Rabbi Yair Robinson
Parashat Bo 5772
January 27 2012
There is a story of a soldier who was in need of spiritual guidance, so he went in search of the base chaplain. The soldier, a Catholic soon found the chaplain, and discovered that he was a rabbi. Anxious and apprehensive, he said, “Rabbi, I appreciate your willingness to see me, but I want you to understand that I’m a Catholic. I hope you won’t try to change my religion.” With a gentle smile the chaplain replied, “Son, I don’t want to change your religion. I want your religion to change you.”
It seems like a simple statement, doesn’t it? We have all heard one version or another the idea that religion is supposed to change us, transform us, engage us; religion is supposed to help us live the kind of life we most want to live. But so often, we stand immobile to religion. We turn our face against it, challenged by the injustice in the world, by the hatred and poverty we see too often. Rather than stand in radical amazement, we are struck dumb. Rather than see holiness in the world, we can only see grime, and we barely even notice that. We go through our lives in a state as opposite Jacob’s as we can: rarely do we say “God is in this place!” We’re too busy looking down. Probably at our phones.
In a way, we stand as Pharaoh. What do I mean? Look to our text. Again and again in Parashat Bo, Pharaoh is confronted by plagues: locusts, darkness, among the others from the previous portion. And Pharaoh’s heart is hardened. He cannot see his own people’s suffering; he is inured to it such that his own courtiers beg him to release the Israelites. He cannot allow himself to be humbled before God, he cannot see God’s presence in his midst. Even when he does humble himself, it’s clear that he’s just trying to say what he thinks Moses wants to hear: “Forgive my offense just this once” he says, a ‘sorry’ as grudging as any child might offer after, say, socking their parent in the behind. Not that this has ever happened. But we do: we act aloof and cynical, as if there is nothing we can do to alleviate the suffering around us, as if there wasn’t beauty and holiness to be found as well.
Contrast this with Moses and Israel, who again and again are told by God to remember: remember what has been done, remember the redemption of Israel, remember and pass it along to the next generation, so that they see themselves as having gone out of Egypt.
What would it mean for us to move beyond that wall of cynicism? What would it mean for us to soften our hearts to those in our midst? What would it mean to hear the voices of those who are suffering, to hear the pain in their voices, to offer the embrace of love rather than the stiffness of distance?
In 1963, Abraham Joshua Heschel delivered a keynote address to a group of National Protestant, Catholic and Jewish social action groups. In that speech, he said, “Friends, at the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. And Moses' words were, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go." While Pharaoh retorted, "Who's the Lord that I should heed his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord. I will not let Israel go." The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate.”
If you listen to the recording of that speech you can hear laughter. The audience laughed, not just because the idea is humorous, but because Heschel identified an uncomfortable truth. And has there ever been a truer statement? Heschel spoke in the midst of the civil rights movement, but that summit continues to this day, and it continues in each and every one of our hearts. What would it mean for our own internal Pharaoh to capitulate? What will it finally take for us to soften our hearts to those in need? What will it take for us to be changed by our faith, and to lead each other across the Sea? Perhaps the words of our prayerbook are true: that there is no way for us to get from here to there, from Egypt to Sinai and Zion, except by joining hands, marching together. May we learn to march, to pray with our feet, as Heschel did, may we learn to let our Judaism lead us to fulfill the words of my teacher, Lawrence Kushner: “when you see something that is broken, fix it. When you find something that is lost, return it. when you see something that needs to be done, do it. In that way, you will take care of your world and repair creation. If all the people were to do so, our world would truly be…the way God meant it to be.” Amen!
Rabbi Yair Robinson
Sermon Parashat Vayigash
12/30/11
"What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect."
These words, written by Henry David Thoreau, from Civil Disobedience, have been at the forefront of my mind in the last week, as protests rocked the State of Israel. Not over economic considerations, nor over peace (or the lack thereof), but because an 8-year old girl was spat upon. In Beit Shemesh a week ago, a dati—that is to say, religious—girl, was walking to her school. Her arms were covered, she was wearing a long skirt. She was observing tzniut to any reasonable halakhic observer, and a haredi—so-called Ultra-Orthodox—man spat upon her, and said she was dressed as a prostitute. Her crime? Her collarbone was showing.
This is, of course, not the first act of violence performed by the Harediim of late. Their war against women has been going on for decades, throwing ink at women reading Torah by the Western Wall, calling women who wandered into the wrong neighborhood shikses and worse. But in the last year things have gotten worse: rabbis calling for Orthodox Jews in the army to leave if a woman’s voice is heard at a secular, military event. There have been often violent attempts to ban women’s images in advertising in Jerusalem. There have been attempts to create segregated seating on public transportation, including just this past week a haredi man calling a woman in her military uniform, returning home on leave, a prostitute and trying to force her from her seat on the bus. Just capture that image in your mind: a woman in uniform, who is defending the Jewish state, a place of refuge for all Jews, is called a shikse and a whore by the very person that woman is protecting.
Thankfully, in the latter case, the individual has been charged with sexual harassment, but I’m sad to say that this is the exception, not the rule. Too frequently women on buses are left to fend for themselves, and too frequently the government says nothing, or little, but does encourage those same haredi political parties to join their coalition. Moreover, those same harediim, after years of having their misogynistic, racist and anti-Zionist idea of Judaism accommodated, chose to riot last night rather than admit that their idea—which resembles Iran more than the Halakha!—should be removed from the national stage.
And so, Secular and non-haredi religious Jews—including Progressive and Masorti Jews—rallied in Beit Shemesh for the madness to stop. Shimon Peres and Tzipi Livni called for the madness to stop. Binyamin Netanyahu asked his haredi partners in government to please kindly settle down. But my fear is that we will continue to coddle, continue to accept and accommodate, out of some mirror-world idea of what diversity means. That somehow our values of egalitarianism, of real pluralism, of a Judaism that recognizes the Godliness in all, should take a back seat to someone else’s bigotry, lest they be offended. Or because that’s the way it’s always been in the Jewish world. Or because we as American Jews don’t somehow have a right to speak Truth—real Truth—to those in the Israeli government who are distorting what a Jewish and Democratic state is meant to be.
This week’s parasha begins with Judah defending his brother Benjamin from the Vizier of Egypt—really Joseph in disguise. He doesn’t just bow and ask nicely—he speaks truth to power. He scolds. He chastises the most powerful man in the world because of the lack of justice he sees. Joseph forgives his brothers not just because they try to save Benjamin, but because they have been transformed from people who hesitated doing the right thing and then regret their decision to people who immediately act in pursuit of justice.
We would do well to do the same. Yes, signing online petitions is a good first step, as is sending money to groups like the Israel Religious Action Center and ARZA. And as I said at the high holidays, we need to go to Israel and stand in solidarity with our Progressive Brothers and Sisters fighting the good fight. But we need to fight here as well. We need to rediscover our voice, to find ways to advocate for the kind of Judaism and the kind of Israel we want, one that really seeks l’taken olam b’malchut shaddai, to bring about the repair of the world—an end to bigotry, an end to the use of religion to espouse bigotry, an embracing of all—for the sake of Heaven. Rabbi Jonah Pesner of the URJ has called for increased activism in our congregations and we must heed the call. And we must be unafraid to make mistakes, to insist on our vision of Judaism, a Judaism that belongs to all, as much as they insist on theirs, even if it means suffering under the false accusation of being anti-pluralistic.
Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Palestine, and an Orthodox Jew, wrote: "The truly righteous do not complain about evil, but rather add justice; they do not complain about heresy, but rather add faith; they do not complain about ignorance, but rather add wisdom." It’s time to live up to our namesake Judah, to add justice, to add faith, to add wisdom, instead of hesitating and regretting and waiting for someone else to pick up the tab. Amen.
Rabbi Yair Robinson
Chanukah 2011
12/23/11
Tonight we continue our celebration of Chanukah, the festival of lights. But that is not what the word ‘Chanukah means’. Chanukah means ‘dedication’, and it hearkens back to the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem, defiled by Assyrian Greeks and their allies, restored after too much bloodshed to its former grandeur. One would think this holiday would then fail to speak to us; I don’t know about you but as much as I love barbecue I don’t long for a return to Temple Sacrifice, and the assimilationist tendencies of the Maccabees’ enemies don’t feel so far off to us—the idea of learning all that world has to offer us as opposed to Mattathias’ parochialism. Even the rabbis are happy to give it short shrift: there is no tractate Chanukah in the Talmud, after all; it appears but briefly in Tractate Shabbat, around the question of lighting lights.
And yet, throughout the centuries, this holiday has resonated. Yes, lighting lights in the darkest time of the year is common among all religious traditions, and yes, its proximity to Christmas has given the holiday extra ‘oomph’, let’s not delude ourselves. But for me, there is another element, a spiritual element that goes back to that idea of dedication. While I don’t dedicate myself to a Temple rite that long ago expired, this holiday gives me a chance to think about what I want to rededicate myself to—what I should focus on in my own personal life and my professional life, as a husband, father, friend and rabbi .
