Parshat Vayeshev 2018 - Willful Forgetting & Anti-Semitism

A few weeks ago, we were in Iselin right before the Hindu festival Diwali.

We wandered into a shop there to browse and, not surprisingly, I noticed the swastika symbol on several items.  

A few years ago, a local Hindu leader asked the question of whether the symbol, which means ‘well-being’ in Sanskrit, could ever be revived as a symbol of the good as opposed to a symbol of evil.

It may come as a surprise that the Coca Cola company sold a pendant in the 1920s advertising the brand, that featured ‘Drink Coca Cola, Bottles, 5 cents’ imprinted on the swastika.

I don’t recall any positive response to her suggestion.  It’s unthinkable to us, especially at this time, with rising anti-Semitism here and abroad, to re-envision a symbol that came to be synonymous with the savage destruction of 6 million Jews and for allied armies to invade and re-conquer most of Europe to make sure the evil did not spread further around the world.

To even contemplate such a re-envisioning, we would have to accomplish willful forgetting.  We’d have to re-condition ourselves when we see the symbol and detach it somehow from the way the Nazis used it.

There are two types of forgetting – one is accidental, and one is willful – and we find evidence of both in our Torah portion this week.

Accidental forgetting happens all the time – we get up and walk into the kitchen only to discover that we’ve completely forgotten what we needed to get or do.  Most often this forgetting is not much of a problem since what we’re trying to remember is likely not so important that we cannot take care of it some time later.  

Willful forgetting is something else – willful forgetting is an intentional way of revising our perspective on an event, really on anything, that completely changes our way of thinking about it.  And this willfulness may well go against logic and what we’ve learned, or maybe haven’t learned, from our experiences.

Joseph, in our parsha, finds himself, awkwardly, in a situation both of accidental andwillful forgetting.  What begins as accidental, or maybe better to say circumstantial, forgetting then turns into willful forgetting.

And as we discussed, the willfulness goes against all logic.

After Joseph interprets the dreams for his cellmates the baker and the chief cup-bearer, he asks the cup-bearer, sar ha’mashkim, when he goes free, to please make a good report of him to the Pharaoh so that Pharaoh will release him from jail.

Our reading will end today with this verse, “The chief-cupbearer did not remember Joseph, and he forgot him.”

Our tradition tends to read the two verbs as different types of forgetting – the Or Ha’Chaim teaches us that ‘did not remember’, in Hebrew, velo zachar, means he forgot Joseph’s name. 

The words, ‘he forgot him’, according to Or Ha’Chaim, mean the following:

This verse also informs us that the chief butler subsequently forgot Joseph completely, he erased the incident from his heart. The Torah indicates that once one has decided not to remember something or somebody such a memory can be blocked out completely.

My thoroughly unscientific analysis is we tend to willfully forget, or try to forget, things that are painful.  I find personally I tend not to stand around taking pictures during painful days and difficult events hoping to relive them.  Of course, photography from wars, even the Holocaust, is important from a humanitarian point of view – we can only remember what we can see and hear, what we can experience, but for as many Holocaust survivors who choose to remember, to tell their stories, there are an equal number who never discuss it, who don’t make presentations, and don’t want to relive it.

Observers of the current wave of anti-Semitism, really the continuation of millennia of anti-Semitism, point to willful forgetting as a technique increasingly in vogue today.  

I’d like to share with you some reflections from a recent article in the Guardian publication, an article written by Joe Mulhall (11/21/18)

Another fundamental difference between the nature of the alt-right’s denial and the denial of more traditional far-right movements is the lack of importance placed on the Holocaust. For many traditional far-right antisemites, the Holocaust represented the primary obstacle to the resurrection of their fascist creed. However, as a result of the increasing distance from the second world war and the young age of many alt-right activists, some perceive the Holocaust as ancient history…

For many young far-right activists the Holocaust is shorn of historical significance, diminished by time and absent from their collective consciousness, as it was not for previous generations throughout the postwar period. Far-right Holocaust denial is changing and if we are to be ready to fight back against those who seek to rewrite history for their own political ends, we have to understand how they are trying to do it…

We’re all on board as witnesses to anti-Semitism and the violence it produces – now after Pittsburgh, after Paris, and other tragedies around the world, we’ve experienced the violence and bloodshed ourselves, not that the hatred was ever old or fading into history for us.  

We must raise the banner of willful remembering to push back against the tide of willful forgetting.  If there’s ever been anything that all Jews of all ethnicities and movements can agree on, let’s hope it can be about this issue.

And may the bright lights of Chanukah, like the lights and colors of Diwali a few weeks ago, give us strength to stand strong even when darkness carries over into the light of day.

Veterans Day 2018 - Story of the Four Chaplains

We gather this morning 100 years after the guns went silent at the end of World War I on the 11^thday of the 11^thmonth and the 11^thhour.

We gather today to recognize our veterans who’ve served our country, brave men and women who’ve served in our armed forces both at home and abroad.

We’re thankful for those who finished their service and returned to life, and we also recognize and pray for healing for those who are wounded, with wounds both visible and invisible that they carry inside.

