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A Weeping Isaac Alone in the Field – A Paradigm for Our Times

06 Friday Nov 2015

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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. Hevron today is a hot spot of Palestinian and Jewish rage, of extremism and violence, of polarization and hate. Until there is peace (shalom) between the tribes of Israel and shalom/salem (not hudna – i.e. “quiet”) 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.

The current violence cannot be the way forward, nor can suspicion, distrust and hatred of the “other” define the character of our people’s and the Palestinian people’s hearts and souls.

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. Haredi, Orthodox, Mizrachi, Ashkenazi, Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, secular, atheist, liberal and right-wing Zionists, American, Israeli, 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 angels / 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 / Because Father broke my heart / And crushed my soul / When he betrayed me / By stealing me away one morning / Before my mother awoke / And nearly offered me to his God.

When my mother learned / Her soul passed from the world.

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

Bereft now / I’m desolate in this world / And 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 / Appears a caravan / Of people and camels, / Led by Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, / With a young girl.

Isaac, burdened by grief / Neither looks nor sees.

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 / Bowed her head / And Rebekah and Isaac entered / Sarah’s tent, / And she comforted him.

High Holiday Sermons – 2015-5776

25 Friday Sep 2015

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For those interested in listening/watching on You Tube or reading the text of any of the three High Holiday sermons I delivered this year at Temple Israel of Hollywood on Rosh Hashanah evening, Rosh Hashanah morning and on Kol Nidre, they are now posted together in written form and on YouTube on the Temple Israel of Hollywood website (www.tioh.org) and can be accessed directly here:

http://www.tioh.org/about-us/clergy/aboutus-clergy-clergystudy

Erev Rosh Hashanah – “Radiance in this Austere World”

There is a vast difference between what I call “good speech” about others and gossip (l’shon ha-ra – the evil tongue). The former builds ethical relationships and the latter destroys them. There are no innocent by-standers when we gossip, so the rabbis teach, and we all do it – according to polls 80% of all speech between people is about other people, for better and worse. Recognizing “gossip” as a serious ethical challenge, Judaism has developed a rich series of rules governing our use of language, how we speak to and about others and what we choose to say or not say. My sister in-law put it well recently when she noted that “Candor is golden; diplomacy is divine!” The problem is that people say far too much to each other and about each other, and allow their anger, frustration and self-righteous belief that they are duty-bound to be honest at all times whether harm and hurt comes to others as a consequence or not. The High Holidays reminds us that not all thoughts ought to be expressed, written, shared, or read. In these days leading to the Presidential primaries, we are seeing far too much destructive speech coming from candidates, but that is just a reflection of the coarseness and insensitivity that is happening across society as a whole.

Shacharit Rosh Hashanah – “Fighting for the Soul of the Jewish People”

We Jews are living in a very difficult, threatening and complicated world, and we have been divided by our own extremists about what is in the Jewish people’s best interest relative to the State of Israel’s long-term security and peace as the democratic nation state of the Jewish people. The unity of the Jewish people is essential to our future strength and security, but policies of the government of the state of Israel, led by fear and arrogance and buttressed by an unholy political marriage between ultra-orthodox Hareidi Jews and right-wing one-state believing settlers has now gained significant influence in the policies of the government and threatens to take Israel over a cliff as it becomes increasingly isolated internationally and a source of consternation for the Jewish people in America. We risk losing a generation of young liberal Jews who want to love Israel but are increasingly torn between the values on which they were raised and policies that emphasize security to the exclusion of everything else. The recent battles in the United States over the Iran Agreement, the failure of the Kerry effort to forge a two-state solution, and the vicious attacks on liberal left Jewish supporters of Israel and on other pro-Israel supporters who have taken a different view by both the left and the right, but primarily by extreme right-wing Jews need to be stopped – and soon, or we could lose everything the Jewish people has striven to build since the beginnings of the Zionist movement.

Kol Nidre – “Six Life Lessons”

In this very personal sermon, I share my own spiritual journey and six life-lessons I have learned over the 65+ years of my life. These lessons have broad applicability.

