Category Archives: Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

We Are Waiting Still – D’var Torah B’shalach

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Divrei Torah, Ethics, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life

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Upon liberation, even after all the signs and wonders that devastated Egypt and its gods, the people were so accustomed to small-minded thinking (moach katnut) that they complained to Moses: “Why did you bring us up from Egypt, to kill us … with thirst?”

God instructed Moses: “Pass before the people; … and take the rod with which you struck the Nile, [and] strike the rock and water will issue from it, and the people will drink?” (Exodus 17:5-6)

Nearly forty years later a similar rebellion rose up against Moses and Aaron, and the people complained bitterly yet again: “Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place, a place with no grain or figs or vines or pomegranates? There is not even water to drink!” (Numbers 20:1-13)

Moses was old and tired, frustrated and disgusted by his own people, and he did not know what to do. God instructed him again, but with a slight difference: “…take the rod…and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water.”

“Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.”

God was unforgiving and charged Moses with defying Him, of hitting the rock instead of speaking to it, and the Almighty punished the leader decreeing that Moses would never enter the Land of Promise.

What changed in those forty years and why did Moses defy God?

From God’s perspective the meeting at Mount Sinai was supposed to have transformed the people, to have washed Egypt from their veins, hearts, minds and souls.

Sinai was meant to change Israel’s understanding of itself as a victimized people without transcendent purpose into a holy people wherein they and the world would live in such a way that force would yield to reason, strength to law, violence to dialogue, and hardheartedness to compassion.

Moses’ hitting the rock before the eyes of the people after Sinai in defiance of God showed that little had actually changed, that brute force justifies ends and that might still makes for right.

God intended that a new age would begin at Sinai, but by striking the rock Moses stopped history in its tracks and publicized before the people that Sinai was not a mountain high enough to be seen throughout the world.

Rabbi Marc Gellman has written a moving midrash explaining this idea:

“Moses understood that God wanted him to speak to the rock and usher in the Messianic age of peace and tranquility. However, Moses knew that though the desert land was behind, the land of Canaan was ahead…and that it… would still have to be taken [by force] by the people….that the strong hand that smote the Egyptians would still be needed to smite the Canaanites.  Moses knew that it was too soon for the power of the fist to yield to the power of the word.

…God asked Moses, ‘When do you think it will be time?’

Moses said, ‘I do not know. All I do know is that…You were the One Who sanctified the power of the fist in this world. Because of You people will learn forever that the land and the fist go together. And if You wanted the power of the fist You should never have given me the signs and wonders …. Now it is too late.’

God was silent… [Moses] said, ‘Why did You let me do the miracles and the signs and wonders?  Why did You command me to strike the rock even the first time? …If the power of the fist is to disappear from this world it must begin with You, El Shaddai. Together we have made Your people free of the power of Pharaoh only to enslave them again to the power of the fist. O God, help us to become free for Your words.’

After a long silence God said: ‘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 … 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 … and all people shall come to be free at last.’

Then God lifted Moses to Heaven …and the shepherd’s staff slipped from Moses’ hand and fell to earth into the waters of Meribah and was gone forever. And God kissed Moses on the lips and took his breath away.”

We wait still for the word to vanquish the fist, for the world to yield to reason and dialogue, compassion and justice, righteousness and understanding. We are waiting still!

Shabbat Shalom!

“The Ineffable Flame of God” – D’var Torah Sh’mot

08 Thursday Jan 2015

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

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“The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned rules of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man. God is raging in the prophet’s words.” (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel)

This week’s and next week’s Torah portions (Shmot and Va-era – Exodus 1-9:35) describe Moses’ first and second revelations of God, the first out of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2+) and the second God’s call for Moses to liberate the Israelites from Egyptian bondage (Exodus 6:1+).

Tradition regards Moses as the greatest of all the Biblical prophets, the only prophet to meet God “panim el panim – face to face” whereas the others encountered God in visions and dreams.

The prophets were solitary, lonely figures, often unpopular, hated and denounced by those whose lives they sought to change. They were all cast into a role they did not seek, often during times of great social and political crisis, and their mission was religious and ethical, this-worldly, bound in covenant and committed to the fulfillment of God’s will that human society be governed by high standards of justice, compassion and peace.

