Category Archives: Divrei Torah

O Purest of Souls – D’var Torah Sh’mot

19 Thursday Dec 2013

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The Book of Exodus is essentially a story about God’s saving love for the oppressed Israelites. It begins with the birth of Moses and follows him as a young prince and then as he turned into a rebel and outlaw, then a shepherd, and finally THE prophet of God.

Why Moses? What was so unique about him that God chose him to be his most intimate prophet?

Moses was a complex man; passionate, pure, just, humble, at home nowhere, carrying always his people’s burdens while hearing God’s words.

Moses was absolutely unique, the only prophet to speak panim el panim (“face to face”) with God, and that is what my drash-poem is about. Moses is the most important Jew in our history and our gold standard of a religious, moral and political leader.

In our own time the world has benefited from great leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Dr. Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, and President Nelson Mandela. Nevertheless, Moses stands alone.

So often we walk in a daze, / Eyes sunk into creviced faces / Fettered to worldly tasks / And blind to rainbows.

I imagine Moses, in Midian, like that, / Brooding in exile,  / Burdened by the people’s suffering, / Knowing each day / Their screaming in stopped-up hearts / And their shedding of silent tears.

A simple shepherd he was, / Staff in hand counting sheep / Until one day / Weaving through rocks /Among bramble bushes he heard / Thorns popping. / Turning his head / His eyes opened  / As if for the first time.

God had long before / taken note of him,  / From his birth,  / But waited until this moment  / To choose him as Prophet.

Dodi dofek pit’chi li  / A-choti ra-yati  / yo-nati ta-mati. / “Open to me, my dove, / my twin,  / my undefiled one.” (Song of Songs 5:2)

Moses heard God’s voice / and beheld angels,  / His soul flowing in sacred rivers / Of Shechinah light.

‘Why me?  / Why am I so privileged / To behold such wonder?  / Unworthy as I am!’

God said, / ‘Moses – I have chosen you  / Because your heart is burdened / and worried,  / Because you know the world’s cruelty,  / and you have not become cruel. / Nor do you stand by idly / when others bleed.

You are a tender of sheep,  / And you will lead my people  / With the shepherd’s staff  / And inspire them / To open their stopped-up hearts / without fear.’

Trembling, Moses looked again  / Into the bush-flames,  / Free from smoke and ash.

His eyes opened as in a dream  / And he heard a soft-murmuring-sound  / The same that breath makes / As it passes through lips.

MOSHE MOSHE!—HINEINI!

Two voices—One utterance!  / He hid his face  / For the more Moses heard  / The brighter was the light  / And he knew he must turn away / Or die.

The prophet’s thoughts were free  / Soaring beyond form / No longer of self. / To this very day there has not been a purer soul / Than his.

God said, / ‘Come no closer, Moses! / Remove your shoes,  / Stand barefoot;  /  I want your soul.

I am here with you  / And in you –  / I am every thing  / And no thing –  / And you are Me. / I see that which is  / And which is not  / And I hear it all.

Take heed shepherd-prince / For My people‘s blood / Calls to Me from the ground, / And the living suffer / A thousand deaths.

You must take them out!  / Every crying child – / Every lashed man – / Every woman screaming.

And Moses, know this / “With weeping they will come, / And with compassion will I guide them.” (Jeremiah 31:8)

The people’s exile began with tears  / And it will end with tears.

I have recorded their story in a Book – / Black fire on white fire – / Letters on parchment  / Telling of slaves  / Seeing light  / And turning to Me  / To become a nation.

The Book is My spirit,  / The letters are My heart, / They are near to you  / That you might do them  / And teach them  / And redeem My world  / And free every human being –  / My cherished children all –  / That the world might not be consumed / In flames.

That book I give to you / O purest of souls.

Jewish Survival is NOT a Given – Miketz Meets Hanukah

29 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Holidays, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories, Uncategorized

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This week Joseph finds himself imprisoned on the false charge of trying to seduce Potifar’s wife. Already known as a dream interpreter, Joseph is called from the dungeons to interpret Pharaoh’s seemingly inscrutable dreams, and convinces Pharaoh that God has blessed him with far-sighted wisdom and the grace of success. Consequently, Pharaoh elevates Joseph to the position of the kingdom’s chief overseer, second in power only to Pharaoh himself.

In his position Joseph deftly manages the realm, and when the years of famine arrive as predicted, word spreads that Egypt has stockpiled an overabundance of grain, and that surrounding peoples can seek sustenance from the throne.

