Tag Archives: Holidays

High Holiday Sermons – 2013/5774 – Ayeka? Where are You?

10 Sunday Nov 2013

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This past High Holiday season (2013-5774) I asked myself and my congregation one central question in three different ways: Ayeka? (Lit. – “Where are you?”).

The question, of course, is not about one’s location. Rather, it asks about our identity, how we think and what believe, who we are and what values are central in our lives.

Ayeka is the first question to appear in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 3:9). It was asked by God of the first humans in the Garden of Eden immediately after they ate from the forbidden tree.

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part I – American Jews

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part II – The Jewish People and State of Israel

Ayeka – Where are You?  Part III – God

I include here as well my Yizkor sermon on “The Death of Moses” based on a compilation of midrashim (rabbinic legends and commentaries).

In the context of my synagogue mission’s to Israel and the West Bank in October (2013) about which I am still writing in a series of Reports from Israel, the second sermon, in particular, informs my thinking.  All three sermons, however, ought to be considered together.

The sermons are posted on the Temple Israel of Hollywood web-site at http://www.tioh.org/worship/clergy/clergystudy

 

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

20 Friday Sep 2013

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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!

40 Years Later – Memories of Jets and Sirens

11 Wednesday Sep 2013

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Forty years ago on Yom Kippur I was studying as a first-year rabbinic student in Jerusalem. I will never forget that day as long as I live.

I left my student dorm near the President’s House in Rehavia at 5:45 AM that morning, and walked the quiet streets to the Kotel to pray. When I reached the bottom of the then undeveloped valley between the King David Hotel and Jaffa Gate, three US-made Phantom jets flew in formation going south over the city of Jerusalem.

I was stunned and wondered; ‘On Yom Kippur – the holiest day of the year over the holy city!? Where are they going and why?’

Eight hours later, just before 2 PM, the air raid sirens sounded throughout the country. I turned on a small transistor radio to learn on the BBC that 1300 Syrian tanks had crossed into Israel over the Golan Heights and that the Egyptian army had crossed the Suez Canal and breached the Bar Lev line in a coordinated surprise attack on the Jewish people’s holiest day of the year.

Israeli radio called up all units. Within 24 hours Israeli soldiers were in place and the fighting was intense. The civil reserve took up residence on the ground floor of my dorm in the event that Jerusalem would come under attack.

Classes ceased, and I worked throughout the war in one of Jerusalem’s two large bakeries producing 75,000 loaves of bread nightly. The only workers there were Jews over the age of 55 and foreign students. Young Israelis had been called up and Arabs were frightened to come in.

Each night I walked through blackened streets to a pick-up point, and worked the 8-10 hour shift until 6 AM.

Israeli casualties were high. By the end of the three-week war Israel had suffered 2656 dead and 9000 injured, equivalent  to 230,000 Americans.

Despite Israel’s heavy losses and the catastrophe of the war itself, the Yom Kippur War is considered the greatest of all Israeli military victories. In three weeks Israel pierced through Egyptian lines, built a bridge across the Suez Canal, surrounded the Egyptian army, and threatened Cairo.

In the north, Israel pushed the Syrian army back into its own territory, and threatened Damascus.

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger understood that hope for a future peace would require preserving a measure of Arab pride. Consequently, the United States forced a cease-fire permitting Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to claim victory. Five years later he traveled to Jerusalem eventually resulting in the Camp David Accords.

Historian and Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren spoke to American rabbis just before Rosh Hashanah this year and reflected on the Yom Kippur War’s 40th anniversary. He described four stages in the war against Israel.

The first stage constituted wars waged by Arab armies (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973).

The second stage was a war of terrorism that began soon after 1967. Prosecuted by Arab fedayin guerrillas and Palestinian terrorists, it includes the War of Attrition (1968-1971), the murder of eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics (1972), the murder of children in Maalot (1974), ongoing attacks on the northern town of Kiryat Shemona, two Intifadas, multiple suicide bombings, and rocket attacks from Lebanon and Gaza on Israeli civilian communities.

The third stage was the “internationalization of the conflict” in the United Nations using diplomacy with the intention to delegitimize the State of Israel.

Ambassador Oren says that we are now in the fourth stage, bi-lateral negotiations intended to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a two-state agreement.

So much history has transpired during these past forty years. Israel is a very different place than it was then, as is the Middle East and the world as a whole.

This coming October 6 I will be once again in Jerusalem, and I expect I will ruminate on those three phantom jets flying over Jerusalem on that quiet Yom Kippur morning forty years ago and upon the piercing scream of the sirens that shattered the holiest day of the year and the hearts of Israelis.