The “I” of the prophet, per Heschel, was God – never the prophet himself. The prophet was merely God’s mouthpiece, and when he spoke it was God who was speaking.

The prophet alternately, depending on circumstances, admonished the people for their ethical lapses and comforted the people in their suffering. He did not predict the future. Rather, he articulated the consequences of unrighteousness and evil practice.

The prophet placed the experience of the people in an historical and salvationary context thereby giving ultimate meaning to his/God’s words and hope to those who suffered despair.

Not every human being was destined for prophecy. God chose only those lonely figures who had primed themselves to be able to “hear” the divine voice. Moses, for example, had first to leave the opulent life of the Egyptian palace and witness first-hand the suffering of his people beneath Pharaoh’s yoke. Acting out of righteous anger and indignation at the injustices he saw, Moses killed an Egyptian taskmaster, fled Egypt and became a wandering refugee in the wilderness. Eventually, he settled into the humble life of a shepherd tending his flocks, a quiet life of solitude beneath open skies and star-lit nights.

The burning bush was, according to Rabbi Heschel, the paradigmatic scene of “God in search of man.”

The 13th century Spanish sage, Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, noted that God revealed the divine Self gradually to Moses:

“Since this was Moses’ first experience of prophecy the Almighty wished gradually to initiate him and raise him by stages until his spiritual perceptions were strengthened.” Thus, the narrative “underlines that Moses achieved the perception of three things: the fire, the angel and the Shechinah [the feminine presence of God].”

Moses first noticed the physical fire, then the angel appeared to him in a flame, and finally God called out to him from the bush. Moses “saw” God with his ears and he “heard” God’s voice with his eyes.

This singular experience characterizes a prophetic moment, all-encompassing, beyond the rational and imaginative faculties, a psychic intuition.

The following poem by Rabbi Heschel describes the life and experience of the prophet. When asked if he (Heschel) was a prophet, Rabbi Heschel rejected the idea entirely.

“God follows me everywhere / Spins a net of glances around me, / Shines upon my sightless back like a sun.

God follows me like a forest everywhere. / My lips, always amazed, are truly numb, dumb, / Like a child who blunders upon an ancient holy place.

God follows me like a shiver everywhere. / My desire is for rest; the demand within me is: Rise up, / See how prophetic visions are scattered in the streets.

I go with my reveries as with a secret / In a long corridor through the world – / And sometimes I glimpse high above me, the faceless face of God

…

God follows me in tramways, in cafes. / Oh, it is only with the backs of the pupils of one’s eyes that one can see / How secrets ripen, how visions come to be.

The Ineffable Flame of God – Man. Poems of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (in Yiddish and English). Translated from the Yiddish by Morton M. Leifman. Introduction by Edward K. Kaplan. Continuum. New York, London. 2005. pages 56-57. Originally published in 1933 in Warsaw.

The Difference Between an Optimist and a Pessimist – D’var Torah Vayechi

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Israel and Palestine, Jewish Identity, Jewish-Christian Relations, Jewish-Islamic Relations, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Tributes

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The optimist says, “This is the best of all worlds.”

The pessimist says, “You’re right!”

As we enter 2015 there is much for which we can be thankful: our lives, our health (hopefully), our families, friends, and community, the people of Israel, and our friendships with peoples of all faith, ethnic and national traditions.

Of course, there’s much about which to worry as well: hard-heartedness, selfishness, alienation, polarization, poverty, inequality, injustice, violence, and war.

A thousand mourners  filled the Sanctuary of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles last Sunday to memorialize the congregation’s founding Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman, which they did with uncommon love and respect for his brilliance, wisdom, kindness, love for Jews, the state of Israel, all people, and a higher moral order.

Throughout his life, Leonard’s dogged determination to keep the fires of love, compassion and justice burning elevated the rest of us by virtue of the nobility of his spirit. So many people from a variety of religious communities depended upon Leonard to help them set the direction of their moral compass. He was a spiritual and moral “north star” that pointed his community in the direction he thought it ought to be traveling.