Suffering the effects of the famine along with everyone else, Jacob instructs his surviving older sons to procure food for the family, lest they all die, and they appear before Joseph.

In the dramatic conclusion in next week’s parasha, Joseph will reveal his true identity to his brothers and explain that their sale of him served his life’s purpose, that God had sent him ahead into Egypt as a slave to save his family.

Joseph is a key transitional figure between the patriarchal era in Genesis and the birth of the spiritual nation of Israel in Exodus. As such, he was the first court Jew in history. He understood Egyptian culture and society. He spoke the language, dressed as a native, took an Egyptian name, married an Egyptian woman, and sired children, the very first Hebrew children to be born in Diaspora.

Despite his acculturation, Joseph did not become an Egyptian, nor did he forsake his ancestral faith. Indeed, he is the prototype of a politically powerful leader who assures Jewish survival.

Fast forward to the second century B.C.E. For 200 years Greek culture had been spreading throughout the lands of the Mediterranean. Jews were attracted to Greek population centers, to the abstract sciences, humanism, philosophy, and commerce.

By the time of the Maccabees (165 B.C.E.), Jews living in the land of Israel had divided into three distinct groups; traditionalists living in villages who followed the priests and observed Jewish law; radical Hellenists living in the cities who saw no advantage in remaining Jewish, who named their children using Greek names, spoke Greek, stopped circumcising their sons, ceased celebrating Shabbat and the Hagim, and rejected kashrut; and the moderately Hellenized Jews who lived as Greeks but maintained their Jewish cultural identity.

When finally the radical Hellenizers conspired with the Greek King Antiochus IV to introduce a pantheon of gods into the Jerusalem Temple, including the sacrifice of the detested pig, moderate Jews were shocked and rose up to fight alongside the traditionalists and save Judaism and the Jewish people from destruction.

For Joseph, Jewish survival meant remembering who he was as an Israelite living in exile. For the Maccabees and their moderate Jewish allies, it meant war in the ancestral homeland.

In these opening years of the 21st century, we liberal American Jews are confronted with a serious challenge. Of the 5.5 million American Jews, 2 million identify with the liberal non-orthodox religious streams, 600,000 with the orthodox and the rest as “just Jewish” and marginal at best.

The recently published Pew Study of the American Jewish community makes it clear that if current trends continue, 30 years from now liberal Jews will diminish by 30% to 1.4 million total, assuming that our current 1.7 children per family birthrate continues and we do not reverse the loss of 75% of the children born to intermarriages who do not identify as Jews. The current intermarriage rate is upwards of 60%. The orthodox community’s birthrate is a shy less than 5 children per family, meaning that in 30 years orthodox Jews will double their numbers.

The declining birthrate in liberal American Jewry is a real threat to our survival. We will need to increase our birthrate, create a more compelling liberal faith that attracts more converts, more intermarried families, more LGBT Jews, and retains all who struggle with faith and claim to be atheists but who feel culturally, ethically and ancestrally Jewish. And we will have to educate everyone better than we do in Jewish history, literature, tradition, and thought.

The core of the challenge is as old as Joseph, and is as Ari Shavit writes in “My Promised Land – The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel”:

“…how to maintain Jewish identity in an open world not shielded by the walls of a ghetto,…[with] secularization and emancipation eroding the old formula of Jewish survival…”

and, I would add for those who have faith, that places God in the center of our people’s daily life and identity.

Hanukah and Miketz remind us that Jewish survival is not a given, that the State of Israel and American Jewry, especially now, need each other to thrive and depend upon each other to survive.

Shabbat shalom and Hag Hanukah sameach!

A Poem on Forgiveness – For Parashat Vayeshev

23 Saturday Nov 2013

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I can’t stop the dreams / That come in the night, / For even while awake / I’m gazing towards light.

My mother died, / My father sighed, / And he wondered / What might become of me / And my dreams?

Trusting a man along the way / I found my brothers lying in wait / To banish me from the clan, / And send me away.

They could not utter aloud / Even my name, / And, casting me into a pit / They spat me away / And broke my father’s heart.

My name had been written with stars – / But I became a slave  / And as flesh in a woman’s heart.

Her master, incensed / Sent me to Sheol, / But still a seer / I glimpsed a glow / And blessings bubbled / Into my dreams.

Alas, I was given reprieve, / Restored to the King, / And I served him faithfully / With shaven head, an Egyptian name, / Secure at his right hand.

There, alone, my heart hardened, / I trusted no one, / Neither man nor angel, / But I dreamed my dreams / And waited for redemption.