For those interested, on the Temple Israel site are posted the sermons of my colleagues, Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh and Rabbi Jocee Hudson – all well worth reading.

L’shanah tovah u-m’tukah – A good and sweet New Year.

Overcoming Despair and Beginning Again

13 Sunday Sep 2015

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The central theme of these High Holidays is teshuvah, a process that brings us back to ourselves, to our families and friends, to our community, Torah, and God. Teshuvah is ultimately an expression of hope, that the way we are today need not be who we become tomorrow.

Teshuvah is essentially a step-by-step process of turning and re-engaging with our most basic inclinations, the yetzer hara-the evil urge that is propelled by desire, lust and need and our yetzer tov-the good inclination that is inspired by humility, gratitude, generosity, and kindness.

A key beginning in the process that is teshuvah is, however, a sense of despair, hopelessness and sadness, the feeling that we are stuck and cannot change the nature, character and direction of our lives.

Judaism, however, rejects pessimism, cynicism and everything that impedes personal transformation and a hopeful future.

In the story of Jonah, to be read on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, we read the tale of the prophet’s descent into hopelessness and what is required for him to change direction.

Jonah is the epitome of a unrealized prophet who runs from himself, from civilization and from God. Every verb associated with his journey is the language of descent (yod-resh-daled). He flees down to the sea. He boards a ship and goes down into its dark interior. He lays down and falls into a deep sleep. He is thrown overboard down into the waters by his terrified ship-mates. He is swallowed and descends into the belly of a great fish, and there he stays for three days and nights until from that place of despair and utter darkness Jonah decides that he wishes to live and not die. He cries out to God to save him.

God responds by making the fish vomit Jonah out onto dry land. Jonah agrees this time to do God’s bidding and preach to the Ninevites to repent from their evil ways. While the town’s people are all putting on sack cloth and ashes and promising to change, God provides Jonah with shade and protection from the hot sun. Jonah, however, becomes mortified because he still believes that change is impossible and that the Ninevites are destined to fail. Their success, in his mind, makes him to appear the fool.

Teshuvah is never easy. It is for those of us who are strong of mind, heart and soul, who are willing to work hard and suffer failure, but to get up every time, to own what we do, to acknowledge our wrong-doing, to apologize to ourselves and others, and to recommit to the struggle, step-by-step, patiently, one day at a time, one hour at a time, and even one moment at a time.

When successful, teshuvah is restorative and even utopian, for it enables us to return to our truest selves, to the place of soul, to the garden of oneness.

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik taught that in teshuvah we are able even to transcend time itself. He said, “The future has overcome the past.”

L’shanah tovah u-m’tukah.
A good and sweet New Year to you all.

Come for One Hour of Peace, Connection and Cultural Detox

07 Friday Aug 2015

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Most of us are over-programmed, disjointed and stressed out. Living in the fast lane isn’t everything that it’s cracked up to be, nor does such a life bring us what we really need deep down – a day simply to be without doing, to love without feeling lonely, to celebrate without worrying, to retrieve simplicity and dispel clutter.

Shabbat is a radical and ancient notion, one that the Jewish people gave to the world 3000 years ago. It’s a day to live counter-culturally, to protest against the domination of consumerism and materialism over our lives.

Through Shabbat, Jews have an opportunity to rediscover family and friends, and to experience why it’s important to take a day to co-exist in the world without having to change or transform it.

Many of us did not grow up with traditional Judaism in our homes, though we may be Jews and strongly identifying. We don’t know very much about Judaism, Hebrew and ritual, and our not knowing feels intimidating and embarrassing. We would rather stay away than feel bad, so we don’t come to synagogue except on state occasions when we can disappear into the crowd.

Let me say this to those of you who feel this way! Stop it! We in established synagogues all over the country want you to come for Shabbat and we don’t care how much you know or don’t know. We just want you. The more frequently you come, the more comfortable you will be. This, I know to be true.

At Friday evening services synagogues sing together, are quiet together, celebrate baby namings, upcoming b’nai mitzvah and weddings, conversions to Judaism, milestone wedding anniversaries and birthdays, and we grieve together and say the Mourner’s Kaddish when we lose our loved ones. We also talk Torah and see its relevance in our lives today. We think, we reconnect and we let go.