This morning I’d like to share a story that some of us may already have heard:  the story of the 4 chaplains – if there is a chance though that someone hears this story for the first time today, then that would be a blessing.

The 4 chaplains story is a story of bravery, sacrifice, and honor about soldiers who go into combat only with their faith, to guide and help the troops. 

This past February marked 75 years since 4 chaplains aboard the troop carrier Dorchester went down with the ship after helping countless soldiers to escape after the ship was hit by U-Boat 223 150 miles away from its destination in Greenland.

The 4 chaplains, all first lieutenants, were:

Methodist minister Reverend George L. Fox

Reform Rabbi Alexander D. Goode

Catholic priest John P. Washington

And minister of the Reformed Church of America, Reverend Clark V. Poling

The coast guard cutter Tampa, one of the Dorchester’s escorts, had detected a submarine and so the Dorchester’s captain Hans Danielsen ordered the men to sleep with their clothing and life jackets on.  Many soldiers chose not to sleep with the life jacket on due to the heat down below or due to the discomfort of wearing the jacket while sleeping.

U-223 fired 3 torpedoes, one of them was the decisive hit, Danielsen ordered the troops to abandon ship.

The escort CGC Comanche (coast guard cutter) and the Escanaba together rescued 229 sailors. 

But there was chaos on board the Dorchester – the blast had killed so many, soldiers groping in the darkness, those who weren’t fully dressed felt the cold Arctic night air when they got to deck, some soldiers overloaded life boats that capsized, some life boat drifted away.  

Out of the panic, the 4 chaplains came forward to help calm the sailors and help them to safety.

They offered prayers for the dying and encouragement to the others.

Rabbi Goode gave petty officer John Mahoney his own pair of gloves after Mahoney explained he forgot his own.

“Never mind,” Rabbi Goode responded, “I have two pairs.”

The 4 chaplains gave away their own life jackets to the soldiers.

The ship went down and the 4 chaplains were together on the deck slanting into the water, offering prayers.

The army awarded the 4 chaplains the distinguished service cross and purple heart posthumously on December 19, 1944.  

A very special, one time only in history Medal for Heroism was awarded to the 4 chaplains by President Eisenhower in January of 1961.  The Medal of Honor could not be awarded due to stringent requirements that the act of heroism needed to be carried out under fire. 

I’d like to share a short biography of Rabbi Alexander Goode – and, as it happens, it was a pleasant surprise that when I was serving a congregation up in Bergen County, I spoke about the 4 chaplains from the bimah and a member came forward to tell me that he was Rabbi Goode’s grandson. Afterwards, he shared with me some memorabilia and documents including his grandfather’s unpublished book ‘A Cavalcade for Democracy.’

He was born in Brooklyn in May of 1911, the son of a rabbi.  He earned his rabbinical ordination at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1937.  After serving congregations in Indiana and Pennsylvania, he applied more than once to become a military chaplain and was finally accepted in July of 1942.  

He attended Chaplains school at Harvard. 

His first assignment was at 333^rdAirbase Squadron in North Carolina and then Camp Myles Standish in Massachusetts – there he regrouped with the 3 others who would join him on the Dorchester that was headed toward Greenland.

There is a chapel of the 4 chaplains that’s been dedicated to sharing the story since the late 1940s – since 2001, it’s located on Constitution Avenue in Philadelphia.  

Today, as we recognize our veterans, we remember the supreme dedication and sacrifice demonstrated by the 4 chaplains – and we take inspiration from the way they helped others, the way they reinforce for us the sacredness and value of life.

You may recall the story told by our tradition about the 2 people in the wilderness, there is only enough water for one to reach the next town – and that in this painful circumstance, the teaching is that one must take the water and live, as the Torah teaches, ‘ve’chay achicha imach’, that your fellow lives, the chaplains helped others to live.

May we have the strength to reach out to those in need, those who like our veterans are suffering from wounds both visible and invisible.

Amen.

After Pittsburgh - About Peace & Strength

We’ve all probably seen photos taken by Roman Vishniac, well-known for chronicling the life of Jews in Eastern Europe in the years prior to the Holocaust.  

Black and white photos of students studying Torah, of life in the villages, a boy touching a mezuzah on the way out the door.

He once took a photo of an older Jewish man walking in a street in Poland, Vishniac asked him, “how long have you been walking?”  And the man responded in a way that Vishniac himself reflected after the meeting that he did not understand the old man’s response, the man said, “Since the beginning.”

Since the massacre at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, we have been walking, slowly, now perhaps looking over our shoulders.  A new and tragic beginning since what is being called the worst act of anti-Semitic violence in American history.  11 Jews murdered at shul on Shabbat morning.

We’ve written letters here, prayed together along with guests from other faith communities in town, and also stood together at last night’s vigil when we prayed for unity, and for peace.

But our tradition also recognizes the need for strength, a willingness to fight, to protect ourselves and to be secure.

When Isaac blesses Esau, he says, ‘You will live by your sword,’ ve’al char’b’cha tichyeh – we might think Isaac blesses him literally to live by his sword, as a thief, a pirate, a plunderer – but Ramban explains that live by your sword means that Esau will survive all his battles.