Surely, Rabbi Leonard Beerman was a unique human being and an exceptional rabbi, and I for one feel lonelier in our world now that he is gone. As I indicated in my remembrance last week, I didn’t see Leonard all that frequently (much more in recent years than before), but I knew he was there holding a moral and spiritual torch high for so many of his chassidim, who may not always have agreed with him on this position or that, or who thought about ethics a bit differently than he did, but who took him and what he once called his “notions” very seriously indeed.

Leonard was laid to rest during this week in which we are reading Parashat Vayechi, the final portion in the book of Genesis when Jacob blessed his sons and grandsons.

The portion opens while Jacob’s family is in Egypt, a constricted place defined by injustice, slavery, brutality, insensitivity, and exile. Among the darkest of Torah portions, it begins unlike any other portion in all of Torah.

Rashi asked, “Why is this section completely closed? Why isn’t there a space of nine letters between the end of the preceding parashah and the beginning of this one, as it is in every other Torah portion?”

Rashi says: “When Jacob our father died, the eyes and hearts of Israel were closed because of the affliction of the bondage with which the Egyptians began to enslave them.”

The Midrash explains that “Jacob desired to reveal the end (i.e. the time of the final redemption) to his sons, but it was closed from him.” (B’reishit Rabba)

This suggests that the hardship, distress and violence of Egypt (or any constricted life) blind the eye, harden the heart and oppress the soul. Torah reminds us that we can never become resigned to a world of dog-eat-dog. Rather, because we were created “b’tzelem Elohim – in the divine image” every human being is infused with infinite value and worth. As such, we are meant to dream big dreams, to climb Jacob’s stairway to heaven, to reclaim our best angels, and to remember who we are and what is our purpose on earth as Jews – namely, to sanctify life, to walk humbly before God, and to care with compassion for all of God’s creatures.

Parshat Veyechi is a story about opposites – impending hardship vs blessing, despair vs hope, hard-heartedness vs elevated dreams. Tradition teaches us Jews to embrace both extremes, but to reach higher than what circumstances seem to allow.

Such was the nature of Jacob’s times. Such is the nature of our times. Such was the nature of Rabbi Leonard Beerman’s life.

Jacob wanted so badly to reveal the end of days to his children, but “nistam mimenu – it was closed to him.” Sadly, It remains closed to us as well.

“Lamrot hakol – despite everything” Leonard sought the light as we Jews seek the light, and he prayed for the peace of Jerusalem and for justice and security for Israel and the Palestinians, for common decency for all humankind, as we Jews must also pray.

Next week begins the reading of the book of Exodus when we witness the beginnings of the spiritual nationhood of the Jewish people at Mount Sinai as we entered into a sacred covenant with God.

Because we see reflected sparks of divinity in the human condition, we Jews are essentially optimists who regard the half-full glass and seek to fill that which is empty.

May this secular New Year 2015 be a time when we continue the work to help facilitate greater kindness, compassion, justice, healing, and peace for us in our own lives, families and communities, for the Jewish people and for all of God’s children.

Hanukah – A Major Battleground for the Heart and Soul of the Jewish People

18 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Holidays, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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Last week I was invited to speak at Campbell Hall, a large private school in Studio City, Los Angeles, before two hundred and fifty 7th and 8th grade students about the story of Hanukah.

I began by saying that without the success of the Maccabean Revolt in 165 BCE, there would be no Judaism, no Christianity and no Islam today. I then reviewed the traditional story of Hanukah as it comes down to us through Jewish tradition, telling about the heroic battle of the Maccabean family against the Greeks, the Greek desecration of the Temple Mount, the miracle of the oil lasting eight days instead of one, the lighting of the Hanukiah, latkes, and dreidls, and then I said, “Truth to tell, this isn’t the history of this holiday at all. Most of that is story-telling. The real history is far more interesting and important for us today, Jews and peoples of other faith traditions alike.”
Then, as now, the Maccabean Revolt was a battle for the heart and soul of Judaism and the Jewish people. Applied more generally, its themes affirming self-identity and survival are applicable to every ethnicity, religion and nation.

