Divre Harav – Words from the Rabbi

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – October, 2011

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I don’t need to expend a huge amount of effort to convince most of you that the synagogue experience of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is not “fun.” Yet, you also understand that it is an important experience – otherwise, you would not come. As a narrow snapshot of Jewish life, the High Holiday experience is psychologically valuable, when done right. However, it is incomplete. Life is not just about the serious moments … it is also about the playful moments. A view of Jewish life that includes only Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is distorted towards the serious and heavy. I invite and encourage you to capture the other side of the emotional scale, the side of Sukkot and Simhat Torah. The singing, dancing, and eating of Simhat Torah are the antidote for the chanting and sitting (or standing and prostrating) of the earlier holidays.

Jews are an intellectual bunch. We tend to be excessively proud of educational accomplishments and the number of Jewish Nobel prize winners. Judaism values study. However, Judaism also values action. Judaism done right is more than an intellectual activity – it is a celebration of life. Simhat Torah provides balance. It is about Torah, but it is not intellectual. It is experiential. It is about using our bodies and our breath as in the Shabbat poem Nishmat kol chai, “The breath of all that lives praises you, Adonai our God” (page 334, Siddur Sim Shalom). From our limbs to our tongues, from our knees to our back, our songs, our lips, our eyes and heart – all join together to “laud, praise, extol, exalt, and sing [God’s] holiness and sovereignty.”

Sukkot breaks us out of our normal pattern of service and worship of God through primarily intellectual channels, to a more physical expression of our commitment to a Jewish life. We cannot fulfill the obligation to eat in the Sukkah by conceptualizing the role of the Sukkah in Jewish tradition, or discussing the historical context of its development. We can only do the mitzvah by putting our body into it, say a berakha, and eating something.

The physical labor I bring to building and decorating a Sukkah each year is as important to me as the money I give to Tzedakah or the time I spend in shul praying or studying. It is very easy in this world of offices, parking lots, highways, and cars, to forget the glory and power of the world around us. Our buildings are solid, our cars have powerful engines, and it is very easy to forget just how fragile we and our lives really are. All it takes is an earthquake a flood, a tsunami, a famine, or a hurricane to remind us of the power of nature. As I sit in a fragile Sukkah, open to the elements, I am very conscious of the physicality of my being. When I say shehehe’yanu on that first night, I am better able to appreciate the miracle of my existence because of the physical effort I put into constructing the Sukkah.

I wish you all a meaningful and joyous Yom Tov.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – September, 2011

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My goal for bulletin articles this year is to reflect on the theme of holiday celebrations. I believe that many adult Jews carry around within them a distorted picture of Jewish holidays based on the education they received in religious school.  Religious school education is not necessary bad education, but it is unsophisticated.  It is designed for elementary age children (most religious school do not re-teach holidays to high school students).  Therefore, each month I want to address an aspect or theme of one holiday on a adult level.

Eating apples and honey and honeycake, gleefully throwing bread into a pond during Tashlikh, hearing the shofar and counting the seconds of the tekiah gedolah are the hooks that sweeten and enliven Rosh Hashanah.  The real meaning of the holiday, the part that we might try to teach to children but that they are not yet capable of understanding on the deepest level, is how we might embrace renewal and how we might experience real and fundamental change in the way we behave and respond to the world.  This is the stuff that people pay big money to therapists to do, and spend months and years doing.

Rosh Hashanah is a time to renewal relationships that have gone bad or simply become stale. Atonement is the goal, and the deadline is Yom Kippur.  The period leading up to Rosh Hashanah and the Ten Days of Repentance from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur is the time to examine how we have failed to nurture the relationships in our life, both with the people around us and with God.

The most difficult pill to swallow on Rosh Hashanah is the idea that we are responsible for everything that has happened or will happen to us.  “It’s not my fault,” should no longer be in our vocabulary. We should behave as if everything we do affects what happens to us.  If we are a victim, it is because we placed ourselves in a position to become victimized. This is a radical notion which may not be objectively true, but this is the message that Rosh Hashanah delivers, and this is the only way that full transformation is every possible – when we accept full and total responsibility for our lives. Rosh Hashanah rejects the “blame game,” in which people and organizations and political factions seek to blame the “other” for things which have gone wrong.  Rather, we are encouraged to look within ourselves to see what we have done to cause the problem. We may not be the sole cause or even the primary cause, but the theology of Rosh Hashanah believes that it is more useful for us to root out our contribution to the problem, since ultimately that’s all we can control.