That’s what Shabbat is and every synagogue is open for you to join us, young and old, for one hour each week. Come together, or come alone. Plan to meet a friend and return home for a Shabbos meal.

Make every Shabbat evening a weekly date with yourself, to reconnect, to meet fellow congregants, or others about whom you care and love. Everyone is welcome – member and non-member, Jew and those from other traditions alike. We are open communities and want you.

If the service start-time is inconvenient, then leave work early on Fridays and work late another evening during the week. Work out an arrangement with your employer explaining that you want/need to celebrate Shabbat.

Give yourself a gift of one hour of Shabbos each week. Reconsider your priorities and the way you spend your time. Start your weekend together in community.

The greatest benefit of Shabbat is the experience of a replenishing rest, a rest that spills over into our weeks, our years, our lives.

A study conducted at Duke University found that those who attend religious services once a week and are part of a caring religious community add years to their lives, reduce stress, and end up in the hospital significantly less than those who don’t pray.

Singing the blessings together over light, wine and challah and eating a good meal are activities that center all of us.

Even the most harried workdays become tolerable when we know that a day of sacred peace is shortly arriving.

Shabbat returns us to the first light of creation, to the Garden of Eden of oneness and to a reunion with our innermost selves, with our loved ones, our people, and God.

Shabbat is a rekindler of light, a restorer of soul, a bridge linking heaven and earth.

Come join us and remember the Psalmist’s words: “This is the day God has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it.” (Psalm 118:24)

Note: If you are already a member of a synagogue, I hope you will take full advantage of its religious community. If not, shop around and find the place that feels comfortable for you. As the Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood, we welcome anyone who would like to join us. Our services on Friday evenings all begin at 6:30 PM and conclude by 7:30 PM.

Shabbat shalom!

“Single Jewish Male Seeking Soul Mate” – A Book Review

12 Sunday Jul 2015

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This second moving novel by Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a love story that catches the two protagonists in a clash of cultures and religious identities that reveals how powerfully the past plays upon the present and future.

Cleo is a beautiful African American left-wing feminist talk-show host in New York City and the daughter of a mid-20th century black Baptist preacher who had been mentored and supported by a Jew in the racist south. Upon her father’s untimely death, another kindhearted Jewish family gives Cleo’s mother a desperately needed job and her family a place to live. Cleo consequently has a warm spot in her heart for Jews despite the experiences of many of her African American radio listeners who bear anti-Semitic animus against the Jews they have known as slum-lords.

Zach is a politically liberal Bronx yeshiva-educated atheist child of Holocaust survivors, becomes an ACLU lawyer and does pro-Bono legal work for a nonprofit called “Families of Holocaust Survivors.” Zach’s only sibling was an older brother he never met who, as a toddler, was shot in the head by a Nazi as his parents watched in horror. He feels empathy with the African American situation and is a solid liberal thinker, but he feels duty-bound to honor the promise he made to his dying mother that he would marry a Jew and bring Jewish children into the world not only to assure Jewish continuity but to help replace the 6 million and avenge his brother’s murder.

Cleo and Zach encounter one another in the early 1980s when a Black Preacher and a Rabbi invite them with other New York black and Jewish leaders to restore the Black-Jewish alliance that once existed during the civil rights movement. This occurs as Black-Jewish relations fray in the aftermath of the anti-Semitic rants of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Jessie Jackson’s “Hymietown” remark.

Letty Cottin Pogrebin is a veteran writer of eleven books. She is a founding editor of Ms. Magazine, a journalist, political activist, wife, mother, grandmother, and a serious Jew who has spent years participating in dialogue groups with African American, Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian women. Feminism, liberalism and positive Jewish identification permeate the novel.

Pogrebin’s prose can be deeply moving, such as the novel’s opening paragraph:

“ZACHARIAH ISAAC LEVY grew up in a family of secrets, of conversations cut short by his entrance into a room, of thick-tongued speech and guttural names and the whisper of weeping. His parents spoke in short, stubby sentences, as if words could be used up, and often in a language they refused to translate. From the grammar of their sighs, he came to understand that Yiddish was reserved for matters unspeakable in English and memories too grim for a child’s ear.”

