Dvar Torah Matot-Masei - Hope for a better tomorrow

Matot-Masei 2013/5773

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dvar Torah - Pinchas - The Pace of Change

Pinchas 2013/5773

The Pace of Change

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat Shalom.

Sadiq's Greeting

Sadiq’s Greeting

            We tend to enter our favorite local supermarket through the parking lot that is below the store.  From this lot, we pick up a wagon and then enter a vestibule leading to a long people-mover ramp that delivers us to the main floor.  In that lower vestibule, we often see Sadiq, a Pakistani man who works security at this lower entrance to the store. 

            I cannot remember when I first met and exchanged greetings with him, nor can I remember when he first greeted my kids and learned their names.  However, each time that he is working there he greets me.  If I only have my daughter, he greets her by name and asks “Where is your brother?”  Dara smiles and tells him that Micah is at home.  When Micah is there, he greets him, “Hello Michael. Is Michael a big boy?”  (Sadiq is not the only one who hears ‘Micah’ and says ‘Michael’.  It is somewhat of a unusual name for many who speak excellent English.)  The kids now know him by name.

            We greet any of the usual security guards in this vestibule, but Sadiq is the only one who consistently steps forward with a smile.  If, God forbid, something unsavory were to occur in the lot, I would want Sadiq to be the one on security at that moment.  While I never have felt unsafe in the lot, the presence of a kind face and presence there lends a sense of peace and emotional security.  It helps me to slow down and ease the way into the mundane, and often stressful, supermarket experience.

            The Rabbis teach us in the Mishnah to greet everyone with ‘a cheerful, pleasant face’ (sever panim yafot’).  This instruction is not as easy to do as it sounds at first.  A recent experience illustrates a painful lack of any facial recognition.  We were pushing our kids in the wide, but smooth gliding, ‘jogging stroller’ on the sidewalk in our town.  Two male tweens were approaching us on the sidewalk with their phones in front of their faces in ‘texting position’.  They kept their eyes on the screen and did not, or pretended not, to notice us.  Startled, we pulled aside and they walked past without turning away from the screen. 

            A positive greeting is a validation, an offer of respect, an opening to dialogue, and something that clears the air and reduces the tension between people.  Sadiq inspires me to be a better greeter, someone who consistently tries to connect with others even when others may ignore or avoid a response. 

            Sadiq translates to the Hebrew ‘tzedakah’, justice, righteousness.  His greetings, our greetings and response and recognition of others, is an act of righteousness that makes us feel more human and contributes to the creation of a world where we can feel motivated to bring people closer together, whether at the supermarket, or in the complex and dangerous politics of international relations.

            I’m willing to start small.  Let’s give it a try.

            

Behalotcha - 'Between one misfortune and another'

Behalotcha 2013/5773

Between one misfortune and another

Neil Tow ©

The TV news flashes pictures of the scenes where they will report the news.  One shocking story after another.  One tragedy after another until numbness sets in, even weather is a study in potential dangers and the only breaks between these segments are commercials that blare in loud and discordant sounds images of products or services we may or may not need.

A football team takes a time out to discuss strategy and to catch their breaths during the course of a game.  One play after another, tackle after tackle, bone-crunching, plastic helmets against helmets, a relentless poem of an organized, ritualized conflict that once again is interrupted by these time outs and more commercials.

Real life offers neither the flow, nor the badly needed breaks, that either of these performances offers.  Life can be unrelenting in its painful progression, molding and kneading us beyond our ability to respond to pain, suffering, indifference, apathy, and even to the happy and the good.

We find one example of breaks in the famous words that leap from the Torah scroll this week, set apart from the rest of the text by a large inverted ‘Nun’ on either side.  The first part of this tiny, two verse section begins with the familiar words: Vayhi binsoa ha’aron vayomer Moshe…And concludes with the words that close our Torah service, Uv’nucho yomar – When the Ark travels, and when the Ark comes to rest. 

For centuries our ancestors have debated why this poem stands apart with a nun as a breakwater before and afterwards.  Rashi explains to us that the first nun breaks after a ‘first misfortune’ and the second nun breaks before the next misfortune. 

Within the two inverted Hebrew letters, there is a refuge, a place of calm after one storm and before the next, or perhaps in the eye of the current storm.  In the wake of the fourth major tornado to hit the city of Moore in Oklahoma in little more than a decade, the people there are existing in that vulnerable place seemingly inside the refuge between misfortunes.  Yesterday, students and teachers gathered together for a post-tornado in-school reunion and then returned to the battered homes on battered streets to continue trying to salvage their lives.