Fortunately, I had an opportunity to have that reflection on dedication last week, but on steroids. Last week, 15 of us went by car and train down to the Gaylord Convention center, just across the Potomac from Alexandria, to join as many as 6000 other Reform Jews at the Union For Reform Judaism Biennial. This is the time when congregational leaders, clergy, and laypeople gather for singing, learning best practices, schmoozing, networking, and the study of Torah. Oh, and shopping. Some of us had been to previous gatherings, especially the sisterhood folks. I’ve been to eight myself. Others had never been to one, or if they had, it’d been years ago.
This convention was notable for a number of reasons. It was it the largest gathering of the Union ever, with registration fully closed a few weeks before. It was the first time the Biennial was addressed in person by Israel’s deputy prime minister and former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak. It was the first time AIPAC was welcomed, along with the head of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and politically conservative leaders like Representative Eric Cantor and William Kristol. It was the largest gathering of Jewish rockers ever, from Julie Silver and Dan Nichols to Rick Recht, Mattan Klein, Michelle Citrin and Josh Nelson. It was the first convention addressed by a sitting president, Barack Obama, who began by kvetching about the length of the skirts his daughter wears to bar mitzvahs and giving a drash on the Torah portion, and gave a shout-out to NFTY, causing 300 teenagers to go absolutely bonkers. It was a time of transition, as Debbie Friedman was remembered, and Rabbi Eric Yoffie, The leader of the Reform movement for 16 years, handed the presidency over to Rabbi Rick Jacobs, formerly senior rabbi of Westchester Reform in Scarsdale New York, a very different but equally passionate and devoted rabbi and community activists.
Most of all, it was the most intense, most engaging and dynamic biennial I have ever been to, and our delegates came home exhausted and rejuvenated at the same time. I asked them to share with me what was, for each of them, the most important thing, or idea, or moment that they took away from their experience.
For some it was the idea that we are part of a larger community, with a voice that should be heard and heard loudly. As the only Progressive synagogue from Malvern PA to Havre De Grace Maryland, and certainly the only voice of Reform in the First State, it can feel a little lonely, and it’s easy to feel like we do what we do in a vacuum. To experience Shabbat with 4700 Jews of all ages, to sing with 4700 other voices, to enjoy Shabbat dinner and song session with 4700 others (and the chicken was just fine thank you) is a powerful moment. And to see our values—of choice, openness, egalitarianism, of a Shabbat that isn’t Orthodox, of a Religious Judaism that is OURS, and not THEIRS (whoever they may be) and only ours sometimes—hailed and trumpeted and celebrated by thousands of others, representing 900 congregations and over a million individuals, filled our hearts with affirmation that Reform has a voice that must be heard.
And it was poignant to see Eric (he’s a classmate of my dad’s, I can call him that) talk about his own children’s spiritual journeys, and about the very real deficits we are facing in our movement, not only financial, as in so many congregations that are suffering from lack of treasure, but the spiritual deficit too many of us feel, unconnected to each other, working ourselves to the bone, over programming our children such that the only relief we feel, as Eric said, is when we finally stagger to sleep, exhausted.
For me, and I know I speak for cantor as well, I came away with a profound feeling that, while what we do here at Beth Emeth is good, it is not yet great. That we are too used to the idea that ‘good enough’ is good enough. That immediate need so often trump opportunities to really focus on our vision of what we could be as a caring congregation, devoted to Tikkun Olam and meaningful Jewish experience. I know I feel that myself more often than I’d like to admit: with so much to do already, so many practical demands on my time that are right here, it’s hard to see past them to what is truly visionary, what encourages us to be the kind of congregation I know we can be. For that, I want to give three examples of things I’m going to be working on with our leadership that I think, I know will lead this congregation to be the place it should be:
The first is our school. This is not to fault our wonderful religious school director—I know Myrna’s devotion to this place and rely upon her wisdom daily, and anyone who knows me knows how much I appreciate what she does in this place. Nor is it to fault our devoted teachers, far from it! It is clear that we have the best religious school in the state, if not the region. But we do not do enough to provide our kids—and their families—with Jewish experiences. Oh, we’re excellent at teaching them ABOUT Judaism, but giving them opportunities to connect with deep, resonant Jewish moments in their lives, well, we could do more, and we could do better. Just as you can’t learn to play tennis or drive a car just from reading a book, our children will not learn to live meaningful Jewish lives if we only talk ABOUT the experience. They need to experience it for themselves. If that sounds a little like a pitch for Jewish camp or an Israel trip, you’re right. That’s what makes camp and Israel so successful, and we need to bring more of that here, including more opportunities for our families to experience Shabbat and the holidays, and experience each other: how many of our kids don’t know each other because they go to different schools? We can do more and we can do better.
Another is our Saturday morning experience. Too often we fail to make minyan when there is no bar or bat mitzvah. Too often attendance at Torah study is dependent on who’s teaching. Too often we as a congregation surrender the morning service over to the family of the bar mitzvah, with the best of intentions, and while I think we do the bar mitzvah experience better than almost any other congregation I have seen, with real love and devotion, we can do better. Shabbat morning must no longer be the neglected stepchild to Friday night, nor dependent on ‘shtick’ like one-off programs. We can do more, and we can do better.
Finally, our Friday night Shabbat experience. (uh-oh, here it comes!) Where are the children? At home and in bed, with some exceptions. Where is our patience with young families? Where is our willingness to engage, not just with each other, but with the tradition itself? We have taught a generation that they’re only allowed here for family services or some special program "fir de kinderlach", that worship must either be formal or ‘entertaining’, and unchanging—not only of structure and time and space, but worship that leaves us unchanged. I know I have worn people out with talking about Friday night, with trying different things and trying to meet different needs halfway. I have often despaired, and have heard the accusations that I’m trying to ‘Shir Ami’-ify our congregation, or make it something that it’s not, and before last week I was willing to give up. I was reminded at biennial that to do so, to give up, would be to shirk my duty to this congregation, to you, to myself, to give up on making this congregation’s Shabbat the best it can be, to be truly great. We can do more, and we can do better!
More than anything else, we as a congregation need to dream big, we need to think big. I know you have dreams for this congregation. I do too. What are your dreams? Please, share them with me, with the leadership, and don’t think ‘this will never happen here’, or, ‘they won’t listen to me’. I will and we will. If we dream small that is all we are going to be, and I’m not talking about numbers in attendance. Biennial reminded me of the importance of having that vision, of living up to that vision, of sharing that vision with others. I want to hear your dreams, and I want to find ways to make them come alive. We can do more, we can do better.
You’ll notice I didn’t say anything about the solutions. That’s on purpose. Oh, I have ideas, and soon enough we’ll talk about them: with our teachers and parents, with our Ritual committee, in forums large and small. I know that many of you have better ideas that will achieve the same things: more engaging Shabbat experiences for all generations, more connection in our religious school, the uplifting of Shabbat morning, and a host of dreams only you can articulate. The practical stuff will come—it will be complicated at times, there will be the gnashing of teeth and shaking of head, and a not a few people will tell me I’m crazy, and some of them to my face. But tonight, in Chanukah, we talk about rededication. I rededicate myself to this Reform Community, this House of Truth, this congregation that I promise you, will shine even brighter, even brighter than it does now. Amen.
Rabbi Yair Robinson
Parashat Toldot
Nov. 25 2011
I hope we’ve all survived our Thanksgiving experiences, and hopefully come through them with more than just an added quarter inch to our belts. I know for many, Thanksgiving means wonderful traditions, and some not so wonderful traditions. The sad fact is, there are many families for whom coming together is not a source of joy but a source of dissention. Sometimes it manifests as old fights being refought, often ridiculous disagreements. My family spent 10 years arguing whether the damage to the garage in my grandparents’ house in Newton was caused by the Buick or the Oldsmobile. Mind you, the house had long ago been sold, and neither car existed except perhaps as recycled scrap somewhere else, but there you have it. Sometimes it emerges as a fear of change, the addition (or subtraction) of a family member, or just regression. I saw a flow chart yesterday suggesting what people should bring for the holiday meal, and for those going to such homes they recommended ‘the ancient candied yams of sorrow.’
It’s appropriate that we read Toldot, the story of Isaac’s life. Poor Isaac. No one likes him. His wife Rebecca tries to trick him along with his son Jacob ‘pulling the wool over his eyes’. His father Abraham tries to kill him. His relationship with his brother Ishmael is strained at best. The community around him, the town of Gerar, kicks him out. And yet, despite eating his share of the candied yams of sorrow Isaac keeps on plugging away, trying to do the right thing. Isaac is a digger of wells, always looking for Mayim Chaim, life-giving water. But every time he digs a well, the townsfolk of Gerar drive him away or stop up the well. So he names them: Esek—contention or strife; Sitnah—hostility). At last Abimelech, the king of Gerar, recognizes that Isaac has the best of intentions, goes to Isaac and, asking his forgiveness, invites him back into society, saying "Now I plainly see that God has been with you." At that moment, Isaac finds Mayim Chaim, living waters, and calls that last well ‘rehoboth’, wide places. .
