Four Bright Lights

CIRCUMCISION, SEDERS AND IDENTITY

2012-01-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

A Dvar Torah for Parshat Bo 5772

The very first seder, about which we read this morning in the Torah, must have been a somewhat uncomfortable affair in more ways than one. Certainly, it was filled with anxiety, as the Israelites consumed the Passover offering in a rush to prepare for the Exodus from Egypt that would happen the next morning, then awoke to the sounds of anguished suffering of their Egyptian neighbors immersed in the plague of the firstborn at midnight. However, the latter part of Exodus, chapter 12, points to what may have been a different source of discomfort, by mentioning different categories of people, men more specifically, who could not consume the Passover offering. These included any non-Israelite, specifically any non-circumcised male such as one’s slave, a resident alien, two categories of employed laborers, and any Israelite who was not circumcised. The Torah makes clear that circumcision is the distinction that determines eligibility for consuming the Passover offering. We might imagine the absurdity of the scene at that first seder in Egypt: households preparing for this major feast before the Lord in anticipation of real freedom, suddenly in an uproar as male celebrants are forced to show their credentials at the door, or to submit to circumcision before they can be part of the celebration. A passage like this likely offends liberal Western sensibilities because it emphasizes exclusivity of membership in the Israelite clan as well as the primitive blood ritual of circumcision, what we call brit milah, as the price to be paid for acquiring membership. Isn’t the seder experience supposed to celebrate the universality of freedom and the struggle against oppression in which all good people are included? Further, why would the Torah demand that a man undergo a ritual such as circumcision in order to be part of what should be a beautiful reenactment of the quest for freedom?

Our contemporary seder is a ritualized re-telling of the Exodus story that has been generously reinterpreted over millennia through the prisms of many different individuals and groups seeking to find their own stories of slavery and freedom in it. Today’s seders, even among plenty of Orthodox Jews, include non-Jewish colleagues, friends, and family for whom this re-telling is often their first encounter with Judaism and the power of the Jewish experience. However, the actual consumption of the ancient Passover offering was an exclusive affair of the Jewish community; its ticket of admission was circumcision. This reflects one major value of Judaism that many people do not like but about which the Torah is unabashed: Jewish identity and community are at times highly particularistic. Further, unlike Christianity whose major criterion of membership is what or how you believe, a major criterion of Jewish membership is how you behave and what you do, including what you do with your body to show that you are part of the Jewish people.

Asserting the distinctiveness of Jewish identity and community has never been an easy thing for the Jews. It has been the major source of anti-Semitism and persecution of our people for many thousands of years, beginning with pagan and early Christian refusals to accept that the Jews have a right to be different. From the time of the Spanish Inquisition all the way through to the development of modern anti-Semitism and Nazism, this same hatred of Jewish distinctiveness took on virulent racial and blood-line overtones: being Jewish wasn’t simply a curse that could be overcome through the abandonment of Judaism, it was an inherent state of imperfection, even pathology, that could never be eradicated without physically destroying the Jewish people.

One of the most telling examples of these enormous challenges to Jewish distinctiveness has been circumcision. When they occupied the land of Israel many centuries ago, the Greeks derided this Jewish practice as a barbaric mutilation of the body that stood in stark contrast to the Hellenistic emphasis on the body’s perfection as living sculpture. Eager to fit in at the Greek gymnasium, many Jewish men of that time sought to hide this mark on their bodies, while others practiced it even under the threat of persecution and death at the hands of some Greek authorities. Later rabbis living in the land of Israel under the Romans’ occupation energetically taught their fellow Jews that circumcision is what makes the body beautiful, rather than what the dominant culture asserts is beautiful, because this is what God asks of us.

In our time, this age-old debate over circumcision has taken on a very destructive tone. Anti-circumcision activists, under the cover of child advocacy, have turned their guns on the freedom of Jews and Muslims to practice our religions by attempting to put anti-circumcision laws on city and statewide ballots across the country. They argue mostly that circumcision is mutilation no different from mutilation forced upon young girls in developing nations. Further, since there is no evidence that circumcision has any medical benefits, all it does it cruelly rob a person of full sexual fulfillment in his adult life; a person is perfect as he is from birth and not in need of such barbaric procedures. These arguments are both old and new, but they are all, in my opinion, disingenuous, and some are motivated by pure bigotry. Brit milah is a profoundly embodied sign of a new Jewish boy’s relationship with God, Jewish history and our people, as the Torah shows us in numerous passages. It bears no real resemblance to female genital mutilation which is used in some cultures to utterly, brutally control women’s sexuality and lives. Further, the argument that circumcision robs men of their sexual capacities wrongly assumes that this can somehow be measured and tested. It obsessively focuses on the anatomy and physiology of a body part as the exclusive determinant of sexuality, an offensively reductionistic way of thinking about relationships, love and desire, and it sends a crude, insidious message that Jewish men are somehow weak and disabled by virtue of their Jewishness. Finally, though circumcision’s benefits are not medically undisputed, there is a body of research indicating that it may be beneficial. However, even if this were not the case, it would be religiously irrelevant: Jews and Muslims don’t circumcise their kids for medical reasons, we do this because this is how we connect to God, history, peoplehood, our values, and our identities.

Obviously, not everyone who opposes circumcision is an anti-Semite, and I respect any Jewish family’s right not to perform brit milah on their own children, as long as they don’t try to tell me or my community what to do as religious people. However, I would ask them the following questions before they make such a decision. Is your decision motivated by a well-thought out opposition to brit milah based upon careful study of its history and meaning? Are you opposed to brit milah on the basis of misinformation that often terrorizes parents of newborns into believing that they are hurting their kids? Do you really want one of the most basic rites of passage into the Jewish family, whose power is precisely its primitiveness, to be a mere matter of choice? Can you stay open to the fact that, within the bounds of safety and parental responsibility, not every act and ceremony needs to be rational or fit the dominant culture’s demands? That religion is sometimes about leaps of faith of a whole community into a different way of living in the world, one that lends a depth of meaning to its adherents’ lives? Do you recognize that as a Jewish family the most potent way for you to be a part of the world is at times to live apart from the world, to embrace the universal by living proudly within what makes us particular?

Like the Passover offering, brit milah is an uncomfortable yet powerful reminder that to be Jewish is to choose to be more than just an individual, it is about choosing to be part of a sacred people called forth by God with a huge mission to heal the world, throughout the dimensions of time and space. It is one permanent symbol that helps us to literally embody that mission in our lives as individuals and as a community.

STALKING TZIPPORAH

2012-01-15T03:27:00.000-08:00

Dvar Torah For Parshat Shmot 5772.

You know the old sexist saw that behind every great man is a great woman? One way to think about Moses whom we met once again in the Torah this morning, is that behind him and his success stand a number of even greater women; some of them are never given names by the Torah, and almost all of them can only carry out their missions through subterfuge, since they lack the power of men in their society. The first two chapters of Exodus offer us a bonanza of these incredibly courageous women who toil quietly and subversively to resist Pharoah’s genocidal decree and to save Moses, the savior of Israel. Whether or not they are Hebrew midwives or non-Jewish midwives to the Hebrews, Shifrah and Puah exploit their expertise and their proximity to women in labor to save innocent children from being murdered; Pharaoh’s daughter exploits her position of power to violate her father’s laws, as she knowingly brings this Hebrew baby into the royal palace and raises him right under her father’s nose, even to the point of giving him a name; Moses’ as-yet unnamed sister intervenes with Pharaoh’s daughter by offering her their mother as a wet nurse to feed and care for baby Moses. All of these women enter a conspiracy of compassion against Pharaoh and the Egyptian state, using their intelligence and love for this one child and for all the children at risk, to disrupt the apparatus of a terrorist regime. The rabbis of the Talmud are so impressed by the role of women in these Torah narratives that they tell all sorts of tales about how all the Hebrew women encouraged their despondent husbands to not lose hope or the desire to bear more children. The Talmud even declares that women should not be exempted from the obligation of being part of the Pesach seder - a time –bound, positive commandment from which Jewish women would normally be exempted according to Jewish law. They reason historically that women were also active participants in the redemption from Egypt, and they too must be part of the seder experience.

Because of all the courageous, quick-thinking behavior of these heroines, Tzipporah’s arrival on the scene in this Torah portion stands out as an enigma. She and her sisters are portrayed initially as shepherdesses- in-distress whom Moses the Egyptian stranger must save from the male thugs hassling them at the local well. When Reuel, her father, questions her about why she did not offer Moses hospitality after his brave act of kindness, we get the feeling that she is a somewhat passive, perhaps not-too-bright eldest daughter, or that she is perhaps a rather young girl. We read that Moses marries Tzipporah, in accordance with ancient near eastern marriage laws requiring the eldest daughter to be married first. After that, all we are told is that Moses takes leave of his father-in-law to return to Egypt on a mission from God to redeem his people, and that he takes Tzipporah and their son, Gershom with him into the heart of the danger. We never hear about Tzipporah’s reaction to her husband’s decision, and later rabbinic writers have to supply an imaginative dialogue in which her father tells his son-in-law that putting his wife and child in the way of harm is a really bad idea. Later rabbinic interpretations of the Torah suggest that Moses becomes celibate as he gets closer to God during the forty years’ wandering in the desert, thus presumably leaving Tzipporah in a miserable married state with an emotionally and sexually unavailable spouse. A very late midrashic source even imagines Tzipporah lamenting to Miriam, her sister-in-law, about the terrible situation of the wives of communal leaders.

It seems that only one biblical story, an extremely strange and elliptical one, offers us a much more forceful, complex view of who Tzipporah really is. Turn back with me to this morning’s Torah portion in Humash Etz Hayyim, pages 336-337, verses 24-26:

At a night encampment on the way, the Lord encountered him and sought to kill him. So Tzipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched his legs with it, saying, “You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!” And when He (God) let him alone, she added, “A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.”

Everything about this bizarre, chilling story hints at even more ancient tales of the angry God or gods being warded off by blood, which serves as an apotropaic, a magical ritual or device that protects people from evil. For a parallel example, think about the blood of the first Pesach offering being splashed on the doors of the Israelites to ward off the impending plague of the firstborn. In our scene, at least as it is understood by many commentators, Moses has failed to perform brit milah, circumcision, on his son, who is now presumably the one imperiled by God’s desire to kill him. Circumcision is the sign of the covenant, and without it a person cannot be part of the covenanted community.

A lot is unclear in these verses: is Moses in danger or is their son in danger? Does Tzipporah take the foreskin and touch it to Moses’ leg or to their son’s leg? What is a bridegroom of blood, and who does it actually refer to, Moses or the child? What is very clear is that Tzipporah not only acts in this crisis situation, she acts quickly and decisively to stop God from hurting her family. How astounding it is that only Tzipporah is named here, along with God, with no men intervening. She and God are alone in a life-and-death battle that requires the actual drawing of blood, not for death but for life. Even more astounding is that Tzipporah takes the radical initiative of performing a brit milah, a religious circumcision, one of the most sacred, mysterious Jewish rituals that focuses exclusively and publicly on the religious identities and power of Jewish men. The Rabbis take this mysterious biblical tale and expand it into an even wilder tale in which Tzipporah sees God’s angel swallow Moses, from his head to his genitalia, and she then realizes that her family is in mortal danger because of Moses’ dereliction in carrying out the mitzvah of circumcision on their son, a mitzvah she values highly.

This portrayal of Tzipporah is refreshingly paradoxical: she is deeply faithful to her adopted religion, including its male-centered rituals and leadership, yet within that framework she is an aggressive advocate for her family, she takes bold religious initiatives, and she fights openly with God! Though they make many patriarchal assumptions and rules about women’s status, the Torah and its rabbinic interpreters recognize Tzipporah’s public activism as a normative role model for traditional Jewish women. Sadly, this model is being seriously threatened in parts of the Jewish world today, as Jewish ultra-Orthodoxy (in Hebrew, Haredi) grows increasingly belligerent and misogynistic. Using Jewish laws of modesty as an excuse, some rabbinic authorities and lay leaders here and especially in Israel have intensified their campaign to utterly segregate men and women in ways frightfully reminiscent of Jim Crow laws in the south. These have included sex-segregated private bus lines that are publicly franchised by New York City in Brooklyn and public bus lines in Israel that are illegally segregated in religious neighborhoods. In both circumstances, women are literally relegated to the back of the buses. Another recent example of brutal sex segregation was the sickening harassment of 8 year old Naamah Margolis of the Israeli city of Bet Shemesh, who was spat upon and verbally abused as she walked to the new Orthodox girl's yeshivah that she attends in that city. Her harassers, members of a violent Haredi faction, claim that she and other girls were not dressing modestly enough to be allowed to walk in public. The outcry from all segments of the Israeli street, including some in the Haredi community, as well as community leaders and politicians, has so far been significant, and peaceful protests against the encroachment upon women's rights -and upon democratic protections- within Israeli society have been growing. Still, such brazen public attempts at repressing women are chilling.

The Haredi community has never supported the religious equality of men and women; it is not egalitarian, and it is not our right to tell Haredi Jews that they must practice Judaism as we do. However, what I am describing is not traditional religious practice, but the perversion of Jewish law in an effort to forcefully silence the public voices and presence of women, even if American and Israeli law and culture forbid someone from doing so. Particularly in Israel, where aggressive Haredi political parties often have their fragile government coalitions by the throat, the growing repression of women is encroaching upon public space and the rest of Israel’s citizenry. This adds to an already contentious relationship between religious and secular Jews around a wide variety of issues that engender deep resentment and divide Israeli society. We are not Israeli citizens, yet as Jews, Zionists, and supporters of democracy, we have a genuine vested interest in helping all women in the State of Israel to live freely and without fear. The increased public repression of women is one canary in the coal mine of Israeli democracy that is facing increasing challenges from political and religious ultra-rightists in the Israeli government and religious community. Under the guises of security and religiosity they are slowly eroding basic protections for women, minorities, and those with differing political view points. This is not good for Israel as a democracy. Yet it is also not good for Israel as a young, vibrant society. Israel needs Shifrah and Puah, the daughter of Pharaoh, Miriam and Yocheved: women who have the strength and the courage to work with men and challenge men to continue to build a state and a Jewish people founded upon justice. Most of all, Israel, the Jewish people and the world need Tzipporah: women for whom Judaism matters vitally, and who are also not afraid to speak their minds and act forcefully in behalf of others in the midst of crisis, when the gravity of the hour calls for it.

CHICKEN LITTLE, FALSE PROPHETS, COMMON SENSE AND THE RULE OF LAW.

2011-08-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

Dvar Torah For Parshat Reeh, 5771.

Do you remember the story of chicken little? According to Wikipedia, “There are several Western versions of the story, of which the best-known concerns a chick that believes the sky is falling when an acorn falls on its head. The chick decides to tell the King and on its journey meets other animals which join it in the quest. After this point, there are many endings. In the most familiar, a fox invites them to its lair and there eats them all.” The story is actually listed in one of the folklore indexes in the category of world-wide folktales –in this case a fable- that make fun of paranoia and mass hysteria .

I have been thinking about Chicken Little as I’ve read Parshat Reeh, in particular its warnings about false prophets. Let’s read what Deuteronomy has to say about them, Humash Etz Hayyim, pages 1068-1069:

If there appears among you a prophet or a dream-diviner and he gives you a sign or portent, saying, “Let us follow and worship another god” whom you have not experienced; even if the sign or portent that he named to you comes true, do not heed the words of that prophet or that dream diviner. For the Lord your God is testing you to see whether you really love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul. Follow none but the Lord your God and revere none but Him; observe his commandments alone, and heed only his orders; worship none but him and hold fast to Him.

Far from merely warning us away from disloyalty to God, the Torah is also warning us not to engage in chicken-little style behavior: that state of being instantly smitten with something, some idea or someone we encounter, even something, some idea, or someone whose pronouncements about truth are so impressive as to seem absolutely definitive. We need to guided by what the great Torah commentator, Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra, refers to as shikul ha-daat, the patient, sober use of reason and good, common sense. Even if a prophet calling us to worship another god produces the promised sign or portent as proof of his legitimacy, we should still not be fooled into believing him, because his claim is still at odds with what we know about God and truth.

This prohibition that Moses gives to the Israelites is true to the form and content of Deuteronomy: it emphasizes absolute loyalty to the one, universal God, even when the faithful person is faced with seemingly compelling evidence to the contrary from a charismatic figure who can back up his or her claims with miracles. Deuteronomy spends a great deal of energy appealing to the people’s good sense and reason, constantly reminding them that they personally experienced God’s redemptive power during the Exodus from Egypt, as well as God’s appearance to them to give them the Torah at Mount Sinai. Signs and portents that support the idolatrous claims of a prophet or diviner might be wondrously seductive, but they are merely tests by God to determine the people’s fidelity to God.

This last argument at first glance feels like a bit of circular reasoning: follow God only, not a false prophet; how do I know he’s a false prophet? He tells you to worship gods besides the God of Israel; but he’s given me signs and wonders that prove his point that I should follow other gods; no, his proof is really a test by the one true God to determine your loyalty; but how do I know it’s merely a test from God, and not a real sign from that prophet? Because that prophet is telling you that you should worship other gods, besides the one true God, so he must not be telling the truth, and his signs must be God’s test, not real signs.

However, we should not be fooled by what appears to be mere circular reasoning. What this passage of the Torah is warning us not to do is mistake the bells and whistles of charisma for the not always popular appeal of reason, and loyalty to the sober boundaries of Torah as determined by the ongoing process of interpretation of a living faith community. Dynamic personalities and emotional appeal can make a huge difference in our lives by inspiring us and giving us meaningful narratives by which to live. However, they are no replacement for truth arrived at through the use of reason, the discovery of fact, and the rule of law. It is far too easy for a demagogue to use all kinds of verbal and emotional sleights of hand –what the Torah referred to as signs and portents- to make an impressive point that convinces people to follow him or her, despite the extremism of his or her claims. The balancing of personal faith with personal reason is a very difficult challenge, but it is the only way to keep faith from degenerating into spiritual fascism and self-destruction, and to keep reason from degenerating into soul-deadening, inhumane rigidity.

How do these teachings apply to us? The presidential election is a little over a year away, and already a whole group of prophet-wanna-be’s are crowding the presidential candidate playing field, each of them hawking his or her form of signs and portents. Each will campaign in poetry and govern in prose, a conceit which we are used to, and which we largely accept as the price to be paid for a free electoral process and a complex system of checks and balances. Each will make near-prophetic claims about what ails America and the world, then make sweeping pronouncements about what he or she will do to solve our problems. To paraphrase our Torah portion: warning, America, we are being tested: can we resist the apparatus of America’s false prophecy arsenal-- the prettily packaged promises, the telegenic shots of baby-kissing shape shifters who keep crafting their messages to the latest voting bases, and the shameless use of obscene wealth to crush opponents in elections? Can we see past the false prophecies of jingoistic fear mongering, of race baiting? Can we curb our own idolatrous impulse to set aside the sober search for truth and fact out of a desperate need to be coddled by the soothing words of people who tell us what we want to hear, and not what we need to hear? Can listen past the smoke-and-mirrors to discover the ideas and leaderships qualities that will make a great leader for the future?

These are frightening days for America and the world, and as Chicken Little would have said, it feels at times like the sky is falling. Precisely when things feel this way is when the Torah raises its warning to us about false prophets, reminding us that it will take all of our moral, spiritual, and intellectual courage not be taken in by their impressive signs and portents. We will need to ask tough, thoughtful questions about the claims of those who rise up among us, and who might speak charismatically in the name of truth, yet whose claims turn out to be nothing more than calls to us to worship false gods of hysteria or complacency that cannot save us. The Torah of the one true God reminds us: follow none but the Lord your God. Pursue the truth and the values that make us Jews worthy of being God’s people, and that make us Americans worthy of our nation’s legacy.

THE MEANING OF OUR WANDERINGS

2011-08-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

In Torah portion Ekev, as we go more deeply into Moses’ second speech to the Israelites prior to their entering Canaan, look carefully at how he explains to the people the meaning of their having wandered in the desert for forty years. In Deuteronomy, chapter 8, Moses makes clear what God’s intent was: to test the people’s faith by simultaneously subjecting them to hardships and supporting them. God, Moses tells them, was like a parent disciplining his child, constantly refining their spiritual resilience and clarifying their consciousness of the true source of their blessings. Some of my students and I were stunned when we recently studied this portion in comparison with Numbers, chapter 14. There, God berates the Israelites for their faithlessness and their attempt to return to Egypt, due to their fear-filled refusal to try to conquer the promised land. God declares explicitly that the generation of former slaves would die in the desert, while their free-born children would possess the promised land after the whole slave generation had died out over a period of forty years of wandering.

Look at the contrast between these two explanations of the same event. God declares that the forty year wandering was decreed by God out of anger, as punishment for Israelite intransigence. Moses later reads the history of the forty year wandering in a radically different way: it was a form of spiritual discipline imposed by a loving God upon this people that needed to grow up spiritually and emotionally. Interestingly enough, Moses explanation is followed by his command to them that when they enter the land and enjoy it to the fullest, they will thank and bless God for all of it: an even more emphatic way of saying that their wanderings were a teaching tool for developing in them a sense of appreciation and gratitude.

Which version explaining the forty year wandering of the people is correct? From the Israelites’ back-looking perspective, perhaps both. God did punish the people for their rebellious intransigence, but God also wanted to refine the people’s understanding of where their support and blessings truly come from. Moses seems to be telling the people and us that we read our lives in many different ways. The goal of a cultivated spiritual perspective on life is twofold: to look with maturity at the reality of the hardships we experience, without pretending them away. At the same time, we try to interpret those hardships and challenges in ways that help us to form a meaningful appreciation of our experiences, what we learn from them, and how we grow in compassion as a result of them.

TORAH CURES THE TONGUE

2011-08-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

Dvar Torah For Parshat Dvarim//Shabbat Hazon 5771.
אלה הדברים אשר דבר משה אל כל ישראל

“These are the words that Moses spoke to all of Israel…”

Thus begins this morning’s Torah portion, the Book of Deuteronomy, and the great, eloquent speech that Moses presents to the people just as they are about to leave the desert and their past lives as slaves, in preparation for entry into the promised land. In her introduction, Rabbi Kieval pointed out the significance of Moses opening Deuteronomy with his speech, for we have known him throughout the Torah as a stutterer, who is slow of speech, and in need of his brother, Aaron, to be his mouthpiece. Moses has grown over the forty years of Israelite wandering, and the Torah emphasizes this as he is preparing to die.

What is also significant is that Moses –not God- is the focal point of this opening verse of Deuteronomy. Moses, the humblest man upon the earth, whose burial site is not even known and who is never even mentioned in the Haggadah that retells the Passover story, is at the center of Deuteronomy’s drama of entering Canaan, and as a preacher no less! The opening sermon in Deuteronomy Rabbah, an early collection of rabbinic homilies on this book of the Torah, also makes Moses the focus of Deuteronomy for a very important reason. After explaining some rules concerning whether or not a Torah scroll may be written in translation, the rabbi giving the dvar Torah weaves together an intricate set of proof verses and word associations to prove that the words of Torah can cure speech impediments, and that in fact they cured Moses’ problems with speech. How do we know, the homilist asks? Before receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, when he stood before God at the burning bush, Moses begged off his mission to Pharaoh by telling God, “I am not a man of word…I am slow of speech.” Here, on the borders of the promised land, forty years after receiving and teaching the Torah, Moses the law giver has also become Moses the eloquent speaker who prepares the people before his death.

In this opening passage of Deuteronomy Rabbah, we find God personally testifying that God’s gift of Torah is so precious because it cures the tongue of its maladies. Our sages were referring specifically to the actual disorders of speech, such as that of Moses who was miraculously healed and turned into a great public speaker. However, I cannot help hearing the other morally weighty meaning of these words that they would have intended: engagement with Torah heals us of the sickness of Lashon Harah, the evil speech of gossip and slander that destroys people, relationships, and communities. It is obvious that Torah does this by teaching us the rules of civility and moral self restraint, by forcing us to focus our words and speech on holy matters, and not garbage, and by allowing us to learn the value of carefully measured, well thought out words. Certainly, the sages of the Talmud understood that the life of Torah study could actually result in dangerous uses of speech, because heated debate over matters of Torah sometimes has a way of degenerating into name calling and public humiliation. However, they more often exemplified in their lives the value of Torah as a path to healing and peace through its harnessing of human speech for good purposes.

How significant, then, that evil speech is at the center of the most famous story about why Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, a tragic event that occurred on the ninth day of Av, which we will commemorate on Monday night and Tuesday. An enemy of one of the notables of Jerusalem was mistakenly invited to the man’s home for a party. The host roundly humiliated the man who had shown up, thinking that they were to be reconciled. As he threw the man out of his home, the rabbis of the community who were at the party passively watched the scene and did nothing to stop it. Wounded by such despicable behavior on the part of his enemies and the rabbis, the man went to the Roman authorities and slandered them, claiming that they were plotting a rebellion. The emperor marched on Jerusalem and destroyed our holy Temple. As actual history, the story has little merit. As a moral object lesson it is brilliant. In his book analyzing great rabbinic stories, my colleague, Professor Jeffrey Rubenstein, argues that this story is a good example of rabbinic self-criticism. The sages of a later time are criticizing their own class for failure to heed the words of Torah by doing the right thing: defending a humiliated person who has been wounded by words and working decisively to stave off disaster. I also see in this passage its more obvious message: words used in acts of senseless hatred have genuine ripple-effect potential to destroy an entire community. Like a caustic chemical, they corrode the life of our community from the inside, so that enemies from without have only to show up at our doors and easily finish us off. This is a moral message that we learn in the Torah, and it is a truth that underlies a good deal of ancient and contemporary history.

The poet Emily Dickinson once wrote: A word is dead//When it is said//Some say.//I say it just//Begins to live//That day. She was talking about the power of poetry, but she likely also was referring to the power of words in general. On this Shabbat Hazon, the Shabbat preceding Tisha B’Av, let’s allow ourselves some quiet moments to think about how words come alive in our own lives, from our own mouths, as forces for healing and destruction. Let’s also recommit ourselves in the midst of this period of deep sadness to a life engaged with the words of Torah, words that can heal our tongues and harness our speech for good and holy purposes.

Shabbat shalom.

KOL NIDRE

2011-06-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

Short Fiction By Dan Ornstein

KOL NIDRE.

Some swore that the building was haunted by ghosts, for the relentless creaking of the wooden beams in its roof would make you shiver and wonder if you were hearing davveners long gone. Bernie, the old hazzan who had been pushed by the congregation into retirement, didn’t have to wonder; he listened to them with aching familiarity. Each morning, before his cool, young replacement breezed into the synagogue office, Bernie shuffled around the darkened sanctuary, where his voice had built a bridge of prayerful melody between God and people for decades. All those spirits of his glorious cantorial past floated by and with him: the bar and bat mitzvah students proceeding haltingly, then confidently, with their parts of the Shabbat service; the tearful, thankful parents at their sons' brises and their daughters’ namings; his late wife, Roberta’s, soprano lilt when she sang in the choir; his own tenor loveliness when he chanted Kol Nidre, and helped everyone achieve God’s remittance of their hasty vows and promises for the coming year, at the beginning of Yom Kippur.

One Sunday before Yom Kippur, he stood alone in that cavernous space that the board members had recently stopped calling a sanctuary. “Too old, stuffy, and alienating,” they had declared. “From now on, we refer to it as our beit kesher, the spiritual connection center.” He chuckled bitterly, thinking about their latest ridiculous attempt to replace religion with religious hipsterism, which was right up there with the open-toed-sandaled rabbi, and with Bernie’s baby faced, guitar playing successor. He stepped onto the bimah and saw himself chanting Kol Nidre the previous year, his final time before the people he had served faithfully betrayed him. Roberta’s voiceless face had appeared before him then, making his old voice creak worse than the roof, and his eyes flood with tears. He had lost his place in the Mahzor, standing in front of the open ark and before a thousand dead-silent congregants.

After the board refused to renew his contract and his lawyer persuaded him that suing them on grounds of ageism was futile, Bernie’s friends tried to convince him to continue tutoring students. He taught wonderfully, so they thought it would be the perfect post-retirement job for him, but he declared that he would never again work for the congregation. The Religious School was in session that Sunday, so the chapel just across the lobby from the sanctuary was filled with students practicing prayers. Angry but unable to curb his hunger for his memories, Bernie snuck outside the chapel door to eavesdrop. A muffled chant wafted into the hall from inside. At first, he assumed it was just the perpetual ringing in his ears, but when it would not stop plaguing him he forced himself to open the door and walk in.

Around a table, his junior colleague struggled to engage twenty bored, restless seventh graders. Near them lay their iPads, iPods, and iPhones, the gleaming armaments of modernity that they reluctantly shed when they entered that holy ground. The young cleric stood in the middle, pressing the clunky REWIND and PLAY buttons of an old tape recorder, and desperately attempting to keep them interested in the retro-toy. Bernie recognized the tape of Kol Nidre he had made years ago for a nursing home resident too frail to attend services. As the kids’ attention wandered to their queer looking old guest, their teacher looked up at him in nervous surprise and said, “Cantor, welcome. We found your old recording in the music library.”

Bernie listened and wondered:

Sh’vikin, sh’vitin, b’teilin u-m’vutalin, lo sh’ririn v’lo kayamin.

“All vows—null and void, no longer valid and binding.”

Should he move towards the table?

(c)2011 By Dan Ornstein

CATS AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS

2011-06-26T07:54:00.000-07:00

CATS AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS.

Short Fiction By Dan Ornstein

Peter Katz sits in Dr. Roberts’ office, his eyes puffy from crying through the weekly therapy session.

“I feel almost paralyzed by these ongoing anxieties of mine about whether Linda wants to stay with me. Last night and this morning…I swear, Doctor Roberts, they were about the worst I’ve ever lived through in the four years since she and I got married.”

“Mmm…,” Roberts hums with professional empathy. “Well, what happened?”
Katz pauses to compose himself. “We made love last night with this incredible intensity, but when we were done, she just…went to sleep. No ‘I love you’, no acknowledgement of how she felt about me…about us. I didn’t know what to make of it, and I was up half the night as a result.”

“Maybe she was just tired,” the therapist suggests.

Katz thinks about this and says, “Maybe. I slept so fitfully, but at one point I had this vivid dream, one that made me feel peaceful about our relationship.”

“Go with that,” Roberts says to him.

“In the dream I was looking at an old Far Side cartoon by Garry Larsen. Two romantically involved alley cats are sitting on a fence looking out at a full moon. In the caption, one says to the other, ‘If I had two dead rats, I’d give you one!’”

“How did the scene feel to you as you dreamed it?”

“Well, I could sense that the female cat was the one talking, and that I was the male cat. I get it that Linda and I are the two cats in the dream, which is why I awoke feeling more secure.”

Roberts asks him slowly, “So, then, what happened this morning?”

Katz pauses again, a soft, expanding water balloon waiting to burst. “At breakfast this morning, she wouldn’t look up from her paper and coffee when I kissed her. Five minutes later, she burst out laughing, almost guffawing! When I asked her what was so funny, she told me, ‘It’s the joke- of- the- week in the comics section. What has four legs and chases cats?’ I wasn’t in a joking mood so I just said, ‘I dunno. What?’ Then she gave me the punch line: ‘Mrs. Katz and her lawyer!’”

Katz begins to cry uncontrollably. The psychologist suppresses his urge to laugh while also feeling tears come to his eyes. He sits with his client in silence, as he absentmindedly strokes a stuffed toy tabby, the ragged artifact of a romantic day at a county fair -and a love betrayed- long ago.

© 2011 By Dan Ornstein

GOD, PLEASE CALM DOWN!

2011-06-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

To everyone and anyone reading my blog:

My regrets and apologies for such a long hiatus in posting new essays to my blog site. I have been distracted by many things over the past several months, and I am finally getting back to posting new materials on a regular basis. Below is my sermon from yesterday morning's Shabbat service that I was unable to deliver, due to time constraints. I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to sending out more writings soon, including two short stories that I have not been able to get published. All the best,

Dan

(Below is my dvar Torah For Parshat Korach, 5771.)

We modern, Western Jews have been deeply influenced by medieval Jewish philosophy, particularly Maimonides, when it comes to imagining Who God is and how God acts. In the first chapter of his classic Code of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides begins not with a discussion of law, but a philosophical discussion of Jewish theology, specifically defining the nature of God and God’s interactions with the universe. He writes that, “Once we have established that God has no body, it becomes clear that God cannot be subject to those things that happen to or define the body…including anger, laughter, happiness, sadness, silenced and speech.” (MT 1:11.)

I always chuckle when I read passages such as this one. Even though Maimonides and other Jewish philosophers do a magnificent job of explaining away metaphorically descriptions of God’s emotions found throughout the Torah, those same descriptions remain there, staring back at us in all of their discomfiting post-modern glory. They defy our quest for sanitized, comfortable depictions of God by forcing us to contemplate God’s very human feelings and emotions, particularly God’s intense anger, that the Torah describes all the time.

