. "Bless me! Me too, father!" he exclaims, but Isaac explains that there is no blessing left for him. Esau cannot believe it. "Did you not reserve a blessing for me?" he asks, becoming overwhelmed. Isaac can only reply by saying it's out of his control. And then, Esau begs a third time - and my heart breaks a little with his - "Do you have only one blessing, father?" Isaac musters up a blessing that at best tells Esau to move away and then maybe things will be okay.

What Isaac and Rebekah didn't understand, what my great-grandmother did, is that love cannot be divided. It is like fire. If it isn't cared for and nurtured, it will either grow wild and out of control or it will fade to embers and ash. But if love is nourished, like fire it will increase with warmth and light as it separates from its source.

Parashat Chayei Sarah and Compassionate Response

2010-10-29T17:09:00.003-05:00

Today's news of attemped attacks on our country and, notably for the Jewish community, explosive packages bound for Chicago citizens has caused our nation to reflect on the past 10 years and on how one moment's madness can change everything. While it appears that al Qaeda may be responsible for these attempted attacks, it is important, especially at times like these, that we not blame an entire people for the wrongdoings of some. As Jews, we know what it is like to be falsely charged with creating harm - blood libels, plagues, financial ruin - when we were not responsible, definitely not as a people, and usually not as individuals, either. Instead, our tradition teaches us the value of compassion. There will likely be voices in the coming days, weeks, and even months, that will place blame on all Muslims for the actions of a fringe element in Islam. Be not mistaken: what has transpired over the past day or hours has not been the work of the Muslim community.

This week's Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, teaches us the value of compassion in Jewish tradition. When Abraham sends Eliezer to find a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac, there is a litmus test that the would-be bride must pass. The young woman who would not only offer to provide water for Eliezer, but also for his camels, would be worthy of marrying Isaac. Abravanel teaches that the woman who would marry Isaac had to be compassionate, kind, and generous. In her Torah commentary, Studies in Bereshit, Nehama Leibowitz explains that "Rebecca was not satisfied with running once to the well and drawing water. She took the trouble to make a number of journeys to and fro, each time letting down her pitcher, filling it, and giving them to drink." She goes on to teach that those who would take pity on Rebecca for having to go through "all of this trouble to quench the thirst of a total stranger and his cmaels, would do well to remember Akavia ben Mahallel's maxim in the Mishnah: Better that I should be dubbed a fool for the rest of my days, rather than become a wicked man for one hour before the Omnipotent (Mishnah Eduyot 5:6).

Better we should be deemed fools for the rest of our days for not blaming an entire people for the actions of some, than that we scapegoat an entire people and in turn offend God.

Parashat Vayera: Pleading for Others, Having Faith in Ourselves

2010-10-22T16:47:00.003-05:00

Abraham, our partriach, has quite a week this week. He learns he and Sarah will have a son, though they are both nonagenarians. He argues on behalf of the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, to no avail. He refers to his wife as his sister, nearly causing a king to sleep with her. He has his son, Isaac, which only leads to Sarah's plea to have Abraham cast out his son, Ishmael, and his mother, Hagar. And ultimately, he prepares to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God. Wow. It's almost too much to handle all at once.

Each of these moments is complex, filled with uplift and depression. But it is with Abraham's pleading with God on behalf of the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah that I want to wrestle this week. I encountered a teaching about this portion, Vayera, from Kolel, the Adult Centre for Liberal Jewish Learning, in Toronto, that spoke to me, especially in light of my recent blog posts about bullying and GLBTQ youth.

In the portion, Abraham is deeply troubled by the possibility that when God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, innocent people will be wiped away with the guilty. He even goes so far as to chastise God, saying, "Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?" (Genesis 18:25).

The commentary from Kolel unpacks this moment in contrast to the last scene in our sedra, where Abraham willingly prepares to sacrifice his son without any argument. With Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham argues for quite a while, first asking what God would do if there were 50 innocent people, eventually bargaining God down to only 10. But there weren't 10. But when it comes to his son Isaac, Abraham remains silent. Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, citing midrash, indicates that Abraham's silence in regards to his son doesn't come from a place of fear, but rather from a place of faith. Regarding Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham sees it as an issue of justice. But regarding Isaac, his son, it is an issue of faith. These are two completely separate issues for Abraham.

So, what does this mean for us today? The commentary from Kolel asks, "How often do we put other people's interests before our own? In our society today, we tend to 'look out for number one,' which is not to say that we don't care for others, but we put ourselves and our own needs before all others." Justice, the value that motivated Abraham's actions around Sodom and Gomorrah, and faith, the value that motivated Abraham's silence surrounding the near-sacrifice of Isaac, do not exist separate from one another. Sometimes, they require compromise. In order to make a better world for everyone, the commentary argues, we sometimes need to put our own needs after those of others. If we are willing to give a little more to others, we can create a better world for all of us. The commentary concludes by teaching us, "Abraham showed us that we manifest our love for God best when we believe in a God-like fashion towards others, and maintain a faith in God for ourselves."

I believe that Abraham also teaches us that we have to know when to speak up for others and when to be secure in who we are.

Lech L'cha: Going Forward

2010-10-15T14:46:00.005-05:00

Last night I attended a vigil in Loring Park in solidarity with students who have been bullied or who are being bullied because of their actual or perceived sexuality or gender identities. This week, I heard a GLBTQ leader's interview on public radio where she said that there aren't all of a sudden more cases of bullying, but that we are both paying more attention and that the cases are more severe than they have been. As I've recently posted here, Dan Savage's It Gets Better Project is encouraging teens who are being bullied to know that things won't always be like this. And I've heard from friends, colleagues, congregants, and others that Dan Savage's project falls short of what we need. Telling teens that it gets better is telling them to wait it out. But as one of the speakers last night at the vigil pointed out, we need to be telling teens, "It gets better now." We need to be doing the work to make this world safer for our children.

Then, this morning, I read an email from a congregant that included Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's post opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, My Jewish Perspective on Homosexuality. In it, Boteach begins strongly by stating that when the Bible uses the word תועבה (to'evah), meaning abomination, in regards to sex between two men, it is important to note that there are over 120 other instances where this word is used and that a sexual act between two men is no worse than any of these other instances, according to the Hebrew Bible.

As I read the rest of Boteach's editorial, I felt as though I was on an emotional roller coaster... sudden ups and downs, twists and turns. At moments I thought, “Whoo-hoo! A ‘right wing’ religious leader who gets it!” and then all of a sudden, I found myself saying, “But you’re still saying homosexuality is a sin!”

I really appreciated his putting abomination in context. And I love that he says, “You have 611 commandments left. That should keep you busy. Now, go create a kosher home,” reminding us that none of us can actually follow all of the commandments, but at the same time I’m troubled by the idea that he disqualifies two commandments with his statement, the prohibition against men lying with one another and one commanding us to bear children. The commandment in Genesis is not, “Marry a woman and be fruitful and multiply.” It is simply “Be fruitful and multiply.” It doesn’t tell us with whom. And he doesn’t even begin to address, in the midst of his concern about divorces and children growing up in multiple homes, all of the children who are not growing up in stable homes at all, whether they are in orphanages or foster homes, who could be the well-loved children of gay and lesbian couples. Talmud (Sanhedrin 19b) teaches us that someone who teaches Torah to a child is considered as if he had produced that child. Even the Talmud understands that some people will “be fruitful and multiply” through non-conventional means.

I love that he implies, in his remarks about Pat Robertson, that homosexuality just isn’t big enough of a deal to exclude people from our communities. But nonetheless, he still labels homosexuality as a sin, He says it is a religious sin, one we commit against God, not a moral one, one we commit against our fellow human beings.

It's a a good start that had me hoping he’d done better. Judaism changes. It always has. It changed when Mahlah, Noa, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah, Zelophehad's daughters challenged the laws of inheritance and insisted that in spite of the fact that they had no brother, their father's property should not leave their family; they should be allowed to inherit. It happened when the rabbis examined the text of the wayward and defiant son whom the Torah commands to have stoned to death (Deuteronomy 21:18), and they conclude that never has such a son existed and never will he. Judaism changes.

But I also hold the value that the Reform rabbis of 1885 held when they wrote their Declaration of Principles, the Pittsburgh Platform of 1885:

We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domain of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of divine Providence and Justice dealing with men in miraculous narratives.

So, when we look at this week's Torah portion, Lech L'cha, and we see Abraham setting out from his father's house, and we consider the midrash from Genesis Rabbah 28:13, we know that we have to move beyond what we have always done when what we have always done is no longer enough. In the Torah portion, Abraham sets out for a new life. In the midrash, we learn that his father was an idol maker. One day, when left to tend the shop for his father, Abraham smashed all of the idols but one, the largest one, with a stick and then placed the stick in the largest idol's hand. When his father returned and asked him what he'd done, Abraham blamed the largest idol, saying it was jealous of the other ones. When his father told him that was impossible, Abraham asked why his father would worship something without knowledge or power. And so, he set out on his own.

When texts and interpretations hinder our relationships with one another and with God, it is time not to rationalize them or to cast them aside as inaccessible, as Boteach claims by telling gay and lesbian Jews that there are still 611 commandments they can follow, but rather to reinvent them, grapple with them, and understand them in the modern world which God has created. It's not enough to say, "It's still a sin, but God will deal with that." God gave us Torah and it is our responsibility to wrestle with it and make sure no one is left out.

In the Image of God: Parashat B'reishit

2010-10-01T17:32:00.005-05:00

This week we begin Torah again, with Parashat B'reishit, the first portion in the book of Genesis. As you probably know, Genesis begins with the Creation narrative, where God creates the world in six days and completes the work of Creation by resting on the seventh day, the Sabbath, or Shabbat. As just about each aspect of Creation is completed, God observes it and admires it, proclaiming it 'good.' When God creates human beings, God proclaims the work completed that day, טוב מאוד, very good. Why are that day's creations, especially the creation of humanity, 'very good,' and not just, 'good'?

When God sets to the task of creating human beings, God says, "'Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness...' And God created man in God's image, in the image of God, God created him; male and female God created them" (Genesis 1:26-27). What does it mean for us to be created in God's image?

Pablo Casals writes, "Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moemnt that never was before and will never be again - and what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two is four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them, 'Do you know what you are? You are a marvel! You are unique. In all of the world there is no other child exacly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you. And look at your body, what a wonder it is. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel.' And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work - we all must work - to make this world worthy of its children."

This is what it means to be created in the Divine image: it is to recognize the spark of God in each and every human being and to teach our children to recognize that spark in one another. But we are failing. Since Rosh Hashanah, four teens have taken their own lives because they were being bullied based upon their actual or perceived sexualities.

15-year-old Billy Lucas took his life on Rosh Hashanah day, Thursday, September 9. He never told anyone he was gay, but his classmates believed he was and taunted and bullied him because of it. He hanged himself in his family barn, where his mother found him. We are failing our children.

18-year-old Tyler Clementi took his life on Friday, September 22. Tyler jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate secretly set up a webcam and broadcast his intimate encounter with another guy. We are failing our children.

13-year-old Asher Brown took his life on Thursday, September 23. Among other things, his classmates would perform mock gay acts on him during physical education classes. Repeatedly, he and his parents complained about bullying, but after he shot himself, school officials denied ever knowing about the ongoing harassment and bullying. We are failin ourchildren.

13-year-old Seth Walsh took his life on Tuesday, September 28, nine days after his suicide attempt. He hanged himself in a tree in his family's backyard, where he was found still alive, but he never recovered. In spite of an anti-bullying program in his school, no one stepped in to stop his bullies.

The Human Rights Campaign is calling on Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to include gender identity and sexual orientation in anti-bullying programs nationwide. Sign the pledge.

Dan Savage has created a YouTube campaign to tell gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer youth everywhere that "It gets better," through his project, the It Gets Better Project. Here's his video with his husband, Terry:

B'reishit teaches us that we are created in the image of God. How we treat one another reflects the relationship we have with God. By failing to act, we are failing our children. But we can do better. Our children need to know that they are marvels, and that it gets better. We were too late for Billy, Tyler, Asher and Seth, along with so many others - zichronam livracha, may their memories be a blessing - but we don't have to be too late for anyone else. It gets better.

Bearing Witness - Parashat Va-et'chanan

2010-07-23T16:59:00.005-05:00

Within the next week, the National Organization for Marriage (Discrimination) will be making three stops within the State of Minnesota as part of their nationwide tour of intolerance and discrimination. The National Organization for marriage, as Michael Crawford has noted in his article Avoiding NOM's Trap, written for the Huffington Post, has even gone so far as to claim that denying others access to marriage is an outgrowth of the civil rights movement. You read that correctly, they are claiming that denying others their rights is the logical next step of the civil rights movement. At their rally in Trenton, New Jersey, NOM President Brian Brown made an attempt to link his discriminatory cause to the civil rights movement and to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“What if Martin Luther King, Jr. would have listened to those who tried to silence and tell him that his faith has no place in the public square — that he should be silent?,” Brown told The Star-Ledger. “You are a part of a new civil rights group — a civil rights group dedicated to protecting the most fundamental and basic institution known to mankind: marriage.”

Fortunately, Outfront Minnesota, Minnesota's pro-LGBT equality group is responding here in Minnesota and has organized events around each of NOM's stops in the North Star State. Join Outfront for 3 Days of Action for Equality and stand up for LGBT equality in Minnesota. Join Outfront and other pro-equality groups in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday, July 28 at 12:00 noon to stand up for love.

This week's Torah portion, Va-et'chanan, includes the words of the Shema (Deut. 6:4):

Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.

Hear O Israel, the Eternal is our God, the Eternal Alone.

In the image above, just as in the text of the Torah, the last letter of the word 'shema' and the last letter of the word 'echad' are written larger than the other letters. These two letters, ayin and dalet, spell the word eid, meaning witness. The text of the Shema teaches us to bear witness to God's unity and to the fact that we are all creating the the image of God.

Stand up for love. Stand up for equality. Bear witness to God's image in each and every person. Show up and lend your pro-equality and pro-love voice of faith to the debate. Let's show NOM whose side God is really on.

A Taste of Torah - Parashat D'varim - Shabbat Hazon

2010-07-16T16:33:00.002-05:00

This Shabbat is Shabbat Hazon, the Sabbath of vision, given its name because of the Haftarah portion, Isaiah 1:1-27 and Isaiah's vision of the people's transgression and their hope for redemption. This Shabbat is the one that immediate precedes Tisha b'Av. But the designation of hazon, meaning 'vision', can also be tied to one of the Biblical characters briefly mentioned in the Torah portion this week. "Not one of the men [counted in the census], this evil generation, shall see the good land that I swore to your fathers - none except Caleb son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him and to his descendants will I give the land on which he set foot, because he remained loyal to the Eternal" (Deut. 1:35-36). Of the generation of the Exodus, only Caleb and Joshua make it to the Promised Land because of the hopeful report they brought back when they and ten other scouts checked out the Land of Israel. Joshua gets a book named after him in the Hebrew Bible, but Caleb does not.

Rabbi Zoë Klein gives Caleb a voice in her text, The Scroll of Caleb. According to Klein, Caleb represents the highest potential of every person. He is not capable of miracles and wonders, like Joshua's making the sun stand still, but he was able to see things that the other scouts couldn't. He helps us see that we, as ordinary people, possess extraordinary potential without being something we are not. On this Shabbat before Tisha b'Av, Tisha b'Av being the date on which numerous calamaties are said to have befallen the Jewish people (including among them the day on which the people chose not to listen to Joshua and Caleb, but rather to the ten other scouts), we are called to have vision like Caleb, seeing the potential of our future and our ability to fulfill the potential that God has placed within us, even when we seem overwhelmed by what seems impossible.

Disconnecting to Better Connect

2010-07-09T18:00:00.003-05:00

When I was a camper at Camp Canadensis, I was a camp director’s nightmare. I refused to participate in cabin activities, constantly found reasons to go to the infirmary, and on multiple occasions threatened to run away. One time, I even wrote my parents and told them if they didn’t come and get me right away, I’d run away. They still remind me of this any time I get too full of myself. Oh, the grief I caused them. Camp Canadensis is a camp for Jewish kids in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania. It’s an eight-week program, no matter your age, and my four summers there were probably the worst summers of my life, or so I thought then.

Because of the duration of the session, there was a visiting day halfway through the summer. During the rest of the summer, campers were allowed to make periodic collect phone calls home. Maybe once a week, though it might have only been once every two weeks. Those collect calls never came soon enough for me. One day, probably on my way back to the cabin from arts and crafts, I found the phone room, a pad-locked room near the main office building, miraculously unlocked. Looking around to see that no one was watching, I snuck into the dark phone room, picked up a phone, and dialed ‘zero’ to get an operator to connect me with my parents. I pleaded with them to come and pick me up. If I were a camper now, and that had been my experience, I would have loved to have had a cell phone at camp.

Fortunately, I did not have a cell phone at camp. And fortunately, my parents did not come and pick me up, no matter how much it pained them to see me suffering so much at camp. Earlier this week, Mitch Albom wrote a piece titled ‘Cell phones at summer camp? Just say click.’ In it, Albom details the highlights of his summer camp experience. He was, I imagine, a better camper than I was.

Summer camp, he writes, “meant disappearing into another world. It was a world of woods and fields and bunks, a world without Mom and Dad, without friends from the neighborhood, without TV, without movies, a world where you wrote letters to communicate with your ‘other’ life.” Unfortunately, this is not always the reality at summer camps today. Camps are struggling with cell phone policies. They know how disruptive a cell phone can be to creating community, but they also know that the kids who want them are the reason the camps exist. Some kids, Mitch Albom accurately notes, even opt out of summer camp if it means being without their cell phones and other technology. But it isn’t only the kids’ fault.

