Thursday, October 30, 2008

Election 2008: Of Schleppers and Shandehs

The Year of Schleppers and Shandehs

As we prepare to go to the polls this week, the most important message I can reinforce is that everyone needs to get out and vote. While the polls tell us that the Presidential race is not close in Connecticut, the polls have been wrong before. No matter whom you support, it is important to do our democratic duty, or, more accurately, to exercise this electoral privilege.

Think of all the generations of our ancestors who were disenfranchised, who never had the chance to choose their leaders. And now, we live in a country where not only does our vote count, but the Jewish vote has become, for the second election out of the last three, a major factor in determining the outcome. We’ll know for sure next week, after the dust has been settled, but at this point, the entire state of Florida seems to be awaiting the verdict of a few Bubbes and Zaydes in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

You’ve heard all the jokes, for the past eight years. I’m as guilty as any of making light of this situation. (As in my Rosh Hashanah quip, that when I was asked what Jews would have done had Joe Lieberman been nominated by the Republicans for Vice President. My response was that we would have done what we always do when Joe is on the ticket: vote for Pat Buchanan). And many of you have undoubtedly heard Sarah Silverman’s plea for the Great Schlep as well as Jackie Mason’s response (see both at http://cordover.blogspot.com/2008/10/jackie-mason-condemns-great-schlep.html).

Recent polls indicate that the schleppers made an impression on their elders, as Obama’s numbers have gone up among older Jews. But that has only intensified some of the personal attacks that have been directed most vociferously toward the Jewish community. I won’t comment on the most recent guilt-by-association accusation, involving Rashid Khalidi. You may want to see what Dennis Ross has to say about it in the Jerusalem Post, however.

I make no endorsement and stick to my declaration on Rosh Hashanah that both candidates are very supportive of Israel. Their approaches might be different, but that support is rock solid. Ultimately, Israel’s security goals can be achieved only through a combination of strength and diplomacy and with the help of an America that is respected around the world. The question we need to ask is which candidate will create the best environment internationally for this to happen.

What concerns me most is not the accusations of one candidate or another, or even all the horrible e-mails flying around, but rather that the scrutiny that Jews have been under has exposed a real seedy side that I had hoped had gone away. When Jews are interviewed, particularly in Florida, I’ve cringed more than once to hear those who will admit openly that they would have trouble voting for an African American.

That, my friends, is a shandeh (Yiddush for “national embarrassment”). It shames me to hear that. There are times when it is better not to be totally honest, even in this tell-all society, and when a national TV reporter asks someone that question, I’m sorry, it’s best to clam up if you believe that way. It is a reflection on all of us. And even those Jews who support McCain (for all the right reasons, not racist ones) should be cringing to hear fellow Jews openly speaking in racist terms.

The Jerusalem Talmud relates the story of Simeon ben Shetach related also in this Wikipedia article:

Simeon lived in humble circumstances, supporting himself and his family by conducting a small business in linen goods. Once his pupils presented him with a donkey, which they had purchased from an Arab. On the neck of the animal they found a costly jewel, whereupon they joyously told their master that he might now cease toiling since the proceeds from the jewel would make him wealthy. Simeon, however, replied that the Arab had sold them the ass only, and not the jewel; and he returned the gem to the Arab, who exclaimed, "Praised be the God of Simeon ben Shetach!”

When we show warmth and acceptance, we represent all Jews, the Torah, and even God. The same is true when we demonstrate pettiness and prejudice. The rest of the world looks on and wonders whether this is what we’re teaching our children.

Well, it’s not. We’ll find all out next week, when we sift through all the exit polls, whether racism is still alive and well among the Jews.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Judaism For Everyone: Class Syllabus

Judaism for Everyone:
An Introductory Class for Dummies, Smarties..
and Those Who Don’t Know How to Ask.


Instructor: Rabbi Hammerman

Sunday mornings, 9:30 – 10:30 (not to worry, we’ll serve bagels and coffee!).

