Author: Rabbi David Krishef

Psalm 1

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My bulletin series this year will focus on my attempt to read the book of Psalms as a devotional practice. Psalms were written to reflect an individual’s or a communal struggle with the joys and sorrows of life. When life is good, the Psalmist reaches out to God in gratitude. When life is troubled, the Psalmist reaches out to God for help. When life is sweet, the Psalmist reaches out to God with gentleness. When life is frightening, the Psalmist reaches out to God in despair. When life is cruel, the Psalmist reaches out to God in anger.

My goal is to post weekly Psalm reflections on my blog and on the Ahavas Israel website, ahavasisraelgr.org. Each week, I’ll have chosen one phrase or verse from the Psalm of that week and use it to create a brief 200-250 word meditation on how the torah of that verse might help us embody a positive approach to life. That’s the goal, anyway – we’ll see how the project plays itself out over time.

A blog is a two-way conversation – please post comments and reactions. Share with me and others how you understand the verse I’ve selected. Join me in creating a devotional practice, creating personal meaning within our sacred texts.

Happy is the man who has not walked in counsel of the wicked, or stood along with the path of sinners, or sat in the company of the insolent; rather, the teaching of Adonai is his delight, and he studies that teaching day and night. (1:1)

Walk, Stand, and Sit. It is easy to fall into undesirable habits. We can travel down a meaningless path in an unfulfilling job, we can stand around with people we dislike whose values and habits do not reinforce good behavior, we can sit around complaining that nothing ever goes our way.

Walking, Standing, and Sitting. We might try to escape a mindless life by stopping what we are doing and practicing stillness; we might try to can escape the exhaustion of endless standing and waiting by sitting down and searching for distraction on our electronic devices; we try to enliven our life by getting off the couch and doing something, anything to get us moving again.

The truth is that the path to a meaningful life is not determined solely by our habit of walking, standing, or sitting — it is determined by our inner life. What’s going on while we are walking, standing, and sitting? To what extent have we internalized a path of Torah so that we are carrying its values with us when we are at work and at play, while shopping and while out with friends, with our parents, children, spouse, or siblings.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – Summer, 2013

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You’ll notice that Rosh Hashanah begins just two days after Labor day. You will recall that Pesah began very early. You’re probably wondering … what about Hanukkah?

The article is adapted from an article by Jonathan Mizrahi, which can be found here:

sites.google.com/site/mizrahijonathan/home/ThanksgivingAndHanukkah

This year features an anomaly for American Jews – The first day of Hanukkah coincides with Thanksgiving, on 11/28/2013. Hanukkah and Thanksgiving have only coincided once before, in 1888 … and it will never happen again. [Note: Prior to 1942, Thanksgiving was the LAST Thursday in November, and thus could occur on November 29 or 30. In 1888, Hanukkah began on November 29, which was also Thanksgiving.]

Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, meaning the latest it can be is November 28. November 28 is also the earliest date on which Hanukkah can fall. The Jewish calendar repeats on a 19 year cycle, and Thanksgiving repeats on a 7 year cycle. You would therefore expect them to coincide roughly every 19 x 7 = 133 years. Why won’t it ever happen again?

The reason is because the Jewish calendar is very slowly getting out of sync with the solar calendar, at a rate of 3 days per 1000 years (not bad for a many centuries old calendar!). The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar modified by the addition of leap months to adjust for the length of the solar year. However, the assumption it makes about the length of the solar year corresponds to the Julian calendar. In 1582, Pope Gregory introduced a calendar reform (known as the Gregorian calendar) when it was recognized that the spring equinox was slowly drifting later at the rate of about 3 days per 1000 years. The solution was to reduce the number of leap years – century years divisible by 100 (but not divisible by 400) are not leap years. Thus, 2000 was a leap year, but 2100, 2200, and 2300 will not be.

This means that while presently Hanukkah can be as early as November 28, in the year 2200 the Jewish calendar will drift forward so that the earliest Hanukkah will be November 29. The last time Hanukkah falls on 11/28 is 2146 (which happens to be a Monday).

Of course, if the Jewish calendar is never modified in any way, then it will slowly move forward through the Gregorian calendar, until it loops all the way back to where it is now. So, Hanukkah will again fall on Thursday, November 28 … in the year 79,811! Of course, Jewish law  and the guidelines for determining the Jewish calendar require Passover to be in the spring.  Therefore, the Jewish calendar will have to be adjusted long before it loops all the way around. Of course, the messiah will have come long before then to sort out these kinds of sticky problems!

Remember that “day” in the Jewish calendar starts at night. This means that although this year the first day of Hanukkah falls on Thanksgiving, candles will be lit for the first NIGHT of Hanukkah the night BEFORE Thanksgiving. When the first day of Hanukkah falls the day after Thanksgiving, the first night’s candles are lit the night OF Thanksgiving.  This will happen two more times, in 2070 and 2165.