We pray for the congregants and police officers who are battling to recover from their wounds.

We pray for strength that we can confront the threats against our communities with the strength of both our striving for peace and also the strength of community that we can build here.

A wonderful moment for us as a community was to see our religious school students lead parts of the Friday night service the Friday after the tragedy.  

A wonderful moment was praying mariv last night before the vigil, right there in the town square, proud, giving each other strength, singing out the Shema into the night even as we also all joined in the Kaddish as well.

Each moment we live can be a blessing, a chance to bring the world closer to redemption, the 11 victims at Tree of Life did so much for the Jewish people – let’s continue their hard work, their dedication, as we honor their memories.  Amen.

Parshat Chayey Sarah - After Pittsburgh

Last Shabbat, we chanted again here in our sanctuary the story of the Binding of Isaac, or as we discussed the title of the episode, the Test of Abraham.

We heard nothing from Sarah.

And now, this week, soon after God saves Isaac’s life, Sarah’s life ends.

Rashi brings us a midrash to explain this jarring, sad, and tragic juxtaposition of life and death.

Our Rabbis teach – Sarah, hearing the news of what happened on the mountain, how Abraham had almost sacrificed her son – her soul flies from her, in shock, and she dies.(Pirkey De Rabbi Eliezer 32)

She hears the news of what did not happen or what almost happened, and she cannot handle the shock. Perhaps we can add to this midrash that she considered what Abraham had almost done, that her own husband had almost taken the life of their long awaited child.

Many of us this morning are likely still in shock by the murder of 11 Jews at a synagogue much like our own, in a neighborhood of Pittsburgh much like our own, murdered while we were also praying together last Saturday.  The news came to us when we were about to begin the Kiddush, to bless the sweetness of the Shabbat day.

For the first few days, I will share that the shock penetrated to my core, and though I sense that for many of us there has been a death of innocence, we are less like Sarah in this moment and more like Aaron, the first High Priest.  When God consumes by fire two of his sons Nadav and Avihu – the Torah describes his reaction, “Vayidom Aharon,” ‘Aaron was silent.’

Ramban explains to us that Aaron was crying loudly, painfully, with his whole heart, and then he fell silent.  There were no more outward tears to shed, only tears on the inside.  

Aaron’s reaction reminds me of a story about my teacher Rabbi Edward Feld – who tells the story of the time his mother passed away, and the next Shabbat arrived, and he joined with his father for Shabbat.  His father raised up the Kiddush cup the first Shabbat after the death of his wfie, the way we here lifted our Kiddush cups right after hearing the news from Pittsburgh, and he couldn’t at first recite the Kiddush.  His eyes were red.  And he said, “Oyf Shabbat mir ton nit vaynen,” On Shabbat we do not cry – on a day of thankfulness to God and the celebration of creation we should not cry -- So he began, recited a few words, stopped, took a breath, continued and so on until he finished the Kiddush.

Today, we join with fellow Jewish communities across North America to celebrate Shabbat in response to the violence and hate that tore apart our last Shabbat.  We welcome among us friends from other religious communities here in Cranford.  We thank you for your support.  And we all join together to support one another, to lean on one another, and maybe we’ll live up to oyf Shabbat mir ton nit vaynen, I’m not sure I’ll be able to do so, and we should feel comfortable here if tears start to fall, or if we just need to sit in silence, if we need to wander to a window and see the leaves falling that will return to the earth and nourish it through the long winter months until spring comes again.

The Pittsburgh victims have, for the most part, been returned to the earth from which we were all created.

We recite Kaddish so their souls can make aliyah, can go to heaven.  We take aliyot here in our sanctuary, we continue to go up to the Torah because, like the name of the Pittsburgh synagogue, it is our Etz Chayim, our Tree of Life, our source of wisdom, a rock when the world smashes against us like powerful waves.  

In our Ark here we have a Torah that survived through the Holocaust years and now has an honored place in our Ark as a testament to strength, to perseverance, and a reminder that anti-Semitism is a living and breathing hatred.

One of the more poignant images I saw this past week was a cartoon drawing – on one side a woman walks with her daughter, a star on their chest, by the barbed wire fence of a concentration camp – on the other side of the picture people from the present day. The woman looks over to the people of the future and says, “Still?” And the man in the present day looks at her and says “yes”.  

In the days after Pittsburgh, there have been swastikas and hate messages painted on cars, on a synagogue in California, on a synagogue in Brooklyn.  

And hate casts a wider net. Not long before Pittsburgh, a hate-filled white individual looked to enter a predominantly African-American church in Kentucky, and when he found it locked, entered a Kroger grocery store and gunned down Maurice Stallard and Vickie Jones, two African-Americans.  And we all heard about how pipe bombs were sent to political opponents recently as well.  Our most fundamental rights and protections continue to come under attack. The safety of our religious institutions as places of peace, harbors of community and hope, are, like schools, in need of additional security measures.