So what do we learn from this? What do we take away, other than heartburn and our teeth stuck together? We learn that Isaac continues to search for Mayim chayim, for living waters, and likewise continues to reach out to bless his family, despite all his experiences. He doesn’t give up, despite having every reason to do so. We learn that only when Abimelech is reconciled with Isaac, only when the people of Gerar learn to see the good in him, recognizing that God has been with him, does Isaac find the life-giving water he seeks. To live with contention and strife and hostility is no way to live at all, and better to forgive and be forgiven, to see the spark of holiness in the other, to place aside the need to be right in order to learn. And we learn that, when Isaac does find that well, he calls it wide spaces. Not ‘now we’re all buddy buddy and we’re going to hang out all the time’, nor ‘now everything is perfect’, But, ‘wide spaces’; the recognition that we all need some distance for our own growth and health.
Sh’ma Minah, May we learn from this. May we seek out living waters for ourselves and our souls, may we recognize the divine in each other, and may we all have our space to learn and grow. And when all else fails, may we remember, as one wise person told me, that God sends us our friends to apologize for our families!
Parashat Noach 10/28/11
They said in seminary there’d be weeks like these.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, but at this time of year, I find myself doing more minutiae and less ‘rabbi-ing’ than I’d like. There always seem to be more programs, projects, courses, rehearsals, phone messages and visitations at this time of year, each more important than the last, and getting through them takes some measure of discipline.
Yesterday was looking like one of those days when I got to my second appointment of the day, already running a few minutes late.
I was meeting with a young woman, a mom and member of the congregation whose kids attend our religious school. We’d talked a few times and I knew her from Sundays and carpool, and knew her kids, but all in passing.
She sat down and looked at her hands in a way that indicated she had something important to say and wasn’t sure how to say it. When she’d asked for an appointment she said it concerned ‘family stuff, but nothing bad’; nevertheless, I had steeled myself.
She started by asking if I knew she wasn’t Jewish. I didn’t; in fact, I make a habit of assuming everyone in shul is Jewish unless I’m told otherwise, and anyway she had seemed awfully knowledgeable. She began talking about her upbringing in the Philadelphia region, growing up nominally Catholic but feeling disaffected from that religion, but then going to a Friend’s School for high school, where all her friends and many of her teachers were Jewish. She talked about dating Jewish boys, going to friends’ houses for Passover, and even being invited to travel to Israel, where she had her most profound spiritual experience standing before the Kotel. In due time she went to college (where she, by chance, joined a Jewish sorority), married a Jewish man, and began a Jewish family, two kids who love religious school and this place. While raising her family, she’d read books by Anita Diamant—first the Red Tent , and then Choosing a Jewish Life. She talked about the ethos she read in that book, and how it touched her very person: that we strive to do right and good in this world for the sake of this world, rather than to enter some reward at the end, and with the hope we would be remembered for blessing.
She looked and told me how she felt that now she was ready to convert to Judaism.
Needless to say, that half-hour appointment became an hour, and the rest of the morning’s projects got pushed off to the side.
Despite my happy jaunts into Kabbalah and neo-Chasidism, I’m not prone to flights of fancy. I tend to view the world fairly empirically, with one exception. I am increasingly convinced that some things happen for a reason, and when one is born with a Jewish Neshoma, that neshoma, that quality of soul will out, and will drink in the Jewish experience as a parched man drinks water. At the high holidays I talked about the idea of coming and searching, and talked about how so often we feel disappointed with our search. But sometimes, sometimes we find what we didn’t even know we were looking for and fall upon it like a lifeline.
To hear someone’s spiritual journey, and to be given the opportunity to play some small role in that journey, to bring some water to the parched lips, is a special gift. But even greater is the gift for the person who for even one brief moment sees the journey herself, and is able to see everything click into place. For that person, her heritage is secure.
Thus it is in our Torah portion. It begins: Eilah Toldot Noach, Noach ish tzaddik, which is usually translated as "this is the story or generations of Noah", but RASHI and the Kabbalists remind us those words could also be understood to mean "these are the chronicles—the life experiences, the stories—that lead to comfort, the comfort of the righteous". That this isn’t the story of a person; rather, it’s a metaphor for the journey we all take toward righteousness and comfort—the comfort we bring to others and the comfort we ourselves find at last. The Zohar comments that noach, comfort, means ‘returning to the source’; and isn’t that the journey of all of us who strive for righteousness, to return to that source of Holiness, of Oneness, of Unity, that is Torah, that is Humanity, that is God? Seen in this light, Noach isn’t just a story about some dude with a boat, but is a metaphor for all our stories, our own efforts to reach the Source.
Art Green reminds us that the journey does not come about from moaning over our human inadequacies, nor from burdening ourselves with overwhelming guilt. Instead, it comes from a place of inner rest and peace. The path to self-transcendence begins with self-acceptance. I was given a gift this week: to witness that act take place, and be given an opportunity to participate. But it was also an opportunity for me to reflect on my own path, my own journey toward the Source. May you be so inspired as I was, and find yourselves as we move past the holidays moving toward the Source, moving toward Peace. Amen.
Yair D. Robinson
Chol HaMoed Sukkot 5772
So I’ve been reading Neil Gaiman’s "American Gods", which is a good and worthwhile book, especially if you like mythology, coin tricks, and road trip stories, with maybe just a hint of fantasy. Anyway, at one point, the main character, who has been wandering all across America after getting out of prison, who has slept in a series of hotels, couches, rented and borrowed rooms, and at least one VW microbus, starts thinking of home, and has the following thought: "He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough."
It’s a worthwhile thought this Shabbat of Sukkot as we wonder what does it mean to go home. Sukkot—not the holiday, but the booths themselves—are structures for a people without a home; gossamer, exposed to the elements, we can imagine our ancestors building them as they first left Egypt, as they first entered the Promised Land. And indeed, we are commanded to build our Sukkot to remember our own Exile and transitory nature when we first emerged as a people from the foot of Sinai.
Today, we are more transitory than ever. Whereas once we may have grown up, lived, loved, raised a family and died within a few miles of our birthplace, today we wander far, far afield, and not just once, but many times. We are constantly moving and relocating, constantly on the move, not only us as Jews, but all Americans. And while that has presented us with wonderful economic and educational opportunities, it has also left us feeling unrooted, never quite a landsman, and not a little like the Major General of The Pirates of Penzance, weeping to someone else’s ancestors because they’re the ones that came with the house. And if we ourselves have found ourselves rooted, surely we’ve seen our children journey, joining the rest of their generation, which is more rootless than any other, and as a result, putting off marriage and children longer than any in a century.
And we’re aware of the fragility of home, as well, as we think of Gilad Shalit this weekend. Hopeful for his release, pinned to the news that he should be back in the arms of his parents within a week, but highly aware of how frail and delicate the arrangements, and that any little shift in diplomacy may undo the whole thing.
So what is home? For each of us it’s something different—be it a place of deep roots, or someplace willed into being—but regardless, it’s something we appreciate more profoundly through this festival of Sukkot, as we gaze from our little, cold, flimsy hut at the place we call our own, and celebrate the chag he’asif, the festival of ingathering, and gather the harvest of our own experiences, welcoming all to hearth and home. Amen.
Rabbi Yair Robinson
Yom Kippur 5772
I first noticed it in the eyes, wide and alert, not with joy, but anticipation, and not a little bit of fear, and old, like the city they were watching. These were the eyes of the soldier on duty in the Old City of Jerusalem, on my last visit back to Israel. It was the first time that the soldiers weren’t adults to me, weren’t these majestic lions, but kids, youths no older than 18, 19, or 20. Where to my American eyes they should have been wearing basketball jerseys and ball caps, they were wearing flak jackets and helmets. Where the American teenager would be playing on their mobile phone texting with friends, they’re handling their M-16 and radio (and texting with friends). Where our kids are worrying about which college is the right fit for them, or what they should post to facebook, these kids are worrying about their friends’ lives, worrying about what their parents will feel if something should happen to them.
We are not used to the idea of discomfort at that level being brought close to home. We are unaccustomed to that level of sacrifice. We are certainly not used to the idea of sending off our youngest generation, never mind our own children, into harms’ way. And think of the sacrifices, no less small, that our own children, boys and girls of eighteen or nineteen or twenty are making, returning from foreign wars to years of psychological or physical therapy, or to be buried.