A few years ago Dr. Noam Zion, of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, spoke to the Board of Rabbis of Southern California on the theme: “The Reinvention of Hanukkah in the 20th Century as A Jewish Cultural Civil War between Zionists, Liberal American Judaism and Chabad.”

He offered a comprehensive view of Hanukah from its beginnings 2200 years ago, and how it is understood and celebrated today by Israelis, American liberal non-Hareidi Jews and Chabad Lubatich. Based on Hanukah’s history and the vast corpus of sermons written by rabbis through the centuries, Dr. Zion noted that three questions have been asked consistently through the ages:

‘Who are the children of light and darkness?’

‘Who are our people’s earliest heroes and what made them heroic?’

‘What relevance can we find in Hanukah today?’

Jewish tradition considers Hanukah a “minor holyday,” but Hanukah occupies an important place in the ideologies of the State of Israel, American liberal Judaism and Chabad.

Before and after the establishment of Israel, the Maccabees served as a potent symbol for “Political Zionism” for those laboring to create a modern Jewish state. The early Zionists rejected God’s role in bringing about the miracle of Jewish victory during Hasmonean times. Rather, they emphasized that Jews themselves are the central actors in our people’s restoration of Jewish sovereignty on the ancient land, and not God.

For 20th century liberal American Jews Hanukah came to represent Judaism’s aspirations for religious freedom consistent with the First Amendment of the US Constitution. Even as Hanukah reflects universal aspirations, the Hanukiah remains a particular symbol of Jewish pride and identity for American Jews living in a dominant Christian culture.

For Chabad, Hanukah embodies the essence of religious identity on the one hand, and the mission of Jews on the other. Each Hassid is to be “a streetlamp lighter” who ventures into the public square and kindles the nearly extinguished flame of individual Jewish souls, one soul at a time (per Rebbe Sholom Dov-Ber). This is why Chabad strives to place a Hanukiah in public places. Every fulfilled mitzvah kindles the flame of a soul and restores it to God.

Dr. Zion concluded his talk by noting that the cultural war being played out in contemporary Jewish life is based in the different responses to the central and historic question that has always given context to Hanukah – ‘Which Jews are destroying Jewish life and threatening Judaism itself?’

The Maccabean war was not a war between the Jews and the Greeks, but rather it was a violent civil war between the established radically Hellenized Jews and the besieged village priests outside major urban centers in the land of Israel. The Maccabees won that war only because moderately Hellenized Jews recognized that they would lose their Jewish identity if the radical Hellenizers were victorious. They joined in coalition with the village priests and together retook the Temple and dedicated it. That historic struggle has a parallel today in a raging cultural civil war for the heart and soul of the Jewish people and for the nature of Judaism itself in the state of Israel.

The take-away? There is something of the zealot in each one of us, regardless of our Jewish camp. If we hope to avoid the sin of sinat chinam (baseless hatred between one Jew and another) that the Talmud teaches was the cause of the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 C.E., we need to prepare ourselves to be candles without knives, to bring the love of God and our love for the Jewish people back into our homes and communities. To be successful will take much courage, compassion, knowledge, understanding, faith, and grit. The stakes are high – the future of Israel and the Jewish people.

Is it any wonder that Hanukah, though defined by Judaism as a “minor holiday,” is, in truth, a major battle-ground for the heart and soul of Judaism and the Jewish people?

Inspiring Words and Blessings for Hanukah this Year

11 Thursday Dec 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, Divrei Torah, Holidays, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day

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I offer these words from a variety of sources for this season of Hanukah and am grateful to the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem for providing them. I  offer my own blessings to be said before the kindling of the Hanukah lights on each night, beginning this next Tuesday evening – the first night of Hanukah.

