Dvar Torah: Va'etchanan - 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act

Shabbat Nachamu – Shabbat of Comfort

Parshat Va’et’chanan

God gives the Torah to all of us, all of us standing together at Sinai.  We all hear it, young or old, hearing or hearing impaired.  We all witness the wonder of God’s Presence, whether we can see or not, somehow every last one of us heard and continues to hear God’s voice.

This past Shavuot, the day that we celebrate receiving the Torah at Sinai, I stood on the bimah with a smiling, happy, and enthusiastic young man named Sean, a young man who was the first student to become bar mitzvah from a special Hebrew school class for children on the autism spectrum.  Unlike some other students who were at times reluctant to come forward and lead prayers from the bimah, Sean always was happy to come forward.  He loved to sing out the chorus of Veshamru.  Even if he did not know a prayer, he liked to stand up there next to me while I was leading.  Always full of joyfulness, he liked to speak about all the people he wanted to invite to his bar mitzvah.

On the day of his Bar Mitzvah, he and his brother Robbie stood together to lead Alenu. 

I was so proud of how he recited the Torah blessings, especially on that day, the day of matan Torah, the giving of Torah.

The effort to create the special classroom drew in Jewish families who lived as far as 30 minutes away from the synagogue.  Concerned about their children who could not sit through services, unable to find Jewish education programs in which their children could learn, they found their way to my shul.  They studied with a certified teacher, each student had a teen aide in the classroom, and they joined together with the rest of the school for special programs including the spring Jewish song festival.

I think about Sean, Daniel, and the other students in the class especially as 2015 is the 25^th anniversary of the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act. 

I think about the great work that has been done for Jewish children and adults with special needs and the work that we still have to do.

Our friends in Israel, in the Masorti movement, have helped over 3,000 families to have a bar or bat mitzvah with their children, 300 students a year, Participants include children with a variety of physical and developmental challenges, such as cerebral palsy, Down Syndrome, ADD-ADHD, autism, blindness, hearing impairments and learning disabilities.

And not only for Jewish children – we still are searching for the causes of autism and scholars are still developing more effective theories and methods for teaching children on the spectrum.

This Shabbat, we read the Shema and the Ve’ahavta as part of the Torah portion.  And in the Shema we find it is not sufficient for the Jewish people to love God with all our hearts, souls, and might.  We also must teach our children to love God, and to love our fellow human beings, by teaching them the mitzvot.

Veshinantam levanecha ve’dibarta bam…

Teach them to your children. 

The Rabbis tell us that our students are called ‘children’, as it says, “The children of the prophets went out from Beth-El to meet Elisha the prophet,”  they were not all children of prophets, they were the students, and Elisha was their teacher.

All our children are our students, and all our students are our children.

It is up to us to make sure that all our children are able to receive a Jewish education. 

Ve’shinantam comes from the root le’sha’nen, to sharpen, and it suggests that we review the material with each child until each child is able to learn the material – to repeat, and review, in many different ways, until each child receives the Torah just like all our ancestors did at Sinai.

In the Book of Proverbs, Sefer Mishlay, we find a similar piece of wisdom, “Chanoch la’nar al pi darko,” teach each child according to his or her way.  Rabbi Eliezer reflects on this, and offers, “If a child is trained in Torah while young, he or she will grow with that wisdom and flourish.” 

With all our students, but especially with our students with special needs, we need to find ways to teach them so that the seeds we plant in their souls will be lasting and will flourish.

Allow me to share with you a story that reflects a great starting point, a story much better told by Slovie Jungreis in her book 'Raising a Child With Soul'.

There was a league of Jewish day school baseball teams here in a region of the tri state area.  At one game, the two teams, in a tense playoff situation, were tied going into the bottom of the 9^th.  The team at bat was sending up one of their best hitters.  With two outs, the team in the field also knew that the next batter would be a young man with special needs, who loved to play the game, but could not hit very well, or even run very well.  They knew if they would walk the big hitter, they could get an easy out, send the game into extra innings.  The pitcher did walk the batter, bringing up the young man, who, smiling, took up the bat and stepped up to the plate.  But instead of going for the easy out, the coach came out to the pitcher, spoke to him, the pitcher turned to his teammates, they knew what they would do.  The pitcher tossed a ball right down the middle of the plate and the batter gave it a weak knock toward the mound – immediately the team in the field, and the team in the dugout, shouted, “Run!  Run!”  Again with a smile the batter slowly made it to first, rounded to second, “Run! Go! You got it!” The cheers grew louder – he rounded 3^rd, toward home, touched the plate and all his friends cheered him for winning the game – they didn’t think twice about the score, or the results, what was most important was for them to give their friend confidence, to give their friend the motivation to keep going, to keep trying no matter what the challenge.