To many of us, that burden is too much to bear, too much to give. As a culture, we are taught not to think of what we should give up, but what we should get, what benefit, what pleasure we should derive from a thing. We are focused on happiness, on having fun, on enjoying ourselves. We all buy into that notion in one way, shape or form. We justify our purchases, no matter how petty, or our behavior no matter how erratic, with the phrase "well, if it makes us happy, why not?" If that car makes us happy, does it matter its gas mileage? If that outfit makes us happy, does it matter how appropriate or inappropriate it is? This is America, after all, and no one can tell us what to do or not do. I find myself using the same language; how many b’nai mitzvah have I told to go onto this bimah and have fun. Not have a spiritual or meaningful experience, not do a good job, or even do their best, but get up here and have fun.
I wonder whether we are really meant to be happy, whether happiness is our greatest and most important tool of measuring how meaningful our lives are. Think of how many American children are prescribed mood-altering substances despite the paucity of research on what long-term effect this has on children, and the studies showing that too many children are over-prescribed these medications. Think more of the ever-encroaching marketing efforts to us and to our children. Will your child really be happy unless she has Dora the Explorer episodes on DVD? Or Dora cereal? What about Dora underwear? Will you really be happy unless you have the body you’ve always wanted (and haven’t you always wanted six-pack abs? Or shoulders you could lay a bridge over?). Everything is there, that constant drone reminding us to be ‘happy’. And yet, happiness seems to get us in more trouble than it’s worth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote:" The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate; to have it make some difference that you have lived, and lived well". I wonder if he was right; our lives are not, should not be about merely sating our appetites, our desires, about pursuing fun and happiness with disregard to all else. Rather, our lives should be filled with sacrifice; doing what is right, what is good, what is necessary, what is essential, what is thoughtful. We are meant to use our lives to do that which gives meaning above and beyond simple fulfillment.
There are, of course, justifications for our sense of fun as happiness, as part of the American way. How much does it hurt someone, after all, if I’m having fun? Isn’t having fun better advice, especially to our all-too-competitive kids, than to go out there and murder their opposition, be it in the classroom or on the playing field? And really, it’s in the Constitution: Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
All this is true, and there is certainly nothing wrong with having fun: and this is a thin-lipped New Englander talking. Nevertheless, I look at these kids coming back from Afghanistan and other places, look at the families of kids who are never coming home, and I wonder: why is it that we only ask sacrifice of the Other: our poor, and our young? Why is it that we look our noses down at those who do sacrifice of themselves, thinking of them as suckers, as fools who couldn’t be clever enough to avoid that hazard, who ‘bought the hype’? Look at the way the words ‘shared sacrifice’ have been treated in the political arena, almost cynically, with a sneer befitting Billy Idol attached to the words. This is equally true in synagogue life: we in leadership spend so much time trying to make the synagogue experience easy and fun, that perhaps we forget to make it meaningful and challenging as well.
Alternatively, why do we think of those who sacrifice as saints, improbably unattainably and impossibly good, able to give of their time and energy in a way that no person could do and maintain a career or family? I think of Danny Siegel‘s mitzvah heroes, people who seemingly spend all their spare time working to get every heroin addict into treatment, every foster child with AIDS into a home, every inner-city child to graduate high school. We look at them and say, one way or the other, "I could never do that!" Why is it that we never say, or rarely say, ‘that is what I should do’?
A few years ago, shortly after Israel’s cease fire with Lebanon, I was talking to a young woman. She had advocated for Israel in college, worked for an anti-discrimination agency, and after all her experiences, talked about a great weariness; she was tired of fighting the good fight, tired of what our African-American brothers and sisters call ‘the struggle’. She wanted no more demands for apologia, no more well-meaning lectures about how anti-Israel is not synonymous with anti-Semitism, no more spirited conversations at housewarming parties, trying to convince the other of Israel’s legitimacy while balancing the Jewish values of human rights. I think perhaps that is what ails us, this sense that we’ve done it already. A hundred times we’ve called our congressman, we’ve rallied, we’ve raised money, we’ve fought the pitched battles in classroom and at water cooler. Let it be someone else’s turn to fight; now it’s my turn to enjoy myself, to have fun.
There is a story of two Jews, a religious Jew and a secular Jew, weeping at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. A bystander asks each why he is weeping. The religious Jew says his weeping comes from the sacrifices and travails the Jews have suffered throughout the ages. The secular Jew explains that he weeps because he does not know what to weep for. I fear, very soon we will have no longer any connection between our own actions and the state of the world, no connection between our tradition and its demands upon us and what makes us feel good, no connection between our people here and in the land of Israel. We will, in our pursuit of fun, in our escape from the struggle, begin to alienate ourselves from our communities and each other and our tradition, more and more convinced that if it does not directly convenience or benefit us—me—in that moment, then it is worthless, and our children will not even know what they miss.
The truth of the matter is, there is no rest for the weary, there is no option for it to be someone else’s turn, for ‘someone else’ will take up the task too late. When Joseph Darby was confronted with pictures of torture and humiliation conducted by his comrades at Abu Ghraib, he did not wait for someone else to report the violations, did not wait for someone else to take their turn. He answered the call, he did the right thing, knowing that he would lose friends, that he would receive death threats, that he would be considered a traitor. Yet if you ask him today if it was worth it, whether he would do it again, he would give an unequivocal yes, that he made ‘the right decision and it had to be made.’
My friends, if Joseph Darby can give up his career to do the right thing, can’t we give up a few hours of our time a week to devote to something other than me and mine? My friends, shouldn’t it be time that we start asking ourselves "what more can I do?" Shouldn’t it be time to put aside our pursuit of what is fun, to put aside questions of what is most convenient, or easiest, or cheapest, or looks the best, but to ask, ‘what is most meaningful?’ To ask: what more can I do? What more can I give of my wealth—and my person, myself, my time, my being—for the betterment of my community, my people? Is it too much to ask of ourselves to go to Israel even when it doesn’t look picture-perfect, when our children go and put their lives on the line, when we are willing to go to celebrate in paradises that hide the slums their staffs come from? Is it too much to ask of ourselves to donate our time to volunteer—really volunteer—to prepare books on tape for the blind, to tutor, to visit the sick and the elderly, to go to a shiva house of a complete stranger, to give up our fifth Sunday to help feed the homeless with Sisterhood or Brotherhood—rather than just give a dollar and wear a bracelet that makes us feel like we’ve done something? Is it too much to ask that we observe more than just one mitzvah day, one Tikkun Olam day a year?
A guy sees an ant lying on the sidewalk, its legs pointed toward the sky. He says, "what’re you doing, little ant?" The ant says, "I heard the sky was falling, so I’m here to stop it." The man laughs and says, "And what good do you think you’re going to do with those tiny little legs?" The ant shrugs and says, "Eh, I do what I can." As much as we may feel that we are no bigger than ants, and have as much influence on the world around us, we must remember what the ant says, and do what we can. For what we can do is transformative. Arik Einstein wrote years ago: Ani v’atah nishaneh et haolam. Amru et ze kodem lifanai, ze lo mishaneh": You and I will change the world. Others have said it before, but it doesn’t matter, for you and I will change the world.
That is why I am calling upon all of us to more fully engage in volunteerism this year. In other synagogues, a High Holiday appeal means asking for more money. While I certainly won’t turn away whatever wealth you may find it in yourselves to generously give to this community, instead I’m asking for your wisdom and work, for your time and effort, for you to be fully present here at the congregation in meaningful and challenging work. Why Beth Emeth? Why not some charitable organization or the JCC or the Kutz home or a club like Kiwanis or Rotary (and by the way, all of those are very good things). For a few reasons: because you have to start somewhere, and despite what Tom Friedman says, the world is still a big place and it’s hard to figure out where to start. This year, we’re partnering with Hanover Presbyterian (among others) to look into how we can better care for our neighbors and our fellows in Delaware and beyond. Because this is your community, a place filled with people who know you and love you and want to share in work but also want to share in your life; where the work of our hands and hearts is spiritual work no different from prayer or Torah Study. Because a synagogue isn’t just a house of prayer or education: it’s a house of community work as well, a public house, an assembly of folks looking to shape the world.
So, before you leave today, look to the handout before you. Look to the opportunities to share of yourself and grow and affect real change in the world around you.
It was the sages of the Chasidim who said: when I say I can’t do everything, let it not be in order to do nothing. Let it be, instead, merely a recognition that I don’t have to do everything, that other people too will do their part to right wrongs, just as they—and I—will try not to add to the wrongs we see done each day.
It is time to be through with saying "I can’t do everything" in order to do nothing. It is time to engage in meaningful work, to pursue the meaningful life: For the sake of our children that they may learn to pursue peace and justice; For the sake of our world, that we will have left it better than when we received it; for the sake of ourselves, that we may answer the question asked of us when our days are ended, that we may look ourselves in the eye every day, knowing that ours is a meaningful life, and lived well.