As I neared the end of the novel, I visited a congregant struggling with metastasized cancer who herself is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, a serious Jew, a fluent Hebrew speaker with strong family ties in Israel, who has devoted her life to furthering justice and enriching Jewish community. Her son is in love with a non-Jewish woman and, though the young woman is wonderful, my friend is tortured by the very issues that are at the core of Pogrebin’s novel. I recommended that she read it because Pogrebin’s perspective could well offer my friend a measure of insight and comfort.

This book raises many questions: ‘What is Judaism?’ ‘Who is a Jew?’ ‘What ought a Jew know and do to enrich one’s own Jewish life and to assure that Judaism, Jewish practice, culture, ethics, and faith carry forward into the next generation?’ ‘What are the challenges that intermarriage brings to Jewish families?’

The book addresses as well the situation of children of survivors and, in light of the present, challenges their obligations to deceased parents who suffered the indignities of the Shoah.

Though Pogrebin does not deal with the question of how one justifies faith in the God of Jewish tradition in light of evil and the suffering of the innocent, nor does she offer a way to affirm Jewish faith in a liberal non-Orthodox context after the Holocaust, she does effectively present the tension between prophetic humanism and tribal particularism as it plays out in Zach’s inner conflict.

At the novel’s conclusion, Pogrebin brings everything together in a n’chemta (i.e. a hopeful and comforting series of teachings presented by Zach’s Orthodox childhood rabbi).

Rabbi Eleazar Goldfarb is a wise, loving and visionary mentor who lives comfortably between the two worlds of Jewish tradition and modernity primarily because he knows exactly who he is and what he believes. He deftly brings essential Jewish teachings to a tortured Zach.

This book is a wonderful read and provocatively challenges past Jewish assumptions in light of contemporary circumstances.

Community note: Letty Cottin Pogrebin will be the guest speaker at Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles on Friday evening, October 30 during a community Shabbat dinner following Kabbalat Shabbat services. She will discuss the many issues she raises in this novel. The community is invited.

 

J’accuse! Social Media and Moral Culpability

04 Thursday Jun 2015

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I follow the principle that unless I’m prepared to have reported what I say and write on the front page of the New York Times, I keep my mouth shut.

Too many people, however, think little about the consequences of what they write on the internet. They use social media without discretion and without a sense of responsibility for the negative consequences on others when they vent their rage, disappointment, irritation, frustration, and disagreement.

In Israel last week, an Israeli government bureaucrat was accused of racism on Facebook. The accuser is an African American woman who made aliyah years ago. She entered a government office with her children to arrange for passports, claimed she was rudely shunted aside by the clerk and not treated as other women with children were treated in the office. She said that the government clerk, 47-year-old Ariel Runis, “told me that if I was complaining about discrimination, I should ‘Get the heck out of his face.’” (Haaretz, May 26).

Enraged by the perceived slight, she went home and posted on Facebook that Runis treated her badly because of the color of her skin. Her post spread quickly and grabbed more than 6000 “likes.” News sources picked up the story without fact-checking and ran it. It became a national story.

Mr. Runis was attacked widely throughout the state of Israel in an already charged racial environment following alleged racist police brutality against Ethiopian Jews and PM Netanyahu’s election campaign against Arab-Israeli citizens.

Runis’ description of the incident is very different from that of the offended woman. He said she had refused to wait in line, demanded special treatment and wanted to push ahead of other mothers with children who were quietly waiting their turn. He denied that his treatment of her had anything to do with the color of her skin.

Runis was humiliated and shamed by the accusation that he was a “racist,” said that his life’s work, including personal activism on behalf of social equality and justice, had been “erased with one stroke.”

The Facebook slander of his character and the media extravaganza pushed him over the edge. He shot himself in the head.

Runis’ suicide could not have been caused only by the public shame he suffered. Other inner demons had to have played their part in his psychology. However, one cannot deny the damage done to his reputation and the public humiliation he suffered by this woman’s Facebook post.