I cannot survey and analyze with you all such examples in one d’var Torah. However, we will let two distinctly different scenarios of Moses’ appeasement of God suffice for this morning. One is found in last week’s parashah, Shlach L’kha. After ten of the twelve scouts sent into the promised land come back to warn the people not to enter the land out of fear of danger, God threatens to destroy the entire people, who have become rebellious and are attempting to appoint a chief to lead them back to Egypt. Moses, who always intervenes with God when God angrily threatens such things, appeals –as it were- to the divine ego. (See HEH, p. 846, Numbers 14:15-16) “If You then slay this people to a man, the nations who have heard Your fame will say, ‘It must be because the Lord was powerless to bring that people into the land He had promised them on oath that he slaughtered them in the wilderness.’” Moses then asks God to remember God’s own self-description as a compassionate God Who is slow to anger. (This description, I remind you, was given to Moses by God after God threatened to destroy the people because of the Golden Calf incident.) God then relents but makes clear to Moses that the slave generation will never enter Canaan, only their free, desert-born children will.

The second scenario is found in this morning’s parashah, Korach. Angered beyond control by the brazen attempts of Korach and his select group of leaders to grasp priestly and political power that is not theirs, God threatens again not only to destroy them, but the entire people of Israel. Whereupon, both Moses and Aaron plead with God (HEH, p. 863, Numbers 16:22), “O God, Source of the breath of all flesh! When one man sins, will You be wrathful with the whole community?” God once again relents and instructs the two leaders to warn the Israelites to separate from Korach and his friends, whereupon God is able to wreak justice upon these perpetrators alone. Moses’ and Aaron’s reasoning almost echoes Abraham’s reasoning with God when he convinces God to separate the innocent from the guilty before destroying Sodom and Gomorrah: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth act justly?” In our parashah, Moses and Aaron criticize God for the way that God wants to act on divine anger by reminding God of the imperative of divine justice. In fact, later Torah commentators are of two opinions as to exactly what they are saying in this one verse. Some of the commentators assert that Moses is telling God, “You know better: You have the wisdom to tell the difference between good and evil people, so use Your divine intelligence and do the right thing!” Others assert that Moses is telling God, “You know better: You know that destroying innocent people along with those who are evil is wrong, so why are You threatening to do this now?” Whichever opinion about this verse one accepts, it is clear that they are taking God to task for potentially not acting justly.

Two different modalities for reasoning with our angry, passionate God emerge from this brief analysis. The first appeals, again –as it were-, to divine ego. Moses appeases God almost laughably by appealing to God’s desire to maintain a good reputation with the nations of the world. The second appeals to the imperatives of divine justice. Moses demands of God courageously, but almost matter-of-factly, that God behave… well… like a mensch. This latter modality presents us with a wildly paradoxical picture of the biblical God being held to a high human standard of justice that has its source in God’s commandments, is not always achievable by human beings, and at least here, is almost not achieved by God, God-Self, Who basically needs a human being to remind God about how to act. Is God testing Moses’ political and moral acumen? This is a nice thought, but it is not borne out by the text. More likely, the commentators on the Torah are on the mark: God, who is our source of justice and morality, at times needs superlative human beings to appease God and to demand good behavior of God. Maimonides’ very static, impassive picture of God is a far departure from the Bible’s descriptions, even if one assumes that the Torah’s narratives are meant only to be taken allegorically or metaphorically.

What does all of this scandalous thinking about God’s relationship with Moses –and by extension with human beings- teach us about this relationship? First, it reminds us that, as we have seen before in the Torah, God grows, along with our thinking about God, and along with us as growing, fluid individuals. As my friend, Rabbi Brad Artson teaches, our relationship with God is never static, because we and God are never static. Second, our Torah passages point out to us an important foundation of moral and spiritual life that is at the heart of the Torah. As Rabbi David Hartman teaches us in his book by the same name, a living covenant with God is one in which we might at times appease the Master of the universe. More likely, however, it is one in which we stand, howbeit respectfully, before God and demand that the Judge of all the earth act justly, just as God demands of us. If we and God can rightly demand this of each other, is it not the most enduring model of what we should demand of ourselves and each other in daily life, as well? Shabbat shalom.

GERSHOM AND GERSHON, THE IMMIGRANTS' CHILDREN

2010-12-24T08:10:00.000-08:00

Dvar Torah For Parshat Shemot, 5771.

How significant are the differences between variant spellings of people’s English names? Let’s try a little experiment to determine this. If I spell Brian B R I A N and then I spell it B R Y A N, does the spelling difference make a difference? Now, let’s try another English name, Louis. If I spell it L O U I S, does this name differ in meaning from L E W I S? How about Billy? If I spell it B I L L Y, then spell it B I L L I E, is there a difference? Or, what about Barry? Is B A R R Y different from B A R R I E? In these last two examples, the variant spellings of Barry and Billy are significant only in terms of determining the gender of the person bearing the name, and only in written form. Just hearing the name Billy or Barry would not allow you to determine if the name belonged to a man or a woman unless the person bearing that name was being addressed in front of you. I would make the highly uninformed and speculative assumption that though English names are rooted in meaningful ideas based upon their Latin, Greek, or Germanic roots, variants on the spelling of those names do not normally have any real significance.

This is not necessarily the case in biblical Hebrew, which uses names consciously to predict the fates and establish the characteristics of its heroes. One example, not a great one, is Avram and Avraham. Apart from one Hebrew letter, we don’t think of these as two distinct names, but the Torah certainly does. The addition of the Hebrew letter Hey to Avram’s name by God completely changed him from Avram to Av Hamon Goyim, the father of many nations, as part of his covenant with God.

Another much less known example of this name phenomenon, one that the Torah itself does not spell out explicitly, is that of the names GershoM, spelled with a final MEM, and GershoN, spelled with a final NUN. We find both of these variant spellings in this morning’s Torah portion, Shmot, which by the way, means “names” and starts with the names of the people who moved to Egypt with Jacob. Looking in Exodus 2:25 (HEH 325), we find the following: “She (Moses’ wife, Zipporah) bore a son whom he named GershoM, for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.’” GershoM is a compound of the Hebrew words, ger (stranger) and sham (there). Moses uses the birth of his first child as an opportunity to remember his (Moses’) precarious state as an exiled resident alien in the land of his wife’s family. Now let’s look at Exodus 6:16 (HEH 354): “These are the names of Levi’s sons by their lineage, GershoN, Kohath and Merari.” Of course, notice the spelling differences between the two, specifically the variant uses of final MEM and final NUN. I suspect that both of these names were originally mere variants with no significant difference, but over time, Jewish tradition came to read them as different. According to Halachah (Jewish law), when you write a get, a divorce document, if you write the name of the ex-husband as GershoN (final NUN) when his name is actually GershoM (final MEM), or vice versa, the get cannot be used and must be written again. Explaining this, the Torah commentator, Rabbi Yehiel Mikhel Epstein writes that GershoM refers to what the Torah had already written: Moses as a stranger in a foreign land. However, the name GershoN is derived from the Hebrew word, Gerushin, dismissal or divorce, which is based upon the Hebrew verb, garash, to chase away. The two names sound the same, but they derive from different roots with different meanings; thus they are not interchangeable for get writing purposes.

I would like to explore the difference between these two names, GershoM and GershoN a bit more closely with you. Though the Torah never explicitly tells us that GershoN the son of Levi was named to recall some traumatic experience of dismissal or divorce, we can readily imagine Levi, third son of Jacob, imputing such significance to his eldest son’s name. The Book of Genesis tells us that, with his brother Shimon, Levi murdered the residents of Shechem to avenge the rape of his sister, Dinah, but their leader. Upon his death bed, Jacob singled out the two brothers for particularly harsh condemnation, as the result of their actions. Gershon’s levitical descendants were charged with the task of transporting the covers of the portable sanctuary, the outermost (and some might say, least significant) parts of that structure, thus emphasizing symbolically how transient or “chased away” they might have been seen or felt themselves to be. Based upon an interesting polemic found in the Talmud, a much later Hasidic comment on the name GershoN relates it to the desirable and condemnable characteristics of a communal leader: a leader with great ancestral lineage who is not also well versed in Torah ( a bar avahan versus a bar uryan, according to BT Menahot 53a) is considered a GershoN, one who should be divorced from or chased away from leadership. Without the sobering and sanctifying discipline of Torah, lineage as a standard for leadership easily degenerates into ruthlessness born of a sense of inherent prestige and privilege. This certainly seems to be part of Levi’s problem: as Jacob’s son, he may well have believed that his lineage granted him license to react with violence, the horror and moral outrage of his sister’s victimization notwithstanding. Separated emotionally from his father, Levi may have named his first born son GershoN to reflect that sense of dismissal, divorce and estrangement, a kind of emotional exile.

Both names, seemingly unconnected in the story of the enslavement in Egypt, actually connect quite meaningfully. Moses’ son, GershoM, bore the memory of his father’s self imposed physical exile in a strange land, the result of his fear for his life at the hands of Pharaoh. Levi’s son, GershoN (Moses’ uncle) bore the memory of his father’s divorce like estrangement from his own father, Jacob. I suspect that neither was pleased about inheriting such darkly symbolic names or the legacies of so much alien residency brought about by their two fathers’ actions and wanderings. They were the dubious beneficiaries of family histories, choices, and migrations over which they had no control.

Let me suggest that the modern GershoNs and GershoMs are the children of illegal immigrants who populate our nation in the millions. A recent Washington Post article offers the following population statistics: by 2006, the number of foreign born children of illegal immigrants had leveled off at 1.5 million. By 2008, the number of children born in the United States to illegal immigrants had actually grown to 4 million. Though there are those who would like it repealed, federal law makes anyone born in the United States a legal citizen, even if his or her parents are not. The Dream Act, legislation recently defeated in the Senate just shy of five votes, would have provided legal citizenship for a limited category of young Americans who came to this country under the age of 16 with their parents illegally. It would have allowed them to apply for citizenship, especially for the purposes of enlisting in the armed forces or applying to college as long as they meet specific residency and legal requirements. Though I found it heartening that a majority of senators (including three Republicans) voted for the new law, it is quite sad that the requisite 60 votes to pass the bill was not reached. Opponents claim that the law would be abused by young illegals who would find ways around the age-at-immigration requirements, thus encouraging even more illegal immigration beyond the more than eleven million illegal immigrants residing here now. Given the byzantine bureaucracy that is the federal government, I doubt this would happen anytime soon; for all we know, the usual big government snafus that accompany all such new legislation would hold up most of these young people from ever seeing their status legalized anytime before the coming of the Messiah, so I am more inclined to believe that opposition to the bill was motivated more by nativist paranoia, a great deal of confusion about proper federal immigration policy, and plain old pandering to racism, most of it directed at Latinos who represent the largest body of illegal immigrants, as well as a growing political force to be reckoned with. Further, given the fact that the Obama administration is planning to deport an all time record high of 400,000 illegal immigrants this fiscal year, killing such legislation on the grounds that it is one more piece of liberalism that seeks to weaken American security is just nonsense. Consider the impassioned words of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican from Alaska, hardly a liberal state. She was one of the three Republican senators who broke ranks to support the bill:

“I support the goal of the Dream Act which is to enable children who were brought to the United States by their parents to earn citizenship through service in the armed forces or pursuit of higher education… I do not believe that children are to blame for the decision of their parents to enter or remain in the United States unlawfully. The reality is that many of these children regard America as the only country they ever knew. Some were not even told that they were unlawfully in the United States until it came time for them to apply for college. America should provide these young people with the opportunity to pursue the American dream. They have much to offer America if given the chance.”

I personally support tough immigration legislation that protects us from absorbing immigrants who do not have good reasons to be here, especially in this era of international terrorism against the United States and in this broken economy. I stop way short of the illegal, racist and capricious immigration policies of the State of Arizona, and I am also well aware of how much we Jews have benefitted from immigration to this country. Still, I believe firmly that we need real immigration reform that will monitor immigrants carefully, prevent them from being abused by sweatshop bosses and prostitution rings, protect jobs for American citizens, and limit legal immigration to those who are seeking genuine political asylum from persecution or who possess high level skills and education that can benefit American society. However, the kids who would have benefitted from the Dream Act are, like GershoM and GershoN of the Torah, mostly the hapless recipients of their parents’ decisions. (We would do well, of course, to remember that most of their parents came here illegally because they wanted a better life for those kids.) What do we benefit by denying them the simple chance to be legal citizens in the only country that they know or have ever known? Surely, we can do better at dealing with this aspect of the very serious problem of illegal immigration. Surely, if GershoM and GershoN showed up at our doors today, we should have a much better way of providing them with a legitimate chance to fulfill the American dream.

Shabbat shalom.

HOW JACOB DIES.

2010-12-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

A Dvar Torah For Parshat VaYehi, 5771.

Parshat VaYehi brings Jacob, his family, and us to the end of his physical life, and it allows us to touch the edges of the impending birth of the Israelites as a nation. Each of Jacob’s death bed scenes –the first with his grandsons, Ephraim and Menashe and the second with his sons- is presented with the almost idyllic quality of cinematic death bed scenes; the patriarch of the family offers blessing and wisdom to his progeny, his infirmities do not prevent him from being mentally sharp and emotionally connected, and he simply dies upon completing his life tasks and putting his house in order, with no mention of his pain, suffering, struggle or physical degradation. Those of us who have encountered the final stages of life with loved ones and congregants know that, at least on the surface, this death bed portrayal by the Torah appears far too gentle and pleasant than it actually is a lot of the time. However, I invite you to look just beneath the surface at the more nuanced progression of the narrative about Jacob’s death, beginning with an important scene in last week’s portion, VaYiggash. When Jacob meets Pharoah, the king asks him, “How old are you?” Jacob replies quite intriguingly that the years of his sojourn on earth have been 130, and they have been few and difficult. Even at the moment of his reunion with his beloved Joseph and the supposed reconciliation among his children, he is fully aware of the losses and pain he has suffered, from the time of his complicated relationship with his brother, Esau, and his parents, until his old age. At the opening of VaYechi, we encounter Jacob as an old and dying man of 147, seventeen years later, the number of years a telling echo of Joseph’s age when his father’s favoritism set Joseph, Jacob, and his brothers on their course of tragic missteps, hatred and pain. As this final narrative continues, we watch Jacob express gratitude for seeing Joseph again, then we watch him privilege his younger grandson Ephraim over his older grandson Menashe, almost as if repeating his past errors of violating societal rules to favor a younger sibling in a way that could engender great resentment in his son’s family. Jacob calls his sons together for what is called, at the end, a blessing, but is really mostly an after- the-fact, bitter criticism of what they have done wrong, how they have disappointed him in the past, or his own observations of who they are. We may find his open assessment of his sons refreshing, but we are also left with the disturbing feeling that this is too little, too late, and that of the all times in his life, not being able to let go of his anger at some of his children at the end of his life is likely not a good thing. It is no wonder then that the Torah continues to call him by his former name, Yaakov (the sneaky heel) and his new name, Yisrael (the one who fights with God and men). To the very end, he is both: a prisoner of the devices and artifices of his younger life, and an older, wiser, freer man who learns from his errors to face himself and others with courage and honesty.

In the last chapter of his celebrated book, How We Die, Dr. Sherwin Nuland writes the following:

The dignity that we seek in dying must be found in the dignity with which we have lived our lives…the art of dying is the art of living. The honesty and grace of the years of life that are ending is the real measure of how we die. It is not in the last weeks or days that we compose the message that will be remembered, but in all the decades that preceded them.

I am not certain that I agree entirely with Dr. Nuland. I have watched people of great dignity become ravaged by the indignities of dying that affect deeply their mental capacity to live with and love those around them. I have also watched dying people whose lives were filled with undignified wrongdoing towards others make serious, often successful attempts at repentance and reconciliation with others. Still, his general point is well taken: the quality of our dying often does relate closely to the quality of our lives. So, I ask us: do we, readers of faith, feel that Jacob’s impending death reflects the way in which he lived? More importantly, did he live well? Most important, are his life and death mirrors that we can hold up to ourselves and from which we can learn? Let’s read VaYechi together and continue the ongoing conversation about these critical questions.

Shabbat Shalom

ONE TO EIGHT OR EIGHT TO ONE? A HASIDIC PERSPECTIVE ON THE HANUKKAH CANDLES.

2010-12-24T08:00:00.000-08:00

A Dvar Torah For Parshat Mikketz and Shabbat Hanukkah 5771.

We all know that our common practice is to light one candle on the first night of Hanukkah (not counting the helper candle, of course) and to add one more candle each night until the final night, when we light eight candles. In the early part of the common era, there were actually two conflicting candle lighting practices. The Talmud tells us that the School of Shammai would begin Hanukkah by lighting eight candles, then reduce the number of candles lit each night, so that by night eight only one candle would be lit. Shammai’s intellectual rival, the school of Hillel, would begin Hanukkah by lighting one candle, then increase the number of candles lit each night, so that by night eight, eight candles would be lit. Shammai’s reasoning was that, since Hanukkah was originally an imitation of Sukkot –a holiday that the Maccabees could not celebrate during their battles with the Greek army- we imitate the practices of Sukkot in our candle lighting. On Sukkot in the ancient temple, the number of sacrificial offerings burned on the altar decreased each day of the holiday, until the Shmini Atzeret holiday on the eighth day, when only one offering would be burned. So too on Hanukkah, the School of Shammai would offer fewer and fewer candles, as it were, on the imitative altar known as the Hanukkiyah. Hillel’s reasoning was that, since the true Hanukkah miracle involved the small jug of oil being sufficient for the people to light the Menorah for eight days, we imitate them by lighting an increasing number of candles each night, until we light eight. However, a careful look at the words used in the Talmud to describe Hillel’s reasoning reveals something interesting: The Hillelites never say explicitly that we increase the number of candles for the reason just mentioned. The Talmud cryptically explains that they practiced this way because we are supposed to increase the presence of holiness in our lives, not decrease it. What the Talmud seems to be getting at here is what we all know intuitively. As a winter holiday, Hanukkah is all about increasing God’s holy presence in our lives by actively increasing the light in a dark, winter world. Hanukkah may have connections to Sukkot, but what light starved people truly crave as we come together during the holiday or on any night, is more light, which brings more joy and more security.

The great 18th century Hasidic master, Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, explains this basic human quest for more light in his extended essays on Hanukkah, which I am privileged to be studying with our fellow congregant, Anschel Weiss. Levi Yitzchak views the disagreement between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai as two unique spiritual postures. He asks us to imagine a person in the desert who is starving for food and water. When that person finds out that food and water are on their way, his gratitude and sense of relief continue to increase because he can anticipate getting closer to nourishment, even though he is still intensely hungry and thirsty. When he finally eats, he initially thanks God for what he now has, but his sense of gratitude begins to wear off as he eats and drinks more and more. Comparing this to the Schools of Hillel and Shammai, Levi Yitzchak explains that Hillel’s practice reflects how they thought the Jews of ancient times must have felt each night of that first Hanukkah. Once they were out of harm’s way, each night they lit the Menorah in the Temple with that one small jug of oil, they became hungrier and thirstier –as it were- for more opportunities to show gratitude to God. Their increasing joy at the possibilities of restoring light to their own dark world only made them increase their thanks to God: thus, Hillel’s practice. Shammai’s practice, however, reflects a very different assumption about the people’s feelings during that first Hanukkah. Once they were out of harm’s way, each night they lit the Menorah in the Temple, the initial thrill of God’s redemption began to wear off as they moved further and further from the original miraculous experience of defeating the Greek occupiers. Like a community slogging through the rituals of Sukkot day after day, after having already observed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Maccabean Jews’ spiritual enthusiasm grew dim: thus, Shammai’s practice.

We record and study both opinions, Hillel and Shammai, but we only observe the opinion of the School of Hillel. We recognize, as does Levi Yitzchak, that our experiences of God and of life are always most powerful at the moment that they happen, and we are always most appreciative of them then. But time, forgetfulness, and the difficulties of life distract us, so that our exhilaration starts to diminish and grow dim. It is human nature to want to practice like the House of Shammai, and we need to accept this about ourselves. However, the lighting of our Hanukkah lights in accordance with the House of Hillel is a symbolic challenge to us to resist that impulse to darken the world further by growing dark ourselves. By lighting more lights each night of Hanukkah, we indicate our steadfast refusal to be swallowed up by that despair that daily accompanies the dark little indignities of life in a world that is less than just, less than perfect, and seemingly so far away from the miracles that life has to offer. By lighting more lights each night of Hanukkah, we shed more light on the ordinary that surrounds us, so that we can see the extraordinary hiding in its shadows.

Shabbat shalom and Happy Hanukkah.

2010-11-24T13:08:00.001-08:00

ghghghghghgh

FEED ME LIES.

2010-11-08T12:25:00.000-08:00

Dvar Torah for Parshat Toldot.

One of the hallmarks of great Jewish literature is the ability of its writers to engage in intertextuality. This is a fancy word for taking a word, phrase, or verse from an earlier text of Jewish tradition and weaving it into what you are writing in a creative and meaningful way. An excellent example of this is the refrain from Shir Nechama, The Consolation Song, by the very popular Israeli hip hop group Hadag Nahash, that you can find in your Shabbat announcements. The song is one of many the group has written bemoaning the decline of Israeli society and the attempt to escape all of its pressures. Before we get to that song, let’s look at one telling verse and scene from this morning’s Torah portion. The portion opens with God healing Rebecca and Isaac of infertility, her discovery that she will give birth to twins, God’s revelation to Rebecca that her younger son will rule over her older son, the symbol laden births of the boys, and the favoritism that Isaac shows to Esau, the older son, while Rebecca shows partiality to Jacob, the younger son. One day, Esau the hunter comes in from the fields, famished, while Jacob the homebody is cooking a red lentil stew. Take a look at the first passage in your Shabbat announcements, our verse from Genesis. “And Esau said to Jacob, ‘Give me some of that red stuff to gulp down, for I am famished….’” Note the Hebrew words for feeding someone in gulps: hal’iteini na. According to the great Torah sage Avraham ibn Ezra, this word is found only this one time in the entire Tanakh, the Jewish Bible. Note how the word paints this scene for us: Esau is portrayed as an animal who is so hungry he wants his brother to feed him, as if he were gulping down his food from a bucket or a trough, without thought for his behavior or demeanor. This portrayal of Esau, using this rare Hebrew word, accentuates how devious and manipulative young Jacob truly is: he knows his brother very well, and he easily wrestles Esau’s legal birthright as the older child from him by offering him the food in exchange for it. Esau, not one to think too far into the future and convinced he’ll die an early death anyway, gulps down the food along with Jacob’s shrewd offer.

If you look at the second passage in the Shabbat announcements, note how this verb, l’hal’it, to feed a gulping animal, is used by the later rabbis. Remember, of course, that they are living and writing the Mishnah well after the writing of the Torah: “In order to avoid physically exertive behavior on Shabbat, a camel driver may not force feed his camel or cram food in its mouth, but he may feed the camel fully, allowing it to gulp down food. (mal'itin). (Mishnah, Tractate Shabbat, 24:3.)” The rabbis use this verb in a purely legal context –laws concerning Shabbat- to convey once again what the Torah was conveying: human beings eat with decency; animals are fed by their masters by being allowed to gulp down their food.

Now we’ll take a look at how our modern, very secular Israeli protest song takes this same biblical word, hal’iteini, “let me gulp down some food,” and subtly reworks it to make a very important point. Note the words in my translation, and then we’ll look closely at some of the Hebrew:

Sovevuni bash’qalim Surround me with Sheqels.
Hal’ituni ba’kzavim Let me gulp down lies.
Va Ani k’seh tamim I am like an innocent lamb.
Odeini maamin. And I still believe.

In each brief line, Hadag Nahash uses echoes of biblical sources and even a reference from the philosopher, Maimonides, to reinforce their feeling that the average Israeli citizen is manipulated and exploited by society. The Hebrew word, sovevuni, “surround me”, echoes the psalmist who speaks about being surrounded by his enemies who swarm him like bees, yet who he fights off with God’s help. Here, however, the almighty sheqel, symbol of rampant materialism, is the implacable enemy that even God seems unable to fight off. The seh tamim, or innocent lamb, calls forth two images: in the story of the binding of Isaac, suspecting that he is the sacrificial lamb, Isaac asks Abraham, “Ayeh ha she l’olah?” “Where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” The word tamim, meaning unblemished or more figuratively, innocent, often refers in the book of Leviticus to sacrificial animal offerings. By now you should get the picture being portrayed here of a person as a lamb led to the slaughter in a predatory society. The phrase odeini maamin, echoes Maimonides’ thirteen principles of faith, each of which begins with the statement, Ani maamin b’emunah shleimah, “I believe with perfect faith.” Hadag Nahash seems to turn this phrase on its head by asserting, “Go on society, keep taking me for a ride. Like an innocent lamb, I’ll just keep on believing whatever you tell me.”

Finally, we have the phrase hal’ituni ba’kzavim, “let me gulp down lies”. Here, Hadag Nahash out-do themselves as masters of intertextual creativity. Recall what I told you before. This word, hal’iteini, shows up only once in the entire Bible, here in our Torah portion. The group uses the word in its plural grammatical form to reinforce not only the feeling of being deceived, but of being deceived like the biblical Esau, like an animal having food shoved down its throat, as it gulps insatiably, with no sense of anything other than eating!

The magic of Torah is in how successive generations of people, Jews and non Jews, use its words in bold new, creative ways to teach new and important things, as even a totally secular musical group like Hadag Nahash has done. Yet, it is not my place to comment on Hadag Nahash’es critique of Israeli society in this song. As much as I love and support Israel, I am not an Israeli, so I cannot make such comments. Nonetheless, I also read these words of our song’s refrain with the eyes of a proud, patriotic, and somewhat anxious American. Specifically, I have now lived through a fair number of local, state and national elections. I am truly disappointed when I watch our most basic democratic institutions of voting and electioneering being surrounded by and tangled up in big money, fear mongering, false hopes, the short attention spans of the electorate, and frankly lots of lies and deceit. Our political culture has nurtured an impatience for change and a hunger for sound bite quality half truths that, coupled with genuine desperation about our economic woes, turns too many people into Esau: too many of us simply give up thinking critically about the real issues and trying to discern with wisdom the difference between what some politicians say and what the truth is. It is as if we are telling our leaders: “Let me gulp down whatever you have to tell me because I am so confused, so scared, and so unable to figure out what the truth really is that I might as well just swallow whatever you want me to hear. “ Too many politicians –partly out of exploitative cynicism and partly because they are so afraid of losing an election- are all too happy to play the role of young Jacob: “Give me your vote, win me this election, and I’ll tell you what you want to hear and what I want you to hear.” No, I am not another northeastern, liberal elitist who thinks that only the right people with the right degrees should elect political leaders. I am a true populist who sees through the so called populist rhetoric of the current political climate. I think I see what is really going on in America: too many Americans, like Esau, are coming in from the fields famished. They are desperate for work, desperate for stability, desperate for security. They are being fed a lot of rhetoric on both sides of the political divide to gulp down, rhetoric that may boil our collective blood and lead to sweeping midterm changes, but that may offer no substantive change in the long run. Ultimately, no one but a small group of political elites wins, and what they win is the birthright of American prosperity and power that belongs to all of us. In return, what we, deserving, scared, hard working Americans get is pot of stew: hot and tasty in the beginning, but easily consumed and gone forever.

Hadah Nahash,and even more so, the Torah before them had it right: it is way too easy to gulp down whatever those in power decide to hand us, in fulfillment of their promises to restore and nurture the great democratic dream. Let’s watch our politicians and debate our great issues with civility, wisdom and discernment; let’s hold the leaders accountable for their actions and their claims, and not gulp down everything they want to feed us; mostly, let’s be vigilant in not abdicating our birthright of freedom and good governance to them. Let’s learn from Esau’s tragic example.

(Many thanks to Professor Azzan Yadin-Israel of Rutgers University for his review of Hadag Nahash'es new album, 6, and their use of intertextuality, in the most recent edition of The Jewish Review of Books. http://www.jewishreviewofbooks.com/publications/detail/a-measure-of-beauty)

AFTER THE TRAUMA, THE SEX.

2010-10-04T16:45:00.000-07:00

Dvar Torah For Parshat Breishit, 5771.

Well folks, here we are once again reading the richest, juiciest, meatiest, stormiest portion in the Torah, the very first portion and the one to beat all portions. There is so much for us to talk about, so many sermons for me to give you, such pathos in the text as it teases out God’s stormy and difficult path from lone Creator of a perfect Garden of Eden world to regretful, angry, first time parent of the children who disappoint him. Think of the possibilities: we could talk about the majesty of the creation story with its emphasis on goodness and people being created in God’s image. We could talk about the tumultuous tale of Adam and Eve, the fratricidal tragedy of Cain and Abel, God’s deep disappointment with God’s creative experiment gone wild that leads God to wipe it all out and start again.

So what did I choose to talk about this morning in what will be an admittedly brief dvar Torah? A brief and often overlooked detail in the portion that I think says so much about the ancient and indelible nature of love, hope, and human perseverance. Let’s look together in Genesis, 4:25 (HEH, p. 29): “Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and named him Seth, meaning, ‘God has provided me with another offspring in place of Abel,’ for Cain had killed him.” This verse is part of an early genealogical list that identifies the founders of cities, musical instrumentation, tool and weapon making. We would expect it to follow directly after the end of the story about Cain murdering Abel, his brother. However, it is more directly connected to the strange story fragment about Lamech and his two wives. Lamech is described as a man who loves to crow about his violent tendencies, so perhaps or verse about Adam and Eve’s new child Seth is well placed here: it’s theme of new life, especially after fratricidal tragedy seems to be a response to Lamech’s arrogant emphasis on violent death. Commentators on the Torah going back as far as the early rabbinic midrash, Genesis Rabbah, have a somewhat different take on this verse. Based upon later genealogical hints in the Torah, our rabbis assert that, after their expulsion from Eden, Adam and Eve refrained from relations for 130 years. Lamech and his wives were, in the rabbis’ imagination, also celibate. When Adam criticized Lamech for threatening the survival of humanity through not procreating with his wives, Lamech countered Adam’s complaint by accusing him of hypocrisy. With a “new and improved” sex drive and a new sense of existential urgency, Adam made love to Eve and they bore Seth, as a literal replacement for Abel, so that humanity could survive those early traumas of expulsion from paradise and of fratricide.

Taken together with these comments, Genesis 4:25 can be understood as more than a mere fragment in the book’s early genealogy of the human race. In the midst of many painful stories about the corruptions of human desire, our lust for power, and the murderous origins and results of familial jealousy, this verse returns Adam and Eve –and us- to sexual intimacy and reproduction as one of the most potent, hope filled responses to all of this human heartache. Somehow, despite –or perhaps because of- the tragic disruption of their family by their son’s murderous outburst against his brother, Adam and Eve managed to find each other once again in the mystery of sex, thus rebuilding their family and humanity. Is this because the human capacity to love is one of our greatest weapons against engulfing despair? Yes, I think so. This verse and its midrashim seem to be telling us that Adam and Eve used their physical and emotional desires for each other to fight despair at a personal and a universal level. They refused to allow their horrible grief to destroy them personally and globally.

Rochelle Krich, the renowned mystery author who is a child of Holocaust survivors, once spoke at our community Yom Hashoah program a number of years ago. She told the story of how her father’s entire family, including his first wife and children, were murdered by the Nazis. He survived the Shoah, came to this country, and began a new family, the one from which Rochelle is descended. When she asked him why he did this after so much personal trauma, he responded with deceptive simplicity: “Because I met your mother.”

Krich’es story is part of that even longer narrative, really the Torah’s counter narrative, to its first dark tale about our human impulses and their destructive capacities. Hiding just behind, but not too far behind, that dark tale is another equally powerful lesson: our impulses to love, to create, to heal, to hope and to build are the angels of our better natures, whether expressed sexually or otherwise. We would do well to cultivate those impulses, that have been given to us as God’s greatest gifts.

Shabbat shalom.

LEFT HAND RIGHT OR RIGHT HAND LEFT?

2010-10-04T16:42:00.000-07:00

Dvar Torah For Day 2 Sukkot 5771.

For this morning’s Dvar Torah, let’s review the underlying reason for a simple halakhah that we have been observing when we wave the lulav and etrog. According to the Shulkhan Arukh, Rabbi Joseph Karo’s Code of Jewish Law, we hold the lulav in our right hands and the etrog in our left hands during Hallel, the waving, and the Hoshanot prayers. The reason for this according to the Shulkhan Arukh is that the lulav contains three separate commandments for us to perform, -taking possession of the palm branches, the myrtle, and the willows- whereas the etrog stands alone as a single mitzvah. Since the right hand is considered the stronger and more important one, and given the prevalence of righties in any population, it retains the honor of being the hand in which we hold the lulav branches, the myrtle, and the willow branches. Though I have no proof for this, I would not be surprised if the etrog is also reserved for the left hand because the etrog is a symbol for a person’s heart; the left hand and arm are closest to the heart, of course.

