Parshat Masei: Where we've been and where we're going

Dvar Torah:  Masei

Where we've been, and where we’re going.

How many stopping points are there along the way in the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land?

42

In just a slightly less authoritative book than the Bible, Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is, The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything – a number calculated by a supercomputer over the course of 7.5 million years.  Unfortunately, in that story, no one remembered the ultimate question, and that is the reason for the creation of Earth – the system designed to produce the ultimate question.

There is symmetry here between these two stories of creation, of journeys, of exploration, and of seeking knowledge.  The space between Egypt and the Promised Land is not empty, physically or spiritually.  Along the way the Israelites contend with enemies, with their own flaws, their own desires and weaknesses, and they get to know God, and God gets to know them, to know us. 

Here, at the end of the journey, and looking back, we realize it is only one more stop along the way.  Joshua will lead the people forward and begin the new journey on the western side of the Jordan.

And now, 3 weeks into the war in Israel and Gaza, the journey on the western side of the Jordan continues. 

More than 30 Israeli soldiers have sacrificed their lives in this conflict.  Several civilian casualties on our side.  Many casualties on the other side as well.

And we wonder, where are we in this journey now? 

I attended the rally at Bergen PAC last night, a rally that drew over 2000 community members from the North Jersey Jewish Federation region to Englewood.  It was extraordinary to see the sheer numbers of people there, cheering for Israel.  No signs or slogans demeaning or defaming the Palestinians, but certainly strong words calling for Israel’s security. 

We love and support Israel, but we are American Jews.  Israelis are our family, our friends, and the soldiers are fighting for us as much as for their homeland. 

Since we do not live there – since we do not serve in the army, or police the borders, or patrol Israeli waters or skies, we may be struggling with what we can offer other than our verbal support, our financial support – whether through donations to programs like Stop the Sirens or purchasing goods made in Israel.

I think that proudly and confidently living our Jewish lives here sends a message.  Gathering here at shul, Shabbat activities at home with family and friends, community service work we do, any and all of the 613 mitzvot are designed to link us more closely with God, the Source of Life and Vitality in the Universe, the Source of Strength for us and for Israel.

American Jews have been great at building synagogues and community centers, placing community and faith at the center.  In Israel, we are beginning to see now a trend toward finding the spiritual and faith roots in Judaism that can inform the culturally Jewish and Hebrew speaking society that has grown there over the past 100 years and more.  A good example is Shavuot evening study in Israel, a project that has taken inspiration from current Member of Knesset and Talmud scholar Ruth Calderon.

“Tikkun Leil Shavuot has been gaining popularity in Israel among secular Israelis over the last two decades.  In Tel Aviv, it gained power with the establishment of an alternative Tikkun Shavuot by the Tel-Aviv Alma College, the college for Hebrew culture (founded by Member of Knesset, Dr. Ruth Calderon) in 1996.  Other Tikkun Shavuot events that offer new meaning, relevance, and an opportunity for non-Orthodox Israelis to expand their knowledge on Jewish and Israeli culture, are Kehilat Ha’lev (a musical and spiritual community associated with the Reform movement), and BINA (Center for Jewish Identity and Hebrew Culture, which operates Israel’s first secular Yeshiva).”

This news, this trend, suggests that they, and we too, recognize that we want to create a world that reflects the Jewish values that are most important to us – the Golden Rule, seeking justice, integrity, honesty, a drive for greater knowledge and sensitivity, and more. 

While the pen may not be able to defend the country like the sword, the pen, the mind really, of the Rabbis and of all of us today as Jews and contributors to the Jewish people, is what continues to create the ideas that build on the core values.

This Shabbat we say Chazak chazak venitchazek, God give us strength to continue to read and study the Torah together, as we finish the fourth book of the Torah tomorrow on Shabbat morning. 

May our brothers and sisters in Israel have the strength to fight for the country both on the field of battle and in all the places where ancient wisdom offers modern inspiration, where words in a scroll move us to write words on laptops and tablets, where prayer books are as valuable sources of guidance as Facebook and Twitter – and let us take up this example as well.

And in our search for this meaning – we remember 42 stops along the way to the Promised Land, and the ongoing search for the question, the questions, that animate us all in this crazy, blessed, chaotic and elegantly structured world where by a stroke of God’s creative will, we have a chance to consider these questions in the first place.