I am bringing 23 members of my synagogue community with me to lend our support to the people of the State of Israel, and to meet with Israelis from all political points of view inside the Green Line and living in the West Bank to better understand their thinking and current state-of-mind, and we will meet with Palestinian leaders in Ramallah and Rawabi to learn more about who they are, what has been their experience under occupation, and what are their needs and dreams.

“Sha-alu shalom Yerushalayim – Pray for Jerusalem’s weal!” (Ps. 122:6 – The Book of Psalms, translated by Robert Alter)

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

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.

Yehuda HaLevi on His Heart’s Yearning For God – Elul Meditation

22 Thursday Aug 2013

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One of Judaism’s greatest poets, Yehuda HaLevi,  said words that became, in time, the spiritual underpinning of political, cultural and religious Zionism:

Gu-fi b’ki-tzei ma-arav v’li-bi b’miz’rach! – “My body is in the west, but my heart is in the east!”

Halevi’s central life pre-occupation was fulfilling his longing for oneness with God and God’s will. The following poem is particularly beautiful for that spiritual message and touches a central theme during this month of Elul and in the upcoming Days of Awe.

Da-rash’ti kir’vat’cha / B’chol li-bi k’ra-ti-cha / u-v’tzei-ti lik’rat’cha / lik’ra-ti m’tza-ti-cha.

“I have sought Your nearness, / With all my heart have I called You, / And going out to meet You / I found You coming toward me.”  (From Selected Poems of Yehuda HaLevi, translated by Nina Salaman)

Yehuda Halevi (1075-1141 CE) was born in Spain and traveled to Egypt on his way to Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel). The Holy Land in those years, however, was a dangerous place for the lone traveler and Halevi’s friends urged him not to go. Rather, they begged him to remain in Egypt and live out his years there. Halevi’s dream, however, of living in Eretz Yisrael could not be denied, and so at last he made aliyah in 1140 at the age of 65. No one knows what were the circumstances surrounding his fate, but he died within that same year.

 

Letting Go – The Great Truth of Human Existence

20 Tuesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Health and Well-Being, Holidays, Inuyim - Prayer reflections and ruminations, Life Cycle, Musings about God/Faith/Religious life, Quote of the Day, Stories, Uncategorized

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I had a meeting last week with a young mother of a beautiful four month-old daughter to talk about the little girl’s Hebrew name and her naming ceremony. As we spoke, the Mom confided that whenever her baby cries she feels the overwhelming urge to go to her regardless of the hour and circumstances – “I just have to be there to hold her,” she said.

This little girl is still very small, a mere 14 pounds, and her mother’s instinct is not only natural but appropriate. I said, “Yes – your response is exactly right at this stage of your daughter’s life, and that instinct will likely be with you for decades to come. However, being a parent means that every day you will have to let go of her just a little bit for both your daughter’s sake and yours!”

Letting go of the people and things we treasure the most, be it our children, our youth and vitality, our professional life upon retirement, our spouse after separation and divorce or when illness and death come, our homes when we can no longer afford them nor manage to live in them, and in the end, our own health, is all part of the progression of our lives from birth to death.

Rabbi Milton Steinberg wrote, “This then is the great truth of human existence. One must not hold life too precious. One must always be prepared to let it go.” (A Believing Jew, publ. 1951)

The High Holidays will be upon us shortly, and we will be reminded by rite, ritual, prayer, sacred text, and music of the quick passage of time and  that we are merely sojourners in this life, not permanent residents. How we accept this truth and all that comes as a consequence is a central theme of the High Holidays season.

One of my favorite quotations is that of the theologian and philosopher Tailhard de Chardin, who said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

Tailhard De Chardin offers us a true and critically important perspective about our lives that can enhance the meaning and precious character of everything we do, learn and experience even as we understand that releasing that which we are not entitled to hold indefinitely is not only natural but a necessary part of living.

Elul Meditation

18 Sunday Aug 2013

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I am husband and father, / Brother, son, colleague, and friend.

I am a congregational rabbi, / And a Jew in the pews.

I am a cancer survivor, / And support those with cancer, / And heart disease, / And dementia, / And mental illness, / And people in bad marriages, / And with troubled kids, / And unsatisfying jobs, / And too little money, / And frustrated lives.

I am one human being, / And life moves through me, / And through you, / Except when it doesn’t.

Life is wondrous, / Most of the time, / But sometimes it hurts like hell!

There is a second me too, / And a second you – / The always-present Neshamah / That hovers and waits / To become one with Nefesh, / The earthly-animal-life-force / That keeps us alive.