In the longer wake after Superstorm Sandy, beaches on the shore have begun to open up, boardwalks rebuilt, rental properties hard to come by as reservations fill the rolls.  Storm damage around our larger area persists as other areas struggle to complete repairs and ‘open for summer’. 

And we will gather together on Monday, Memorial Day, to remember our brave men and women in uniform who willingly walked into storms of another kind, of a human created kind, and were unable to return home along with their friends back to their families and loved ones.

In all of these stories, the calm between the storms has not proven to set the tone for the future.  One tornado hits and then another just as strong if not stronger.  One storm hits the northeast and then another still stronger.  Waves of terrorism spread over the world and there are more white stones in our military cemeteries. 

We cannot seem to prevent armed conflict in this world, despite our best prayers and efforts.

We can though commit, in these calm moments between the storms of nature, to take steps to mitigate the impact of future storms.  I reacted with anger and disbelief when the city manager of Moore, Oklahoma said in a radio interview that with regard to whether city residents should be required by law to build storm shelters, especially given the tragic deaths at the local school, he replied, “The lives of children are priceless, but we know what building costs are.” 

Nothing compounds pain more than stating the obvious.  The city manager’s coldness on this issue does not fit in with the spirit of the Oklahoma that sent its trucks to our neighborhoods to restore power after Sandy.  Now it is the turn for us, for people with the know-how, to go over there, to sponsor and build the shelters so that the city of Moore does not have to shoulder the cost itself. 

Now is the time for residents of our area to begin long-range planning for the next fall storm season. 

Now is the time to support the families of our fallen soldiers, so that we may imitate the loving-kindess of God who everyday is ‘zokef kefufim’, the one who enables people bent over in grief and loss to stand up a little more straight.

TV News and football games have a life of their own.  They are both performances rather than lived experiences.  They operate by their rules.  Our Torah today pricks us to awareness of the haven between the misfortunes that appear in our world, helping us to challenge the momentum of Torah reading so that it does not become rote, to challenge us to rebuild and remember, to have the strength to carry the Ark forward through the most terrible storms and to summon up the courage to shatter and scatter their destructive potential, Vayhi binsoa ha’aron vayomer Moshe, kumah Ado—nai ve’yafutzu oy’vecha mipanecha.

What can we do in the face of terror? -- "Do not stand idly by..." (From Parshat Kedoshim)

Kedoshim 2013/5773

To not stand idly by

Rabbi Neil A. Tow©

As we paid tribute on Yom Ha’Shoah to the victims of Nazi terror, we focused on this year as the 70^th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising – a battle that was lost before it started, doomed to fail due to overwhelming enemy forces and lack of support and supplies from outside the ghetto.

The uprising began 70 years ago, today, April 19, 1943.

Nothing is left of the Ghetto – walking in the ghetto area we see apartments, green lawns, roads, and memorials – and a soon to be opened museum of Polish Jewry.

And as our recent Eastern Europe trip drew to a close, news of an attack on innocent bystanders, fans of the Boston marathon, people who, like me, stood on the sidelines cheering at the finish, helping in a small way to get people toward the finish line.  People like Krystle Campbell, 29, 8 year old Martin Richard, graduate student Lingzi Lu whose lives ended at that finish line.

“Lo ta’amod al dam re’echa,” our parsha teaches, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.”

If we know we can save someone, we should, but what if we do not know the danger?  What if we are as surprised as everyone else?  What then?  Is there a way to not ‘Stand idly by’, a way to be active after the fact?  Can we fulfill God’s expectation of us even as the blood of our fellow human beings stains the sidewalks on Boylston Street, or a Jerusalem street, or a village in Syria, or anywhere else?

We think to ourselves, I am not an FBI agent, I cannot assist with the investigation.

I am not CIA or NSA, I cannot help clarify intelligence reports.

I am not a first responder, I could not be there to bind wounds.

I do not live in Boston.

Can we be active in the debates and planning around issues of gun violence and other violence in our area?

Yes.

Can we offer material, spiritual, and moral support to our brothers and sisters in Israel who live in range of rocket fire?

Yes.

Can we muster the courage to step in when we see bullying occurring between adults and kids?

Yes.

Can we offer our prayers for the victims of violence and spread messages that there are non-violent ways to resolve conflict?

Yes.