What is less known is a variation on this halakhic rule, the minority opinion that a left handed person should reverse this order, by holding the lulav bunch in the left hand and the etrog in the right hand. Underlying this minority opinion is the halakhic concept of azlinan batar yamin didei: a leftie holds the lulav in the hand that is the right, or stronger, hand, for him or her, and not in one’s actual right hand. Though this is not common ritual practice today, Halakhah records this opinion as a legitimate option for ritual practice.

Let me stretch your thinking based upon this somewhat obscure bit of flexible ritual law. This idea that a leftie’s right hand is what he or she considers the right hand to be points to an important insight. Like righties and lefties, we are all wired differently. Each of us has different learning styles, personality strengths, disabilities major and minor, and ways of perceiving and knowing. Though at times, every person has to conform to the culture and modalities of the majority of society and fit in with its rules, force fitting the individual like a square peg into a round hole often produces no positive results, and is in fact dangerous to that person and his or her community. At times, we all act like righties, and at times we lefties have to be allowed to behave like lefties.

This is particularly the case with education. President Obama’s Race To The Top, his challenge to states to improve their schools in order to get large federal grants, has certainly sent departments of education in numerous states scrambling to prove a number of things to the White House. Everyone is trying to show that they can test students more often, demonstrate student and teacher success and failure based upon standardized testing, and standardize teacher training more rigorously. As a teacher, I am all for tightening standards for teacher training and tenure, as well as for strengthening student performance in our nation’s schools, especially for the purposes of making our students more competitive with the rest of the world. But I am fearful and skeptical about a mad nationwide dash to secure federal education dollars that may sacrifice emphasis on students as individual learners. Asian schools, especially the Chinese, often force teach their students in a cookie cutter fashion that emphasizes testing and conformity. That may produce a lot of students who can answer test questions and spit back information, but is it really a mark of educational success? What about developing critical thinking skills and appreciation of the world as goals of education? What about character development, moral reasoning, and becoming a thoughtful, active participant in democracy? Most important, what about the student who either because he is learning disabled or she is just different, learns and thinks differently: the student whose left hand is his or her right hand? Now, we are not China. Whatever Marxist critiques exist of our education system as a feeder for the great, hungry capitalist free market monster that demands worker docility and conformity, we are way ahead with respect to respecting individuality and free choice. Still, we need to be careful that in our educational race to the top, we do not go over the top in deemphasizing the unique gifts of individual students and teachers, even if they do not fit the standard marks of success as they are now being defined. Surely, even Halakhah, which generally favors communal conformity over individual predilection, understands that sometimes an individual’s left hand is that person’s right hand; that is where that person’s strength lies. Our politicians and educators would do well to remember that wisdom as well.

Chag Sameach.

GROUND HOG DAY REVISITED

2010-10-04T16:39:00.000-07:00

Sermon For Yom Kippur, 5771.

What if you had only one day to live, and you were lucky enough to live it over and over? What if you had only one day to live and you were cursed to live it over and over? What would or would you not do with it? Imagine yourself able to live that one day any way you liked, with no concern for consequences or shame, for the next day you would awaken, and realize that it was the beginning of yesterday, an endless today. Imagine yourself unable to ever move forward with your life and learn from your mistakes, as you played that one scene of your life over and over again. Would you ever want to leave that playground of joyous moral depravity, unleashed from all moorings of conscience and guilt? Could you ever leave that prison of existential frustration and boredom, that supposed heaven of eternal youth that is actually a mask for hell?

These sound like questions of people who live entirely in the mind, rather than in the real world of everyday lives found in every new day. However, I want to suggest that they, in fact, reflect much deeper concerns about freedom and personal meaning that we human beings struggle with all the time. Do we ever get to do over the mistakes we make in our lives? Can we return to and relive parts of what we did and who we were, in order to redeem ourselves from mistakes? Are there ever second chances?

You probably already know that rabbis think about these questions a fair amount, especially around this time of year, when we come together with our congregants to face God and ourselves, and try to figure out the spiritual technology of repentance and growth. However my current interest in these questions derives only partly from Judaism and its holidays. I recently viewed–seventeen years late- a rather curious film that, since 1993, has become almost a cult classic: director, Harold Ramis’es Ground Hog Day. Citizen Kane the film is not; it is fairly light and stars the rather droll and goofy comedian, Bill Murray. However, upon closer inspection, the film possess an existentialist charm and insightfulness about second chances and freedom, by turning the questions I posed before into an interesting story. Murray plays Phil Connors, an egocentric, mean spirited, and small minded meteorologist who plods through the mental boredom and physical drudgery of his daily work at a local news station. The film opens with Connors leaving with his producer and his camera man on their annual trip to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to report on what he considers to be the soul deadening observance of Ground Hog Day: February 2, when Punxsutawney Phil the groundhog will inevitably see his shadow, thus predicting like clock work another six weeks of winter. Connors hates his job, hates his life, hates the people he works with, and hates the good folks of Punxsutawney who actually revel joyously in the celebration of their local culture and history. After a snow storm forces the TV crew to remain overnight in the town, Connors goes to sleep. Upon awakening and reawakening over what appears to be a succession of several days, he comes gradually to the conclusion that he has not woken up each time to a new day, but to the same day, February 2. Convinced at first that he is now truly imprisoned in a life not of his own making, he slowly recognizes that getting to do the same day over and over again actually liberates his darkest desires: he can be as destructive, rude, and sexually rapacious as he likes, because when he wakes up the next day, no one but him will remember what he has done. The next day is simply yesterday, rerun like a film clip played over and over again. As Connors’ indulgence in selfishness and stupidity wears thin, he attempts anything, especially death, which will allow him to escape the prison of the present day with all of its predictable sameness. Yet even death, the ultimate form of liberation, fails him in his quest to move time and his life forward: he can’t even die. As the film progresses, Phil Connors gradually begins to understand what will free him from eternity and allow him to grow. The endlessly replayed scene of his life on Ground Hog Day –symbolized of course by the endlessly boring life of the other Phil in the film- has one catch in it. He can change the scene day to day through how he behaves, not only for evil but for good. In a way that actually requires the skeptical viewer to set aside the film’s logic, he comes to know and affect positively the lives of the people of the town; he learns to treat the people he has abused more kindly; he figures out how to show his producer, with whom he is in love, that he can love her like a grown up who cares about people. Only when he finally gets this scene of his existence right, can Phil Connors break the surrealistic spell of his constant feedback loop of a life and go home.

Though Judaism recognizes the indestructibility of the soul after death, it also recognizes that we don’t literally get to live the same day or the same life over and over again. So, I ask: are the ideas found in this film Jewish ideas? From a Jewish perspective, is there no opportunity when we are alive to relive the past –as it were- so that we can reshape it? How irreversible are our actions and choices? Moses Maimonides, the great medieval rabbi and philosopher, took on these vital questions in his monumental book, Laws of Repentance, which is found in his compendium of Jewish law. There, he lays out what Judaism says about personal change, and forgiveness: how we reach them, and our beliefs about human freedom that underlie them. Listen carefully to what Maimonides has to say:

There is a difference between repentance and complete repentance. What is complete repentance? A person finds himself in the same circumstances of wrongdoing as he had been in previously: he has the opportunity to commit the same sin, to do the same wrong, but he decides not to because he is commited to behaving differently, not because he is afraid of getting into trouble or because he lacks the physical strength to do so. For instance: two people have an illicit affair. They find themselves alone with each other at the exact time of year and in the exact place as in the past. They both still love each other and their physical desire for one another is just as strong. They can easily resume their illicit relationship, but they refrain from doing so.

Maimonides took his idea about complete repentance from earlier traditions found in the Babylonian Talmud, the master work of Jewish tradition and law. A close comparison of his writing with this original source reveals that, in fact, Maimonides chose what appears to be the most extreme explanation of complete repentance found in the Talmud. The seemingly more realistic definition of complete repentance found in the tradition is that a person may find him or herself in circumstances similar to the one in which he or she had done wrong, but that person nevertheless chooses to behave differently. But to be in the same place, at the same time of the year, wanting to do the same things with the exact same person that we know are wrong? What are the chances that two people would be so motivated by desire or even true love to do this? Clearly, I am being somewhat facetious. We all know perfectly well that life is messy and complicated. The human heart follows its most passionate desires, sexual or otherwise- whether they are right or wrong- and we are well equipped with very powerful tools of self deception and rationalization that make it easy for us to justify doing what we know we should not do. Maimonides knew this too. I think he chose precisely this version of the complete repentance idea to make an important point about making choices and about teshuvah, Hebrew for repentance. Like our hero, Phil Connors, we may find ourselves placed repeatedly in the same situations over whose outcomes we think, or want to think, we have no control. “What a dream I’m having, what a nightmare this is! How did I get here again?” we ask. Our pain is real enough, as we struggle with the old impulses, the persistent sadness, the old addictions, the self deceptions, whose acting out we know will get us nowhere fast. They may make us feel ok in the short term, but they contribute to our self destruction in the long term. Maimonides is inviting us to look at the most extreme possibilities in human behavior precisely to teach us that, if you find yourself going back to earlier times and behaviors, you may not be able to undo what you did then, but you can choose not to do it again, now. Like Phil Connors, you may find yourself in the same life scenes of your complicated past, but you can change those scenes, and you can change them for the better in the future. As Maimonides explains it, complete repentance is really hard to do, and it may cause you excrutiating pain. You deserve all the love, support and compassion from others that they have to give you, as you are working on doing it: but you can do it….

Except of course, for when you can’t… or you just plain don’t. Maimonides wrote with firm, rigid religious and philosophical commitment about the idea of human moral freedom, the bedrock of complete repentance. If you look in his book, Laws Of Repentance, you find him engaging in scathing attacks upon other philosophers, Jewish and non Jewish, who limit the extent of what we would call free will. For him, “a human being directs him or herself deliberately to any course of action or life that he or she desires.” End of discussion. Or is it? Remember that, in addition to being a rabbi and a philosopher, Maimonides was also a prominent physician. I am going to assume that as he saw patient after patient, Maimonides likely encountered and was affected by what any competent, sensitive physician encountered: plenty of pain, suffering and disease inflicted upon his patients by themselves and by others, repeatedly. He likely detected crippling physical and emotional traits in multiple generations of families; he likely recognized that they could not so easily be overcome, and that they affected people’s behaviors and lives; all of this hundreds of years before the world knew anything about DNA or the human genome, and well before the advent of psychoanalysis. And beyond Maimonides the rabbi, philosopher, and physician, there was yet another Maimonides: the one who understood from personal loss and grief that at times, our attempts to “just do it” or “just get over it” or “just decide to do the right thing” are fleeting shadows of wishful and naïve thinking. At the height of his leadership, fame, and intellectual acumen, when Maimonides could talk with easy confidence about the difficult but can-do path to complete repentance and personal change, his beloved brother and benefactor, David, died suddenly and tragically, leaving Maimonides impoverished and responsible for David’s bereft family. As Dr. Sherwin Nuland points out in his biography of Maimonides, the great rabbi revealed in some letters and even one medical treatise just how devastating and debilitating was his ensuing depression: we get a much more truncated, compassionate, limited picture from him of the capacity for a human being to make free, life affirming choices for personal growth. Certainly, we now know enough about clinical depression and so many inherited traits to understand well that their crippling influence upon a person’s behavior are not at all the same thing as a person’s free choice to continue to behave one way or another. However, my point is that Maimonides’ intense spiritual commitment to complete repentance and free moral choice was likely balanced in his own soul with his own personal and professional experiences that told him life is not so simple. Yes, we possess free moral choice, we can make decisions to stop making excuses for our behavior, and we can change; but in real life, there are things that hurt us or that are just beyond our control, partly or completely, that affect who we are and what we do. That is why in Jewish tradition, we talk about balancing judgment with mercy, both divine and human; that is why in Jewish law, you can ask sincere forgiveness from God and others even upon your deathbed, after a life of repeating the same ground hog day, day after day, and the forgiveness is there waiting for you. That is why I think Maimonides himself explicitly distinguished complete repentance and just plain old repentance. Listen now closely to another great teaching of his from the same Book, Laws of Repentance:

So, what is plain old repentance? The person who does wrong stops committing his sin, stops thinking about it, and he makes the firm mental commitment to never do it again, even to the point of making God, the One who knows all secrets, his witness to this effect. He expresses sincere regret for the past. Whatever he resolves in his heart he must also confess out loud.

Note what is missing in this teaching of Maimonides. A person looking to repent has to make every sincere effort, before God, himself, and humanity to do so. But nowhere in this passage did our teacher ever say that this process is some kind of an immunization against bad behavior down the road. Taking his cue from the Jewish tradition he followed and the imperfect, broken human nature he observed, Maimonides offered us a formula for breaking out of the cycles of pain we inflict upon ourselves and others that recognizes with compassion the power and the limits of our ability to change. Part one of that formula is all about apologizing and doing better towards those we have hurt. Part two –discussed by Maimonides elsewhere- is the often grueling, but healing response to repentance: forgiveness, of oneself and of others, even and especially when our hurt from the past and our often logical assumptions about people’s future tendencies fill us with anger and mistrust.

Yom Kippur ritualizes and concentrates this dynamic in one powerful day, whose echo we should listen for and respond to during the rest of the year. That is why we are here in prayer and here, living in the world. We are here because we are struggling to break the cycles –the groundhog days- of our behaviors and attitudes that we know hurt us and others; and we are here because we are struggling to forgive ourselves and each other for not always being successful at breaking those cycles. We are here because we are free, and God calls us to take responsibility for what we are and what we do as adults; and we are here because God knows well the nature of human nature, loves us all the more for it, and asks us to forgive ourselves and each other too. We are here because in remembering our loved ones at the time of Yizkor, we can appreciate them for their love and the good that they did, and forgive them for their imperfections, some of which may have scarred us; and we are here because in remembering them we know that we can learn from them what to do and what not to do with our lives, and act upon those teachings. Finally, we are here because our creation in God’s image always demands of us the dignity and courage of repentance; and we are here because being a loving reflection of God always grants us the opportunity to try over and over again, when our personal limits make us fail to live up fully to that reflection.

MOUNT MORIAH REVISITED

2010-10-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

Dvar Torah And Torah Intro For Rosh Hashanah Day 2, 5771.

I have never been a big fan of Bob Dylan’s music and mystique, not because I do not like what he sings and stands for, but because I kind of missed the Dylan moment in American pop culture. Though Dylan continues to be an important force in American music, his greatest influence over the ears and hearts of America was likely in the 60’s and early 70’s, when I was a little kid. Nonetheless, when his music and lyrics speak to me, I know it.

In anticipation of the reading of the painful and complex story of the Binding of Isaac, I have been thinking of the opening stanza of Dylan’s song, Highway 61 Revisited, found on the 1965 album by the same name. The words sound better when sung, but no such luck today: I am going to read them to you.

Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son.”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on.”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run.”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done?”
God says, “Out on Highway 61.”

Dylan’s words at first strike us as pretty simplistic poetry. The rhyme scheme doesn’t appear to be very creative, and God’s dialogue with Abraham –who Dylan refers to as Abe in an overly folksy way- feels somewhat forced. Moreover, we have seen this midrash, this interpretation, before: the seemingly compliant Abraham of the Torah is turned into the protesting Abraham of later rabbinic legends, the one who opposes the awful divine decree that he murder his own son. But note how, at the end of the stanza, Dylan turns the biblical story- and its back story- of Abraham’s dialogue with God into something entirely unique, and actually quite sinister. Minnesota State Highway 61, which originates in Dylan’s hometown of Duluth, runs for 151 miles along the shores of Lake Superior until it reaches the border with Canada. Legend has it that the great Blues musician Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of Highway 61 and highway 49, in return for professional and artistic success. The Abraham of the Torah –a courageous yet enigmatic man of faith- is turned by Dylan into an abused man who would contemplate killing his own son for the sake of protection from the demonic, abusive God demanding such a horrible thing from him. That is why God tells him to kill Isaac, not on Mount Moriah, but out on the notorious Highway 61.

On one level, Dylan’s reading of God’s demonic cruelty that he draws from the Binding of Isaac is an overstatement. As bizarre and terrifying as God’s demand is, we the readers already know that God has no intention of allowing Abraham to kill Isaac. Our Torah portion makes clear: “V’Ha Elohim Nisah Et Avraham,” God puts Abraham’s faith and loyalty to the test only. Further, this is the same God who earlier in Genesis accedes to Abraham’s demand that God behave justly by not killing the righteous people along with the evil doers in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Knowing the context of Abraham’s encounter with God in this terrible story, we are perhaps more inclined to see God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac in less extreme terms.

And yet, Abraham himself does not know these things. When we try to imagine Abraham’s experience as our own, to place ourselves in his shoes, we recognize that perhaps Bob Dylan’s take on our story is not so far off the mark emotionally. Can we not safely assume that, when confronted with God’s wildly cruel and capricious demands on the life of his son, Abraham feels like any other parent or in fact any other person who has feelings and a conscience? Literary theorist, Erich Auerbach, points out that the Binding of Isaac is a classic mimetic story: like a mime performing silently, it uses mostly action, no interior monologue and almost no dialogue to convey brilliantly the tensions and deep dilemmas posed by God’s and Abraham’s actions. It never tells us what Abraham is thinking or feeling. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: just because we have no direct idea about how Abraham feels in the story, does not mean that he has no feelings. We just need to imagine them and tease them out of the text with creative interpretation.

So, let me suggest the following as we read this awesome and terrible story. We Jews read it as a faith community on Rosh Hashanah because of its themes of self sacrifice and of hope despite despair, which are the perennial signatures of Jewish faith throughout the ages. We Jews also read it as critically thinking people of conscience who have no problem taking issue loudly with God when we perceive God not living up to the ethical standards that God demands of us. Yet we Jews can and should also look at this and our other great stories as rich works of art that force us to think about the fearful, stormy and often conflicting emotions standing behind our heroes’, God’s, and our own actions. They stir up in us the deep feelings of love, outrage, despair, desire and hope that make us fully human and engaged in dynamic relationships. These emotions are ultimately some of the enduring bases for Jewish religion: a jealous God Who makes impossible demands upon our loyalty, a people torn between loving God in return and wanting to be left alone, and the promise of a relationship between us that transforms us and the world.

MEAH KOLOT: ONE HUNDRED VOICES, ONE HUNDRED YEARS.

2010-10-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

Sermon For Rosh Hashanah, Day 1: 5771//September 9, 2010.

Shanah Tovah. Just a few minutes ago, we listened to Anschel Weiss sound the shofar for us quite beautifully. The blasts of the shofar give us such a mystically inspiring feeling because they transcend all words; they get to the heart of what people are feeling but cannot necessarily articulate. Several years back, Rabbi Kieval and I did a high holiday exercise with our USY youth group called “I Shofar That Emotion,” whose title is a kind of wordplay on the famous Motown hit song, “I Second That Emotion,” sung by the great Smokey Robinson. We brought in a variety of shofarot, the Hebrew plural for shofar, and –in keeping with ancient teachings- we asked the USYers to show how they would convey different feelings without using words, and only making sounds with a shofar. How could the blasts of the shofar help them to imagine voicing those deepest human emotions and anxieties that often cannot –and should not- be expressed in words? I want to try this exercise with you this morning, though we will have to improvise a bit, since I don’t have 700 shofars to hand out to everyone praying here today. Instead of blowing on a shofar, I invite you for just a couple of minutes to use your own voice and become a shofar. As we sound out each of the shofar calls with our voices, think of some feeling, some idea, some urgent insight or warning that you need to call out to someone else, or to yourself. Imagine, as the sound pours out of your throat, something important to which you want to give a voice, something that you need to have recognized.

I understand that, for some of us, this kind of exercise will feel silly, or hokey, or just plain uncomfortable. Certainly, if you choose to sit quietly and listen to others making these human shofar calls, that is fine. If closing your eyes as you are making these sounds helps you feel less self conscious, then close your eyes. However, I encourage you to try this spiritual exercise of imagining that your voice is a shofar. We are going to shout out the three basic shofar notes. I will start, then I invite you to repeat the sound that I make. We will pause briefly after each call. Here we go:

Tekiah! (sound) Now you call. (pause)
Shevarim! (sound) Now you call. (pause)
Teruah! (sound) Now you call. (pause)

I hope that each imaginary shofar call that you made called up important things for you that you need to voice. Now, if you are skeptically thinking that what we just did is nothing more than another fluffy, new age, feel good, touchy feely, pop psych meditation, think again. One Hebrew word in our tradition that is used to describe the sound of the shofar is Kol which literally means, “voice.” The shofar itself has a voice that is so simple, clear and uncluttered, it provokes very primitive, at times childlike, emotions in us. We hear its voice, and perhaps we feel that fear stirred up in us when an ambulance or fire truck siren wails ominously on its way to an emergency. We hear its voice, and perhaps we feel that aching compassion stirred up in us when a baby cries without consolation. We hear its voice, and perhaps we imagine shouts of rage between people fighting, moans of desire between people in love, the elated yell of two friends greeting each other after a long absence, or our own cries of desperation and protest to God and Man in the darkest moments of life. The shofar’s sound is an echo of each of our voices in every life situation. Jewish tradition alludes to this when it teaches that the shofar blast known as Teruah could be nine staccato blasts (blow shofar) like a person wailing, or three longer blasts, called Shevarim, (blow shofar) like a person sighing heavily in sadness. Originally, the number of shofar blasts required during Rosh Hashanah was a mere thirty, but over time the custom developed to blow a hundred notes on the shofar in public each day of the holiday. Later interpreters of Jewish practice explained the hundred shofar blasts by comparing them rather imaginatively to the hundred cries of a woman in active labor. Situated at that most awesome, painful, beautiful moment of helping her newborn to transition from the womb to being in the world, she cries out with the recognition that new life is beginning, and that all life will ultimately end. So too, as the new year is born, we listen to the shofar cry out in our behalf, as we cry out for life, and give voice to the sobering truth that mortality will catch up with some of us in the year to come, and all of us eventually.

When we consider the role of the voice and speech in the history of human evolution, we should not be surprised that Jewish religion would establish such a powerful connection between our voices, our deepest thoughts, emotions, and even actions, and the shofar. Jared Diamond, the renowned scientist and social critic, points out that even though modern human beings evolved and diverged physically from our cousins, the chimps, a million years ago, our great leap forward as full human beings only happened a mere forty thousand years ago: a blip on the timeline of human and natural history. What made this happen were evolutionary changes in our heads and necks that allowed us to use our voices to speak and develop language. Once we could speak and communicate with each other, human creativity and ability leaped forward, securing our place as the most powerful –and simultaneously the most destructive- of all species. Diamond points out that we share with our closest primate cousins almost everything in our genetic make up, except for this singular gift of meaningful speech. With it comes the almost limitless capacity to make free choices by being able to give voice to every thought and to understand and respond to the thoughts of others. But the dark, often demonic, side of this great leap forward is the monstrous human capacity to use our unfettered power to silence the voices of other people and other species. For example: I recently learned that cultures at war with each other have been committing acts of genocide for millennia, not merely since the 20th century. Another example: I recently learned that, well before they had contact with European colonialism and industry, native cultures from North America to the south Pacific islands were already mindlessly annihilating hundreds of species of animals for thousands of years in their quest for food, leading gradually to the slow deterioration of our global environment that we in the West have merely catalyzed. A final example: I recently learned that the current yawning gap between the powerful voices of the world’s wealthiest nations and the near silence and powerlessness of vast segments of Asia and Africa is due, not entirely, but in part to the blind accidents of history and geography. Societies in the right climates that were blessed with animals and crops they could cultivate, became the victors who have taken the spoils for thousands of years in a grossly uneven global competition for food, resources and power that continues today.

Theoretically, all human beings possess equal potential to make their voices heard –to plead and protest their case before family, community, society and the world, to attain and possess power, security, comfort. Yet, paraphrasing what the animals of George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm taught us so cynically: some human animals have the tools, the luck, and the power to be more equal than others. This is the depressing, despairing truth about being human, a truth that is cemented by the sad realities of human greed, aggression and short sightedness. In the great cacophony of our planet’s many peoples, communities, classes, and nations, the voices of some shout down or drown out the voices of others. That is why this seemingly tame musical ritual of blowing shofar on the day commemorating the world’s creation grabs us by the soul and will not let us go. Every musical note blasted from the shofar represents a voice of some human being crying, shrieking the demand –“Here I am, don’t ignore me!-“ into the vast space between that person’s lips, the world’s ears, and ultimately, the attention of God. These crying voices abound.

There are the nearly silenced voices of countless women and girls in the developing world who are brutally repressed by religiously motivated terror, physical abuse, sexual slavery, and the status of chattel conferred upon them by the men in their societies. Read the unbelievable book, Half the Sky, by prize winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn, to learn these women’s stories and to hear their voices. Find out from them what you can do –as a Jew, as a human being- to give them back their voices through various strategies of empowerment and Western support.

There are the nearly silenced voices of disadvantaged children from neighborhoods no more than two miles away from us in our own city, who could just as well be dwelling in another galaxy. They brush shoulders with many of our children in the halls of the middle schools and the local high school, but the equalities and similarities mostly end there. How many of these children possess the deep potential to add their voices of creativity, insight, leadership, and courage to the ongoing dialogue of society? How many of them are born, will live, and die in voiceless, dead end poverty because of parental neglect, a subculture that tells them education is meaningless, the persistence of racism, and governments at all levels that don’t listen to them because poor people lack political clout?

There are the nearly silenced voices of our friends, neighbors, colleagues, teachers, students, and fellow congregants who suffer quietly or wordlessly what the renowned psychiatrist and rabbi, Abraham Twerski calls the shame borne in silence: domestic violence at the vicious hands of family members and other people in positions of physical and emotional power. The old, emotionally numbing self deceptions that domestic violence and sexual abuse don’t happen in the Jewish community have been long discredited. It is time to listen much more carefully to the voices of the Hagars and Yishmaels who are right under our noses.

There are the nearly silenced voices of hundreds of species of living things the world over that are nearing mass extinction not because of natural selection but because of our environmental short sightedness. I am no Neo-Luddite. I believe and participate in the blessings that technology, science and industry have brought and can bring to the lives of every person on this planet. But biodiversity and global environmental health cannot continue to be the poorer cousins of progress; if so, we might as well say goodbye now to this planet on which our attempts at human advancement will become utterly futile, as we destroy the fragile, elegant balances of life and nature that sustain us. We, our captains of industry, and our leaders need to listen as one to those voices of warning. We are coming dangerously close to what the ecologist Rachel Carson called the Silent Spring.

There are the nearly silenced voices of the lonely people who live alongside of us in the midst of our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our public spaces. They appear to be at the center, yet they feel marginalized and ignored because of the deaths of loved ones, the ravages of divorce, our society’s polite obsession with privacy, and the devastating, uprooting effects of mobility upon families and communities.

You know, this year our synagogue theme is “100 Years, 100 Voices.” We are rightly and proudly celebrating our 100th anniversary of existence and achievement as a sacred Jewish community. Throughout this year to come and well into next year, we will explore the many voices – that is, the people and ideas- that have made our congregation a wonderful place over the last 100 years. Together we will explore 100 of the greatest ideas, values, practices, people and events that have made, and that make, Judaism and the Jewish experience so meaningful. I want to expand our theme a little bit: I want to challenge each of us to make this the Year Of the Shofar, a year in which we find some way to be a resounding, piercing voice of advocacy, of compassion, of protest, of caring for at least one other person or community. We will offer at least 100 different ways for you to find your voice within Judaism and this Jewish community this coming year, and some of them will be in the form of being a voice for others. For example, over the years, our congregation has been growing a collective voice in behalf of people in the wider community who cannot make their voices heard sufficiently because they lack the power and resources to do so. Get active in the programs of our social action committee, by bringing food to the synagogue next Friday afternoon as we kick off our Project Isaiah Food Drive prior to Kol Nidre. Find out about how they can help you to contribute to helping the poor and the homeless of our community, and to defending our global environment by guarding our earth, our water, our precious resources here at home. For a number of years, our congregation has been growing a collective voice in behalf of our brothers and sisters who cannot make their voices heard sufficiently because they are challenged by disabilities. Learn more about and help support the truly magnificent work that our preschool and religious school programs do to integrate children with special needs and their families into our school communities and into Jewish life. Make a commitment this coming March to volunteering at our annual seder for people with special needs. Many of our brothers and sisters spend their entire lives in group homes with tremendous personal challenges, at times neglected by their families and easily forgotten by the rest of the world. Imagine yourself helping to bring true joy and a sense of personal liberation to them through the celebration of Passover. But the congregation is not the only place in which to make your voice heard in behalf of others. Some say we are cursed by living in the state capitol, but I would ask us to think differently about this. The Capitol District is home to one of the largest centers of political and social activism in the nation, and our state government’s terrible health notwithstanding, our activist community is alive, robust and thriving. Pick one issue, one concern, one cause that you want to fit into your busy life, and make a difference in the lives of people who lack a powerful voice. You be their voice in your small, modest way. You be their shofar.

In a few moments, we will listen to the shofar blasts of the Musaf service. Each set of blasts is specifically connected to the unique blessings recalling God’s universal dominion, God’s undying remembrance of us and all humanity, and God’s revelation of the Torah amidst the shofar blasts at Mount Sinai. As we listen to those notes, my hope is that we can imagine ourselves as shofarot, ready in mind, body and soul to meet this coming year with courageous voices whose echoes pierce the heavens and bring down the walls of oppression.

HIDING THE FACE?

2010-10-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

Do you remember this experiment with babies that you learned about in developmental psychology class years ago as an undergraduate? Place a brightly colored object like a toy or a bottle in front of a baby’s face. His or her face will of course light up, and if the baby has sufficient dexterity, he or she will reach out and grab it. Now, place a piece of cardboard in front of the object so that the baby can no longer see it. Before the age of about 12 months, the child will quickly lose interest, assuming that the object is no longer there, or perhaps was never there to begin with. From a year of age onward, the child will begin to look for the object, perhaps even growing sad, restless and whiny when he or she cannot find it. Developmental psychologists refer to this phenomenon as object permanence: the cognitive ability to hold something in your memory and even to be able to figure out logically where it may have gone to, when it is no longer in your sight. Object permanence is the reason why young children at a certain age love the game Peek-A-Boo: when I hide my face from the child with whom I am playing, that child knows I am still there behind my hands, and is eagerly anticipating my return. The great psychologist, Jean Piaget, was able to define formally the different stages of cognitive and intellectual development in the life of a human being. He called this earliest stage at which object permanence begins to develop, sensorimotor: from ages 0-2, we are trying to figure out the relationship between ourselves, our bodies, and the world around us. We begin life quite egocentrically, not understanding that we and the world are not the same thing, and that it does not revolve around us. As we grow older, we recognize that the world and its objects are separate from us, and that just because we do not see something does not mean it is not there.

I always think about these developmental insights when I come to the high holiday season and read this double portion, Nitzavim-VaYelekh. This is because of the haunting idea, hastarat panim, the hiding of God’s face, that is found in the parshah and in psalm 27, the psalm for the high holidays. In Deuteronomy 31, after Moses warns the people about the consequences for violating the covenant, God tells him: “…My anger will flare up against them, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them…And they shall say on that day, ‘Surely it is because our God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us.’ Yet I will keep My face hidden on that day, because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods.” Torah commentators are generally of two minds about what hiding God’s face is. Some, like Rashi, say that God is threatening to ignore the people and to refrain from watching over them. Others, like the early Targumim (who translated the Torah into Aramaic) say that God is threatening literally to remove God’s presence from the people. The first interpretation focuses on the psychological dimensions of God’s absence: the feeling that we are abandoned. The second focuses on the ontological –or spiritual- dimensions of God’s absence: the fact that God has abandoned us. Whatever the hiding of God’s face means, for the Torah, it is the result of the Israelites’ decision to worship and serve other gods, a punishment for their behavior.

Psalm 27 takes a different approach to the hiding of God’s face. After telling us that God literally hides him in the hiddenness of God’s tent (yastireini b’seter ohalo) from his enemies, the psalmist turns to God with plaintive desperation: “To you my heart says, ‘Seek my face!’ O Lord, I seek Your face. Do not hide Your face from me; do not thrust aside Your servant in anger; You have ever been my help, do not forsake me, do not abandon me, O God, my deliverer.” For the psalmist, God’s hiding of God’s face is a source of terror, the adult spiritual equivalent of a child experiencing the most primitive separation anxiety when his or her parent walks away. There is no morally causal reason for the hiding of God’s face, no explanations are to be found in the individual’s behavior: after all, the psalmist is called God’s servant, hardly a term for someone who has sinned against God.