Many parents, perhaps more than the kids, want there to be cell phones at camp. They want to be able to be in constant contact with their children. They cannot bear the thought of not having their children at their fingertips. Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand where the parents are coming from, even though I am not yet a parent. Parents want the best for their children. Parents worry about safety. They worry about loneliness. Mitch Albom points out that “we can’t live in constant fear.”

But more importantly, he gets what really makes technology at summer camp so problematic: We can’t enjoy life while filming it. Mitch Albom expresses his desire for a ban on all electronic devices at summer camps. He says this out of fear, too, but out of a different kind of fear. He fears that kids are losing the ability to exist. Albom writes, “When we went to camp, we were in the moment. We jumped in the pool; we didn’t film ourselves jumping in the pool … Kids who have to give up their smartphones or computers for summer camp – thereby losing touch with Facebook – worry about becoming invisible. But they are erasing themselves from the real world every minute they spend in the virtual one. Kids need to learn that memories are not the same as storage devices and feelings are not the same as postings … You can’t absorb the experience if you’re constantly sharing it.”

For us, as Jews, this shouldn’t be a foreign concept. From the beginning, Judaism has taught us the value of disconnecting with our every day experiences in order to have a richer existence. In his book The Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches about the unique quality of Shabbat. Other religions, he teaches, speak of holiness in space and in nature – sacred spaces. But Judaism introduced the concept of holiness in time. Heschel writes, “The sense of holiness in time is expressed in the manner in which the Sabbath is celebrated. No ritual object is required for keeping the seventh day, unlike most festivals on which such objects are essential to their observance, as, for example, unleavened bread, Shofar, Lulab and Etrog or the Tabernacle. On that day the symbol of the Covenant, the phylacteries, displayed on all days of the week, is dispensed with. Symbols are superfluous: the Sabbath is itself the symbol” (Heschel, The Sabbath, p. 82).

Though I may not have known it then, my disconnecting from the world around me taught me to focus on the world in which I was living, the world of summer camp, with all of its activities and all its anxieties. I learned more about who I was as a person, even if some of that understanding took years to develop. It meant that when I was a staff member at a summer camp, I was more keenly aware of kids like me who need to be encouraged not to withdraw from the summer camp experience to survive it, but rather understand that disconnecting from the outside world would help me to connect better with the world of summer camp.Just as Shabbat needs no ritual objects to be a holy experience, summer camp needs none of the sacred objects of our everyday lives to create meaningful moments and memories. Shabbat teaches us to disconnect with the ordinary world so that we may better appreciate it. Summer camp provides our children with the opportunity and the incentive to disconnect with ordinary existence so that we can relish the world in which we live and the people with whom we interact during the rest of the year.

P.S. If you made it this far and you are reading this at summer camp, you've missed the whole point. Put away the technology and go enjoy the summer.

A Taste of Torah - Parashat Pinchas

2010-07-02T16:07:00.002-05:00

A fair amount of this week's Torah portion details a census of the Israelites. One of the details of the census is the division of land among the tribes of Israel. According to the Torah (Numbers 26:54), the larger tribes would be given more land while the smaller tribes would be given less land. But the next verse says that the land would be given out by lottery. Rashi looks at these two verses that seem to contradict one another and sees a nuanced lesson. He writes, citing a midrash from Sifre, that since some areas were superior to others, the land was not divided solely according to measurements, but it was assessed; an smaller piece of land sufficient to grow crops well was equivalent to a larger piece sufficient to grow fewer crops. It all depended on the value of the soil. These two verses, when read together, teach us that while the Israelite's land was divided up by size based upon the size of the tribe, the real value of the land was in its quality, not its quantity, a lesson that we could well apply to our daily lives, as well. It's not about how much we have, but about how good it is.

Balak, Balaam, and the Perfect Game

2010-06-25T10:05:00.004-05:00

If you know me at all, you know that I'm probably one of the last people to talk sports. And when it comes to sports, I am probably least interested in baseball. It's not that I have anything against baseball; it just doesn’t captivate me. But a few weeks ago, a baseball game caught my attention. Well, to be honest, the aftermath of the game caught my attention. I didn’t know about the game until a few days after it had been played.

The game, played on Wednesday, June 2, pitted the Detroit Tigers against the Cleveland Indians. It was the top of the ninth inning and Detroit pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game. In baseball, a perfect game occurs when there are 27 batters up, 27 batters down, no walks, no hits, and no errors. There were two outs in the ninth inning and Cleveland's Jason Donald was up to bat. When Jason hit a ball towards the space between first and second base, the first baseman went for the ball while Galarraga left the pitcher’s mound to cover first base. The umpire, Jim Joyce, stood alongside Galarraga at first base, ready to make the call.

As the ball hit Galarraga's glove and the batter crossed the base, Jim Joyce, the umpire, had to make the call. Who had arrived first? The batter or the ball? With his arms spread to his sides, Joyce made the call. Jason Donald was safe. And Armando Galarraga’s hopes for a perfect game disappeared. The fans were disappointed, to say the least. Galarraga's teammates and coach doubted the call. But baseball has no instant replay. Joyce's call had to stand. Armando Galarraga grinned and Joyce, with a sort of, "Well, if that’s what you think you saw," kind of look, confident that the umpire had made a bad call, but with no recourse to do anything about it.

To be fair, Jim Joyce's task was onerous, to say the least. Hall of Fame umpire Doug Harvey explains, "When you have a play where the first baseman fields a ball to his right and the pitcher covers first, the thing you focus on is watching the fielder pick up the ball and make the throw, and then you turn your eyes to first base and watch and listen for the ball hitting the pitcher’s glove. At the same time you are watching the runner, but it is the sound of the ball hitting the glove that will trigger the call. I would imagine the noise of the crowd was so great, in view of the circumstances, that the umpire had trouble hearing the ball hit the pitcher’s glove."

With Donald on first, Galarraga pitched the twenty-eighth batter, who never made it to first base and the game was over. Some have dubbed it the '28-out perfect game.' But that’s not what I think made the game a perfect one. I think it's all in how Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce handled themselves and the situation.

Galarraga didn’t scream at the umpire. In fact, he didn't even respond to the umpire. He simply smiled, perhaps with a smile that expressed his dismay, but smiled nonetheless. Mary McHugh of The New American described him as "disappointed but classy." After the game, when Jim Joyce had the opportunity to review the tape and saw that he had, in fact, made a bad call, he approached Galarraga, even before Joyce had showered, to apologize. Galarraga thanked Joyce for the apology and, in the story I heard after the game, explained that he looked forward to showing his kids tape of his perfect game, even if the record books didn't record it.

This week's Torah portion, Balak, teaches us to be careful with the words that leave our lips. In the Torah, the Moabite king Balak, after whom the portion is named, becomes concerned with how numerous the Israelites have become and calls upon a Moabite prophet, Balaam, to curse the Israelites. The king offers Balaam riches for performing the task, but God seeks to intercept Balaam and stop him from cursing the Israelites. God even sends an angel to block Balaam's path, an angel that only Balaam's donkey can see, until the donkey begins to talk and tells Balaam why they can’t move forward. Still, in spite of God's persuasion and the talking donkey, Balaam still chooses to move forward with the king's men to curse the Israelites.

Three times, Balaam opens his mouth to curse the Israelites and he is instead filled with awe for God and a blessing comes out, instead. He wanted to say all the wrong things, but in the moment, he can only say all the right things. Among his words of blessing are the words, " Mah tovu ohalecha Ya'akov, mish-k'notecha Yisrael – How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel" (Numbers 24:5), words we recite in our morning liturgy. We take the words that were meant to be a curse, that instead were a blessing to us as a people, and recite them about ourselves. When all the right things come from our mouths, they are, indeed, words of blessing.

Rabbi Arthur Segal understands this moment with Balaam in this way: "Life really is not a battle of God versus man or good versus evil. Life is an eternal battle inside each of us between what we know is right and what we know is wrong. It is man's battle against himself. We all have the power to curse and the power to bless ... If Balaam's curses could be turned into blessings, perhaps we could turn our own personal adversities into opportunities for blessings as well."

The day after Galarraga's perfect game, Jim Joyce had home plate assignment in Detroit's afternoon game. When Jim Joyce took the field, most of the crowd rose to their feet and gave him a hand, bringing umpire Jim Joyce to tears. It was another perfect game, not because of the stats or the score, but because of its abundant blessings. Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Chukat - Learning to Do Things Differently

2010-06-18T16:22:00.001-05:00

I heard a brief segment about the implications of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Science Friday this afternoon. One of the comments caught my ear. I wish I could tell you who said it. When asked what the worst possible outcome of the spill could be, one expert summed it up. She said, "Not to have learned anything from this." A lot of comparisons have been made between the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the recent one in the Gulf of Mexico. Better than knowing how many Exxon Valdezes equal each day of this crisis, we need to know how we can do better. While fines of BP may begin to offset some of the loss, what really matters is doing things differently. The host, Ira Flatow, noted that rather than President Obama declaring war on oil, he would have rather seen the President ask us all to chip in in our own communities. The President should have motivated us to help clean up local waterways and make an environmental impact that would ripple out to those around us. This might have a more profound impact than any efforts in the Gulf will have.

In this week's Torah portion, Chukat (which happens to be my Bar Mitzvah portion), Miriam dies. In the wilderness, Miriam was the source of water. We commemorate this role with Miriam's Cup on the Passover Seder table. The text tells that following Miriam's death at Kadesh, "The community was without water" (Numbers 20:2). You probably know the story that immediate follows this: Moses strikes the rock out of anger with the Israelites. But I want to jump about a chapter past that incident.

In the middle of Numbers chapter 21, amidst the verses I read when I became Bar Mitzvah, we read that God tells Moses to assemble the people so that God may give them water. Then, the Israelites sing to the well, requesting water from it. The words that introduce their song, "Az yashir Yisrael et-ha-shirah ha-zot - Then Israel sang this song" (Numbers 21:17), are the same words that introduce the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15:1). One midrash, Yalkut Shimoni, teaches us that at the Sea of Reeds, Moses had to lead the song, but at the well following Miriam's death, the Israelites gain the courage and maturity to sing for themselves.

Through Miriam's death, she passes the baton to the people, empowering them to find water for themselves. Though initially they are scared, so much so that they rebel against Moses causing him to lose his temper, the Israelites realize that they have to learn from the tragedy of Miriam's death and learn to do things differently. So, too, we need to respond to the oil spill. We may initially respond with anger and fury, but if we are to survive, we have to learn how to do things differently.

A Taste of Torah - Shelach-Lecha

2010-06-04T17:26:00.000-05:00

So, twelve spies scout out the Promised Land. Ten of them return with a rather terrifying report of the land and its people. They describe grape clusters so big they need to be carried by multiple people, a land that devours the people, and people so large they made the spies look like grasshoppers in comparison. But two of the spies - Joshua and Caleb - talked about the wonders of the land, what it had to offer, and how with God's help, they would be able to conquer it.

Unfortunately, the people sided with the ten spies who came back with the terrifying report. God got angry and threatened to wipe out the people, only to be stopped by Moses who warned God about what the other nations would think of God if the Israelites were to all be wiped out.

Shelach-Lecha reminds us that what is popular is not always right and what is right is not always popular. In the end, Joshua and Caleb were right, even though they weren't popular. Of the entire generation of the exodus from Egypt, only Joshua and Caleb set foot in the Promised Land, because of their faith in God and their faith in the Israelite community.

A Taste of Torah - Parashat B'ha'alotecha

2010-05-28T17:02:00.007-05:00

I was a strangely patriotic child. On my night table, I had a little American flag that I could raise and lower on its miniature flag pole so that I could put it at half-staff when appropriate. I knew the words to countless patriotic anthems. Above my bed was a picture of President Kennedy. I was also the kid who would show up at my high school and remind the principal to lower the flag to half-staff on such occasions as the deaths of President Nixon and of Corporal Jamie Smith, an alumnus of my high school, who died in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu. I was aware of Veterans Day, Pearl Harbor Day, Flag Day, and, of course, this coming Monday’s holiday of Memorial Day. But it wasn’t until I celebrated Israel’s Memorial Day during my first year of rabbinical school that I truly understood what Memorial Day could mean.

Unlike most Israelis’ experience, I have no immediate family members who had served in the military. Neither of my grandfathers served, both, I believe, because of medical reasons. Some of the other men of their generation in my family had, but they were people I either didn’t know or who had died before I was born. In Israel, Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, is a somber day which begins with a siren that sounds for a solid minute, bringing Israel to halt. There are no barbecues, no sales, and no youth group trips to Valleyfair. We Americans would not recognize Memorial Day in Israel and Israelis would not recognize ours here.

We don’t often think about Monday’s holiday of Memorial Day as one with Jewish significance. But it is. In the hall outside this sanctuary are plaques memorializing members of this congregation who served in both World Wars and on Monday morning, there will be a memorial service at Temple Israel's cemetery. Jews have been part of the military in this country since before we were a country. One of the earliest examples, which you might have read in today’s “Ten Minutes of Torah” (from the URJ written by Kate Bigam) indicates that in 1655, Jews living in the colony of New Amsterdam fought a prohibition against their military service, gaining the right to enlist. Ever since then, Jews have served in the U.S. Armed Forces.

Still, few of us can name even two people serving our country today, unless you include the two members of our congregation whose names are listed under the prayer for peace on the back of the Shabbat service program. In an article published Wednesday in The Jewish Week, Gary Rosenblatt shares the story of Stephanie Koerner, a young Jewish woman who joined the ROTC program at Syracuse University in 2002. Since then she has served twice in Iraq. Her career choice had a profound impact on her rabbi, Gerald Skolnik. Rabbi Skolnik was a vehement opponent of the Vietnam War, but when Koerner deployed to Iraq, he had a change of heart. When she deployed, Rabbi Skolnik gave a sermon that apologized for his generation’s inability to separate the war from the soldier. Whether or not we agree with the wars we currently wage in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must remember that there is a difference between supporting the war and supporting the troops. For some of us, these go hand in hand. For all of us, the latter must be important.

Five years ago, the Reform Movement recognized our failure at supporting Jewish members of the Armed Forces. A resolution passed by our movement called upon our congregations and communities to provide for the needs of Jewish military chaplains, personnel, and their families. The resolution went on to encourage us to reach out to Jews on bases, on ships and in military hospitals. Just yesterday, I received an email about a Jewish chaplaincy position at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center.

It’s not only about the Jews serving our country, though. There are nearly 3 million men and women currently on active or reserve duty. As Hillel teaches in Pirke Avot (2:4), we are not to separate ourselves from the community. It is our responsibility to make sure that those who serve our country are not separated from our communities. Andrew Bernstein, a philosopher and novelist, writes, “To fully appreciate the virtue of our soldiers, we must remember what freedom means. It means we can choose our own fields of study, our own careers, our own spouses, the size of our families and our places of residence. It means we can speak out without fear regarding any issue—including governmental policy—choose our values, without interference from the state.”

Bernstein says it’s about remembering what freedom means. This is the essence of Memorial Day: remembering. In this week’s Torah portion, B’ha’alotecha, God commands us to make silver trumpets that will be used in order to summon the people when it is time to assemble or move into battle (Number 10:1-10). Twice, the passage alludes to the concept of remembering. The first tells us to sound the trumpets when we are at war with our enemies so that God will remember us and deliver us from our their hands. The second tells us that the trumpets themselves will serve as a reminder of us before God. It seems strange that God would need to be reminded of us.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik teaches that Judaism wants us to cry out aloud against injustice and unfairness, against the imperfections of the world in which we live. If we allow our own legitimate needs to go unmet, we will ignore the crying out of others. The calling out of the trumpets before engaging in battle is not just a battle cry, but a prayer to God. According to Soloveitchik, “Prayer tells the individual, as well as the community, what his, or its, genuine needs are, what he should, or should not, petition God about… God needs neither thanks nor hymns.” God wants to hear us cry out against the discord in our world.

Memorial Day provides us with an opportunity, a Jewish opportunity, to speak to the conflict in our world. We may agree with the way it is being solved or we may not, but we cannot, as Rabbi Skolnik did in the 60s, confuse the conflict with the soldier. The Talmud teaches us that the labors of our ancestors are a sign to us today (BT Sotah 34a). Our Torah portion tells us how our Israelite ancestors organized themselves and how they used the trumpets to move them forward. We, too, must be reminded of the need to move forward. Memorial Day reminds us of how our American ancestors labored for our freedoms today.

Wherever you find yourself on Monday – at the Memorial Day service at Temple Israel's cemetery, at a barbecue with friends, at Valleyfair with Temple's youth groups – find some time to remember those who fought and died for our country and our freedoms. Sound the trumpet so that God may remember them, as well. Rabbi Skolnik, inspired by his congregant, Stephanie Koerner, who chose to make a career of serving her country, penned the following prayer:

Ribbono Shel Olam! - Sovereign of the Universe!
We invoke Your blessings upon the members of our American military forces, those brave men and women whose courage and commitment to that for which this country stands protects us all.
Whether by air, land or sea, in the mountains of Afghanistan, the cities and deserts of Iraq, or wherever their orders take them, we ask, dear God, that they be protected within your sheltering presence. Shield them from harm and from pain, assuage their loneliness, and sustain their faith in the face of the formidable enemies that they confront on a daily basis. May all of their efforts be crowned with victory, and the assurance that we who depend on their courage appreciate and understand the great difficulty of their work.
Most of all, we pray what for all soldiers is the ultimate prayer - that they be privileged to return to the loving arms of their families and a grateful country safely, speedily, and in good health. Because of their courage, may we all be privileged to know and savor the blessings of true peace and security.

Oseh shalom bimromav hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu, v’al kol Yisrael, v’al kol yosh’vei teiveil, v’imru: Amen. May the One who makes peace in the high heavens make peace for us, all Israel and all who inhabit the earth, and let us say: Amen.