Rabbi Yair Robinson
Congregation Beth Emeth
Yom Kippur 5772
Before the law sits a gatekeeper. To this gatekeeper comes a man from the country who asks to gain entry into the law. But the gatekeeper says that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The man thinks about it and then asks if he will be allowed to come in sometime later on. "It is possible," says the gatekeeper, "but not now." The gate to the law stands open, as always, and the gatekeeper walks to the side, so the man bends over in order to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices that, he laughs and says: "If it tempts you so much, try going inside in spite of my prohibition. But take note. I am powerful. And I am only the most lowly gatekeeper. But from room to room stand gatekeepers, each more powerful than the other. I cannot endure even one glimpse of the third." The man from the country has not expected such difficulties: the law should always be accessible for everyone, he thinks, but as he now looks more closely at the gatekeeper in his fur coat, at his large pointed nose and his long, thin, black Tartar’s beard, he decides that it would be better to wait until he gets permission to go inside. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down at the side in front of the gate. There he sits for days and years. He makes many attempts to be let in, and he wears the gatekeeper out with his requests. The gatekeeper often interrogates him briefly, questioning him about his homeland and many other things, but they are indifferent questions, the kind great men put, and at the end he always tells him once more that he cannot let him inside yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper. The latter takes it all but, as he does so, says, "I am taking this only so that you do not think you have failed to do anything." During the many years the man observes the gatekeeper almost continuously. He forgets the other gatekeepers, and this first one seems to him the only obstacle for entry into the law. He curses the unlucky circumstance, in the first years thoughtlessly and out loud; later, as he grows old, he only mumbles to himself. ..Finally his eyesight grows weak, and he does not know whether things are really darker around him or whether his eyes are merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway to the law. Now he no longer has much time to live. Before his death he gathers in his head all his experiences of the entire time up into one question which he has not yet put to the gatekeeper. He waves to him, since he can no longer lift up his stiffening body. The gatekeeper has to bend way down to him, for the great difference has changed things considerably to the disadvantage of the man. "What do you still want to know now?" asks the gatekeeper. "You are insatiable." "Everyone strives after the law," says the man, "so how is it that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?" The gatekeeper sees that the man is already dying and, in order to reach his diminishing sense of hearing, he shouts at him, "Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going to close it now."
Thus wrote the great Jewish writer Franz Kafka, but it is a story familiar to all of us. How often have we been kept out, found the gate and the gatekeeper blocking our path, excluded and alienated for no reason we can fathom, except here we are, the entranced barred. And this is especially true of our Jewishness, our personal spirituality, our connection to God and each other, a thing we glimpse in darkness, barely illuminated, but blocked, it so often seems, by so many guards, the next more intimidating than the last. Questions of authenticity, of legitimacy, of value, of commitment come flooding toward us. Some are indifferent questions, questions about dues and congregational culture and youth groups and programs. Some are costly questions indeed, about identity, about dedication and obligation, about intermarriage and access, about what we want to teach our children, and how we want to see ourselves.
And still. We sit on our stool and curse our luck, and never wonder why we never see anyone else try to enter. We never look to move past our gatekeepers, our questions, because sometimes those gatekeepers, the most powerful gatekeepers, are the ones we put up ourselves. We deny ourselves the opportunities for intimacy, for real, meaningful connection; we fear making a mistake, or exposing ourselves, so we keep our connections on the surface. Or we put the onus entirely on others, then call them ‘unfriendly’ and ‘unwelcoming’ when they don’t live up to our expectations. Rabbi Elie Kaufner shares a story of going to onegs and playing a little game, standing just outside a conversation and waiting to see how long the people talking would acknowledge him. How often have we felt like the interloper in such settings, but as Kaufner points out, the barrier was not them, but him. What would have happened, he wonders, if he had introduced himself to the people talking, and joined their conversation?
What would happen if we would give ourselves fully to one another—to our spouse or partner, to our children or parents, to the people standing near us—rather than go through life standing just outside each others’ circle, fearful of what might happen? [move away from the podium] there is nothing that frightens me more as a rabbi than this [gesture], the space between us, that seemingly endless chasm where we can pretend somehow that we’re not engaged, not praying together, not really present in each others’ midst, and when I collapse that space [move forward] many in this room recoil, as if I’m violating some kind of trust. There is too much space here, too much opportunity to disconnect, and as a rabbi, a Jew, a friend, I want nothing more than to create that closeness, to get rid of this space! [return to podium]. So here we stand, on the holiest day of the year, and we are already preparing our gatekeepers—the ones that keep us out of synagogue, the one that keeps us from each other. Or, we could make a promise to eliminate that gatekeeper once and for all, and to bask in the light of Torah, the light of prayer, the light of intimacy, the light of each others’ holiness. Let’s not let the moment pass! Let’s not let our gatekeepers close the door! Let’s strive for that closeness, that relationship with one another that is rooted in holiness, and let’s start now. I invite you to open yourselves up and participate in a ritual. Hold the hand of the person next to you, or lock arms, or place an arm around the other—even if that person is a stranger to you! Even if that person is someone you have never met in your travels in this world! Take hold of the person next to you, and say these words with me:
I pray in this new year
Include me
Invite me in
Allow me to make space for you
May I be supported by those around me
May I be a strength to those who need me
May I let others see the real me
May I see what is real and holy in you.
May our words be true. Amen
Rabbi Yair D. Robinson
Sermon for Rosh Hashanah Morning 5772
“Why are you Here?”
Hi!
So I’d like to ask a question. Truth be told I’ve been meaning to ask it for a while, but I’ve been a little intimidated. Some of you will find the question silly, and others yet may find the question offensive. Please understand that I’m truly, honestly asking the question not to be judgmental or cute or smart, but because it’s important.
Why are you here?
Seriously, why are you here?
I know for some, it’s ‘tradition’; the question doesn’t even arise because the answer is self-evident. What else do Jews do, after all? For others, it’s about family; the chance to be together once or twice a year. Some of you are here for memory: you’re not really ‘here’ per se, but are hearing the sounds and feeling the feelings of your childhood. Then there are those who want to connect spiritually: you want to do the hard work of cheshbon nefesh the accounting of the soul. Yet others are here for the music, a few might be here for the sermon, and at least one person is here because the clergy look really good in white.
And then I’m guessing that there are many of you who truly do not know why you’re here. You come every year—or perhaps this is the first year in a long time—looking for something, hoping for something, expecting, well, you’re not sure what. Connection? Inspiration? Meaning? Something other than confusion and tedium, which you encounter all too frequently as you stumble over unfamiliar prayers (not just the Hebrew ones, but wacky over-formal English as well), as you try to join in music that doesn’t quite sound like what you remember from childhood, as you sit surrounded by people who all seem to know each other, but not you. You could come up with a thousand reasons to be anywhere else, but you chose to be here. And so you sit, waiting more-or-less patiently, for something to happen, some trigger to go off, some ‘a-ha’ moment, waiting for your Abraham moment.
What do I mean? For that we have to look at today’s Torah portion, the binding of Isaac. We tend to focus on the act itself, gruesome and awful as it is, a father nearly sacrificing his son to the voices in his head. Or we focus on the Ram at the end of the story, the justification for the Shofar blast we’ll hear momentarily. But there is something else happening in the story as well. When God calls to Abraham he uses the same words as when Abraham first heard the divine voice: Hineini, here I am. When his son looks at him plaintively and calls out to his father (for comfort? For inspiration?) he uses those words again: hineini, here I am. When the angel cries out to stop Abraham’s hand as the knife is about to plunge, again Abraham says Hineini, here I am. Three times in this portion Abraham says “Hineini”. It’s a simple statement, yet one filled with meaning. The Torah doesn’t give us tone of voice or a sense of emotion—it’s all action verbs and nouns—but we can well imagine how that word, “hineini” is said in each moment along this terrible and awesome journey.
Now please don’t misunderstand—I’m not suggesting we’re waiting for a voice in our heads that tells us to kill our children. This is Rosh Hashanah, not “The Shining”. However, I think there’s something emulative about coming to a place unfamiliar and declaring ‘here I am’. There is expectation and readiness, to be sure, but there’s also openness to what comes next, the willingness to be challenged, to be taken seriously. The text says God was testing Abraham, and we assume the test was the binding and near-sacrifice of his son. But what if the test was really whether or not Abraham would listen at all? What if Abraham passed the test just by saying ‘hineini’, here I am?
Of course, the high holidays aren’t the only ‘hineini’ moments in our lives. In fact, I would argue that our days are filled with hineini moments, that potentially every moment of every day is a hineini moment. When we acknowledge someone in need and respond in kind, when we engage in love and compassion for the other, when we have that moment of connection with someone else, when we read sacred text, sing and celebrate with gusto, we are saying “Hineini, here I am. When we speak these words, we are seeking not mere survival, but nourishment for the soul, connectedness, meaning. We remember the words of Herman Hesse in Siddhartha:
When someone is searching," said Siddhartha, "then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that what he searches for, that he is unable to find anything, to let anything enter his mind, because he always thinks of nothing but the object of his search, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed by the goal. Searching means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal. .. striving for your goal, there are many things you don't see, which are directly in front of your eyes."