“The glory and the educational value of the Hasmoneans is that their example revived the nation to be its own redeemer and the determiner of its own future…”
-Yitzhak Ben Zvi, 2nd President of the State of Israel

“The Hanukah lights reflect the fire within the Jewish soul, as it is written, The soul of a human being is the lamp of God.’ (Proverbs 20:27) Each person possesses this light within his body. Hanukah teaches how this light must be ignited, …renewed and increased each day. Projecting light to the world at large is the underlying intent of all the mitzvot, as it is written, ‘A mitzvah is a lamp and the Torah is light.’ (Proverbs 6:23) However, to a greater degree than in other mitzvot, this intent is reflected in the Hanukkah candles, for they produce visible light and they spread that light throughout their surroundings.”
-Rabbi Menachem Schneerson

“When reading the contemporary accounts of the Hasmonean Revolution found in the Books of the Maccabees (c. 165 BCE), the rabbis of later centuries made the observance of the commandment of “pirsum hanes – the public proclamation of this miracle” the centerpiece of the festival thereby emphasizing that the power of the spirit is enduring and not weapons of war, high finance and politics.”
-Professor Shimon Rawidowicz

“Just as the light of a lamp remains undimmed, though myriads of wicks and flames may be lit from it, so the one who gives to a worthy cause does not make a hole in his/her own pocket.”
-Midrash Exodus Rabbah 36:3

The Talmud tells of a great debate about how to light the Hanukiah. Do we start with eight and diminish until the last night. Or do we start with one and build to the eighth night. Beit Hillel says the latter. Beit Shammai says the former. The halacha (Jewish law) follows Beit Hillel. In other words, each day we build on what has taken place.  Each day we add light. Each day we are strengthened in resolve, goodness. Each day we draw closer to God. [The custom is to line up the candles from the right to the left, but to light them from the left to the right – the current day first.]
-Bavli, Shabbat 21b

The Midrash compares a mitzvah to a lamp. The increasing light kindled on Hanukah reminds us that we are not diminished when we give of ourselves to others. The opposite is true. By our kind deeds we increase light and sparks of Divinity into the world.

Suggested Blessings to Say Before Kindling the Lights of Hanukah

FIRST CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF TORAH AND BLESSING

With this candle we reaffirm our people’s commitment to the study of our sacred tradition. May the light of this flame cast its warmth and inspire us to be grateful for the blessings of life and health.

SECOND CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF LIBERATION AND HOPE

On behalf of our people dispersed in the four corners of the world who live in fear, repression and imprisonment, we stand this night in solidarity with them. Our Hanukkah flames are theirs and their hopes are ours. We are one people united by tradition, history and faith in the one God who inspires freedom and liberation.

THIRD CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF PEACE AND MEMORY

With this candle we pray that a just and lasting peace may be established between Israel and the Palestinians, between Israel and all Arab and Muslim peoples. May the memory of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and those who gave their lives for peace be a blessing for our people and all peoples of the Middle East.

FOURTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF TOLERANCE

With this light we pray that racism, political enmity, gender bias, homophobia, religious hatred, intolerance, and fundamentalist extremism be dispelled, and may all people recognize divinity within all of God’s children.

FIFTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF ECONOMIC JUSTICE

With this light we recommit ourselves to work on behalf of the poor in our communities and throughout the world. May we be inspired not only to feed the hungry and lift the fallen, but to reorder society’s priorities and  educate all children to be able to sustain themselves with dignity and hope.

SIXTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF CREATION

With this light may our commitment be renewed to preserve God’s creation, for as the Midrash reminds us, if we destroy it there will come no one after us to make it right.

SEVENTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF BLESSING

May the light of this flame cast its warmth upon us and inspire us to be ever grateful for the blessings of life, family, community, and health.

EIGHTH CANDLE: THE LIGHT OF MEMORY AND WITNESSING

May these lights inspire us always to care, love, and perform deeds of loving-kindness to others. Amen!

Pavel Stransky – Terezin, Auschwitz and the Death March of a Survivor

18 Tuesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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As we drove into Terezin where 33,000 Jews died and from which 88,000 were deported to Auschwitz, the place appeared as a charming medieval walled-town graced with a central square beneath gentle-leaved trees.

Terezin, a medieval town constructed by Joseph II for Maria Teresa, was established by the Nazis in 1940 to be a model camp used to persuade the International Red Cross that Jews were there for their protection and led a normal life.

The camp would receive 150,000 Jews including 15,000 children from Czechoslovakia, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Most Jews stayed 6 months before being transported to Auschwitz. The camp crammed 80,000 souls together. Today, 1000 people live there.