A Taste of Torah - Parashat Naso

2010-05-21T17:04:00.000-05:00

The ancient threefold blessing of the priests is contained in this week's Torah portion, Naso:

May the Eternal bless you and keep you.
May the Eternal's face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the Eternal turn toward you and grant you peace. (Numbers 6:24-26)

According to two commentators, Rashi and Ha'emek Davar, the first line is connected to one's secular business be blessed. The second is of a spiritual nature, asking for the one being blessed to feel God's presence. And the final line builds on the previous two by asking for peace.

In order to find peace, we need to be sure that our ordinary needs are met and that our spiritual needs are met. Without one or the other, peace will not happen.

A Taste of Torah - Parashat B'midbar

2010-05-14T17:29:00.001-05:00

Rabbi Jack Riemer (in Learn Torah With...5756 Torah Annual) calls our attention to a nuanced detail in this week's Torah portion, Parashat B'midbar. In the Torah portion, which begins with a census of the Israelites in the wilderness, each tribe names a prince. Eleven of these princes have names that contain a name of God. There are names like Elitzur (God is my Rock) and Elishama (God has heard). There's even Shelumiel ben Tzurishaddai, which includes Shalom, El, Tzur, and Shaddai, which are all names of God. But then there's the twelfth prince, Nachshon ben Aminadav, whose name gives no allusion to God. Perhaps he sounds familiar to you, though? Nachshon ben Aminadav, according to midrash, was the first one to jump into the Sea of Reeds before it split, the one whose confidence in God was enough to begin to part the waters.

What Nachshon (and the other princes) teach us is that our identities are not based upon the names we have or even the names we give ourselves, but rather based upon our actions. Each of the eleven princes whose names bore God's names had a falling out with God. But the one whose actions spoke to his relationship with God ended up being the most holy among them.

As Shavuot approaches, the holiday on which we celebrate receiving Torah at Sinai, let us not define ourselves by the names we have or by the words we use to describe ourselves, but rather by our actions that make us worthy of our relationship with God and with one another.

A Taste of Torah - Behar-Bechukotai

2010-05-07T12:52:00.002-05:00

As I type this, rain drops are cascading onto the greening lawns in South Minneapolis and, undoubtedly, in other nearby areas. (I hear it will snow up north today, but let's not talk about that.) The rain couldn't be more perfectly timed. In this last portion of the book of Leviticus, Bechukotai (the second half of a double portion with Parashat Behar), God tells us that if we follow God's laws and commandments faithfully, our reward will be rain. Rain? That seems like a strange reward. But wait! God doesn't just say there will be rain, but that the rains will fall at the right time, allowing the earth to grow produce and the trees to bear fruit. Nature will flourish (Leviticus 26:3-5). (Remember that ever-greener grass in Minneapolis?) But God doesn't stop there. With produce, with fruits and vegetables, we will have our fill of food and we'll live in safety. God will grant peace in the land.

That last bit is the key. If we have enough to eat (not just us, but the whole world), there will be peace. How do we get enough to eat? When the world functions the way its supposed to and the rains fall in their appointed times. How do we get that to happen? By following God's commandments. Well, as Reform Jews, what does that mean for us? A lot of things, of course. Rashi and Ibn Ezra explain that following God's laws means studying, doing, and teaching. Sforno takes this one step further and says that studying, doing, and teaching help us fulfill God's intention that we are created in God's image, after God's likeness. We are partners in Creation with God and we have an obligation to act like God in the world. Behave in a way that represents God well - feed the hungry, take care of the environment, take a break (on Shabbat, of course), help make peace - and God will bless us so that each person has enough and can live in peace.

As we finish Leviticus, the third book of Torah, we say, "Chazak, chazak, v'nitchazeik - Be strong, be strong, and together we will be strengthened." We're all in this together; let's act accordingly. Shabbat Shalom!

A Taste of Torah - Parashat Emor

2010-04-30T17:12:00.002-05:00

This week’s Torah portion, Emor, contains one of the most misunderstood concepts, by Jews and Christians alike, in Biblical text, the notion of eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life (Leviticus 24:17-21). It can be difficult to figure out what our tradition, the rabbis of old, and God want from us concerning revenge. At their core, these verses speak about how we live in community with one another.

Nehama Leibowitz teaches that the misconception of what ‘eye for eye’ means has made the idea into the embodiment of vengeance at its cruelest level. Think even of the scene from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock wants exactly a pound of flesh from Antonio. In that case, Shakespeare has reversed the rabbis understanding of monetary compensation and implies that bodies can pay for monetary debts.

The rabbis worked hard from the beginning to teach that ‘eye for eye’ was never intended as anything except monetary compensation, that that reading is not a new interpretation, but rather the purpose of the text all along. One example: If a blind man blinded another person, how could we apply the verse literally? The law cannot be inequitable. It must apply equally to everyone. In another example the rabbis give to justify an understanding of monetary compensation, the school of Hezekia teaches that in seeking retribution, the revenge could go further than the initial offense. In an effort to blind an offender, taking his eye could inadvertently result in the taking of his life, too, based upon injuries he would sustain. This, like the first example, would not be evenhanded. (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kama 83b-84a)

While the Biblical text seems to imply that revenge is to be taken literally, Jewish understanding of Biblical law begins with the Torah. It does not end with it. We have to take into account the position of the rabbis in order to fully understand what the text means for us. And we must add to that opinion our own interpretation, because Jewish law continues to develop over time.

Another way our tradition understands ‘eye for eye’ as metaphorical is nuanced in the Hebrew. The Hebrew text says, “nefesh tachat nefesh, life for life … shever tachat shever, bruise for bruise; ayin tachat ayin, eye for eye; shein tachat shein, tooth for tooth” (Lev. 24: 18, 20). As Nehama Leibowitz teaches, the word we translate as ‘for,’ tachat, does not really mean for. It means, ‘in place of.’ In the binding of Isaac, Abraham sacrifices a ram tachat his son Isaac, in place of his son Isaac. In the story of Joseph in Pharaoh’s court, Judah says to Joseph, let me be your servant tachat Benjamin, in place of Benjamin. And perhaps most notably, when the spies speak with Rahab in Jericho, they tell her that if she keeps their presence a secret in the Israelite conquest of the city, they will pledge their lives tachat the lives of her family, in place of their lives. All of this teaches us that someone who blinds another person must give the other person something tachat the lost eye, something in place of the lost eye. That something, our tradition tells us, is monetary compensation. If we were to live in a society where we sought revenge based on actual loss, not the value of our losses, where would that leave us? To paraphrase Gandhi, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth would leave the whole world blind and toothless.

Our relationship with our community is of a higher value in Judaism that our individual needs. Whether or not we are wrapped up on the offense, Judaism teaches us "Kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh, All of Israel is responsible for one another" (BT Shavuot 39a). At sundown on Saturday, May 1 the holiday of Lag b’Omer begins. It is the 33rd day of the counting of the Omer, the transition from Passover to Shavuot, symbolically building towards the barley harvest commemorated on Shavuot. The 33rd day of this cycle is unique among those days. Lag b’Omer is known as the holiday of Aish ha-Torah, the fire of Torah. It is a holiday of scholars, teachers, and students because of the celebration of learning and teaching associated with it.

As my friend and colleague, Amy Gavel, teaches, “The name, Lag B’Omer, simply refers to the 33rd day of Counting the Omer, which refers to the seven weeks from the second night of Passover to the day before Shavuot. Just as simply, that means the counting is a reminder for us of the link between Passover, commemorating our Exodus from Egypt, with Shavuot, commemorating the giving of the Torah at Sinai. What complicates everything is that between the time when we left Egypt together and arrived at Sinai together, we weren’t exactly together. We fought, we bickered, we saw each other’s faults. We didn’t work together. We didn’t study together. We didn’t even always eat together. Instead, we worked hard to find reason, after reason, after reason to have conflict – and there are always reasons for conflict if we look for them.”

One of the reasons that Lag b’Omer is an important holiday in our tradition ties to the story of Rabbi Akiva. There was a terrible plague that affected the students of Rabbi Akiba, killing 1200 pairs of students. Our tradition tells us that the plague struck because the students were fighting among one another. As Amy Gavel teaches, “Conflict was a problem in Rabbi Akiva’s time, too. Today, counting the Omer is not only a time of rejoicing and remembering freedom, it’s also a time to mourn the 2,400 students of Akiva’s who mysteriously died from their own plague. The Talmud says they died because they ‘did not show proper respect for one another.’” Our understanding of ‘eye for eye’ and how we choose to apply it may be understood as whether or not we respect one another.

Aish ha-Torah, “the fire of Torah is like the fire of the soul, not like the fire of conflict. The fire of Torah is like the moment the soul reunites with its source, or the moment two people understand each other, or the moment two people accept each other for who they are – even if they can’t understand” (Amy Gavel). Parashat Emor and its text of ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth,’ along with the holiday of Lag b’Omer seek to teach us not to take ‘eye for eye,’ but rather to see eye to eye. May we learn not to destroy our relationships with revenge and distrust; but rather, to build community based on fairness, equality and mutual understanding.

A Taste of Torah - Shemini

2010-04-09T17:40:00.003-05:00

This week's Torah portion contains one of the most troubling scenes in the Torah. Parashat Shemini continues the outline of sacrificial laws and in the midst of it, we witness two tragic deaths at the altar, where the priests would carry out the sacrifices. Aaron's sons, Nadav and Abihu, having witnessed their father make sacrifices on the altar, make an offering of their own, one which the Torah describes as an eish zarah, an alien fire. Immediately following, God sends a fire down, consuming the two young men instantly. When Moses tries to console Aaron with words I hardly find comforting (This is what the Eternal meant when God said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all people. - Lev. 10:3), Aaron is speechless. The text says, "Vayidom Aharon - Aaron was silent" (Lev. 10:3).

Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir), the 12th century French commentator, tells us that when the text says that Aaron was silent, it means that he was silent about his grief, neither crying nor mourning. It implies a refraining from the weeping and mourning he would have wished to do.

Rashbam doesn't say it explicitly, but what I think he means to imply is that such restraint is not the appropriate response. Aaron should have cried out and mourned if that was what he wanted to do. Silence is not golden. Aaron's silence does not teach us how to act and react when events in the world are not as we would wish them to be. Instead, his reaction teaches us to speak out if not to cry out. There are far too many issues that demand our voice and far too many times when we remain silent.

Wednesday, April 21 is Outfront Minnesota's justFair Lobby Day at the Minnesota Capitol. Their publicity for the event says, "Equality in 2011 begins with Action in 2010." Consider making your voice heard and participate in Outfront Minnesota's GLBT Lobby Day in an effort to bring equality - marriage and otherwise - to Minnesota.

Blessings Like Dew - Shabbat Chol Ha-Moed Pesach

2010-04-02T15:16:00.002-05:00

This week's Torah reading is assigned to the Shabbat during Passover. In it, Moses approaches God in order to replace the first set of the Ten Commandents, broken when Moses witnessed the Israelites' worship of the golden calf, and culminates with a list of the festivals and the commandment to observe them. It is because of this last part, where the Feast of Unleavened Bread is specifically mentioned, that these verses are read this Shabbat.

Maybe you've had your fill of matzah? (I actually haven't, yet.) So, instead of writing about the Torah text, I figured I'd talk about another significant moment connected with Passover. Passover begins the dry season in Israel, but here in Minnesota, little green leaves are appearing on tree branches, tulip leaves are pushing their way through soil and mulch, and as I write this it is raining. Even though the rainy season is ending in Israel, it is still becoming Spring there, so now, perhaps more than ever, water is important.

During the service that takes place the first morning of Passover, we recite a blessing called Tefilat ha-Tal, the Prayer for Dew. It is a prayer that asks for the land of Israel to be abundant, for its plants and animals to lack nothing. It concludes with the request for the wind to blow and the dew to appear. Dew becomes a fleeting, yet important blessing, for the plants in Israel, something they need to survive. Before the days of modern irrigation technology, the lack of dew would have meant a lack of food.

As we near the end of Passover, think about the fleeting blessings that appear in your life and the ways in which you can soak them in, much like the plants in Israel that benefit from the fleeting presence of dew.

It Would Have Been Enough (and Still We Don’t Say ‘Thanks’)

2010-03-26T16:46:00.005-05:00

As we make our way into the book of Leviticus, which we began last Shabbat, it can become more challenging for us to find meaning among the texts about ritual sacrifice and the priestly laws. But this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, is actually one of my favorites. Seriously, it is. This was the week, in the Jewish calendar, that I was accepted to rabbinical school. By chance, I taught a Torah study ten years ago in my home congregation on this week’s portion, Tzav, that’d I’d prepared a few weeks in advance, unaware of how relevant the text would be to my own life.

Parashat Tzav, not unlike many of the other Torah portions in Leviticus, outlines priestly laws regarding the central shrine – the mishkan in the wilderness or the Temple in Jerusalem – and the sacrifices that occurred in those places. Among them, this week’s portion outlines the laws regarding three offerings: the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the offering of well-being.

The first two, the sin offering and the guilt offering, are pretty similar to one another. An animal is sacrificed to atone for something an Israelite has done. Some of the offering may be burnt for God to enjoy and the rest nourishes the priests. The individual bringing the sacrifice eats none of it.

But the third sacrifice, the offering of well-being is different. The Torah tells us that it is to be offered for thanksgiving. Along with the animal for the sacrifice, the individual making this thanksgiving offering brought along ten loaves of four different types of bread, forty loaves in total. The animal for the sacrifice along with one of each type of bread were given to the priests. The remaining thirty-six loaves of bread remain in the possession of the one offering the sacrifice. But here’s the kicker – the thanksgiving offering must be eaten on the day that it is offered; none of it, our text tells us, may be set aside until morning. That means that if you make a thanksgiving offering, you end up with thirty-six loaves of bread and less than a day to eat them. That’s a lot of carbs!

Sforno teaches that the thanksgiving offering was necessary for someone whose life had been in danger, but was saved. Because of the number of loaves of bread that remained with the individual and the time limit placed upon him to consume them, there was only one way to understand this. The purpose was to ensure that the individual would share the bread with others. By sharing his bread, he would share his good news.

It should be noted that sharing what one has been through does not apply to the previous two offerings. “There was no particular place specifically designated for bringing the sacrifice of the sin offering [or the guilt offering] in the Mishkan (BT Sotah 32b). This is significant. The sin offering was offered by one who had sinned and now wished to repent. If there were a specified physical location for these sacrifices, the identity of the sinners would become readily known. And this might in itself discourage repentance. Because the sin offering was offered in the same place as was the burnt offering, no one could be certain that the bearer of the offering had actually sinned. In this way, the matter would remain a private one between the individual and God and the sinner would be spared public embarrassment” (Mordechai Katz).

But this is not the case for the thanksgiving offering, it had a designated spot for bringing the sacrifice to make it easier to publicize one’s good news. As Rabbi Zelig Pliskin teaches, “The only time that such publicity was a part of the offering was in the case of good news. A person felt deep gratitude to God for help and in this joyous state one shared the joy with others. When one brought an offering for a sin, this was not publicized. When things were going wrong in one’s life, one did not do this. Only when one had an event to be thankful for did one publicize it. While there is definitely a need to share problems and difficulties with a sympathetic and understanding listener, the main areas to publicize are the good that happens to you.”

The week that I was accepted to rabbinical school, I had the fortuity of being able to share my good news publicly because the Torah portion that week and the material I’d prepared around it were all about gratitude and publicizing our good news. The theme of gratitude in Parashat Tzav, however, extends beyond my own personal experience and its relationship with the portion. It also links us to the festival we’ll begin Monday at sundown, Passover.

Elie Wiesel teaches, “Dayeinu is the song of our gratitude. A Jew defines himself by his capacity for gratitude. A Jewish philosopher was once asked, ‘What is the opposite of nihilism?’ And he said, ‘Dayeinu,’ the ability to be thankful. We all know the song:
Had God brought us out of Egypt,
Only brought us out of Egypt,
Had God brought us out of Egypt,
Dayeinu!

One midrash (Sifre on Deuteronomy, Piska’ot 337 and 339) may be one of the sources that helped to frame the significance of Dayeinu. According to the midrash, the Israelites grew anxious wondering if Moses would return from the mountain, from his conversation with God. They began to ask, “Where is Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt, who split the sea for us, who gave us manna, who performed miracles and wonders for us.” Dayeinu shifts the focus back to God. It was God who brought us out of Egypt, who split the sea, who gave us manna, and who performed miracles and wonders for us. It wasn’t all about Moses, it was about our relationship with God. As David Arnow writes, “By putting the focus on God rather than on Moses, and extending the narrative beyond the Exodus, Dayeinu reminds us that leaving Egypt was only a beginning, a prerequisite for building and enduring relationship with the ultimate One of Being” (My People’s Passover Haggadah, vol. 2, p. 49).

Dayeinu expresses the gratitude that we failed to express in the wilderness. If you remember, almost as quickly as we’d made it across the parted waters, we began to complain about the mud on our feet. We began to beg to return to Egypt, if only for the food that we had when we were slaves to Pharaoh. “In the Bible, the people express little satisfaction. They miss Egypt, with its cucumbers and melons; they lack water to drink and meat to eat; they abhor the idea of dying in the wilderness” (Wendy Zierler, My People’s Passover Haggadah, vol. 2, p. 70). But Dayeinu allows us to express that omitted gratitude as each of us recalls our personal redemption from Egypt.

One question remains: Would it really have been enough? Would it have been enough if God had only brought us out of Egypt and had not divided the sea? Wouldn’t we have been trapped between the water and the Egyptian army? Would it really have been enough if God had given us the Torah, but never brought us into the land of Israel? Wouldn’t we still be wandering in the desert? Would it really have been enough?