Too frequently, however, we don’t say ‘hineini’, we don’t pass the test. We don’t listen hard enough, we don’t reach out enough. We judge, we engage in snark, we find others wanting. We keep up our armor lest our vulnerabilities be exposed. We engage in a world where everyone is trying to score points and interaction is a zero-sum game, where openness is weakness. We see it in our political discourse, we see it in our personal interactions. There has to be a winner and a loser, and none of us wants to be the loser. In this environment, who can take chances? Who can build real trust, who can learn or grow? Please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not speaking of walking on eggshells, afraid to insult the other. That is mere political correctness, a game of ‘gotcha’ where we never reach real dialogue because we’re too busy trying to figure out the right words. That too is a kind of armor. I’m speaking of the constant search for criticism that we find on the radio and the internet, the devaluation of the self we see in magazines that are meant to inspire ‘beauty’, the kind of meaningless point-counterpoint we saw in the internet debate on CNN a few weeks ago, between teachers and parents, arguing that one is right and the other wrong, that parents always distrust teachers and make their jobs more difficult, or that parents need to look out for predatory educators more interested in assumptions than learning. Are those really our only two options? Is it impossible for teachers and parents to hear each other, ask questions of each other, challenge each other meaningfully and respect one another’s positions? Is it impossible for us to stand before someone and say: “Here I am, open to the possibilities that our encounter can lead us someplace better”?
So let me make a suggestion for all of us, even the ones who already ‘know’ why they’re here. Let’s learn to say ‘hineini’. Let’s learn to be open, to be vulnerable, and to create space for others to do so as well. Easier said than done, I know, and we can come up with all kinds of reasons to keep those defenses up, to go on living life the way we always have, but if that were true, you wouldn’t be here today, would you? You wouldn’t be sitting in this place, waiting. You’re not at yoga, you’re not at the gym, or work, or your favorite restaurant, or at home; you’re here. Be here more: not only in this physical space (though that’s good too), but in this state of being, open to what is before you.
We end with a prayer, a poem written by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, a prayer for a service leader, but one that I think applies to all of us.
Here I stand
painfully aware of my flaws
quaking in my…shoes
and in my heart.
I'm here on behalf of this kahal
even though the part of me
that's quick to knock myself
says I'm not worthy to lead them.
All creation was nurtured
in Your compassionate womb!
God of our ancestors, help me
as I call upon your mercy.
Don't blame this community
for the places where I miss the mark
in my actions or my heart
in my thoughts or in our davening.
Each of us is responsible for her own teshuvah.
Help us remember that without recriminations.
Accept my prayer as though I were exactly the leader
this community needs in this moment,
as though my voice never faltered.
Free me from my own baggage
that might get in the way.
See us through the rose-colored glasses
of Your mercy.
Transform our suffering into gladness.
Dear One, may my prayer reach You
wherever You are
for Your name’s sake.
All praise is due to You, Dear One
Who hears the prayers of our hearts.
May this day open us to all the moments when we may say Hineini, “Here I am”, and may we be so transformed and moved to hear others and ourselves, to hear the Voice even as we hear the sound of the Shofar. Amen.
Rabbi Yair D. Robinson
Sermon for Erev Rosh Hashanah 5772
“Time to Go to Israel”
So here’s how the story goes, as recounted by Martin Gilbert:
“While visiting Israel, a teacher of mine encountered an American minister who started badgering him with hostile questions and comments about Israel, and finally asked him, "What is it that you Jews really want?"
“My teacher responded with the following story:
At Stolpce, Poland, on September 23, 1942, the ghetto was surrounded by German soldiers. Pits had been prepared outside a nearby village where the Jews would be led and then shot. The Germans entered the ghetto, searching for the Jews. A survivor by the name of Eliezer Melamed later recalled how he and his girlfriend found a room where they hid behind sacks of flour. A mother and her three children had followed them into the house. The mother hid in one corner of the room, the three children in another.
The Germans entered the room and discovered the children. One of children, a young boy, began to scream, "Mama! Mama!" as the Germans dragged the three of them away.
But another of them, only four years old, shouted to his brother in Yiddish, "Zog nit 'Mameh.' "Don't say 'Mama.' They'll take her, too."
The boy stopped screaming. The mother remained silent. Her children were dragged away. The mother was saved.
"I will always hear that," Melamed recalled, "especially at night. 'Zog nit Mameh' 'Don't say Mama.' And I will always remember the sight of the mother. Her children were dragged away by the Germans. She was hitting her head against the wall, as if to punish herself for remaining silent, for wanting to live."2
After concluding the story, my teacher told the minister, "What do we Jews really want? Well, I'll tell you what I want. All I want is that our grandchildren should be able to call out 'Mama' without fear. All we want is that the world leaves us alone."
This story has been close to my heart ever since I first heard it. There are a number of things we could take away from this awful tale. One is that even today, even now when we as a people are as secure and as prosperous as we have ever been, when we can finally stop wincing in anticipation of the violent act, when our charities have worldwide reach and do profound good throughout the world (witness IsraAid, American Jewish World Service, and Mazon, just to name a few), even today, there are those who, be it out of spite or ancient hatred or well-meaning ignorance—would seek to do us harm. That there are still people in this world who hold dear the notion of the Jew as weak, helpless (alternating, of course, with powerful and insidious) and a strong State of Israel undermines that deeply felt idea.
Another idea—one that follows directly from the first—is that a strong Israel in partnership with the Jews of the world is our best chance to live in a world without fear. And that means, of course, our own advocacy and support: Through AIPAC and J-Street and their advocacy for a strong Israel, through support of institutions like ARZA, The Reform Movement’s Zionist wing, and through the purchase of Israel Bonds.
I also draw from this story an idea that Israel—and by extension the Jewish people—wish merely for survival, for equal treatment, to be, as Melamed said, left alone. And certainly, there is that sentiment I’m sure among those in this room and in the halls of the Knesset: that we want to be left alone, that only then will we as a people and the Jewish state have real peace. Why else would the security fence have been built, except to say most definitively to the Palestinians: ‘we don’t want to talk, we don’t want to be blown up, we don’t want to be at war but we don’t think we can be friends, so leave us alone.’
I take something else from the story as well. Yes, we want to survive, but survival means more than mere existence. There is an ethical, a moral element to survival as well. Many of us want Israel to be more than just a country like any other, with prostitutes and crime and dirty sidewalks. We want a state that is Jewish and Democratic in the full sense of both of those words. We want a Jewish state that represents the values of our People, that stands, to quote our Scriptures, as a light to the nations. Perhaps this is Diaspora thinking; perhaps Israel has nothing to prove to other countries and by espousing this belief we are fooling ourselves somehow, forgetting our lessons in realpolitik, too concerned with exceptionalism. However, as an American, I come by my exceptionalism honestly, and just as I want the United States to be a nation that, if it were a person, we could describe her behavior as moral and upstanding, so to do I wish for an Israel that fulfills the words of our prophets, that is informed not just by our heritage of oppression but our heritage of joy and commitment to the betterment of others.
Of course, this is all well and good to speak of this theoretically utopian Israel, what about the Israel that exists, the facts on the ground? What do we find there?
Well, let’s find out!
It’s been too long since Beth Emeth had a trip to Israel. We have been away from that country for too many years. Much has happened since then—heck, much has happened in the last year! The uprisings in Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, and throughout the Middle East, sometimes resulting in regime change, sometimes revealing the oppressiveness of those in power, have transformed the middle east. Israel has seen herself transformed as well, with her citizens piling into the streets to peacefully protest financial, civil and social inequalities, demanding a better life for themselves and each other. And the Palestinian Authority saw this month as a month to make their move, to finally express their longing for their own home in ways that many of us find understandable, but challenging and disconcerting, to say the least.
And yet, despite all these changes, despite all that’s happened in Israel in the last several years, how well do we know the country? Oh, we’re informed in our news consumption, in communicating with relatives back home, but you and I know that’s not the same thing as being present, being physically there, being amongst Israeli Jews and Arabs and Druze, touching the earth, breathing the air, listening to someone else’s cellphone conversation in Hebrew, and arguing every last point with the guy at the makolet corner store when all you want is a coke and he wants to talk politics, jutting a cigarette-ornamented finger at you to make his point.
If you can’t tell, I miss Israel. I miss the country, her people, every aspect of that place. And my guess is many of you are like that as well—even those of you who haven’t been to Israel. That’s why it’s time to go back. To go to Israel, to meet her people, to see the places—ancient, historical and contemporary—that make the place the homeland of our souls, and to better understand what it means to advocate for Israel.