My brothers came, / Their faces forlorn, / Begging for bread / Before the throne, / Thinking me Viceroy, / With scepter in hand, / Not as Joseph / From their clan.

My heart had shut down / For twenty odd years / My love blown away / In cold desert tears.

As my father re-dug his father’s old wells, / Seeing my brothers / I recalled where I dwelt, / And water seeped up / Into my steeped-up heart, / To open me to love again.

I forgave them / And brought them near, / And saved them / from their fears, / As God intended / all these years.

Jacob’s Dream and Spiritual Leadership – Parashat Vayetze

08 Friday Nov 2013

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Jacob’s dream (Genesis 28:10-22) was his first encounter with the God of his fathers Abraham and Isaac, and is part of a narrative that culminates next week in a second meeting at the River Jabbok (Genesis 32). There, in the darkness of night, Jacob wrestled with a Divine/human being and became Yisrael, the one who struggles with God.

In these Genesis chapters, we watch Jacob grow into the Jewish leader he was destined to become. As a boy he was graced with great spiritual potential, but he was ethically challenged and needed a full range of life experience, including hardship and suffering, before he could assume leadership of the tribe.

At the core of his life was his relationship with his twin brother Esau, a relationship that was troubled from the start. Even before birth in Rebekah’s womb they struggled. Jacob emerged second holding Esau’s heel signaling both his resolve and his destiny to become the leader.

Rashi reasoned that Jacob’s apparent manipulation and deceit in attaining the birthright in last week’s portion Toldot gained for him what should have been his from the beginning. After all, Rashi explained, if you drop a pebble into a flask followed by a second pebble, and then invert the flask, what happens? The second pebble falls out first. Thus, though Esau was born first, he was conceived second.

As the boys grew, Rebekah understood as only a parent can that Esau lacked the necessary spiritual gifts to effectively lead the tribe, whereas Jacob possessed deep understanding of the spiritual world. She therefore compounded Jacob’s unethical behavior with her own, and orchestrated with him a plan whereby Isaac would bless Jacob as the first-born in Esau’s place.

Our commentators struggled with the deception. Some explained that Isaac’s old age, blindness and feeble-mindedness kept him from knowing which son was which, and so he was easily tricked in blessing the wrong son. However, all evidence suggests otherwise, that Isaac was not at all feeble-minded, nor was he confused. He had maintained and built upon his father’s wealth, and his blessings of his two sons in last week’s portion (Genesis 27:28-29, 39-40) were each eloquent poetry describing Jacob’s and Esau’s respective natures and destinies.

It seems to me that Isaac was a silent and willing partner with Rebecca in the ruse, that though loving Esau dearly, Isaac agreed that Jacob was the more fitting heir and leader. This was not the first instance in which the younger exceeded the older (e.g. Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac).

Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending the ladder to heaven at Bethel signals the spiritual destiny of the Jewish people. Commentators note that the stairway (sulam – samech, lamed, mem) totals 130 according to the science of gematria that assigns number equivalents to Hebrew letters, just as Sinai (samech, nun, yod) also totals 130, thus linking Jacob’s dream-revelation and Moses communion with God at Mt. Sinai.

When Jacob awoke from his dream, he was astonished and said, “Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it!”

For the first time in his life Jacob experienced awe, wonder and humility, the quality of which he sorely lacked and needed to lead effectively his tribe.

Jacob’s faith was not yet fully evolved despite his powerful encounter with God at Bethel. Though moved, he vows his obeisance to God conditionally:

“If God remains with me, if God protects me …, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safe to my father’s house – then the Eternal shall be my God.”

Nachmanides (also Ramban – 13th century) explained that Jacob was not as deficient in faith as the narrative suggests. He doubted not God but himself, because he knew that he was a man prone to committing sin. Ramban says that Jacob’s conditional vow was a sign of his righteousness.

Among the great themes in the patriarchal and matriarchal narratives is that our Biblical heroes all suffer fear and a sense of inadequacy, as do each of us. Only the hardship that comes with life experience facilitates their spiritual and moral growth.

This week Jacob dreams, falls in love and is tricked by Rather’s father, Laban, to serve him for many years that he may marry Rachel. Laban made Jacob’s life miserable, and so at last he fled with his family.

In next week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, Jacob’s spiritual and familial journey reaches a peek moment as he encounters for the second time a Divine/human being on the night before he is scheduled to meet the brother that he so wronged twenty years earlier. That night encounter and the next day’s meeting are among the most dramatic moments in all of Biblical narrative.

