Embodied Torah

Divre Harav – November, 2023

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Ahavas Israel has been involved in an interfaith Thanksgiving service for at least 40-50 years, originally with a group of churches in our neighborhood, and for the past 20-some years, a city-wide coalition convened by the Kaufman Interfaith Institute of GVSU. The service takes place on the Monday night before Thanksgiving. It is designed to be a glimpse through the window at an authentic expression of gratitude from a variety of traditions, including Sikh, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist, Native American, Catholic, several Protestant Christian denominations, Unitarian, non-theist, and Jewish. During the years that I have been involved in planning the service, I have tried to stress that we’re not creating a service which erases the differences and the unique character of each our traditions, but rather one which weaves the texture, and color of our differences together in a color rainbow tapestry. I am always moved and lifted up by the offerings of prayers, music, dance, and song.

I had a different reaction to a service which I attended earlier this year in my role with the Grand Rapids Police Department’s Clergy on Patrol, I attended a memorial service for officers with Michigan connections who have fallen in the line of duty. Each officer, the first of which was George Powers, a detective shot by a suspect in a train robbery, was represented by a current officer who presented a rose in their memory. The service itself was moving, but the hymns and music and prayers were distinctly Christian. I found myself feeling like an outsider, excluded from the service.

Recently, I went to a meeting of clergy working with the police at which the police chaplain was invited to present about his position and duties with the department. He talked about the importance of a chaplain not pushing his personal faith, but being available and accessible to all. I brought up my feelings of exclusion at the memorial service, and offered my thoughts that an organization connected to the government and laws of the State, comprised of people from a variety of faiths, has the responsibility not to promote Christianity over other faiths. To my mind, this kind of memorial service is not an experience in which people witness the faith of other traditions, but rather one in which all people attending remember and pray for the fallen officers and their families together. Therefore all prayers and hymn should stay away from language expressing a preference for a particular tradition, referring instead to a common God which might appeal to all people of faith attending. Rather than a tapestry illustrating unique differences, it is a blanket weaving universal threads of love and comfort, joining people together in prayer.

These are two different models of interfaith prayer. There is a proper place for each one. Each one has integrity and beauty. I will be out of the country and miss the Interfaith Thanksgiving service this year, but I hope you will go and represent Ahavas Israel in my place. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Hebrew Words of the Month:

  • Hag Ha-hodaya – Thanksgiving
  • Hodu – India
  • Turkiya – Turkey (the country)
  • Turkee – Turkish
  • Tarnegol Hodu – turkey (the bird)
  • Hodu LaAdonai! – Give thanks to Adonai!
  • Toda – thank you

Divre Harav – October, 2023

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A Hasidic teaching I studied recently suggested that God is represented by words. God is found in the words of the revelation at Sinai, the words of Torah. But it also suggested that when we live our faith fully, that we not only hear God’s words, we also actually hear God’s voice, a more powerful connection.

The difference between words and a voice is this: Words might be seen as an artifact of an ancient world, the dusty remnants of a previous generation. A voice, on the other hand, is an active presence, something alive and vibrant. Faith, commitment, spiritual energy, belief, is what transforms the words on the page into a living, contemporary, compelling, tradition.

I have been on a quest to learn how to transform words into a voice and to teach others how to take the words of Psalms or words of the Siddur and derive transcendent meaning from a single sentence, verse, or phrase. It began with a four year journey reading Psalms and writing reflections which appeared in columns in the Voice and in posts on our ahavasisraelgr.org website. In the past year, I have collected those reflections and published them as “Reflections on the Psalms,” a demonstration of the process of contemplative reading in order to see what word, phrase, or sentence draws the reader’s attention, and discerning a larger message by connecting that passage with Jewish wisdom.

Our prayer books contain many words. Our services are rivers of words, in which you dip your consciousness like a fishing line to see what comes out. I like to think that the words that stick with me after a service are a message from God. God’s voice is in those words. My job is to figure out what God’s voice is trying to say to me.

I want to help you find God’s Voice in the words of our tradition, in Torah, in the Bible, in the Siddur, in Rabbinic literature. I’d like you to join me for our many Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret and Simhat Torah services, for my Zoom Torah study, or for my Sunday morning survey of Mishnah classes. 

And if you’d like to purchase the book, you can find more information and a link to Amazon here, https://embodiedtorah.com/reflections-on-the-psalms/, or search for the title on Amazon.com. Discover how the Psalms can inspire you to engage significant contemporary issues. This is not a commentary on the meaning and message of the Psalms; rather, this book considers the Psalms as a collection of phrases and images that invite us into brief meditations using Jewish wisdom for spiritual development.

Hebrew Words of the Month:

  • Tehillim – Psalms
  • Hit’bon’nut – Contemplation (from the word bina, understanding)

Reflections on the Psalms

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With gratitude to the Holy One of Blessing, I am excited to announcing the publication of Rabbi Krishef’s Reflections on the Psalms!

Discover how the Psalms can inspire you to engage significant contemporary issues. This is not a commentary on the meaning and message of the Psalms; rather, this book considers the Psalms as a collection of phrases and images that invite us into brief meditations using Jewish wisdom for spiritual development.

Reflections on the Psalms, published by Luminescence LLC, is available on Amazon.

You can find endorsements of the book from Rabbi David Wolpe, Rabbi Brad Artson, Rabbi Elana Zaiman, Rabbi Pamela Gottfried, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and the Rev. Fred Wooden, here.