The Neshamah connects us to Divinity, / And infuses us with Essence, / And inspires us To think and know / That we come closest to God / When we know that we are no-thing / And part of the All.

When we are most receptive to Neshamah / Our lives work.

In Elul each morning I awake wondering – / What is my greatest challenge? / What troubles me about me? / What gives me heartache and grief? / What ruins keep me enslaved?

Am I patient and kind enough, / Generous and respectful enough, / Understanding and wise enough, / Appreciative and grateful enough?

The Yamim Noraim are coming! / There is little time.

Heschel on the Spiritual Battlefield

16 Friday Aug 2013

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Classic rabbinic tradition understands well the battle waged within every human being between the good inclination (yetzer tov) and the evil inclination (yetzer hara), a theme upon which Jews particularly focus during the month of Elul leading to the High Holidays.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) wrote eloquently of this dynamic as follows [note: Rabbi Heschel wrote his books before modern feminism influenced many writers to consider alternatives to gender exclusive language. Out of respect for Rabbi Heschel’s original work, I have left the language as he wrote it, though I suspect he would have written it differently so as to be more inclusive had he lived in a later period]:

Life is lived on a spiritual battlefield. Man must constantly struggles with “the evil drive,” “for man is like unto a rope, one end of which is pulled by God and the other end by Satan.” “Woe to me for my yotzer [Creator], woe to me for my yetzer [the evil drive],” says a Talmudic epigram. If a man yield to his lower impulses, he is accountable to his Creator; if he obeys his Creator, then he is plagued by sinful thoughts.

Should we, then, despair because of our being unable to retain perfect purity? We should, if perfection were our goal. However, we are not obliged to be perfect once and for all, but only to rise again and again beyond the level of the self. Perfection is divine, and to make it a goal of man is to call on man to be divine. All we can do is to try to write our hearts clean in contrition. Contrition begins with a feeling of shame at our being incapable of disentanglement from the self. To be contrite at our failures is holier than to be complacent in perfection. (Between Man and God, p. 188)

It’s Never Too Late – In the Spirit of Elul

12 Monday Aug 2013

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I was sent this in an email, and though I assume that it was not intended for Jews at this time of year, I think it is exactly what we ought to be thinking about in the month of Elul before the High Holidays. It was written by Gary Ryan Blair.

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE
to change.
to fall in love.
to tell the truth.
to get in shape.
to simplify your life.
to act with integrity.
to do the right thing.
to enjoy the journey.
to expand your mind.
to dream big dreams.
to make a comeback.
to ask for forgiveness.
to live happily ever after.
to take full responsibility.
to create a breakthrough.
to honor your commitments.
to break out of a comfort zone.
to expose yourself to greatness.
to commit your life to excellence.
to be what you might have been.
to start heading in the right direction.
to make a significant contribution to society.
to make everything you say, think and do count.
It’s never to late to do anything, just a little later than it was!
Dreams deferred are dreams that die – a process that can
take the dreamer along with them. The good news is that it’s
never too late to revisit, and relive, one’s deepest desires.
Go for it, and always remember…
Everything Counts!

Elul – The Season to Forgive

08 Thursday Aug 2013

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With the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul yesterday (August 7) we count down the days to Rosh Hashanah (30) and Yom Kippur (40). During this period, t’shuvah (return to family, friends, community, Torah, God) is the spiritual and emotional per-occupation of the Jewish world. Central in this process of return is the ability to forgive others, ourselves and God.

Forgiving those who hurt us is among the most difficult emotional challenges in our lives. According to a 2001 study, Psychologist Loren Toussaint and colleagues at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, it was learned that men have a more difficult time forgiving than do women, and men have a more difficult time asking forgiveness of others than do women (LA Times, September 9, 2002).

The study upon which this article was based that appeared in an article in the Journal of Adult Development (2001) also found that those people who have forgiving personalities “have fewer psychological problems, feel more satisfied with their lives and are generally healthier than grudge holders.”

It goes without saying that unresolved anger has a negative impact on our marriages and our other relationships because anger hardens the heart and distances us from others feeding mistrust and getting in the way of intimacy.

The best antidote to anger is forgiveness, which really means letting go of what once occurred. Doing so does not require us to forget the harm that another caused us, but it does enable us to relieve ourselves of the negative burdens of the past.

I love this statement by the poet, novelist and playwrite Alden Nowlan (1933-1983), and I offer it at the beginning of this season of forgiveness, return and renewal:

“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, s/he becomes an adolescent; the day s/he forgives them, s/he becomes an adult; the day s/he forgives him/herself, s/he becomes wise.”