Pavel Stransky was one of only 17,247 survivors. At 93, this warm-hearted, articulate and loving grandfather guided us through the camp and shared his story.

He was born in Prague and met the love of his life, Vera, as a young Jewish girl in 1938. They became engaged but before the marriage could occur he was taken to Terezin in 1941. By chance, Vera and her parents were on the next transport.

Vera and Pavel married in Terezin on December 16, 1943 in a non-Jewish ceremony one day before he would be transported to Auschwitz. Not knowing what would meet them there, Vera and her mother (her father had already died) voluntarily joined him. Upon arrival, Vera’s mother was gassed. Pavel and Vera were selected for work and separated.

Pavel lost half his weight by the time he was liberated. At 70 pounds and starving, he was forced on a 150-mile death march from Auschwitz and back to Terezin before Soviet troops liberated him.

Of Auschwitz, Pavel wrote:

“Had Dante Alighieri seen the ramp in Auschwitz-Birkenau at the end of the night of December 20, 1943, he probably would have been ashamed of his sober description of Hell.” (Pavel Stransky – “As Messengers for the Victims”, publ. 2000, p. 14).

Before being deported from Prague at the beginning of the war, Pavel had fortuitously taken a teacher training seminar, a role he credits with saving his life.

“The Children’s Block [at Auschwitz] was conceived by Fredy Hirsch, a handsome man who … could have been a model in ancient Greece… Fredy loved children and they …worshipped him.”

In October 1943, Fredy asked Dr. Mengele to make a children’s block out of one of the barracks, and Pavel became one of the coordinators.

The Czech Israeli writer, Otto B. Kraus, tells the story of the 500 Jewish children who lived in the Czech Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau in which Fredy and Pavel worked. The children’s instructors organized clandestine lessons, sing-alongs and staged plays and charades (all described in Kraus’ novel “The Painted Wall”).

Mengele sustained The Children’s Block to provide the Nazis with an alibi to refute the rumors of the Final Solution. It became a shelter and haven for the children, who would all eventually perish in the gas chambers. 83% of the 50 Children’s Block coordinators, however, were still alive in May 1945 because they had spent days inside and out of the bad weather. The coordinators’ mission to create a make-believe world for the children, humanize and bring happiness into the last days of life for the most innocent victims also helped sustain them. (Ibid., Stransky, pps. 44-45)

Upon liberation, Pavel returned to Prague and advertised in local papers with the hope that Vera survived. One day she knocked on his door. Ecstatic, they married a second time under a chupah with real wine and a glass for breaking, and they bore and raised four children and six grandchildren. Vera died fifteen years ago.

As we toured Terezin, Pavel told us that the Nazis’ intention wasn’t just to murder Jews, but

“…to systematically humiliate people’s human dignity …, until the person had been transformed into a starving skeleton that for days and nights without end longs only for a piece of bread… in order [for the Nazis] to hate and despise the product of their own perversion …No one who has not gone through it … can imagine how hours, days, weeks, and months of an empty stomach can hurt; how it can dominate all the thoughts of someone who is eternally hungry, and how it focuses those thoughts on only one thing: just once to eat one’s fill!” (ibid. p. 37)

Pavel showed us a most remarkable synagogue in the camp, one that was hidden from the Nazis and that he (Pavel) did not know existed when he lived there, a windowless 20 X 20 feet room at the end of a drive. Its interior was painted in beautiful Hebrew calligraphy with passages inscribed from Tanakh and Tahanun prayers. Here is but one inscription from the Shacharit service:

“Concerning our brethren from the house of Israel, who in sorrow and in bondage, who between the sea and dry land – May God be merciful to them and deliver them from hardship to ease, from darkness to light, from slavery to redemption, and let it happen speedily.”

A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field

13 Thursday Nov 2014

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

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Chayei Sarah is a monumental Torah portion in the Book of Genesis (23:1-25:18) that establishes Hevron as one of our people’s holiest cities in the land of Israel and tells the story of the betrothal of Isaac and Rebekah. Thus, for the first time in Jewish history we witness the passing of the baton of history from one generation to the next.