The story is not only about the meeting between estranged brothers. It is about each one of us. Stay tuned!

Shabbat Shalom!

We Are The Descendents of Believers – A Response to Ian Lustick in Light of Sukkot

20 Friday Sep 2013

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Holidays, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Uncategorized

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University of Pennsylvania Political Science Professor, Ian Lustick, touched a raw nerve in the Jewish world this week after a piece he wrote called “Two-State Illusion” appeared on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Review (September 15). He said, among other things, that the State of Israel’s lease has expired, that the Zionist project is dead (or almost dead), and that the only way forward, after a catastrophic war, is a one-state solution combining anti-Zionist extremist religious Jews, post-Zionist secular Jews, Jews from Arab countries, and secular Palestinians. It was an outrageous and defeatist piece, depressing to Zionists and lovers of Israel the world over, and embraced by few if any Jews or Palestinians.

Ian Lustick wrote:

“The disappearance of Israel as a Zionist project, through war, cultural exhaustion or demographic momentum, is…plausible…Many Israelis see the demise of the country as not just possible, but probable.”

The timing of his piece the day after Yom Kippur and days before Sukkot was upsetting and challenging because not only were his ideas unworkable, but they were contrary to everything this festival of Sukkot is about.

Much has been said about the symbolism of Sukkot. The Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson, says that Sukkot is connected to Moses warning the Israelites at the end of his life that there’s danger in feeling too secure and affluent, recalling Deuteronomy 8:11-14 – “Hishamer l’cha pen tishkach et Adonai Eloheicha…Take care lest you forget Adonai your God. When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in…beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget Adonai your God, who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.”

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief Rabbi of Great Britain, points to a verse from Jeremiah, “Zacharti l’cha chesed n’urayich ahavat clulotayich – I remember the loving-kindness of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the wilderness, through a land not sown” (Jeremiah 2:2) (God is speaking to Israel) as a key in understanding Sukkot. He notes that the Jeremiah verse is one of the few in the Hebrew Bible that speaks in praise not of God, but of the Jewish people’s love for God and that this is what this festival is really all about.

Yes, the sukkah represents the Jewish people’s vulnerability throughout our history, that our tents and homes are flimsy, our lives impermanent, and the future uncertain, but that in building a sukkah we exercise control over our lives and communities, and that we can take history into our own hands just as we did when Nachshon ben Aminadav led the way with Moses in crossing the Red Sea, and just as did the founding generations of Zionists and Israelis who built the state of Israel. It has taken a lot of faith for the people of the State of Israel to do what they’ve done against great odds, and that is one of the most remarkable aspects in the history of the Jewish people.

Reish Lakish, a Babylonian 3rd century sage, 1700 years ago reminds us in the Babylonian Talmud that when Moses questioned the people’s faith during the period of the wandering, God knew their hearts and reassured his prophet saying, “The [children of Israel] are believers, [and] the descendants of believers.” (Shabbat 97a) In other words, don’t worry, my servant Moses, my people have what it takes and they will not only do well but they will do what is necessary to survive and thrive as a people.

As we think about Ian Lustick’s article, the festival of Sukkot reminds us on the one hand that, yes, we’ve always been historically insecure, but also that this is our season lismoach, to rejoice, in spite of whatever circumstances we have faced in our history. Indeed, another name for this festival of Sukkot is Z’man Simchateinu – the Season of our Rejoicing.

We Jews are experts at insecurity, but we’ve never lost faith because we are  “believers and descendents of believers.”

Shabbat shalom and chag Sukkot sameach!

Turning and Returning: A Journey Outside Time and Space

08 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Ethics, Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry, Quote of the Day, Uncategorized

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These ten days from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur is the time of turning and returning, as the psalmist says, “O God, bring us back, and light up Your face that we may be rescued.” (Ps 80:4)

Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav used to say that “Everywhere I go, I am going to Jerusalem. “ He probably meant that his every thought, prayer and deed brought him closer to his true spiritual home, to that time when the Jewish people was one with the land of Israel, the holy city, and with Torah.

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, however, differed and said, “Everywhere I go, I am going to myself” as if peeling away the skins of an union to rediscover his core spiritual essence.

We too are called by tradition to ask in these days of turning and returning, ‘What is our spiritual essence, the core within that we cannot abandon without walking away from ourselves?”

The psalmist said, “Torat Elohav b’libo – His God’s teaching is in his heart” (Ps 37:31), meaning that we can be truest to ourselves as Jews when we learn and embrace and become living Torah scrolls ourselves.