During this year-long course, Rabbi Hammerman will discuss all aspects of Judaism: History, ethics, customs, literature, lifecycle, basic mitzvot; the hows and whys of living a life imbued with Torah. This class is ideal for everyone looking to understand the basics, as well as those seeking answers to life’s most difficult questions. It is also perfect for those exploring the possibility of becoming a Jew by choice, along with those choosing to reclaim a heritage that has long seemed so elusive and complex. It’s for those who love services, those who are bored by services, and those who don’t know what services are. It’s open to members, non-members, Jews and non Jews. It’s for everyone.

Also, we are embarking on a two year cycle that will culminate in another Beth El Adult Bar/Bat Mitzvah service. This class is a prerequisite for those who may wish to become part of that B’nai Mitzvah process.

There is a $50 registration and materials fee. Required texts will include Joseph Telushkin’s “Jewish Literacy” and Rabbi Brad Artson’s “It’s a Mitzvah,” as well as Xeroxed texts and online assignments.

Certain sessions, listed in italics, will be open even to those not otherwise taking the class. The schedule is subject to change:

Nov. 2 Introductory Class: What is Judaism? Why be Jewish? Who is a Jew?

Nov. 9 What is the Torah? What is the Bible? Biblical history: What REALLY happened?

Nov. 16 Exploring a Torah Portion. Meeting the traditional commentators; Who were the Prophets (Nevi'im). What is a haftarah?

Nov. 23 What is the Siddur? The structure of the service; exploring key prayers

Dec. 7 What are the Mishna and Talmud?

Dec. 14 What is Shabbat?

DEC. 21 The True Story of Hanukkah:
What Really Happened to the Maccabees, the Oil and the Elephants…
Elephants?

Jan. 11 What is Kosher?

Jan. 25 CONGREGATIONAL SHABBATON

FEB. 1 Tallit, Tefillin and Mezuzah: a “hands-on” experience in conjunction with the World Wide Wrap

FEB. 8 Tu B’Shevat Seder: Jewish Environmentalism – ALSO AN INTRO TO KABBALA

Mar. 1 Jewish Values: Tzedakkah and Gemilut Hasadim

MAR. 8 THE PURIM STORY – “FOR ADULTS ONLY”

Mar. 15 Jewish Values: Business and Medical Ethics

Mar. 22 Jewish Values: “Guarding your Tongue” – Gossip

March 29 HOW TO RUN THE BEST SEDER IN TOWN! A PASSOVER PRIMER

Apr. 26 Zionism, Israel and the Holocaust

May. 3 Omer, Shavuot and the Jewish Calendar

May 10 Life Cycle: Birth, Bar/Bat Mitzvah and Marriage

May 17 Life Cycle: The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning

May 31 Final session: The rhythms and cycles of the Jewish calendar and Jewish history – what’s all the fuss about the Messiah?

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

TBE Bar/ Bat Mitzvah Commentary: Adam Satz on Parashat Bereisheet

Shabbat Shalom!

My torah portion has the story of Creation in it, something that brings to mind the Miami Dolphins. Actually, just about everything brings to mind the Miami Dolphins…. In fact, for each day of Creation, there is some connection to the Dolphins, or at least to my favorite sports.

On the first day, God said, “Let there be light.” That is exactly the cue for the Dolphins to come out of the tunnel when the game is about to begin, going from darkness to light in an instant – and that is the moment when the game begins! For God and for the world, that was also the moment that the “game” began.

On the second day, God said, “Let’s divide the waters above from the waters below,” separating heaven from earth. I don’t know what heaven is really like, but I’m pretty sure it’s like walking into Yankee stadium and seeing all the players warming up from only a few feet away. But now, we have two Yankee Stadiums, the old one that is being torn down, and the new one that will open next year. Maybe the new stadium will become heaven, as the old stadium falls into the earth.

On the third day, God made dry land and separated it from the water. Water is very different from dry land, much like the National League is different from the American League. Not only does the American League have the designated hitter, it also has more domed stadiums, which is why it is drier!