Shabbat Shalom.

Matot - The Israel Conflict, Summer 2014

PARSHAT MATOT:  THE ISRAEL CONFLICT, SUMMER 2014

I returned from Israel last Friday morning, a trip to Israel that was different from any other.  Twice in the second week in Jerusalem, the air raid siren blared over all of Jerusalem.  The first time was at night, on my way back from studies at the Hartman Institute.  I ran up Mendele Mocher Sfarim Street to the hotel, and straight downstairs to the basement with everyone in the hotel.  The second time was Thursday afternoon.  Sitting on a street near Ben Yehuda, eating lunch, the siren rang out again and we scurried down the staircase behind a restaurant.

Each time, when the 10-minute waiting period ended, we emerged from hiding to see that Jerusalem is whole, people on the streets, life continues.  But the cities on the coast and inland cannot tell the same story.  Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ber Sheva, Sderot, Tel Aviv and other cities have been under a barrage, a barrage that continued even after Israel, the Arab League, and Mahmoud Abbas signaled acceptance of an Egyptian brokered cease fire.  A very short lived ceasefire did happen and then mortars and rockets from Gaza broke the hudna, the ceasefire, not long afterwards.  Now, IDF soldiers have crossed the border in the south and north of Gaza, to target the tunnels that Hamas terrorists use to operate against Israel and to achieve other strategic goals with the hope of eliminating the capability to strike Israel in the future.

The spirit of our brothers and sisters in Israel is strong, but a constant conflict wears on the soul.  “Im tirtzu ayn zo aggadah”, is what Theodor Herzl said about the mission to re-establish a Jewish homeland, “If you will it, it is not a dream.”  Today, in light of the ongoing conflicts since before May 1948, I think of another poet, Langston Hughes, who asks, “What happens to a dream deferred?”  Our brothers and sisters in Israel have endured and given us strength.  They have kept the dream alive.

As a Jewish community, united in the the face of an ongoing crisis today.  We may yearn for revenge, and for military action to go forward, and also for a resolution and end to the conflict.  With both these impulses, we look to our tradition for guidance. 

And we also look inward, even before we consider politics and diplomacy.  We are now in the three weeks before Tisha B’Av, the day of memory, of mourning the destruction of the Temple and other tragedies of Jewish history.  If ultimately according to the Rabbis it was our own disunity, and causeless enmity between Jewish people, that leads to the destruction of the Temple, we can we learn the lesson today that partnership and unity across all Jewish communities is essential, that we must be rodfay shalom, pursuers of harmony within our own community and amongst Jews of all backgrounds, not only when a crisis in Israel binds us in solidarity but through the times when Yehi ratzon, God willing, there is not a crisis that musters our attention and resources.

The conflict also focuses our attention on issues of power and peace, two of the topics that I along with over 100 rabbis studied for two weeks at the Hartman Institute.  How can we find equilibrium being both the people of ‘Shalom rav al Yisrael…’? Let God make peace for Israel’ and ‘Ado-nai Ish Milchamah’, ‘Our God is a God of War’?  We know that Israel tries more than most to use its military power in a responsible way, and we still hope that nation shall not lift up sword against nation, perhaps that there will not be a reason for swords but other tools. Let’s not forget that even during the fighting hundreds of trucks with humanitarian and other aid from Israel have crossed into Gaza.  We consider Yehudah Amichai’s challenge:  ‘Don’t stop after beating the swords into plowshares, don’t stop!  Go on beating and make musical instruments out of them.  Whoever wants to make war again will have to turn them into plowshares first.’  Now with boots on the ground, my own first reaction is to pray for the safety of our troops.  Sadly, the first soldier casualty occurred yesterday.  Eitan Barak, 20 years old, from Hertzeliyah, zichro livracha.  We cry with his parents.  We cry with the parents of the three boys who were kidnapped and murdered, Eyal, Naftali, and Gilad.  We cry with the parents of Muhammad Abu Qdeir the shanda of Jews murdering this boy. 

