Embodied Torah

An open letter to the Jewish Federations of North America

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I am sending the following letter to the leadership of my local Federation. I invite you to do the same.

In the past year, we have seen the tension in Israel between Hareidi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews and everybody else go from bad to worse. We have seen Hareidi campaigns to force women to sit at the back of the bus, signs in some neighborhoods restricting women to sidewalks on one side of the street, a campaign to remove images of women from public spaces, male IDF cadets walking out during ceremonies in which female soldiers were singing, and an eight year old girl from a religious family being harassed and spit upon while walking to school, because some Hareidi Jews didn’t think she was dressed modestly enough.

The non-Orthodox movements still do not receive support from the state, because the ministry of religion is controlled entirely by the Orthodox chief rabbinate. The government of Israel spends at least $450 million a year on Orthodox programs and institutions. There are 3000 Orthodox rabbis on the government payroll. Masorti gets, by comparison, less than $50,000 and no Masorti or Reform rabbi gets government funding. No Masorti or Reform rabbi serves as a rabbi in the IDF, though some have served in combat positions.

It is clear to the leadership of the non-Orthodox movements in Israel that the best thing for Israel and for Judaism would be a separation of religion and State, but the Reform and Masorti (and modern Orthodox) movements simply do not have enough power to move Israel in that direction. There were Masorti services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in 64 locations this year, and there is a network of 30 Reform congregations. It is clear there is an openness and interest in non-Orthodox Judaism, but they are limited by a severe lack of funding.

Money alone will not solve this problem, but an infusion of funds into the non-Orthodox movements will help them grow and will fund their campaigns for greater freedom of religion in Israel. I call upon the Federations of North America to take 5% of the money that they would send to National Federation and send it directly to the Masorti and the Reform movement in Israel, with the goal of strengthening freedom of religion in Israel.

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.

 

“Special” needs?

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What is is that they say about the children in Lake Wobegon?  “… where all the children are above average.” Of course, when every child is special then no child is special, and that’s the way it is supposed to be.  At this past weekend’s CRUSY kinnus at Beth El in Pittsburgh, every child was warmly received and brought into the program.  There were no special needs.  There was only a conscious effort to provide everything that was needed to make the program fully inclusive and accessible.
This post is my periodic plea to congregations to consider what it takes to be accessible to a blind person who happens to walk through your door on Shabbat.  It doesn’t take much.  This year, Beth El’s inclusion committee decided to purchase a set of the Braille volumes of Sim Shalom and Torah.  They actually only needed to acquire five of the nine volumes of the siddur in order to satisfy the needs of a regular Kabbalat Shabbat, Shaharit, Minha, and weekday morning.  Knowing that they were hosting the kinnus, they also purchased the volume of Torah and the haftarah for that specific Shabbat. All of this is easily available from the Jewish Braille Institute.
When my son Solomon arrived at kinnus, he was not special.  He dovened just like everybody else, with his Braille siddur.  He went up to the Bima and led Torah service.  It was no big deal.  He just participated in leading a part of the service, something that a couple dozen USY’ers did over the course of the weekend.
However, it was a big deal to his father who was standing in the back of the sanctuary with tears running down his cheeks, because at that moment his son was not special. Like thousands of youth before him, he was given the honor and privilege of participating in a Shabbat with his USY friends.
One day, Solomon might show up at your synagogue.  When he does, are you going to make him feel ‘special’ by requiring him to bring his own very bulky set of books, or are you going to make him feel like a part of the congregation by giving him a book, just as you will undoubtedly do for every other person who walks in?
For more detailed information on how to order a standard Shabbat set of Braille volumes, contact me at Rabbi@AhavasIsraelGR.org.

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.