We, the current generation, however, have yet to fulfill our Jewish destiny. Until there is peace between the tribes of Israel and between Israel and the Palestinians, we will not have fulfilled our raison d’etre as a people to be rod’fei shalom, pursuers of peace.

I offer a poetic midrash on Isaac’s and Rebekah’s encounter leading to their marriage. I love this story because their meeting is pure and sweet, and it suggests a paradigm of what is possible not only between individuals, but between the tribes that comprise the Jewish people today (e.g. Hareidi, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, secular, liberal and right-wing Zionists, American, Israeli, Russian, British, European, Latin, etc.), and the peoples of the Middle East who know far too much polarization, suspicion, distrust, and hatred of each other.

A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field

To be alone amidst shifting wheat
And rocks and sun
Beneath stirred-up clouds
And singing angel voices
Audible only by the wind.

‘I’ve secluded myself
As my father did
When he went out alone
Leaving all he knew
For a place he’d never been
That God would show him.

I can do nothing else myself
Because my father broke my heart
And crushed my soul
When he betrayed me
By stealing me away one early morning
Before my mother awoke
And nearly offered me up to his God.

When my mother learned what he had done,
Her soul passed from the world.

O how she loved me!
And filled me up
With laughter, love and tears.

Bereft now of them both,
I’m desolate in this world
And in this field.

O Compassionate One –
Do You hear me
From this arid place
Filled with snakes and beasts,
hatred and vengeance?

I sit here needing You.’

As if in response,
Suddenly from afar
There appears a caravan
Of people and camels,
Led by Eliezer, Abraham’s servant,
With a young girl.

Isaac, burdened by his grief
Does not look nor see.
He sits still
Lasuach basadeh
Meditating and weeping
Beneath the afternoon sun
And swirling clouds
And singing angels
Whom he cannot hear.

Rebekah asks:
‘Who is that man crying alone in the field?’
Eliezer says:
‘He is my master Isaac, Your intended one,
Whose seed you will carry
Into the future.’

“Vatipol min hagamal –
And she fell from her camel”
Shocked and afraid
Onto the hard ground
Yearning.

She veiled her face
And bowed her head
And together Rebekah and Isaac
Entered Sarah’s tent,
And she comforted him.

“The Creation” – A Poem by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

17 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Art, Beauty in Nature, Divrei Torah, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Poetry

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And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I’m lonely–
I’ll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.
Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That’s good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That’s good!

Then God himself stepped down–
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas–
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed–
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled–
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That’s good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I’m lonely still.

Then God sat down–
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I’ll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

“For with God there is steadfast kindness!” (Psalm 130:7)

10 Friday Oct 2014

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

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Sukkot so often is associated with ‘doing.’ The first thing observant Jews ‘do’ after Yom Kippur, the most ascetic holyday in the Jewish calendar, is get back to work and build sukkot. Beyond the doing, of course, is much meaning that gives the holyday its character, power and appeal.

The Sukkah

There’s a machloket (controversy) in the Talmud about what a sukkah represents. Rabbi Akiva said that it represents the booths our people lived in during the 40 years of wandering, thereby recalling the years of exile and suffering experienced by the Israelites who, despite God’s beneficence (per Rabbi Akiva), wanted to return to the Godless Egypt and attach themselves to the false physical comforts based in brick and mortar, as if there were any.

Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus disagreed saying the sukkah represents the ananei kavod (Clouds of Glory – i.e. God) that hovered over the people en-wrapping them with God’s self like a tallit, and providing them with food, water, protection, and safe passage in the desert wilds. The Clouds of Glory were a physical reminder of Divine-nearness that enabled the people to develop trust and faith in a redeeming God without fear.

We seduce ourselves into believing (per Rabbi Akiva) that any house, with its thick walls, gates and alarm systems, can guarantee safety. And so, the sukkah becomes our “house” during this season to remind us of our fragility, impermanence and the limits of the material.

Sukkot comes each year to break us of our illusions and to emphasize that real protection lies within God’s arms. This is the spiritual message of the sukkah, and it’s there that we live for seven days under the t’sach, God’s canopy, a sukkat shalom.

Our bodies are like a sukkah as well, a vessel within which the indwelling presence of God (i.e. the soul) abides. We know, especially as we age, that our bodies are not forever. They break down; we get sick and frail; and we die.