We cannot talk about the Israel situation without recognizing the larger context of Middle East politics and conflicts.  The Syria crisis drags on year after year.  Radical groups like ISIS, and Boko Haram in Africa, threaten with their extremist view of Islam.  They slaughter at will, without judges or courts, and their story now is backpage to criticism for Israel for seeking to defend its borders.  Many media outlets and Palestinian or pro-Palestinian activists and writers accuse Israel of brutalities when  in other Arab countries life, democracy of any sort, and general well-being are nonexistent.  In Israel, Arabs can be citizens and receive benefits.  There is admittedly inequality, but they can vote and serve in the Knesset.  In what Arab country in the Middle East do Jews serve in politics?  Why are deaths from Israel’s military more newsworthy or significant or painful that generations of Arabs killing each other, Shiites and Sunni, Alawites, Kurds and more?      

And what does peace mean for Israel, for us?  Is it the messianic peace of the wolf and lamb living together?  Or is it the more structured peace brokered by people, less dramatic than the prophecy, but more realistic, and hopefully attainable?

Tonight, and during these dark and challenging days, the words of Hatikvah ring true, ‘Ayin leTziyon tzofiyah’, our eyes look toward Zion, we cast our eyes and prayers toward Israel.  We search for the strength to stay connected to the people, our family and friends in Israel, and the stories of their lives, triumphs, and struggles though they are so far away.  Let them know they have our full support.  Od lo avdah tikvatenu, we did not lose hope before, and we never will.

God's Curriculum for Us - Parshat Behar 5774/2014

Parshat Behar 2014/5774

I’m finishing up a class on how to design curriculum.  One of the major lessons I learned this semester is something that, for sure, was not written into the syllabus and the teacher did not raise up this red flag: Is it really possible to teach something fully?

And what is the best way to teach a lesson? 

Do we write it up on the board, ask students to make notes, then test student memory?

Do we conduct a hands-on activity, and following the ideas of John Dewey, learn by doing?

Which lesson planning style do we use, Understanding by Design, 4Mat, Jigsaw method?

How do we figure out if anyone learned something (or not)?

And one of the more interesting issues is the way that a school teaches not only by what it chooses to teach and how but also by what it doesn’t teach explicitly, what is implicit, what is the message of what is left out?

In our Torah reading this week we notice just how artificial the distinction between curricular and extra-curricular can be.  With God as the teacher, life itself is the curriculum.  God creates the world itself with lessons and assessments built in. 

Every seventh year, farmers must let their fields lie fallow; planting and all farming activity must stop.  No sowing, reaping, pruning, or picking.  Only those things that grow naturally will be food. 

This shemittah, this release, this break for the land, is not just a nice idea.  It was a necessary part of the system.  Irrigation water for crops dumped a variety of chemicals into the soil, poisoning the soil.  High chemical content in the soil was a major cause of a civilization’s downfall.  The area of modern day Iraq, between the Tigris and Euphrates, experienced decline when chemicals built up around one of the rivers.  Crops would not grow.  The economy in the area failed.(Sarna, Excursus 10, JPS Leviticus)

The descendants of those who for hundreds of years had worked under Pharaoh’s orders, who now work the fields in their own Promised Land, cannot overwork them the same way that Pharaoh mistreated the slaves as expendable, killing their spirit and bodies until they had no option but to shout out to God.  It’s as though God wants to remind us that we came from the soil, God formed us from the ground and breathed life into us, and so we must nourish the source of our existence, the soil that in turn produces the food that gives us life.

Clearly, despite the fact that the lesson was written into nature, there were those who needed to hear it.  Caring for the soil was the only way the Promised Land could become a Land of Promise.

The chemical build up is not limited to the soil.  We see after a long winter, and the claustrophobia of staying inside month after month, that we are starving for fresh air, straining to take a walk, see the sun, plant seeds in the soil and watch them grow.  The weather affects our bodies and souls.  We want to be around other people to remind ourselves that we are alive, just like we do during shivah.

God also builds into nature the ways to revive our own souls, to nourish our spirits and selves.  Our voices and language allow us to speak and sing, and teach, our eyes enable us to read and study holy words.  Our hearts help us to match what we say and see to what we do, challenge us to create new growth in ourselves, in each other. 

2014 is in fact a Shemitah year, a 7^th year, and now, 7 months from Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur there is a chance to begin the work that will get us ready for the New Year.  If we wait until summer turns to fall, it will be too late.