In this month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, here are some things that you can do to achieve a sense of repentance and renewal:

Make a mental list of things you want to do better in the coming year. Consider what personality trait or traits led you do do the things you regret.  Consider the following questions:

In what way does Judaism serve as a guide in your life?  Do you draw upon Jewish wisdom to help you make business or personal decisions?  Does Judaism feel inadequate or too antiquated or irrelevant to address your day to day needs?  Do you feel overwhelmed by the impossibility of knowing how to ask the right questions of Judaism, in order to get the answers you seek?

During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services, use the following questions to enhance and guide your prayer experience:

At what points in the service are you moved?  Emotionally by the cantor?  Intellectually by the Siddur?  Intellectually or emotionally by the rabbi’s words?  Physically by the incessant chatter of the people sitting behind you?

What emotions do you feel (here’s a sample list from a to z – out of order)? – boredom, apathy, joy, fear, worry, compassion, eagerness, friendship, pettiness, verisimilitude, happiness, insult, xenophobia, zealotry, uneasiness, sadness, rage, openness, questioning, jadedness, genuineness, decisiveness, nasty, tentativeness, magical?

In what way does Rosh Hashanah in the synagogue facilitate a prayer experience ?  At what points does the liturgy, the sometimes free translation of the prayers, or the commentary and additional readings, move you to a deeper examination of your life?  What does the experience of High Holiday services do for you, how does it affect you?  As a general question, do you consider it to be the responsibility of the synagogue and the prayer book to engage you, or do you consider it to be your responsibility to engage with the synagogue and the prayer book?  To address the (Divine) elephant in the room, what role does God play in this whole drama?  Is God a commanding presence, a relationship presence, a supportive presence, a demanding presence, an imperious presence, an irrelevant presence, an ineffectual presence, an emotional presence, a non-presence?

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – Summer, 2011

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I love books, and I hope to be able to hold a book in my hands and read for the rest of my life.  I love turning the pages.  I love flipping back and forth between pages.  Sometimes, I go back to a book I have read in the past because I remember a particular passage or concept, and I find it based on the location in the book, where it is on the page, and I can scan paragraphs very quickly to find what I am seeking.
Some of you know that in my pre-rabbinic early college life, I studied computer science.  I begin my love affair with calculators when I was about 10, graduating on to desktop and laptop computers, PDA’s, and iPad, and dabbling in programming, testing software, using electronic communication, and creating web pages.
The experience of reading electronic materials is very different, and although I like reading short articles, I still prefer the feel and small and texture of the book.  Nevertheless, just as the scribes of old would have been foolish not to see that the codex was going to replace the scroll and the  printing press was going to replace the codex, we would be foolish to imagine that the proliferation of ways to read electronic documents will not someday displace the book.
We supplement our written communications, the Voice and the Shabbat announcement page, with a weekly email and a web site that is intended at some point in the future to evolve into a replacement for the Voice.  We designed the web site with specific features in mind to help this happen.
First of all, although a web site is something that you can go to for information, it is also designed to be able to send the information to you automatically. For example, if you use a google calendar to keep track of your personal calendar, you can subscribe to the synagogue calendar, so that events, classes, and meetings automatically appear in your calendar.  Do this simply by adding AhavasIsrael@gmail.com in the entry box under “Other Calendars” along the left side of your google calendar page.  You can also subscribe to the Jewish Holidays/candlelighting times and UJS calendars, but the calendar addresses are a complicated string of numbers and letters – email me and I’ll send them to you.
You can subscribe to my columns in several ways.  If you go to EmbodiedTorah.Wordpress.com, there is an entry box on the right side to type your email address and click “I want to embody Torah,” and you will get email notifications of every blog post.  Alternatively, if you go to the Divre Harav section of the web site, there is a set of five little buttons beneath the right menu.  The last of these buttons is an RSS feed.  RSS is normally explained as “really simple syndication,” an easy way to subscribe to articles on web sites.  If you click on the RSS button, your browser or computer should give you options for how you want to read the articles.  You can choose to read them in your browser, in your email program, or in another RSS reader program.  You can also subscribe to any page of our web site, such as the upcoming events, the home page (where the most important/urgent articles will be posted), the library news column, and the presidents column.
The Voice will continue to show up in your mail box 10 times a year, but if you take advantage of ways to subscribe via our web site and calendar, you will be completely up to date at all times.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – May/2011