Fundamental ethical questions about responsibility in this case have to be asked. Who is responsible?

Runis himself ? Of course.

The woman?  Yes.

Facebook? Yes.

The media in its 24/7 news-frenzy and rush to get the story first? Yes.

Everyone who read the Facebook post, forwarded it and commented on it? Probably.

It’s my conviction, and I believe backed up by Jewish tradition, that all the above are morally responsible in this case.

Jewish tradition has much to say about the ethics of gossip (l’shon hara – lit. evil tongue) and slander (r’chilut), comparing l’shon ha-ra to the three cardinal sins of murder, adultery and idol worship, the commission of which prevents perpetrators a place in the world to come. (Babylonian Talmud, Arachin 15b).

Tradition also warns that the people who listen to gossip are considered worse even than the person who tells it because no harm could be done by gossip if no one listened to it. The Talmud says that l’shon ha-ra kills three people: the person who speaks it, the person who hears it, and the person about whom it is told. (Ibid.)

Yes – social media has a positive function in our society, but social media is a potentially dangerous weapon in the hands of irresponsible and self-centered individuals who think little of or care little about destructive consequences to other human beings.

I’m reminded of the young yeshiva bucher who told tales about his classmates, was called into the rebbe’s study who instructed the boy to take a pillow, climb a hill, cut the pillow, release the feathers into the wind, and then return to the rebbe for further instructions. When the boy completed the task and returned his rebbe told him to collect every single feather, return it to the pillow and report back to him.

The boy said, “I can’t do that Rebbe!”

His rebbe said: “So too you must guard your words, for once you speak them you can never get them back!”

This tragic incident in Israel shows how important it is for us to hold our tongues and remember that if we don’t want what we say and write to appear on the front page of the New York Times, then we must be silent less we shame others publicly and destroy their good name.

A Rabbi’s Ethical Will – A Challenge for Liberal American Jews

29 Friday May 2015

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The following is my Congregational “Ethical Will” that my synagogue will include in a new time-capsule to be opened at some time in the future. My synagogue is today nearly 90 years old and we have just finished a 13-year process in which we have completely rebuilt our schools and buildings into a modern state of-the-art facility. We are a healthy synagogue community of 950 family units, but our current health is no guarantee for the future. What follows, to be opened in 30, 40, 50, or even 75 years, is a statement of my hopes for my future congregants, read perhaps following my death.

May 28, 2015 – Sivan 10, 5775

Dear TIOH of the Future:

As the Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel of Hollywood, I am gratified by what so many have accomplished together in nurturing our synagogue community and distinguishing it as the vital, enriched, loving, and progressive Jewish community that it is today in 2015.

We have grown three schools with an enrollment of nearly 700 students from pre-school to high school, and developed a strong Jewish learning community of adults, an inspired worship experience for individuals and families of all ages, engaged social justice activity, a Jewish arts and emerging arts education program, and strong relationships with our Israeli Reform sister synagogues, Congregation Mevasseret Zion and Congregation Kodesh v’Chol in Holon, as well as an invigorating family exchange program between our 6th grade Day School students and the 6th grade Israeli students at the Tzahalah Elementary school in North Tel Aviv via the Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership. We have also introduced more than 250 adults and children to the land and state of Israel on congregational trips.

We are a strongly identifying liberal Jewish community in the heart of Los Angeles, but we know that there is still much to accomplish, much to learn, many unaffiliated Jews to draw in, and much healing of people, our community, city, county, country, and world for us to effect.

Despite what we have learned to do well, and despite the current challenges left unaddressed, I worry mightily about our collective Jewish future not only at Temple Israel of Hollywood, but amongst American liberal Jews as a whole. Demographic studies of the American Jewish community suggest a serious cause for concern.

The 2013 Pew Research Poll indicates that the American Jewish community numbers today between 4.5 million and 9 million, depending on how one defines ‘who is a Jew.’  Seven in ten Jews nationally in non-Orthodox communities are intermarrying; one-fifth of all Jews say they do not believe in God; and two out of three are not affiliated with a synagogue community. Though 90% of all American Jews say they are proud to be Jewish, 30% say they are not religious in any way. Two-thirds of non-religious Jews do not raise their children as Jews. Many of us worry whether our grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be Jewish at all.

