Divre Harav – Words from the Rabbi

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – March, 2012

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Purim is the quintessential children’s holiday, right?  It’s the Jewish version of Halloween, when we dress up in costumes and and make lots of noise during the synagogue service and get treats, right? No wonder that Purim in many synagogues is attended primarily by families with grade school age children.  As the children age out of the years when they look cute dressed like Esther, a Disney princess, Haman, or the season’s hot villain or superhero (Darth Vader, Spiderman, or Superman), they stop coming.  The parents, who are only coming because their children look so darn cute in their costumes, also stop coming.

Purim is in fact not a children’s holiday, but an adult holiday. Not along the lines of a recent article in the Jerusalem Post, which reported on an Israeli retailer trying to shake things up by selling adult oriented Purim costumes. Don’t all nurses wear fishnet stockings?  Shouldn’t every cat costume come with a bondage mask and whip?  Wouldn’t a police officer costume be incomplete without a latex bodice?  And for the ultimate in bizarre religious syncretism, how about dressing as a sexy Santa for Purim?

Like all sophisticated Jewish experiences, Purim is an adult holiday that makes room for children. The story of Purim, a provocative piece of literature, raises questions about the lengths we should go to fight evil, the limits of taking revenge, and the extent to which we should hide our Jewish identity in the public sphere.  The book of Esther can be read as a revenge fantasy or a fantasy of what we would do if only we had the power to shape the world in our favor.

The news coming out of Persia these days is awfully dark. It’s not hard to find articles coming out of Iran baldly stating the desirability of a world without Jews and giving legal and moral justification for taking steps to annihilate Israel.  Just in case the lesson of the 20th century has begun to fade, Purim is a reminder that Haman is not a relic of some dark day in history, but rather a living threat in our world today.

A strong religious practice does not hide us from the reality of the world, but neither does it constantly beat us over the head with it. The function and purpose of Purim is to give us momentary relief from hatred and violence, to allow us to experience a moment of pure joy unadulterated by evil and suffering. This is something, I would argue, that adults need much more than children.  I hope you will join your Ahavas Israel family on Wednesday evening, March 7, for our Purim celebration.

 

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – February/2012 – Tu Bishvat

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Tu Bishvat is a multi faceted holiday, actually quite complex. It is correctly considered a minor holiday, but like many such days, it has accumulated layers of meaning over the centuries. Religious Schools and the Jewish National Fund and Ecological Organizations have not done Tu Bishvat a favor by narrowing the focus to planting trees, recycling, and singing about planting trees (“maybe apple, maybe apricot”), thus obscuring the rich and deep meaning.

Tu Bishvat is first mentioned in the first century Mishnah.  The first Mishnah in the Tractate of Rosh Hashanah begins, “There are four New Year’s Days.”  The 15th of Shevat, or Tu Bishvat (Tu = tet-vav, tet = 9, and vav = 6), is designated as the New Year for the planting of trees.  Leviticus 19:23 prohibits eating the fruit from trees for the first three years after they are planted.  Tu Bishvat was designated as a somewhat arbitrary “birthday” for trees, so any tree growing before that time would automatically become 1 year old on that day.  This was important for calculating ma’aser, tithes. The day was chosen for a very practical reason, because in Israel, at least, it falls past the midpoint of the winter, just before the time that the fruit trees would begin blooming.

In the 16th century, Jews following a mystical tradition invested Tu Bishvat with additional meaning, and began to celebrate a Seder on that day drinking four cups of wine and eating different kinds of foods from the land of Israel, celebrating both the land of Israel and our desire for redemption and peace in the world.  They focused on three different kinds of fruits – those with inedible skins, those with inedible pits, and those that are eaten whole.  Each represents a different level of God’s creative energy in the world.  The Seder also focuses on the Tree of Life, a representation of 10 mystical emanations of God.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, as the Jewish National Fund was born, the Zionist movement was focused on rebuilding the land of Israel.  Tu Bishvat became a time to plant trees.  Planting eucalyptus trees was a way to absorb water and drain the swamps which were a major source of malaria carrying mosquitos.  Many of us remember the JNF blue boxes, and collecting money to fund the forests of pine trees planted around Israel.  In the late 20th and early 21st century, it has been recognized that some of the early efforts to drain swamps and plant non-native trees have damaged the ecology of Israel.  Thus, the focus of Tu Bishvat has added an aspect of examining the impact that we have on the natural world, and trying to live more in harmony with God’s creation.

Tu Bishvat this year is celebrated on Wednesday, February 8.  The Beit Sefer B’yahad/United Jewish School will hold a Tu Bishvat Seder for the students that afternoon.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – January/2012 – Sacred Time

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The month of Tevet, falling in late December – early January, contains the fast day of the 10th of Tevet (this year, Thursday, January 5) commemorating the start of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia and culminated in the destruction of the Temple.  In 1951, the Israeli chief rabbinate decided to turn this day into a memorial day for Shoah victims whose date of death is unknown.  Despite this, in 1954 the Israeli Keneset passed a law creating a Holocaust Memorial day on the 27th of Nisan, a day approximately midway between the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the celebration of Israel Independence Day. Nevertheless, the 10th of Tevet remains the official Yahrtzeit day for victims of the Shoah whose actual Yahrtzeit is unknown.

Sometimes, Jews complain that Judaism has too many holidays.  I sympathize.  However, I think the human being has an psychological need to mark and celebrate time. Freethinkers have a calendar of events that often include seasonal celebrations, such as winter solstice parties, as well as regular gatherings. I sometimes wonder whether the over-commercialization of Christmas is related to the relative paucity of sacred days of the Christian calendar.  If our calendar doesn’t give us enough of a variety of days to celebrate, then we will take the celebrations that we have and expand them.