Whichever of these interpretations and contexts for understanding Hastarat Panim we connect with, we are still missing an important piece of the puzzle that the idea of object permanence can help us to find. Note what is implied in these both of these scriptural passages: the hiding of God’s face is real and effective because we experience it as such. Paradoxically, we are bereft and terrified at God’s hiddenness precisely because, like the child who has learned object permanence, we expect God to be there, always, behind the hiddenness. In fact, unlike the young infant who loses interest in the bright object behind a screen, we know that God is there, even as we seek God out in such desperation. So, whether we do wrong and alienate ourselves from God, or we just feel terribly disconnected and hidden from life, God is there always, and always waiting with love, patience, and compassion. Our perceptions of God’s fluid presence and absence are the result of our many experiences. Our deeper perceptions of God’s permanence lie just beneath them, waiting for us to take them out and affix them as wings that carry us home to God. Shabbat shalom.

Old Friends, Book Ends (D'var Torah For Parashat Shoftim 5770)

2010-08-26T03:06:00.000-07:00

Do you remember this opening stanza of Simon and Garfunkel’s classic song, “Old Friends”?

Old friends, old friends sat on their parkbench like bookends.
A newspaper blowin' through the grass
Falls on the round toes of the high shoes of the old friends.

The song is about two men (perhaps Simon and Garfunkel themselves?) imagining their friendship projected from the position of lively youth many years into the future, when they find themselves much older and lonelier but still together. The song possesses a melancholy beauty, though the rest of its lyrics are somewhat naïve, almost ageist, given the assumptions about aging that the two youthful song writers seemed to have, and given the American youth culture in which they lived.

I actually am not as interested in the song’s treatment of friendship and aging, as in the striking metaphor that it uses: old friends sitting on a park bench like bookends. We could say that this image conveys a kind of deadness and stiffness. After all, bookends may hold in and maintain the shape and position of books, but unlike books, they have no life of their own. Another way to hear this metaphor is this: bookends contain between them the rich breadth and depth of the books that they support; they are a supportive structure and a physical context, without which books lie around and become broken. To the books, those bookends are truly “old friends.”

Let me suggest that to anyone hungry for understanding and wisdom, the beginning and ending sections of this morning’s parashah, Shoftim, are definitely important bookends, and if we allow them to speak to us we will see that they are truly old and trusted friends as well. The first bookend of Shoftim is the all-important theme of justice and some of the rules for its realization: the people of Israel will need a judicial system when they enter the land of Canaan; their judges are forbidden from judging unfairly, from showing partiality, and from taking bribes; we must pursue justice, not wait passively for it to happen to society. The parashah continues with other rules about judges, justice, and the limits of rulers within the rule of law: we are commanded to go to the highest court of the land whenever a case of law is too difficult for us; we may appoint kings to rule over us, but they are bound by specific God given laws, and they must keep a written copy of God’s law with them at all times, to prevent them from grasping too much power; we are only to listen to prophets who speak to us in God’s name when those prophets command us to follow what God has commanded us; in cases of accidental manslaughter, we must provide cities of refuge that protect the killer from the passionate anger of family members of the victim, who would seek to avenge the death of their loved one upon a person who killed without malice. This first bookend of Shoftim is all about justice pursued under the rule of law, with reason and deliberation predominating.

The second bookend of Shoftim, seems to be the exact opposite of the first. It contains a strange passage about a murder victim found in an open field, whose assailant’s identity cannot be determined by normal judicial means of evidence, law and investigation. The same elders and judges who were called upon at the beginning of the parashah to dispense rational, thoughtful justice are now called upon to perform a ritual. Those leaders of the town closest to where the victim was found break the neck of a young heifer over an ever flowing stream. They wash their hands over the animal, and symbolically wash their hands of culpability for the commission of the crime whose injustice they cannot adjudicate and rectify by using the regular apparatus of law. Thus, they cleanse the land and the people of blood that has been shed, for in the minds of our ancestors, the unrequited blood of victims would literally pollute land and society.

In America today, we do not perform rituals like this when a crime cannot be solved or an injustice cannot be rectified. We prefer to focus insistently on our faith in the rational aspects of our laws, judicial proceedings, and judges. After all, we are a democratic, secular society. Are we not fully committed to the idea that the rule of law is supreme, that reasoned investigation will ultimately bring justice, and that our legal system, though imperfect, is the best there is for preserving justice, freedom and human dignity? What do these two bookends, our old friends at each margin of the parashah, seem to be teaching us when they are taken together contextually? Perhaps it is this: the pursuit of justice through law, the courts, fairness, and reasoned application of law is of unparalleled importance: it is the sacred scaffolding upon which our society is founded. But there are times when even the reach of law cannot adequately bring justice; there are times when even those judges and lawmakers charged with dispensing justice according to the rule of law allow people in power to get away with murder, figuratively, if not literally. In those times, Americans and their leaders need rituals -ways of coming together and articulating our sense of injustice- that are comforting and electrifying, religious and secular, personal and communal; they are the ways through which we say to ourselves and each other: “Our hands did not shed this blood, but we still need to cleanse ourselves of the outrages that have occurred by seeing to it that justice and the balances of power are restored.” Only then can the community feel whole and begin to restore justice.

A FROSTY AND STARRY EYED FAITH?

2010-08-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

A FROSTY AND STARRY EYED FAITH?

Stars and other features of the night sky possess tremendous power to stir up in us what our teacher Rabbi Abraham Heschel called radical amazement, that wondrous sense beyond words of being in the presence of endless greatness. We often write about stars and night sky poetically, in our quest to articulate a deeper wisdom we feel when we look up into the heavens at night. Two poems from vastly different times and places emphasize how widespread this human impulse is. The first poem, Stars, by Robert Frost, was written by him early in his career, and published in his first poetry collection, A Boy’s Will, in 1913.

How countlessly they congregate
O'er our tumultuous snow,
Which flows in shapes as tall as trees
When wintry winds do blow!--

As if with keenness for our fate,
Our faltering few steps on
To white rest, and a place of rest
Invisible at dawn,--

And yet with neither love nor hate,
Those stars like some snow-white
Minerva's snow-white marble eyes
Without the gift of sight.

Frost sets the scene vividly for us: we feel as if we are with him, standing outside on a cold, clear snowy night, craning our necks to embrace the breath taking sight of uncountable numbers of stars. Yet that scene is quickly replaced by a brooding, earth bound meditation about the fragility and mortality that await us all. Rather than feel enlivened and excited by the bright winter night sky, Frost imagines those “faltering few steps” that our feet take over the snowy ground as well as through life. Those very steps are “keen for our fate,” they know that they will bring us ultimately to our graves –“a place of rest” that, like the stars themselves, are “invisible at dawn”. What about those majestic stars gazing upon this earthly scene? Like the snow-white marble eyes of a statue of the Roman goddess, Minerva, they are beautiful but blind, stony, detached and impassive. Possessing “neither love nor hate”, they “look down” upon the world coldly, unable to see, to intervene in, and to feel empathy for human suffering. Frost’s use of the image of Minerva in the last quatrain of the poem is quite significant., The ancient Romans identified her as the goddess of wisdom. (She was the Roman “version” of the Greek goddess, Athena.) The poet seems to belittle the idea of divine wisdom: unlike even the steps of our own feet, God (or “the gods”) utterly lacks consciousness of, and investment in, the human condition. Frost makes this clear in his notes to his first poetic collection, where he writes that Stars is about how “There is no oversight of human affairs.” His alternating sense of wonder and terror at the universe and its spiritual emptiness emerges from the simple act of looking upwards at the night sky. Searching for comfort in its stars that are like God’s eyes, Frost concludes that no One “up there” is watching us with engagement and compassion. Like the “tumultuous snow”, we are blown about by the winds of life, and we are truly alone.

The second poem, known in Hebrew as Maariv Aravim (literally, “God causes the dusk to be dusk”) is perhaps more familiar to us. Like its parallel, Yotzer Or, in Shacharit (morning worship), Maariv Aravim is a Maariv (evening worship) prayer praising God’s creative power as manifested in nature. It is the first brakhah recited prior to the chanting of the Shma. This prayer-poem, whose author is unknown, is quite ancient. The Mishnah (Tractate Brakhot 1:4) refers to it obliquely as the “long brakhah” (one that begins and ends with all or part of the Barukh Attah Adonai formula) that is the first to be read in the evening before the Shma. The Mishnah was edited by Rabbi Judah the Prince in the 3rd century CE, and he drew upon even more ancient oral traditions. The translation below is taken partly from the new Siddur Sim Shalom, with some modifications by me. I have written it out in poetic form:

Praised are You, Adonai our God, Who rules the universe:

Whose word brings the evening dusk.
Who opens with wisdom the gates of dawn,
Designs the day with wondrous skill,
Sets the succession of seasons,
And arranges the stars in the sky
According to His will.

Adonai Tzevaot is His name.

God creates day and night,
Rolling light away from darkness,
And darkness away from light.
God causes the day to pass by
And brings on the night,
Distinguishing between day and night.

May the eternal God rule over us forever.
Praised are You, Adonai, Who brings on the evening dusk.

Unlike Frost’s Stars, this prayer-poem is filled with divine wisdom, engaged, active divine participation in the world, and (by extension), plenty of oversight of human affairs. Maariv Aravim forms a triad with the two brakhot that come after it, all three of which encompass the biblical words of the Shma. This triad emphasizes the three ways in which, according to Judaism, we experience God’s presence in the world: through creation, through revelation of the Torah, and through God’s historical redemption of the Jewish people. Note the rich use of metaphors that invoke images from the original creation story found in Genesis. God’s word brings on the evening, God opens the gates of the heavens, designs the days, rolls away light from darkness and darkness from light, orders the stars in their celestial courses, and sets the seasonal patterns. All of this God does with wisdom and with wondrous skill as the Lord of Hosts and the ever living Ruler. We might assume that everything in the night sky is the result of a one-time creative divine act; since that original moment of the world’s birth, the world has run on its own energy, blindly and without purpose. Not so, asserts the poet of Maariv Aravim. Whether read in Hebrew or in English, the prayer-poem’s verbs are all in the present tense, to assert forcefully that the work of creation is now and is God’s. Further, our supposedly distant royal Creator is addressed twice in the intimate second person, in a manner hardly similar to a “snow white Minerva [statue]…without the gift of sight.”

Like Stars, Maariv Aravim is poetry, not a scientific account of astronomical truth. It echoes a discredited ancient world view of a flat earth at the center of the universe, capped by a domed sky, with the sun crossing over it from east to west until, at evening time, God opens a gate in that dome to let the sun hide away until dawn. So too, Frost uses images of the stars as heavenly eyes and of the goddess Minerva as a celestial ruler, which are also based upon discredited ancient ideas. However, we do not need to believe literally in a Roman pantheon looking down unfeelingly upon the earth to grasp Frost’s point about human loneliness and futility. We also do not have to accept our ancestors’ ideas about natural science to appreciate their richly poetic responses to the night sky. It evoked in them radical amazement and a deeply faithful sense of God’s active, powerful presence in the world: a sense they wanted to evoke in us as well.

A simple analysis of these two poems regards them as irreconcilable polar opposites: Stars represents atheistic despair, while Maariv Aravim represents faith and hope in an active, caring God. That is not an incorrect approach, but I believe a more subtle spiritual perspective is also in order. Though Jewish religious sources have never come close to denying God’s existence, the experience of God’s (howbeit temporary) absence from our lives is a regular feature of Jewish theology and spiritual writing. The most ancient biblical sources such as Deuteronomy 31, Psalm 13, Job and Lamentations are very much at home with this aspect of the human spiritual condition. The great Hasidic master, Nahman of Breslov, spoke extensively about the dialectical tension between closeness to and distance from God that resolves itself in an ever higher religious consciousness. Finally, the theologian, Rabbi Yitzchak Greenberg, writes about the idea of “moment faith”, in which our experience of God has to fluctuate between deep intimacy and a despairing feeling of absence. There are times when the world’s and our lives’ cold realities lead us to look at the snow swirling (literally and figuratively) around us, to look up at the stars in the night sky and to see nothing but cosmic blindness. Those feelings are not right or wrong, they simply are how we will sometimes experience life. Judaism understands and respects this. However, when we find ourselves in those moments of despair and suffering, Judaism also cries out to us to take a leap of faith that God is with us, that the world has order, and that life has purpose, no matter how much we hurt. It invites us to look up at those same stars in the night sky, and to see God arranging everything in it with the gentleness of a parent putting away her sleeping child’s toys at the end of the day, as she prepares him for the dawn with its fresh possibilities.

(c) 2010 by Rabbi Dan Ornstein

Moses: Judge And Lover

2010-07-18T04:14:00.000-07:00

MOSES: JUDGE AND LOVER.

Dvar Torah For Parshat Devarim, Shabbat Hazon: Third Of The Tlata D’Puranuta, 5770.

From the very beginning of Deuteronomy, the Moses that we encounter is a contradictory man who defies what we have known about him previously. All through Exodus, our law giver has shunned the role of public speaker, preferring to hand that task to his brother, Aaron. The reason for his reticence? Exodus 4:10 tells us the whole story. Desperately attempting to get out of God’s charge to him to go to Pharaoh and demand the release of the Israelite slaves, Moses begs: “Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” After a bit more haggling with God, God appoints Moses’ brother to be his mouthpiece, and Moses is then dispatched to a life of leadership, struggle and nation building. Fast forward from that moment at the Burning Bush when Moses complained about his oratorical disabilities to this very first verse in Deuteronomy: “These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.” Note what is so significant about this verse. Moses, the man who is not a man of words, addresses an entire assembly of over a million people with words. The Hebrew words, devarim (words) and dibber (addressed) are grammatically related, thus intensifying the meaning of what is happening here: Moses is about to pour out a profusion of words, specifically words of warning, admonition, complaint and judgment upon the motley and rambunctious Israelites prior to his death and their entrance into the promised land. Not only that, Moses –the same man who is slow of speech and tongue- will speak to his charges for a total of 33 long, eloquent, and haranguing chapters, all in God’s name! (Note of course that throughout Deuteronomy we never hear what the people think about his speeches. Is it that, like the overly long rabbinic sermon, his words simply made everyone go to sleep? We’ll come back to that question, maybe.)

Clearly, words matter to Deuteronomy, and placing them in the mouth of Moses is of the greatest importance. What we see as a contradiction between the Moses of Exodus and the Moses of Deuteronomy may in fact be that. Scholarly consensus identifies Deuteronomy as a book that was composed and edited later than the first four books of the Torah and then appended to the Torah during the age of religious reform of the Judean king, Josiah, around 621 BCE. However, that historical fact does not do justice to the inspired religious and literary purposes of whoever attached Deuteronomy. Whatever the histories of her respective sources, the Torah as she stands is a literary and spiritual unity. The Moses who reluctantly accepts his mission, then gives the people God’s law, then begins to burn out as the Israelite trek wears on for forty years, is the Moses who now will reflect upon his life, the failings of the Israelites, and his insights about how the people can succeed in the promised land as a people of God. He is a man with one last opportunity to tell this people he loves so much, how angry they make him and God at times. And tell them he will.

From the very beginning of his final addresses to the people, Moses does sound like a man haranguing and judging them, quite harshly. This morning, only 12 verses into his first address, we read these words of his to Israel, at Deuteronomy 1:12: “How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden and the bickering?” Note that this verse, in Hebrew, begins with the word Eichah, “how?” You may have noticed that it was sung using the tune of the book of Eichah, also known as Lamentations, that we will read on Monday night at Tisha B’Av services: a not too subtle reminder that the people who tried Moses so sorely in the desert later wound up in exile from the land of Canaan as a result of their sinfulness. For the following 33 chapters, Moses will really annoy them about worshipping only one God, remembering their earlier backsliding, preparing to live according to the covenant, and accepting that they will likely fail at doing what God wants anyway. Like an emotionally abusive parent whose child can never do right, Moses does not exactly seem to be interested in warm nurturance and positive reinforcement. He is all judgment all the time.

But this analysis of Moses’ relationship with the Israelites, even and especially at the end of his long life and tortured dealings with them, barely scratches the surface. Moses could never have spoken to the children of Israel this way effectively were there not something much deeper to their relationship that gave his words credibility. Consider the insight of our rabbis who commented upon this first verse of Deuteronomy, which is found in the great midrashic compilation, Devarim Rabbah:

The words of rebuke and judgment found in Deuteronomy really should have been spoken by Bilaam the prophet, who was originally sent to curse the people of Israel. The blessings that Bilaam gave them back in the book of Numbers really should have been spoken by Moses, their leader! However, had Bilaam rebuked and judged them, the Israelites would have dismissed him, saying, “Of course Bilaam’s berating us. He hates us!” Had Moses blessed them, the nations of the world would have scoffed at him, saying, “Of course Moses is blessing them. He’s one of them, so he’s biased towards them and he loves them! Thus God decreed that Moses their lover should rebuke and judge them, while Bilaam who hated them should bless them. (Devarim Rabbah 1:4)

Recall, of course, that Bilaam is the non-Israelite prophet and magician sent by the Moabite king Balak to curse and destroy the Israelites. He ultimately blesses them because, as he warns Balak, he can only speak what God puts into his mouth. Later biblical and rabbinic traditions cast Bilaam not as a hapless hired gun, but as a person who actively hates the Israelites. He is the perfect person to bless them in this reversal of fortune. Yet what is most significant about this rabbinic teaching is the way it applies good political and psychological insight to talking about rebuke and judgment between people: to avoid others’ accusations of gushing bias, you want to show that you can criticize the folks you love for their shortcomings, even more than the folks you hate. Even more important, your judgment of others can only possess the highest credibility and human authenticity when you do it out of genuine love. It is easy to tell off the people in your life for whom you have no use or who are your enemies, but such judgment often carries little moral or spiritual weight with it, weighed down as it is by bias. It is much harder to criticize those you love, yet only with love as the basis for a real relationship can your more harshly critical words have any value or impact. This certainly seems to underlie the sharp critiques by the prophet Isaiah of the people of Israel in the haftarah that we are about to read. After chastising them for their sins, and calling them to do justice, God has Isaiah tell the people: “Come let us reach an understanding. Be your sins like crimson, they can turn snow white. Be they red as dyed wool they can become like fleece!” (Isaiah 1:18) God and Isaiah speak in judgment with the people because their judgmental words emerge from real love, passion, and investment in their well being.

In our own lives, we learn over and over again that judgment and criticism have to be balanced with rahamim, mercy and compassion for the person we are critiquing, that is founded upon love and respect for that person. Certainly, there are many times when judgment and criticism can be excessive, and when a great deal more compassionate and humble understanding of a person’s actions and attitudes is called for, and when we would do well not to be so quick to judge. However, a truly authentic moral choice for human beings is not only between total neutrality and excessive judgmentalism. That is a simplistic pseudo-choice concocted by a culture that often wants to live by the relativistic motto of “everything goes.” Like Moses, we human beings who are defined by loving relationship can also carefully choose between criticism of others that is based upon love and respect, and criticism that seeks only to hurt and denigrate. As we approach these final days before Tisha B’Av, may we learn from the words of our teacher Moses, who judged us precisely because he loved us and wanted the best for us. Shabbat shalom.

Microfinancing Zelophehad's Daughters

2010-07-11T05:33:00.000-07:00

MICROFINANCING THE DAUGHTERS OF ZELOPHEHAD.

Dvar Torah For Parshat Matot/Masei and Second Week Of Tlata D’Puranuta 5770/2010.

The story of the daughters of Zelophehad that we read in last week’s Torah portion, comes back to haunt us this week in an inverted way. Recall what we learned in Parshat Pinchas. As Moses is preparing the Israelites for entering and conquering the promised land, five women –the daughters of a man named Zelophehad- approach Moses with an unprecedented concern. The inheritance rules given to the people by God privilege sons over daughters. Only sons inherit their fathers’ estates. But the daughters pose a unique problem: they have no brothers to inherit their deceased father. Is it fair that his property and legacy should be lost because they, his descendants, are forbidden from inheriting him? This is one of four “on-the-spot” cases that are brought to Moses and God in the book of Numbers, generally as complaints, because they present the potential for injustice and unfairness. God addresses the daughters’ complaint by ruling that in a case of a man who has only daughters, his estate reverts to them upon his death. At the very end of Parshat Masei that we just read, the leaders of Zelophehad’s tribe approach Moses on the eve of entering the land of Canaan and press the matter of his daughters’ inheritance in the other direction: if these five women, and other women in the tribe, inherit their fathers’ estates then marry out of the tribe, the tribe’s property holdings will be diminished. Once again, God engages in an on-the-spot ruling that the daughters are only to marry within the tribe itself, so that the tribal property will be maintained. The book of Numbers ends with the five daughters marrying their cousins within their clan.

As I have mentioned in the past, these two stories about Zelophehad’s daughters fascinate me because they show us how even God, as it were, has not anticipated each real life situation of injustice encountered by the Israelites that requires rectification. Even God has to be moved by the complaints of human beings who see an injustice being created inadvertently. Back in Genesis, Abraham challenged the Judge of all the earth to act justly by distinguishing the righteous from the evil citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah before punishing the cities. Here in Numbers, the same challenge to God to rectify potential injustices is brought up, howbeit on a smaller scale. Continuing this theme of human beings alerting God to potential injustices, note of course that God only modifies the ruling about the daughters’ inheritance rights with respect to their marriages after their tribe complains.

As I noted last week, this is not the feminist text that some would like to read it as. The daughters do not press their case with Moses as an issue of fairness to women: “Why should we not be able to inherit like the men? Aren’t we as good as any brother?” They pose their question to Moses in order, ostensibly, to achieve justice for the memory and honor of their deceased father. Further, what we would think of as the ultimate injustice –that daughters were not allowed to inherit equally with sons- is never really addressed in this story at all. Nor is it ever rectified in later Halakhah, even though in much of the ancient world women did inherit equally with men. Nonetheless, as the basis for a discussion about Judaism and women’s empowerment, our story is remarkable, given the boldness of these daughters in even making their case before Moses and God. I believe that this is the only case of bold women pressing God directly for justice in the five books of Moses. Generally when biblical female characters advocate for themselves or for others, they do so surreptitiously, well behind the scenes, and as it were, behind the backs of God and men.

What more can we take away from this unique story about the proactivity of Zelophehad’s daughters? Is it there to teach us more than what we have analyzed? Though what I am about to say is admittedly a midrashic stretch, I think its spirit has a basis in the bold spirit of these women as narrated by the Torah. I imagine the following scene. Zelophehad has died, as the Torah tells us in Numbers , ch.27, because of his sinful behavior, something that his daughters make very clear to Moses and the community. Later rabbinic commentators identify Zelophehad with the man who was put to death for violating Shabbat, a story found back in Numbers , ch. 15. The daughters pick up from shivah, grieving, distraught, and humiliated. They are now tainted as a family by daddy’s public behavior and execution, they lose pedigree that will help them to find husbands, and worse yet, they have no property rights. Soon enough, the males in the family will grab everything, leaving them even less empowered than they already are. Surely, the God who commanded their community to love one’s neighbor and to protect the orphan and the widow would not want them to lose their one source of empowering livelihood—the ancestral property of their father! With that land, they can grow their own food, make money, and support themselves. However, no matter how just God may be, the men in the community are very set in their traditions, especially when it comes to women inheritance rights. The daughters huddle one night. “Look, we know what we need to have happen here, but if we argue this with Moses in our own behalf, he’ll never go for it. He simply lacks God’s expansive vision for equality and justice, as great a man as he is. Besides, the community overall will have too many problems with this. We need to frame this demand of ours as being about daddy: how can the community allow his name to be utterly obliterated just because he was unlucky enough to only have girls?” The next day, they call out Moses and the community. God, Who wants these women to have real earning power, but Who also knows that even He can’t change a community’s attitudes over night, gives Moses the ruling. A man dies, leaving only daughters? Let them inherit his property. Yes, Zelophehad’s tribe will come back and complain about the negative effects this may have on their property holdings, but God will deal with that later. For now, five women have taken one small step forward in preserving their family’s livelihood with God’s backing. This is my modern midrashic take on the story.

In a world very much controlled by a male power structure, the daughters needed courage, ingenuity, and a lot of help from God to secure their father’s property for their well being. We should not think that the reality for women is all that different in many parts of the world today; if anything, it has always been much worse for women and their children, especially in vast parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, than it had ever been for them in the times of the Torah, a book that does care deeply about loving one’s fellow human beings. In their powerful book, Half the Sky, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn describe the hideous treatment of women in a good part of the developing world today. They are often viewed as subhuman compared with men, they have no real access to health care, no political rights, and most of all they lack the two things that actually give them status in their largely rural communities: property on which to grow crops, and resources to make money by starting their own modest businesses. The authors advocate strongly for an empowerment tool for these women –and many poor men as well- that is both simple and very Jewish: microfinance, which is the brain child of Nobel Peace Prize winner Mohammed Yunus, a Pakistani economist. Yunus realized that the best way to empower poor women economically and emotionally is to give them small loans to build businesses, grow food, or stabilize their families so they can build their earning power. Since the time that he developed this practice through his Grameen Bank, microfinance has “gone viral”. Its benefits to poor but proactive women are obvious: like Zelophehad’s daughters, they don’t just get hand outs from government or private sources, they get tools for taking care of themselves and their families in the dignified form of loans that they can pay back after making money. With increased earning power, their status in their villages and towns increases –thus bettering their lives with the men among whom they live. Its benefit to you and me, Western benefactors, is the incredibly small amount of invested –not donated- money it takes to help them. My family recently made a modest investment with Kiva, a major, reputable clearing house for microloans, to six entrepreneurs and business groups in Africa and Asia, many of whom are women or made up of women. Together with others around the world, we are lending them amounts, which to Westerners, are very low, but to them will make all the difference between chronic poverty and self subsistence. This kind of lending also gives them the ability to contribute to their nations’ emerging free market economies, something that can only make them stronger. Finally, in case this was not clear, microfinance is exactly what our teacher, Maimonides, was talking about when he taught that the highest level of Tzedakah is when you lend money or give a job to a needy person. By doing this, you are restoring his or her independent earning power and dignity.

One of the best things to do during these three weeks of contrition and sadness leading down to the Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning and fasting, is to do mitzvot that help others, thus contributing to the redemption of one small piece of the world. I strongly recommend that you think about the traditional mitzvah of microfinance as one way of making a difference in the world. Kiva.org and American Jewish World Service’s website at AJWS.org can tell you more about how to do this. The daughters of Zelophehad could easily have despaired themselves into a cycle of endless poverty and misery, following the death of the most powerful male in their lives. Instead they took a small but significant action, with God’s support, an action that provides us with an empowerment model for all people –women and men- throughout the world today. We have a positive role to play in helping the modern day daughters of Zelophehad. Let us do our best to play that role.

A Paradoxical Peace

2010-07-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

A PARADOXICAL PEACE.

Dvar Torah For Parshat Pinchas, First of Tlata D’Puranuta, 5770/4th of July Weekend, 2010.

Often when I deliver a d’var Torah, I point out grammatical anomalies in the Torah scroll – strange or out of place words, phrases, and grammatical features that hint at some deeper message or teaching. Certainly, many of these anomalies abound. However, equally prominent and suggestive in the Torah text are what I call orthographic anomalies: the strange ways in which letters, words, paragraphs, and verses are actually spelled or written. In the brief course of a mere 13 verses, the first aliyah of Parshat Pinchas contains three of these strange features. Let’s look at each of them and ask ourselves what they may be teaching us, separately and together. Unfortunately, our version of the Humash has expunged a number of these features to make the text cleaner. As I guide you through each of them, I ask you to imagine what they look like. After services, I’ll be happy to show them to you in the Torah scroll itself.

The first anomaly is found at Numbers, 25:11, which you can find on page 918. Notice the name of Aaron’s grandson, Pinchas. Though you can’t see it here, in the Torah scroll the yud letter in his name is written smaller than the other letters. Though it may have originated as a scribal error, it has persisted as the standard way in which to write his name here. It is known in ancient scribal tradition as a Yud Zeirah, a miniature yud. Further, that yud letter is actually not entirely necessary for the spelling of the name. This is an example of ketiv malei, or full script, a full writing of the name Pinchas that uses the yud letter as a vowel. Without that letter, we could still pronounce the name Pinchas properly.

The second anomaly is found in the last word of Numbers, 25:12, shalom, which is on page 919. Again, our Humash version lacks this, so please imagine that you can see it. In the Torah scroll, the vav letter of the word shalom is actually split in half. It is known in scribal tradition as Vav Ketiyah, a snapped or broken vav. This broken vav may also have originally been a scribal error or the result of a crack in ancient parchment. Nonetheless, the tradition of writing this letter in this way is very ancient (it is mentioned by a Talmudic rabbi who lived in the 3rd or 4th century), and it obviously has stuck with us for millennia.

The final anomaly is found in the middle of Numbers, 25:19 and 26:1, on page 920. Our Humash clearly indicates this strange feature with a small star near the final word of verse 19, and by leaving out a colon next to that word that would normally indicate the completion of a verse. This is called Piska B’Emtza Pasuk: a sentence break in the middle of the verse. What this means is that the three words of 25:19 are actually the middle of a sentence, but we treat them as if they were their own separate verse. They form what grammarians call a dependent clause that, translated, reads simply, “When the plague was over…”

All three of these curiosities in our text are emphasized by the Baalei Hamesorah, the very exacting schools of scribal scholars who lived in the land of Israel between the 8th and 10th centuries. They assembled literally thousands of notes on features of the Torah scroll’s script and wording based upon even older traditions that have survived in the Jewish community for millennia. As I alluded to before, what is so amazing about these three is that they are all found in one short 13 verse passage of Parshat Pinchas. What might they be telling us, or more likely, screaming at us?

A good way to begin answering this question is to recall the back story to this morning’s Torah portion. Last week we read about how Pinchas engaged in vigilante justice by killing an Israelite chieftain who engaged in lascivious behavior with a Midianite woman in front of the Tent of Meeting. He did this to avert a virulent plague caused by God that was already in progress, the result of God’s anger at the Israelites for idolatrous behavior with the Midianites. When we reentered the Torah this morning, we encountered God granting Pinchas and his descendants a pact of peace and friendship, as well as the mantle of the priesthood in perpetuity. God did this, according to the Torah, because of Pinchas’es act of impassioned and zealous violence that calmed down God’s fury with the Israelites.

The comments in our Humash summarize the two main explanations for this covenant of peace and friendship given by God to Pinchas. The first one, that the Torah and a number of later commentaries on it, makes clear that God’s violent anger was averted by Pinchas’es violence. Presumably this is because Pinchas satisfied God’s need for one person to empathically feel and act upon God’s fury. It may also be that his curative act of violence is an echo of a distant, ancient belief that the two victims were some kind of a sacrificial offering to appease God. This is pure speculation on my part. However, it is clear that without Pinchas’es belligerent behavior, God would have continued plaguing and killing the people. For the Torah, his act was thus justified and desirable, even if shocking and unacceptable to our modern ears. Thus, the pact of eternal peace, friendship and favor was Pinchas’es reward. The second explanation is far more qualified in its praise of Pinchas. His passion and violent behavior were not good, because of the bloody destruction they wrought, and the way in which his vigilantism dangerously ignored the rule of law. The pact of eternal peace, friendship and favor was hardly a reward for his behavior, and more of an attempted antidote to his violent tendencies.

These two opposing explanations for God’s grant of peace to Pinchas actually give way to a third, more subtle explanation, one that members of our Monday morning minyan advanced the other day during the weekday Torah service. The Torah is quite clear that God’s wrath was averted when Pinchas killed the man and the woman. 24,000 people had already died from the plague, and Pinchas’es actions saved even more from being killed. He did what needed to be done for the sake of the entire community. However, his necessary act of violence had a horribly disruptive effect upon the rest of his life, because that is the price we pay for acting aggressively, even if the aggression is warranted in the name of peace. Thus, the small yud in his name symbolizes the way in which part of his identity shrunk after his drastic action. The broken vav in the word shalom indicates how broken Pinchas became after he acted, and how the peace he found in serving God and averting disaster was forevermore broken and incomplete. The strange interruption in the verse about the ending of the plague reminds us that Pinchas’es act of self sacrifice interrupted the peaceful flow of his life.

