Dvar Torah Matot-Masei - Hope for a better tomorrow

Matot-Masei 2013/5773

The second half of Unetaneh Tokef, the great prayer and poem of God as judge, the prayer that helps us to remember how fragile we are but also that we are not without ways to find hope, this prayer tells a story that is all to familiar, all too tragic, this week.

Berosh Hashanah yikatevun, uv’Yom Tzom Kippur Yechatemun – On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.

This past week in our country 19 elite forest firefighters, members of the’Hotshots’ squad, the names we shared as part of our memorial prayer moments ago, these individuals died while fighting a fire, a fire that destroyed 200 homes and compelled some 1,000 people to evacuate.  North of Phoenix, the fire has burnt over 8000 acres of land.

And in this tragedy we hear the words, “Mi va’esh”, who by fire.

We also know of the unrest in Egypt, the unseating of Mohammed Morsi and a plan to pursue a new direction.

Over the past week, we witnessed pro-Morsi and anti-Morsi demonstrators clashing in Cairo streets, including a photo of pro-Morsi citizens holding an opponent down on the front hood of a car with a stone raised above the head of the man down on the car, angry faces blaring at him from all around.

And in this moment we hear, “Mi va’skilah…u’mi yitaref,” Who by stoning and who will be afflicted…”

Amidst this loss and unrest, here and abroad, God speaks to the Israelites as we get ready to cross into the Holy Land, telling us to beware of the potential for the inhabitants of the Promised Land to turn us from the path of faith in our God.  Just when in the Torah story we are feeling so close to the comfort of entering the Land of our ancestors, once again there is a warning that settlement in the Land will not be easy, peaceful, that we are in for another tough road as the road from Egypt has been.

As Seforno teaches, we have to settle the Land in a secure way so that it will not just be the current generation who can make a life there, but the next generations as well.(Seforno to 33:53)

Both the firefighters and the protestors across Egypt embarked on dangerous journeys, the firefighters from walls of flames that crept up on them despite their excellent training, the Egyptians have been mourning over victims of the violent clashes over the last several days as they seek to establish the democracy they want. 

We struggle with the mystery of why some areas of the country and the world experience such extremes of events like forest-fires, of dictatorships and bloody rebellions against them? 

We might ask, why do people choose to live in areas where there is significant risk of natural disasters, and why do more people not leave places like Syria, Egypt, or other countries oppressive regimes?

There is a hope planted deep within us that the next day will be better than today.  Whether we call it a hope or more cynically call it a ‘coping mechanism’, the Israelites think this way as much as we do today.  The Israelites for 40 years of wandering have mourned their losses, celebrated victories, complained, rebelled, and returned to faith again.  Somehow they keep trudging through the sand as best they can.

We also develop significant connections with places, and they become hard to leave.  Some do leave places filled with crisis and intolerance and find life on shores of freedom.  Others, many of whom might like to leave but cannot, get dragged under the bullets and batons that seek to herd people like animals rather than celebrating our diversity, knowledge, and potential.

We may think that God protects us or looks out for us, but it is not clear to me that we understand God works this way.  The Rabbis teach that someone on her way to do a mitzvah is protected, but that protection only serves in a place where it is not likely that anything negative will happen.  If we put ourselves in a dangerous, unstable, situation, then the Rabbis suggest we cannot count on an extra layer of protection.

The firefighters knew there were no guarantees of safety, and the protestors in Egypt must have known that violence was possible if not probable.  50 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that ‘unearned suffering is redemptive’, a message to people who had suffered much racism and discrimination.  If there can be some redemption, some concrete, or hidden, way that the tragedies of the past week might bring the world closer to redemption, then maybe we all would feel less grave and more open to the possibility that there is some order beyond the disorder, some plan amidst what seems to be chaos, since as individuals we can never see the whole picture, but we are the ones who feel, the heat of the fire, the anger of an opponent, the loss of innocence and peace.

Can repentance, soulful prayer, and acts of justice soften the severity of the decree we face?  God implanted a strong desire in us for life, and so faith amidst crisis, that hope for a better tomorrow, is inescapable.

Dvar Torah - Pinchas - The Pace of Change

Pinchas 2013/5773

The Pace of Change

The Supreme Court handed down decisions that changed the dynamics around the Voting Rights Act and the power of states to administer voting related re-districting and even voter identification programs.  The Court also ruled that federal benefits are available to same-gender couples and effectively ruled that California will become the 13^th state with marriage equality.

While I would like to address these issues, tonight I want to focus on issues here in Bergen County, and elsewhere, that the Supreme Court, and even local justice systems, cannot decide with cases and rulings, issues of tzedakah, the larger category of justice and the pursuit of a more harmonious existence for the peoples of our country, the many cultures, languages, and religions of the 900,000 residents of Bergen County, of New Jersey, of our whole country and beyond.

We began on Tuesday the period of the 3 weeks, 3 weeks between the 17^th of the Hebrew month of Tammuz and the 9^th of Av, the time that recalls the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and many other tragedies of Jewish history.  Our discomfort with blaming the victim aside, our tradition teaches us that ‘sinat chinam’, causeless hatred between people was the key factor in the destruction of the Temple.  The Babylonians and Romans only capitalized on what was already a weak, shaky foundation, that could well have imploded from inside without the help of tyrants and their armies.

Our Torah reading from Parshat Pinchas leads us back into the world of the ancient Temples, refreshing our memories of the rich and colorful offerings we made at the altars during the annual festivals.  Our prophets kept a close watch of our relationship to the Temple and its rituals.  They emphasized time and again that a society rife with injustice is a shame that makes the Temple offerings meaningless. 

The elusive unity that could have, theoretically, protected our Holy Temples, the unity of building a just society that would render the Temple rituals complementary and beautification of our collective efforts – these things together comprise a significant challenge for us here in Bergen County and beyond.  These things when writ large, when we draw them over the diversity in our neighborhoods, remind us that there are too many gaps in knowledge of the other, that in those dark in between spaces we may form assumptions and biases, and we have seen tragically the results of prejudice in attacks on synagogues within the last two years.  The divisions are both internal and external to the many groups who live in our County.  As I work with the Jewish Community Relations Council to build partnerships between the Jewish community and others – with Koreans, African Americans, Latinos and others, I realize that the high level or organization in the Jewish community is something we take for granted.  I do not argue that our high-level of organization means that we are highly efficient, but we do have a central address that unites, or at least attempts to unite, our Jewish communities.  In meeting with Korean-American leaders, it is clear that while many are active community leaders in their own right, they are still searching for grounding and methods for growing their communities in ways that Jewish communities were over 100 years ago when millions migrated from Eastern Europe to American shores and sought to organize themselves and create institutions that would serve and reflect their needs and aspirations.

We have done a good deal of interfaith work through our congregation, but Glen Rock is a small town in a County of 70 municipalities, a County of rich diversity.  If we can turn prejudice into tolerance, lack of knowledge into familiarity and friendship, and increase awareness and sensitivity, then we will go a long way toward healing the conditions that the Rabbis described in Jerusalem prior to the destruction of the Temples, the rifts among people that weakened our people, that left us vulnerable.  If you would like to be a part of the outreach effort, please join me and my colleague Rabbi Stephen Sirbu and the Community Relations Council in our work.  One face to face meeting with leaders of another Bergen cultural or faith group could open up a whole world that was hidden beforehand.

Shabbat Shalom.