On the fourth day, God says “let darkness be separated from light and let there be stars and other lights in the heavens”. I’m pretty sure he meant to say “Let the All Star Game determine who gets the extra home game in the World Series – and let all the games be night games and end much too late for kids on the east coast!”

On the fifth day, God decided to make animals. But what he really did was create team mascots like the Dolphin’s mascot, “TD.” The dolphin would be considered a fish in the Creation story, but it’s really a mammal, and very smart.

On the sixth day, God commanded “let there be Man and Woman in MY image.” I’m not exactly sure about this one, but I’m assuming that this meant let there be football, baseball, and basketball players, and let there be cheerleaders for all of them.

It’s important to note that the first man who God created was given a really cool name: Adam.

In fact, Adam’s creation is mentioned two different times and some commentators explain that there were really two different Adams, or at least two different stories about Adam’s creation. In one story, Adam rules over the world and dominates it, and in the other, Adam nurtures the land and takes care of the animals.

I think of myself as a combination of the two Adams: Like Adam in the first story, I like being the one in charge, but like Adam in the second story, I like being outdoors, I care about the environment, including animals, and I’m a team player.

On the seventh and last day God rested - or in this case - it’s like he pitched a complete no-hitter against the Red Sox or scored the second and winning touchdown against the Patriots – and now he gets to rest.

So… that’s what the Seven Days of Creation would have looked like if they had been covered on Sports Center’s Top Seven Plays of the Week.

For my mitzvah projects, I’m doing my best to help make the world a better place, because it wasn’t totally finished by God and we all need to do our part. I will donate a portion of my Bar Mitzvah gifts to the World Wildlife Fund to save seven different animals, one for each day of the week.

I also collected sports equipment that I will donate to the Boys and Girls Club to help the kids who go there because I love playing sports and I wanted to give kids who are not as fortunate as I am the opportunity to play sports. Finally, I also collected food and helped sort food donations at Person to Person. It was very hard work… unloading the truck, checking for expiration dates, sorting the food by category into crates, and carrying the crates into the pantry. Before the truck containing all the High Holiday food donations got to the parking lot, I went down stairs and almost every single shelf in the pantry was empty. Once we had sorted all the food, the shelves were overflowing. Person to Person gives food and clothes to working people in need, so they can spend their salaries on heat, rent, and gas so they can get to work.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to my collections… as well as to my parents who made a food donation to Jewish Family Services through the baskets you see on the bimah.

TBE Bar/Bat Mitzvah Commentary: Max Eber on Parashat Noah

Jambo! Karibu! Hello and welcome in the language of Swahili. I learned these words in my trip to Kenya this past summer. As a present from my uncles, I was allowed to go anywhere in the world with them. The second I knew about my present I picked Kenya. Ever since I can remember I have always wanted to go there.

Kenya could be described as no better word than free. Freedom of the people, the animals, the trees, the grass, everything was free. The lions would lazily stroll around as the warthogs relaxed in the safety of their burrows. This is exactly the opposite of what the animals on Noah’s ark must have felt. For an animal that has been living in absolute freedom its entire life, to be thrown into a cramped boat with many other animals must feel just awful. All freedom was taken away from it and it was forced to sit in a small pen for weeks on end. Very often people don't realize what they have until it is taken away from them, just like the animals and their freedom.

Many rabbis argue over the issue of whether Noah or Abraham was more righteous. Abraham lived in a good time when everyone was nice. He was a great tsadik and studied torah. Sometimes it is difficult to stand out when everyone around you is being superb as well, but on the other hand it is easy to do good because everyone is encouraging you and setting an admirable example. Noah lived in a bad time when everyone was wicked. He was no tsadik and did not study torah, but none the less he did not steal or kill or be wicked. In his time it was easy to be bad and submit to evil ways, but looking at it from the other perspective, simply not being bad, makes you seem great. There are valid points on both sides of the argument and I am unable to decide who is more righteous, but if Hashem chose both of them to aid him, they must both have been righteous enough for their jobs.