This interpretation of the aftermath of Pinchas’es actions underscores the paradox of peacemaking, something I suspect every soldier understands all too well. It is all well and good to love peace and detest war, which of course we should. But, until the Messiah arrives, military intervention often remains the only feasible option for protecting fragile democracies, thwarting thug leaders who oppress their own people in rogue states, containing genocidal violence between warring groups, and defending one’s borders and one’s citizens. Our American soldiers –and our brothers and sisters in the Israel Defense Forces as well- are similar to Pinchas in the following way. They perform the dirty, hand bloodying tasks of peace keeping that everyone wants done, but that no one else wants to do. They depart from family and friends for long periods of time with no guarantees of safe return. This is traumatic enough. During their tour of duty they are faced with helping Iraqis and Afghanis to build peaceful, democratic lives, while being forced to take their lives into their own hands and to take the lives of terrorists and Taliban. At times they are tragically killed while defending others. At times, they return home broken by the bloodiness of their peacekeeping efforts, and forced into the living death of disabling war injuries, deep depression, drug use and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Right after President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote about the acceptance speech that he wished the president would give. It went like this:
“Members of the Nobel committee, I accept this award on behalf of all these American men and women soldiers, past and present, because I know — and I want you to know — that there is no peace without peacekeepers. Until the words of Isaiah are made true and lasting — and nations never again lift up swords against nations and never learn war anymore — we will need peacekeepers. Lord knows, ours are not perfect, and I have already moved to remedy inexcusable excesses we’ve perpetrated in the war on terrorism. But have no doubt, those are the exception. If you want to see the true essence of America, visit any U.S. military outpost in Iraq or Afghanistan. You will meet young men and women of every race and religion who work together as one, far from their families, motivated chiefly by their mission to keep the peace and expand the borders of freedom. So for all these reasons — and so you understand that I will never hesitate to call on American soldiers where necessary to take the field against the enemies of peace, tolerance and liberty — I accept this peace prize on behalf of the men and women of the U.S. military: the world’s most important peacekeepers.”

This July 4 weekend, as we enjoy, and perhaps take for granted, the blessings of liberty and peace, let’s take a moment to think of, thank, and find ways to support our soldiers. Like Pinchas, they enter the paradox of peacekeeping every day. We are better off for their efforts.

Shavuot Sermon 5770

2010-05-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

NO SHAME WHEN GOD’S FACE IS WITH YOU.
Dvar Torah For Shavuot, Day 1, 5770.

As enigmatic and mysterious as the story of the Sinai revelation is, the content of that revelation –what we call the Ten Commandments- is equally puzzling and mysterious. Consider just a few examples of its enigmatic nature. The first “commandment” is not a commandment at all, but a kind of preamble to the other commandments. In it, God self-identifies as the Redeemer Who took the Israelites out of Egyptian slavery. The last “commandment” does not prohibit behavior, but feelings: you are forbidden from covetously desiring what others have. Finally, these commandments are not even identified as such, but as devarim or dibrot, words or utterances of God, even though functionally they are clearly mitzvot: binding commandments and obligations.

This first morning of Shavuot, I want to focus with you on one of these ten divine utterances that I find most interesting. Let’s look for a moment at the second commandment, specifically the first part of it. Please open Humash Etz Hayyim to page 443, at verse 3:
לא יהיה לך אלהים אחרים על פני:
You shall have no other gods beside Me.

In his classic listing of all 613 commandments, Sefer HaMitzvot, Maimonides lists this one as the very first negative commandment, and as the one that is the anchor for all the others: “By this prohibition, we are forbidden to believe in, or ascribe deity to, any but God, exalted be He. It is contained in His words…’You shall have no other gods beside me.’” What I find troubling about this second of the ten commandments, at least as it is stated by Maimonides, is that –like the prohibition against coveting- it seems to be about what a person thinks or believes, not about what a person does. It does not necessarily possess any behavioral content. Maimonides himself acknowledges this when he teaches elsewhere (MT Hilchot Teshuva ch. 3) that a person who believes in the existence of many gods or deities is branded a min, a heretic who is denied access to the world to come. Implicit in his teaching is the recognition that a traditional court of Jewish law could not punish such a person, mi shum she lo asah maaseh: he or she has not actually done anything prohibited, only thought or believed something that is presumably unacceptable.

The sages of the early rabbinic period, who preceded Maimonides by many centuries, offer a more concrete, behavioral interpretation of this prohibition. They translate “other gods” to mean literally, “the gods of other people”, or “the gods who become like others to their worshippers by being proven worthless,” or even “the gods who transform their worshippers into the other—someone who becomes less than human through enslavement to idolatry.” In other words, God is not prohibiting a personal belief, feeling or thought as much as prohibiting active physical and emotional servitude to false deities. What counts for the sages is the behaviors of false servitude that lead to the spiritually enslaved mentality of false servitude.

Another refreshing way of understanding this second of the Ten Commandments is that it is not a commandment at all, but a promise or a reassurance concerning the results of faith. The popular Hasidic Torah commentary, Noam Megadim explains our verse by first referring us to the very last commandment: do not covet. The author of Noam Megadim asks, how is it that God could require us not to covet? We may not want to feel covetous feelings, but they will sweep over us anyway, against our will. His answer? Do not covet is not a prohibition but a promise: if we follow the first nine commandments and align ourselves with a life of holiness in God’s presence, we will be able to master (not extirpate) that covetous impulse that often results from our belief that we are the center of the world and that we have coming to us everything that we want. So too, “You shall have no other gods besides Me.” Read in a creatively literal way, the Hebrew of our verse can be understood as God saying to us : “You will not have any other gods.. as long as you are in the presence of PANAI, My face.” That is, as long as we discipline ourselves to keep God’s face – God’s immanent presence- right before us, the other false gods won’t become our gods. What gods in particular is the Torah speaking about here? Other human beings who try to coerce a person of faith into embarrassed conformity to their views of the world and perspectives on life: they assume a kind of god-like mastery over many a person who is seeking a life in God’s presence but who is made to feel stupid, backward, or humiliated because he or she dares to embrace a life of religious values and consciousness.

I am no fan of extremes, whether they be of the religious or the secular variety, and I certainly have no use for the way that extremists of either camp carry truth with a capital T in their pockets, attempting to denigrate others who do not share their worldviews. Like you, I am terrified by the way a small but virulent group of young Muslims are using Islam as the match that lights weapons of terror and mass destruction against innocent human beings. Admittedly in a different way, though with growing concern, I fear how growing number of secular thinkers are reacting to religious extremism. Rather than focus critically on what has become corrupted and dangerous in organized religion, they are throwing out the spiritual baby with the political bath water by condemning all religious faith, all religious community and values, and all mention of God, as backward and toxic. With an almost puritanical fervor borne of understandable fear, they are developing a rhtetoric of anti-religion that is just one more false god seeking to cow adherents of religious tradition into silence by branding all of us adherents of dangerous fundamentalism. They do no justice to the wisdom and insights of millennia of religious teaching and quest; they also do no justice to the billions of truly decent human beings whose decency derives in great part from religious living.

The teachings of the Noam Megadim are especially applicable in responding to both forms of extremism. To religious extremists we need to say: “Your fervor for God needs to be balanced with respect for God’s laws that require you to treat all of God’s creations with respect.” To secular extremists we need to say: “Your fervor for law and freedom needs to be balanced with a humble recognition that these great traditions of law and liberty have their sources in the even greater traditions of religion.” To ourselves, as religious modernists seeking to contribute spiritually and morally to promoting peace and human rights, we need to say: place the God of peace and justice before you every day; make God –however you understand God- the basis of your decision to live in the world and better it; and recognize that, all the false gods of human arrogance and contempt notwithstanding, you have nothing for which to be ashamed, when God is facing you.

Passover Sermons 5770

2010-04-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

IN EVERY GENERATION, PART 3: HALLELUYAH!

Dvar Torah For Day Eight Pesach/Yiskor 5770.

Everyone, say Halleluyah! Don’t be shy, all it means is, “Praise God!” What… you don’t believe in God, or you’re not sure you do? You don’t like overt, maybe over the top, expressions of piety? You think that shouting Halleluyah is sanctimonious, posturing, self promoting, religiously preening, hypocritical? You think that you dare not shout Halleluyah when you’re a nothing, a humble nobody? Huh, look who thinks he or she is a nobody! Come on, get out of your comfort zone, stop rationalizing, live a little. Your life may not be perfect, you may even be quite unhappy right now, you may be a confirmed atheist, you may not be feeling well, you may think that this little exercise is leading us right down the path to being a…Baptist church…but so what? Stretch your vocal chords and your spirit, move your body and shout Halleluyah! Let me hear you! Halleluyah!

How ironic that a word like Halleluyah, an authentically Jewish word that comes from, and is found all over, our Bible, should be so uncomfortable for Jews to say with passion and gusto. Some of this is the result of our overall discomfort with emotion laden spiritual expression. Yet, I think that we are also uncomfortable with shouting Halleluyah because we have bought the myth that it is something that Christians do, not us. How untrue this is. Please look with me at a famous passage from the Mishnah, Judaism’s oral tradition, Tractate Pesahim, 10:5; this is a passage we have been studying together since the Shabbat preceding Pesach.

Rabban Gamliel said: “Whoever has not referred to these three matters connected to the Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (to tell the Passover story), and these are they: Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.
Passover: because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.
Unleavened bread: because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt.
Bitter herbs: because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said (in the Torah), “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)’”
Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise, glorify, honor, exalt, extol, and bless the One who performed for our ancestors and for us all these miracles. God brought us forth from:
Slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption.
So, we should say before God Halleluyah (that is, the psalms of Hallel, Ps. 113-118.)”

As we have been learning throughout Pesach, this teaching of Rabban Gamliel is found in its entirely in the Passover Haggadah. In the first two parts of the passage, he reminds us to talk about the ancient Passover sacrifice with its accompanying matzah and bitter herbs, so that we relive that great feast at the seder, even if we can no longer perform it ourselves. Further, our teacher asks us to place ourselves at the scene of that very first seder when, as slaves about to become free, we offered that very first paschal sacrifice in grateful preparation for liberation. Then, notice that Rabban Gamliel concludes with one more instruction. Because we owe God a huge debt of gratitude and praise for transforming us into free people, we should chant before God the Halleluyah psalms of the Hallel prayer, also known as the Egyptian Hallel because it thanks God for redeeming us from there. (In fact, Hallel is sung in two segments as part of the seder service according to the traditional Haggadah.)

I imagine Rabban Gamliel as a Baptist preacher shouting “Halleluyah, praise the Lord!” to his congregants in the pews. He jumps up and down, with sweat streaming from his beet red face as the faithful get riled up, catch the spirit, fall down, start writhing on the floor and speaking in tongues. For all we know, the context of his teaching was something akin to this: he wanted his fellow Jews not only to practice the rituals of the seder as if they were in that exact moment of liberation from Egypt. He also wanted them to feel the exhiliaration of that moment, to scream and shout Halleluyah as they charged Egypt’s gates en masse and walked out into freedom. However, it is just as likely that Rabban Gamliel exhorted us to sing the Halleluyah psalms of the Hallel because he was copying what our ancient ancestors did during the Passover sacrifice in the Holy Temple. An earlier passage of the Mishnah, Pesahim 5:7, teaches us that the Jewish pilgrims would eat the Passover in three shifts, all of which would sing the Hallel prayer as the Temple priests distributed pieces of the sacrificial meat to them. The Talmud, Tractate Pesahim 117a explains that the Egyptian Hallel goes back in time as far as the crossing of the Red Sea itself. As the Israelites embarked on their dangerous journey to freedom, the prophets among them taught them to sing Hallel as a way of asking God to protect them from trouble. After they were finally saved from Pharaoh, those prophets taught them to sing Hallel again in thanks to God for redeeming them. Thus, Rabban Gamliel’s spontaneous exhortation to his fellow Jews was actually a well thought out pedagogic strategy for –once again- helping us to relive the Passover Temple service, and by extension, that terrifying moment at the Red Sea when we were caught in that transitional space between shedding our skin of slavery and dressing ourselves in the robes of freedom.

I am drawn to the Talmud’s twofold understanding of Hallel: we chant it as we walk through breath holding, heart stopping danger; we chant it after we live through that danger. It accompanies us on both parts of our life journeys because –as the Talmud points out- its most important word-Halleuyah- compounds a command to praise (Hallelu) with a straightforward reference to God –known here by God’s Hebrew name, Yah. We are not asked or encouraged, we are commanded, to carry an attitude of praise with us wherever we are and through whatever we experience. A view of life that is suffused with praise does not usually come naturally: we have to inculcate it within ourselves through the hard work of waking each day –no matter how we feel, no matter what a day brings us- and recognizing that day as one more precious opportunity to breathe, to live, to be in this mixture of madness and magnificence that is our world, the world created by God, the never ending source of all life in all of its complexity, mystery, and imperfection. A Halleluyah perspective on the world sees God’s creative power and compassionate presence in everything: danger and redemption, sadness and joy, life and death. A Halleluyah perspective praises God for life as it is, because it is holy and worthwhile simply by virtue of being life!

In a moment, when we chant Yizkor, we will actually be reciting an extended Halleluyah. Yes, we will be remembering our loved ones who have died, some naturally in their time, and others tragically and before their time. But we will also be remembering their precious legacies, feeling their palpable, endless presence, and praising God for the people they were and the people they have helped us to become. For the love that they gave us and allowed us to give them, we say Halleluyah! For the complex, imperfect but loving relationships that we had with them, we say, Halleluyah! For our ability to remember them without the varnish of false piety, we say Halleluyah! For their having lived in our world, in God’s world, we say Halleluyah!

Passover Sermons 5770

2010-04-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

IN EVERY GENERATION, PART 2: A DOSE OF SPIRITUAL MEDICINE

Second Dvar Torah for Pesach (Day 1), 5770.

My wife likes to joke that I treat food as if it were medicine. I guess that early on in my parents’ home, I internalized the idea that you don’t consume foods like green tea, blueberries, and tofu because they taste good, a debatable point at best for some, or even because they’re healthier for you than very tasty cheese fries, a point that is irrelevant for others. You eat them because they’re loaded with, well you name it: phytochemicals, antioxidants, micronutrients, essential fatty acids such as Omega 3 and Omega 6, high density lipoproteins, and polyunsaturated fats. Certainly, there is more than ample evidence that much of our chemically treated, commercially prepared food supply is potentially quite toxic; we have more than ample information that a balanced diet of high fiber, low fat foods consisting mostly of fruits and vegetables is quite good for you, and can also be quite tasty. However, I think that I have taken this basic, scientifically grounded wisdom a bit far. Imagine the scene. As a regular green tea drinker, I look at green tea as the magical preventative and powerful cure all for whatever may or does ail me: a sure shot antoxidant weapon in my internal arsenal against oxidized chemicals in the body that scientists have labeled, significantly enough, free radicals! Now, from time to time I engage in the quintessential American ritual: I eat a ton of junk, most of which I really like. If I wind up feeling sick to my stomach, do I resolve not to eat like that again? No, of course not, I’m an American, and that kind of resolution is, frankly, un-American, the kind of behavior you would expect of, well, a free radical! I simply boil a pot of water, pour it over my favorite green tea, and poof!, all is well with Rabbi Dan-i-el! I might as well become a marketer for the green tea industry. My ad line? “GREEN TEA—THE WONDER DRINK BURSTING WITH ANTIOXIDANT GOODNESS!"

We all know that no food is a wonder drug with magical medicinal powers, even though we may allow ourselves to be duped by the natural foods industry into wanting to believe this. However, as we move from seder to seder –a culinary experience filled with rich spiritual symbolism- we certainly can understand the power of food as spiritual medicine that deepens our sense of personal meaning and our connection to God and values. Consider the teaching that you will find in the synagogue announcements in front of you. We began learning this teaching this past Shabbat. It comes from the Mishnah, and it is quoted in full in the Haggadah:

Rabban Gamliel said: “Whoever has not referred to these three matters connected to the Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (to tell the Passover story), and these are they: Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.
Passover: because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.
Unleavened bread: because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt.
Bitter herbs: because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said (in the Torah), “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)’"
Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise, glorify, honor, exalt, extol, and bless the One who performed for our ancestors and for us all these miracles. God brought us forth from:
Slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption.
So, we should say before God Halleluyah (that is, the psalms of Hallel, Ps. 113-118.)”

Note the three foods that one is supposed to talk about during the obligatory telling of the Exodus story at the seder: the Passover offering, the matzah, and the bitter herbs. As I mentioned on Shabbat, Exodus 12:8 mentions God’s commandment to the Israelites and their descendants to eat these three foods together as part of the feast commemorating the Exodus. Our teacher, Rabban Gamliel, transforms this commandment –which by his time was obsolete, given the prior destruction of the Temple- into a commandment fulfilled through words, based upon Exodus 12:27: we are to tell our curious children that the Pesach offering recalls how God pasach, passed over our houses during the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn. Of course, we know that, even without the Passover offering, we still do more than talk about this three food concoction: we continue to eat matzah and bitter herbs at the seder, even though we no longer eat roasted lamb. Therefore, for the Mishnah and Haggadah, seder food is about memory.

But is it about more than memory of things past, and perhaps also a kind of culinary medicine directed at our spiritual health? One Talmudic commentator seems to think so. Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, also known by his acronym, the MaHarSHa, was a sixteenth century teacher who lived in Poland. He was one of the rare Talmudists who wrote as extensively about the aggadah, the non-legal narratives and moral teachings of the Talmud, as about the Talmud’s legal arguments, the Halakhah. Eidels wrote the following intriguing explanation –recast in a contemporary idiom by me- for why we talk about these three foods, and eat at least two of them, at the seder.

Eidels asks why it is that, of all the Torah’s commandments, these three are singled out with the explicit requirement to publicly ask why we do them, then to explain the reasons? Normally, when I perform a commandment, I say the blessing thanking God for commanding it, but that’s all I do. Here, I have to actually have to experience the meaning of these three commandments. He then explains that consuming the Pesach offering, the matzah and the bitter herbs was a kind of spiritual antidote for our ancestors as they made the hard climb out of physical slavery into physical freedom. As the Haggadah even explains to us, our ancestors’ slavery was not only physical but spiritual as well. They lived with a slave mentality that subjected them to the idolatrous, morally bankrupt consciousness of their masters, the Egyptians. Eating the Passover lamb, an animal revered by the Egyptians, freed them from feeling subject to their gods; eating matzah, the bread of escape that reminded them of their redemption, was a further step in their feeling liberated from the spiritual afflictions placed upon them by their oppressors; eating the bitter herbs helped them recall that slavery is bitter not only to the body, it also embitters and distorts the soul by sullying us with the dangerous impurity of inner passivity and dependence. Thus, the generation of the exodus had to consume these three foods as palpable reminders to digest –literally and symbolically- the spiritual message of freedom and redemption. In our day, the MaHaRSHa teaches, we are doing the same thing when we sit at our seders, speaking about and sampling matzah, bitter herbs, and by extension, the Passover offering.

Rabbi Eidels’ interpretation of Passover, matzah and bitter herbs offers great spiritual insight to us as we transition from seder to seder. We American Jews –and Americans in general- possess unparalleled physical, economic, and political freedom: we are truly blessed. Pharaoh does not hold us back physically. Yet, it is obvious that we too at times find ourselves slaves to the idolatries of the contemporary spiritual Egypt: those negative after images of freedom’s blessings that, if not mastered, will master us and hurt us as we travel in the wide open spaces and market places of our very free and aggressively consumerist culture. One need only walk through an American mall –the richest symbol of American liberty and privilege- with critical lenses fitted to one’s eyes to witness how easily an individual’s prioritization of values can be blunted. Money, material glut, and the confusion of want with need are spiritual stealth bombers that ever so subtly distract us, dull our consciousness and rob us of intellectual independence. In a society like ours that is dependent upon independent thought, courageous moral action, and commitment to community, entanglement in servitude to the world of things will only bring us existential heartache. Worse yet, that kind of narcissistic spiritual enslavement which masks itself as the liberty of luxury can only be used as a very dark tool in the hands of political elites: how they would love to foist a new Egypt, with themselves in the role of Pharoah, upon a public too drunk with the preoccupations with our stuff to ever notice what hit us.

Now we are slaves, next year we will be free. Tonight we will look again, taste and speak of those ingredients in the paschal sacrifice: hopefully that taste of outer and inner freedom will linger in our mouths and stay with us for the rest of the year.

Passover Sermons 5770

2010-04-08T19:45:00.000-07:00

IN EVERY GENERATION, PART ONE: STANDING IN THE SHOES OF SLAVES.

First Dvar Torah For Pesach (Shabbat HaGadol) 5770.

Between this morning and Yizkor, on the eighth day of Pesach, we are going to look at one famous passage of the Mishnah, the tradition of Jewish oral law. This Mishnah, which is quoted in full in the Haggadah, is one of the liturgical and spiritual centers of the Haggadah and the Pesach seder. I want to learn it with you from three different perspectives as we celebrate the holiday together. Please look with me at the text of the Mishnah, Tractate Pesahim 10:5:

Rabban Gamliel said: “Whoever has not referred to these three matters connected to the Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (to tell the Passover story), and these are they: Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.
Passover: because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.
Unleavened bread: because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt.
Bitter herbs: because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said (in the Torah), “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)’”
Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise, glorify, honor, exalt, extol, and bless the One who performed for our ancestors and for us all these miracles. God brought us forth from:
Slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption.
So, we should say before God, Halleluyah! (that is, the psalms of Hallel, Ps. 113-118.)”

Some background information will help us understand this passage more completely. Our teacher, Rabban Gamliel, lived in the land of Israel and was the patriarch of the Jewish community there in the decades immediately following the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans. He hailed from the family of the great Hillel, and was the preeminent religious leader of his time. Rabban Gamliel derived his ruling about the obligation to talk about Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs during the telling of the Exodus story at the Seder from the famous verse in Exodus, 12:8: “They shall eat the flesh of the Passover offering that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs.” Exodus 12 contains God’s instructions to our ancestors concerning the first Passover meal prior to their leaving Egypt. Whatever the Torah’s original reason for the Passover offering and for eating these three foods together, our teacher offered three unique explanations for them that are not found explicitly in the Bible, all of which emphasize the dual experience of slavery and redemption from slavery. Note that his entire teaching then transforms the Torah’s commandment into a three-fold obligation of continuity, remembrance and gratitude.

The first obligation—continuity: In the wake of the trauma of the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem and the holy Temple, Rabban Gamliel directed the Jewish community to continue offering the Passover sacrifice –in their time a rapidly fading memory- through words: the words of the retelling of the Passover story and the words recalling the Passover sacrificial ritual through which our ancient ancestors prepared for freedom. For Rabban Gamliel, Temple or no Temple, Roman occupation or no Roman occupation, freedom or no freedom, all Jews then, now, and always were, are, and will be preparing joyously for the Exodus through the Passover sacrifice.

The second obligation—memory: Rabban Gamliel then took one step further. Not only are you and I obligated to continue offering the Passover, howbeit in a different way. We are also obligated to see ourselves as having personally been slaves who were liberated from Egypt by God and Moses. This is an intriguing psychological dimension that our teacher adds to the celebration of Passover. My telling of the Passover story is not a mere retelling of someone’s else’s history: it is my history, a traumatic experience of transition from slavery to freedom that happened to me. In its original context, the proof verse used by Rabban Gamliel to make his point was originally addressed to the Israelites who actually left Egypt and were on their way to the land of Canaan. He turned it into a verse applying to all of us for all time. For him, regardless of time and place, all Jews, then, now and always, are tasting the bitterness of slavery and the sweetness of freedom.

The third obligation—gratitude: Rabban Gamliel understood that constantly reliving the experience of redemption from slavery should naturally lead to spontaneous, and uncontained, expressions of thankfulness to God for transforming us and our situation. After all, if we are always at the crossroads of slavery and freedom with our ancestors, then the trauma and catharsis of that experience is always ours, and our gratitude should be a spiritual and moral no brainer! However, he also understood human nature well enough to comprehend that, left to our own devices and at an increasing distance from the original experience of freedom and redemption, we will not feel or express gratitude for the most part. Such is the narcissism and lethargy of human experience, especially when a person or people take freedom for granted. Conversely, the actual experience of suffering oppression distracts us from genuine gratitude because who can feel thankful for freedom when one is immersed in slavery? I suspect that when Rabban Gamliel and his fellow Jews were surrounded by the living evidence of their own oppression at Roman hands, their natural motivation to thank God for freedom was likely pretty weak.
Yet these reasons are precisely why his teaching is set up as a series of three obligations, not pious suggestions or requests. Under the best conditions of freedom, a person will not make great efforts remember the oppressions of the past, and would certainly not try to imagine that experience as a living, personal one. Under the worst conditions of oppression, a person would not feel overly thankful for deliverances of the past, and would certainly not be so inclined to see God or any force in his or her life as a redemptive presence. Rabban Gamliel’s teaching worked so well in the past, and it works so well now, because it is a powerful personal and communal discipline that applies universally. Using ritual, psychology, and spirituality, it directs us to do what we find hardest to do under the best and worst circumstances: feel and live like slaves crossing over to freedom, who can internalize that experience and apply it to the seder and to our everyday lives. In words, deeds, and feelings, Rabban Gamliel, the seder ritual, and Judaism call us to choose the actions, the words, the feelings, and lives of free people. That is not only what gives us purpose as Jews, it is what gives us dignity as human beings.

Shabbat shalom.

A Poem I Wrote While In Israel 2010/5770

2010-03-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

I wrote this poem while in Tzfat, one of Israel's four cities that are holy to Judaism. The mikveh -ritual bath- of Rabbi Isaac Luria is a pool inside a cave at the lower end of the old city of Tzfat, that I presume is fed by en underground spring. I go there to immerse myself every time I am in the city.

Isaac Luria (Egypt and Israel, 16th century) was one of the most important figures in the history of Jewish mysticism, whose greatest contribution to religion is a creation myth that explains the existence of evil and imperfection in a radical way.

Put in very simple terms, Rabbi Luria’s teaching seeks to understand the hidden reality behind the story of creation that is found in the book of Genesis and cherished by Western religions. In his view, God, who is endless in time and space, (Ein Sof--"without end") “pulled back” to open a “space without God” in which some “thing” other than God could be created. God then sent God’s light (or creative energy) into that space by placing that light into vessels --kayleem-- in Hebrew- which could contain and organize it. The original divine plan of creation was for the light in those vessels to bring about a perfectly created world modeled upon God, who is infinite and perfect. But a terrible thing happened. Because God’s light is so powerful and overwhelming, the vessels were unable to hold it and they shattered. After this cosmic accident, God reorganized the creative process and brought the universe into existence. However, the universe as God finally ordered it was a mixture of sparks of creative light and shards of the broken vessels blocking and trapping those sparks: a tangle of light and dark, life and death, ugliness and beauty, good and evil. This is the world that we have inherited in nature as well as human affairs: broken and beautiful. Luria believed that human beings have the power to release those original sparks that are still trapped, to repair those original vessels for God’s light, and to return the sparks to their source in God. For instance, when a Jewish person performs one of the mitzvot –the ritual and ethical commandments of Judaism- that action releases some of those sparks and brings us closer to perfection and redemption from evil. Thus, human beings are important actors in the great cosmic struggle for healing and wholeness that began before there was reality as we know it and that will only end when we and God heal and perfect that reality.

My poem draws upon Luria's ideas as well as the simple beauty and mystery of the mikveh where he would purify himself.

IN TZFAT (At The Mikveh Of Isaac Luria)

The bulb, dim and naked,
-A weak, dying emanation of Ein Sof-
Hung over the frigid, murky water
Of the damp stone pool.

Standing naked and cold,
I briefly considered my options:

Let the light fan its pallid rays
Over the still,
Perfectly dull liquid surface?

Or create a wet commotion with my body
That dispersed the light and the dark water
In endless jagged directions
Until they came to rest, trapped,
In the enveloping blackness
Of the shell-like cave?

I was freezing;
I had places to go.
I reasoned: anything is better
Than stagnating in static serenity.

Banking on a moment of purity
Before the long trek back
To inevitable dirt,

I plunged in.

© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein

Purim In Jerusalem

2010-03-07T04:01:00.000-08:00

PURIM IN JERUSALEM.

The end of our congregational mission to Israel was close at hand. After our tour bus came to a halt in the midst of the post-Shabbat pandemonium at Ben Gurion Airport, I bid farewell to all of our participants as they rushed to grab their bags and begin the long trek back to America. We had all ridden the euphoric wave of an intense Israel mission that deepened us as people, Jews and Zionists, and now it was time to return to the realities of life at home. However, for the first time since I began taking congregants to Israel in 1999, I was not going back with the group. Because my son, Joe, is participating in Nativ, USY’s Israel gap year program, I was staying in Israel for an extra week of study and travel that would include spending time with the Nativ community.

Nothing compares to reconnecting with your college age child after he or she has been away for a while. From the first to the last embrace during our visits, I marveled at how much Joe had matured even more into a young man with thoughtful opinions and a life that began with our family, but was now truly his. A number of times during the year, he had thanked my wife and me for giving him the opportunity to be part of Nativ, and live in Israel at the tender age of eighteen. During the last Shabbat of our synagogue trip, he joined us in Tel Aviv, and spent the weekend telling me wonderful stories about his travels, studies, and friends. I looked forward to meeting them all and watching Nativ in action. First, I would spend a long awaited week alone, walking the streets of Jerusalem, searching for new wisdom and new words to write.

Jerusalem is home to myriad hotels and hostels for the pilgrims and tourists who come from all over the world to be part of its mystique. As a Conservative Jewish traveler, I found a simple, but excellent home and spiritual respite at our movement’s Fuchsberg Center in the heart of the city. The center houses a well maintained hostel along with the Conservative movement’s main Israel offices, Kehillat Moreshet Yisrael –a thriving Masorti (Conservative) shul-, ongoing educational programs, and our movement’s Conservative Yeshiva. The Yeshiva attracts Conservative (and a number of formerly Orthodox) Jews from all over the world to Jerusalem, where they can have a fully observant, egalitarian Jewish life and learn Torah. I regret not having enough time to really get to know the students of the Yeshiva and to learn with them. My time in Jerusalem was far too short and filled with too many commitments. Still, the spiritual energy and genuine warmth of the Yeshiva community was immediately apparent to me, as was their level of seriousness about learning Torah and applying it to their lives. Praying each day from the balcony of my room at the Center, I would look out over Jerusalem, and be able to glimpse the very top of the beautiful golden Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount. While the Dome, the Al Aksa mosque, and the entire Temple Mount have become holy to the worldwide Muslim community, we Jews continue to venerate this site and its powerful symbolism. It is part of what the prophet Isaiah was referring to when he declared: “For Torah shall go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” Cradled in the arms of our holiest city, and knowing that just a couple of hundred feet below me our Torah students were making God’s word come to life, I was pleased that our Conservative movement in Israel was making its small but precious contribution to fulfilling Isaiah’s words.

Having the time to be alone is a blessing, but being alone can also be disconcerting. While I was with our synagogue mission, I was so focused on our group that I had little time to miss everyone back in Albany, New York too much. The people with me were my congregational family on-the-go. Yet, as I walked (actually, hiked with a heavy backpack) the streets and neighborhoods of Jerusalem during my extra week’s stay, no matter how busy I was, I felt alone, even lonely, at times. Though every Jew belongs to the Jewish people and is always walking with God, my closest friends, family, and congregation were in America, not at the corner of King George and Agron Streets. I felt this most explicitly that week, because it was the week before Purim. Purim is an all encompassing communal holiday: it celebrates our people’s redemption from evil. This celebration is given concrete expression through four mitzvot that are all about community, friendship, and common fate. We read Megillah in public, we give gifts to our friends, we help the poor, and we eat a huge meal together with the people we love. All around me, the friends and families of different communities –even the most secular Jews- were joyously preparing for the holiday. I felt a part of it all…and apart from it all. As busy as I would be back home preparing for Purim at shul as one of its rabbis, at least I would be an integral part of a community I knew. Not so in Jerusalem. I worried a bit. Even though Purim in Israel is far more rich and intense than anywhere else in the Jewish world (a strange paradox, given that Purim is the ultimate diaspora holiday!) would the Purim I was about to spend with Nativ wind up being an uncomfortable encounter with strangers absorbed in their own tight, somewhat insular community of late adolescents, my son among them?

My concerns were put to rest from the very beginning of my stay. My son had grown so much in the five months since I had seen him, not only because he was ripe for growth (and because, I am proud to say, my wife and I raised him to be a mensch). He had grown because Nativ strongly emphasizes the best Jewish values of kehillah (community), hesed (kindness), and ahavat Yisrael/Habriot (loving one’s fellow Jew and one’s fellow human being). From the moment our spirited and very musical Kabbalat Shabbat began, until the last hug and warm goodbye that I gave to Joe and his friends on that Sunday, Purim afternoon, the Nativ community embraced each other, and found room for this middle aged rabbi in that embrace. Praying, learning, singing and joking around with this very special group of young, committed Conservative Jews, I got a very potent taste of what Jewish community is and what Conservative Jewish community can be at all times. I feel truly blessed to have been with them and their madrichim (group leaders) during the celebration of the holiday.

Conservative Jewish community as it can be is a great concern for at least some of the “Nativers” with whom I spoke. Like their older counterparts in the Conservative Yeshiva, these young people like being Conservative Jews. They respect and appreciate the appeal of Orthodoxy for religiously serious Jews, but it is not for them. However, at least a couple of the Nativ participants mused sadly about needing to find religious community outside of the Conservative framework if they returned to the United States and were given no support for spiritually progressive and halakhically serious Jewish life in our synagogues. Our movement is painfully aware of this phenomenon. We debate almost incessantly (and we even joke about) the ongoing exodus of young, committed Conservative Jews to Orthodox synagogues. These are the young people who learned to take traditional Judaism seriously when they were in USY and the Schechter schools, at Camp Ramah, on Pilgrimage, Wheels, Nativ, and in the Yeshiva. They often return to their campus Conservative communities and their local Conservative shuls and they truly feel alone spiritually. The students I met were not threatening me with talk of defections. They were merely telling the truth about what they would need to do for themselves and their future families to find spiritual homes where they belong.