This High Holiday season is our annual corrective to everything in the past that has fragmented, shattered, distracted, frustrated, disappointed, hurt, offended, humiliated, angered, and taken us away from our truest selves.

Rabbi Eliezer taught that the time to do t’shuvah is brief. He told his students, “Turn one day prior to your death.”

They asked, “Master, how can anyone know what day is one day prior to their death?”

He said, “Therefore, repent today, because tomorrow you may die.” (Talmud, Shabbat 153a)

Central to Yom Kippur is that we use every opportunity to break from the inertia to which we’ve become accustomed and take the first step to turn ourselves around and return to the right path that represents a new beginning. God promises a great reward saying, “You are as if newly created. What happened in the past has already been forgotten.” (Sifre Devarim, Piska 30)

At my weekly Men’s Torah study recently I had a difficult time moving the discussion away from one point we were discussing on the theme of t’shuvah that seemed to take over the hearts and minds of many participants. I had an agenda for our hour long session, and we were not getting quickly enough to what I considered the main and conclusive issue. One of the participants said, “Don’t worry Rabbi – if we don’t get there today, we always have next year!”

He was right, of course. We read Torah every year, and over time fulfill Yochanan ben Bag Bag’s instruction, “Hafoch ba, v’hafoch ba, d’clua ba – Turn it over and turn it over again, for all is contained in it.” (Tanna De-Vei Eliahu Zuta 17:8).”  

The special kind of t’shuvah that comes as a result of Torah learning transports us beyond past and present as we know it, because Torah has no time. It occupies Eternal time, and as such is always current.

Torah stands also outside of space as we understand it. When we learn Torah we are on a spiritual journey towards our essence, as Levi Yitzhak taught, and towards Jerusalem, as Rebbe Nachman taught.

Rabbi Brad Shavit-Artson reflects movingly on the nature of religious turning in these words:

“I think about turning and turning without end… just another word for a dance. It may be that the turning we are called to do before God is one of rapture and joy, of dancing in the presence of the Holy One, as did King David when he returned to Jerusalem with the Ark. Maybe the turning that we should focus on is not one of sorrow and mourning, but of exultation – that we are in the presence of something so magnificent, so unpredictable, so unanticipated and unearned that all we can do is click our heels and spin and dance.”

The 13th century German mystic, Matilda of Magdenberg, expressed it this way:

“I cannot dance, O Lord, /  Unless you lead me. / If you wish me to leap joyfully, / Let me see You dance and sing. / Then I will leap into love – / And from love into knowledge, / And from knowledge into the harvest, / That sweetest fruit beyond human sense / And there I will stay with you, turning.”

May this time of turning be restorative for us all.

G’mar chatimah tovah. May you be sealed in the Book of Life.

Note: I am grateful to Rabbi Brad Shavit-Artson, who assembled some of the above text material and the last poem in an article on T’shuvah in 2003. Translations of the Psalms are taken from The Book of Psalms, by Robert Alter, 2007.

Seeking Higher Intuitive Purposes – D’var Torah Nitzavim

30 Friday Aug 2013

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Rosh Hashanah is but days away, and this week we read the double Torah portion, Nitzavim-Vayelech, that’s always read on the Shabbat before the New Year. Due to its timing, there’s an urgency about its message it on the one hand, and a tone of encouragement on the other:

“Surely this Instruction (i.e. mitzvah) that I command you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it too us, that we may observe it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it. No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.” (Deuteronomy 30:1)

The rabbis debated what specifically this “instruction” or “mitzvah” is.

Most commentators say that the mitzvah is t’shuvah, repentance, which explains why the Torah portion Nitzavim might come just before Rosh Hashanah.

Each of us begins this High Holiday season in a state of chet (sin), which the great Rav Kook taught is a state of alienation and separation from our true tasks and true identity. Only through t’shuvah (repentance/return) is a corrective possible, and only through t’shuvah can we come back whole-heartedly to ourselves, families, friends and colleagues, community, Torah and God.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik taught that sin isn’t just limited to our lack of observance of some ritual and ethical law. It includes our obligation to ‘get right’ with our own souls, to focus more on the life of our higher intuitive purposes.

Soloveitchik teaches that “Returning to the heart” is the first necessary step in that spiritual process.

Most of us wait to do t’shuvah until this season, if we do it at all. Intrinsic to the process, however, isn’t just recognizing that we’ve done some specific wrong, but that chet means that we’re out of relationship with the Torah itself.