We cannot know what the state of your community will be as you read this, 30, 50 or 75 years from now. Will your generation be literate Jews? Will you know Hebrew, Torah, Jewish texts, Jewish history, ethics, and culture? Will you have faith in God? Will you increase the numbers who identify as liberal Jewish Americans? Will you have a strong sense of Jewish connection with Jews living in Israel and throughout the world? Will you be engaged as Jews in the messianic work of tikun olam, healing an unjust, hard-hearted and broken world?

I speak on behalf of our congregation, staff and lay leadership today in 2015/5775 and wish you Temple Israel congregants of the future well, and I hope for you the following:

1. That your knowledge and love of Torah and Judaism’s sacred literature, history, language, culture, ethics, and the state of Israel will be strong;

2. That you will be practicing Jews in your homes and here in the synagogue;

3. That mitzvot will be the primary business of this congregation and your lives;

4. That your prayer will be meaningful and enriching, filled with moments of personal and communal transcendence and joy, rooted in Jewish tradition’s great spiritual legacy;

5. That Torah and Jewish ethics will continue to be at the core of this congregation’s mission, that kindness will characterize all relationships in the community between staff, leadership and congregants, from the very young to the very old, that TIOH will be a model of ethical living and human decency in Los Angeles, and a place where ideas are freely debated with civility and mutual respect;

6. That every human being will be honored and valued here and outside these synagogue walls by virtue of being created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God;

7. That TIOH will be, as it is today, an inclusive community of Jews and their families (Jewish and non-Jewish) from around the country and the world, embracing the straight and LGBT communities, and Jews of color;

8. That you will visit the people, land and state of Israel with regularity, study there, support its democracy and Jewish character, and consider it your national home as it is the national home of the entire Jewish people.

May your Jewish lives be enriched and rewarding, and may you be worthy always to stand humbly before God.

With every good wish from my house and family across time to yours,

Bivracha, u-v’ahavah, u-l’shalom,

John L. Rosove
Senior Rabbi – Temple Israel of Hollywood

Who Are You in this Fourth Stage of Life? D’var Torah Bemidbar

22 Friday May 2015

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Mi at – “Who are you?” (Ruth 3:9) – So asked Boaz. It’s a question that every human being asks from time to time. Especially on this weekend of Shavuot, of the great meeting between Israel and God on the mountain, we ask ourselves individually and as a community – “Who am I/Who are we?” in this time and place, at this stage of our lives, as individuals, as a people, and as a nation.

This Shabbat we begin the fourth book of the five books of Moses, Bemidbar (Numbers; lit. “In the wilderness”). If the Book of Genesis is about human and tribal origins and beginnings (mirroring infancy and childhood), and Exodus is about human freedom (representing the driving force amongst adolescents), and Leviticus is about the need to adjust to the rules and regulations imposed on society in order to live productively (characteristic of young adulthood), then Bemidbar is about the mid-life journey.

In this fourth book we see that the bloom is off the marriage between God and Israel. Doubt, disillusionment and struggle define our people’s lives. We rebel. Our faith is broken. We want to be somewhere else, anywhere else if it brings relief and renewal. We confront our limitations and mortality. We wonder if this is all there is. We’re caught in the unfettered and cruel desert, a vast wilderness of silence. Our hearts pound. The quiet thunders in our ears. We’re alone and afraid. We yearn for safety and solace.

The wilderness of Sinai is far more than a physical location. Bemidbar is a human wasteland, where everything falls apart. We wander, without a shared vision, without shared values, or shared words. Leaders of every kind attempt to lead; but no one is listening and each is marching to the sound of his/her own drummer. Driven by fear and jealousy, ego and greed, the people are moved by basic things; hunger, thirst and lust. God’s transcendence is elusive. The book is noisy, frustrating and painful.