One commentator seeks to answer this question. Abudarham teaches it would not have literally been enough if God had only done any one of these steps along the way. Each favor was part of a Divine promise that God was obligated to keep. But God could have kept the promise without the spectacular means used at each juncture. It is not only because God brought us out of Egypt to safety, establishing a lasting relationship with us that we offer our gratitude, but also for the miraculous ways in which we encounter God in the world, something we continue to do on a daily basis (Alyssa Gray, My People’s Passover Haggadah, vol. 2, p. 60).

This is why the thanksgiving offering described in Parashat Tzav is substantial and why it must be eaten in such a short period of time. Each and every day we have the opportunity to offer our gratitude for what we have, appreciation we must share with others. And this is why the fifteen verses of Dayeinu recount so many different moments in our relationship with God, affirming that any one of them would have been enough. If God had left out even one step, we wouldn’t have made it to where we are today. If God had left out even one miraculous detail, it would not have been as powerful and awe-inspiring of a journey as it has been. And so, we offer our thanks. Shabbat Shalom… and Chag Sameach, Happy Passover.

A Taste of Torah - Vayakhel-Pekudei

2010-03-12T16:24:00.001-06:00

There is a connection in this week's Torah portion, Vayakhel-Pekudei, between the building of the Mishkan, the place where the Israelites worshipped God in the wilderness, and the observance of Shabbat. In the beginning of the double portion, Moses gathers the people and tells them that we are to work for six days, but that the seventh day should be a holy sabbath of complete rest.

Later the portion outlines the 39 categories of work that are forbidden on the Sabbath. Each of these is tied to the type of work that needed to be done in order to build the Mishkan. The question for us as modern Jews is what does it mean not to work on Shabbat and what does it mean to rest? According to one midrash documented in the 18th century Ladino commentary, Me-am Lo'ez, "It is true that tpeople say that the Hebrew word for the Sabbath (Shabbat) can be seen as an acrostic of shenah b'Shabbat ta'anug, Sleep on the Sabbath is a delight." But Me-am Lo'ez teaches us that this only applies to those who study Torah all week long. Only they can rest on Shabbat. If we don't spend our whole week studying, then Shabbat is barely long enough to allow us to study Judaism, let alone to rest.

What does this mean for us today? It means that we must allow Judaism not to be something that happens now and then, on Shabbat and on holidays, but something that is part of our daily lives. We should exist in the world Jewishly during the six days in which we work so that we can truly rest on Shabbat and connect with one another and with God.

A Taste of Torah - Shabbat Zachor and Tetzaveh

2010-02-26T17:36:00.001-06:00

Our Torah portion this week, Tetzaveh, is filled with intricate details about the priests' clothing and sacrifices that are to be offered on the altar of the Tabernacle, hardly things that we might find meaningful today in the ways in which we practice Judaism. But in reading over the parashah and some commentary, I encountered an interesting verse towards the end of the portion. "Seven days you shall perform purifcation for the altar to consecrate it, and the altar shall become most holy; whatever touches the alter shall become consecrated" (Exodus 29:37). The last part of that verse, in Hebrew, reads 'kol ha-noge'a ba-mizbei-ach yikadeish - everything that touches the altar will be holy.'

A few of our commentators (Rashbam and Ibn Ezra, in particular) read this verse and see a warning against coming to close to the altar. Rather than reading "whatever touches the altar," they read "whoever touches the altar" and teach that it means that before someone can touch the alter he or she (though likely he in those days) must be ritually pure. Others (Rashi and Bekhor Shor among them) indicate that it means that anything that touches the altar will become holy, whether it is a person or an object. Rashi goes so far as to say that even something that was previously ritually impure will become holy just by coming in contact with the altar.

What does all this mean for us? When I read Rashi's commentary, and commentary of those who agree with him that the altar has the power to make anything holy, I think about how we convey holiness today. In Judaism, holiness is inherently about separation, about distinction. God makes things holy by setting them apart from other things. But here, we see that things become holy by coming in contact with other holy things, in this case, the altar. As we make our way through this Shabbat towards the holiday of Purim, we can think about how Mordechai and Esther drew the king away from Haman, and towards themselves in order to bring him closer to holiness. Just by being in Esther's presence, Ahasuerus was able to make better decisions, perhaps, and became holier by being in the presence of holiness. It's sort of the opposite of guilt by association; it's holiness by association. It would benefit all of us to keep that in mind when we make decisions about our behaviors and interactions. Do we want to disassociate ourselves with the altar and its holy power. Or do we want to be closer to the altar and its holiness, closer to the likes of Mordechai and Esther. Shabbat Shalom and Happy Purim!

A Taste of Torah - Mishpatim

2010-02-12T15:38:00.001-06:00

This week's commentary is in honor of Amy, whose birthday Torah portion is Mishpatim, who studied law and advocates for reproductive choice, among doing all sorts of other wonderful things. Happy Birthday, Amy!

“Life for life, eye for, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise” (Exodus 21:23-25). Our Torah portion this week seems to put forward the idea that we can seek vengeance on others in the form in which they have hurt us. The texts seems to indicate that capital punishment, the death penalty, is acceptable. But our sages have realized the harshness with which this would come across. Or, as Martin Luther King, Jr., said it, “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.” So, what do we make of this law?

Ibn Ezra, the 12th century Spanish commentator indicates that one would have to be ignorant to take these words literally. Instead, he teaches, there is a ransom for each of these categories. “Eye for eye” means that while the one who caused the damage deserves to have his eye gouged out, he is permitted to make a payment to make up for the harm he has caused.

Interestingly, one of the most contentious issues comes out of the words that lead up to this list. Here’s the text in its entirety: “When men fight, and one of them pushes a pregnant woman and a miscarriage results, but no other damage ensues, the one responsible shall be fined… But if other damage ensues, the penalty shall be life for life, etc.” (Exodus 21:22-23). It in this text that Jewish belief about abortion and reproductive choice are based. According to this text as a whole, a miscarriage is a loss of property, while a death (of the man’s wife) as a result of the fight, is a loss of life. Judaism teaches that life begins at birth, not at conception, so if the fight between the two men results in losing the pregnancy, a life has not been lost. From this text develops Jewish law around abortion. Jewish law understands the fetus as part of the mother until it is born. Accordingly, the rabbis understand that there are times when an abortion is necessary in order to save the life of the mother, whose life is more important that the fetus she carries.

A Taste of Torah - Yitro

2010-02-05T12:50:00.002-06:00

The original top ten list comes to us this week: The Ten Commandments. (Though, I should mention that none of the commandments is more important than any of the others. But I digress.) Among them is the 9th commandment: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Abravanel, the 15th century Spanish-Jewish commentator, writes that first, God warns us not to harm our neighbors with our actions. Do not murder; do not harm his body. Do not commit adultery; do not harm his family. Do not steal; do not harm his possession. After these precautions, God warns us not to harm our neighbor with our words: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Literally, bearing false witness is lying under oath, but Abravanel takes it one step further and says that this includes a prohibition against mocking our neighbors, slandering them, disparaging them, or insulting him publicly. Abravanel believes, and I agree, that included among the Ten Commandments is the requirement to treat one another respectfully and avoid causing others any kind of harm, be it through our actions or through our harm.

Next Friday is Freedom to Marry Day. Between this Shabbat and next Shabbat, countless groups around the country will gather to stand in solidarity with gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer neighbors who are not allowed access to civil marriage in most states in our country. Here in Minnesota, people of faith, along with many others, will gather at the Minnesota Capitol at 8:30 am on Thursday, February 11 along with Outfront Minnesota to say, “I do support love.” As long as marriage equality is not a reality across our country, we will continue to have neighbors who are mocked, slandered, disparaged, and publicly embarrassed through their being told that they are less than equal in the eyes of our state and our federal government. It is not enough to be sure that our actions do not hurt others, as Abravanel teaches us, but we must make sure that neither do our words cause harm. I encourage you to find a way this week to stand on the side of love and support marriage equality in our country.

A Taste of Torah - Beshallach

2010-01-29T16:15:00.000-06:00

Our tradition teaches us that on Shabbat, we are supposed to have two loaves of challah at our Shabbat dinner tables. This week's Torah portion, Beshallach, provides the reasoning for this custom. After we have crossed the Sea of Reeds to freedom, the Israelites find themselves in the wilderness complaining about the lack of food, remembering that even though they had been enslaved, they always had enough to eat in Egypt.

God speaks to Moses and lets him know that each day bread in the form of manna will rain down from the sky. The Israelites should gather their share each day. On the sixth day (Friday), when the Israelites brought what they needed home, they would find that they had double what they needed (Exodus 16:5), a portion for Friday and a second portion for Shabbat. Next, Moses and Aaron tell the Israelites, "By evening you hsall know it was the Eternal who brought you out of the land of Egypt" (Exodus 16:6). Didn't they already know that it was God who had brought them out of Egypt? Apparently not. A few verses earlier, when the Israelites complain and say that they had had enough to eat in Egypt and it would have been better for them to have stayed there, they credit Moses and Aaron with having brought them into the wilderness.

The double portion of manna on Friday, which we now observe as the two loaves of challah at our Shabbat dinner tables, is meant to remind us that while Moses and Aaron helped lead us out of Egypt, it was actually God who brought us from slavery to freedom. When we sit down at our Shabbat dinner tables, or even when we eat an ordinary meal, God expects us to remember God's role in our lives. We have freedom not only because of our own actions and our own fortune, but also because of our relationship with God.

A Taste of Torah - Bo

2010-01-22T15:52:00.004-06:00

This week, we find the conclusion of the ten plagues and the Israelites' exodus from Egypt. (Next week, we'll get to the Sea of Reeds with the Egyptian army still on our tails.) In the midst of the story, we read that along with us, an erev rav, a mixed multitude went up with us from Egypt, along with all sorts of animals (Exodus 12:38). Our commentators ask about this erev rav, this mixed multitude who left Egypt with us. Most of the commentators agree that the mixed multitude were people of other nations (some say only the Egyptians and some say they had converted to Judaism) whom God chose to free alongside us.

Me'am Lo-ez, the 18th century Ladino commentary from the Ottoman Empire, teaches that when Pharaoh agreed to let the Israelites go, he refused to allow this mixed multitude to exit with us. But the Egyptians - those who would stay behind - saw that the Israelites refused to leave without the mixed multitude. We had our freedom, though it wasn't enough if those others who needed their freedom couldn't come along with us.
In the past two weeks following the earthquake in Haiti, its aftermath, and aftershocks, the world has responded. Most notably, CBS News highlighted the Israeli Defense Forces' "field hospital, the Rolls Royce of emergency medical care."

Beginning with our exodus from Egypt, the people of Israel have understood that unless the whole world is better off, we are not better off. We may at times choose to be critical of Israel and decisions her leaders make, but we should also count the blessings that Israel has bestowed upon the world and the role that the Jewish people continue to make towards fixing the broken world in which we live.

A Taste of Torah - Va'era

2010-01-15T17:03:00.000-06:00

The first seven of the Ten Plagues appear in this week's Torah portion, Va'era. The first plague, if you remember from the Passover Seder, is the plague of blood. According to the Torah, when Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites leave Egypt, God instructs Moses to stand before Pharaoh and warn him that if he doesn't let the Israelites go, Moses should strike the water of the Nile with his staff and God will turn the water to blood, killing all the fish in the Nile. As if that weren't enough, all of the water in Egypt, even the water stored in people's personal vessels, would turn to blood.

Pharaoh understands that by not allowing the Israelites to go, his entire country's water supply will be ruined, the fish that live in the water (off which the Egyptians likely receive nourishment) will die, and there won't be a drinkable drop of water in all of Egypt. Still, Pharaoh refuses to let the Israelites go, allowing his country's water source to be destroyed.

When we read this, we think of Pharaoh's foolishness, yet are we much different? We know that unless we change the ways in which we eat, we will destroy the sources of our nourishment, as well. When we buy meat raised on factory farms where the goal is not how well we treat the earth and God's creatures, but rather, how much meat we produce, we pollute our food and water system. Animal waste present in runoff from factory farms pollutes local water systems. Pharaoh is warned time and time again of the dangers that lie before him for not making the right decisions. We know the dangers, and yet we choose not to do anything to avoid them. Is locally sourced, sustainably raised meat more costly? Maybe. Maybe not. Sure, the sticker price is higher, but when we pay a lower price for unethically raised food, someone else - the people living near the factory farm, whose water supply is polluted - foot the bill, at least for now. Eventually, we'll all pay the price.

A Taste of Torah - Shemot

2010-01-08T15:00:00.002-06:00

We begin a new book of Torah this week, Shemot, or Exodus. Just eight verses into the book of Exodus, we see a major theme present itself: "A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighitng against us and rise from the ground'" (Exodus 1:8-9).

Pharaoh decides, in his effort to suppress the Jewish people in Egypt, that the male children born to the Israelites should be put to death. Moses' parents decide to try to save him. His mother puts him in a basket, floats him down the Nile. Miriam, his older sister, hides nearby to see what will happen to her baby brother. When she sees Pharaoh's daughter rescue Moses, she makes sure that her own mother, Moses' mother, will be the one to nurse him. With his parents' faith and his sister's watchful eye, Moses survives. But not all children who find themselves cast out from their parents' homes are so lucky. Some end up on the street of their own volition. Other's are cast out by their parents. And their are those whose parents' choices force them out. Check out this Torah commentary from Martin Rawlings-Fein and this recent article on youth homelessness in the Star Tribune.

Fortunately there are plenty of people working to end homelessness, and even youth homelessness, in particular. Each year, my teenage congregants partipate in Night on the Street, a sleep-out aimed at raising awareness about homelessness in Minnesota and to fundraise to eliminate it. Last year, roughly 400 teens participated and Temple Israel sent more teens than any other group.

A Taste of Torah - Parashat Va-y'chi - Chazak, Chazak v'Nitchazek: Renewed Resolve

2010-01-01T19:37:00.002-06:00

This weekend is about endings and new beginnings. Last night, we ended a year, 2009, and began a new one, 2010. This Shabbat, we end the book of Genesis with its last Torah portion, Va-y’chi, and in the coming week, we’ll begin the book of Exodus, with its first portion, Shemot. This time of year calls us, at least in our secular lives, to be more aware of ourselves. Just as at Rosh Hashanah we pledged to be better people, we often resolve at this time of year to be better than we have been over the past year. Our Torah portion teaches us the same lesson.

Parashat Va-y’chi contains Jacob’s blessings for his sons (his daughter, Dinah, markedly absent from his list), but more noteworthy than his sons’ blessings is the blessing he offers his grandsons, Joseph’s boys, Ephraim and Manasseh. Toward the end of our portion, Jacob blesses his grandsons. The text tells us: So he blessed them that day, saying, “By you shall the people of Israel give their blessing, saying, ‘May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh’” (Genesis 48:20). Rashi, the 11th century Biblical commentator, tells us that this verse means that when we bless our sons, we are to ask that God endow them with Ephraim and Manasseh’s qualities. What qualities? What is so special about them that we should hope that our sons turn out like them?

Well, the entire book of Genesis, the book we finish this week, is teeming with sibling rivalry. Here are just a few examples: Isaac and Ishmael have issues from the outset. Jacob and Esau’s hunger for their father’s blessing persists throughout their lives and interactions. Rachel and Leah compete for Jacob’s love. And Joseph clashes with his brothers right up to this week’s portion. In each generation of the Genesis narratives, siblings struggle with one another, but for Ephraim and Manasseh, things are different.

Rabbi Harold Kushner sees the “blessing in the boys’ relationship with each other. He suggests they become a source of blessing ‘perhaps because they were the first brothers in the Bible to get along peaceably, after the conflicts that marred the lives of Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers.’ So it’s possible the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh is one of peace and acceptance. When Jacob crosses his hands to bestow the greater blessing on the younger boy, neither boy complains (although their father does). They accept the blessing they are given, and given the lack of a story of brotherly strife, we assume it did not harm their relationship. May we be like Ephraim and Manasseh, at peace with our lot in life and in harmony with those we love. How powerful this ritual could become for our extended families, reminding ourselves weekly to celebrate our relationships regardless of the unexpected twists and turns they might take” (Joshua Rabin, Parashat Vayechi—For the Next Generation, USCJ Hazak Shabbat 2009).

On this Shabbat of New Year’s Day 2010, our Torah text reminds us of the words that Jewish families traditionally speak to their sons each Friday night, at the Shabbat dinner table: May you be like Ephraim and Manasseh. Our prayer for our children contains a hope that they can overcome history and do things differently and better than we have done them in the past. It is a resolution, a resolution to do better in the coming week, month, and year, than we have in the past.

As we reach the end of each book of Torah, it is our custom to announce the words, “Chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek – Be strong, be strong, and together we will be strengthened.” This custom developed over the course of Jewish history connected with God’s first revelation to Joshua after the death of Moses. God says: “Chazak ve’ematz – Be strong and resolute; do not be terrified or dismayed, for the Eternal your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9). Three times in the first nine verses of the book of Joshua, God tells Joshua to be strong (Joshua 1:6, 7, 9). So, three times at the conclusion of a book of Torah, we tell one another to be strong: Chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek – Be strong, be strong, and together we will be strengthened. Our tradition tells us that the Torah is a source of life – eitz chayim hee l’machazikim ba v’tomcheha m’ushar – it is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it, and all of its supporters are happy (Proverbs 3:18). But Torah is also demanding. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 26b) tells us that Torah weakens the strength of a person. It makes demands on our time and energy, it sometimes places us in conflict with values and temptations that contemporary life places before us.[1] Our secular resolutions at this time of year should be ones that are not in conflict with our Jewish values.