This Yemenite Midrash explains:

“They say to a person: ‘Go to a certain town and learn Torah there.’ But the person answers: ‘I’m afraid of the lions that I’ll encounter on the way.’ So they say: ‘You can go and learn in another town that’s closer.’ But the person replies: ‘I’m afraid of the thieves.’ So they suggest: ‘There’s a sage in your own city. Go and learn from him.’ But the person replies: ‘What if I find the door locked, and I have to return to where I am?’ So they say: ‘There’s a teacher sitting and teaching right here in the chair next to you.’ But the person replies: ‘You know what? What I really want to do is go back to sleep!’ This is what the Book of Proverbs (26:14, 16) refers to when it says, ‘The door is turning upon its hinges, and the sluggard (i.e. lazy one) is still upon his bed…the sluggard is wiser in his own eyes that seven that give wise counsel.’” (Yalkut Midreshei Teiman)

Do we recognize ourselves here, not just in relationship to Torah but to what is truest about ourselves? Do we see that perhaps we’ve been negligent or lacking in will in making necessary  changes, that we may wish to do things differently but always find a way to rationalize why we don’t.

Change is always difficult, often threatening, sometimes destabilizing, and frequently disruptive. Changing the way we eat or neglect our health, how we control our passions and anger, refuse to leave relationships that are destructive or change from a job that’s killing us, or take charge of our addictions that enslave us, or control an expense account that’s bankrupting us – all change relative to these destructive parts of our lives require enormous acts of clear-thinking and will.

So often we just don’t want to do what we know we have to do, to acknowledge that what we’re doing is destructive both to us and to the people we love, and that it’s high time for us to get help and support from family, friends, professionals, and clergy.

It’s time, however, to make those changes. No one is stopping us except ourselves.

We know it won’t be easy, but if we can change one thing this year about ourselves, the effort will be worth it.

Chazak v’eimatz – strength and courage.

L’shanah tovah u’m’tukah.

Where Ever You Go There You Are! – D’var Torah Parashat Mattot-Masei

04 Thursday Jul 2013

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Twenty years ago the physician and Zen Master, Jon Kabat-Zinn, wrote a book he called “Where Ever You Go There You Are.” The book’s title has stayed with me and it has helped me to focus not only on why I do what I do, but also on why others might behave as they do.

We are who we are where ever we are, and that means that we carry with us trunk loads of emotional baggage – fear, trauma, anger, resentment, disappointment, as well as our loves, passions, joys, dreams, and hopes. Consequently, for better and worse, we often respond to situations not based on who or what stands before us, but rather out of the “stuff” we carry in our emotional trunks that have nothing to do with present circumstances.

The idea that “Where ever you go, there you are” begs the question – Can people really change their orientation in the world, or are we fated because of our personal histories to think, feel and behave as we have always done?

Judaism affirms that we can change and evolve, though slowly, incrementally and often with sacrifice and pain.

In this week’s double Torah portion Matot-Masei , our sages affirm this truth as they reflect upon Moses’ list of 42 places through which he and the Israelites passed during the 40 years of wandering (Numbers 33).

The book of Numbers as a whole (the 42 places act as chronological signposts) enumerates the people’s disillusionment and struggle, temptation, rebellion, and broken faith. If there is a common theme to Numbers, it’s that the people wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else than where they were.

Commentators asked why Moses enumerated these 42 places. The Malbim (1809-1879) suggested that because their experience in Egypt was so filled with suffering, it was necessary before they entered the Land of Canaan to exorcise, a little bit at a time in each of the 42 places, a measure of the pain, resentment, humiliation, and defilement that they bore. Then they would be able to meet God in a pure state in the land.

Their redemption from Egypt, therefore, was gradual and progressive spread out over 40 years. With this understanding of the Biblical narrative, the Talmud says that when we are brought before God for heavenly judgment, we’ll be asked Tzapita l’yeshua (“Did you anticipate redemption?”) (Shabbat 31a).  In other words, did you undo wrongs you committed? Did you do restore your relationships with family and friends, colleagues, community, the Jewish people, and God? Did you forgive? Did you act from fear or faith? Did you restore justice and mercy? Did you live with high moral standards, with kindness and integrity?

Rav Abraham Isaac Kook taught

“…we should feel that we are like a limb of a great organism….that we are part of a nation, which, in turn, is part of humanity. The betterment of each individual contributes to the life of the larger community, thus advancing the redemption of the nation and the universe.”

The end of Numbers finds Moses and the Israelites encamped on the steppes of Moab, at the Jordan River near Jericho. They had not as yet entered the land, but, say the commentators, they did as individuals and as a community relieve themselves of the burdens and defilement, humiliation and degradation of Egypt, and so they could answer collectively “Yes” to the question, Tzapita l’yeshua – Did you anticipate redemption?