Admitedly, I am one more rabbi bemoaning one of our greatest challenges as a movement. I have no brilliant solutions, nor would I say that my congregation (as wonderful as it is) always gets this aspect of our Jewish life right all the time. We all have work to do in this regard as we chart the course of Conservative Judaism in the 21 st century. However, let me conclude with one simple insight that I had as I spent time with Nativ and our Yeshiva. Apart from creating even more elaborate outreach efforts and expending much money on alternative programming, what if we simply got the names of any Yeshiva or Nativ graduates living near us, invited them to our shuls, gave them a free membership for the duration of their college or grad school stints, and put them on a committee or on our boards? What if we asked them (given whatever time they had) to teach one course to a group of people who wanted to learn more about Judaism, Hebrew, Shabbat songs, or Israel? Would this simple act of inviting these core members to our community and giving them the power to shape us from the ground up make a difference? I believe that it would, it could cost little, and it could require even less in terms of personal investments of time and energy. If a religiously active and Jewishly knowledgeable laity matters to us and we recognize it as the basis for Conservative Jewish renewal, then these graduates of our best denominational programs will need us to provide them with a welcoming spiritual home. What they will give back to our communities will transform us for the better, if my interaction with these young Nativ students is any indication.
No one wants to be alone, and everyone needs a sense of supportive Jewish religious community to live a full, meaningful Jewish life. The students of the Yeshiva and of Nativ taught me this quite powerfully and quite naturally. We have resources as a movement that can be replicated again and again, here and in Israel. My time with my son, my people, and my Conservative movement in Eretz Yisrael showed me how wonderful community can be, and how it can truly build the world, one traveler on this earth at a time.

(c) 2010 by Rabbi Dan Ornstein

So, Who Really Did Take Us Out Of Egypt?

2010-03-07T03:57:00.000-08:00

SO, WHO REALLY DID LEAD US OUT OF EGYPT?

Dvar Torah For Parshat Ki Tissa/Shabbat Parah 5770.

At times in the Torah, we encounter lead words and phrases whose repetition is so explicit and unsubtle that, in the words of our sages, they appear to be screaming: “interpret me!” Ki Tissa contains one such phrase that is used in three different contexts. I believe it is a critical key to understanding the meaning of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt, their relationship with God, and the importance of their journey to the promised land.

Ki Tissa opens with five sets of directions and commands that are part of God’s instructions to Moses concerning the mishkan, the desert sanctuary: the half shekel poll tax to be given by every male twenty years and older, the copper laver for the priests to wash in before performing sacred service, the anointing oil for the sanctuary items and the priestly vestments, the incense for burning before the holy ark, and the commissioning of Betzalel and Oholiav, the master craftsmen of the building project. God then reminds Moses and the Israelites that Shabbat, the sanctification of time, takes precedence over the building of the mishkan, the sanctification of space. This portion of Ki Tissa closes God’s instructions to the Israelites with a tone of cosmic order and peace. God finishes speaking to Moses and gives him the two tablets containing the Ten Commandments. All is right with the world, above and below.

Then, all hell breaks loose. What follows, of course, in Exodus, ch. 32 is the infamous story of the building of the golden calf by the Israelites who, in their frenzied longing for Moses’ delayed return from his encounter with God, force his brother Aaron to build them “a god who shall go before us.” Aaron does this with the people’s gold that was supposed to have been used for the holy purposes of building the mishkan. They tell Aaron to do this because, “That man Moses, who brought us from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.” Note, of course, the total absence of God in the people’s statement. Having forgotten so quickly that it was God, and not Moses or some other power, Who performed miracles for them at the Sea of Reeds and who gave them the Ten Commandments, the people look at the golden calf and exclaim: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” How ironic and terrible that the Israelites would so quickly forget what the true God of Israel had done for them just months before, and that they would replace their allegiance to God with exclusive allegiance to Moses or to a piece of molten gold. Even more ironic is the way in which they turn God’s introductory words to the Ten Commandments –“I am the Lord your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt”- on their heads. A more emphatic misidentification of their true divine savior there could not have been.

What follows is the whole messy story of God, in God’s fury, seeking to destroy the entire people, Moses staying God’s hand, Moses burning the idol, forcing the Israelites to drink water mixed with its ashes, the slaying of 3,000 Israelites, and God’s begrudging reconciliation with the people. What I want to look at is the way in which this phrase “bringing the people out of the land of Egypt” continues to be used in the story, and the possible message that its use has to teach us. The first two uses of the phrase we noted above. However, now turn to Exodus 32:7, p. 531 in the Humash. While the people are engaged in their debauched and idolatrous revelry, God tells Moses: “Hurry down, for your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted basely.” Once again, note the bitterly ironic appropriation by God of the Israelites’ own incendiary language to describe Moses as the sole redeemer of the people from Egypt that we saw above. We almost imagine God saying to God’s self, “Well, you folks want to rewrite history, with My redemptive efforts struck from the record and Moses as the center of this drama? Fine…Moses, you deal with your people whom you delivered from Egypt. I have nothing to do with them anymore.” But Moses will have none of this. After God threatens to let God’s anger blaze forth and destroy the people altogether, Moses engages in a kind of deferential conceit to stay God’s hand. Notice Moses’ words in Exodus 32:11, p. 532 in the Humash: “Let not Your anger, O Lord, blaze forth against Your people whom You delivered from Egypt with great power and a mighty hand.” Moses not too subtly shifts responsibility for the people’s redemption from Egypt back onto God’s shoulders, as it were. But this bit of political and spiritual ping pong is not yet over. After the great massacre of the people that Moses and his fellow Levites execute, God tells him, in Exodus 33:1, p. 536 in the Humash—“Set out from here, you and the people that you have brought up from the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, ‘To your offspring will I give it…’” In a state of extended rage against the sinful Israelites, and in an apparent attempt to disown them and all responsibility for them, God continues to turn this language back onto Moses. However, note the transition that has taken place in the verse we just read. Despite the rage and almost willful disownership, God is still willing to look to the future that is the Israelites’ raison d’etre, and the reason for their leaving Egypt in the first place: to enter and settle the land promised to our ancestors, Canaan, or what we call the land of Israel. Only after God calls up this ancient promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, can Moses move God –as it were- to reclaim shared responsibility with Moses for moving the people forward to the promised land. God then promises Moses to help him lead the people, and reveals to Moses God’s 13 attributes of mercy and compassion.

So, who was responsible for bringing the people up out of Egypt, and into the promised land? Certainly not the mute, inanimate golden calf that symbolizes the most infantile, slavish impulses of an immature people. I suggest that what emerged from this extended dialogue between Moses and God was the recognition that both of them –the human leader and the divine Leader- were responsible. It is not that God and Moses were equals, but that neither of them alone –as it were- could fulfill the necessary criteria for redemption from slavery and possession of the promised land. Without God at the helm, the mission would have no spiritual energy. Without Moses at the helm, that spiritual energy would lack a channeled, human focus, and would hemorrhage uselessly.

Having just spent three weeks in Israel –our modern promised land- I am once again amazed at just how true this insight of the Torah is. From the beginning of our Israel pilgrimage until its end, our Ohav mission group experienced almost non-stop the vital energy flowing through our Jewish homeland and the awe inspiring, world class Jewish society that our people has created there. The great quantities of great food that we sampled daily were paralleled by the rich expressions of the Jewish past, present and future and the rich varieties of diverse Jewish backgrounds and experiences that we encountered as well. Even those of us who knew no Hebrew or Bible quickly immersed ourselves in a highly compressed and emotionally intense embrace of Jewish knowledge and experience: as it were, we became the Israelites entering the promised land, we entered into dialogue with God near the Holy of Holies, we lived through the horrors and heroism of the Holocaust, the terror and the triumph of the War of Independence, the prosaic banality of ancient Jews living their daily lives in the Holy Land, and the poetic bliss of Jews achieving our greatest dream: to be a free people in the land of Zion and Jerusalem after two thousand years of homelessness and hope in the face of despair. Here is what we learned there, and what I learn there time after time that I visit: the Jewish people, the great Zionist enterprise to assert our right to freedom, dignity and sovereignty, and the creation and continuation of the State of Israel continue to flourish because of a powerful partnership between us and God. This partnership brought us out of Egypt and into the promised land; it brought us out of Auschwitz and into the founding of the Jewish state; it brings all of us out of the diaspora and into an utterly transformative encounter with our destiny each time we visit Israel, each time we support Israel, each time one of us makes aliyah. Almost all Israelis, from the most idealistic to the most cynical, from the most religious to the most secular, from the most right wing to the most left wing, are bound together by the simple Hebrew phrase, yihiyeh tov, it will be alright, everything will turn out ok, I have hope. That is more than just a phrase: it is a whole way of life, a massive leap of faith forged in the crucible of time, vision and spiritual energy, and given distinctive shape by a lively people who express it in myriad ways, great and small, every day. It binds together and lifts up the people of Israeli society who are often deeply divided and plagued by difficult internal and external problems, yet who refuse to give into despair.

Walk down the streets of Jerusalem before Shabbat as our group did, or walk those same streets in the week before Purim, as I was privileged to do by myself, and you feel it. Talk, as I did, to the students and faculty of the amazing Hand In Hand School For Jewish-Arab Education who are trying to create a civic space for dialogue and peace, and you feel it. Plant a tree in the Kennedy Memorial Forest, listen to the words of David Ben Gurion proclaiming Israel a state in the actual place where he made that proclamation, or sing Hatikvah –the Jewish National Anthem- on the beach in Tel Aviv at sunset, and you feel it: you feel God, however you feel God, very much alive and present in this place called Israel, but especially among this people called Israel.

Who brought us up out of the land of Egypt and into the promised land? God did and Moses did. Who does this today, time and time again, when we are open to it happening? God does and the people and State of Israel- do. It is great to be home, but already I miss our imperfect, pock marked, crazy, beautiful Jewish home, our promised land, our Israel: partnership of God and Man, old/new miracle, sign of God’s eternal covenant with us and with the world.

(c)2010 by Rabbi Dan Ornstein

A New Posting From Israel.

2010-02-17T13:03:00.000-08:00

Dear Ohav Family:

In my last posting, I wrote about the incomparable experience of being in Israel as a Jew and as a human being. Lest you think that our missions (I like to refer to them as pilgrimages, but I’ll discuss the use of that word in a later posting) are exclusively about intense encounters with Judaism and Jewish identity, I assure you that is not the case. Since our synagogue group arrived last week, we have certainly had our share of hands on lessons in history, archaeology, Hebrew, politics and comparative religion. However, we have also had a lot of fun. In one sense, a small group of seventeen people traveling together anywhere for twelve days should bond and have a great time. This is the nature of groups like the ones I take to Israel every two years: I like to think of them as portable retreat centers! However, because we are linked to Ohav and the Capital District Jewish community (even our one couple from Rochester is now an honorary Capital District family) we share something unique that has made us open to enjoying each other’s company from the moment we left the ground at Newark International Airport. This has consistently been my experience with all the Ohav Israel missions I have led since 1999.

We have also had a lot of fun because we have done enjoyable activities that are unique to Israel. Let’s start with food. Though I shy away from over the top pronouncements about Israel being a country of indulgent Jewish mothers, Israeli Jewish culture does place great emphasis on everyone being fed well: food is love, after all, and Jews from all walks of life have always made food a major focus for celebration, worship, and coping with loss. From hotel breakfasts to the simplest road side truck stops and miznonim (fast food buffets) Israel offers the pleasures of food and drink, and plenty of it. In traditional middle eastern fashion, Israeli restaurants for the most part fill a patron up with salads and condiments of all types prior to the main meal, almost as a way of fending off the possibility of hunger between the time you walk through the door and the time that you eat your main course. The other night we were truly blessed to meet our friends and fellow congregants, Jeff and Anne Rothenberg (part time residents of Jerusalem) at a typical middles eastern eatery, after which we “rolled out” and ate dessert at their lovely Jerusalem home. This is the second time that Anne and Jeff have hosted an Ohav group, and the friendship is as good as the food. Anne is fond of saying that one of the many wonderful things bringing her back repeatedly to Israel (aside from her children and grandchildren) are the truly gigantic and delicious strawberries grown here. One look at them reminds me of the gigantic grape clusters taken out of the land by the Israelite scouts mentioned in the Book of Numbers.

Finally, understand that, apart from its religious, historical, and political significance, Israel is incredibly beautiful and just lots of fun: a vacation paradise that is fueled by a powerful and well developed tourism industry. Israel not only needs tourism as part of its economic lifeblood; it is committed to tourism as part of its life mission as home to the three major Western faiths and an international center of culture, arts, and entertainment. So far, we have ridden jeeps in the Golan Heights, participated in an archaeological dig, walked through the Western Wall tunnels, planted trees, checked out the excitement of Tel Aviv, enjoyed the Israel Museum, shopped in the great Arab Bazaar, walked through a beautiful nature preserve, and our mission has three more days to go. What we have enjoyed is a mere fraction of what one can do in Israel, whether you like to be very active or very quiet. Our Ohav mission had some of the best fun at a wonderful simcha (religious celebration) on top of the breathtaking Masada, the summer home of the ancient Roman King, Herod. Earlier this week, Sarah Spiro, one of our seventh graders at our Talmud Torah, became a bat mitzvah in front of her family and new friends. There is nothing more pleasant or inspirational than this. Mazal to, Sarah!

Finally, let me tell you about Pini the Pig, our preschool and Ohav mission mascot.. (See the picture.) Before each mission, I pick out a stuffed toy animal who becomes our mascot. Amie Bloom, our preschool director, and I make a big deal of our mascot with our preschool students. When in Israel, I take numerous photographs of me and Pini in different parts of Israel. They become part of a photographic travelogue for the kids and their families that teaches them about Israel. Why a pig? First, as I’ve explained to the preschool staff and our participants, Pini does best in Israel where so few people eat pig out of religious (Jewish and Muslim) conviction. Also, as I told the kids, Pini really wanted to go to Israel, but his skeptical friends told him that this would happen when pigs fly! I guess Pini fooled them all. Hey, it’s a goofy story, but the kids and our participants get a kick out of it.

I look forward to writing one more time towards the end of our mission, either on Saturday night or Sunday.

From somewhere along the shores of the Kinneret (The Sea of Galilee), Shabbat shalom and only blessings.

Rabbi Dan

Finally, An Israel Mission Posting From Rabbi Dan!

2010-02-15T13:54:00.000-08:00

Shalom U-Vrakhah (Peace and blessing!)

After six extremely intense days of travel, camaraderie, celebration of Israel and Jewish community, and new friendships, I am finally able to post this letter from Israel, along with some photos of our congregational mission. My apologies to those of you who may have been checking for posts from me, only to find none here. Between jet lag, very long days, and lots of things happening, this is my first opportunity to write.

It is late right now in Jerusalem, so in the interests of actually getting this note out to our congregation, I will be brief. Short of living in Israel -with its deep Jewish rhythms and its place at the vital center of Jewish history and destiny- an Israel mission is an unparalleled opportunity to taste Israel. A two week mission cannot begin to capture just what this land and this society (with all its pockmarks and imperfections) means to the Jewish people and to the world. Yet as any of our 2010 participants would confirm, this kind of mission provides a person with the the grand sweep and spiritual depth of Israel and Jewish experience tightly compressed into relatively little time in a powerful way. There is no comparison between reading about David Ben Gurion's stunning declaration of the founding of Israel as a state, and actually hearing a recording of his famous speech in the very place -Independence Hall in Tel Aviv- where it took place -under a portrait of Herzl, founder of modern Zionism- on May 14, 1948. To be here, to be embraced by the Jewish and Israeli experiences that pulsate with life and meaning, is without parallel, even in Albany!

In only five days, we have ridden a roller coaster of Jewish history. We have shared these experiences in the context of new friendships, new encounters with our Jewish identities, and new confrontations with the great questions of life and living that Judaism answers each day for us.

We got sweeping and close up views of Jerusalem, a city full of holiness, mystery and spiritual diversity. Imagine standing at the Haas Promenade in southern Jerusalem and not just reading about, but being where Abraham came to as he looked out to where God wanted him to bring his son Isaac for an offering: what would later be the Temple Mount.

We also made our small but significant contributions to Israel's and the world's environmental health by planting trees in the JNF Kennedy Memorial Forest.

There is so much more to write about, but it is almost midnight. Next time, I'll write about the fun things and celebrations we've been able to be part of!

Shalom Mi Yerushalayim.
Praying for peace from Jerusalem.

Rabbi Dan

A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, jr.

2010-01-21T13:46:00.000-08:00

FROM MOSES TO MARTIN.

Dvar Torah For Torah Portion VaYera and Commemorating Martin Luther King Day 5770.

It is a complaint that repeats itself so many times in the short span of a few biblical chapters, we almost want to shut our ears out of embarrassment. I am referring to Moses’ persistent protests that he is the wrong man for the job of forcing Pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves. Certainly, Moses is known in the Bible as anav me-od, extremely humble, as the book of Numbers, chapter 12 calls him; yet this is not how Moses describes his inadequacy for the position of liberator and leader of Israel. He refers constantly to his being an arel sefatayim and a kevad peh: one who has uncircumcised lips and is slow of speech. These phrases have been variously interpreted to mean that Moses had a severe speech impediment or that he simply was a poor speaker who could never hold his own before a big shot king like Pharaoh. Whatever they actually mean, Moses clearly saw himself as unable to speak with force and eloquence before Pharaoh, which is why God dispatched his brother Aaron to serve as his speech maker and agent.

Nowhere is the role of Moses and Aaron as dynamic duo for the Lord expressed more strikingly than in this morning’s Torah portion. At the very beginning of Exodus, chapter 7, God tells Moses: “See, I have made you as God before Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet.” This is a strange way for God to describe human beings, even two servants as close to God as Moses and Aaron. Though Moses is described in biblical and later rabbinic literature as a prophet, referring to him as God feels sacrilegious. This is especially the case when we consider how forceful Judaism has always been in refusing to deify or even idealize Moses as a human being. Further, referring to Aaron as a prophet or divine messenger seems so contradictory to the role he played throughout the Bible: that of the conciliatory ritual functionary whose temperament at times clashed with Moses’ role as a truly fiery prophet speaking God’s admonitions to the people.

Numerous commentators found God’s descriptions of Moses and Aaron troubling as well. Understanding that Pharaoh saw himself as a god, and had already refused to recognize the existence and supremacy of the God of Israel, these Torah teachers explained our strange passage in a number of interesting ways. Moses was indeed God –more accurately God’s stand in- to Pharaoh, for Pharaoh would only be humbled by what and whom he could see. According to our ancestors, God sent Moses to be “God before Pharaoh” in a number of ways: as a master teacher, as a fear inspiring angel, as a judge, and as one with superior power. Surely, only God can be God, but Moses would be the human conduit through which God would act to wreak judgment upon the arrogant oppressor. Aaron would extend Moses’ divine agency through words of warning and admonition, as the mouthpiece of divine power. Ultimately, these two brothers were flawed human beings who would die before reaching the promised land with the Israelites. However, in their lifetimes they concretized God’s battle with Pharaoh, and pressed God’s case against the king’s egomania and unjust treatment of the Israelites.

It is the rare leader fighting for justice who has the credibility and moral weight to be compared with Moses and Aaron. The Reverend Martin Luther King jr., whose birthday and legacy we celebrate this weekend, was one of those rare leaders for whom the comparison was appropriate. Like Moses, he saw himself as God’s servant fighting for civil rights for the future generations descended from African American slaves, and for all Americans. He lived and died by the words of the old African American spiritual that demanded of every Pharaoh in every age to “Let My people go” as Moses had done before him. Like Moses, Dr. King was part master teacher, part awe inspiring angel, part judge who stood in judgment of a racially divided American society and found it sorely wanting. Like Aaron, Dr. King fought his war with the Pharaohs of bigotry and discrimination, not with plagues and violence, but with words: eloquent words that showed people life could be better, that America could behave better; demanding words that organized boycotts and sit ins, pressed hard on the laws and law makers of America, and inspired thousands to dedicate their lives to the cause of freedom; healing words that showed America that human rights are not some marriage of convenience between a government and its citizens, but an eternal truth embedded in the word and will of God, Creator of all human beings.

The night before he was murdered, April 3, 1968, Dr. King delivered a speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis TN, in support of striking sanitation workers in that city. Eerily alluding to what may have been his recognition that his life might soon end, he spoke these famous words, through which he connected himself once again to Moses and his legacy of fighting for freedom:

"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

An old Jewish aphorism states that from Moses to Moses, there was no one like Moses. It is referring to Moshe Rabbeinu and to Moses Maimonides, our great Torah teacher of the middle ages. Reflecting upon the life of Martin Luther King jr., I might amend that saying in honor of this weekend: From Moses to Martin, there was no one like Martin. And that has made all the difference in this, our promised land. Shabbat shalom.

Willows

2010-01-12T11:39:00.000-08:00

WILLOWS.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

When we moved into our house a number of years ago, the two old, sprawling willow trees on each side of our lawn stood like lazy guards at an open gate. They graciously waved their long, leaf drenched branches at us, ushering us into our new home. Over time we settled into a lackadaisical relationship with our trees; we let their chaff choke our gutters, and we fought back very little as their roots pushed up under our driveway. Branches large and small fell with increasing frequency under the weight and pressure of snow, ice, and wind, yet we looked on and cleaned up after our aging neighbors. We left them in peace, and they let the breezes whisper to us through their thick leaves as we sat on the steps of our house on summer nights. An ice storm broke off very large limbs of both willows, littering our property and endangering passersby. Realizing that we had waited too long to care for them, we contacted an arborist who owns a tree service. After a brief check, he told us that the old willow on the right side of our house was rotting. With its massive, drooping branches forming a looming canopy over our street, large parts of it –or the tree itself- would eventually fall down as it continued to rot and die. The tree would have to be cut down.

I struggled to keep myself grounded with the pragmatic rationale that cutting it down was the sensible, responsible thing to do. Yet on the morning that the tree service was scheduled to arrive, I woke up with the queasy feeling that we were about to euthanize a dying grandparent. Turning to my wife, I whispered my fear that our youngest daughter -a great lover of these trees- would be traumatized by the day’s events. A compassionate and practical woman, yet still half asleep, she whispered back to me: “It’s just a tree, she’ll get over it.” Annoyed by her response, I bounded out of bed to start the day in a state of agitation.

The tree servicemen came and went, mustering their impressive arsenal of saws, cables, and cherry pickers that dismembered Old Man Willow from canopy to stump with tidy, almost robotic dispatch. Watching them, I could not shake the powerful images of trees personified as people that are found in the Bible. Yet as increasingly large pieces of the old man thudded to the lawn, I allowed my fascination with the technology to push aside my uneasiness, and I reasoned to myself: “It’s a rotted old willow tree, Dan. You’ll get over it.”

That afternoon, my wife, daughter and I stood around the stump, as we easily poked holes in its spongy center and half heartedly attempted to count its many rings. We performed an informal ritual of “arboreal memorial” by alternating between quiet murmurs of regret, acknowledgment of the stump’s rotted sponginess, and respectful silence. Neighbors and friends stopped by over the next couple of days to comment wistfully on the tree’s sad remains, almost as if they were paying the traditional shivah visit in a Jewish house of mourning. Looking over at our surviving willow, I was mildly shocked by its lonely lopsidedness: a twin bereft of its sibling and swaying forlornly on our lawn.

I gradually got over the “tree-as-family member” thing; yet something about this routine, if regrettable, act of property maintenance continued to bother me. A few weeks after we cut the willow down, I came across the 1937 painting, Willlow Tree, by the abstract painter, Arthur Dove. Upon first glance, I assumed that he had drawn a cross section of a stump that can either be viewed sideways or from above. However, looking more closely, I realized that the supposed “stump” resembled a fetus curled up in the womb, hardly the shape or life form I would expect to find inside the stump of an old willow. The personal significance of Dove’s work became painfully apparent to me. Our deceased tree possessed a kind of fetal memory. Its trunk, branches, leaves and rings encoded a long, rich history of birth, growth, decline and death that patterns all life and living things. Necessary and routine as it may have been, by cutting down our willow, we had also erased one small piece of that memory.

Now that the willow’s stump and roots have been ground and the top soil has been replenished, I have planted a Japanese maple sapling and small shrubs in its place. Their mix of light maroon and dark green will capture the sunlight and fill our lawn with color. They will grow through the seasons, and the willow’s rough brown branches and light green leaves will slowly fade from memory. On late afternoons I will sit on the steps of my house, pausing to consider that, after all, it was a very old tree.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, New York.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein

So, Here Is A Shofar That I Wrote To God (Poem)

2010-01-06T10:43:00.000-08:00

Note: I wrote this before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, 5770 (September 2009) after learning of the illness of the child of a friend.

“SO, HERE IS A SHOFAR THAT I WROTE TO GOD…”

Guardian of Israel, Who neither slumbers nor sleeps,
Wake up!
Master Builder, Who fashioned the human brain
And planted on its sides two elegant ears,
Take the cotton out of Your own, and get it through Your head
That I am here,
Angry, pleading, shivering
On the lawn outside of Your heavenly home.
I whisper, weep, and wail,
Loudly gasping for Your attention
As You sit there, dozing divinely on Your throne.

I am the child wailing with pain,
I am his parent weeping with fear,
I am the one whispering hoarsely-
“Where are You?”-

You tell me that, when that shofar blasts,
I –like it- should let out a whimper.
You tell me that, when that ram’s horn sounds,
I –like it- should let out a groan.
You tell me that, with the first blasted note,
I –like it- should let out a wail…
But I’ll tell You what:
I –like it- will gather my breath
With the force of hurricane wind in a sail
And I’ll shout and shriek and shake my fists
At You, demanding You be there when I call,
I’ll rattle Your walls and shatter Your windows,
As I shake You, wake You from the conspiracy
Of Your Deaf-Mute Complacency.

Say hello to my little friend, Lord:
This bent, stooped, bowed, crooked shofar,
Symbol of humble petition, submission, contrition
No more.
This weapon of the wounded
That wounds Your cast iron heavens,
Its bullets whistling
Anguish and hope.
Together with every piercing note-
Every voice of every person
Who ever loved, lost, smiled and suffered-
We’ll march on Your property:
An army of shofars bellowing like grown ups
And crying inconsolably like children.
Hooting and hollering,
With love, lust for life
And that limitless mix of joy and fear
For what this year may bring,
We’ll get Your attention,
As we scream Tekiah in Your ears,
And get in Your face…
Only to realize when, face-to-face,
That You were awake all the time:
The anxious Parent up at 3 AM in tears
Waiting for us to come home, away from all harm
Whispering to us, “I’m here, it’s ok.”
Letting us fall silent, and cradling us like babies
In Your arms.

© 2010 by Rabbi Dan Ornstein. All Rights Reserved.

A Poem I Published In The Jewish Forward

2010-01-03T17:59:00.000-08:00

From time to time I'll be posting poetry that I've been privileged to publish. Unfortunately, I"m still figuring out how to insert links, so you'll need to cut and paste for now. I hope you enjoy it.

http://www.forward.com/articles/104830/

Whales

2010-01-03T17:01:00.000-08:00

WHALES.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

My wife and I recently spent a few days in Santa Cruz, California, on the shores of Monterey Bay which is home to the National Marine Sanctuary, one of the largest and biologically richest marine life preserves in the world. A favorite pastime on the bay for locals and tourists alike is to get on a boat and go whale watching. All year long, depending upon the season, you can see different species of these beautiful creatures, along with their cousins the dolphins, as well as sea lions, otters, seals, and a host of graceful seabirds. Each of the whale watching programs -and there are many- markets the superiority of its tours with fantastic claims such as, “whale sightings guaranteed or your next trip is free,” as if marine life will perform on command for the pleasure of us humans who gawk from these boats, insisting on getting our money’s worth with a great show. The whales, of course, have an agenda which is radically different from ours. They swim, breed, rest and play at their own pace, unaware of little else except employing the skills of survival with which they have been endowed over billions of years. Unlike dolphins, who relish chasing and swimming near the boats that come out to sea, whales like to keep to themselves, content to dive and surface where and when they choose, oblivious to the humans invading their homes.

Out in the boat, a few miles away from shore, on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, we were surrounded by the peace and stillness of endless water, along with pods of dolphin and beautiful grey whales. A once endangered species, greys are now estimated to number over 26,000 along the Pacific coast. Marine biologists, two of whom were conducting our tour, study these mammals with great care and respect, and they work hard to enlighten the layperson about how these creatures live. Our guides taught us some incredible things. Did you know that the greys migrate yearly from the Bering Sea near Alaska to Baja California and back? That is a 12,000 mile round trip between their winter and summer homes with their entire families. Imagine trying to take your kids or your grandchildren on a three hour trip from Albany to New York City in a car. Think about what that involves and you’ll realize that we do not hold a candle to the whales. Did you know that greys have such huge lung capacity that they only need to come up out of the water to breathe every seven to eleven minutes? (Remember, whales and dolphins are mammals, not fish. They do not have gills.) The most conditioned swimmer or diver would be lucky to stay under water without scuba gear for a few minutes before gasping for air. Did you know that like a lot of marine life, greys use echolocation, a built in sonar system which allows them to guide themselves through pitch black water without ever having to see a thing? I can’t find my way from Albany to some parts of Latham, even when using a map in broad daylight. The guides had me hooked. To quote America’s children, the greatest of all scientists, whales are mad cool.

We also learned about some profoundly disturbing features of the life of whales. Our guides quite matter-of-factly described to us the predatory battles which take place between female grey whales and their cousins the Orca, or killer whales who share the water with them. When hungry, Orca will attack baby greys and eat them. Like all mothers since the beginning of time, female greys fend off Orca fiercely by slapping them with their powerful tails or biting them until they leave the babies alone. Commenting on this grotesque whale-on-whale violence, our guide Frank mused nonchalantly, “What are you gonna do? Orcas also have to eat.”

Unable to enjoy anything without taking at least a few moments to ponder anxiously its moral significance, I couldn’t help thinking about what Frank had said. With all of their highly evolved intelligence and social behavior, you would think that whales would have found ways to survive which are less brutal to their own kind, but they haven’t. Even more vexing are the scary, apparent similarities between whale behavior and that of human mammals. We pride ourselves on our moral and social sophistication, yet we can be just as predatory, whether we are engaged in war with each other or simply eating other animals. For all of our presumed evolutionary superiority, we continue to exploit and to prey upon other species and upon each other.

It was the philosopher Thomas Hobbes who taught that when we are left to our own devices in the state of nature, our lives remain “nasty, brutish, and short,” with no purpose to living except to attack one another out of selfish motives, and then to die. Even out of the state of nature, in what passes for society, life often appears to fit Hobbes’ description perfectly. It is no wonder that Hobbes was committed to the idea of an autocratic, iron fisted regime which people would impose upon themselves for the purposes of maintaining moral and social order. It is interesting that Hobbes referred to such a regime as the Leviathan, the monstrous and powerful mythical whale mentioned a number of times in the Bible. Perhaps we should go one step further than Hobbes: rather than live under the watchful eye of the great political whale, maybe we should give up being human, slink back into the sea from which we emerged at the beginning of time, and become like the great sea creatures. We might spare ourselves a whole lot of pain that way.

Yet each time I ponder the pain caused by our predatory side that makes us look more whale than human, I realize that my very ability to ponder is part of what makes us more human than whale. Though I have no intimate knowledge of the inner life of whales, I believe it is safe to assume that when Orca attacks a baby grey, it isn’t thinking about how a morally free choice is being made or about its disastrous consequences for the victim. Orca is responding in a very primitive and instinctive way to hunger, and nothing else. Over billions of years, Orca and grey whales have evolved the capacity to hunt, the tools of echolocation, great lungs, and the ability to travel enormous distances. These things are their gifts which help them to survive and which make them wonderful. Yet the burden and the glory of having to choose between brutality and beneficence, and having to accept responsibility for these choices, belong to human beings alone. For all of their sophistication, whales do not argue about good and evil, or fight, or kiss and make up, or feel remorse, or ask forgiveness, or repent, or accept apologies. Since the day that Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil we have been blessed and cursed with that knowledge and with the ability to act upon it. Admittedly, human freedom is often an unbearable paradox. Our lives possess dignity and meaning precisely because we are equally free to prey upon each other as we are to pray for each other. Were we programmed to be consistently good our world would be much nicer but we would be irrelevant because our moral choice would have been obliterated. Human freedom is as indispensable as it is terrifying.