We’re thankful to the Cranford Police Department for being on site with us this Shabbat.  Please thank the officer (s) here on duty for keeping us safe.  

We’ll join together tomorrow evening with the entire Cranford community in a vigil right in the middle of downtown at the clock, a place that serves as an unofficial center of town.  

We know that in our tradition of shiva that mourning is not something we do alone.  Our community surrounds us, and so that is our plan for tomorrow evening.  

But for now we are here in this holy place.  The Torah here in front of us, about to read about a shock to Sarah that suggests the shock to our souls we feel after the horror in Pittsburgh.

Before we read our Torah portion, I’d like to read from Psalm 11 in memory of the 11 victims as we continue to pray for those who are injured, like Daniel Leger, nurse and chaplain at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and like the police officers Daniel Mead, Michael Smidga, Anthony Burke, Timothy Matsin, John Persin and Tyler Pashel.

In the Lord I am safe. How can you say to me, “Fly away as a bird to your mountain? ² For look, the sinful raise their bow. They make their arrow ready on the string to shoot in the dark against the pure in heart. ³ If the base of the building is destroyed, what can those who are right with God do?”

⁴ The Lord is in His holy house. The Lord’s throne is in heaven. His eyes see as He tests the sons of men. ⁵ The Lord tests and proves those who are right and good and those who are sinful. And His soul hates the one who loves to hurt others. ⁶ He will send down fire upon the sinful. Fire and sulphur and burning wind will be the cup they will drink. ⁷ For the Lord is right and good. He loves what is right and good. And those who are right with Him will see His face.

May God keep the victims under the embrace of God’s sheltering wings.

May God heal the injured.

And May God give us the strength to turn our shock into inspiration to protect the Jewish present and create a bright, joyful, Jewish future.  Amen.

The Tower of Babel - Gained In Translation, October 2018/5779

Google translate.

Instant simultaneous translation apps.

And other technologies are making achieving understanding between people who speak different languages close to seamless.

Douglas Adams would be pleasantly surprised that the BabelFish, the universal translator he describes in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is on the horizon, in a tech form, of course with Google’s aptly named Babelfish earbuds that are supposed to instantly translate 40 languages.

In our reading from Parshat Noach this week, we read the Tower of Babel story – that’s where Doug Adams got his inspiration.  He noticed how God decides to scatter the people who create the Tower, not only geographically, but also make them speak different languages – so that they will never again conspire the way they did to overtake heaven.

You’d think it odd for the Torah to suggest at the beginning of the reading that the fact of everyone speaking the same language is negative, that it somehow leads to the building project and subsequent dispersal.  But that’s the clear implication.

Don’t we all want to be on the same page, as we say, speaking the same language?  Able to hear and understand each other?  

And what makes this even more perplexing is Rashi explains the one language everyone was speaking there was Hebrew.  Wow! Try to imagine that instead of English, Hebrew is the lingua franca!  I’m trying to imagine Hebrew with a thick Brooklyn or Texas drawl.

But no, better God says that we strive to figure out what each other’s saying, better that we have the benefit of the way different languages can say things with subtleties and connotations our own language sometimes cannot.

There is a lesson for us here in our synagogue community – all of us pretty much are English speakers first, but as Winston Churchill famously said about the United States and England, ‘We are two countries separated by a common language.’

We each of us speak, both verbally and nonverbally, with such different words, rhythms – making it all the more important to listen, process, and put words into context, not only listening to the words, or observing the body language, but doing our best each time to see the whole person - because after all if the synagogue is at least in part a business, it is a people centered business – and while our goal should not be to build a tower into heaven, our goal should be to build a heavenly tower where, as I believe, as a person who loves to study languages, that everything is gained in translation.

Shabbat during Sukkot 2018/5779 - Now it's time to get to work...

Writer Malcom Gladwell caught our attention several years ago in his book called ‘Outliers’ with the idea that it generally takes about 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in a skill.

Now, a few years after I read his book and thought about his conclusions, it occurs to me that 10,000 hours translates into just over a year.  That is, if we practiced a skill 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we’d reach 10,000 hours in just under 14 months.

Let’s look at our fall holidays As I through the 10,000 hour lens.  Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about teshuvah, about repentance, reflection, an honest appraisal of ourselves on our journey.  We have 10 days of penitence, plus 5 days in between Yom Kippur and Sukkot, and 7 days of Sukkot – that’s a total of 22 days until the official teshuvah season ends tomorrow, the 7^thday of Sukkot, called Hoshanah Rabbah, when we beat willow branches on the ground to symbolize that this season ends and we shed the vestiges of the past year like the trees that are dropping leaves now.

22 days, that’s 528 hours, only one half of one percent of the 10,000 hours.  

If Gladwell’s reporting is correct, then it seems we have little chance of improving our teshuvah.

Today, we read from Kohelet, the megillah for Sukkot, and we find in the material we chanted today a lesson that may help us when we confront the question of what to do now that the official teshuvah season is almost over.

Sow your seed in the morning,    and at evening let your hands not be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed,    whether this or that,    or whether both will do equally well.