After Hashem destroyed the world with the flood, he promised everyone that he would never destroy it again. Many believe that no matter what we do, we don’t have to worry, because of Hashem’s promise. What they fail to realize is that what we do, is what we do and he never promised that we wouldn’t destroy the world. With all of our pollution and waste we are creating global warming and an environmental crisis. With all of our war we are killing off all the nations of the world just as the flood had. Hashem promised that he would never again destroy the world and he intends to keep his promise, but we can just as easily destroy it for him. As I become a bar-mitzvah I see that I have the responsibility and opportunity to change the world for the better. I realize that I am just one person, but as Mother Theresa said, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”

When our safari group pulled up to our first wildebeest right when we got there, we stopped in awe. After taking about 300 pictures each of this one wildebeest, we decided it was finally time to move on. After about 2 days of being in Kenya, we would see a wildebeest and our driver would ask us, “Do you want to stop or look for something better?” Naturally, we said better because the wildebeest were so common that we were sure to see many more. We would rather go see lions than to stop and stare at a lowly wildebeest. So we moved on. When we were finishing up our journey and we had 1 or 2 days left, we stared, dazzled at the thousands of wildebeest stretched out over the plains, but just one meant almost nothing to us. When we finished our trip and came home I saw a deer walking through my backyard as I have a thousand times. I looked at it, but I don’t just mean I peeked and said, “Oh look a deer.” And then walked away. I looked at it as if I looked at the first wildebeest in Kenya. And I looked at its legs and muscles and the way it moved and ate. And just then did I realize that each individual, no matter how many there are, is special. Now I regret not taking the time to look more at the wildebeests and the common animals. Although the so called “better” animals were amazing, the common ones are not as appreciated and they should be, because no matter how many, each is special.

This is my conclusion. Where everything I have just spoken about gets wrapped up with just a few words. As I was writing this I thought to myself, “What could sum up everything and still leave a lasting impression?” After a while I came up with my answer. Happy is simple. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it is. It is the key to happiness. While I was in Kenya, I went to a village. All that they had were the things they made with their own two hands and what they gathered from nature. The thing that surprised me the most is that they were smiling, every last one. They were smiling and singing and dancing and they were happy. They didn’t need the televisions and electronics that we have or the games and toys either. All they needed were a few simple things and they were truly happy. When I was looking at the first wildebeest, my jaws hurt from my huge grin, but I couldn’t control it. I was fulfilling a lifelong dream. I was in Africa. Why should I contain my emotions? Simply seeing the one wildebeest made me happier than many, if not all, of my toys had. When I saw the deer in my backyard, after I returned, I was smiling and a warm feeling rose from within me. Once again, I experienced this pure happiness. The argument with the rabbis over Noah and Abraham about who is more righteous and who stands out more, doesn’t really mean anything. When a person stands out and they are recognized for their actions it always feels wonderful, but what truly is wonderful is knowing inside that they did the right thing and acted like who they are. Simply being yourself can make you truly happy. Freedom is something we all take for granted. Without it we would be utterly miserable. We all don’t realize how lucky we actually are. Now I’m not saying freedom is some simple thing because it’s not. It’s a complicated and difficult matter, but we are free and simply that should be enough to make you happy. So there you have it. It’s all wrapped up. But you don’t need me to tell you all that. Just look around you. Stop to look at the next deer you cross, the next time you watch TV or the next time someone makes you feel small. You don’t need much to make you happy. So, if you leave this shul with one message tonight, make it this.


Happy is simple, always remember that.

Friday, October 24, 2008

Challah-ween?

Challah-Ween?

The observance of Halloween is not Jewish and many arguments pro and con about dressing up and going door to door for candy have been made over the years. But there is no argument over the importance of Shabbat in our tradition. This year, Halloween comes out on Shabbat. The confluence of October 31 with Friday night presents families (and synagogues) with a unique opportunity to make a positive statement to their kids about Shabbat, while not necessarily placing people into a position of conflict with the fun of Halloween.

