Sabbatical Journal

Divre Harav – Summer, 2024

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Beginning mid-June, I will be taking six weeks of Sabbatical time. It has been about four years since my last Sabbatical. My pattern has been to take three months of Sabbatical every five years, but I am hoping to split this next Sabbatical into two – six week segments, over the course of two years. With Stuart’s retirement, it is more difficult to be away for three months at a time. It will not be easy covering the six weeks between June 16 and July 28, but between Stuart Rapaport, Rhonda Reider, Dovid Ben-Avrohom, a small additional crew of Torah readers and service leaders, and with your help making the minyan, it is possible. If you would like to help out by sharing a d’var Torah during the service, you can do so at http://tinyurl.com/CAITorahSignup. A d’var Torah should be about 12 minutes.

We are always looking for additional help reading Torah, more Haftarah readers, and people willing to lead a portion of the service. If you are interested in learning, I can connect you to resources, including audio recordings, that will help.

I am hoping to spend Shabbat in congregations in New Jersey, Minneapolis, metro-Detroit, and Indiana to learn new melodies and gather some ideas for enhancing Shabbat practice and community. In addition, I will continue working on a collection of brief introductions to pieces of prayer for Shabbat and holiday mornings. On my Shabbat travels, in exchange for hosting me, I have offered the congregations several book talks on Psalms or prayer, based on my book Reflections on the Psalms. I will be sharing some of that material at our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot evening program on June 11. Don’t forget to make a reservation! 

Beginning this month, I will be on Sabbatical for three months. It is a common practice of rabbis and other clergy to be given a periodic Sabbatical from their regular duties for reflection, for rekindling the spirit and the sense of calling by God, for reconnecting more deeply with the tradition (Scripture, theology, liturgy), and for deepening one’s own spiritual life. While on Sabbatical, I will not be available for my normal Rabbinic duties. I will not be coming into the office, attending meetings, or scheduling appointments. I will not be taking phone calls or responding to email for routine questions. I will not be teaching, leading study groups, leading services, or giving Divre Torah. The office will refer calls or email either to the president or to the appropriate committee.

Clergy organizations suggest that a Sabbatical should not be heavily structured. The idea is to have free time for unexpected projects and learning. The one exception I will make in a normal Sabbatical practice will involve officiating at funerals, if I am in town. However, during normal office hours the initial phone call regarding a funeral should go the office. At other times (weekdays 7:00 am – 10:00 am and 3:30 pm – 10:00 pm or weekends), please call Ann Berman. After the basic funeral arrangements (include date and time) have been set, I will be contacted. If I am available, I will contact the family to speak about the funeral service. Otherwise, Stuart Rapaport or another appropriate person will handle the funeral service.

Hebrew word of the Month:

  • Shabbaton – Sabbatical

James Monroe

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When James Monroe became president, the Federalist party, that of Presidents Washington and Adams, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall, which believed in a strong Federal government and a strong, almost royal, executive, and close ties to Great Britain, was dead. The Republican party (no relationship to today’s Republican party), which believed in States’ rights, a weak Federal government and executive, and close ties to the revolutionary republic of France, reigned supreme. It is worth noting, however, that Monroe continued Madison’s movement of the Republican party closer to the center of the political spectrum. The White House was significantly more formal than it was during Jefferson’s presidency, and while consolidating the United States’ control over a swatch of North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, he expanded the power of the Presidency considerably.

Monroe was elected to a second term virtually unopposed. Were it not for one electoral vote for John Quincy Adams, he would have been the second president (after Washington) to have been elected unanimously by the electoral college. We think that the lack of organized opposition would guarantee his ability to get things done. This was not the case. In Monroe’s second term, his cabinet members and congressional leaders were more interested in pursuing their own political agenda than in working with their president. For example, according to Harlow Giles Unger, author of “The Last Founding Father,” Madison’s Treasury Secretary, William Crawford, deliberately misreported the financial state of the government (he reported a surplus, when in fact there was a $5 million deficit) in order to make John Calhoun, Secretary of War, look bad because of the heavy spending on the military.

It turns out that the lack of party politics meant that there was no cooperation to get things done, because there was no opponent against whom to organize. It was every man for himself. A decision making body comprised of people who all think the same has no one to challenge their thinking. A knife needs a sharpening blade, a whetstone, or some other hard substance upon which to grind it in order to keep it sharp. A Board or a Congress without an opposition will similarly lose its sharpness.

This ought to be a lesson for synagogues and other institutions, when recruiting Board members. They shouldn’t look for ideological uniformity, but rather for people who are willing to talk to and learn from those with very different political or religious outlooks.

Next up:  “John Quincy Adams,” by Harlow Giles Unger.

James Madison and Disability

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In “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered,” author Lynne Cheney demonstrates that Mr. Madison’s epilepsy fundamentally affected who he was as a politician. What specifically caught my attention was the connection between his condition and the first amendment to the Constitution.

