Memorial Day 2016: How do we remember the fallen?

There is a wonderful children’s book by William Steig called the Magic Pebble.  In this story, there is a family of donkeys, their son Sylvester loves to collect rocks of different and interesting shapes, sizes, and colors.  One spring day he finds a round, red pebble, and to his surprise, discovers this pebble has the magical power to grant wishes, but the magic pebble only works when the one making the wish is in contact with it.  When a hungry lion threatens Sylvester, he quickly wishes to turn into a rock, something the lion cannot eat.  But then, he cannot pick up the pebble to turn himself back into a donkey.

He despairs, his parents despair and lose all hope.  The seasons change and one day it is spring again and Sylvester’s parents decide to have a picnic, even though they are still terribly sad, they want to get outside and they set up their picnic on the rock that is Sylvester.  Sylvester’s father notices the red magic pebble and when he is holding it he wishes that his son would be there to add this special pebble to his collection.  In that moment, Sylvester the rock becomes Sylvester the donkey once again.  They go home happy together and keep the pebble in a safe should they ever wish to use it again, but for the moment, most important is that they are together and happy as a family again.

When I read the magic pebble story again this week I noticed a connection between this story of sadness and loss and a loved one becoming a stone and the way we remember and mourn our soldiers who gave their lives in the fight for freedom, soldiers for whom we mark their graves with a stone, often a simple white stone. 

This past year, 22 American soldiers died in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, so far 3 have died in 2016 in that operation.

There is tragically no magic pebble that can revive them.  The best we can do is make Memorial Day a meaningful day of reflection so that we can take inspiration from their sacrifice in the work that we do to strengthen our communities and our country.

Memorial Day, like other military related holidays, may not speak directly to us, to those of us who are not veterans or families without veterans or other military experience or connections.  The same can be said for Veterans Day. 

Memorial Day means a Monday holiday, barbecues, and sales at local stores.  Our freedom to enjoy these benefits comes with the price of lives lost in the line of duty.  While none of us can speak for the fallen, I would hope their spirits would take pleasure in seeing us able to live out our lives with the promise that around the world our soldiers continue to protect our freedom and the freedom that others may have or that they wish to have.

How can we experience a more meaningful Memorial Day?  We can join together to remember and celebrate our soldiers and veterans at the local Memorial Day parade, there is one happening Monday morning in Syosset – and I invite everyone to join me there.  We can purchase a red poppy to support local VFW and American Legion veterans organizations.  We can visit the military cemetery in Farmingdale, notable for its simple white stones, and say a prayer, leave flowers in memory of the fallen, and perhaps recite the World War 1 era poem by John Mc Crae that inspired the red poppy in the first place:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place, and in the sky,

The larks, still bravely singing, fly,

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead; short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high!

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

His poem moved Moina Michael to write in 1918:

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,

Sleep sweet - to rise anew!

We caught the torch you threw

And holding high, we keep the Faith

With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led;

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies,

But lends a lustre to the red

Of the flower that blooms above the dead

In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red

We wear in honor of our dead.

Fear not that ye have died for naught;

We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought

In Flanders Fields.

And let us not forget the immortal words of King David reflecting on the death of his great friend Jonathan and Jonathan’s father Saul.

“A gazelle[a] lies slain on your heights, Israel.

    How the mighty have fallen! Eych naflu giborim…

As we continue to count the Omer 7 weeks of 7 days, and as we approach memorial day, we’ve read today about the Yovel, the Jubilee, the 50^th year after 7 cycles of 7 years. 

During this time of counting the omer, we remember the heroes of ancient Israel, Rabbi Akiva and his students whom the Romans slaughtered at the time of the Bar Kochba revolt.  This time of year is a time of mourning, just as Memorial Day is for us a day of mourning. 

The Jubilee spoken of in our parsha is a time when the cycles of working the land for almost a half century stops, land reverts to its original owners, and all slaves go free. 

We will stand in silent meditation and remembrance on Monday for the soldiers who fought to enable us to live out the Jubilee that is our lives, that we have the opportunities to make the most of our lives, to face our own challenges personal, family and otherwise with the comfort of knowing that there are those who are watching out for us around the world.

May the memories of the fallen inspire us to stand up a bit straighter and more confident.  Amen.