On this Shabbat of New Year’s Day 2010, as we resolve to be better people through the secular year ahead, we ask God to help us to be strong, chazak, strong enough to be like Ephraim and Manasseh, brothers who overcame their potential for conflict. We ask God to make us strong, chazak, strong in our New Year’s Resolutions, so that our Jewish principles will be in harmony with them. And we hope to acquire the strength we need together – v’nitchazek – as we turn over a new leaf in Torah and as we begin 2010. Chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek – Be strong, be strong, and together let us be strengthened. Shabbat Shalom. And Happy New Year.

[1] Daniel Goldfarb, “Chazak – Renewing Our Strength When We Finish the Torah,” The Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

A Taste of Torah - Vayeshev - Chanukah

2009-12-11T16:42:00.004-06:00

This week we begin our long sojourn in Egypt. In our Torah portion, Vayeshev, Joseph iritates his brothers so much that they cast him into a pit and subsequently sell him to the Ishmaelites who bring Joseph to Egypt. In the coming weeks, we'll read about Joseph's ascent to high society, namely in next week's Torah portion, Mikketz, Pharaoh will dress Joseph in the local garb, give him an Egpytian name (Zaphenath-paneah, Egyptian for 'God speaks; he lives.'), and Joseph will fully assimilate into Egyptian society so much so that when his brothers come down in search of food, they will not recognize him anymore.

Tonight, of course, also begins Hanukkah, the Jewish celebration of the Maccabees' revolt against the Syrian Greeks in 164 BCE. The Maccabees' revolt is one against assimilation, one which strives to have the Jewish community's particular qualities keep it separate from the larger society. And yet, the way we celebrate Hanukkah today, especially in America, has taken on one of the strongest qualities of assimilation. It has been commercialized. I was very surprised to find out while going through the stations on my car's XM Radio that from December 7-December 19, XM Radio has created a Hanukkah station, Radio Hanukkah. Radio Hanukkah leaves me conflicted. On the one hand, I absolutely love that for the first time in my recollection, I can turn on a radio station that plays holiday music and only hear Hanukkah music. I have heard Reform Jewish musical artists I know including Debbie Friedman, Rabbi Joe Black, Mark Bloom, and Rick Recht; I've heard Hanukkah songs I grew up singing, including the Dreidel Song, Oh Hanukkah, and Ma'oz Tzur; and I've even heard some of my favorite artists performing Hanukkah songs of their own, including the Barenaked Ladies. On the other hand, I realize that all of this feeling just like everyone else, having a radio station that plays music celebrating the holiday I am celebrating, means that my traditions are assimilating into the larger society. And then I have to ask myself, isn't the point of Hanukkah to celebrate our people's successful battle against assimilation?

Then, to top it all off, a friend shared an Op-Ed piece from today's New York Times by David Brooks, The Hanukkah Story. In his piece, Brooks shares the real story of Hanukkah. If you think the real story of Hanukkah is about the miracle of the oil and you'd like to keep on believing that, you probably want to stop reading at this point. In the real story of Hanukkah, there is no oil, but rather a rather bloody battle. I thought I knew the real story of Hanukkah, but this piece enlightened me to greater details about that period in our people's history. I always knew that Greek culture was infiltrating the Jewish community and that Mattathias and his sons, led by Judah Maccabee, succeeded in defeating the Greek army, reclaiming the Temple, and rededicating it for Jewish worship. What I didn't know was the battle that ensued within the Jewish community, too.

I should not have been surprised. The Maccabees and their followers not only went after the Greeks in the quest to hold on to Judaism as they saw it, but they also went after the members of their own Jewish community who had assimilated, Jews who had taken on Greek names like Jason, Jews who had begun exercising in the Greek gymnasiums, Jews who wanted to live in the secular world and the Jewish world simultaneously. All of a sudden, I didn't identify with the Maccabees. I identified with the Hellenistic Jews, the Jews who were adopting Greek culture. They wanted to feel like they were a part of the society around them; I want to feel like I'm a part of the society around me. They wanted to hear themselves reflected in the culture of their time; I want to hear myself reflected in the culture of my time (perhaps with Hanukkah music on the radio).

Of course, that left me wondering, if the person I am today would have sided with the Hellenistic Jews (whom Brooks, coincidently or deliberately, identifies as 'reformers'), then what does my celebration of Hanukkah actually celebrate? Am I supposed to now believe that the Jews of that time should not have adopted Greek culture at all? Is it that Antiochus went too far in outlawing Jewish practice, but if he hadn't done that the Maccabees' battle would not have been justified? I just don't know. What I do know is that when I light my menorah tonight, I will acknowledge that no matter how much I feel a part of the larger American society, even if there is a Hanukkah station on the radio now, I am still different. I do not feel bad that I am different. I celebrate that difference and at this time, I rededicate myself to acknowledging, accepting, and celebrating that difference. So, for what it's worth, Chag Chanukah Sameach, Happy Hanukkah!

A Taste of Torah - Vayishlach

2009-12-04T17:14:00.007-06:00

This week, more kissing. However, this time, it's not of the romantic variety like last week's kiss between Jacob and Rachel. In this week's Torah portion, Vayishlach, Jacob reunites with his brother, Esau. To recap, you might recall that Jacob and Esau had quite the falling out. Jacob stole his brother's birthright and their father's blessing, after which the two separated. This week, they reunite. Jacob, having been prosperous, shows up with his wives, his children, and a great deal of his possessions. Esau shows up with 400 men. From other places in the Bible[1], we learn that the presence of 400 men is metaphorical of an approaching battle. But when Esau arrives with 400 men, he doesn't engage Jacob in a battle. Instead, they embrace and kiss. What gives?

The Hebrew word for Esau kissing Jacob is vayishakehu: . In the text of the Torah, the letters are dotted on top. Rashi explains that there is a discrepancy of opinions about why the letters are adorned with dots. Some say that it indicates Esau's insincerity in the moment, but the prevailing opinion is that we would expect Esau to be insincere. The dots must indicate that something unusual is happening. Rashi teaches that according to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, we would expect Esau not to get along with Jacob. The dots, he says, teach us that this kiss was uncharacteristic. In this moment, Esau had genuine, tender feelings for his brother. Why? Because only he showed up with 400 men. Jacob didn't. Jacob didn't approach ready to wage a battle. Instead, he approached ready to reconcile with Esau and his willingness to reconcile warmed Esau's heart, allowing him to show mercy. If we approach one another with an open heart, then we set the tone and allow them to embrace us in a similar fashion.

[1] I Samuel 25:13, I Samuel 30:10, I Kings 22:6, among others.

A Taste of Torah - Vayetze

2009-11-27T16:28:00.001-06:00

Parashat Vayetze, this week's Torah portion, details the meeting of Jacob and Rachel, when Jacob experiences love at first sight as the woman who will become his beloved wife approaches the well in town to water her father's flock. As Rachel approaches the well, the townsfolk are unable to get the stone off the well to water their flocks. Jacob is introduces to Rachel and when he discovers that she is Laban's daughter, the family whom he's been seeking, he demonstrates his strength by rolling the stone off the well and then embraces Rachel and kisses her.

This kiss, though, is more than just a kiss. It is a moment that calls us back to his own parents' union. When his grandfather Abraham's servant seeks the right partner for Isaac, he knows that Rebekah is the one because she provides water not only for him, but also for his camels. At this moment, Jacob shows up and opens the well to provide water for the flock Rachel tends and also for the townsfolk. But then, a strange thing happens. Jacob kisses Rachel. We'd think that, perhaps especially in Biblical times, these two single people would have known better than to have kissed on their first date, especially in front of others. But the Hebrew lets us know that this is more than just a chance kiss. In Hebrew, the word used for Rebekah's providing water for Abraham's servant's camels is hishkatah. When Jacob provides water for the sheep, the text tells us, vayash'k. And when he kisses Rachel, the text says, vayishak. Though the verb for providing water comes from a different root (shin-koof-hay) than the one for a kiss (nun-shin-koof), the parallel in sounds is clearly important. This is more than a kiss. It is beloveds meeting for the first time, ready to care for one another, just as one of them learned from his parents.

A Taste of Torah - Tol'dot

2009-11-20T16:23:00.007-06:00

Picture this scene: A mother dresses her son in goat skin to disguise him as his hairier brother so that he can steal his brother's blessing from their father. This is the scene in this week’s Torah portion, Tol’dot. Rebekah wants the son she favors, Jacob, to get the blessing from her husband, Isaac. But Esau, Jacob’s brother is hairier, so certainly, Isaac will know the difference. Isaac reaches out his hand to identify his son. His eyes have been dimmed by old age; he can no longer see the difference between his sons. Isaac says, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau” (Genesis 27:22) It seems as though Isaac is on to Rebekah’s scheme, yet he still gives Jacob the blessing that was deserving of Isaac.

As Reform Jews, we know that we need to look at Biblical text in its own context in order to understand its message for our time. Rebekah’s maneuver was not just a costume change. It was a shepherding trick. Check out the closing scene from the movie “Cold Mountain." Fast-forward to 5 minutes and 45 seconds into the clip:

What Rebekah did would have been recognized by the shepherding audience of the Torah as a technique for getting a parent (a sheep) to accept a child (a lamb) that isn’t its own. Of course, this method doesn’t speak to us today, but we make use of the tricks we know to win the affection of those whose love we desire.

A Taste of Torah - Chaye Sarah

2009-11-13T14:44:00.001-06:00

Parshat Chayei Sarah from G-dcast.com

More Torah cartoons at www.g-dcast.com

In this week's Torah portion, Chaye Sarah, we move on to the next generation of our Genesis ancestors. At the beginning of the portion, Sarah dies. At the end, Abraham dies. In the middle, Isaac begins to create a family of his own. Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac. The servant asks for guidance to know which girl will be the right one for Isaac. It is not her beauty that identifies Rebekah as the right one for Isaac, but rather her compassion. She not only takes care of Abraham's servant, but his camels, too. Her care for others is the quality that the servant identifies as the necessary quality in choosing her for Isaac. All too often, we focus on the things that don't really matter. In Pirke Avot, Rabbi Meir teaches us, "Al tistakel b'kankan, ela b'mah she-yesh bo - Do not look at the flask, but rather at what is inside." Or, as we know, don't judge a book by its cover.

A Taste of Torah - Vayera

2009-11-06T16:42:00.001-06:00

This week’s Torah portion, Vayera, is filled with family conflict. In it, Sarah and Abraham fear that they will not be able to conceive a child; Sarah asks Abraham to have a child with her maidservant, Hagar; Sarah becomes jealous of Hagar and the latter’s son, Ishmael; and Abraham takes his son, Isaac, to the top of a mountain to kill him at God’s request. It’s neither an easy nor a pleasant portion. But from conflict and controversy come growth and reconciliation.

When Sarah becomes jealous of Hagar and Ishmael, she demands that Abraham cast them out. Abraham doesn’t know what to do. He goes to God and asks how to remedy the situation. Though we might not agree with how God, Abraham and Sarah handle things, God says to Abraham, “Sh’ma b’kolah ~ Listen to her voice.” God tells Abraham to do what Sarah asks, thus keeping peace between Abraham and Sarah. According to the midrash, this moment, where Abraham yields to Sarah’s wishes, teaches us that in matters of prophecy, Abraham was secondary to Sarah. That’s not what we’d expect from Torah in its own day, for a man to be secondary to a woman, but that’s what our tradition tells us. Sometimes, when we find ourselves amidst conflict, we need to listen carefully, because the answer may not come from where we’d expect.

A Taste of Torah - Noach

2009-10-23T16:49:00.001-05:00

In Noach, this week's Torah portion, the legend of Noah and the Ark is followed by the story of the Tower of Babel. In the narrative, the people all band together to create a tower that will reach heaven. They indicate that their intention is to make a name for themselves. They want to be remembered. But according to the midrash, in building the tower, the people become more concerned with the structure and lose sight of their connection to one another. As bricks fall, they become enraged at how their loss delays the project, but when people fall from the tower, no one seems to care.

The people of the Tower of Babel do make a name for themselves, in the end. Their tower does not reach heaven, but they are remembered for losing sight of what really matters, the people who are in our lives. We often focus on how much we can acquire, how much we can do, but at Judaism's core is an intention to see how much we can be. We are, after all, human beings, not human doings.

A Taste of Torah - B'reishit

2009-10-16T17:37:00.001-05:00

This week we begin the Torah again with the first portion, B’reishit, at the beginning of the book of Genesis. One of the narratives in this portion is the story of Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel are Adam and Eve’s sons. Each makes an offering to God. When Abel’s offering is accepted and Cain’s is not, Cain becomes enraged and kills his brother. God confronts Cain and asks him, “Where is your brother, Abel?” Cain responds and says, “I do not know. Am I my brother’s guardian?”

The Hebrew words that translate as ‘am I my brother’s guardian’ are ‘ha-shomer achi anochi.’ The Hebrew letter hey at the beginning of the phrase is translated as what is called an interrogative hey, a hey that indicates that a question is coming. But the other use of a hey at the beginning of a Hebrew word is to indicate the word ‘the.’ So, the sentence could read, “The guardian of my brother is ‘Anochi.’” Anochi is one of the Hebrew words for ‘I.’ It is the word for ‘I’ that God uses to refer to God’s self. Cain could be saying to God, “The guardian of my brother is Anochi; You, God, should have been looking out for my brother.” Up until this point in Torah, no one has ever died. It is possible that Cain didn’t even know that he was capable of killing Abel and he reminds God that God is responsible, too. We bear responsibility for our actions, but we have the authority to hold God accountable, too.

A Taste of Torah - Simchat Torah-Sh'mini Atzeret

2009-10-09T17:07:00.002-05:00

When we finish reading most books, we move on to the next book in the series or to a new book. Once in a while, we return to a favorite book and re-read it some time later, but hardly ever do we start a book again as soon as we finish it. Tonight is not only Shabbat, but also Simchat Torah-Sh'mini Atzeret, when we end the book of Deuteronomy and begin again with Genesis.

As Jews, we re-read Torah over and over again, starting again the moment we finish, to show us that what Torah has to teach us is never-ending. We read the same books, the same portions, the same words over and over again, not because something in them has changed, but because something in us has changed. Each time we re-read those words, we hear something different because we are now different.

Chazak, chazak, v'nitchazeik... Be strong, be strong, and together let us be strengthened!

Sukkot: Season of Gratitude

2009-10-02T17:41:00.002-05:00

Tonight at sundown begins the festival of Sukkot. Our Torah reading for Sukkot is Leviticus 23:33-44. The text tells us when Sukkot takes place, that we are to live in a sukkah for seven days, and make use of four species: the palm, willow, and myrtle (that make the lulav) and the etrog.

Earlier this week, Ruth Brin, an accomplished Jewish author, poet, and liturgist died. Her poems appear in just about every Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist prayer book. Following is one from her book Harvest: Collected Poems and Prayers titled "Sukkot" (pp. 161-2). Zichrona livracha, may the memory of Ruth Brin be an everlasting blessing.

On our tables are the harvests of the earth,
pears and grapes, corn and peppers;
we thank You for the food which sustains
us in all seasons of the year.

In winter we stand at our windows looking out
upon dreary trees;
long ago the harvest was taken, only dry stalks remain,
and frozen groudn beneath the snow.

We thank You for shelter, for the body that shelters the spirit,
for the house and the city and the nation which shelter us.

For the talents of those who design and build,
for the ability of those who make shelters of justice
and structures of peace.

In the spring, after rain, our eyes are filled with loveliness;
greening lawn, opening bud, darting bird.

To thank You for fruitful earth and talented people
is not enough;
there is life and growth, perception,
consciousness, logic and truth,
and because of these there is Your gift of freedom.

We thank You that we are not like bud or bird,
but being human, are free to choose
even between good and evil, life and death.

In July, in the warm sweet days of summer,
we thank You for beauty.

The oaks cast their deep shadows on the lawn,
and we thank You for love:

That we dwell in the shadow of Your love,
that we are able to love,
even as You love us.

Now at Sukkot, the apples hang ripe and heavy
on the trees,
the trembling leaves shine red and gold in the sunlight.

You are the source of the radiance of the sun,
the bridegroom,
and of the fruitfulness of the earth, his bride.

For shelter and freedom, for love and beauty,
for all the harvest of earth and sun,
of talent and spirit,
For all Your blessings, we give thanks to You.

A Taste of Torah - Haazinu

2009-09-25T16:06:00.001-05:00

This week is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of return, the one that falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Torah portion this week is practically the last one in the Torah, Haazinu. There's a short portion called V'zot Habrachah that gets linked to Breshit on Simchat Torah in two weeks.

The opening word of this week's portion, the word haazinu means 'Give ear.' It's often translated as 'Listen,' but it is linked to the Hebrew word for ear, ozen. At the beginning of the portion, as Moses prepares to die and let the Israelites cross into the Promised Land with Joshua, Moses calls out to heaven and earth and says, "Listen up, Heaven and Earth, to what I'm about to say!" It seems strange that as Moses addresses the people that he asks heaven and earth to listen, rather than the people.

Heaven and earth serve as witnesses to this moment because, unlike us, they fulfill God's mission constantly. While we aren't always as consistent as they are, they serve as a model. The 18th century commentary Me'am Lo-ez teaches that heaven represents the soul and earth the body, teaching us that we need to strive to walk in God's ways with every part of our being. On this Shabbat of return, consider the ways in which you dedicate your whole self to the things that are truly important.