Veshinantam levanecha – In these words we hear a call to action, a call to action that over the next many months will turn from a call into action here in our community, as we find ways to open our doors wider to students and families with youth and adults with special needs. 

May God grant us the strength, wisdom, insight and courage to do this work together.  Amen.

Love and Justice

Love and Justice

In addition to Shabbat Shalom, I want to wish everyone today a happy Tu Be’av.

What is a Sadie Hawkins dance?  

Today is Tu Be’Av, the 15^th day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day the Rabbis considered one of the two happiest days of the whole year.

What is the other happiest day of the year?  (Yom Kippur)

This day, the beginning of the ancient grape harvest, was also a Sadie Hawkins day when young women would dress in white, go out to the vineyards to dance, and invite the young men to dance with them.

Tu BeAv really sounds like a day of celebration, happiness, and love.  How is Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of judgment and purification before God a happiest day?  Yom Kippur is about justice, responsibility, and recognizing our humanity and mortality.

What’s the relationship between love and justice?

We ask this question still reeling from two terrible incidents that occurred in Israel this past week, both perpetrated by Jewish extremists – one act against fellow Jews in Jerusalem and one act against a Palestinian family in Duma.

Yesterday in Jerusalem, it appears that Yehuda Schlissel, the same man convicted of stabbing at the pride parade in 2005 again committed the same savagery at the same event 10 years later, having just been released 2 years prior to the end of his prison sentence.

And overnight, extremists firebombed the Dawabsha family home in the city of Duma, near Nablus, badly burning family members and killing 18 month old Ali Saad, leaving the word ‘revenge’ written in Hebrew in spray paint on a wall of the house.

Will Herberg, the great 20^th century Jewish theologian, argued that justice is at the heart of the Jewish notion of love, and the foundation of Jewish law, he wrote, “The ultimate criterion of justice, as of everything else in human life, is the divine imperative, the law of love, Justice is the institutionalization of love in society…this law of love requires that every (person) be treated as a…person…and end in himself, never merely as a thing or a means to another’s end.  When this demand is translated into laws and institutions, under the conditions of human life in history, justice arises”

Love then for us, unlike the fluffy Valentine’s Day version, is a commitment to see the humanity and holiness in each of us.  If as our ancestors teach, the Messiah was born on Tisha B’Av, the day of tragedy a week ago, then we can better understand this teaching on this day, the day of love.  When we look at each person, that person may be the Messiah, or a Messiah, one who will redeem us, if not in a cosmic way, perhaps by teaching us, opening our eyes to higher awareness, or giving us a helpful critique so we can fulfill our potential.

And if we can internalize this idea of love, then we may receive two gifts.  The ability to love God even when evil occurs around us.  This week we chant the Shema from the Torah and Ve’ahavta, Love Ado-nai Your God.  When we see love as the potential for human beings to be holy, to create holiness, and to share it with others, we know that no enemy can ever, ever, shake us, or douse the flame of courage forever.  And we also receive the gift, a reminder that we should never take our loved ones and friends for granted.  The words of Isaiah in this week’s Haftarah, “All flesh grass; grass withers, flowers fade when the breath of God blows on them…”  Our lives can feel like they move so slowly.  Days may be long, but years a short; and in these 7 weeks until Rosh Hashanah we have the chance to show how important our loved ones are to us, a more important High Holiday preparation and activity than any prayer we could recite in the Machzor.

May those injured in the parade have a refuah shlemah, a healing of body and of spirit.

May the Dawabsha family members burned in the attack find their way to healing of body, and may the memory of their little Ali Saad remind us those would perpetrate such horrific attacks that each of us was once the age of Ali Saad, and in need of the love and tenderness of others.

Devarim/Shabbat Chazon 2015/5775: Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses

During Hurricane Sandy – the trees in my neighborhood took a major hit.  The trees that shaded our yards and streets, the trees that created a canopy of color along the roads, the trees where swings hung from branches, trees that we even gave names to – the wind simply tore many of them out of the ground, and they ended up snagging power lines, blocking the roadways, and even causing damage to homes and fatalities when they fell.

The trees, one of the town’s greatest strengths became one of the towns greatest weaknesses.

The same happens with us.  Our greatest strengths are our greatest potential weaknesses.

Tonight we begin our observance of Tisha B’Av, the Ninth day of Av, the day that commemorates the destruction of both Jerusalem Temples and many more tragedies of Jewish history, including the expulsion from Spain in 1492.

Who destroyed the Second Temple?  The history books tell us it was the 10^th Roman Legion.

Our ancient Rabbis tell us we did it to ourselves.

They teach us that our greatest strengths became our greatest weaknesses.

We were busy with Torah study, doing mitzvot, and gemilut chasadim – acts of lovingkindness.