Memorial Day 2016: Reflecting on the President's Visit to Hiroshima

Our ancestors and teachers the great Rabbis of the past, were not acquainted with weapons of mass destruction.  For them, people fought wars seeing the white’s of the enemies eyes, in pitched battles and sieges.  According to our Torah stories, God often led these battles with the few able to defeat the many to prove God’s power and to increase faith amongst God’s people.

Our Rabbis evolved during millennia in which imperial wars of conquest and territorial expansion were, by our standards, frequent, common – the Land of Israel itself has changed hands so many times:  Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Hasmoneans, Romans, Christians, Muslims, Turkish, British…

But in all these wars, there was never a single weapon that had the power to determine the outcome of a single battle or a war…

This past week, the President visited Hiroshima, that along with Nagasaki, have been the only places where a nuclear weapon was used in a combat situation.

Monday we will observe Memorial Day here, and remember the soldiers who died in the war that these nuclear attacks helped to end, and those who have died in all wars.

The message from the visit to Hiroshima was a message of hope that we might one day prevent mass conflict in the first place.

For my part, I look on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with horror at the power of nuclear weapons equal to the horrors unleashed by incendiary bombings in Europe and Japan, but also with a sense of gratitude for American resolve to try to end the war in this way instead of through an invasion of the Japanese mainland, which projected an estimate of anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 American casualties.

Operation Downfall, the name for that invasion, would have included my grandfather, army officer Bernard T. Lewis.  If that invasion had gone forward, there is a chance I, and many others, would not be standing here today.

While the presence and threat of nuclear weaponry remains, thank heavens, no one has chosen to use this power over the past 71 years, but the threat is there. 

And perhaps the fear of nuclear materials being used by rogue nations or groups is greater now as borders are more porous than ever and there appears to be more potential access to acquire these materials.

And so how do we here carve out a life that recognizes the human potential for destruction and causing chaos while living lives that are meaningful and that return us with meaning and structure, that we might teach ourselves, our students, children and others that although we may not be in control of major destructive forces, we can unleash other forces that with help can multiply and push back against the fears, the threats, and the sense that the world might spin out of control.

Our Torah reading this week, that we read on Shabbat, tells of 3 other types of Shabbats, the 7 year Shemittah cycle of letting the land lie fallow and the 7 times 7 year cycle leading to the 50^th year Jubilee in which the land lies fallow, debts are cleared, slaves become free, and all land returns to its original owners, the Jubilee year that begins in the 50^th year on Yom Kippur, a Sabbath unto itself.  Unlike our weekly Shabbat and the Shemittah cycle, there is little evidence to support that the Jubilee ever occurred in practice, and so it remains a hope, a rallying cry that cycles us back around to this, our weekly Shabbat, when in a smaller form of Jubilee, instead of land resting we rest, instead of clearing debts we strive to avoid doing business at all if possible, instead of releasing slaves we try to release ourselves from the tyranny of routine and rigid schedules, and instead of releasing the land to its original owners we take an extra moment to appreciate nature and creation, and by extension, the Creator who gave us these gifts.

And this Shabbat let’s also recognize and appreciate the faithful soldiers who gave their lives that we might be able to observe our Shabbat, those who fell in battle, we remember them today, their courage, their sacrifice, and their spirit.  And we pray that one day we will not have to remember any more soldiers who’ve fallen, that neither weapons of mass destruction nor simpler weapons will threaten us, “Lo yisa goy el goy cherev, velo yilmedu od milchama,” “Nation will not threaten nation, neither will humankind study war anymore.” 

Parshat Emor 2016/5776: Traditional Prayer & Inspired Spontaneous Prayer - Not Mutually Exclusive

It is always a privilege to share a service together with members of our community and with guests, to pray, schmooze, read and reflect, to study, question and sing.

And in this holy space, when we gather for services, there’s a critique I have heard time and again, a critique that I would like to put to rest today, or at least try to put to rest today.

The critique is that our Jewish tradition provides a rigid and consistent set of prayers for us to say.  Week in and week out, we recite the same words as a community.  Except for some seasonal and holiday variations, the Amidah is the same, the Shema is always the same, Alenu, the Kaddishes – all the same.