Kohelet teaches us, work hard in the morning, keep working hard in the evening, because we can’t immediately tell success, failure, or some outcome in between.

Kohelet seems to be arguing that any productive effort requires much more than 10,000 hours, but rather a constant effort, a persistent effort over time, an effort that we cannot fit into a number but rather a way of thinking and living that we are constantly striving for, constantly seeking to establish as our lens for seeing and interacting with our world, our community, from the mundane to the transcendent, from the easiest of tasks to the most complicated.

Rabbi Naftali Bachrach, in his commentary Talumot Chochmah, he explains that the morning in our verse is our youth, and the evening is our mature years.  Wherever we are on the journey, he says, we plant seeds and do mitzvas.  Teshuvah is a constant effort throughout the year.

Rabbi David Altshuler explains our verse to mean we must tend our garden constantly, ve’lo tamtin al ha’ruach, and don’t wait for a fair wind to blow, for conditions to be right. What’s so interesting here is that ru’ach means both wind and spirit, and so he’s also saying don’t wait until you feel it’s the right time to re-think, re-dedicate, and try on a new set of lenses – the right weather and the right spirit may never come along.

It’s tough though, as we all likely will agree, it’s tough to be persistent and consistent. Scientists tell us they know why our brains shut down and we feel tired and distracted after working hard at a project. Self-help writers tell us to work in small increments, break, and think, many businesses now offer rooms for employees to meditate or nap to refresh themselves.  Google is famous for their offices designed to maximize interactions and reflection.  But our technology and related media push back with an overwhelming amount of available distractions.  I recall a few years ago when the City of New York removed pre-installed games like hearts from computers in city offices, we can imagine why…

The message in Kohelet dovetails with the Sukkot holiday and this season.  Sukkot asks us to make the Sukkah our permanent residence and our homes our temporary residence.  The holidays compels us to re-examine our priorities, habits, and our comfort zone as we move on from the relative comforts of the teshuvah season into the wild jungle that is the rest of the year ahead of us.

If we can adjust our thinking – then we just might be able to start adjusting what we choose to say and to do – until, ideally, we come to a place that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are only the beginning of a new calendar year but they become a stop-over, a stop along the road of self-awareness and growth that’s been happening morning and evening, day by day.  

This is not a glamorous or mystical type of faith – it’s work! – but this type of work, as I taught this past week, is full of joy, longing for closeness to God, full of creativity, and seeking to build community.  

10,000 hours for us is something tough to imagine – tough to imagine in theory and while we’re checking off each hour – but not tough to imagine after the fact looking back.  Let’s set a more guarded goal, minimum one minute of teshuvah a day!  One full, uninterrupted minute of self-reflection, of asking ourselves tough questions, of leaning on God’s invisible hand for comfort, one full minute of re-dedicating ourselves to being partners with God and with each other in the ongoing creation of the world.

Dvar Torah: Balak - What is a blessing?

Can I have your daughter for the rest of my life?

Say yes, say yes 'cause I need to know
You say I'll never get your blessing 'til the day I die
Tough luck, my friend, but the answer is no!

Why you gotta be so rude?
Don't you know I'm human too?
Why you gotta be so rude?

These are the words to a recent popular song by a band called "Magic!"  

In this song, the young man asks his girlfriend’s father for his blessing on their engagement and marriage.

He is asking, as we say, for her father’s blessing.

Our tradition loves giving blessings.  

The Rabbis teach we should strive to say 100 blessings day.  

On Shabbat we give blessings to our children, to each other, May God bless and keep you.

Throughout the week, outside of services, we make blessings on occasions when we see a rainbow, hear thunder, when we see beauty in the world.

When looking in our parsha this week at the blessings Balak recites to the people of Israel, we begin to think about the idea of blessing.

What exactly is a blessing?

Is it a compliment we give to someone else?  Is it a ‘good wish’?  Is a blessing always positive?  Or is something more going on when we pronounce words of blessing to another person, toward nature, toward God?

Though Balak’s words of blessing to the Israelites sound positive to our ears, as we will see, the Rabbis believe them to be curses.  

Rabbi Abba Bar Kahana teaches, All the blessings of Billam became curses when the Holy Temple (in Jerusalem) was destroyed – except for the blessing which praised the synagogues and the Houses of Study, for these we have to this very day.”

We know this particular blessing, ma tovu ohalecha Yakov mishkenotecha Yisrael.

It sounds as though words of blessing can only be true if they reflect something about our world even as they suggest a reality that we hope for, that we strive for, that we dream about.

And each blessing, whether to a person, to nature, to God, reflects a relationship – We cannot give a blessing in a vacuum, and we do not bless ourselves.  A blessing recognizes the inter-connectedness of each of us to each other, to the earth from which we were created, and to God, the Source of Life itself.

Each time we make a blessing, we reaffirm the relationship.

We notice that the first word of many blessings is Baruch – this word is in the passive voice, we say to God, You are blessed – We might have expected the blessing formula to begin with “We bless You, God”, but it starts by saying, in effect, God, You are blessed by us, through us!  