And so how could we imagine that our Holy Temple would be destroyed?  We were doing right.  We were making the world a more holy place.  They teach us the Second Temple was destroyed due to sinat chinam, causeless enmity, or as Rashi explains it, pointing out the sins and faults of others when there was no cause to do so.

Exactly what strength became our weakness?

We were thoroughly immersed in learning, in awareness of God, in selfless acts of helping one another.

Dr. Gordon Livingston explains that ‘practically any human characteristic…even kindness…when indulged to an extreme can produce undesirable results…we need to acknowledge that those qualities of which we are most proud can prove our undoing.’

We can only speculate on what led to causeless enmity among our ancestors.  Perhaps we overindulged in the pursuit of holiness to the point that we disregarded other priorities, family, friends, our work, taking care of ourselves…The Talmud teaches many stories about great teachers who sacrificed their families and well-being in pursuit of Torah study…

Perhaps in our eagerness to study we began to believe only our own perspective was correct.  The Torah does teach that one reason the Temple was destroyed was that we were over zealous in making legal judgments, we judged too harshly.

Or in our eagerness to do mitzvot we began to take pride in the fact we were doing mitzvot and we fell victim to self-importance.

Or in our zeal to help others we forgot about how vulnerable and fragile we all are and neglected to be gentle and discrete.

Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses.

It’s still hard to digest the Rabbis message that we destroyed the Temple when the Romans set the fires and knocked it down.

It’s as hard to digest as the message that what we do best, our blessings, can somehow lead to conflict even pain.

So should we try to do everything in moderation?  Try to avoid extremes all the time?  This sounds like a recipe for an unfulfilling life, a life of walking on eggs, a life of never allowing ourselves to experience the lows of loss and mourning, the highs of pure joy, and everything in between.  Our tradition holds us accountable for the wonders of this world that we do not experience during our lifetime.

Rather, we keep in mind that Tisha B’Av shares much with Yom Kippur, the same sundown to sundown fast, the same restrictions, the same idea that we must be reflective about ourselves, and with God, so that we can do teshuvah, so that we can turn toward our best selves, and create the best community for each other.

As Dr. Livingston continues and expands, ‘the final and controlling paradox[is] only by embracing our mortality can we be happy in the time we have….our ability to experience any pleasure requires either a healthy denial or courageous acceptance of the weight of time and the prospect of ultimate defeat.’

Instead of trying to walk the middle of the road, we should live boldly, and with humility at the same time, humility enough to remember that when our best talents and blessings turn into a tidal wave, we need to throttle back, reevaluate the purpose of what we are doing and the process by which we’re doing it.  We need to be fully comfortable with the unknown lifespan of events, of people, of relationships, of all the things that are important to us.

And so, ironically, the message about Tisha B’av is that our ancestors could, should have, contemplated that the Temple might be destroyed in order to stay humble and recognize how their strengths turned into weaknesses.  The prophets said time and again that the Temple itself  

Moses helps our ancestors to learn this lesson.  When we start reading tomorrow from Deuteronomy, Rashi tells us how Moses reminds the people where they stayed in the desert throughout the years of wandering, not just a list of places, but specifically places where they challenged God, and so it is up to Moses, at this moment of transition, to offer rebuke, and guidance, to them. 

We hear today the voice of Moses, and the voice of our conscience, knowing that we are as mortal and fragile as the trees that surround us, as the stones of the ancient Temple.

Shabbat Shalom.

Pidyon Shvuyim (Redeeming captives)...Again

We pray for the Israeli citizens Abraham Mengitsu and the Beoduin Arab who are being held in the Gaza strip and for their families.

Regardless of how or why they entered Gaza, redeeming captives (pidyon shvuyim) is a fundamental value and goal for the Jewish people.

We pray for their safe return.  As we say 'Shalom Aleichem' to Shabbat tonight, may we soon be able to say 'Shalom Aleichem' and 'Salaam Aleikum' to these two Israeli citizens as they return to Israel proper.

Amen.

Parshat Pinchas 2015/5775: Leadership and Jewish Pluralism in Israel

It’s a pretty standard story, someone says he is at college and his major is philosophy – and the question is, What job can you get with that degree? The standard response is – a shepherd.

Many of our ancient Jewish ancestors and leaders were shepherds.  Moses, our greatest prophet, was a shepherd, not by training but as a result of his life journey.   It sounds like a pretty easy job at first.  Watch the sheep, let them graze…but leading the flock requires skill and is dangerous.  Animals attack the flock.  The shepherd has to fight them off.

This week in our parsha, there is a transfer of leadership – and the big question that challenges us is - how do you get the flock to move together in one direction?