What about us? What fears, trauma, anger, resentment, and disappointment do carry with us that we need to release in order to encounter others as individuals and as a community appropriately?

The good news is that we can make choices. We do not have to do things the same way we have always done them. Nor do we have to presume the same responses of others that we’ve experienced before. We have the capacity to be self-critical and, by an act of will, transform who we are and where we are in our lives.

“Where ever you go there you are?” This is a true statement, but the supplementary questions are as important to ask and answer – Where are we? Who are we? And do we need to remain where we are if fear, distrust, pain, and resentment keep us in Egypt far from the Promised Land.

This is what I believe our Torah portion is asking of us as individuals and as a people this week, to break from the chains that keep us far from redemption.

May our journeys transform and uplift us.

Shabbat Shalom.

Finding Light Amidst Darkness – D’var Torah Pinchas

28 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Ethics, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

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How to read the story of Pinchas, a shatteringly brutal tale of love and violence? That is the question in this week’s Torah portion, especially for the modern Jew?

The story begins this way:

“Now YHVH spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Pinchas, son of Elazar son of Aaron the priest, has turned my venomous-anger from the Children of Israel in his being zealous with My jealousy in their midst, so that I did not finish off the children of Israel in my jealousy.” (Numbers 25:10-11)

What did Pinchas do to attract God’s attention? Without due process he took his sword and in one thrust plunged it into the back of the Israelite man Zimri and through the belly of the Midianite woman Cozbi who were locked in an amorous embrace, and Pinchas killed them dead.

The Torah tells us that God credited Pinchas with having saved thousands who God was about to kill Himself, but Pinchas’ righteous rage kept God’s violence at bay. Then God rewarded Pinchas with “briti shalom – My covenant of peace.”

If this were the entire story many of us would despair its implications. Indeed, Jewish extremist rabbis in Israel have used this story in recent years to justify attacking Reform rabbis in the manner Pinchas attacked Zimri.

Thankfully, the midrashic and esoteric traditions explore deeper truths hidden in this grim tale that offer meaning rather than despair.

Most rabbinic commentary justifies Pinchas’ deed as virtuous. There is, nevertheless, a mystical strain that regards Cozbi’s and Zimri’s love not as a great sin at all, but as a union so pure and beautiful that the world could not contain it.

For this understanding I’m grateful to Rabbi Jonathan Omer-man and Rabbi Yosi Gordon. They have brought forward the reflections of some of our greatest mystic sages, Rabbis Isaac Luria, Chaim vital, Abraham Azulai, and the Izbeca Rabbi (“Learn Torah With…” – July 22, 1995) who wrote:

“There are ten degrees of fornication in the world. At the lowest level, the worst, the will to sin is even greater than the desire to perform the act, and the person has to urge himself on to sally out into the world and sully it. At each ascending level, however, the protagonist’s will becomes progressively more powerful. At the tenth and final level, which is extremely rare, the desire is so powerful that no human will in the world would be strong enough to vanquish it. We must conclude that it was not a sin at all, but God’s will. Zimri and Cozbi, far from being wicked sinners, were a couple ordained from the beginning of creation.”

In other words, Zimri’s and Cozbi’s love was so high and exalted that it could neither be realized nor sustained in the real world, reminding us of the forbidden love of Romeo and Juliet and the maiden and her beloved in The Song of Songs 8:6-7:

Ki azah cha-mavet ahavah, /  kasha chishol kin’ah.      

“For love is fierce as death, / passion is mighty as Sheol;

R’shafeha rispei esh / Shalhevetya.

Its darts are darts of fire, / A blazing flame.

Mayim rabim lo yuchlu l’chabot et ahavah / Un’harot lo yish’t’puha.

Vast floods cannot quench love, / Nor rivers drown it.”

The Kabbalah teaches that though Zimri’s and Cozbi’s soul-love defied the tragedy of their real life together, they came back into the reincarnated life of Rabbi Akiva who built his famed academy.

In light of this, how might we regard Pinchas?

To the modern eye his reward of the “covenant of peace” seems unjust and wrong. Most traditional commentators, however, emphasize Pinchas’ motive as pure, l’shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven. The Kabbalists said that though Pinchas sincerely sought Truth, he did not grasp nor understand Cozbi’s and Zimri’s love.