We are tied together each time we offer blessing, tied together to the recipient of the blessing – together, as Rabbi Lawrence Kushner calls it, in invisible lines of connection.

But are the blessings of Bilaam really hidden curses?

There’s always an element of uncertainty in a blessing.  We hope and pray that our blessing will come to be, that the words and the actions that follow them will raise us up, open us to happiness, to experiences that will enrich us, but we do not know the future.

A blessing, then, is an intention, a hope, a dream – grounded in reality but also pointing toward the unknown, and so, Rabbi Abba bar Kahana’s teaching is striking, since with the destruction of the Temple the reality for the Jewish people changed, and our lens for seeing Bilam’s words as blessings changed as well.  

Blessings involve mystery but they are not magical.  When we bless someone for good health we know that the words and prayers themselves, for example, cannot heal disease, but by offering up a vision of healing, we create hope, we create community, we send out positive energy into the world that was not there before.

It’s for this reason that I find it puzzling and troubling that when Bilaam follows God’s instructions to follow Balak, King of Moav, that immediately afterwards God is angry at Bilaam for going along.  

Though Balak wants Bilaam to curse the Israelites, Bilaam only will follow God’s command, he says as much in the previous moment.

Why is God angry at Bilaam?

God is angry at the perception, that Bilaam rises early to follow Balak and so seems to be intent also on following Balak’s instructions to curse the Israelites.

Should the motives of one who blesses be at issue?  Do we question the motives of those who offer blessings, why they’re doing it, what is their goal?

The lesson of our parsha is that we offer blessings because that’s what we’re designed to do – we naturally reach out beyond ourselves, seeking relationship, seeking meaning, trying to create a world that reflects our values but often stymies us when we see it fall short.

In the song we started with, the young man asks for his father in law’s blessing – the other lesson of our parsha is that we can continue to become more generous blessing-givers – this week let’s give, in our own words, a blessing to someone, a friend, a co-worker – a blessing out to those in need of help and support in the larger community around us, and a blessing to God – and this particular blessing need not be rosy like Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? – when we bless God we can also challenge God saying that as partners with God in creation the world isn’t yet the way it should be, and it’s time for us to join hands, from us finite beings to the Infinite One, to join hands and shine the light of blessing out.

Dvar Torah: Shlach Lecha 2018/5778 - A special parsha & time...

27 years ago, I became a Bar Mitzvah on parshat Shelach.  11 years ago my oldest daughter was born on Saturday morning, June 9, parshat Shelach.  And now, in 2018, Shelach again falls on Shabbat, June 9th, and two days after my 40th birthday.

Shlach 2018/5778

When thinking of the story of our 40 years wandering the wilderness, we can’t help but ask the question of why it takes so long.  Clearly, even the slowest walker would not take 40 years!

From a bird’s eye view, it’s only about 300 miles from Cairo to Eilat.

But for us, 40 years.

The best story I can think of to illustrate the dynamics involved in the 40 year journey is the story of the origins of the Yeshiva University rowing team.  When it started, they had a terrible time in practice and dismal results in competition.  They decided to send one of their number to Princeton, to spy on the team from a longtime powerhouse in the sport with vast experience.  He went over to New Jersey, watched as they practiced, took notes, and returned to campus.  His teammates asked him, “So, what did you find out?”  He responded, “On their team, only one person shouts and everyone else rows.”

The 40 years of wandering from Goshen to the heights of Moab looking over to Canaan is, according to our parsha, the result of choices the Israelites make, just like the rowing team. When they hear the reports from the spies that the Land is inhabited by giants, that the cities are fortified – everyone becomes terrified and loses heart…

40 years though, why is the punishment 40 years?

Because God punishes the Israelites one year for each of the 40 days the spies explore the Land.

Midah k’neged midah, measure for measure.

But is it really measure for measure here?

Benjamin Franklin said, “At 20 years of age, the will reigns, at 30, the wit, at 40, the judgment.”

He suggests what we can see as a progression.  At 20, we are in early adulthood and independence.  The world is a big place.  We have energy, but also we’re relatively untested, and likely somewhat naïve.   At 30, the wit begins to grow, an ability to step back and analyze from experience, to notice and comment from a place of gained knowledge.  Then, 10 years later, Franklin argues we’re able to form more cogent and thoughtful judgments.

The Torah corroborates Franklin’s theory.  40 in the Torah is a number with symbolic meaning of preparation, maturing, a number that implies patience over a period of waiting and perseverance without knowing the outcome.  

We see 40 in the days and nights of rain during the Flood.  40 days of waiting until Moses comes down with the 10 Commandments.  And now 40 years.

Our tradition does critique the people for their lack of faith, but also recognizes that God’s response, though it sounds harsh, contains compassion within it.

After all, as Benjamin Franklin wisely said, 40 years can be helpful as a time for the nation to grow, to find ways to let go of the Egypt mentality, for a new generation of leaders to step in to blaze the trail.  