Will You Marry Me? A Jewish View of Marriage Equality

2009-09-21T12:07:00.002-05:00

Will You Marry Me?
A Jewish View of Marriage Equality
Rosh Hashanah 5770
September 19, 2009 – 1 Tishri 5770
Temple Israel – Minneapolis, MN
Rabbi Jared H. Saks

A friend recently sent me a link to a video on YouTube.[1] It features a young man in his late 20s or early 30s. As the video begins, the man brushes off the toes of his shoes, buttons his sports coat and fixes his hair. Then, he takes a deep breath—the kind you take when you are about to undergo a nerve wracking experience—and walks up to the front door of a nearby house. When the door opens, the young man is greeted by a gentleman, perhaps in his 60s. The young man looks the gentleman in the eye, with a mixed look of fear and anticipation, and says, “I’d like to ask for Sinead’s hand in marriage.” The gentleman takes a similar deep breath and says, “Sure. No problem.”

In the next scene, we don’t find the younger man standing with his beloved before an officiant. Instead, we get a glimpse, from inside a house, of him coming up the front walk. He rings the door bell and repeats the previous scene with the woman who lives there. Then, we watch him walk to the house next door and later down an alley. He speaks more than one language. He visits an apartment building, presumably stopping at each apartment. He is in urban centers and rural fields. He stops a woman walking her dog. And each time, he asks the same question, “May I ask for Sinead’s hand in marriage?”

At the end of the video, words appear on the screen: How would you feel if you had to ask 4 million people for permission to get married? Lesbians and gay men are denied access to civil marriage in Ireland. Lesbians and gay men are denied access to civil marriage in Minnesota, too. And if marriage equality were to be put up to a popular vote, gay men and lesbians where we live would have to ask three-and-a-half million friends, neighbors and fellow Minnesotans for permission to get married.

Marriage is about sanctifying a loving relationship. It is an opportunity for a couple to celebrate the values of long-term commitment, faithfulness and the willingness to share life’s joys and sorrows. It is about a public pledge of commitment.[2] Marriage has the potential to provide mutual care for both partners. Marriage enables the individuals to make a greater contribution to the common good. Marriage helps to make sure that all children are wanted, loved, and nurtured. “The benefits of a good marriage are the same, no matter your sexual orientation.”[3]

So, why should I address you on the topic of marriage on Rosh Hashanah? First of all, Rosh Hashanah reminds us of the magnitude of the world and how small we are in comparison to it. Our liturgy helps us remember that we have little control over how or when we will die – who by fire and who by water – or how or when we were born. So much of who we are is beyond our control. Each of us is as unique as our fingerprints.[4] Like so much else about us, our sexual identities are determined for us, not by us.[5]

Secondly, Rosh Hashanah is inherently connected to the concept of marriage. On this day, the first of the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, we formally begin the process of teshuvah, our return to God. Our tradition teaches us that when we received Torah at Sinai, the people of Israel wedded God with Mount Sinai as our chuppah and Torah our ketubah. Over the past year, we have strayed from our relationship with God and perhaps even feel that God has strayed from us, too. So today, on Rosh Hashanah, we renew our wedding vows, we return to our commitment, we reinvest in our relationship with God.[6]

But for some of us the metaphor that our relationship with God is a marriage is just that, a metaphor. For gay men and lesbians, marriage is mere figure of speech, withheld from us by secular society. Today, on this morning of Rosh Hashanah, I want to discuss with you the topic of marriage equality. Marriage equality goes by a variety of names, many of which I will use during the course of this sermon, based upon the papers, essays, and sermons that I have read in preparation. Some people say gay marriage. Others say same-sex marriage or same-gender marriage. No matter what it’s called, it’s all the same thing. It is the right of two people of the same sex to marry one another. And in the State of Minnesota, that right does not exist.

In 1994, a committee here at Temple Israel addressed the issue of wedding ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples. The result was a full educational program on the inclusion of gay and lesbian individuals, couples and families in the Temple community, including the affirmation that wedding ceremonies would be performed by our rabbis in the sanctuary or chapel for any two Jews, regardless of whether those two Jews were of the same sex or of opposite sexes. Over the past year, we have explored the topic of ceremonies for interfaith couples. I will not be addressing interfaith marriage today. Nor will I be addressing same sex marriages performed on this bimah. Both of those issues have been decided and are part of the fabric of life at Temple Israel.

Today, I will be addressing the need for marriage equality in the State of Minnesota and our Jewish responsibility to ensure that any two people, regardless of their gender, can have their marriage recognized not only by God and the Jewish community, but by our civil society, as well.

Opponents of marriage equality assert that same-sex marriage is not traditional marriage, but what does that term really mean? They imply that traditional marriage is the marriage of one man and one woman, but we Jews know that the definition of marriage has continually changed. The Bible defines marriage as a union between one man and one or more women. There are three patriarchs mentioned in the T’filah and four matriarchs, after all. Jacob had two wives. Classical rabbinic texts understand marriage as the acquisition of property. A man acquires his wife from her father.

We also understand as Americans that marriage has changed. In the past, most states prohibited interracial marriage, but that injustice ended with perhaps one of the best named Supreme Court cases, Loving vs. Virginia, in which Mildred Loving, a woman of African and Native American descent, and her husband, Richard, won the right to remain married, overturning Virginia’s and subsequently all states’ laws banning interracial marriage. “These understandings have changed … in greater recognition of the humanity of persons and their moral and civil rights.”[7] Our current understanding of marriage must also change, because of our greater recognition of the moral and civil rights of gay men and lesbians.

The classical rabbinic texts do not address same sex marriage. The scant references to homosexuality in our tradition are unaware of the possibility of committed, long-term relationships between two people of the same sex and often condemn what the rabbis do know of homosexuality. But the Talmud teaches us that the value of human dignity is so great that it supersedes any negative commandment in the Torah.[8] Deuteronomy teaches us Tzedek, tzedek tirdof, Justice, justice shall you pursue.[9] In giving the world the concept of justice, Torah gave the world equality: fair treatment of the poor, the orphan, the widow and the stranger. Time and time again, Torah commands us not to oppress the stranger, because we were strangers in the land of Egypt and we know the heart of the stranger. We are Israel and we know what it is to be labeled as different.[10] As our Daily Worship prayer book reminds us, “We are Israel, schooled in the suffering of those tyrannized by oppression. Their anguish is ours, their poverty and humiliation diminish us.”[11] Empathy is a central virtue in Judaism. It demands that we see things from the point of view of the other.

The civil rights era of the 1960s and 1970s saw a renewed voice for various causes: racism, sexism, and anti-Semitism, among others. But equal rights for gays and lesbians all but fell on deaf ears and on many levels cease to exist even today. Until the 1960s, there were no major Jewish voices speaking out for civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans. But in 1965, a year after the Civil Rights Act, “one national Jewish organization spoke out against the harassment of [gays and lesbians] … that [organization] was the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods,”[12] what is now the Women of Reform Judaism. Reform Jewish women have always been an empathetic voice for equality; we must listen to them.

In the quest for marriage equality, we hear the words of the 1960s echoing in our ears. Daniel Judson writes, “This is an historic moment in which the rights and human dignity of a minority is [sic] under assault. As Jews, we know what it is to be harassed and persecuted because we are different. We too have been considered dangerous, deviant, a threat to society, abhorrent. As Jews, we ought to be frightened when a majority tries to deny rights to a minority they think are not equal to the rest of us.”[13] We must have empathy and recognize the need for marriage equality in Minnesota.

Religious Jews who favor same-sex marriage do not do so only because they embrace American ideals. Rather, we approach marriage equality with a sense that it is part of our obligation to pursue justice. In Genesis, we are given a vision of humanity that tells us every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.[14] In confronting the civil rights issues of the 1960s, Rabbi [Max] Shapiro addressed the challenges of racial inequality. “There is a religious standard,” Rabbi Shapiro wrote, “by which man relates to his fellow man. ‘All men are brothers.’ ‘He who honors his fellow man honors God.’ No religious person – no Jew – can dispute this.” Rabbi Shapiro reminded us then that we have always been a people driven by a sense of justice. We Jews have been the victims of discrimination. We have had jobs, schools and neighborhoods withheld from of because of who we are. “We understand that the law is not enough. The law tells us not to injure. The law forbids us from denying others their rights. But religion goes beyond the law. It demands that we help! Judaism demands that we help the less fortunate, that we protect [their] liberties, that we enhance [their] rights.” [15]

The Talmud teaches us that God created all of humanity from one person to illustrate God’s genius. When coins are minted from a mold, all are alike. But when God created humankind, though we were all minted from the same mold, each of us turned out differently so that each of us could say, “For my sake was the world created.”[16] The Psalmist teaches us, “How many are the things you have made, O God! You have made them all with wisdom; the earth is full of your creations!”[17] Our diversity speaks to God’s power. Each one of us has worth and value and dignity.[18] We must find God’s image in one another and recognize the need for marriage equality in Minnesota.

Rabbi Ed Feinstein speaks of his support for marriage equality saying, “I support the freedom to marry because I have never met gays and lesbians in the abstract. It is my son and my daughter, it is my sister and my brother, and I wish for them the privilege, the miracle, the gift of a long and lasting relationship. And in our faith community, we call that marriage.”[19] We do not know gay and lesbian Jews in the abstract. Gay and lesbian Jews are part of our Temple Israel community. We participate in nearly every other aspect of their religious lives. We bless and name them as infants. We celebrate with them as they become B’nai Mitzvah and reach Confirmation. We bury their grandparents and parents and eventually them. But we are barred from fully participating in their marriages, because in the State of Minnesota gays and lesbians cannot be legally married.

Marriage equality must be important to us as the Temple Israel community. Our mission statement affirms that Temple Israel is a welcoming and accessible place for worship, for lifelong learning, for celebration and for gathering. We are a community that takes care of one another. At this point, I could go through a list of all of the rights and responsibilities of marriage that are denied to gay and lesbian couples in Minnesota. There are 515 of them on the state level and over 1100 on the federal level. But at this moment, the details of them don’t matter. What matters is that by denying marriage equality to gays and lesbians, we are denying them the ability to take care of one another and that is in opposition to who we are as a Temple community and as members of the Jewish people.

Legal marriage would offer more than the opportunity of joint income tax filing, health care benefits, the rights of inheritance, and the authority to make health care decisions. Legal marriage would offer the stability and safety that every family and every child deserves. Imagine that one of our Temple families was on vacation and one of the parents fell ill. If the other parent had no legal rights to make a medical decision, that family is at risk. By seeking marriage equality, we are asking for the ability to take care of one another, to look out for our children’s well-being. Who can fault anyone for wanting to take care of his or her family?

For those of us born since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, I can tell you that marriage equality is a non-partisan issue. Most of us support marriage equality. The ideals of the Democratic Party demand that we protect our civil rights and liberties.[20] As for the Republican Party, young Republican Madeline Koch asked for a new GOP for the next generation in an opinion piece in the Star Tribune this summer. In her piece, she indicated her desire to remain a member of the Republican Party, a party that she hopes will not back down on economic issues and homeland security, seeing the need for fiscal conservatism. But she also wrote, “We want gay marriage. Though we may not all be willing to march in the Pride parades or even send fiery letters to our congressmen about it, most of us believe that gay couples deserve the right to be legally wed. I can guarantee you this: The issue of gay marriage is not going to go away, and unless you start shifting within the Republican Party, you will not gain our support. ”[21] Both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party will need to embrace marriage equality if they wish continue to have support for their party platforms and remain players in the political arena.

For us, as Jews, especially on this morning of Rosh Hashanah, marriage equality is a religious issue. As we renew our commitment to our relationship with God, we must add our voices to the campaign for marriage equality. As Jews, we know what it is like to have our rights limited. Our experience demands that we care for those who are strangers even in the places they live, because we were strangers in the land of Egypt. As Jews, our tradition demands that we recognize the image of God in each and every individual. “The question is no longer whether Minnesota will achieve marriage equality, but when.”[22] Please join me in the campaign for marriage equality in the State of Minnesota.

Hear our voice God and help us to recognize Your image in each and every person, inspiring us to protect liberties and enhance rights. Hear our voice God and help us to pursue justice and human dignity, because everything is created for Your glory. Hear our voice God and help us to diminish the humiliation of gay men and lesbians that we may all be uplifted on this morning of Rosh Hashanah. Shanah tovah v’tikateivu, May we all be inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life.

[1] MarriagEquality, “Sinead’s Hand,” http://www.marriagequality.ie/action/sineadshand/.
[2] Rebecca T. Alpert, “Reconstructionist Judaism and Marriage Equality,” June 2005.
[3] Jerry Brown, “Protecting the Institution of Marriage…” Northridge, CA: Temple Ahavat Shalom, Yom Kippur 5769/2008.
[4] Ken Chasen and Rachel Timoner, “Ve’erastich Li Be-Tzedek: I Will Betroth You to Me in Righteousness,” Los Angeles, CA: Leo Baeck Temple, Yamim Noraim 5769 (Fall 2008).
[5] Marcia A. Zimmerman, “My House Shall Be A House of Prayer for All Peoples: How Welcoming Are We to Gays and Lesbians?” Minneapolis: Temple Israel, December 3, 2004.
[6] Denise L. Eger, “Erev Rosh Hashanah 5769,” West Hollywood, CA: Congregation Kol Ami, September 29, 2008.
[7] Brown.
[8] Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 19b-20a.
[9] Deuteronomy 16:20.
[10] Joceyln Hudson, “Love Your Neighbor As Yourself,” Santa Ana, CA: Temple Beth Shalom, Yom Kippur 5769.
[11] Harvey J. Fields and Chaim Stern, adapted, as it appears in Temple Israel’s Daily Evening Worship for use in the synagogue and the home, Minneapolis, MN: Temple Israel.
[12] Maragert Moers Wenig, “Truly Welcoming Lesbian and Gay Jews,” The Jewish Condition: Essays on Contemporary Judaism Honoring Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, ed., Aron Hirt-Manheimer, New York: UAHC Press, 1995, p. 330.
[13] Chasen and Timoner.
[14] David Ellenson, “Same-Sex Marriage, In the Jewish Tradition, “The Jewish Week. March 12, 2004, p. 29.
[15] Max A. Shapiro, “Religion and Politics,” Here Am I; Send Me, Minneapolis: Temple Israel, p. 8.
[16] Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5.
[17] Psalm 104:24.
[18] Chasen and Timoner.
[19] Hudson.
[20] The Democratic Party, “What We Stand For,” http://www.dnc.org/a/party/stand.html.
[21] Madeline Koch, “Wanted: GOP for the next generation,” The Star Tribune, July 30, 2009.
[22] OutFront Minnesota Marriage Equality Sign Up, http://www.outfront.org.

A Taste of Torah - Rosh Hashanah

2009-09-18T15:44:00.001-05:00

Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and sweet new year!

On Rosh Hashanah, we read the Akeidah, the Binding of Isaac. It is said to be one of the tests of Abraham's faith where God tells him to take his son Isaac and bring him to the top of Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice. It is a challenging story that I often question its role in the High Holy Days. Why should we read a story of a God who asks the only believer at the time to sacrifice his own son?

The story, I think, serves two purposes. First, it is a text that speaks out against the other cultures of its time. They would have engaged in child sacrifice, but our God puts a stop to it. (Maybe that should have happened before Abraham had Isaac tied to the alter?!?) Also, it teaches us of Abraham's faith and his willingness to follow God. While we might not admire someone who believes that God has told him to sacrifice his son and then follows through on that belief, we can appreciate Abraham's conviction for what he believes. If only we were so sure of ourselves!

Rosh Hashanah sermon to follow in the coming days...

A Taste of Torah - Nitzavim-Vayeilech

2009-09-11T15:52:00.000-05:00

This Shabbat we read the same verses that we will read in just over two weeks on Yom Kippur. Nitzavim-Vayeilech addresses the assembled people about to enter into a covenant with God with the words, "You stand this day, every one of you, before the Eternal your God--your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your women, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer" (Deut. 29:9-10).

Often we think of Torah and Jewish text as being androcentric, being mostly about men, often excluding the women. But this week's Torah portion reminds us that each and every one of us is included in the covenant with God, not just the people with titles, not just the men, and not even just the Israelites, but each and every person -- men, women, and children -- who were part of the Israelite community.

It's easy to be a part of a community when we are at the center of it, when we are its leaders, or when the community addresses us specifically. Often, though, we find ourselves outside the circle, excluded, and isolated from the larger community. Nitzavim-Vayeilech reminds us that just as we hope that others will reach out to us when we feel excluded, God expects us to make sure the people on the fringe are brought into the inner circle and made part of our community. This is part of our responsibility and God's expectation of us.

A Taste of Torah - Ki Tavo

2009-09-04T17:30:00.000-05:00

Ki Tavo, this week's Torah portion, opens with a commandment to bring the first fruits of our harvest as an offering to God, acknowledging God's having brought us into the Land of Israel. Then, we are told to recite the words that appear in the Passover Haggadah (Deut. 26:5-10):

My father was a fugitive Aramean. He went down to Egypt with meager numbers and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us. We cried to the Eternal, the God of our ancestors, and the Eternal heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and our oppression. The Eternal freed us from Egypt by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm and awesome power, and by signs and portents. God brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So, I now bring the first fruits of the soil which You, O Eternal, have given me.

The text, along with the Passover Haggadah, tells us not to take for granted the blessings that we have. Perhaps you believe that the Exodus from Egypt literally happened. Or maybe you believe, as I do, that the lessons of the Exodus are more powerful and more truthful than whether or not the Exodus actually happened (I don't think it did!). Either way, I know that a lot of the blessings that a lot of the blessings I have in my life are the result of circumstance beyond my control. I do believe that God plays a role in those blessings and our tradition teaches us to be grateful and to offer our thanks.

A Taste of Torah - Ki Teitzei

2009-08-28T17:36:00.000-05:00

Judaism takes promises seriously. In this week's Torah portion Ki Teitzei, the text instructs us that when we make a vow to God, we should not delay in completing it. It goes on to tell us that one way to avoid sin is to avoid making promises.