There are times in my life when I wish I could be like the whales, floating gracefully in the sea and living in the moment, free of the anxieties of moral, emotional, and spiritual struggle and ambiguity. I suspect that we all fantasize about how pleasant it would be just to be from birth until death. Yet, thankfully, this is not our reality. Since that time when we climbed out of the sea to begin the journey called living, our visions, our choices, our beastliness and our beauty have made the human story perhaps the greatest one ever told. If I may badly misquote Robert Frost, we have taken the roads less traveled by...and that has made a whale of a difference.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Tests

2010-01-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

TESTS

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

I was a late bloomer when it came to getting a driver’s license. Growing up in an urban family for whom driving a car was an exotic, somewhat fearsome ritual, I graduated –kicking and screaming- from the passenger’s side to behind the wheel when I was an old man of twenty six. I suppose I should have seen it coming: that dreaded day when, a year before the end of graduate school, my wife firmly reminded me that our home in Manhattan would soon be a distant memory as job offers in the suburbs beckoned over the professional horizon. What followed were my first tortured miles on the road. My attempts to become a driver almost totaled friendships after near fatalities practicing in friends’ cars. Three failed road tests at the hands of bored and sadistic examiners drove me into therapy, as I tried to figure out a possible connection between my childhood anxieties and my troubles with driving. By the time of my fourth road test, I was experiencing an emotional multiplier effect. My inability to pass the road test turned from a minor nuisance into my uphill battle to become a real American adult who was free to move about his life. A kind examiner took pity on me the fourth time, and later my wonderful wife rescheduled the “driver’s license party” for me that she had canceled a number of times before. Joyous that night in the company of friends and family, I had finally arrived.

I vowed that when each of my kids came of age and prepared for this rite of passage I would not fail at this parental duty of helping them to get their licenses. They would not be condemned to be pedestrians forever. For the past six months I have taken to the road with my son as one of his driving instructors. We have bonded around these lessons, the latest of our shared driving experiences that began when he was eighteen months old. Back then, he and I left my working wife behind and took a vacation car trip for ten days to visit family along the Eastern seaboard. All these years later, I gladly (and with surprisingly little trepidation) hand him the car keys and teach him the skills of automotive manhood that I dream will spare him the infantilizing humiliation that was mine. Little league dads and stage moms revisit and repair their early traumas and ambitions through their children’s endeavors. I am what you might call a parallel parking parent, seeking through my son to exorcise the demons of my dark driving past, as well as facilitate his coming of age. Yet there are hard lessons that I the teacher have had to learn in that driver’s seat. One day I took him on a practice road test, barking at and failing him for any and all infractions, like a real life examiner. Growing uncharacteristically testy, he barked back: “You know, maybe that’s how they did it when you took the test in New York City, but this is Albany!” We returned home in surly silence. As he turned away from me into his room, I stopped him. “I’m sorry I did that to you. This is not about you, it’s about me. It was humiliating for me, failing all those times.” With a characteristic adolescent mix of filial tenderness and curtness he shot back, “Yeah, I know.”

The impulse to live or re-live through our children is like the sports car we see racing around on the car commercials above the little words, “Professional driver, do not attempt.” It seems like such good fun, performed with effortless grace and skill. Then, we get behind the wheel and try to drive our children’s lives –albeit for the noble purposes of helping them that we have rationalized for ourselves. Unsurprisingly, those car rides some times crash- and- burn, or simply go nowhere. The poet Kahlil Gibran was right. Once they leave the womb, our children are not our children. That is the awesome, heartbreaking mystery of loving these young ones and letting them go…but not before they pass the road test.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Teenagers

2010-01-03T16:58:00.001-08:00

TEENAGERS.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

Some time ago, a friend who was the priest of a local Catholic church invited me to guest preach at Sunday morning mass. This church is airy and modern, a beneficiary of both sunlight streaming through her windows and of her generous benefactors. I rarely preach outside my own synagogue. Accepting my friend’s invitation was an opportunity for interfaith goodwill, so I took my assignment seriously.

After a quiet early morning mass, the ten o’clock crowd entered, a more boisterous group that busily filled the sanctuary. I took in the beautiful worship with a mixture of spiritual reverence and respectful detachment. I was witnessing a community seeking connection with God and each other. How could I not find that deeply moving? Yet I was also an outsider to this particular community whose beliefs are not mine. Naturally I would feel somewhat marginal to the experience.

I intently watched communion being offered, as the pianist played lovely contemporary music. I also watched a teenaged boy, maybe fifteen years old, waiting to take communion. He looked no different from my teenaged son. It was a hot day, so he wore shorts, a tee shirt, and flip flops, presumably permitted attire for summer mass in this warm, inclusive church. He playfully jostled a boy in front of him, most likely his little brother. When his turn came to receive the wafer and the wine, he quickly paused in his playful banter. He entered the sacred space of communion with no fanfare or trepidation, just a look of comfort with this ritual that belonged to him and his family. Thirty seconds later he was done, a faithful adherent transformed, yet the same teenager he had been before. Touched by this scene, I asked to meet his family after mass. They were, in fact, an active church family, and he was one of the musicians.

Afterwards, I thought about this boy and about the parallel spiritual experiences and comfort level of my own son and daughters. For all of them, religious expression is neither exotic nor alienating. It is a kind of mother’s milk that gently nourishes their everyday experiences without them giving it much thought. Like that boy and his family, my family and I have worked hard to foster a spiritual culture in our home, howbeit a distinctively Jewish one. My kids sometimes complain about it, and like most kids brought up in religious homes, they may reject all or part of it for a while as they explore adulthood. Yet at some level they know that our family’s consistent spiritual practice lends order, meaning, and love to our lives.

I do not know what has happened to that boy I met that Sunday. I hope that he and his family are well and that he is preparing, like my son and our family, for high school graduation and the bittersweet farewell to home that comes with growing up. I hope both boys will never forget that religion is a spiritual home where, when they feel they need to go there, God will take them in. I hope that no matter how far from that home they find themselves, they will also understand, to paraphrase the writer Max Dimont, that God is portable. But mostly, I hope that every child graduating this summer, whether religious or not, will grow in soul, as mirrors reflecting and flooding God’s light into an often cold, dark world.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Summer Camp

2010-01-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

SUMMER CAMP.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

One of my children’s favorite refuges from their parents is the Jewish summer camp that they attend. It is one of several summer programs in our religious denomination that, for over half a century, have built lasting friendships, produced marriages, perpetuated the values of Judaism, and left kids with cherished memories well after they have grown up. When my wife and I dropped our kids off at camp and picked them up a month later this past summer, I was mystified by its power to draw them away from the comforts of home and into the secret society of their circle of camp friends and activities. I attended one of these camping programs only once, the summer that I was thirteen. My parents made me go for a full eight weeks, and as a scared, insecure, unathletic homebody, I wanted nothing more than to escape that prison and hitchhike back to our house in Queens. Though I recognize now how wisely they helped me to cut the cord and become more independent, at the time I was miserable. That is why, even though we gladly pay the bills to have the kids be at camp summer after summer, I have had a hard time understanding what they see in the whole experience.

Two days after we picked them up, I drove back out to camp to spend some time teaching at our denomination’s regional high school youth group conference. Other than the voices of excited teenagers socializing and playing softball in the distance, the usually noisy, energetic campgrounds were deserted and quiet. The summer season was really over, but in the gentle movement of the wind as it passed through the tall pines, I imagined echoes of children, mine and others, singing, laughing and pledging their loyalties as they greeted one another then bade each other tearful goodbyes all too quickly. Almost immediately upon arriving I was haunted by images of my daughter running back and forth from one activity to the other with her bunkmates, her sweet smile and spunky personality filling camp with joy and warmth. I kept thinking about my teenage son walking around with his buddies, one year older, just dying to rule camp and to seek out the new, awesome adventures of adolescence. Walking from my car to the camp’s magnificent library I stopped and wept as these images filled me with memory and meanings. For me, camp had been in retrospect a necessary evil, without which my learning to leave home would have been so much more difficult. For my kids, camp has been a blessing that is teaching them to feel at home wherever they are, whenever they are in the company of friends and community. Yet camp also means that they are getting older. They are slowly taking their leave of us as each summer passes and they store up memories, have experiences, and form relationships to which my wife and I will mostly never be privy. That is as it should be, but that day I truly tasted the bittersweetness of growing up and saying farewell, a life cycle ritual that our kids reenact each camp season. Like my parents in the distant past, each summer my children are teaching me the fine and poignant art of letting go.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Rides

2010-01-03T16:54:00.000-08:00

RIDES.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

There is nothing that my children love more, and that I love less, than amusement parks. Each summer, whether we are at a monster park like Morey’s Piers in New Jersey or a gentle kiddie park like our own Hoffman’s, my kids cannot wait to charge through the gate, grab their tickets from us, and sail off into the sky at dizzying, gravity defying heights on rides that make me physically ill just to look at them. My two older children’s taste for these thrills is so infectious that my youngest child has now begun to join them with an abandon and light heartedness that I cannot understand. My wife, who is not much less anxious than I about these rides, looks on with me in utter amazement as we wonder aloud if these are really our children, and if so, where they got their genes from. Often, only the good graces of my more adventurous sister in law, their beloved and fun loving aunt, save us from having to accompany our kids on all of these roller coasters and water slides. She has saved her nephew and nieces from the dark prisons of our cowardice and motion sickness on more than one occasion.
I knew my hang ups about being hung upside down would clash with my children’s high energy thrill seeking as early as the summer when my son was eight. Champing at the bit like a race horse about to leave the gate, he was forced to listen to our cautious lectures about safety on the monster water slide he was about to zip down. “No funny business up there,” we warned him. “Lie flat on your back, do not try to stand or sit up as you’re going down, and for heaven’s sake…” As we droned on and on, he looked up at us with his big little boy eyes that spoke volumes to us: “You are aliens from another planet, and you are driving me nuts. Now, let me go have fun.”

Some of my anxiety derives from a legitimate concern about the safety of amusement parks, and the limits of what young children should be doing at them, and some of it derives from my neurological wiring. There are folks like me who just get sick from a combination of speed, height, and sudden movements. Some of my anxiety derives from fears about being out of control that I have carried with me since I was young. For many people, roller coaster enthusiasts especially, the feeling of being out of control produces an almost euphoric rush that they crave. As a father and a rabbi, I get enough of that chaotic feeling every day, that I can live without me or my kids creating more of it. Nonetheless, when I find myself projecting these fears onto my children, I struggle to suppress that part of myself so that I can let them ride to their heart’s content. I don’t want them to grow up fearing the things that I fear, because I want them, within reasonable limits, to be much more free and at home in the world than I have been in the past.

At a deeper level, my problem with putting myself and my kids on all of those rides is that they are symbols for what the author John Irving calls the undertoad, the terrifying reality of chaos and randomness just below the surface of our journeys through life, which threatens to pull us down into death. Life isn’t scary and bumpy enough, that we have to go looking for opportunities to produce artificial encounters with mortality? However, reality is a complex balance between laying down by still waters and plummeting down raging rivers. We cannot escape this truth, and we would be fools if, in the process of protecting ourselves and our children from danger, we squelched our freedom to take risks and our courage to live fully. I imagine the roller coasters and water slides wisely chanting a chorus to me when I hesitate before saying yes to requests for an amusement park visit: “Check the height and age requirements on the tilt a whirl, and see to it that the safety belts are fastened on the Comet coaster. Then, let go of your children’s hands and allow them to experience the thrill and the risk of real life.” Though you will never catch me on anything wilder than the merry go round, that chorus is sound advice that teaches me and my children how to embrace our spinning carousel of a world everyday.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Praying

2010-01-03T16:52:00.001-08:00

PRAYING.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

As part of its airport renovations, the Capitol District Airport Authority wisely included an interfaith prayer room, for which it enlisted the support of the different religious communities. The room is decorated with an understated mural of Ann Lee Pond and the Helderbergs under a nighttime sky, along with two fountains on both sides dribbling water into an artificial stream. Sitting in this stream are well polished stones that shine under dimmed lights while the water gurgles, creating an atmosphere of peace. In one corner of the room are prayer books and other ritual objects, while tucked away in the other corner is an ornate Muslim prayer rug decorated with a picture of Mecca. Simple benches adorn each side of the room, beckoning to travelers to sit and allow themselves a few moments of contemplation. I often use the prayer room prior to catching a flight. Set apart from the coffee bars, intercoms, security guards, and noisy travelers, it is a place where I, a regular worshipper and a somewhat nervous flyer, can connect with God in privacy. Judging by the numerous entries in the room’s sign in book, I am not alone in my appreciation for this bit of sacred space that helps me prepare mentally and spiritually for each trip.

Almost without fail, the first thing that I do when in other airports is ask at the information desk about a similar prayer room or chapel in which I can pray peacefully. Sadly, the American airports that I have been in, most far larger than ours, have no such islands of calm. In the past, this presented me with a big problem, because the occasions on which I fly are in the early morning when there is a limited window of time for me to recite morning prayers according to Jewish religious law. Out of necessity, I have learned to be comfortable praying in public at any airport terminal. I find a quiet spot where few people are sitting, I put on the ritual garb of Jewish prayer, and I try to enter a different world. Each time I do this, with other passengers and airport staff strolling by me, I grow a bit more unselfconscious. Are they curious, put off, or suspicious about me, as I attempt to pray intently while wearing strange clothes that contrast with their capris and business suits? I don’t know, because I’ve trained myself not to care by not looking around to see who, if anyone, is looking at me. For the longest time I shied away from such public displays of religious involvement. I reasoned that they violated the personal space of others and that they could invite trouble from people less tolerant than me. My real concern, the one that none of us shakes off entirely after adolescence, was that I would be laughed at or that someone would think I’m weird. Over time my reasoning has changed. Almost by default, the public places of America are showrooms for multicolored hair, various ethnic dresses and styles, and more body parts prominently displaying piercings and jewelry than one can imagine. I’ve learned to accept my role as another strange note in the music of the diverse American experience, which often sounds more like a tone poem than a symphony.

Notwithstanding my accommodation to the necessity of being religious in public, I would like to require every airport, train station and bus depot in this country to build a chapel similar to the one our region has. Places for public transportation are microcosms of the breathless culture in which we reside, providing a stage for our harried and unreflective races through the day. Stand in a corner of any of these venues and count the cups of coffee, the cell phones, and the business suits zooming by and you are certain to become dizzy or get a headache. Add to this mess the terrifying significance of these places in the back of each traveler’s mind: they are often points of departure from the familiar and the safe, for destinations that often hold out uncertainty. Setting out on a trip should be an opportunity for centered contemplation of one’s life and the meaning of one’s inner and outer journeys. Instead it becomes a chance to get heartburn from overpriced fast food and to feel angry and anxious as we try to beat the clock to leave a terminal or a gate. A chapel or meditation room would reverse so much of this unhealthy living simply by being there as a protective refuge from the headlong rush. To paraphrase Rabbi Abraham Heschel, it could be an island in time and space. Atheists and fundamentalists, sinners and saints, could all sit side by side in this sacred space, sharing the blessings of meditative silence and the pursuit of the inner life. Strengthened and refreshed, we could reenter the terminal, station, or depot feeling better prepared to deal with life’s challenges and more capable of behaving like human beings towards each other.

Governments and industries build amenities that reflect the demands and needs of their customers, making certain to provide the community at large with what it values. Airports in particular resemble mini neighborhoods, hosting business centers, conference rooms, malls, and even hotels that arch gracefully over their grand concourses. The emphasis in American religion is slowly shifting away from formal membership in denominations and towards the private spirituality of the individual. Whether we like it or not, this changed emphasis coupled with geographic mobility is growing a class of Americans who practice a kind of “religion on the go.” They will demand increasingly that the comforts of meditative spaces be included among the options already offered for those in transit, and those who develop our nation’s travel centers would be wise to heed those demands. I look forward to the day when, without violating the separation of church and state, our public places will proudly provide these mini-retreat centers for the private enrichment of our inner lives. Their presence will send the powerful message that the diverse spiritual paths of Americans are of the greatest importance and deserving of support. They will also gently remind people like me that, even when we are on the road, we are never too far away from home.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

New Year's

2010-01-03T16:48:00.000-08:00

NEW YEAR’S

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

One blessing of being a light sleeper is waking up to watch the sun rise. I generally welcome the new day this way on early morning visits to the beach when I vacation with family during the summer. Yet, recently I have discovered among the many simple pleasures of the capital district an almost perfect spot for watching the sun and the moon jump back and forth over the horizon. A few miles from my home in Albany, at the corner of New Krumkill and Font Grove roads there is a small parking spot overlooking a field. It is an elevated point with an almost unobstructed view from which I am able to look down into Albany and see the towers of the university and the Empire State Plaza. I sit on the hood of my car in front of a dilapidated, authentic red barn whose paint is fading. I watch and listen as the world of sky, sun, moon, trees, and birds goes about its business, oblivious to me and the other humans who pass through the area.

On New Year’s Day, 2002, I woke up early. Anticipating sunrise at 7:25 AM, I dressed, kissed my wife goodbye, and quietly left the house without disturbing our sleeping children. Driving out to the intersection with the sun just at the edges of the sky I marveled at the different look and feel of our community when it sleeps and is enveloped in silence. That morning was cold but clear and windless, allowing me to ease out of the car and embrace the peace and stillness of New Year’s Day without great discomfort. Other than the voices of birds in musical conversation and the occasional bark of a dog, nothing else competed for my attention. Light broke on the eastern horizon in front of me, while high in the Western sky behind me the bright moon began to fade as if being pushed back into its hiding place by the sun eager to rule the day.

The tentative fingers of sunlight that wrapped themselves around the wisps of clouds in the distance quickly grew into floods of brilliant red, orange, and pink. On a telephone wire above me, three birds held me in rapt, almost childlike attention as they chirped a reverent welcome to the sun that was by now well above the horizon and almost impossible to look at directly. Pulling a pocket Bible from my knapsack, I read aloud some verses from psalm 19: “The sun bursts forth like a bridegroom from his marriage chamber//Like a champion exultant and eager to run his course.” There we all stood in gentle praise on January 1, - the sun, the moon, the cold air and I, bound together with each other, the birds, the barking dog, the trees, and everything else: witnesses to the unity of all life, the painting on God’s canvas.

The night before, my family ended 2001 at the first night celebration in downtown Albany. Then too the sky was lit up, only this time by fireworks that, this past year, were part of our ongoing response as Americans to the tragedy of September 11. As the year closed in an explosion of sound and color with “God Bless America” blaring from a loudspeaker at City Hall, I was moved by our attempt to deal with our collective grief through this slightly superficial display of patriotism. That next morning I was alone in the middle of a world no different than the day before, yet so full of hope for what could happen on the day after. On the heels of a tumultuous year of death and suffering, I stood at that intersection and wrapped myself in the rhythms of nature and of life that continue despite their unpredictability. The author, Rachel Remen, once wrote that life may be terribly uncertain, but it is not fragile. Even in the deep winter freeze it persists, as surely as the sun chases the moon away in their race through the morning sky.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Mountains

2010-01-03T16:47:00.001-08:00

MOUNTAINS

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

My friend Tom has taught me the fine art of hiking. An avid naturalist since the age of fifteen, he is as comfortable spending a few days in the high peaks of the Adirondacks as he is in his own home. In the time that I have known him, Tom has taken me on three hikes through those peaks that I would never have done myself. By now a “46er,” a climber who has reached the summits of all forty six Adirondack high peaks, Tom takes me along partly for company and partly because he knows how much I enjoy hiking. He is a sure footed guide through rough and inspiring terrain whose challenges I love.

Understand that hiking with Tom is no piece of cake. He is incredibly strong and well conditioned, and keeping up with him is challenging. Our first high peaks together were Mount Algonquin and Mount Iroquois, two of the tallest peaks in the state that are separated by a rough and unmarked trail over a ridge called, simply, Boundary. We completed our ascent of Iroquois without incident, and feeling strong, I eagerly agreed when Tom proposed that we not backtrack over Algonquin, but rather, take the trail to Lake Colden and return to Marcy Dam, making a loop. It was a decision that my legs would regret, for as I found out later, the trail that we were descending is one of the steepest descents in the high peaks.

Overestimating my own strength, I was incredibly unprepared for the physical difficulties of the all day trek. My leg and thigh muscles took a beating, and with five of the fifteen miles left to go on the hike, I was desperate for a drink of water, having failed to conserve what I had brought with me. As Tom was showing me how to climb down a rock wall ten or fifteen feet high, my thigh muscles suddenly locked and I froze. In a panic, I yelled to him that I could not move, and for a few moments I vaguely understood what it feels like to be paralyzed. Tom helped me off the wall, and I hobbled along behind him down a difficult descent of huge boulders, stopping frequently to knead my sore calves and thighs. At one point, he turned to me and said, “Give me your backpack.” “Tom, you shouldn’t have to carry my stuff for me. I’ll be fine,” I replied. Staring at me with polite frustration, he answered, “You don’t understand. I can carry three times as much as I am now and still move at the same speed. You’re slowing us down, now give me your backpack!” In the middle of the high peaks with the sky growing darker and reports of black bears in the area, you don’t argue with your guide. He carried my backpack the rest of the way.

Last summer I was better prepared for our hike up Giant Mountain and across Rocky Peak Ridge. In preparation, I exercised regularly and conditioned my legs. I also decided well in advance that I would drink water only after long intervals when I really needed it. I was proud of myself for doing so much better on the trail, though Tom amazed me yet again. The day of the hike, his wife was out of town with their son, and he had no babysitter for their three year old daughter. What to do? Like any good 46er educating his children in the ways of the trail, he took her along and she had a blast being carried gracefully up and down by her dad who never missed a beat, and who once again moved faster than me at all times.
The day that Tom and I hiked Algonquin, we stopped briefly to chat with an assistant park ranger trained in trail guidance, who informed us that the Adirondacks are about a billion years old. Walking around the Adirondacks exhibit in the State Museum some time later, I discovered that, to be much more precise, their origins go back nearly a billion and a half years, and a geologist I know tells me that some rocks there are probably closer to two and a half billion years old, corresponding to the Precambrian era in geologic time. They were formed when the only living things around were the simplest bacteria and maybe some fish. Life in all of its complexity continuously evolves, with whole species rising and becoming extinct. Yet it is humbling to realize that these mountains under our feet have been silent, unyielding witnesses to all of this within the vast embrace of time and nature for a good part of the earth’s history. Even more humbling is the great paradox that these mountains present to the hiker. Their majesty is a song of glory to the beauty and variety of life. Yet one false move off of a boulder, and the mountains can send you to your death, as they remain where they are, implacable and oblivious to your suffering. Most humbling of all, the mountains themselves shrink one half inch per year, the victims of the even larger forces of erosion by wind, rain, snow, and ice.

Like Tom, the mountains are my teachers. I am drawn to the mountains whether I am climbing in the Adirondacks, hiking on the California coast, or descending into ravines near the Dead Sea. Admittedly, their appeal to me is not always about my humbly putting my life in perspective as I stand dwarfed before them. When I hike I come alive with a deep sense of the raw power that still pulses through my generally sedentary and slowly aging body. I feel the strain of leg muscles, the fierce pounding of my heart and the rush of air into my lungs as I conquer a summit and survey the vast world high above street level. Yet even these experiences gently force me to prevent myself from swelling with too much pride at my own strength. My energy is merely one small rivulet that flows out from and back into the ocean that is life itself. The mountains and I are separate entities, but we are also one with each other in the project of creation shaped gently by God’s fingers at the beginning of time. Huffing and puffing along a trail, I dance a waltz with them that will continue well after they and I have returned to the earth.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Menschen

2010-01-03T16:45:00.000-08:00

MENSCHEN

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

We all filed in to the SEFCU Arena on the UAlbany campus in a raucous spirit of joy and pride on Albany High School’s graduation day in June. Albany High is an inner city school, so my son graduated with friends and acquaintances from numerous social class, ethnic and economic backgrounds. He knows students who are the first to graduate high school in their families, and who grew up in some of the worst neighborhoods in the city without proper familial or educational support. Yet there they were, receiving high school diplomas, their tickets to potential success in the future.

Knowing that he was speaking to a bunch of teenagers, the keynote speaker -a renowned scientist and entrepreneur- presented a very funny Powerpoint slide show. It bore the simple message that in this fiercely competitive world, if you want to stay ahead of the game, you have to work hard, be competitive, and innovate aggressively. I found his style and message refreshing, even inspiring, until he started talking about his high tech business version of “the golden rule,” which was a strange echo of Darwin’s evolutionary theory that the members of a species who survive are those who adapt most readily to change. I was dismayed, to say the least. When did the biblical commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” cease to hold the golden rule title and get replaced by a message amounting, however jovially, to tired truisms about getting ahead in a “dog eat dog” world? My wife wisely reminded me that some of the students he was addressing are from such disadvantaged backgrounds that they need all the inspiration they can get. Nonetheless, I left the ceremony fearful that my son and his peers had been charged by this influential man with nothing more than the usual narcissistic obligation to self framed as an iron clad rule of nature, and aping the language of religious ethics. His speech begged a larger question for me about American values that nags at me constantly: have we have forgotten or been scared away from teaching children the fine art of being a mensch, the popular Jewish term for a good and decent person, which is the essence of “the golden rule”?

I recognize that many teachers work hard to raise classroom communities based upon the core values of compassion, cooperation and character. But these pedagogic endeavors quickly fade as the pressures of academic success, college admissions, and standardized tests overwhelm high school students and teachers. It does not help that public school teachers are justifiably reticent to promote their students’ character development because it feels too much like religious training being snuck into a public education setting. However, they forget about us, the religious leaders and educators who are not interested in fighting culture wars with them. We don’t want to teach creationism as science, ban books in school libraries, or overrun school boards. What we want is to make common cause with parents and teachers to help children live according to the moral values of personal civility, decency and responsibility, and compassion.

There is a broader consensual dialogue about combating culturally ingrained incivility and selfishness that can bridge the religious-secular divide. We are a culture in search of a common educational language that can help the genuinely nice kids of my son’s generation value integrity and kindness as much as they value getting a high paying job. Emerging from the mess of Bernie Madoff and the current recession, we have been humbled and devastated by the betrayal of values that these tragedies represent. Perhaps we are ready to restore the golden rule to its rightful place in the private and public spaces of our lives and those of our children. Perhaps we are ready to re-learn the fine art of being a mensch.
Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Lost Objects

2010-01-03T16:42:00.000-08:00

LOST OBJECTS.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

Something strange is happening to me. Over the past couple of months, members of my family and I have become the human equivalent of St. Anthony’s medallions, which according to Catholic lore bring the wearer the power to find lost objects through the intercession of that patron saint. This is admittedly a weird metaphor for me, a believing Jew and rabbi, to use about myself. Yet, how else to explain my eerily recurrent experience? Let me illustrate.

First, while with me at a local supermarket, my youngest daughter saw that a man using the store’s ATM had left behind a twenty dollar bill in the cash dispenser. We ran after him to return the bill, and I refused his offer to give my daughter the money as a gesture of his gratitude. Then some time later, after eating ice cream in a restaurant with that same daughter, I noticed that the waitress had forgotten to charge us for an item. I pointed this out to her and she thankfully corrected our bill. Most recently, after returning from a shopping trip, I realized that the cashier had accidentally placed a bracelet lying on the store counter in my bag with the items I had purchased. I went back the next day to return the item to the owner of the store.

I wonder: has God granted me, of all people, the power to find and return the lost possessions of others? I’m the guy who is still late to meetings because I leave my car keys in places no archaeologist could unearth. Upon more critical self reflection, I am forced to admit that my role as finder of lost things possesses none of the spiritual significance or glamour that I might attach to it. Stuff happens, and lost stuff is thrown into that liminal space between our awareness and our sleepy distraction quite randomly and naturally. Finding what is lost is just as random, from my perspective: a confluence of luck, looking around, and location.

Nonetheless, a lucky streak of three “finds” gives me pause to consider what it teaches me. My faith and moral code compelled me in all three instances to return what I found or to make good on what was missing. However, some –perhaps many- people would take that lost property, justifying their behavior with the technical, letter-of-the-law equivalent of finders-keepers-losers-weepers: if you are too irresponsible or spacey to hold onto your property and I find it, it becomes mine. Why should I not benefit from your lack of attentiveness and bad luck, especially since, technically, I did not steal what belonged to you?

I am neither an expert in the study of law nor the study of ethics, but I know when I am touching the edges of the murky realm of borderline dishonesty. This is behavior that cannot definitively be called theft and that is not as blatantly dishonest as the argument that stealing is only stealing if you get caught. Yet, the logic of this version of finders-keepers is equally dangerous because of the dog-eat-dog impulses underlying it, and the rationales we use to salve our consciences when we act upon those impulses. If I can rationalize taking your lost things because of your frailty or temporary disability I will have no problem with many other instances in which I actively benefit from your bad luck or misfortune. This kind of thinking finds its ugliest cultural expression in the insidious and elitist claim that if I have power and wealth and you don’t, each of us deserves exactly what he or she gets. This kind of thinking is nothing new, having plagued haves and have nots alike for millennia.

We will need to leave the massive overhaul of society’s institutionalized selfishness to our new president and his advisors. However, since all politics is local and personal, that transformation will have to begin with how we treat one another. Charity may begin at home, but so do meanness and exploitation. As we begin a painful period of national recovery and healing, our greatest challenge as individuals, person-to-person, will be this: to have the honesty to recognize when we are giving a pass to bad behavior, no matter how good we may want to make it feel, and to have the courage to act on our noblest, not our nastiest, impulses.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Lanes

2010-01-03T16:41:00.001-08:00

LANES

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

Some time ago, I mentioned to the parents of a student of mine that I like to go bowling. The boy’s parents, who have been bowlers on the local scene since their student days at Albany High School, responded to my revelation with a mixture of admiration and shock. They admired my motivation to frequent the bowling alley for more than my kids’ birthday parties, despite my admitted lack of skill. Yet they were also shocked to find their rabbi relishing a sport that is often stereotyped as the gritty domain of coarse, beer drinking louts who bum around all day. I forgot about the conversation until the day before the young man’s bar mitzvah ceremony, the Jewish coming-of-age ritual for 13 year old boys. That Friday morning I stood in the sanctuary of our synagogue – a place of holy retreat from the world- taking posed photographs with his family in honor of this milestone. I saw a gift bag that had been placed inside my lectern but I thought little of it, until my student approached me with it, smiled, and said, “This is for you.” Inside the bag was a shiny, new bowling ball. The family told me to take the ball to one of the well known pro shops in our area. They had paid for me to have the ball’s finger holes custom drilled and to have it monogrammed. I was speechless, for I had never received such a unique and sincere gift before, and I was now initiated into the bottom ranks of the elite bowling community. Separated from the “Sunday birthday party crowd,” who can be identified by their frantic search for the lightest ball in the racks as a gaggle of kids clings to them, I knew that I had arrived.

Why am I attracted to the game? I’ve been asking this question since the time I laughed all the way through the Big Lebowski, the Coen Brothers’ comical film noir about bowling. I’ve decided that I like to bowl for at least three reasons. I bowl, obviously, because it’s fun and because I can play it fairly well. I’ve never been much of an athlete, and I don’t expect that state of affairs to change in the future. Yet, when I watch frail looking eighty year old men from the senior league easily scoring strike after strike, I say to myself with conviction: “I want to do that! If they can do that, so can I.” Bowling is a challenging yet simple sport that even I -an uncoordinated man lacking in court sense- can play with success. Bowling is also a kind of spiritual act for me, one in which I pull myself out of time momentarily and focus my awareness on following the directional floor arrow leading to the sacred center pin, the key to a strike or a spare. I suspect that the inventors of the game were spiritual people themselves, for the idea of one ball breaking up ten pins is strangely reminiscent of the Jewish mystical teaching that God, who is indivisibly One, formed the physical world through a chain of ten emanations of divine creativity. Maybe there is some truth to the old school kids’ tale that whenever you hear thunder, that’s just God going bowling. Perhaps my most important attraction to the game is this: Though rich and satisfying, my experience as a spiritual leader feels at time like the proverbial life in the fishbowl. When I get to the bowling alley, the lanes are filled with a very diverse group of people who have no idea that I am a rabbi or even Jewish, nor could they care less. Bowling allows me to transcend my daily circumstances and just be one among many kinds of people in blessed anonymity

I remember stopping by a local alley a while back, still dressed in my suit and tie after a morning meeting. In the lane next to me were two young, tough looking, blue collar workers who were taking some time out of the work day to bowl a few frames. My game progressed, and I felt increasingly inspired as gutter balls led to some spares and then to three consecutive strikes in the last three frames. The computerized score keeper then informed me that I had achieved what is called a turkey. Wondering what that meant and embarrassed that I didn’t know what to do next, I nervously turned to the two men and said, “Excuse me, but the scorer is telling me that I got a turkey. What do I do?” I was terrified that they would start laughing at me. Clearly not interested in wasting too much time on the conversation, they paused, and then said the two words that are every bowler’s salvation : “Bowl again.”
They may not have thought twice about the encounter. However, looking back, I realize that at that moment I had crossed the deep cultural and social divide between us through that most human act of reaching out in need of help and support. On the lanes and in all of life, this universal recognition of mutual need is the basis of civilized community, and an indispensable ingredient in promoting peace and justice. At $2.50 a game, my favorite sport may just prove to be the cheapest form of international diplomacy in the future. Trading in our army boots for bowling shoes, we can spend our time knocking down pins instead of each other.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

History

2010-01-03T16:39:00.000-08:00

HISTORY

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

I am currently publishing a children’s book about the underground railroad. In it, a family of slaves seeks refuge with an immigrant Jewish family from Germany who had never intended to serve in the dangerous role of harboring escapees. Noticing the Jewish family’s Menorah lamp burning brightly in their window one night in celebration of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, the African American family mistakes the lights for the lights of a safe house beckoning kindly to people running from plantation owners and slave hunters. Caught in a web of accidental circumstance, fear and suspicion, the story’s four parents are prodded by their four quick thinking children into devising a plan for hiding the fugitive family that night. The plan works, the two families celebrate Hanukkah together, and the Jewish family helps its new friends escape to freedom the next morning. Though based upon historical fact, the story is fiction. The Jews of America before the Civil War were a tiny, politically passive minority that played almost no role in helping or owning slaves. Inspired by a conversation with one of my students, I wrote the book to help young readers imagine the extraordinary potential of ordinary human beings, children especially, to act with courage and compassion in times of great fear, danger and oppression.