And all these are the same when we are not the same from day to day, from month to month.  Can we recite the prayer Mechayey ha’metim, the 2^nd blessing in the Amidah, the prayer praising God as the one who gives life to the dead, when we’ve just lost a loved one or friend?  The Shema, the prayer of heavenly unity, may feel strange to say if we feel scattered or lost in life…

We are looking for opportunities to infuse our prayers and Jewish experiences with what is unique to who we are, with what we may feel in the moment – joy, sadness, anger, uncertainty…And it may feel as though the mat’be’ah, the traditional sequence of prayers, does not permit us the mental and soul-space to commune with where we are right now, in this moment, with what we want to say, or shout, or say through our tears as they fall.

The beauty that we find in the Siddur, in our services, is the chance to achieve both goals – to be a part of a community in prayer, to sing in unison, and find comfort and familiarity in the prayers of our tradition.  And we also have the chance to pray from the inside out, to reach out with our own words, our own perspective, our own emotional response even as others may continue on with the prescribed order of psalms, poems, and blessings.

Our parsha today, parshat Emor, offers a holiday schedule:  Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot, a celebration the first day of the 7^th month, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and this begins with God’s instruction, “Eleh mo’adey Ado-nai…asher tik’re’uh otam be’mo’a’dam.”(23:4)  These are God’s festivals…that you will call at their appropriate times.

If God has set the timing for the festivals, than what need is there for us to call them, to proclaim them? 

Ramban explains God is specifying these specific holy days, as if to say, “It’s these holy days that I want you to observe.  And if you don’t treat them as holy days, then they won’t be My holy days.”

What’s important here is not just that we observe holy days at the appropriate time, but that we infuse these days with a spirit of joyfulness, thoughtfulness, meaning and relevancy to our soul and spirit during the course of the seasons – as the weather shifts, as our moods and lives shift in response to blessings, losses, searching, boredom, excitement, the whole range of human experience.

The same is true with our prayers.  We do have a set of prayers we recite, laid out in an intentional sequence just like our holy days, but, like the holy days, our traditional prayers can only help us bring out our true voices, can only help us feel connected and like we’re speaking sincerely and personally if we infuse our prayer moments with all that we’re thinking and carrying with us, through the lens of who each of us is today.

I’d like to share 2 short stories about how different communities encourage self-expression within the framework of a traditional prayer service.

The first is Kehillat Mayanot, a Masorti-Conservative minyan that meets in the Bakaa neighborhood of Jerusalem.  At Mayanot, I experienced for the first time the way members of the community would raise a hand and ask a question or offer a comment during a dvar Torah.  I was so used to sitting in rapt silence, but found this a refreshing way of staying involved and, well, awake to what the speaker was teaching.

The second is Mt. Bethel Baptist Church in Ridgewood, New Jersey.  I had the privilege on several occasions of joining Reverend Johnson and his congregation for a service, and during their songs people cry out, call out, and harmonize.  When the Pastor speaks people call out like it’s a pep rally, calling out their support, their encouragement, their feelings of pure praise and glory.

Whether in silent reflection, in conversation, or in clapping, singing, and joyful noise, our traditional prayers and our self-expression are not mutually exclusive here in this holy space.  Prayer is avodat ha’lev, the work of the heart, and we can allow our ancient prayers to well up inside us and seek their wisdom to relate and react to where we are today, and we can allow our souls to soar on the energy of our emotions and the thoughts that mysteriously open up in our minds as we explore them to find their source.

And so may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to You, Ado-nai, shome’ah tefilah, the One who Hears Prayers, prayers from the book and from the heart, and also the prayers that leap forth from the spaces in between us when we talk to each other and pray together.

Kedoshim 2016/5776: Ve'ahavta Li'ray'acha Kamocha - Love your neighbor as yourself...

Each morning, we begin a new day with a mental list of things to do, what we hope to accomplish, activities that are in progress, or just getting started, then dealing with the unexpected.

When we say our regular morning prayers from the Siddur, though, it’s interesting to me there is no prayer at all about asking God to help us finish the checklist we’ve set for today.

There is only a message as each new day begins about how we will treat other people during the day, how we will try our best to do the right thing when we are faced with decision-time, so that our energy to do good will overcome whatever is pulling us away from the good:  a bad night’s sleep, ambition, jealousy and the like.