Often, when we make a promise, we don't carry through with the same level of enthusiasm with which we made the promise. According to some commentators, this lack of enthusiasm is as bad as not having followed through at all. That's why avoiding making promises keeps us from sinning.

The Hebrew word for vow is neder, which may sound familiar to you. Kol Nidre, the evening service of Yom Kippur, is named after a prayer by the same name that means 'all the promises.' It asks God to forgive us for not following through on promises we make between this Yom Kippur and the next if after honest effort we find ourselves unable to fulfill them. We are only let off the hook if we fail at keeping our promises when we try with the same level of intention and enthusiasm that we had when we made them.

A Taste of Torah - Shoftim

2009-08-21T16:31:00.000-05:00

This week's Torah portion, Shoftim, includes laws regarding the conduct of the Israelite army when it is attacking a city. These laws include a commandment that when the Israelite army attacked a city, it was prohibited from destroying the fruit-bearing trees in or around that city. While other trees could be destroyed, the ones that sustain the people could not, even if it was the army's goal to wipe out the city.

From this commandment, the rabbis developed the Jewish value of bal tashchit - a prohibition against destruction. The text asks, rhetorically, if the trees are human beings who can flee from the army. Of course, they are not, and they cannot. We are reminded that God created the world and has placed it under our care. But we do not own the world; God does. God has lent it to us. If we destroy the world, there will be no one left to repair it after us. Consider the ways in which you purposefully make use of the world around you and changes you can make in your behavior to protect it for others.

A Taste of Torah - Re'eh

2009-08-14T18:10:00.001-05:00

Our Torah portion this week, Re'eh, reminds us of our obligation to those among us and around us who are in need. In Deuteronomy 15:7, God tells us that if there are people among us who are needy, we can not close our hands nor harden our hearts to them. Rashi, the 12th century commentator and scholar, tells us that when God instructs us not to harden our hearts, God understands that when we see someone in need, we often deliberate whether or not we should help that person. Will he buy food with the money I give him, or is he going to buy liquor? Does she really need the money for the bus home, or is she going to buy drugs? This debate sometimes leads us to close our hand, to decide not to help, rather than taking care of those less fortunate than ourselves.

As with many texts about caring for others, God reminds us a few verses later that we have an obligation to take care of others because we were among those in need when we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. We repay God for our freedom by helping others get what they need. The text tells us that we have to take care of whatever need others have. Sometimes it can be hard to know what another person's real need is. When we find ourselves faced with helping others less fortunate that we are, we should at least treat them with dignity and respect, making eye contact, smiling, and perhaps greeting them with a kind word expressing our regret if we choose not to help. God understands that we struggle with how to best help others, but doesn't let us off the hook just because the decision might be difficult.

A Taste of Torah - Ekev

2009-08-07T17:01:00.000-05:00

In this week's Torah portion, Ekev, Moses reminds the Israelites of the incident with the Golden Calf, when Moses came down from the mountain and found the people dancing around the golden, which made him so upset that he threw down the tablets of the Ten Commandments, shattering them at the foot of the mountain. At first, God is prepared to wipe out the people, but Moses challenges God and asks, "What will the Egyptians think of You if You only took the Israelites into the wilderness to kill them?" Then, Moses reminds God of the promises God made to the matriarchs and patriarchs, asking if God would break those vows. In the end, God follows Moses' advice and has Moses create a new set of tablets.

There are times when we are so angry with what others have done that we don't know how we can forgive them. Even God feels this way. But it's important to have people around us - like Moses' presence for God - who remind us to offer second chances.

A Taste of Torah - D'varim

2009-07-24T13:51:00.000-05:00

In the first portion of the book of Deuteronomy, D'varim, Moses reminds the Israelites of God's vow not to let any of the Israelites of the generation that left Egypt into the Promised Land because of their complaining and asking to go back to Egypt, except for one of them, Caleb. Caleb was one of the 12 scouts who checked out the Land of Israel. Instead of coming back with a report like 10 of the others talking about how they'd never be able to succeed, Caleb - along with Joshua who would succeed Moses - said the people had God on their side and they would be successful.

The Talmud (Sotah 34b) tells us that when Caleb scouted out the land, he saw things that the spies did not see, that he prayed at the graves of our ancestors, and drew strength from our collective past to get him through the difficulties of the moment. When you find yourself in a tight spot, to what do you look back to find strength to move forward?

A Taste of Torah - Matot-Masei

2009-07-17T16:49:00.001-05:00

This week we finish the Book of Numbers, the fourth book in the Torah, with a double portion, Matot-Masei. In the latter portion, Masei, God asks us to establish what are called 'cities of refuge,' places to where someone who unintentionally causes the death of another person can run in order not to be killed by someone seeking revenge. As long as the person who has caused the death remains in the city, the people of that city are required to protect him or her. Of course, the way we in modern society handle manslaughter - causing the death of another person by accident - is different. Nonetheless, these cities of refuge create an important model for us. What are the places where you seek refuge? To where can you run to be safe and seek sanctuary? Who are the people who protect you when you need to be safe?

(And since this is the last portion of the Book of Numbers, we say, "Chazak, chazak v'nitchazeik - Be strong, be strong and let us strengthen one another!")

A Taste of Torah - Pinchas

2009-07-10T17:23:00.001-05:00

This week's Torah portion, Parashat Pinchas, includes the case of the daughters of Zelophehad, who are Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah and Noah. When their father dies, the five of them bring their case before Moses to see if in spite of the fact that they don't have brothers, that they should be able to inherit their father's land. Up until this point, only men could inherit from their families when others died. Moses, not sure of what to do, brings their case before God. God sides with Mahlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah and Noah and says that they should be able to inherit.

Because of the daughters of Zelophehad, there is a step in the right direction towards equality among men and women in Jewish tradition. Since them, more has been done, but there's still a lot to do. There are still ways in which we need to ensure equality among men and women, even in Reform Judaism.

A Taste of Torah - Chukat-Balak

2009-07-03T16:15:00.001-05:00

This week we have a double portion, Chukat-Balak, and Parashat Balak has one of the best stories in the Torah, in my opinion. King Balak, after whom the portion is named, sends Balaam to curse the Israelites, but God intervenes and places an angel in the path of Balaam's donkey, an angel that initially only the donkey can see. When Balaam gets angry with the donkey, the donkey asks Balaam (Yes! The donkey talks!) if she has ever disobeyed him before. Only when the donkey helps him realize that there's something special going on does the angel appear to Balaam. Instead of cursing the Israelites, Balaam says the words that become part of our morning worship: How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel - Mah tovu ohalecha Ya'akov, mishkenotecha Yisrael. This week's Torah portion reminds us to pay attention; when something isn't the way it usually is, look for miracles and blessings.

Remembering Michael Jackson

2009-06-26T17:37:00.003-05:00

As I was contemplating what I might want to write this Shabbat, my mind kept drifting back to one thing: Michael Jackson. If you know me, you probably know that I don’t talk about, read about, or care about Hollywood gossip all that much. When the OJ Simpson trial was going on years ago, I couldn’t care less. When Jon and Kate announced they were divorcing, I thought, “Why should I care?” But, when I learned that Michael Jackson had died, I had a different reaction. To be honest, I don’t know if I’d say that I was sad. I’m not even sure I was surprised. But I was definitely affected.

This morning while I was at Camp TEKO for the Yom Yafeh service, some of the staff, in particular some who are still in high school, were discussing Michael Jackson’s death and I overheard them saying, “This is going to be like Elvis for our generation.” For our generation? Our generation? “You weren’t even alive when ‘Thriller’ came out!” I thought. Okay, so I barely was either. But Michael Jackson’s music, for better or worse, played a role in the music of my generation. “Thriller” came out when I was four and became a staple of the music I still like and probably influenced many of the musical artists that I came to enjoy during my childhood and teen years.

So, when I learned of Michael Jackson’s death, I was reminded of days at summer camp impressed by the counselors who could moonwalk and singing misheard lyrics from “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” with my brother – “It’s the same as the sound of matzah; it’s the same as the sound of matzah.” But I was also reminded of all of the controversy that surrounded Michael Jackson in more recent years: the irresponsible spending, the legal battles, the erratic behavior. And I couldn’t help but ask myself how Judaism would expect me to remember someone who played such a big role in my childhood, who at the same time might not be the greatest role model.

This week’s Torah portion, Korach, recalls a member of the Levite tribe who leads a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. Korach’s rebellion fails as Moses and Aaron illustrate that God is on their side, and yet, this week’s Torah portion is named for this would-be leader. There is clearly a value that even this person who sought to overthrow Judaism as it existed in his time must still be remembered. Judaism teaches us that we recite Kaddish for eleven months following the death of a loved one. Our tradition tells us that we don’t say Kaddish for a full year because we are not in a place to judge the person we remember and decide that they lived a life that requires a full year of prayer from us. But neither are we in a place to judge their life as so good that we only need to recite Kaddish for a year. We don’t place judgment on how good of a life a person has lived or hasn’t lived. That’s not up to us to decide. Nontheless, we understand the importance and the power of memory.

As a prelude to the Kaddish, Richard Levy writes:

It is hard to sing of oneness when the world is not complete, when those who once brought wholeness to our life have gone, and naught but memory can fill the emptiness their passing leaves behind.

But memory can tell us only what we were in company with those we loved; it cannot help us find what each of us, alone, must now become. Yet no one is truly alone: those who live no more, echo still within our thoughts and words, and what they did is part of what we have become.

We do best homage to our dead when we live our lives more fully, even in the shadow of our loss. For each of our lives is worth the life of the whole world; in each one is the breath of the Ultimate One. In affirming the One, we affirm the worth of each one whose life, now ended, brought us closer to the Source of life, in whose unity no one is alone and every life finds purpose.

Maimonides teaches us that we are supposed to see ourselves as a scale with an equal amount of good and evil and that each decision we make will tip the scale in one direction or the other. In his song, “Heal the World,” Michael Jackson sings:

We could fly so high
Let our spirits never die.
In my heart I feel
You are all my brothers.
Create a world with no fear;
Together we'll cry happy tears.
See the nations turn
Their swords into plowshares.
We could really get there
If you cared enough for the living.
Make a little space to make a better place.
Heal the world.
Make it a better place
For you and for me and the entire human race.
There are people dying
If you care enough for the living
Make a better place for
You and for me.

May we be inspired by those who have influenced our lives to act in ways that tip the scale towards the good. And may we be the inspiration for others, to heal the world and make it a better place.

A Taste of Torah - Sh'lach L'cha

2009-06-19T17:33:00.001-05:00

In this week's Torah portion, Shelach L'cha, the scouts head into the land of Canaan to bring a report back to Moses, Aaron and the Israelites about the land they are about to enter and acquire, as God has promised. All but two of the scouts come back fearful of what lies ahead of them. They say that while the land is flowing with milk and honey, the people living there are like giants, making them appear like grasshoppers.

But Joshua son of Nun and Caleb aren't so intimidated. They tell the people how good the land is and encourage them not to rebel against God. Sometimes it's easy to give in to our fears, even when we know it's not in our best interest. This Shabbat, take on one of your fears and see if you can be like Caleb and Joshua son of Nun, and do what you need to do, knowing you have support and are protected.

Resurrection and Reform Judaism: Understanding M'Chayeih Meitim and Ezekiel's Vision of the Dry Bones in a Reform Jewish Context

2009-06-05T10:12:00.004-05:00

One of the things that I really like about Mishkan T’filah, as a rabbi, is that a new format demands renewed attention. In Judaism we are taught not to pray from memory, but, even when we know the prayers well, to use a siddur, a prayer book, and pay attention to the words on the page. Our new prayer book demands that kind of attention. Our readings change week to week, depending upon who is leading the service and what that leader’s mood is. And even the Hebrew has changed.

In the first prayer of the T’filah, the Avot v’Imahot, the prayer that praises God as the God of our ancestors, we have changed the order of Leah and Rachel, Jacob’s wives. We used to say “Elohei Leah v’Elohei Rachel,” but now, we say, “Elohei Rachel v’Elohei Leah,” allowing us to honor our matriarchs in the way in which we honor our ancestors in Judaism, by acknowledging their deaths, their yahrzeit. Rachel died before Leah. In the Yotzer, the prayer we recite about creation in the morning restores the line “Or chadash al tzion ta’ir, v’nizkeh chulanu m’heirah l’oro, Shine a new light upon Zion, that we all may swiftly merit its radiance.” This line restores a prayer for the Land of Israel, which the Reform movement rejected in our earlier days. Today, we pray for the well-being of Israel and its inhabitants, so we’ve returned that line to its place.

But there is one change in our liturgy that most Reform Jews would probably say does not mesh with their idea of what it is to be a Reform Jew. In the Gevurot, the second prayer of the T’filah which praises God’s power, there are options within the text, words that traditionally are said, but that the Reform movement rejected a long time ago. There is a word that appears in parentheses throughout the Hebrew text of the Gevurot in Mishkan T'filah: meitim. We say, “m’chayeih hakol, You give life to all,” but this word meitim changes the prayer to praise God “m’chayeih meitim, who revives the dead.” Reform Judaism doesn’t hold resurrection of the dead among its beliefs. Neither do most Reform Jews. So, why offer this alternative in Mishkan T’filah, the new Reform prayer book? Is it simply to let us know how other people are saying it? That’s not the way that Reform Judaism works. If we put something out there, it’s because we want it to be useful and meaningful for Reform Jews.

The Haftarah reading - the reading from the Prophetic texts - for Shabbat Chol ha-Mo'ed Pesach might lend us some insight into this change and guide us toward a new understanding of “m’chayeih meitim, who revives the dead.” Because it is a special Shabbat, Shabbat Chol ha-Mo’ed Pesach comes with a special Torah reading and a special Haftarah reading. The Haftarah reading comes from the prophet Ezekiel who writes (in Ezekiel 37:1-6):

The hand of the Eternal was upon me, leading me out by God’s spirit and setting me down in the middle of a valley. It was full of bones. God led me all around them. There were a great many of them spread on the surface of the valley, and they were very dry. God said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O God Eternal, You alone know.” Then God said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: You dry bones, hear the words of the Eternal. Thus says the Eternal God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will put sinews on you, and cover you with flesh, and spread skin over you. I will put breath into you, and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Eternal.

In the Talmud, the Rabbis debate this text. Did Ezekiel actually resurrect the dead by invoking God’s name or is this story just a parable? Some say that they are the tribe of Ephraim who were so eager to leave Egypt that they left early and were struck down by enemies in the wilderness. But because of their efforts, God resurrected them when the Israelites made their way out of Egypt during the first Passover. We might be able to imagine, metaphorically, what it would have been like for the Ephraimites to have striven for freedom and not achieve it, but then be able to look back, with renewed strength, upon the remains of their failed efforts of the past. We, too, have struggled and been overcome, only to resurrect our ideals and try again.

When our ancestor Joseph faced death, he had our people promise to take his bones with him out of Egypt. Even if he wouldn’t live to see freedom, he wanted to know that his bones, at least would see freedom. When I was a child, my father used to sing a song to me, a song that recognized the freedom that only came with death for some American slaves:

The poor old slave has gone to rest,
we know that he is free
his bones they lie, disturb them not,
way down in Tennessee

This was the only freedom that Joseph would know. Our Passover story tells us, “Bechol dor v’dor chayav adam lirot et atsmo k’ilu hu yatza miMitsrayim, In every generation a person is obligated to see himself as if he went out of Egypt.” Rabbi Lisa Grushcow teaches, “Al tikra ‘atsmo,’ ela ‘atsmotav’ – In place of ‘himself,’ read, ‘his bones’: In every generation a person is obligated to see his bones as if he went out from Egypt.

But Joseph’s bones almost didn’t make it. According to one midrash (Tebat Marqa, cited in James L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts, pp. 138-39), the pillar of fire and cloud that guided the Israelites stood in their way, preventing their exit. Serach daughter of Asher was the one who remembered that they needed to get Joseph’s bones. The weary Israelites barely had enough strength to get themselves out of Egypt, let alone Joseph’s bones, and asked Moses in the wilderness, “Were there no graves in Egypt, that you took us out to die in the desert” (Exodus 14:11)? They needed to be revived and resurrected in the wilderness, along with the Ephraimites.

Even Ezekiel understood his words as metaphorical (Ezekiel 37:11-12):

Then God said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole House of Israel. They say: Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost; we are cut off from life! Therefore prophesy to them and say: Thus says the Eternal God: I am going to open your graves, My people; I will life you out of your graves and bring you home to the land of Israel.

It wasn’t a literal resurrection of which Ezekiel spoke, it was directed at a weary, exiled people. He lived during the time of the Babylonian exile. The Jewish community around them thought they didn’t have the strength to wait for a return to the Promised Land. They, like the Ephraimites, couldn’t wait any longer. But Ezekiel promised them that God would restore their strength.

This, perhaps, is the message that we Reform Jews can take from the alternative text in the G’vurot. It is not a prayer, I believe, of literal resurrection. Rather, it is a prayer that allows us to acknowledge the times when we haven’t thought we had the strength to push forward, the times when we forgot what we needed to go ahead, like the Israelites that had forgotten Joseph’s bones, but then God provides us with a Serach daughter of Asher, someone or something that gives us the drive to push on. It took tremendous perseverance and fortitude for our ancestors to make their way out of Egypt. And we have to see ourselves as we, too, went free out of Egypt, we and our weary bones, and with that redemption were given new life. May we continue to find new strength and new life. Shabbat Shalom.