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Conservative Judaism has been in the news in the past couple of months, but it hasn’t been entirely good news.  The United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism has approved a new strategic plan intended to revive the “brand.”  The Rabbinical Assembly devoted a number of sessions at their recent convention to such titles as, “Thriving Against Difficult Odds,” and “Creating a Culture of Success.”  The overall picture being presented is one of a aging and dying movement trying to redefine itself.

It’s not that I believe that we shouldn’t be self-critical.  On the contrary, as individuals, as an institution and as a movement, we only learn and grow by honest evaluation and mindful change.  I am concerned not about the criticism but about the sense of panic surrounding the critical questions.  Hysteria does not lead to useful deliberation and decision making.  Panic leads to adopting program because they are successful for someone else, not because they advance our particular mission and vision.  Hysteria leads to widespread cutting of programs and budget in order to balance the budget based on saving money, not based on focused attention to our raison d’être.

We need to have and express a sense of passion about our mission.  If we are not sufficiently devoted the community that our synagogue has built, we will not be fully capable of making informed decisions about what is ikar and what is tafel, what is central and what is peripheral.

One of my colleagues was quoted in an article about the challenges facing the conservative movement, saying that his 1500 seat Sanctuary for his 700 household congregation averaged 100 people on a Shabbat morning.  He has an enormous building built on a grand scale for a 1200-1500 household congregation sitting virtually empty during the week.

Fortunately, due to the wisdom of our board and a measure of good luck, we are not faced with such grave immediate questions.  We have been able to rent out our building so that it is generating income during the times that it would have been sitting empty.  Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of the Board and the Congregation to continue looking at a range of possibilities for what our congregation might be in the future.  How might we encourage more people to affiliate?  What if our membership increases – what more might we do with the additional income and people?  Why do people leave the congregation (other than for the obvious reasons of death and moving out of town)?  What will happen if our membership decreases?  What will happen if one of our renters leaves?  What will we do to replenish our building fund balance if large scale expenses, such as replacing a roof, deplete the fund?

I believe in Congregation Ahavas Israel and am committed to being a part of its long term success.  I don’t share the sense of panic regarding the greying and shrinking of the Conservative movement.  I believe if we stick to our core mission, of creating a vibrant egalitarian Conservative Jewish community by helping each individual follow his/her spiritual path using traditional Jewish practice; that we can address any situation that arises calmly and sensibly by remembering that we are a community which embodies Torah, making every decision and every act reflect our commitment to Torah.

Divre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – April/2011

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I’m posting this a bit early, because I’m also going to post an article from the Jerusalem Post magazine that perfectly illustrates my point.

No holiday encourages fanatical Jewish behavior like Passover.  It’s not bad that many people keep kosher for Pesah much more strictly than they keep kosher the rest of the year.  However, the almost pathological behavior of scouring the home of every microscopic crumb of leavening can obscure the beauty of the meaning of the holiday.  I hope the following exchange will help you enjoy a serious Seder without having exhausted yourself by its preparation.

Dear Rebbe

Question: We had two wonderful seders, but this year particularly, it seemed that the last two days of preparation – Sunday, a day which lasted twelve hours as we turned the kitchen over and Monday, the day we spent in preparation for the first seder – left us crippled with exhaustion and pain.  It was very much like forced labor with this uncompromising deadline.  I kept thinking, “why did we leave the fleshpots of Egypt? Let’s return to Egypt where we eat for free.”  And then I remembered Rush Limbaugh’s warning that socialism is slavery and nothing comes for free, so I put my head down and continued scrubbing.

But a serious thought crossed my mind.  Is this our age showing?  What will Pesah preparations be like when we are seventy or eighty and have no children to do this work.  As it was, at age 63, I found myself incapable of davening either day.  I tried, but I couldn’t focus my mind.  I don’t understand how one can do it all, I certainly can’t. I think even we lived next to the shul, I would not have had the strength to make it through the davening.