Each morning we start by saying:  Hareni mekabel alay, mitzvat ha ‘Boreh V’eahavta li’ray’acha kamocha.

Translating to:  I take upon myself the teaching of the Creator:  Love your neighbor as yourself, or love your kinsman as yourself, or love your fellow human being as yourself, or wait a minute, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or the Golden Rule…

This teaching V’eahavta li’ray’acha kamocha that we find in this week’s parasha, the heart of the Torah’s morality message for humanity, is a wonderful kavannah, a wonderful intention and lens for the rest of the day but what exactly does it mean?  How do we translate it?  The translation makes a difference here.

What does it mean to ‘love’?  Is love or friendship something we feel, an emotion, or is it how we relate to and treat the other person?

Who is the Re’ah?  Is a neighbor just the person who lives next to me or behind me?  Only another person of my faith?  Or any other human being?

The great teacher Nehama Lebowitz pulls together these questions and sources for helping us answer them.

I’m going to use the word re’ah since there’s no clear translation into English.

The Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson, observes, how can we love our re’ah if that person is wicked?  Should we be open to wicked people?  No, he says, only relate to them if they are righteous and good.

The Ramban asks, “How can we love someone else as much as ourselves?”  Our own well-being and survival tend to come before that of someone else, and even Rabbi Akiva teaches our own life takes precedence over another’s – based on the classic moral dilemma of the 2 people in the desert with only enough water for one to survive until reaching the next city for help.  One drinks and lives instead of 2 drinking and not surviving.

So if we cannot love someone else as much as ourselves, what is Ramban, what is Nahmanides saying that ve’ahavta means?  It means we should wish our re’ah the ‘same benefits we wish upon ourselves’.

Similarly, the Biur, Moses Mendelsohn, observes if God asks us to have full empathy for others, then we would mourn other’s sorrows as deeply as our own.  And such a way of living would be ‘intolerable since scarcely a moment passes without hearing of…[someone’s] misfortune’.

And so Mendelsohn argues we should accept Hillel’s re-reading of the Golden Rule which is, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.”

Rabbi Naphtali Hertz Weisel offers an alternative reading – that we should care for all human beings, that is, the word kamocha, does not mean, care for someone else as much as  we care for ourselves, rather, it means care for all those who are like us, our fellow human beings.  Hillel’s reading, he argues, limits the teaching too much.  And after all, we are all God’s creations – we can decide in the end how much we will care for, or not care for, any given person but we should be motivated by the idea each day that when we see other people, we see them as holy, as created by God in God’s image just as we are.

We see them this way even if they are flawed, as Bal Shem Tov teaches us, Just as we love ourselves despite the faults we know we have, so we should love our fellows despite the faults we see in them.

There is a trend to translate re’ah as just someone from our own tribe, from our own religion, but the Torah does not support this translation.  When the Israelites leave Egypt, they are to ask of their neighbors for parting gifts – and the word for neighbors here is re’e’hu, the same word in our verse here in Leviticus.

There is another message coded here in our verse, in perhaps one of the best known verses of Torah across the world.  And, as it happens, similar statements of faith appear in most world religions:  Christianity, Bahai, Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Jain, Sikh, Islam, Confucian, Tao, Native American, African religions.

Here, there is a hint of that universality, that sense of community implied by the way the verse makes a key assumption, the assumption that there is some level of relationship between us and the people we’re to relate to, no matter who they are, that somehow we’re connected, that we’re not meant to live isolated lives alone, that it’s not enough to just be harmless instead of helpful but we also must strive to be friendly, thoughtful, and supportive to others even if we are not true friends, even if we are not BFFs.

And isn’t it amazing for us that our teaching ve’ahavta li’re’acha kamocha appears in verse 18?  18 which is Chai, meaning life, that this teaching give us a fundamental perspective on how we should conduct our lives, no matter which reading or readings, no matter which translation we choose.

And so every morning, let’s say as we wake up, before the barrage of to dos and before the rush to get out the door, ve’ahavta li’re’acha kamocha, we accept upon ourselves this teaching as a prism for seeing ourselves in relationship to others and making decisions not just about what we will do today but how will we do things today, tomorrow, and God willing forever.

Shabbat Shalom.