True stories abound concerning courageous rescues of oppressed people by others who risked their lives to do so. Many schools in our area have children read Lois Lowry’s award winning Number the Stars, a historical novel which tells about the rescue of Danish Jewry from the Nazis by the Danish resistance. Fourth and fifth graders are introduced to the Underground Railroad, and its narratives of bravery in the face of brutality become commonplace to them. Many of our children watch all or part of Schindler’s List in middle school or high school. It is only a matter of time before similar accounts of courageous compassion emerge from Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and Darfur, to be woven into our children’s educations and our everyday language. Inspiring as these stories are, they stand out precisely because they are exceptions to the human apathy, cowardice, and –at times-willing complicity with the evildoing of those in power that we too often witness. Consider the ancient biblical story of how the Pharaoh coopted the Egyptians into allowing him to enslave and murder the Israelites, and how a few courageous women resisted his decrees before Moses came on the scene. This ugly, lopsided aspect of human character and behavior has been with us for a long time. Raised in a toxic atmosphere of tribal hatreds, terror, misinformation and the naked lust for power, too many people, it appears, will at the very least avert their eyes with guilty rationalization as their neighbors are dragged from their homes, never to be seen again.

I find it troubling to contemplate all of this and I wonder: if a knock came on our door in the middle of the night and our neighbors begged us to hide them from state sponsored terror, would we and our children find the courage to let them in? To be fair, even asking this kind of a question openly is much easier for Americans than for people in repressive, less socially diverse societies. All the more reason for Americans to keep asking them, to learn those stories of courageous compassion, and to model for future generations steadfast respect for all human life and a firm commitment to protecting it. Further, we would do well to remember that for all our advancement as a society, America was a state sponsor of slavery only 160 years ago, and segregation was the law in a number of states up until the 1960s. Remembering the past so that we and our children are not doomed to repeat it is not just a curriculum requirement, it is a sacred national obligation. Even more important, telling those stories about the men and women who risked their lives to save the oppressed is a vital discipline of collective conscience: a way of teaching ourselves and the world that human beings have the capacity and the obligation to give one another refuge.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Gladiators

2010-01-03T16:31:00.000-08:00

GLADIATORS.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

When I was fifteen, one of my partners in crime was a cousin of mine. At family gatherings, he and I would perform show stopping improvisational comedy skits that had our family members roaring for hours. My cousin probably does not remember this, but he taught me the memorable pun for the word gladiator. You know the old game. The teacher tells you to make a sentence using a word like gladiator. So you say, “A lion ate my mother in law---and I’m gladiator!” At thirty eight, I still chuckle at this retort which I knew carried with it all sorts of popular stereotypes about mothers in law before I even had a mother in law. Mind you, I have a mother in law whom I love and respect, and who I am very glad no lion has eaten. But the absurdity of this word play still tickles me.

What does not tickle me is the frightening truth about the human condition which is conveyed in the recent blockbuster movie, Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe. The movie portrays with graphic precision the total disregard for human and animal life displayed by ancient Roman society, as slaves were hurled into brutal, “fight to the death” contests attended by blood thirsty citizens of all classes. Watching it with my wife one night, I was transported back to 1987 in Italy, which she and I visited together with my in laws. Viewing the Coliseum in Rome, I couldn’t get past an ugly paradox. The Romans, with their advanced culture, employed their mathematical brilliance and their keen aesthetic eye to create this architectural masterpiece which was the site of some of the cruelest bloodshed in human history. I encountered a similar paradox later that year when, touring the British Museum in London, I suddenly realized that the British Empire had gloriously preserved the riches of diverse cultures by raping and robbing them, all in the interests of civilization. I struggle the most with this paradox of “brilliance and brutality” when studying the Holocaust. How could German society - which at the time of Hitler’s rise to power was the world leader in everything from science to the humanities- use its phenomenal gifts for the development of a genocide machine which claimed the lives of eleven million human beings, six million of them Jews? I have to conclude that intelligence is no guarantor of goodness, and that the heart of darkness often blots out conscience and compassion. Aristotle’s assertion that reason is what nobly sets us apart from other animal species has not made complete sense to me for a long time.

My son recently brought home a children’s book about gladiators by a respected educational publisher. It describes in loving detail and colorful cartoon pictures everything you would want to know about these men, including what they ate, the weapons they used, and how to say “Ave Caesar! Morituri te salutamus!,” which is Latin for the gladiators’ salute: “Hail Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!” The educational goal of the book is noble enough: it tries to impart intimate knowledge of the Roman empire and its excesses to the young reader in an objective manner. Yet it is that objectivity which gnaws at me. Certainly, critical and dispassionate inquiry is a hallmark of Western culture. We cherish it as the mechanism for teaching values such as tolerance, respect for diversity, and the rule of democratic law. But I fear that at some point education can become so value neutral and objective that young people will use it to objectify others. Too many cultures have educated generations of the best and the brightest, who used their intellectual skills to act like monsters. Is American education travelling the same path when we encourage students to be competitive, market driven successes while we shy away from teaching moral reasoning, values, and character development?

Admittedly, I am making sweeping generalizations in the form of alarmist questions. I am not suggesting that we erode the separation of church and state by imposing a specific set of values on public education and public life. Yet as a spiritual leader I take my cue from the prophets of ancient Israel who railed against the demeaning of human life and the injustices perpetrated against the weakest members of that sophisticated society: its poor, its sick, its disenfranchised, the ones about whom no one cared and who were often abused. The prophets’ criticisms transcend time and place to speak loudly to us, reminding us that “justice will roll down like mighty waters” and that “nation shall not lift up sword against nation” only when we teach ourselves and our children to strive for those ideals. How about requiring all high schools in America to teach the Anti Defamation League’s excellent “world Of Difference” curriculum which promotes tolerance? How about encouraging an Advanced Placement course in ethical problem solving? Why not establish a year of required national service for all high school or college graduates, to promote their sense of obligation to community and to sharpen their moral leadership skills? Our children -in fact all of us- need to learn more than the value of the profit motive. We need to be motivated by the values of the prophets. To paraphrase the late John Lennon, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one who envisions this kind of America. Awash in big money and deep poverty, great power and political apathy, our divided and often selfish society is hungry to revive its public dialogue about who we are and what we stand for. If we don’t revive it, we risk turning into a culture of moral mannequins: well dressed and pretty but hollow. Our task is to avoid becoming a community of masters and gladiators. Our survival as a civilization depends upon our fulfillment of that task.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Forty

2010-01-03T16:27:00.001-08:00

FORTY

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

While in a Judaic crafts store a few weeks ago, my wife and I were intrigued by a framed print which bears an inscription from a famous book of Jewish wisdom: “The age of forty is an age of understanding.” The comment is taken from a passage authored by Judah ben Tema, an ancient Jewish sage who lived in ancient Roman Palestine. In it, he outlines his view of the most important achievements toward which a person should strive at each stage of life, from five to a hundred years of age. Because we are turning forty this year and because the print has a unique style, it resonated strongly with us in a way that other pieces in the shop did not. Since buying it and hanging it on a wall of our home, I have been fascinated by the artist’s interpretation of what this bit of wisdom means. Below his very fancy lettering of the quote in Hebrew and English, he has placed a version of Vitruvian Man, a man’s body that is drawn with great mathematical precision and symmetry. It is laid out in such a way that you get the impression that the body parts, the arms and legs especially, are moving. Many such pictures exist, the most famous being those of Leonardo Da Vinci. Their focus on the mathematical dimensions of the body as an example of symmetry and perfect form are based upon the writings of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Roman era architect whose ideas about architecture dominated Europe until the Italian Renaissance. The artist of our print used a version that has the signs of the Zodiac surrounding it in a circle. The zodiac signs are drawn twice, paralleling each other on both sides of the circle as mirror images, complementing the way that the two sides of the man’s body mirror each other. One side of the circle is a rubbing onto a piece of dull gray sheet metal which contrasts with the lighter colors of the drawing paper on the other side.

I have thought a lot about how I would interpret the artist’s rendition of Judah ben Tema’s statement. The word for understanding in Hebrew is binah, which can also be translated as discernment, the ability to distinguish one thing from another with wisdom. The man in the drawing is presented in light and dark colors: at forty we are hopefully wiser about the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and the brighter and darker sides of who we are. Metal and paper divide the drawing in half: at forty, our relationships and perspectives on life have hopefully achieved some balance between a harder, stricter insistence upon justice and a more compassionate and flexible acceptance of life’s imperfections. The inner circle of the drawing contains the picture of a man: flesh and blood moving freely through the world. The outer circle contains the zodiac signs, those tools of ancient astrology which understood human affairs as a matter of divine fate which could be predicted by reading the stars: at forty, we are hopefully better equipped to know the difference between the things that are fully within our power and responsibility to change, and the things which are truly out of our hands. All of these artistic symbols are visually balanced and symmetrical, perhaps reflecting the ideal human life of physical, emotional, and spiritual wholeness toward which we strive at age forty.

I am saddened that this perspective on turning forty is not exactly shared by the culture at large. Since the time that I turned thirty nine, I have been introduced to the anxious American preoccupation with getting “over the hill,” along with its silly theme parties and even sillier gag gifts such as false teeth, adult diapers, and toy coffins. People have begun asking me half serious questions about what it’s like to be nearing old age, implying that I am supposed to be feeling cursed or that I am in premature decay. I am not in denial about the gradual effects of aging upon my body: I am certainly slower, grayer, and heavier than I was at eighteen or even at thirty. I am just uncomfortable with the pejorative assumptions about aging that seem to underlie the “turning-forty-over-the hill” phenomenon among Americans. Our society, which obsesses about the physical perfection and sexual prowess associated with youth, still does not know what to do with growing older. This is despite the fact that we are blessed with healthy longevity and that our older population, that is growing, has become a powerful political and cultural force with which to be reckoned.

I was fortunate to have acquired a different perspective about aging when I was growing up. My father has worked in the nursing home business since the time that I was a small child. He would bring me to the nursing homes in which he worked to meet the residents who lived there, many of whom were very old, weak, and sick. Yet many were also very humorous, wise, and mentally alive. My parents taught my siblings and me to look past older people’s physical appearances and disabilities that could be scary at times to a kid, and to discover the incredible human beings that they are from within. I have internalized these values as I have matured, and they inform the way that I think about my own life. The way that I see it, getting older has not led me over the hill so much as it has helped me to approach life’s summit from where I can see and discern reality a bit more clearly.
From that summit I am forced to acknowledge that as much as the rituals and myths of turning forty can be misguided or ageist, they nonetheless play a role in helping us to confront our mortality. Because we are blessed with average ages of between 76 and 80 in America, we are well aware that forty is roughly the midpoint between birth and death. For all that forty is a time for reveling joyously in wisdom and maturity it is also a time for being terrified: we are passing from, roughly, the first half of our lives into the last half, with death awaiting us at the end. As tacky and offensive as some of them may be, the preoccupations and ceremonies of turning forty are like all rituals. They seek to organize and give coherence to our experiences in times of chaos, crisis, and transition. To paraphrase my teacher, Rabbi Neil Gillman, they are threshold rituals that allow us to pass from our first forty years into the next by helping us to confront these changes in our lives with a defiant sort of humor that accepts mortality yet also reaffirms the joy of being alive.

Recently, two dear friends of mine turned forty, and this essay is in their honor. Both of them are fine human beings. One of them is raising five boys, and the other is raising three girls with their respective spouses. These accomplishments alone at age forty should earn them the right to share the Nobel Peace Prize! Their lives are not perfect nor have they experienced uninterrupted joy. Yet they have taken the raw material of life given to us at birth and they have shaped it, each in her own way, into something sacred and meaningful.

And so, hats off to my two friends. Hats off to all forties and forty somethings and almost forties who are meeting life’s challenges and celebrating their big birthdays. My advice to all of us: let’s celebrate and be grateful. We have made it to a time and a quality of life that plenty of needy people in the world may not ever attain. As we climb over that big hill and begin the gradual descent into that valley where the shadow of death will start to grow longer, let’s take our antioxidants, check our 401k’s, and most of all, let’s stop worrying about aging. It’s going to happen to us no matter what we do and no matter how much we rage against the dying of the light. Our goal is to grow older with grace and wisdom, while finding meaning in every moment that we are here.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Empathy

2010-01-03T16:24:00.000-08:00

EMPATHY.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

Some time ago, as I prepared for worship early one morning while standing by water’s edge on a beautiful Florida beach, the sun rose over the horizon, gleaming a fiery orange. In front of me rolled the seemingly endless expanse of ocean, its waves filled with life and the mysteries of life’s origins. Behind me rose ultra swanky hotels with their ghastly colored facades, each one uglier and gaudier than the next. I was all alone. It was just me, the water, and hundreds of people walking, jogging, slurping coffee and gabbing along the boardwalk behind me. Alone is often a state of mind. As far as I was concerned, I was truly alone as I wrapped myself in my traditional Jewish prayer garb and began to recite the early morning blessings of the Jewish prayer book. I was oblivious to the possible stares and befuddlement of beachwear clad passersby who would see me in my strange worship clothing from a distance. As I tried talking to God through my prayers, my mind wandered helplessly back and forth between the words of the prayer book and the awe inspiring setting of the ocean that can produce almost spontaneous inspiration.

Then I saw him. He was probably in his mid twenties, though his heavy black parka in which he huddled with the hood over his head made him look older. Thick black sneakers with the laces untied came up above his ankles, and he seemed not the least bit aware or disturbed that he was dressed for upstate New York in February while around us a clear, seventy five degree day was dawning. Fairly close to the water, and no more than twenty feet away from him with no one else close by, I was instantly repelled by him. Inferring from his dress and behavior that he was homeless and mentally ill, I was overtaken by a primal fear for my safety. I almost instinctively began planning how to flee him if he approached me. Having encountered my share of mentally ill homeless people, some of whom were violent, when I lived in New York City, I decided that it was in my best interests to avoid eye contact and to move away from him quickly. As I stood near him in a state of quiet panic and suspicion, my mother’s voice –of all things- suddenly broke through the cloud of terror and distraction inside my head: “Don’t run away from him or mistreat him. For all you know, he could be a messenger from God.” All laughter aside at the absurdity of the situation, I wasn’t really surprised that her advice popped into my head just then. From time to time since my childhood, she has reminded me and my siblings of that ancient Jewish folk teaching, impressing upon us that each person is so precious it is always possible for anyone –even the anonymous homeless man walking the beach- to be God’s messenger dressed in deceptive clothing.

I didn’t run away. I stayed to watch him lie down in the sand, oblivious to me and the rest of humanity, as the ocean wind crept gently around us. We were twenty feet apart, both of us out of synch with the world, but still separated from each other by light years of radically different fortunes. I was a privileged, middle class man enjoying God’s sunny company while wearing Bermuda shorts. He was a homeless man, clothed in the winter-dark colors of mental illness. My heart opened to this person who I did not know, who I would never befriend and whose life I could not change. With my compassion for him overcoming my fear, I began to weep as I touched the fragile yet persistent bond of humanity drawing us together. My mother’s voice faded, and from deep within me I imagined hearing God responding to my prayers by asking me: “Is your heart breaking for this man?” “Yes,” I answered between sobs. “Good,” God said, “Now you can truly begin to pray.”

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Drinking

2010-01-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

DRINKING
Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

We came from Albany, New York, Scottsdale Arizona, and Pensacola, Florida. We came from Washington, DC, Boston, Massachusetts, and New York, New York. We came from Las Vegas, Nevada, Fullerton, California, and Mexico City, Mexico. Like a people journeying to its promised land from the four corners of the earth, we converged upon beautiful Mobile, Alabama to celebrate with close friends of mine as their son became a bar mitzvah, a boy who is coming of age in the Jewish tradition. Representing our family from Albany, my son and I took a long journey down to the deep south, joining other dear family and friends to watch with pride as the boy took his own journey into adulthood through this time honored rite of passage. The weekend went perfectly. The young man led worship services, reciting the ancient Hebrew prayers with a southern drawl, thus fusing the sacred language of his ancestors with the warm, rich cadences of the wider world in which he lives and plays. His father is the rabbi of the synagogue where the ceremony took place. It gave me and my other colleagues who were there incredible pleasure to watch him be the proud father as well as the officiant, something that we clergy don’t often get to do for each other. Their Jewish community demonstrated its unparalleled blend of gracious southern hospitality and haimishness, the Yiddish word for warmth and hominess. “Shalom y’all,” the slightly exaggerated Hebrew greeting of peace peculiar to Jews of the south, was the order of the day. We worshipped together, we ate too much great food, we sang, laughed, and cried, as the boy’s extended family and friends surrounded him with love and pride, thanking God for enabling us to reach that special occasion.

A few months later, my entire family and I were privileged to celebrate with other close friends from rabbinical school days as their daughter became a bat mitzvah, a Jewish girl who is coming of age. Once again, family and friends converged on the synagogue in Washington, DC, where my friend –the girl’s father- is the rabbi. People came from all over the world to wish her well as she began her foray into adulthood, and once again we proudly sang, danced, ate, drank, and worshipped together.

Now that my son is preparing for becoming a bar mitzvah in the next year, I have been thinking a lot about the underlying meaning of these and similar life cycle celebrations. Specifically, who is the celebration really about? At one level, these ceremonies celebrate the life and achievements of the child in the presence of God and community. They are our way of saying to him or her, “We thank God for your having reached this point in your life, we wish you luck on the next leg of your journey, and we have expectations of you as an adult member of your faith wherever you go and whatever you do.” Yet at a deeper, though not too hidden, level these life cycle events are also an opportunity for extended family, parents in particular, to take a long look at what the dramas of their lives have wrought thus far. If our children are reflections of us, then bar and bat mitzvahs, communions, and confirmations are times when we look in the mirror to confront what is peering back, beauty, warts, and all. We invite our friends and family not only because we love them and want them to share in our joy, but also because they have been our supporting actors in our life dramas and they can affirm that we have acted well. We also need them to assure us that the best scenes in those dramas are yet to come, especially since our children’s growth means that we too are gradually aging and nearing death.

At both celebrations I attended, after morning worship and the Sabbath day luncheon were completed, many of the guests went home to rest before evening worship. A small group of us –mostly rabbis and spouses- sat around at a table singing the traditional, Sabbath melodies that are customary in Jewish tradition as the light of the Sabbath day starts to fade and the gradual transition to the new week begins. Drinking scotch whiskey slowly, we sang the twenty third psalm to a popular melody whose somber notes match the days’ serenity and our acknowledgement of the frail, imperfect world awaiting us beyond the protective walls of the Sabbath and those celebrations of life. We chanted my favorite line in the psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no harm, for You (God) are with me.” I have taught one meaning of this line many times to others: from the moment that we are born, we realize that every day of life is a walk in that valley. We are always conscious of the fact that death is shadowing us, and that each day that we live that shadow grows a bit longer.

Nonetheless, we can walk through life courageously, knowing that God’s presence fills our lives when we live with purpose and joy. Sitting with my friends, the proud parents, at their celebrations, and awaiting the time when I will be the proud parent, I now understand the words in a very personal manner. Yes, our children’s coming of age is one more marker that we have passed on our journeys through the valley. Yet we are passing those markers together as fellow travelers who will support each other along the way. Even as we grow older, our children –reflections of ourselves and made in God’s image as well- will take their own places on the journey and carry with them the values and love that are the durable legacies we have given them.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Compassion

2010-01-03T16:15:00.000-08:00

COMPASSION.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

It is amazing how we are able to draw together in our minds the disparate images of our daily experience in order to understand the truth. Consider what happened to me recently, at the beginning of the war in Iraq. One Sabbath evening, I taught my congregants about the concept of the Sabbath as a day that helps us to transcend the world and all of its imperfections. For twenty five hours each week, we put the world as it is on hold and live on an island in time, thus giving ourselves a taste of paradise, the world as it ought to be. The next morning, on Saturday, I woke up before everyone else, and the blessed stillness lent my house a feeling of Sabbath serenity. One of my children woke up after me, snuggled with me on our sofa, and asked me to read aloud with her Lois Lowry’s Newbery Medal winner, Number The Stars. The book had been assigned by her English teacher as family reading in preparation for Holocaust Memorial Day on April 29. Using a fictionalized account of two friends, Annemarie and Ellen, it tells the true story of Danish resistance to the Nazis and how the Danes courageously saved their Jewish community from being murdered by the German army. Annemarie’s non-Jewish family takes in Ellen, a Jewish girl, and hides her to protect her from being deported to a concentration camp. My daughter and I began at chapter two. It opens with a scene of Annemarie and her little sister, Kirsten, lying in bed telling stories of good and noble people living happily ever after, until Kirsten drifts off to sleep, leaving Annemarie with her thoughts about her people, the war, and her late sister, Lise, who died while on a resistance mission. Imagining these two little girls cradling each other in bed as shelter against the brutality of war while holding my own daughter near me, I was unable to restrain the feelings of despair, fear, and deep sadness that we hopefully all feel for the children of a world at war, whatever our opinions about any specific war happen to be. The serenity of the Sabbath day was broken for me as I started to cry. I could barely finish the chapter, and my daughter asked me, “Dad, are you crying?” Yes, honey,” I replied. “Why?” she asked. “All I could say was, “Well, it’s a very sad book.” She burrowed her head into my sleeve a little deeper, perhaps trying to create her own protection against the evils of the world and the scary feelings brought on by her father’s tears.

The next morning on Sunday, prior to my leaving the house to lead morning services at the synagogue, I looked at the front page of the New York Times. The newspaper had printed a photo from the frontlines in Iraq of a U.S. marine medic sitting on the ground cradling a four year old Iraqi girl whose mother was killed by Iraqi crossfire near a place called Rifa. With his eyes shut and his mouth tightened into a grimace, he is frozen momentarily by the unspeakable suffering and grief that he holds gently in his arms. The girl appears eerily calm with her arms stretched upwards playfully towards the soldier, as if her now dead mother was just around the corner and the man was her babysitter. If pictures are worth a thousand words, this photo is a Tolstoy novel about good people in army fatigues and innocent babies whose lives are thrown together in the web of cruel fate and implacable powers, and whose shoulders are crushed by the weight of the world. Remembering my spontaneous outburst of sadness from yesterday, I quickly put the newspaper aside, frightened by my potential reaction to it at the beginning of a work day, yet promising myself to return to its haunting images of the man and the girl.

I got to morning services, and towards the end of the worship, a friend of mine who was praying with us picked up her baby to nurse. Cradling the child near her body, she lovingly pressed the baby near her chest, then draped her tallit –her prayer shawl- around herself as an act of modesty and propriety. Mother, child, and sacred garment came together in a simple, reflexive, and ancient act of compassionately sustaining life that is deeply imbedded in our consciousness and is a key to human survival.

Within the span of one day all three disparate experiences came and went, but as each etched itself in my memory all three became a unified theme for me. Despite being traumatized by the bloodiest carnage that we inflict upon ourselves, our voices barely audible over the sound and fury of war politics, we human beings instinctively cradle each other. It is as if we know at the most primitive level that compassion is our one shield against this terrifying inheritance of ours that we call aggressiveness. As we go about the business of war for purposes both noble and detestable, it is one of the few threads binding all of us together and preventing each of us from unwinding entirely into chaotic spools of personal misery and insanity. We have little or no control over the decisions of international leaders about war, and we know it. Yet we have what no firearms can snuff out, if we hold fast to it: the gentle sweep of our own arms cradling a crying, orphaned baby as we sing to it of the peace that is yet to come.

Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Bridges

2010-01-03T16:13:00.000-08:00

BRIDGES.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

Last March those big electronic traffic information signs began to appear in the Albany neighborhood where I live and work. They warned motorists and pedestrians alike of the construction project which was to take place on the route 85 overpass bridge that connects Albany and Guilderland. The State’s Department of Transportation would repair and widen both sides of the bridge, as well as knock down and rebuild other overpass bridges nearby. Our bridge, open to non-motorists during the project, would be closed to vehicles in each direction at different times. Everywhere we would be dealing with detours.

Detours are the price we pay for improvement, so my friends, family, and I were ready to put up with the inconvenience. Yet I became keenly aware of just how disruptive the repairs might be to the life of the synagogue community of which I am the spiritual leader, since our congregation is right near the bridge. The work and the detours began the day after a popular Jewish holiday. As if descending from heaven, a makeshift congregation of construction workers, engineers, and contractors filled the area around the bridge and near the synagogue, bringing with them jack hammers, cranes, back hoes, portasans, hard hats, trucks of all shapes and sizes: the tools of their work. My kids were overjoyed by all this cool construction stuff. I was overwhelmed and a bit put off. As a rabbi I live in the quiet, though very intense world of worship, counseling, education, and spirituality. I help people to examine their inner lives and their spiritual commitments. This construction crew was the exact opposite of my daily experience. Here were strong, tough looking people doing the hard physical labor of building that bridge with machinery whose sheer size and power could be intimidating.

Each day, driving to work near the construction site I see the same people out there building, repairing, tearing things down, and directing traffic. From one’s car it becomes easy to ignore them after a while. You drive on to what you need to do, accepting the fact that a bunch of hard hats whose names you do not know have invaded your community to do all this endless work which becomes background noise to your busy day. You conveniently dismiss them as people with whom you have nothing in common who will soon be gone.

However, as a pedestrian without the protection of a vehicle, your perspective changes. As a religiously observant Jew I don’t drive on Saturday, which is the Jewish Sabbath. I walk everywhere, including over that bridge. Lately, the workers have been putting in a lot of time on Saturdays in order to get the project done before the Winter. As a walker I come into much closer contact with each of them. I see the details of their faces. I hear them laughing with each other and barking orders. Some of them are men; some are women. They are Black, White, Hispanic, Asian. Even for the briefest moment we stop to say hello or to exchange a lighthearted comment about the weather or their work. “So you guys gonna be finished by November, huh?” I ask one of them, trying pitifully to sound like a tough guy myself. In good weather, one of them sounds almost like a preacher when he reminds me that this is a day worth being thankful for. Walking instead of driving, I remember that each of these people has a life which in many ways is no different from my own. These workers aren’t interlopers to be tolerated until they leave our community: they are our community.

As we were walking home from worship one day, one of my friends suggested that, when the bridge is done, we should invite the whole crew to join us at the dessert reception which follows our services, and that we should say the traditional blessing which you recite upon reaching a special occasion. Thinking about what I share with this group of folks I recognize that, though it probably won’t come to fruition, this idea holds a great truth. The 19th century spiritual master Rabbi Nachman of Breslau once taught that life in this world can be compared to a very narrow and dangerous bridge. Our job is to try to never be afraid as we walk over it. I, wearing my traditional skull cap, and these construction workers in their hard hats are doing the same thing: we are working hard to widen the bridge and to make it safer to cross.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY.
© 2010 by Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Ascending

2010-01-03T16:07:00.000-08:00

ASCENDING.

Please note: Each of my public radio essays was written and aired at different times between 1999 and now. None of them is posted in chronological order. Hopefully, the ideas and insights in each of them will transcend the times and places about which I’ve written. I hope you enjoy what I have to offer.

During a recent retreat, I took a break from writing and walked outside the forest cabin in which I was staying. Poking through a hazy sky, the sun setting in the west cast its receding rays on the clouds and the woods with that mix of light and shadow so dreamlike and intense a person cannot easily describe it. As I began to chant the first line of my afternoon prayers, I walked to the side of my cabin and spotted a small bird perched perfectly upright with its feet clinging to the branch of a wild bush. It barely moved and it would not fly, yet it did not seem to be in distress or pain. It wore white tufts of hair or down on the sides of its head that reminded me of pictures of Albert Einstein. Its white back was speckled and streaked with brown, and its underbelly was a dull white. As I stood there so close to the bird yet not touching it, my eyes met its eyes that seemed to show no fear. I wondered silently: where had this bird come from and why wouldn’t it fly away? Was it sick or injured? Was it a baby or perhaps a baby owl? I brought over the gardener of the retreat center; he confirmed for me that it was a baby bird, that it would have to be nursed with a dropper if we were going to care for it, and that I shouldn’t touch it or the mother bird would reject it. I later learned from him that this is no farmer’s legend: apparently some species of birds will not touch their young if they smell the scent of another species on them. The director of the retreat center came over, and together we watched this tiny creature balancing itself silently on the branch. She remarked that, sadly, nature would have to take its course because the center could not care for injured or stray wildlife. We slowly surmised that the bird had tried prematurely to fly from a nest in the tall tree high above my cabin. We marveled at this baby’s maiden voyage: unable to fly well, it must have tumbled onto the forest floor, miraculously landing on that supple, green branch unharmed, with its feet wrapping around the limb and holding on for dear life. When a fully grown bird appeared, hovering tentatively on the low hanging branch of a nearby tree, we stepped away, believing that this was the mother waiting for us to leave so she could care for her fallen child.

Before I drifted off to sleep that night, I listened to the composer Ralph Vaughn Williams’ delightful piece, The Lark Ascending. The solo violin paints a light and beautiful musical picture of a lark flying higher and higher into the heavens, its view of the ground becoming increasingly expansive and distant. “When will you ascend, baby bird?” I thought to myself about my new friend who stood five feet outside of my cabin window. Right after I woke up the next morning I walked outside to see what had happened to the bird. There it still stood on the branch, seemingly unfazed by its nighttime vigil in the cold air that could have resulted in its being eaten by a predator or its freezing to death. An hour later, as I prepared to leave the retreat center, I looked for the bird and it was gone. Had it finally ascended like the lark?

I got into my car, drove away from the retreat center and pulled onto a winding road to get home. Driving along the way, I was startled by a bird that suddenly flew in low from the right side of the road and under my car. Unable to stop my car quickly and safely enough as I rode from that point where it met the bird, I glanced in my rearview mirror. The bird lay dead on the road, and it rapidly faded from my sight as I drove along. My remorse was matched by my sense of tragic irony. One bird wanted to start its life by ascending in flight like the lark but did not yet know how. Another bird knew how to ascend like the lark and ended its life in flight, yet probably did not know why. I think about those birds as two depictions of the same truth. As we grow, from time to time we need to soar, ascending into freedom flight like the lark. Yet the risk of suffering and death comes with those ascendant flights of freedom. Hopefully we find the wisdom and the courage to accept that truth as we leave the comfort of our many nests over and over again.

Dan Ornstein is rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom, and a writer living in Albany.
© 2010 By Rabbi Dan Ornstein.

Welcome To Dan Ornstein's Blog

2010-01-03T15:12:00.000-08:00

Welcome, everyone.

I'm pleased to present my new blog to you. The title, Four Bright Lights, is taken from my forthcoming children's book by the same name, to be published by Ben Yehuda Press. The story follows the adventures of an immigrant German Jewish family and an African American slave family. They meet each other quite by accident...or maybe not so accidentally...on the underground railroad in the 1850s. The four bright lights represent the four bright lights of the Hanukkah menorah burning that third night of Hanukkah when the two families meet. They also symbolize the four courageous children from the two families. The book is a tribute to people of all faiths who see the image of God reflected in all humanity, and who have the courage to help those in need.

On this blogspot I will post sermons and divrei Torah (in English, "mini sermons") that I have written, based upon the teachings of Jewish tradition. I am also posting essays of mine that have aired on WAMC Northeastern Public Radio,located in Albany, NY. Finally, members of Congregation Ohav Shalom (Albany, NY) and I will be traveling to Israel for a mission/pilgrimage in the coming months. I will be staying on afterwards to explore and write about some of the spiritual scene in Jerusalem, one of the holiest cities in the world. I will be posting from Israel during that time, and I hope you enjoy and find meaning in what I write.

All the best, and enjoy!

Dan