We had a student at our table on Tuesday.  He doesn’t observe much, but he goes to shul on major holidays and his self-image is one of a Jew who is loyal to our traditions.  Once we got to the meal, he took out his cell phone and started to send a text!  I told him to put it away and he sheepishly set it aside.  I understand that teachers in classrooms have similar problems with students who can’t seem to let go of their cell phones. But I was surprised to see its appearance at my seder!

Answer: I think you have bought into the Orthodox trend to make Pesah more and more difficult by multiplying the humrot, the ways to be more and more restrictive in Jewish observance.  Marisa and I, over the past several years, have cut way back on the cleaning, returning to the Mishnaic model of Pesah.  You clean the rooms that you eat in – you don’t need to search out and sterilize every surface of the house.  You rely on biur hametz, the ritual destruction and nullification of hametz, so if you miss a few crumbs here and there, you have not endangered your eternal souls with karet, spiritual excommunication.  Our kitchen doesn’t look like a 1950’s spaceship, covered in $100 worth of aluminum foil.  We clean counters and pour boiling water on them, relying on the fact that we don’t cook on the counters or eat food off of them.  Self cleaning ovens are great.  We are relaxed about the refrigerator – hametz doesn’t contaminate like the bubonic plague.  We don’t serve a 6 course gourmet feast – 3 courses is enough! – so we can focus more on the hagaddah and less on the food.  We, especially on the 2nd night, are not hung up on the hagaddah.  At the proper candlelighting time, we tell the story of Pesah in a very abbreviated way.  In keeping with the mishnah’s instructions to tell the story from degradation to redemption, we basically tell the story by reading the key passages of the Hagaddah from Deuteronomy 26:5-8, reciting the plagues, the teaching of Rabban Gamliel and the beginning of Hallel.  Before candlelighting, we do the 4 questions and 4 children and singing songs.

Regarding the student – before the Seder, send out a note to your guests making your expectations clear.  Here’s a sample, sent by one of my colleagues, Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff:

To our Seder Guests

I am delighted — and honored — that all of you have agreed to join me at this year’s Passover/Pesah Seder.

For me, the Seder has always been one of the highlights of the year — and one of the most important rituals of the Jewish faith.  It is a reminder, to me, of the fact that we cannot change history, but to a very large extent, we can control its impact on us, so that memory becomes a springboard to move us forward toward better times, not a trap, to hold us prisoners of the past.  We understand that no one can be told to “forget and move on,” but we can help others, and ourselves, understand HOW to remember, so that our memories become a blessing, not a curse, and history becomes part of a rich and treasured heritage, that reminds us of the hope we must have for the future….  And so, at the seder, we remember stories of Israelite slavery in Egypt. But we learn not to hate Egypt, but instead, to hate slavery…and value freedom.  We learn from our memories of pain not to hate others, but to reach out to them, including all those treated like strangers, or feel like strangers, so that their pain might be less.

This is a reminder, in part, of the fact that the essence of the seder is discussion.  The evening is based on the Biblical verses that command us to tell the story.  “Haggadah,” the book that helps us remember the story and its traditions, comes from the Hebrew word for “telling.”  “Seder,” which means “order,” reminds us that there is a traditional order to the evening’s discussion, but, as the Haggadah states, “the person who elaborates is to be admired.”  In other words, no two seders are ever alike, because all those involved elaborate in terms of what the very ideas of slavery and freedom mean to them, and how their individual memories can come together with the memories of the Jewish people — or humanity itself — so that, as we remember, we share the lessons we have learned from the past, and then join together to work for the future.

As I look forward to seeing all of you, here are a few “house-keeping” notes:

“Bringing” do’s and don’t’s.  Please do NOT bring any food, drink, or flowers.  The laws of Passover food and drink are so complicated, and we are stocking up with so much, that there is no room for anything else (even flowers!).  However, DO BRING something: bring a story you might have of another Passover seder — or another holy day that taught you something that has helped you struggle with values and ideas, and with life; bring a question — about Passover, about Judaism, or about faith; bring an insight about the different kinds of slavery that still exist, and what freedom really means…. These will be gifts that all of us will treasure, for the seder, and for the future. Just as we focus on freedom from Egypt at our Seder, we also focus on freedom from various other enslaving devices of modern day society, such as cellphones and texting devices.  I ask that you refrain from using such devices at the table, so we can focus on being fully present for each other.