Bibliography
Barzilai, Gabby. Redemption, Resurrection, and Passover. Bar-Ilan University’s Parashat Hashavua Study Center, April 10, 2004.
Fishbane, Michael. The JPS Bible Commentary: Haftarot. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2002, pp. 426-430.
Gordon, Jonathan. On Viewing the Bones of Idealism. Union for Reform Judaism’s Torat Hayim/Living Torah, April 19, 2003.
Grushcow, Lisa. Parshat Beshallach: HUC Senior Sermon, January 24, 2002.
Romm, Ed. Shabbat Hol Hamoed Pesach. Jerusalem: The United Synagogue Conservative Yeshiva Haftarah Commentary, April 11, 2009.

The Future of HUC-JIR

2009-05-03T12:09:00.007-05:00

Over the course of recent weeks and months I have received numerous requests, both personal and general, to write to the leadership of HUC-JIR to voice my opinion regarding the future of the College-Institute. I have not ignored those requests; rather, I have wrestled with them. I would guess that a new request comes my way nearly every day. But I cannot write to the other leadership of the College-Institute to tell them what decision they should make.

Instead, I have chosen to write to let them know that I recognize how incredibly challenging and difficult the decisions are that lie before them. I cannot imagine being in their shoes, being faced with making choices that will impact the future of the College-Institute and of Reform Judaism. I recognize the strength, wisdom, and insight that they must have to make these choices and how heavy any change will weigh on their hearts. I may have loyalties to one campus, one program, or one opinion, but my own loyalties must be put aside for the sake of the institutions I support, work for, and believe in.

I have written not to tell them to preserve any one campus. Instead, I’ve written to let them know that they, the Board of Governors, and the leadership of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, have my unwavering support. I can only imagine the wrestling that will go on in the coming weeks to ensure the future of the movement I hold so dear. I trust that they will make this decision wisely, thoughtfully, and prayerfully. The conclusions they reach may likely be radical and unpopular, but so long as they ensure a vibrant and thriving institution for higher Jewish learning, for the training of the future leaders of Reform Judaism, then I have no doubt they will be the right decisions. I am grateful for the many ways in which the leadership of Reform Judaism and of the College-Institute give to our community and for being present and involved at such a critical moment in history for Reform Judaism.

Walking Judaism Street

2009-04-27T15:02:00.000-05:00

Title inspired by Arnold Jacob Wolf’s article in The Condition of Jewish Belief, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966, pp. 267-74.

I have the same conversation with myself around the third day of Passover every year: I could really go for a spicy tuna roll. Or maybe some salmon nigiri. Or even a cup of miso soup. But each year, I have to ignore my sushi craving. The reason is twofold: rice and soybeans. According to Ashkenazi custom, both rice and soybeans are considered hametz, forbidden foods during Passover. But for Sephardim, Jews whose practice originated in Spain, neither are forbidden. Among the Ashkenazi rabbis, the concern is that when rice or beans are ground into flour, they can be mistaken for other flours that are forbidden during Passover – wheat, barley, oats, and so forth. But the Sephardim have adhered to the notion that though ground rice or beans may look like wheat flour, they are, in fact, not wheat flour and are permitted. Each year I intend to make time to study the laws of Passover before Passover arrives so that I can make an educated decision about whether or not I will eat these foods that sit the fence, that the Sephardim eat but the Ashkenazim don’t. But each year because I haven’t made the time to learn, I forego the sushi, make myself a matzah pizza, and promise that the next year will be different.

Reform Jewish practice affords me the privilege of making a decision, even though I am not a Sephardic Jew, of observing Sephardic custom. I cannot blindly make that choice. It must be an informed choice, an educated decision. It must be choice through knowledge.

Reform Judaism was born of the Enlightenment in eighteenth century Europe. The Enlightenment was a movement with many aspects. It resulted in the creation of a middle class that had previously not existed; the spread of French language, literature and philosophy throughout Europe; the beginning of the Industrial Revolution; and the freedom to think and choose one’s own form of government, which led to both the French and American revolutions. It also resulted in the Western Jew leaving the ghetto to join the larger society. The question before each Jew who chose to step outside the ghetto was: Could one continue to be a Jew and still enjoy the benefits of modern society?[1]

Most people believe that the first movement in Judaism, the original Judaism, was Orthodoxy. Most people would be mistaken. Prior to the Enlightenment, prior to the modern era, Judaism existed in isolated communities. Scholars and rabbis versed in Torah and rabbinic law guided their communities along similar lines, yet separate from other Jewish communities from the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 until the Enlightenment.

And then things changed. A group of German Jews had a notion of changing Judaism to fit the modern times, they sought to reform Judaism. The response to the changes they made eventually became Orthodox Judaism. “Orthodoxy and Reform are fraternal twins,” writes Martin Cohen, “to help Judaism cope with the dissolution of the organic Jewish community in the modern world.” Both rebelled against the Judaism that predated them. Orthodoxy said, “No more change,” while Reform insisted upon ongoing change.[2]

The early Reformers made two serious errors in the early stages of our movement. The first was that they made it appear as though nonobservance of the commandments was one of the requirements of Reform Judaism. In the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, the founders of our movement wrote, “We accept as binding only [the] moral laws and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.”[3] Taking this stand, the early Reformers were no less rigid than those who required strict observance of all of the commandments.

For Reform Judaism to be liberal, it must be up to the individual to decide what is binding. And this was where the early Reformers made their second mistake. By focusing only on the moral laws, the early Reformers failed to teach the other half of tradition from which we may make an informed choice. “We no longer believe, [though,] that the European Jew becomes a better European or the American Jew a better American by shedding his Jewish particularism.”[4] Bible and Talmud, midrash and philosophy, Kabbalah and the Jewish legal codes are the possession of all Jews and we are all commanded to engage in the study of Torah. As Jakob Petuchowski writes, “A true Reform Judaism, therefore, and one worthy of its name, would have to cultivate the study of the totality of our tradition, applying it to a set of criteria to guide the modern Jew in making his selections from it.”[5]

So, if everything is up for grabs, if we truly believe as Reform Jews in choice through knowledge, how do we know what God has commanded us? What is the value of Jewish law if any of it could end up on the cutting room floor?

It is said that we speak to God through prayer and God speaks to us through study. “If we want our Reform religious culture to be an authentically Jewish one, we must become students of the halakhah, [Jewish law,] the literature that our people have produced in their ongoing effort to understand God’s will for their lives.”[6] It is possible that study may lead to nonobservance, but it would be nonobservance based upon careful evaluation, not ignorance.

Our tradition teaches us that there are 613 commandments. In the Talmud, Rabbi Simlai gives us this number,[7] but it isn’t until a half a millennium later that Maimonides gives us a definitive list of those mitzvot. Until then, a variety of comprehensive lists existed. No one observes all of the commandments. No one can observe all of the commandments. There are numerous commandments that are related to the Temple in Jerusalem that no longer stands or to the sacrificial system we no longer observe. Some are just for the priests and some are just for Jewish kings. “In other words, the 613 commandments—whatever they might be, and whatever enumeration of them we might choose to follow—were never meant to be observed by every Jew.”[8]

We often hear the claim that the Orthodox follow all of the commandments, while Reform Jews follow none. It is impossible for any Jew to follow all of the commandments. It is equally impossible for any Jew to reject them as a whole. If one loves his neighbor, he is observing a commandment. If he refrains from murder and theft, he is observing two more. If he pays his employees on time, returns lost items to their owners, honors his parents, three more. By leading an ethical and moral life, we will fulfill a great number of the commandments. Nonetheless, the Reform Jew maintains far fewer ritual and ceremonial observances than most Orthodox Jews.[9]

Unfortunately, many Reform Jews “regard Judaism as an elastically interpretable civil religion which permits just about anything short of the acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah.”[10] But there are bounds on the choices we can make. Our sacred tradition has always employed change, reform, in Jewish law as long as that change ensures that the values and ideals of Judaism’s revelation continue. Jewish law has always been supple, pliant, flexible. It allows us to apply Torah-values and Torah-perspectives to the changing demands of modern life.[11]

Dynamic change in Judaism is not only permissible, but demanded. In fact, change has always been a part of Jewish religious history. As Abraham Kohn writes, “If the institutions of Judaism are anything, they are not unchangeable, for they always kept pace with the civilization and the civil and social circumstances of the Jews.” Consider our worship. In Torah, we see a sacrificial system. By the time we get to the Psalms, King David has employed poetry and music. And it isn’t until King Solomon that there is even a fixed place, the Temple, for ritual observance. Judaism has always been Reform.

But we must truly understand the commandments to know which ones we will follow, omit, or change. “Regular and intelligent observance of tradition and rite enriches the spiritual life of adults and children alike.” Our movement has adhered to the moral and ethical message of the prophets, but we need to embrace custom and ritual alongside the work of social action.[12] “The purpose of mitzvot is to dedicate a moment and an act to God, thereby transfiguring life. Any mitzvah, then, which has the power regularly or occasionally, thus to become a window on the divine, a meeting place with God, ought to be observed by the Jew who believes in … God.”[13]

We can only understand what God wants of us when we understand the relationship we have with God. The Covenant we have with God is a human relationship. There is give and take on both ends. We fulfill our end with actions that are appropriate for our relationship with God and it is God who is the measure by which we determine that appropriateness. It is also important to remember, as we learn about mitzvot and make determinations about our observance, that the Covenantal relationship we have is both historic and communal. Our decisions cannot be strictly personal and fleeting; tradition has to weigh in as well.[14]

One who wants to experience Israel’s Covenant with God will find more success in trying to live by the Covenant than in just thinking about it. Begin anywhere, one mitzvah at a time. Recite motzi before you eat or birkat ha-mazon after. Light the Sabbath candles in your home. Observe the yarzheit of a loved one. Say the Shehecheyanu at the first fallen leaves or the first snowflake. “When the inner embarrassment of doing a mitzvah as a mitzvah has been overcome, we can see what the reality of the covenanted existence might be and do one more.”[15]

So, how do we begin the process of determining which mitzvot we will try? Jakob Petuchowski outlines four criteria for modern Jewish observance. First: Determine the main message of Jewish tradition for the mitzvah you are contemplating. Second: Figure out how to make the traditional teaching regarding the mitzvah relevant in your own life and in the current situation in which you find yourself. Third: Listen to the voice of your own conscience on the matter. And fourth: Acknowledge your responsibility regarding the communal Covenant with God.

First: Determine the main message of tradition for the mitzvah you are contemplating. This level requires only investigation. There is no commitment yet. Consider the prohibition against work on the Sabbath. We might think it is a prohibition against heavy labor and that tasks that don’t require a great deal of effort would no longer be prohibited. So what if we go into the office and get a few things done? It won’t be labor intensive. But this isn’t the essence of the commandment prohibiting work on the Sabbath. Instead, it is intended to make us aware that all the creating we do over the course of the week pales in comparison to God’s work of Creation. Shabbat is about more than just relaxation and physical recuperation. It’s about acknowledging God’s presence in the world. Not stopping our ordinary activities to be aware of God’s presence doesn’t fulfill the main message of the tradition for not working on the Sabbath.

Second: Figure out how to make the traditional teaching regarding the mitzvah relevant in your own life and in the current situation in which you find yourself. This requires conscious application of Reform principle. Returning to the idea of Shabbat, Orthodox tradition prohibits driving a car on the Sabbath. But as a Reform Jew, in the modern context, does this make sense? Ask yourself: How can I best observe Shabbat, being aware of the distance between where I live and Temple. Does the use of my car help me to make Shabbat meaningful? Yes! By driving to Temple, I can be part of a larger community, rejoicing in the Sabbath, and acknowledging God’s presence in Creation.

Third: Listen to the voice of your own conscience on the matter. Leo Baeck said that the Reform Jew is characterized by the piety of the individual, not the piety of the environment. As individuals, we are free to participate in or refrain from any particular observance. It’s not enough to know why others observe a commandment, each of us must know why we, individually, want to observe or refrain. Ask yourself: why is making Shabbat a day distinguishable from the rest of the days of the week meaningful to me, personally?

Finally: Acknowledge your responsibility regarding the communal Covenant with God. “Everything that contributes to the survival and to the unity of the covenant community of Israel must be regarded as a religious commandment.” This means that the Reform Jew must observe some mitzvot that if his faith were only about himself, he wouldn’t observe, but because he is a member of a community, his observance is affected. Shabbat is Shabbat because it is the same for all Jews. We cannot choose to observe the Sabbath on another day of the week because it is more convenient. That would place us outside of the community of Israel and outside of the bounds of our covenant with God.

These four criteria, considering the purpose of the commandment, making the mitzvah relevant, listening to one’s conscience on the matter, and being aware of our place in a larger community, are the yardstick that the modern Jew must apply to his inherited tradition. But our religious faith and life require more than this measure of tradition. Intense Jewish education at all ages makes these criteria meaningful. And only an application of the criteria can make tradition itself come alive.[16]

I cannot tell you whether or not I will eat sushi during the week of Passover this year, but I can pledge to study before Passover arrives so that I can make an informed choice about my religious practice this year. One of the goals of Chabad is to get Jews to observe one more commandment. Just one more. The goal of the Reform rabbi is no different. Learn about one more commandment this year. Try to take on one more mitzvah or understand one that you’re already observing or avoiding. Make this year the year that you live up to the responsibility of being a Reform Jew and engaging in study so that you can make informed choices about your religious practice.

I’d like to conclude with a passage written by Arnold Jacob Wolf:
“My problem is that I cannot appropriate for myself all that God means, that I cannot comprehend it, that I sometimes cannot stand it, that I often cannot fulfill it.

“I try to walk the road of Judaism. Embedded in that road there are many jewels. One is marked ‘Sabbath’ and one ‘Civil Rights’ and one ‘Kashruth’ and one ‘Honor Your Parents’ and one ‘Study of Torah’ and one ‘You Shall Be Holy.’ There are at least 613 of them and they are of different sizes and shapes and weights. Some are light and easy for me to pick up and I pick them up. Some are too deeply embedded for me, so far at least, though I get a little stronger by trying to extricate the jewels as I walk the street. Some, perhaps, I shall never be able to pick up. I believe that God expects me to keep on walking Judaism Street and to carry away whatever I can of its commandments. I do not believe that He expects me to lift what I cannot, nor may I condemn my fellow Jew who may not be able to pick up even as much as I can.

“The various commandments look somewhat different to me. Some seem larger, some smaller, some important, some trivial. But there is no commandment that may not have its day, and no certainty that may not sometimes fall into doubt. I must not decide in advance what properly belongs on Judaism Street. Nor may I walk down the broad parkway only, but must follow the road even when it narrows and is no longer very easy to walk.

“Neither Orthodox nor liberal, I try to be a Jew.”[17]

L’Shanah Tovah Tikateivu – May you be inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life.

This was originally a Rosh Hashanah sermon delivered at Temple Israel, Minneapolis on Rosh Hashanah 5768 (September 13, 2007). Subsequently, I studied the laws of kitniyot (legumes prohibited during Passover by Ashkenazi custom). It became evident that Jewish practice has never been unilateral on the issue of kitniyot.

There were Talmudic arguments that not only supported the consumption of rice, but actually required it during Passover. In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Pesachim, the Sages discuss the Passover meal. In the Mishnah (Pes. 114a), the text tells us that the meal includes two cooked dishes. The Gemara (Pes. 114b) discusses the two cooked dishes. Rabbi Huna tells us that they are cooked beets and rice. Rava agrees with him. The Sages even go so far as to say that no one is concerned about that ruling of Rabbi Jochanan ben Nuri (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 35a), in which he teaches that rice is a species of grain and is prohibited on Passover.

In the 13th century CE, Rabbi Samuel of Falaise supported the custom of not eating kitniyot; however, he taught that it came from a mistake and prohibits food that had been permitted. Rabbenu Jeruham ben Meshullam in 14th century Provence indicates that following the custom of not eating kitniyot only makes observance and enjoyment of Passover more difficult.

In modern times, efforts have been made within the progressive movements to allow for kitniyot during Passover. Benjamin Mordecai Ben-Baruch argues for the sake of k'lal Yisrael, for the sake of Jewish unity, to incorporate kitniyot into Passover observance.

With all of this in mind, after thoughtful study, I made an informed choice to follow Sephardic custom during Passover. This past Passover was my second year following Sephardic custom and I believe that it has only enhanced my observance of the holiday, helping me celebrate our people's redemption and freedom.

[1] W. Gunther Plaut, The Rise of Reform New York: World Union for Progressive Judaism, Ltd., 1963, p. xiv.
[2] Martin A. Cohen, When Is Reform Judaism? Brooklyn, NY: Temple Beth Emeth, 1987, p. 14.
[3] Central Conference of American Rabbis, “The Pittsburgh Platform” 1885.
[4] Jakob J. Petuchowski, “Some Criteria for Modern Jewish Observance,” Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader, ed., Elliot N. Dorff and Louis E. Newman, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 294.
[5] Ibid, p. 295.
[6] Mark Washofsky, “Solomon B. Freehof and Reform Halakhah,” The Chronicle, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, 2007 Issue 69, p. 10.
[7] Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Makkot 23b.
[8] Petuchowski, p. 292.
[9] Ibid, pp. 292-3.
[10] Cohen, p. 10.
[11] Ibid, pp. 12, 18.
[12] Bernard J. Bamberger, “Bernard J. Bamberger,” The Condition of Jewish Belief, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966, p. 21.
[13] Herman E. Schaalman, “Herman E. Schaalman,” The Condition of Jewish Belief, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966, p. 203.
[14] Eugene B. Borowitz, “Eugene B. Borowitz,” The Condition of Jewish Belief, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966, p. 37.
[15] Ibid, p. 38
[16] Petuchowski, pp. 295-8.
[17] Arnold J. Wolf, “Arnold J. Wolf,” The Condition of Jewish Belief, New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966, pp. 268-9.