The “people first” language of the disability rights movement asserts that we are not “handicapped, epileptics,or wheelchair-bound,” but rather a person with a handicap, a person with epilepsy, or a person in a wheelchair. The difference is that first they are people just like any other. Their condition doesn’t define them, but rather gets integrated into their personhood just like a person’s height, hair color, or temperament.

James Madison read widely on the subject of epilepsy, seeking a cause for and hoping to prevent his “sudden attacks.” Christian sources suggested that they a person who exhibited symptoms of seizures was a lunatic, possessed by the devil or a dumb spirit, or sinful. He struggled with this explanation, which didn’t ring true. He found in other books suggestions that regular exercise and sufficient sleep could prevent seizures.

It is likely that Madison used the same investigative logic with which he researched his physical condition to also examine his spiritual condition. Just as he cast aside the notion that Satan was the cause of his epilepsy, he also began to move away from other ideas of traditional religion.

He began to understand that religion, like science and medicine, needs to be tested. In order to test religion, society needs free and open discourse on religion. When government and religion are connected, it is not possible to openly question religious precepts. Thus, there is a direct line from Madison’s epilepsy to his questioning of religious texts to his belief in the separation of church and state as expressed in the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Next up in the presidential biography series: “The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation’s Call to Greatness.”

The Leadership Qualities of Thomas Jefferson

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One of my occasional projects is to read presidential biographies. I am reading them because each of them had the leadership qualities to get elected to perhaps the highest office in the Western world, so by definition there is something in their lives that is worth studying.

I have just finished “Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power,” by Jon Meacham. Jefferson was a man who lived for the chance to increase his knowledge about anything and everything. He could engage virtually anyone in conversation because he could find a genuine interest in something that the other person was interested in. In his political leadership he was able to blend two opposing qualities that made him enormously successful. As president, he wanted to know everything that was going on in his cabinet so he could shape events according to his will. He wanted control. At the same time, he would do almost anything to avoid a direct confrontation. He understood that the way to maintain cordial relationships is to avoid arguments. So when he wanted to push some piece of legislation or introduce some controversial idea, he would often ask another person to do it for him, while keeping his involvement a secret. In this, there was an element of humility – he didn’t care whether he got credit for his ideas (on one case, he asked that the recipient burn the letter in which he suggested that the recipient introduce the legislation – we only know about this because the recipient didn’t burn it!). Jefferson blended control with humility. Although at one point he and John Adams were on opposing sides of a fierce struggle for the future of the emerging country (Federalist vs. Republican), at the end of their careers the two of them were on very good terms.

Jefferson also understood that theoretical idealism does not work in the real world of politics. He was elected as a States’ Rights Republican anti-Federalist (whom he called Monarchists), but over the course of his eight years he saw the wisdom of a strong president and a strong Federal government. For example, the Louisiana Purchase would not have been possible had he waited for a Constitutional Amendment (which he theoretically believes was necessary) before signing the agreement.

A synagogue should be an inclusive institution, and this means that within the boundaries of the mission statement, arguments should be avoided. People ought to be welcomed where they are, and the mission of the synagogue ought to be to encourage them to explore the depths of Judaism and increase their commitment to a Jewish life. The mission of the synagogue ought to be encouraging, not coercive. Synagogue business ought to be conducted with humility, with the awareness that control over the institution ultimately belongs to Torah, which embodies the mission of the congregation.

Next up: “James Madison: A Life Reconsidered,” by Lynn Cheney.

The Story of Soup

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I shared two Sabbatical articles with my writing group last week. Aside from the small suggestions of grammar and sentence structure, I heard comments that I need to pay more attention to story. These articles could be more than just a journal of my activities. They should be the ongoing story of a series of transformative activities. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be in a profession that allows them an unstructured leave from daily responsibilities to spend an extended period of time learning and thinking. However, the Sabbatical can be experienced in microcosm if the story can be translated into the reader’s life.

Here’s a story from the first week of Sabbatical: One of my more mundane activities has been making soup. When I was first learning to cook seriously, in my early 20’s, I thought cooking soup required magic. My mother is a wonderful cook. I could never figure out how she could turn water into this rich, fragrant, golden liquid called chicken soup until I tried it for myself. I discovered that cooking soup simply requires throwing the ingredients into a pot of water and cooking it for hours, letting the magic of chemistry blend the flavors together, pull the starches and bind the liquid together into … soup!

If all you have at your disposal is standard kitchen equipment (i.e., no pressure cooker), you can’t rush the process of making soup. You can’t turn the stove up to high and make the magic happen faster. Similarly, the learning that happens during a sabbatical takes time. What do you do when you don’t have extended unstructured time? One answer, the Jewish answer, is that you can build a mini-sabbatical, called Shabbat, into your week. Magic happens on Shabbat when you decline to schedule shopping, entertainment opportunities, or children’s obligations, but rather spend the time in prayer (preferably community-based prayer), study, reading, contemplation, socializing, and eating meals with family and/or friends.

Winter is approaching. What a good time to make soup and make Shabbat!