Because, I will tell you, there is no better way to advocate for Israel than by being there. Yes, it is crucial to support Israel here at home, through support of ARZA, AIPAC, J Street, and other organizations. Yes, to buy Israel bonds is as close to achieving Maimonides’ highest rung of tzedakah: for by buying them, we give Israel the ability to invest in her own people, who can lead meaningful lives, making the whole land bloom not just with the flowers and eucalyptus trees of the old songs of the yishuv, but scientific, technological and educational endeavors as well. But there’s a reason AIPAC is taking 81 congressional representatives and senators to Israel this fall. They understand that it’s one thing to read a really nice brochure or follow things online, or to bring in all kinds of experts to speak with us; it’s another to go and learn for yourself, to experience with your own hands and own eyes. And that is what all of us need to do. For those of us, like myself, who trend left-of-center, we need to go to Ariel University and Ma’aleh Edumim on the other side of the green line, and ask ourselves if these ‘settlers’ are really the demons we think they are. And those of us who trend right, and see no partners for peace among the Palestinians, need to be challenged as well, and speak with Arabs who want to see their children grow up as our children grow up, with a sense that their homeland is free and at peace.
Friends, we need to go to Israel, you and I. We need to be there, to feel Israeli earth beneath our feet, to breathe the air. So it’s my pleasure and honor to announce that we are going to Israel. It has been too long since Beth Emeth had a congregational trip to Ha’Aretz, ,and so this summer, we are going, and I want you to come with me.
If you’ve never been to Israel, now is the time to go: we’ll go to Tel Aviv and experience Shabbat in Jerusalem, stand where our ancestors stood in Safed and Masada, connect with our Reform brothers and sisters at Kibbutz Yahel and Lotan and learn what ecological marvels they’re creating there. And if you’ve been to Israel before, now is still the time to go: we’ll meet settlers and Palestinians, study with Rabbis for Human Rights and work the looms with Yad L’khasish, lifeline for the old. Over 10 days in June and July we’ll marvel at this country and all its wonders. We’ll offer words of prayer and have challenging and meaningful experiences. And yes, there will be shopping.
If you have children, don’t leave them behind! This is a trip for all ages. And if you’re travelling without children, don’t worry: There will be special educators and guides with us to create and lead kid-friendly programs separate from the adults.
I could spend all night talking about this trip, but I’d rather you came to a special parlor meeting here at the Temple on November 15th, where you’ll have a chance to see the itinerary, learn about costs and the trip, and meet people from Ayelet the tour company we’ll be working with.
Most importantly, I want you to come with me. To see Israel as you’ve never seen her before. Not only for your own spiritual wellbeing, not only for your own growth and understanding of Israel; but so that you and I can advocate for Israel better. So that when we return from the Holy Land, we can respond to questions as banal as that minister’s, so that we can speak to our congressional leaders with authority, so that when something happens, we aren’t thinking about abstract ideas, we will have real places in our hearts and our minds.
So, let us support AIPAC, and go to their advocacy program in March (you will see the fliers for that program on your seats or, will be handed a brochure on your way out). Let’s fill out every ARZA petition ever and make sure to commit ourselves to the Progressive vision of an Israel strong enough to be the kind of country it wants to be. Let’s buy Israel bonds—and ushers will be handing out Israel bonds brochures as you leave and I will tell you, you are not permitted to leave this place without one! But most importantly, let’s go to Israel and help speed redemption: for our people, for our children, for our grandchildren, so that they will only ever know a world where Israel is strong, the Jewish people secure, and they can cry out for their mamas without fear.
Rabbi Yair Robinson
Yizkor 2011 – Rabbi Brian Eng
Yizkor. Remember. This is a time of remembrance, a time to recall love and loss, triumph and tragedy, time shared with loved ones who have departed from this earth . . . but what is remembrance? How do we remember? What does it mean? Is it a picture, a song, a smell? Is it a feeling or a memory? Does it fade with time? Does it grow stronger instead? What is it to remember? What is Yizkor?
Perhaps it is simply to recall our own pasts. Names, dates, places, feelings . . . . Perhaps it is not. The Torah tells us remember the Sabbath. It tells us to do so because the world was created in six days, and the seventh was thus made holy. Clearly we cannot recall an event from the creation of the world, but we can recall, or rather we can know, that the seventh day is special. We can know of Shabbat, but if remembering is merely knowing, then why on Shabbat do we not merely say "today is the seventh day, and it is holy"? Why then would we do all of the things that we do? Why the ritual, the service, the Torah reading? Is it merely so that we do not forget, so that we do not stop knowing? Surely that is part of it, but just as surely, that cannot be all.
Remembering is more than knowing, more than a recollection of things experienced or learned. We should be grateful for this. Just as time softens the pain of loss, so too does it soften the focus of our recollections. Over time, it becomes harder to remember the exact contours of the face, the exact sound of the laugh, the exact feel of the touch. The recollections soften and, dare I say it, even fade. Photographs and videos may help stem the tide, but even then, we have only the fixed points. The time between fades, perhaps even faster, as the fixed points we do have begin to bleed into our other memories. Every smile begins to look like the one in the picture. Every laugh begins to sound like the one in the video. The broad landscape of time shared together becomes a series of high peaks, with the valleys shrouded in fog. If remembrance is mere recollection, it is a losing battle, but fear not, for memory is more than a landscape, and we need not fear the fog of time.
What then is memory? It is more than the contours of a smile or the sound of a voice. It is . . . it is more like a beach. Remember a beach. A specific one if you can. What is the memory? It is the feel of the sun on your face and the sand between your toes. It is smell of the salt air and its taste on your tongue. It is the sound of the waves and light as it sparkles from their peaks. It is all this, and yet it is so much more. It is the memory of the time spent, of moments shared, of swims and sunbathing and cold drinks with little umbrellas, and yet it is so much more. The memory of the beach is at its core no single recollection and no conglomeration of recollection. It is, at its core, a unitary thing, an almost indescribable nucleus, a seed, a feeling. We know in our hearts and minds what it is, but the core of it defies definition. That is memory, and it persists, even if we don’t remember the contours of the beach, or the exact sound of the sea. The memory deep within us does not fade with our recollections of details. On the contrary, the deep memory persists, and even grows.
As it is with a beach or an apple, how much the more so is it with our memories of those we love. The deep memories grow with time. They do not fade. They become part of the core of our being. The memories cause us to become who we are. We hold fast to them always, for they hold fast to us. We hold fast to them, even when we don’t know that we are. Thus we answer our question, what is it to remember? To remember is, in effect, to live, but to do so with reflection. It is to see those seeds that planted by our loved ones. It is to feel how those seeds have sprouted and grown and entwined themselves around us, until they are part of us. It is also the recollections of the smiles, and the laughs, and the stories of time spent together. It is all of these things, but it is the feelings they evoke, the seeds they reconnect us to . . . those are the true remembrance. Let us now take a moment . . . a moment to remember.
Shabbat Shuvah Sermon 2011 – Rabbi Brian Eng
One of my favorite athletes
Even if we can determine what the defining qualities of Mikiness are, we raise another question. Since most of us will never be rich world-class athletes, who work with animated rabbits, becoming like Mike is, I am sorry to say, impossible. As such, is it a waste of our time to attempt to be like Mike, or is it worthwhile to try even knowing that we can, at best, only be marginally Mikelike? We tell ourselves that we can be anything if we try hard enough, but there are limits. I am never going to play for the NBA. Sure you can be short and play, but I’m also slow. If I dropped everything and tried to make that dream a reality, would I be wasting my time? Obviously, we’re not here to talk about how better to emulate sports figures, but remember the questions we asked. When we have a goal, how do we define it, and what does it mean to strive for something that you know from the outset is unattainable?
Tonight, of course, is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I read somewhere that name of Shabbat Shuvah is a pun, because it sounds a lot like the word “teshuvah,” usually translated as repentance. This, I am sorry to say, is absolutely untrue. It is not a pun. The two words have the same root, the Hebrew verb “to return.” They sound a little different because they’re not identical words, but it’s really no more of pun than saying that “bankers work in a bank.” Don’t get me wrong, there are Hebrew puns, and there are even some in the Tanakh. This just isn’t one of them. The problem, as is often the case, rests in the translation. We rightly call Shabbat Shuvah the Shabbat of Return. The problem is that we call teshuvah repentance. Repentance, like many English words, has its origins in Latin, and its root roughly means “to regret,” which actually comes from the word “to punish.” Modern English relatives to “repent” are actually penalty, penal system, and penitentiary (which was originally envisioned as a place inmates would sit isolated and in total silence in a cell with a single skylight representing the “Eye of God”). For this reason, teshuvah is not really repentance. Why do we call it repentance? It’s really the same reason we often call tzedakah charity. They aren’t really the same, but it is a sufficiently close translation for most days. Today, however, is not one of those days. Teshuvah, like Shabbat Shuvah, is about returning, not regret. The purpose of the Days of Awe is not to cover yourself in sackcloth and ashes and think about how much you regret what you may have done wrong in the last year. The true purpose, as the name suggests, is for us to take this time to return. Return to what, you say? That is an excellent question, but it is not a simple one.