Rabbenu Bahya teaches us:

יוםלשנהיוםלשנה”a day for a year, a day for a year.” We would have expected the Torah to write the opposite, i.e. “a year for a day,” i.e. that the punishment for each day the spies had spent traveling the land and planning to slander it would be that the people would have to spend an additional year in the desert…If the Torah wrote the verse in the manner it did it was to teach us something about G’d’s mercy which is manifest even while He metes out punishment.
When the Torah chose the wording: “a day for a year,” we must consider the fact that seeing the land of Israel has been described as an area of 400 by 400 miles, approx, this is an area which the spies could not possibly have covered in the space of a mere forty days. However, seeing G’d had known in advance that He would have to decree the punishment mentioned, He telescoped the distance under their feet so that they could cover it in such a short period of time. This is why G’d said: “a day for every year,” i.e. just like a father who is forced to inflict a blow on his son. He does not inflict a cruel blow but is as considerate as possible. The meaning of the verse therefore is: “here I have reduced the extent of your punishment as much as is possible by shortening the time you (the spies) needed to traverse the land so that it took only forty days. “

In other words, Bahya argues we can read 40 years as a minimum penalty rather than a maximum.

But talk to a Washington Capitals fan, the Caps just won their first Stanley Cup trophy, who waited 44 years for this moment, and they will likely tell you that 40 years is an incredibly long time.

Talk to someone who just turned 40, I’m sure there’s someone like that around, who looks back at 1978 when Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize and wonders how Middle East has stalled for so long, or who wonders if kids today will know that Saturday Night Fever is not a medical condition but rather the 1978 album of the year – There is a structural fear our ancestors may feel, the fear of not knowing the future, not being able to see what the next generations will become.

And we also know tragically this week about how for Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, and for too many others, no matter how much we grow and pursue our dreams the journey itself can be filled with pain, depression, and a sense of hopelessness from which it can be so difficult to raise ourselves.

Like the fictional Jewish rowing team, can we navigate our journey by listening louder than we speak? Can we see each other as resources for support and wisdom?  Can we have a dialogue while we row together, not a dialogue in which we all agree but in which we all participate?  Can we be sensitive to see the rower who is silent, who may look well enough on the outside, but who is hurting on the inside?

If we can strive to do these things, then 40 years will pass by like 40 minutes and those who will enter the land will carry the torch forward filled with a collective wisdom and strength greater than anything one person could achieve alone.

Shabbat Shalom.

Dvar Torah: Bechukotai, May, 12, 2018/5778 - Walking Upright

Israel is 70 years old, but Jewish settlement and connection to the Land go back much further.  

For us here in the Diaspora, we look to Israel through a variety of lenses – Israel is a center of Jewish spirituality and identity, a homeland, a refuge, a symbol of Jewish survival, place where Hebrew language was reborn, it’s the Startup Nation, leader in technology, the names are many and clearly there are those in the world who for decades have spoken negatively of Israel as the apartheid state, as an occupier, and the like.

With the disturbing rise in anti-Semitism, often married to anti-Israel activity, it’s as important as ever that there continues to be a Jewish State, a place where in the spirit of the prayer we recited just a short time ago, our people can go with heads held high.

We prayed, “May God bring us in peace from the four corners of the world, and brings us komemiyut, with heads held high, to our Land.”

The word komemiyutappears in our Torah reading today as God promises to break the bonds that hold us back and lead us forward komemiyut, standing up straight, as Rashi reads it, and as Rashbam explains, once the weight is removed, we naturally can stand up straighter.

I find myself focusing on this idea of us holding our heads high, in strength and with a confident presence as we hear reports of Israel taking initiative against Iranian aggression in Syria including sending a drone into Israel and positioning its troops and weaponry near Israel’s border.

Just as God reminds our ancestors how small a people we are, we remind ourselves of how small Israel is – how quickly jet planes can reach Israel’s borders from surrounding hostile nations, how small Israel is overall and how unstable the region has been for the last 100 years.

The Rebbe of Mezhibizh reminds us that although we stand tall and stand in strength against our enemies, the Rebbe teaches, that God, the One Who Looks into the Heart, knows that inside we must continue to be humble before God.

Rabbi Natan Tzvi Finkel, famous head of the Yeshiva of Slobodka in Belarus, emphasized that his students should walk upright, with heads looking straight ahead, and with a strong and confident stance.  Students of Torah can be both humble, compassionate, and also project confidence and strength at the same time.

This is the lesson of our Torah reading this Shabbat, a reading that comes as we round out our reading of Sefer Vayikra, the Book of Leviticus and say chazak ve’nit’chazek, let us be strong and our strength renewed. 

'What we do matters': Holocaust Remembrance Day in Cranford, NJ -- Spring 2018

Thank you Pastor Tom Rice for your thoughtful introduction.

Mayor Hannen, Superintendent Rubin, Chief Greco…

To all of you, the Cranford community, first a thank you, thank you for welcoming us to Cranford six months ago.

The community has reached out to us in friendship, with support, and caring from the beginning, and so it is clear that there is already in our town the knowledge that what you do matters.

What wedo matters.

But we cannot take it for granted that we will always feel motivated to act, to do what is right.

We cannot take it for granted that we will know what to do if and when we decide to act.