Our homes can so easily be knocked down by earthquake, tornado and storm, just as our bodies and the sukkah are subject to time’s vagaries.

Kohelet

The megilah (scroll) we read on the Shabbat of Sukkot is Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) and it emphasizes this theme of human impermanence and fragility. Kohelet says: “Havel havelim amar Kohelet – havel havelim hakol havel!” – ‘Utter futility, said Kohelet, Utter futility, all is futile!’” (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

A better translation of havel is “vapor.” We feel it one moment, and the next it dissipates much like Abel, whose Hebrew name was also “Havel,” for he left no trace when his brother Cain murdered him.

Most often we attach far too much importance to things – our home is important – our job is important – certain possessions are important – we’re important – everything feels important because we’re attached to, identify with and treat our possessions and self-made identities as extensions and reflections of ourselves, but the truth is that over time nothing tangible or created by human beings is ultimately important – “All is vanity,” like vapor dissipating leaving no trace.

That’s the disturbing side of life, and Sukkot reflects ultimate truths about the limits of materiality and the eternal nature of the spirit. The other side of the holyday, thankfully, empowers us because tradition calls us to rejoice in the very things that we know are impermanent which, like us, are the manifestation of divinity too.

The Four Species

The arba minim (the four species), the lulav, etrog, hadas and aravah plants, represent different aspects of the natural world. They symbolize also different kinds of Jews, the Jewish people as a whole, the oneness of humankind, and God’s all-encompassing unity.

And so, in this z’man simchateinu, this “time of our rejoicing,” we leave our homes and return to nature and the earth. We become more aware of what’s around, above and below us, and we become even more aware of who and what we are.

Universalism

Sukkot carries a deeply universal message. It’s not just for Jews – it’s for non-Jews too. We know this because in the Talmud 70 sacrifices were brought to the Temple during Sukkot, representing the 70 known nations of the world at that time (Bavli, Sukkah 55b). This festival is for the entire world, for everyone everywhere on the planet.

Redemption

Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot is a triad of Biblical festivals celebrating three kinds of p’dut, redemption.

Pesach’s p’dut celebrates our people’s liberation from Egyptian bondage.

Shavuot’s p’dut celebrates our receiving Torah.

And Sukkot’s p’dut celebrates our redemption from ourselves, especially from the finitude and impermanence of our lives.

In Psalms (130:7-8) we read:

Yachel Yisrael el Adonai
Ki im Adonai ha-chesed
V’har’beh i-mo p’dut;
V’hu yif’deh et Yisrael mi kol a-vo-no-tav.

O Israel, hope in God
For with God there is steadfast kindness
And great redemption is with the Eternal;
And God will redeem Israel from all its wrongs.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sukkot Sameach.

High Holiday Sermon Themes 5775 — The Meaning of Love – The State of the Jewish World – Soul Hunger – Never Forgetting

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by in American Jewish Life, American Politics and Life, Divrei Torah, Ethics, Holidays, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History, Jewish Identity, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Stories

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I have posted the four sermons I delivered on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur this season at Temple Israel of Hollywood. For those interested, they may be accessed by clicking the titles below:

Their titles and themes are:

“Love is the Only Road” – Erev Rosh Hashanah – I consider the many kinds of love and the yearning to belong that animates all. I focus on two powerful true stories that evoke what is core to the human condition.

“For Jews Despair is Not An Option” – Shacharit Rosh Hashanah – I consider four themes – Post-Gaza War – The Rise in anti-Semitism in Europe and Scandinavia – The Rise in Extremism, Racism and Hate within Israel and the American Jewish Community – And our Relationship as American Jews to the State of Israel.

“For What Do Our Souls Really Hunger?” – Kol Nidre – Reflections on Judaism’s understanding of what constitutes wisdom, strength, wealth, and honor in contemporary American western culture and thoughts about what the human soul really craves.

“Why I Don’t Want to Die” – Yizkor – Based on a conversation with my 97 year-old mother who is legally blind, nearly deaf and suffering from dementia but at times lucid enough to express her deepest fear in dying.