Divre Harav – Summer, 2023

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Supporting Christian Zionists and Evangelicals for Israel

Many Jews, especially liberal Jews, have a hard time accepting the friendship of evangelical Christians. The two communities disagree on so much – abortion, public education, gender issues, appropriate books for libraries and school, the role of public prayer; and perhaps also guns. But in general, we do agree on one issue that is important to the majority of Jews, and that issue is Zionism, the importance of the existence of the State of Israel. That issue alone makes friendly relations with our neighborhood evangelical church and associated organizations worthwhile.

When asked about their support of Israel, evangelicals often quote Genesis 12:3, God’s blessing of Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you,” believing that if they support Israel, God will bless them. But there is a common belief in the Jewish community that evangelical support of Israel is really based on an idea that Jesus won’t return until Jews reestablish a State of Israel according to Biblical prophecies. Or that some evangelicals support Israel because they believe that in the end times, all of the Jews will die in the apocalypse. But many evangelicals support Israel because God’s promise to Israel is eternal and therefore Israel will be saved. And whether that future salvation means that they believe someday all Jews will become Christian or that Jews will persist as Jews is a question for some future messianic era. And the world needs Israel today. So I won’t sacrifice support for Israel today just because I disagree with a theology that I don’t believe in anyway.

In a world in which real antisemitism is increasing and anti-Zionism has a strong presence in liberal and academic circles, Israel needs supporters. Jews needs friends who do not think that we are trying to control the world through Hollywood or a shadow cabal of political domination. Christian evangelicals love the idea of Jews, and for the most part, even when real Jews fail to live up to their fantasy picture of what a Jew is, they love Jews as well.

Granted, their idea of Jews only vaguely resembles the reality of Jews. They tend to imagine Jews as a monolithic people, beloved by God, who have memorized the Bible and walk closely in the footsteps of Abraham and Moses. Their picture of a Jew is influenced by the dress of Orthodox Jews, especially women in skirts and headscarfs. I’m not sure I look entirely authentic to them, except that I do wear a black (leather) kippah.

So I’ll take evangelical support of Israel, even though Christian Zionists tend to hold hard right political positions on Israel. Some object to this, saying that such positions push our American government to be more right wing than the right wing Israelis, and ultimately that is damaging to Israel’s future survival. I reject this argument for two reasons: First, despite evangelical pressure, because of our government’s strict separation of religion from state, they have mostly resisted the pressure to become a mouthpiece for the religious right wing of the Israeli government. And second, Israel is pretty good about ignoring the United States (and anyone else) who is trying to push them into making decisions that they don’t want to make, so they aren’t going to fall in line with an evangelical political position unless a majority of the Israeli public believes in it as well.

That is why I have spoken at Cornerstone University and Seminary, Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary, Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids Puritan Seminary, Western Theological Seminary, among others, and taught at Kuyper College. It is why I have participated in the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry’s Honor Israel night and Israel programming at Resurrection Life Church. We can nurture relationships and build alliances based on issues on which we agree, even when we might profoundly disagree on other issues.

Hebrew Phrase of the Month:

  • • Yeshua – salvation (not only a Christian concept!)
  • • ge’ulah – redemption

Divre Harav – May, 2023

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I have devoted my Rabbinic career to the advancement of small congregations, and hope to do so here in Grand Rapids until I retire. Small congregations are not just miniature versions of big congregations. We are a different sort of entity entirely. True, large congregations have numbers and budgets exceeding our capacity, but we have strengths and potential not found in large congregations. We have the potential to know and value each member of the congregation. We rely on each member to step up financially to the best of their ability and also participate in multiple other ways. Shabbat and holiday services, programming, committee work, and building management, happens because of lay leadership supported by paid staff, rather than the other way around.

Congregation Ahavas Israel is a small congregation and we need to be thinking like a small congregation. Small congregations are lay led. Small congregations develop resources from within. Small congregations are resourceful, without a tremendous amount of resources. We are creative. We take advantage of opportunities. And we understand that the landscape is always shifting, so we adapt. Small congregations have small budgets. No organizations has unlimited financial resources, but small congregations need to be mindful of overreaching. We cannot act like a large congregation. We cannot buy all of the services we would like, so we need to cultivate them from within.

While we value independence, we know that we have to make all of our assets work for us. Renting our building to the Children’s Workshop preschool, All Souls Community Church, and the Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids has provided a critical source of income.  Along the way, it has allowed us to form good relationship and partnerships that benefit the synagogue. All Souls has helped us create a Sacred Ground Native Pollinator garden on the back patio. All Souls and Temple Emanuel help us grow food in our Corners of the Field garden. We have partnered with Trinity Lutheran Church and Family Promise of West Michigan to help feed families who are housed in the church, several times a year.

Small congregations need to form partnerships to leverage limited resources. Partnerships are not necessarily permanent relationships. They might work well for a while, but as circumstances change, they might dissolve. Our partnership with Temple Emanuel to run a joint Beit Sefer B’yahad/United Jewish School is strong. Our partnership with Temple Emanuel and the Jewish Federation for a yearly scholar in residence weekend is ending because Temple and the Federation are no longer interested in the weekend format. It may evolve into a different format or we may seek a different kind of partnership. Temple Emanuel has ended our partnership to supply us with the services of a Cantor. We understand that nothing lasts forever and we need to be nimble and adaptable.

In a small congregation, each person is important. We need you to pitch in. Opportunities abound. Speak to me or the president, Ann Berman, and we can find a way for you to add your strength to Congregation Ahavas Israel.

Hebrew Phrase of the Month:

  • • Kehillah ketanah – a small congregation