2,000 years ago, a Rabbi named Hillel shared a piece of wisdom in my tradition that continues to live and light a fire for us, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  But if I am only for myself, what am I?  And if not now, when?

If not now, then when?  

There are many special days we observe throughout the year when we say, “If not now, when?”  On July 4^thwe remember courageous deeds of our ancestors in determining the freedom and future of our country.  On Veterans Day and on Memorial day we honor the service and sacrifice of our soldiers.  On each of these days, we rededicate ourselves to meaningful action to carry forward our hard won freedoms, at the very least, not to take our freedom for granted.

We can legitimately choose at times to be harmlessinstead of being helpful.

But the lessons of Holocaust remembrance that we take from today, from survivors like Mollie Sperling, is that there are times when we must act decisively.  As we know, when dark forces spread, when the Nazi occupation in Europe spread over the continent, the people who tried to be harm-less were also burned by the fires of hate.

As an example of this, one day you may have occasion to visit Berlin, and you will see there in the center of a plaza, the Bebelplatz, the Empty Library Memorial, an underground memorial installation that is visible through a glass pane in the ground, it’s a room of empty bookshelves in remembrance of the Nazi burning of some 20,000 books written by Jews, Communists, and pacifists, on May 10, 1933 85 years ago.  

Inscribed there is a phrase written by Heinrich Heine, “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”

Perhaps if some had doused the fire on the books, Heine’s prophecy would not have been so tragically fulfilled.

To spur us to action we need inspiration!

Who are our action heroes?

Who are our action role models?

The Avengers?  The Justice League? Our teachers in school?  Our clergy?  Town leadership?

One of my action heroes was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the many faith leaders who joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the march from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery on March 21, 1965.  In reflecting on that day he wrote, “For many of us the march…was about protest and prayer.  Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling.  And yet our legs uttered songs.  Even without words, our march was worship.  I felt my legs were praying.”

100 years before that, the great Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who became one a leader of the abolitionist movement, made his escape from slavery at age 20 and he said, “I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

Prayer is good and important.  Prayer brings insight and awareness.

And then we must act.

Because what we do matters.

But how do we act when the odds are against us, when there’s no partner with whom to have a dialogue, when enemies of humanity like the Nazis looked upon Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, political opponents, Polish Catholic priests, when they look upon us as something less than human?

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke on the evening of April 3, 1968 in Memphis, he knew the civil rights movement was still confronting great odds, significant resistance – that night, the night before he was assassinated he said:

“And another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we are going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demands didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.”

Dr. King argued there was no other choice but to pursue justice because, as he also said, if any people are enslaved, then we all are.  Violence against one person, against one people, impacts everyone.

And the reverse is true as well – in my tradition we say one mitzvah leads to another, mitzvah goreret mitzvah, meaning one good deed to one person leads to so many more.

We know how Ray Allen[1]asks just this question.  In an interview, he was asked about whether he would take action to save others as many did during the Holocaust years, he says, “I would like to think that I was – that I would be that courageous….[and] that is I think the ultimate question that we live with every day…are we willing to fight for the next person when it doesn’t benefit us?”

Ray Allen asks an ultimate question about our theme today, what we do matters, and that question is whether we’re willing to act when we do not expect anything in return, or when the primary goal of what we’re doing may only benefit us indirectly.

Of course, if you remember from a few moments ago, the great Rabbi Hillel teach us, If I am not for myself who will be for me?  But …if I am only for myself, what am I?

We ask these questions looking back on the 20^thcentury, when across the world there were some 27 genocides by the United Nations definition.  And now, into the 21^st, at least 2 more tragically to add – South Sudan and the Rohingya in Myanmar.

In the face of such tragedy and loss, we might feel stuck, glued to our seats, wondering just what could each of us individually, or even us as a group, do in response to such hatred and pain?

I found inspiration for this dilemma in the immortal words of Anne Frank’s diary, Anne Frank, the young woman in Holland who wrote a diary during her time in hiding with her family in Amsterdam.

Anne Frank writes in 1944, dreaming about what she will do if she survives, “If God lets me live…I will make my voice heard.  I will work in the world for mankind.”

What can each of us do to make a difference for just one person, in our schools, in our community, in our world?

For now, in this moment, I’d like to ask everyone to say hello, exchange greetings with the people sitting on either side of us – if it’s family or best friends turn behind you or reach in front of you – one action we can take right now is to get to know each other, to bring ourselves closer as a community.  Take a moment, share greetings! – And we can do this at any time, when we’re walking in downtown Cranford, anytime.

And one more thing we can do -- on your way out this evening, please consider taking one of the yellow Holocaust memorial candles sponsored by the Temple Beth El Mekor Chayim Men’s club and Menorah Chapels at Millburn.  You can light this candle at home tonight in memory of the victims of the Holocaust and victims of other genocides throughout the 20^thand 21^stcenturies.

And let’s always remember, what we do, matters.

---

[1]Ray Allen was an NBA basketball player who continues to be an advocate for Holocaust education.  One of his articles appears here:  https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/ray-allen-why-i-went-to-auschwitz