Rabbi Eddie Feinstein has written (“The Wilderness Speaks”, The Modern Men’s Torah Commentary, pages 202-203):

“Bemidbar may be the world’s strongest counterrevolutionary tract. It is a rebuke to all those who believe in the one cataclysmic event that will forever free humans from their chains. It is a response to those who foresee that out of the apocalypse of political or economic revolution will emerge the New Man, or the New American, or the New Jew. Here is the very people who stood in the very presence of God at Sinai…who heard Truth from the mouth of God…and still, they are unchanged, unrepentant, chained to their fears. The dream is beyond them. God offers them freedom, and they clamor for meat…”

L’havdil – I am not Moses, nor has my experience been his remotely, yet as a congregational rabbi I understand our greatest leader’s burden of leadership. In the course of Bemidbar “everyone in [Moses’] life will betray him. Miriam and Aaron –  his family members – betray him, murmuring against him. His tribe rebels against him… his people betray him in the incident of the ten spies… and finally, even God betrays him [when he hit the rock and lost his dream of ever entering the Promised Land].” (Ibid)

Numbers is a book about burdens, not blessings. Again, Rabbi Feinstein:

“Everyone has found himself in that excruciating moment when words don’t work – when we try and say the right thing, to heal and to help, but each word brings more hurt. Everyone has tasted the bitterness of betrayal – when no one stands with us, when those who should know better stand against us. Everyone has felt the deep disappointment of the dream turned sour. It could have been so good! I should have turned out so differently! Where did I go wrong? Everyone has tortured himself with the torment Moses feels in Bemidbar. And that’s the ultimate lesson. Listen to the Torah’s wisdom: the agony, the self-doubt, the frustration are part of the journey through the wilderness. Anyone who has ever worn Moses’ shoes or carried his staff – knows the anguish of Bemidbar. But know this, too: You’re not alone. You’re not the first. You’re not singled out. And most of all, you’re not finished. The torturous route through the wilderness does not come to an end. There was hope for Moses. There is hope for us.” (Ibid)

Where does hope come? In the turning of the heart, the turning of a page, the discovery of shared values and shared purpose, of shared life, shared listening, and shared doing.

In Deuteronomy, the fifth and last of the five books of Moses (representing our senior years when we begin to integrate who we are and rediscover our greater purpose), we’ll hear “Sh’ma Yisrael – Listen O Israel.”

In Devarim (Deuteronomy), “words” return and we’re able to share as a people in listening to God’s voice and to each other. In this, there is hope yet to come.

Shabbat shalom and Hag Sameach.

Bring Back Our Boys!

19 Thursday Jun 2014

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We send our prayers for the safety, health, courage, strength, and quick return home and to their families of three young Israeli teens, Gilad Shaar (age 16), Eyal Tifrach (age 19) and Naftali Frankel (age 16) who were kidnapped a week ago (all indications suggest by Hamas) in the Gush Etzion region of Israel.

May their captors free them. Na hashiveinu et bachureinu u-vaneinu habaita!

The following UTube expresses what is in the heart of the Jewish people and all peoples who cherish peace.

http://youtu.be/iWnEjwLGh6k

 

Prayers For the Safe Return of Three Israeli Abducted Teens

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by in Health and Well-Being, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Israel and Palestine, Israel/Zionism, Jewish History

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The kidnapping of three Israeli teens hitch-hiking in the area of Gush Etzion has filled the hearts of the Jewish people and all decent human beings the world over. I join with our people in wishing for the safe and peaceful return of Eyal Ifrach, Gil’ad Sha-ar, and Naftali Frenkel to their family and friends.

The following prayer is based upon a prayer written by Rabbi Yehoyada Amir, the Chairperson of MARAM, the Reform Rabbinic Council in Israel.

May it be Your will, Eternal our God and God of our ancestors, that You may sustain in life and peace the abducted young men, Eyal Ifrach, Gil’ad Sha-ar and Naftali Frenkel, and enable them to return safely to their families and loved ones who fear for their safety.

May You save these young men from the hands of our enemies, and may You bless them with life and good health.

May You hear the voice of our prayer and the prayers of all those yearning for justice and peace, life and goodness, compassion, safety and home.

Blessed are You, O God, Who hears our prayer. Amen.