This work is not like a cattle roundup with riders on horses moving around the herd.  It tends to be the work of one person at a time.

I learned the lesson of how to lead a flock of sheep at a wonderful site in Israel called Ne’ot Kedumim, the Biblical gardens, outside of Tel Aviv.  They have a small flock there and those who are willing can try their hands at leading the flock.  There is a secret that the folks there revealed to us, a secret that without it there is no chance of success.  No amount of gesturing, hollering, or pointing the way can work unless we first figure out who is the lead sheep.  Once we know who is the lead sheep, we motivate the leader to move, and then the rest follow the lead sheep. 

This critical insight teaches us an invaluable lesson about leadership.  Effective leadership amongst us human beings, only comes from establishing, first, a strong relationship one to one.  No leader, no matter what her vision and how appealing it is, can drum up support only on the basis of that vision.  First, she must build relationships with one person and small groups, one at a time.

To try to force a group of people to move as one, like forcing the flock to move, to force conformity, is to replicate the horrors of Nazi Germany and other oppressive regimes.  Real, effective leaders know that there are significant and powerful differences in any constituency that require sometimes compromise and sometimes going our own way.  As an example, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X both pursued civil rights, but in radically different ways.  Real leaders know that success is a mixture of teaching a vision and also building consensus, not an easy task.

There is a contemporary example of forced conformity, one that impacts our Conservative egalitarian Judaism in Israel as well as reform and even modern Orthodox movements in Israel -- the religious establishment in Israel, an establishment that has maintained a monopoly on marriage, conversion, kosher supervision, the totality of Jewish religious life.  Non-Orthodox congregations receive minimal financial assistance from the government.  And officials who represent the establishment like religious affairs minister David Azoulay condemn down other streams of Judaism.  This past week Mr. Azoulay said about all non-Orthodox Jews, ““A liberal Jew, from the moment he stops following Jewish law, I cannot allow myself to say that he is a Jew.”  Afterwards he softened the argument, saying, “These are Jews that have lost their way.”  While other ministers support liberal and all forms of  Judaism in Israel, and while the prime minister’s office maintains that Azoulay’s point of view is not its official stance – it is a sad state of affairs that without the Orthodox political parties, the coalition would fall apart, and so important transformations in Israeli society like adoption of a more expansive conversion law have recently been rejected, and there has been apowerful backlash against the change in the law that now obliges all to serve in Israel’s armed forces, reducing the exemption for students studying full time in yeshivot.

I experienced the discrimination against liberal Judaism 10 years ago when I was studying in my Israel year, living in west Jerusalem.  We belonged to the Masorti the Conservative minyan Ma’yanot.  They wished to purchase a piece of land in a new housing development, but Shas, the Sephardic religious party, the same party that Minister Azoulay belongs to, put in a competing bid to acquire this land only to block May’anot from acquiring it.

It is critical to know that Orthodox Jews make up 10% of Israeli society but control 100% of the religious establishment.

There are now well more than 50 Masorti Conservative congregations in Israel from Eilat as far north as Kiryat Shmona near the border with Lebanon.

They are taking a leading role in integrating Israelis back into religious life, showing youth and adults alike opportunities to learn and grow.  Natan Sharansky, leader of the Jewish Agency has said this – inspired by Masorti’s bar mitzvah program for students with special needs is amazing and holy work – and even this program received a rebuff from the city of Rehovot.  Mayor Rahamim Malul, in April, called off the bar mitzvah ceremony for 4 autistic boys that was to be held at a special needs school in the city because a Masorti-Conservative Rabbi was going to officiate.

Minister Naftalit Bennet wrote about how Israel is the home for Jews of all types, all backgrounds, and this spirit of unity is one that we take from our Torah reading this week, as Moses passes the torch of leadership to Joshua, he pleads with God to make sure the people have a new leader – so that the people will not be like a flock without a shepherd – and the Alshech teaches that this new leader, the new shepherd, is someone who will be able to bring down God’s influence and presence to people who can share the message – to establish the one on one relationships that will extend God’s covenant in an ever expanding network, to all anashim, nashim ve’taf, men women and children…

And we hope and pray that the Israeli government will not only speak of one Jewish people but immediately begin to engage in high level dialogue and outreach to the Masorti-Conservative, Reform, Modern Orthodox and other liberal streams of Judaism in Israel that are bringing people back to faith and opening up opportunities for Jewish involvement in such exciting and innovative ways.

Over the course of this year, I want to begin to develop the relationship of our community to our Masorti brothers and sisters in Israel, to get to know them and to show our support for their trailblazing work.  Like Joshua, they have major work ahead of them to overcome the inertia of the religious establishment.

Yehi  ratzon she’tishreh Shechinah al ma’aseh yadam.

May God bless the work of their hands.

Amen.