Nature is a curriculum.  Time is a curriculum.  However long we merit staying in God’s classroom, let’s get to work.

Shabbat Shalom.

Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach: Pi'se'ach to Pesach - Learning to Walk to Freedom...Again

October 1945, the leaders of the Yishuv, the Zionist community of Palestine, authorized the Palmach in its first major operation.  The goal was to free 208 ma’apilim, idividuals who sought to evade the British blockade and enter the Promised Land and ended up as prisoners in Atlit.  Yitzhak Rabin was an officer in that mission.  The first Palmach brigade completed its mission without firing a shot and without losing one soldier. 

When it was time for the next mission, to destroy the supplies of the British unit ‘Palestine Mobile forces’ Rabin and others carried out intelligence operations, and when he was ready to report and receive permission for the ‘go ahead’, he decided to drive up to Chaifa for the report on a motorcycle – and he did not have a license to drive one.  On the way, he was driving too fast and collided with a truck.  His left leg was completely broken.

Now out of the action, he felt like a prisoner, locked up in his house.  He wrote a letter to his sister and signed it, “Your brother, the cripple.”  ‘Achicha ha’pi’se’ach.”  When I read the way he signed the letter, I immediately heard the overtone in that word of Pesach.  Pis’each and Pesach, spelled the same way, pronounced differently, one referring in the letter to a person who is stuck, the other to a holiday of freedom, liberation, release from oppression.

Rabin’s leg would heal, and one day he would become the army chief of staff, and prime minister.  He would continue to fight for the Jewish people to be able to live safely and securely in our ancient land.  The people of ancient Israel would be free, but their difficult transition to freedom would lead to 40 years of wandering the wilderness, not a prison, but a challenging environment – no walls but requiring patience and strength of spirit that the first generation of freedom does not seem to possess.  None of that generation enters the Promised Land. 

The irony in this story does not stop there.  The Malbim in his extraordinary commentary to the Haggadah points out that after the 4 questions, we say ‘Avadim hayinu’, we were slaves, meaning we are no longer slaves, and we could ask, ‘Of what value is our freedom from Egypt?  We’re still prisoners or slaves to Achashverosh”, the King of Shushan, from the Purim story, standing in for every other dictator or government in the days after Egypt that persecutes us, the Greeks, Romans, Persians, Muslims, Christian Europe, the Nazis, the British mandate…

The lesson I learned this year in preparing for Passover is that there are two Hebrew words for freedom, and they both do not mean the same thing – it is the difference between the two that clarifies how the Jewish people not only can thrive but can flourish and grow in strength at this time, in this country, when there is no persecution – and so we are relatively relaxed, calm, and so the message of what we should do is more critical than ever, despite the fact that, as we’ve discussed, in the last survey of American Jews the reponse for components of Jewish identity showed that the the biggest percentage of Jewish identity today appears to still be a post-Holocaust survival and memory mentality.

One word for freedom is ‘chofesh’, chofshi, like liyot am chofshi, traditionally that word is understood to be free in the sense of no limits, nothing held back, kind of like the Dauntless in Veronica Roth’s ‘Divergent’.  The other term ‘cherut’, means freedom with a purpose, with a message, with limits, responsibilities and expectations of ourselves and others – Cherut does not mean that we cannot dream, actually, this type of freedom allows us to dream, giving us a firm foundation, the lesson that all the matzah we eat, the words we say at Seder, all these limits we impose on ourselves are not arbitrary – they point us in a specific direction, toward reclaiming the excitement, the hope, the mystery, the freshness of walking together and with God on our journey through time – through the scorched deserts of doubt and pain, through the calm valleys of friendship and community.

The light of Jewish faith burns brightest at Pesach, brighter even than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  When the matzah is gone, when Seder leftovers are gone, and we go back to real pasta made from Semolina, we must not allow the light to get clouded over, dirty, until we cannot see it anymore – tape a piece of matzah to the inside of the front door, have horseradish more often, shout the message of freedom from the pen and from the rooftops, so that we can follow Yitzhak Rabin’s example, as he recovered from being pi’se’ach, unable to walk, to Pesach, walking out from Egypt proud, tall, and strong.

Shabbat Shalom.