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I do a variety of things in addition to writing sermons and bulletin articles, answering questions by phone or email, going to Board and Committee meetings, teaching religious school classes, leading study groups, and visiting members of the congregation. Here are some of my additional activities of the past month:

  • • I am one of the co-founders of the Coalition for Small Conservative Congregations (CSCC) and one of the planners of the Rabbinic conference sponsored by the CSCC. I have been working on our 3rd annual conference, taking place in Chicago June 2-4.
  • • The weekly Torah study group that has been meeting for about 15 years (for the last 10, at Schuler Books and Music on 28th St.) will shift focus this fall to begin reading a chapter a week from the classical prophets. I have been researching books and commentaries on Isaiah.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – May, 2013

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The third of the three Biblical Pilgrimage festivals, coming approximately at the beginning of the summer, is Shavuot (“Weeks”), named after the practice of counting the days and weeks from Pesah to Shavuot. Although it is a harvest festival in the Torah, this aspect of the festival has been eclipsed by its post-Biblical connection to the revelation of Torah at Mount Sinai. Today, Shavuot is the holiday on which we read the Ten Declarations/Commandments and celebrate receiving the Torah.

Torah is, of course, the foundational text of Judaism. Traditional Judaism is structured around the practices of Torah, also know as mitzvah.

The literal, Biblical meaning of mitzvah is commandment, an obligation that God has imposed upon you. The implication of this is spelled out clearly in the Bible – God rewards those individuals and communities who follow the mitzvot, and punishes those who are disobedient. If this theology works for you as a motivation to engage in serious Jewish life and practice, you can stop reading here (and I’ll see you on Shavuot!). If you, however, like most Jews, do not believe that God cares whether you observe mitzvot, don’t believe that God rewards and punishes, keep reading – I’m going to give you an alternative meaning of mitzvah, inspired by a talk given by my colleague Rabbi Brad Artson.

The hasidic tradition noticed that the root of the word mitzvah in Aramaic means, “to connect” and understood mitzvah to mean “a connection.” Mitzvah is our means of making connections. When we are in a relationship, we do things for the other person not because we are seeking reward or afraid of punishment, but because the things we do express our desire to be in that relationship. The acts of mitzvah are acts which express our intimate relationship with God and/or with Torah and/or with the Jewish people and/or with the broad and eternal concept of Judaism. Most Jews at certain points in their life, find incredible and deep meaning in mitzvah – it may be within funeral ritual, it may be at a Passover Seder, it may be at a child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah celebration, or it may be at a synagogue service. It is an experience of finding a connection to eternity through the texts and rituals that have sustained the Jewish relationship with the Divine for millennia. As in any relationship, the more you do, the deeper the relationship becomes, and the more joy you find in the relationship. Shavuot is the holiday on which we read the “love letter” and marriage contract of the Divine-Human relationship. See you at Mount Sinai!

The full talk by Rabbi Artson, Contemporary Meaning of Mitzvot, can be found online at ZiegerTorah.org.

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I do a variety of things in addition to writing sermons and bulletin articles, answering questions by phone or email, going to Board and Committee meetings, teaching religious school classes, leading study groups, and visiting members of the congregation. Here are some of my activities of the past month:

  • Partially planning and leading a 9th grade religious school trip to New York. We visited three different synagogues for services, two Jewish museums, a number of kosher restaurants, a walking tour and a museum of the Lower East Side, a Broadway Show, and more.
  • I gave an Introduction to Judaism talk and tour of the Synagogue to students of Westwood Middle School of Grand Rapids.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – April, 2013

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April 7 is Yom Hashoah V’hagevurah, the day designated by the Israeli Kenesset as the day to remember the Holocaust and the Heroism of those who resisted. I have been thinking a lot lately about how we commemorate Yom Hashoah. Some survivors choose to remember by telling their story, others are very reluctant not only to tell the story but to have it know that they have a story at all. Having heard quite a few survivors speak, I understand quite well those who feel that telling the story satisfies a human voyeuristic impulse to gaze upon another’s pain, but can never fully transmit the depth of the actual experience and does not always transmit useful lessons.

What troubles me about the stories is when the survivor uses his or her story as a weapon, a club to beat people over the head with. I heard one such story the last time I took a group to the Halocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills – the survivor repeatedly looked at the audience and accused them of passivity, complicity, and asked them what they are going to do to prevent another holocaust. “This is what happened to me,” the survivor said, “and you” – looking at my Christian college group – “would have been guilty. This is what they did to me – what would you have done about it?”

I fully support Steven Speilberg’s project or documenting, recording, and saving the stories. We need to retain the hard evidence of human stories and suffering to keep the holocaust deniers at bay. However, if the only result of publicly telling a story is to make the audience squirm with guilt that they, who were born 50 years after the end of WWII, didn’t take action, what’s the use of the story?