We should honor though, at the same time, our ‘would have feelings’, the sense that we could not offer assistance in the moment even if we wanted to do so, perhaps even if we had been there – after all, we could have become victims ourselves no matter how good our intentions or skills.

Jewish thinking gives us language and action points in this situation.  Missing an opportunity for a mitzvah, for example, is much different than an intentional avoidance of doing a mitzvah.  If ancient Jews could not offer the Passover sacrifice on time, there was a Second Passover opportunity one month later.  If we miss offering the Morning prayer, we can ‘make it up’ later on – there’s even the text of an Amidah called ‘Havinenu’ designed to be recited in moments of duress when we cannot do a full version.  Teshuvah is a continual process of self-reflection and a road to reconciliation that opens the chance for each of us to make right what went wrong between us and God, and between people.

Action after the fact may feel too late, ‘token’, or just as something that makes us ‘feel better’. 

I believe though that the people centered wisdom of Jewish generations suggests that we do not get mired in such feelings. 

I believe in the story told to me by Rabbi Jeff Summit of Tufts Hillel, of the Rabbi who taught, ‘What can we learn from the telephone?  That what is said here is heard there.’

What we do here will echo there – wherever we could not be, wherever we wished we could offer a hand, wherever we fear to go because we legitimately feel we are putting our own lives in danger – the danger is the idleness or inertia, that we stand, planted in place, until the moment when the evil finds us

Good News from Israel - Changes coming at the Western Wall

Emor 5773/2013

Good News from Israel

Amidst a new wave of terrible devastation, Boston, Bangladesh, Texas, a vicious shooting in Manchester, Illinois, there was some good news out of Israel, some news that marks a hopeful change in the thinking about religious pluralism at the Kotel, the Western Wall, one of the most revered sites for the Jewish people. 

Jerusalem judge Moshe Sobell upheld an earlier ruling that cleared the Women of the Wall from being held on charges of creating a public disturbance by their once a monthly prayer gatherings.  He also ruled that these women, many of whom wear a tallit, who read Torah and daven as a minyan, do not violate ‘local custom’, which was a legal basis for the arrest of 5 women earlier this month.  He based his decision on a 1994 ruling from High Court Judge Shlomo Levin who argued that ‘local custom’ is not limited to traditional Orthodox practice.  Levin argued that custom can change and that the operating principle should be a ‘tolerant approach to the opinions and customs of others.’

The Jerusalem police have agreed to follow the court’s ruling and refrain from arresting the Women of the Wall who for 25 years have been holding services one each Rosh Chodesh, each celebration of the new month.  Over this time, they have been verbally and physically abused at the Wall, detained, shackled, arrested.

Rosh Chodesh is among the days that we celebrate life, hope, and the renewal of time and our people.  Parshat Emor places most of the major Jewish holidays in the foreground, as God asks us not only to know what these days are and when they are, but to actively proclaim them and act on them, to bring the holiness of these days off the pages of the scroll or book and into lived experience.

The writer R. Yakov Zvi Mecklenburg, Haktav ve’Hakabalah, explains that Shabbat, the first and most basic ‘festival’ in the Jewish calendar, a day that sets the example for all other holy days, is a day of rest, pausing, and ceasing from work.  Also, Shabbat suggests a day for opening the mind, a day when we give our physical selves a rest and open up the potential for studying and exploring holy words and ideas.

I believe that Women of the Wall are most interested in being able to do just this, to create meaningful holy experiences, to encourage women by facilitating a sacred space where they may fully express their beliefs in a supportive environment.  For the women in our community, on your next Israel trip, try and schedule your trip so that you can attend a service on Rosh Chodesh with this trail-blazing group.  Their courage gives us strength.  Their vision has motivated the Israeli government to instruct Natan Sharansky to implement a plan that will establish mixed prayer space at the lower part of the wall, Robinson’s Arch, that is regularly open to all who wish to daven this way, rather than the current arrangement that requires reservations.  The new area will be equal in size to the upper plaza and both will be accessible through one entrance.  We should all applaud this significant step and share our appreciation with Israel’s leaders and with the Women of the Wall.

And so amidst more chaos we find a new and hopeful order, amidst political instability in the Middle East we find voices raised up in song a prayer with renewed strength, and we see Eretz Yisrael, the State of Israel, growing, changing, evolving, striving to find a way to live up to the high expectation that Israel, that our people, can be a light that shines out to all nations and peoples of the world.