There are two slight variations in the text that give support to this view. The first is in the writing of Pinchas’ name – Peh-yod-nun-chet-samech (Numbers 25:11).  The yod is written unusually small suggesting that God’s holiest Name – Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (which at times is designated by a lone yod), and Jews (Yehudim) – Yod-heh-vav-daled-yod-mem) that begins with yod, are diminished when a Jew engages in violence, even justified violence.

The second variation comes in the vav of the word shalom – shin-lamed-vav-mem – meaning “wholeness.” The vav here is strangely broken in the middle suggesting that the wholeness of this covenant – briti shalom – (indeed, any agreement that’s reached by destroying one’s opponent) will inevitably be a flawed and incomplete peace.

Is it not true? Real peace cannot come from violence and war.

Lest we despair, Rabbi Omer-man reminds us of Zimri’s and Cozbi’s love, of its exalted purity despite transgressing tribal taboo, and that even in situations as dire as this one “there is light [even] when we [believe we] can only see darkness.”

Shabbat shalom.

Sinai and American Efforts for Peace – D’var Torah Hukat

14 Friday Jun 2013

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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In this week’s Torah portion Hukat, Miriam dies and the people complain bitterly that there’s no water (Numbers 20:3-5). God tells him to take his rod and order the rock to produce water. But Moses, old and weary, instead of ordering the rock strikes it with his rod. Though the people drink God punishes Moses from ever entering the Promised Land.

Talmudic sages said that Moses’ faith wasn’t strong enough, that because he failed to sanctify God in the sight of the people God deemed him unworthy to lead them into Canaan.

RAMBAM explained that Moses lacked compassion, that because the people were on the verge of death from thirst he should have spoken kindly to them instead of with words of rebuke.

Others say that in losing his temper Moses lost his moral authority to be leader.

And some say that because Moses claimed credit for the miracle of the water without acknowledging God, the Almighty denied him what he dreamed for most.

And there’s yet another explanation.

Earlier at Massah and Meribah (Exodus 17) the people also had complained of their dire thirst. Similar to our portion God told Moses to take his rod, but this time to hit the rock instead of speaking to it.

Why? What was different then vs now?

The answer is that Sinai intervened between the two events. There, at that lowly mountain God sought a new way for the people, to erase the experience of slavery, to create a new people in which force would yield to reason, physical strength to law, violence to dialogue and compassion.

God intended that a new age was to begin, the messianic age, and Moses was to be the Messiah. However, when Moses hit the rock instead of speaking to it, he showed the people that Sinai had actually changed nothing, that God was just a more powerful Pharaoh with bigger magic and greater violence.

In a modern midrash on the “Waters of Meribah,” Rabbi Marc Gelman writes movingly of what God intended for the people, then and now (Learn Torah with…Vol. 5, Number 16, January 30, 1999, edited by Joel Lurie Grishaver and Rabbi Stuart Kelman):

“When my people enters the land you shall not enter with them, but neither shall I. I shall only allow a part of my presence to enter the land with them. The abundance of my presence I shall keep outside the land. The exiled part shall be called my Shekhinah and it shall remind the people that I too am in exile. I too am a divided presence in the world, and that I shall only be whole again on that day when the power of the fist vanishes forever from the world. Only on that day will I be one. Only on that day will my name be one. Only on that day Moses, shall we enter the land together. Only on that day Moses, shall the waters of Meribah become the flowing waters of justice and the everlasting stream of righteousness gushing forth from my holy mountain where all people shall come and be free at last.”

Turning to the present, we ask how we can apply the message of Sinai to the most challenging problem facing the Jewish people – the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Sinai teaches that the power of the fist must give way to a vision of Oneness, and that vision requires us as American Jews to publicly support our own American effort led by President Obama and Secretary Kerry to help the Israelis and Palestinians resolve their conflict diplomatically in two states for two peoples living side by side in peace and security.

The status quo in which Israel occupies another people is morally, religiously and practically unsustainable. Israel will lose its soul, its democracy and/or its Jewish majority if it continues to occupy millions of Palestinians.

Israel must be helped to choose and the Palestinians must be helped to choose a new way that leads our two peoples and two nations towards acceptance of the other and a peaceful resolution of this conflict. The extremists on both sides need to be contained and controlled. Each side will need to make significant compromises for the sake of peace.

It will not be easy, but that, I believe, is the greater meaning of Sinai and we ignore it at our own peril.

Theodor Herzl said more than a century ago when envisioning a State for the Jewish people –  Im tirtzu, ein zo agadah – If you will it, it is not a dream!

If Israel and the Palestinians will it, peace is also not a dream.