There are many ways of commemorating Yom Hashoah. My Rabbinic colleagues have created a “Megilah Hashoah,” a Holocaust Scroll, modelled after Jeremiah’s Biblical book of Lamentations. They suggest reading it liturgically on Yom Hashoah just as we read Lamentations on the 9th of Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Some fast; most do not. Some say Kaddish for those whose lives were lost. Some give tzedakah to organizations that fight hated and/or murderous dictatorships. Some gather together and tell and hear stories. Some say extra prayers for the souls of the murdered six million. Some demonstrate against ongoing holocausts and other slaughters taking place in Africa and the Middle East today. Any and all of these things are good ways to observe Yom Hashoah. The only thing that should not be acceptable is to ignore the day completely. So take action. Make April 7 into Yom Hashoah. Post a remembrance on your Facebook status. Do something.

I don’t want the world to forget, and I want the remembering to have a useful outcome.

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I do a variety of things in addition to writing sermons and bulletin articles, answering questions by phone or email, going to Board and Committee meetings, teaching religious school classes, leading study groups, and visiting members of the congregation. Here are some of my activities of the past month:

  • • Unfortunately, we experienced three funerals in the past month, and one additional Shiva home from an out of town funeral.
  • • Between Purim and Pesah, I studied a tractate of Mishnah, concluding the book on the morning prior to Pesah with a celebratory meal to break the fast of the first born.
  • • I administered the Ma’ot Hittim program – collecting money, buying Meijer gift cards, and distributing them to those who need extra help buying Pesah food.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – March, 2013

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Households, cities, countries, and nations have enjoyed great happiness when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. . . . Such people not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind.

– Philo (1st century BCE/CE Hellenistic Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, Egypt)

Eknath Easwaran, 20th century spiritual teacher and author of books on meditation and ways to lead a fulfilling life, wrote:

Just as we live in a physical atmosphere, we are surrounded also by a mental atmosphere. And just as the air we breathe may become polluted, our mental atmosphere can be polluted by negative thinking. If trees were not always releasing oxygen into the atmosphere, scientists tell us, all life on earth would suffer. On a smoggy day the trees along the freeway look grey and drab in the haze; they do not seem to add anything valuable to the landscape.

Yet they are performing a vital function: they are taking in our carbon dioxide and giving us oxygen in return.

A person whose mind is free from negative thinking spreads a life-giving influence in much the same way that a tree gives oxygen. Although a selfless man or woman may seem to go through the day doing nothing extraordinary, without them nothing would revitalize the atmosphere in which we think. By being vigilant, and not encouraging negative thoughts, all of us can offer this vital service – which benefits everybody, including ourselves. [from Eknath Easwaran’s Thought for the Day, easwaran.org/thoughts-for-the-day-quotes.html. Thank you to Pat Nowak for introducing me to this daily email.]

The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, a word containing a root for narrowness and constriction. Egypt is named for its primary geographical feature, a thin strip of fertile land adjacent to the Nile, surrounded by dry, unforgiving, desert. Spiritually, however, Mitzrayim/Egypt can be understood as a mindset, that of constricted, narrow-minded stuck-inside-the-box thinking.

The spiritual Passover is a process of freeing ourselves from the small box in which we may find ourselves, especially when we are living in crisis mode. Those who are constricted by negativity see the world through that negative lens. Their experience is that the world is a hard, unforgiving place. The world has given them a hard time, so they proactively push back by attacking the world with antagonistic and negative thoughts. It is an inversion of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you think negative thoughts about yourself, then you assume that your neighbor is similarly plotting negative actions against you.

Freedom is the ability to breathe, calm the mind, and realize that the world does not hate us. When we breathe out love and positive energy into the world, those around us breathe in the fresh oxygen. They feel better, and radiate happiness and calm. We are surrounded by calm, happy people, which reinforces our own sense of security and well-being, shalom.

This is what it means to leave Mitzrayim and cross through the Sea of Reeds into a place of Freedom.

May you have a liberating Passover. May you climb out of the box of Egypt, stretch and open up all of the constricted places in your body, and feel the great happiness of freedom.

***

Some people are curious about the variety of things that I do, in addition to writing sermons and bulletin articles, answering questions by phone or email, going to Board and Committee meetings, teaching religious school classes, leading study groups, and visiting members of the congregation. Here are some of my activities of the past month:

  • I represented the Jewish community on a multi-cultural/faith panel during a Spectrum Health day long educational workshop on Cultural Diversity: The End of Life.
  • I was a guest speaker in a World Religions course at Cornerstone College.
  • I studied everything every written by Stanislavski Method to prepare for my role as Stephen Foster in the Purimshpiel (if you missed it, you can find a rave review in the New York Times).