The simplest answer you can give to “to what are we returning” is, unsurprisingly is “God.” I call that the “person who is asking me when I’m really not in the mood to be asked questions and just want them to go away” answer. It’s not untrue, but it isn’t really all that helpful either. After all, we talk about God as being infinite and beyond our comprehension and so forth, so just saying “God” doesn’t get us very far. We could think about it a bit more and come up with something a bit more user friendly like “Torah” or “the Covenant.” We could tap into our humanist predilections and say “each other” or get back to nature and say “the Earth” or just be grumpy and say “whatever it was I was doing before that I’m now not doing because I’m here listening to you.” Maybe not that last one. I like to think about it as returning to the path that God has set out for us. Not that we have some sort of pre-destiny that we have to stay on track for or anything like that. I mean simply that there is a vision for how we can be the best we can be by living righteously, pursuing justice, caring for one another, caring for the world that we are borrowing from our children’s children’s children. You get the idea. It’s all that warm, fuzzy stuff. Often, we stray from this path, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of carelessness or laziness, and sometimes . . . hopefully very rarely . . . out of malice. Regardless, we wander off, and so we need to return. This season is the bright, shining beacon that shows us not only that we are off the path, but how to get back on it.
So, that was nice. The Rabbi talked for a bit, made us feel all warm and fuzzy about the season, and off we go . . . if only it was so easy. As I said, that’s how I like to think about teshuvah, but the way I think about it isn’t the only way. I wouldn’t even go so far as to say that it’s the best way. All I claim is that it is the best way for me, for right now. This is the part that’s challenging, because what’s right for me isn’t necessarily right for you. I know it would be nice if I said that teshuvah means promising to not do bad things and maybe, if you really want to be good, following mitzvoth, but we’re Reform Jews. More than that, we’re Americans. Both of these groups basically have “rugged individualism” stamped all over them. Okay, maybe we’re not so rugged, but still . . . . We don’t want to be told what to do. We want to tell you what we’re doing. I don’t know if we still throw around “informed choice” as one of the central features of Reform Judaism, but even if we don’t use the words as often as we once did, the idea is still there. So, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that each and every one of you gets to determine what it means to Return. The bad news is that each and every one of you has to determine what it means to Return. Choice is an obligation, not a privilege. They should probably put that in the literature . . . perhaps not.
In the end, at least as far as I’m concerned, it matters less what you decide than it matters that you decide. Whether it’s working to improve relationships with your family and friends, giving more to those in need, cutting down bacon cheeseburgers, for either religious or cardiovascular reasons, the point is to go through the process. It is the journey that matters. Here’s why.
Those of you who know me know that my favorite Jewish philosopher is Martin Buber. One of Buber’s central themes is that the only way in which we can experience the world is in relationship. There is an objective reality, but we can’t experience it objectively. Everything we experience is through the lens of our relationship with the world and thus, for our understanding, the relationship is at least as important as the “object” we are experiencing. Let me put it this way, it’s sort of how in quantum physics observing something changes it. You can’t observe without interacting. It is physically impossible. You are, at least in some small way, “in relationship” with anything you observe or experience.
Here’s where I’m going. However you end up “defining” what it means for you to return, going through the process renews a relationship. Really, it renews a great many relationships. Going through the process makes you think about your family, your Judaism, your community, and your world. It reconnects you with all of that, and going through the self reflection reconnects you with yourself, and with God. That’s why I opened tonight by talking about Michael Jordan. I am certainly not saying that attempting to achieve “Mikiness” is some sort of great virtue. My point is that if you wanted to do it, the process of determining exactly what “Mikiness” means to you puts you in a relationship, and thus the process in part becomes its own goal. If it is true with Mikiness, how much more so is it true with returning, to God, to Torah, to each other, and to ourselves.
This is also why it doesn’t matter if we know from the outset that whatever goal we set may be unattainable, or that even if it is attainable, we may fail to attain it because of our own faults and frailties. It may be too late for most of us to be astronauts, but if wanting to be more “astronaut like” makes us exercise our minds and bodies a bit more, it wouldn’t be a failure just because we never make it to orbit. If we set really good goals for ourselves, we won’t always achieve them, but that’s okay. We will be better having gone through the process of deciding what’s important, and we will be better for having tried to live up to it. None of us will ever be able to stay completely on the path. We are too fallible, but none of us will entirely lose it either, as long as we take the time to return. We have a week until Yom Kippur. Let us use it to reflect, to grow, and to each find our own ways in which to return.
Congregation Beth Emeth
Chol Hamoed Pesach, 5771
Yesterday Marisa and I had the good fortune to attend a brit milah ceremony for the son of friends. It was, as one would imagine, a wonderful and joyous event—with many members of the greater community, amazing food (even at Pesach), two rabbis, two cantors and no waiting. It’s one of those events that remind you of what’s most important in life: there is this child, a new life heretofore unknown to the world, surrounded by people who love him and who love his parents and want to support and nurture the family in the raising of this new life, and these people join together in song and blessing. It is, as the mohel, my friend Cantor Mark Kushner reminded us, a messianic moment. We welcome Elijah the Prophet to the brit milah just as we welcome him to the Passover seder: as the herald of the Messianic age, the one who will proclaim that time of Oneness we pray for in the Aleinu. Just as Pesach is zeman cheiruteinu, the season of our liberation from Egyptian bondage, we pray that the Messiah will come and redeem us from the various forms of bondage the world now suffers from. And in each new life there is that messianic promise of renewal and redemption, and after all, every parent thinks their child is the messiah.
It is those notions of redemption and renewal that most speak to us at Pesach: we thank God for redeeming us: from slavery, from bondage, from the death that came at midnight, and we renew our commitment to our people and our history through rituals strange, mystifying, and sometimes a little silly (try explaining the afikoman to someone: you hide crumbly matzah in your house for the kids to find it, give them a prize and then eat it for dessert? Really?), but these rituals, no matter how goofy they might seem at times, breathe new life into our sense of yiddishkeit just in time for spring to come and shake us out of our doldrums. There is a reason nearly everyone who counts themselves as Jewish uses their participation in a seder as their way of measuring their connection to the Jewish people: somehow this meal, with its rituals and family customs, its foods and fragrances, compel us to reconnect with family and friends, our people and our history, to the point where the Sfat Emet, Yehuda Leib of Ger, observes that Passover is a time when every Jew is reborn, and the Haggadah itself observes that every Jew must see themselves as if they as individuals were personally liberated from Egyptian bondage.
Now, that is the question: can you imagine yourself as being personally redeemed from Egypt, of leaving the terror of bondage and slavery? When you look around this sanctuary, do you see fellow liberated bondsmen and women escaping the nightmare of Mitzrayim, the narrow place that held us back as a People? My guess is, probably not. While we see fellow Israelites gathered together, I suspect most of us aren’t quite Mythological enough to completely reimagine each other in Biblical terms. And I have to say, looking around the room during that brit milah, I don’t think I saw it as a Sinai moment, or an Exodus moment. God was not in Fire or the Thunder. Nevertheless, I trembled, for God was in the still small voice of that newborn baby boy, and his potential to redeem the world around him, to make a difference in this world for the better. Not only through his actions, but in the way the people in that room responded to him and his family, wanting to be a support. In that moment of celebration, a family and community were renewed.
Perhaps that is what Yehuda Leib meant when he said that every day has many Pesach moments within them: that every experience brings that potential for renewal and redemption. Some, like Brit Milah or Brit Bat, can’t help but transform even the hardest of hearts. But what are those other moments in your day, in your life, that you might be missing? What are those opportunities to leave behind the Egypt of our consumer-driven, workaday lives and embrace the redemption of doing something of meaning? Where are those moments in your day when you can recommit to your own spiritual and personal renewal? Only you can answer that question for yourselves, of course, and sometimes it’s hard to ask that question; like Harry Chapin, the new job’s a hassle and the kid’s got the flu, there’s too much noise, too much stuff going on, too many games on facebook to distract us. However, I would suggest that, when we are able to do that, when we’re able to tap into that reservoir of redemption and renewal in ourselves, we hasten the coming of that Messianic age. After all, when the rabbis ask “when will the Messiah come?” they answer, “today, if only we hearken to the Messianic voice.” It’s easier to hear that voice at the Seder Table amidst the happy chaos of friends and family, easier to hear that voice in a newborn baby’s cry. But we must strive to listen better, so we can attune ourselves to those moments of renewal and redemption in every day, and bring about that Oneness, that holiness, that deliverance we so urgently pray for. Amen.
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