Sacred days are event magnets.  Rarely does a holiday commemorate only one event.  Most Jewish holidays, like the 10th of Tevet, have multiple associations.  The Biblical festivals, which began as Harvest festivals, accumulated additional layers of meaning.  the 9th of Av, the day on which both Temples were destroyed, is also the day on which Jews were exiled from Spain in 1492 as well as other national calamities and exiles.

As Americans, we live our lives by the rhythm of the secular calendar.  The day of the week often determines when we will wake up, where we will go, and what we will do.  We know what the next holiday is because that gives us a break from our routine to look forward to.

To live a dedicated Jewish life, we live our lives by the rhythms of the Jewish calendar. We are aware of the number of days until Shabbat, and that determines when we wake up, where we go, and who we see.  If we know the day of the month, then we also know the phase of the moon and approximately how many days until the next holiday, which not only breaks our routine but also most likely will require some preparation to celebrate properly.

The Jewish calendar ought not be something to resent (or worse, to ignore).  Rather than seeing it as an intrusion on our lives, we might see it as an opportunity to examine a different dimension of our lives.  In the short, cold days of winter, isn’t it nice to have Tu Bishvat (February 8), Purim (March 8), and even Pesah (April 7) to look forward to?

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – December, 2011

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I have written in the past about the historical Hanukkah, and how the miracle of one jar of oil lasting for eight days is missing from the historical record.  Although this is the story that we teach children, I think there is a much more powerful and important lesson in the real story of Hanukkah.

I had an appointment last month to meet with a ten year old non-Jewish boy and his father.  The son had been reading about Hanukkah and had some questions.  He asked me if it was OK to light a menorah.  Rather than giving him an immediate answer, I asked him why he wanted to light the Hanukkiah.  I wanted to know what it would mean to him, to light the Hanukkah menorah.  At first, he couldn’t answer the question very well.  It wasn’t a question that he had considered.  I had the impression that he liked the exotic nature of participating in another religious’s ritual, that he thought that lighting a menorah sounded fun. After speaking for a bit, however, I was impressed at the seriousness of the young man. It became apparent that he had done some serious reading about Hanukkah – he just hadn’t connected all of the dots. He was able to describe the ritual of lighting candles very precisely and he knew the history of Hanukkah, but he hadn’t connected the history of the holiday to the ritual of the celebration of the holiday.

I led him through a series of questions – first, we talked about Thanksgiving.  I asked him to tell me why we celebrate Thanksgiving, to describe the historical Thanksgiving, and to explain why the Pilgrims ended up on the shores of North America in the first place. He quickly came to the conclusion that one of the stories behind Thanksgiving is a story of a group of people seeking religious freedom.

I then asked him to relate this to the story of Hanukkah.  He told me how the Maccabees fought against the Syrian army to purify the Temple.  I suggested that the Syrian-Greek culture was being imposed on the Jews against their will, so Hanukkah was also a celebration of religious freedom.

I told him a story that happened in 1993 in Billings, Montana.  Among other acts of hate, Swastikas were painted on the door of the synagogue and a Jewish home was defaced. The non-Jewish community responded by painting over the defaced property.  In late November, beer bottles and cinder blocks were through through the windows of Jewish homes displaying hanukkah menorahs.  Churches began distributing pictures of menorahs, and within days thousands upon thousands of Christian homes were displaying menorahs in solidarity with the Jewish community.

Generally, I do not support the idea of non-Jews appropriating our rituals and symbols.  However, my message to this young man was that as long as he understood that the light of the menorah is intended to be a call for religious freedom, that I would understand why he felt compelled to light the candles.  I offer you the same message – don’t light the Hanukkah menorah because God produced an eight day supply of oil where only one day’s worth was expected.  That’s a cool magic trick, but God can do better.  Light the Hanukkiah because the faith of a small group of Jews in God and Torah was so strong that against all odds, they achieved religious freedom.  That’s a miracle worth celebrating.

 

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – November, 2011

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I have been serving on a committee overseeing a city-wide project beginning this fall and continuing into next year called “2012: The Year of Interfaith Understanding.” I spoke about the personal and communal benefits of interfaith dialogue on Yom Kippur, referencing this project and suggesting that you take on the obligation during 2012 to read at least one serious book about a religion other than Judaism; and then read or research the questions that come up to find out how Judaism answers the same questions.  Over the course of the next year, I will have other suggestions and opportunities for participating in interfaith dialogue, learning, and worship.  One such suggestion is to participate in the annual Interfaith Thanksgiving service, this year to be held at 7:00 p.m. on Monday, November 21.  As of the deadline for the bulletin, the location had not yet been confirmed (watch your eVoice or Shabbat announcement page or call the office for location information).

Of all the American holidays, Thanksgiving is the most Jewish, and also the most explicitly religious. It has obvious roots in the Biblical festival of Sukkot; in addition, there is an offering mentioned three times in Leviticus called the todah, or Thanksgiving, offering. The religious attitude of thanksgiving is deeply rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures. How fitting that in our country, Thanksgiving has become a time for members of different faith traditions to come together and give thanks.  The city-wide Interfaith Thanksgiving service has become a meeting point for Jews, Catholics, Quakers, Protestants of various denominations, Bahai, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindu, Native American, and non-theists to meet, share texts and teaching on gratitude, and appreciate each other’s musical offerings.

If you are a regular participant in this service, I am grateful for your presence.  If you have never come to the service, I ask you to give it a try.  I think you’ll enjoy it, and by your very presence you will be making an important statement about the importance of the inclusion of all faith groups in the religious landscape of West Michigan.