So next Friday night at services we're going to celebrate Shabbat with a unique twist. We'll call it "Challah-Ween," a title that won out over "Hallowed Queen" when I did a sponteneous survey at Simhat Torah services. Whatever you choose to call it, please come! Adults and children of all ages are welcome to join us at our regular time of 6:30 PM, and if you happen to have a costume on because you are coming from trick-or-treating, we still want you to come by and spend Kabbalat Shabbat with us. Cantor Littman and I are planning a fun service, and we'll have plenty of candy here…I may even bring out my favorite Jewish ghost story, “The Rabbi Who Was Turned into a Werewolf.”

Another way that has been suggested to embrace Shabbat while allowing your child to have the "fun" of Halloween is to keep the NOAH theme (next week’s portion) when choosing a costume. So, did Scooby Doo have a place on Noah’s Ark?

One year, when my kids were young and we had the same Shabbat issue, we contacted a few friends and set up a Thursday evening trick-or-treat alternative. We stationed adults in each room of the house, and the kids went from door to door inside, and when they knocked, a smiling adult gave them candy (kosher, of course). That way they could have their challah and eat it too.

As you might be able to tell, I come from the “lighten up” school of thought when it comes to Halloween, although I do feel a far greater concern because of this year’s confluence with Shabbat. But the question as to whether or not Halloween is “un-Jewish,” is far too complex to relegate to a few comments here. This is a fascinating time to tackle the fascinating subject of “Jew-sion,” the fusion of Judaism and surrounding cultures. It’s a perfect opportunity to discuss this, because there is a clear connection between the Creation account (this week's portion), the story of Noah and various ancient near eastern myths.

What is also clear that the Creation and Noah stories have many universal themes. It shows clearly how the destiny of all humankind is intertwined.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

TBE Bar/Bat Mitzvah Commentary: Melissa Miles on Sukkot

When I was thinking about this speech, it occurred to me that one specific theme seems to pop up in almost every aspect of my life, from softball to learning my haftarah. Strangely enough, the same theme also is found in today’s service, several times over!

And what is this theme? Life is like the Zoomerang, my favorite roller coaster at Lake Compounce. It is full of ups and downs, and even a few loop-de-loops, and lots of struggles that you have to overcome in order to get to the “good stuff.”

In softball, you have to strike out a few times – or in my case, a lot of times – before you can really appreciate hitting a home run. It was the struggle that made me strive even harder to hit the home run and then, when I did, to enjoy it more.

Sukkot is called z’man simchataynu which means time of our happiness. You might wonder why it’s called a time of happiness when Sukkot is associated with so many sad and serious things, like the end of summer and the wandering in the wilderness. This gives us a clue that for Jews, happiness is really all about accepting what life throws at us and appreciating the good things.

My Torah portion drives home that point. Moses recalls breaking the tablets containing the 10 commandments; and he remembers that things got bad. But then he made another set and things got better. My haftarah describes a prophecy about a huge war that will cause massive destruction, but it will be followed by the messianic era. And there is a third selection from the Bible read today, from the book of Kohelet or Ecclesiastes.

This is one depressing book! But when you read between the lines, it’s very reassuring. I read through the book and was intrigued especially by this verse:

“Better a poor, wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer has the sense to heed warnings. For the former can emerge from a dungeon to become king while the latter, even if born to kingship, can become a pauper.”

I interpret that to mean that even if you are born with nothing you can still rise to the top, like Joseph did. But if you are already at the top, you feel no need to work to stay there and there’s nowhere to go but down.

All of this teaches us in how important it is to overcome all the sad things in life. At the end of Sukkot, we have a very serious day called Shmini Atzeret where we say YIZKOR prayers and pray for rain. But on that same night we have one of the happiest celebrations in the year, Simchat Toroh.

In my own life I too have gone through, and will continue to go through many struggles, as everyone does, to finally reach the good things. With the death of my dad many people reached out to us which made me thankful to have such great friends and hard almost impossible to think how other people go through worse situations with no one to fall back on and no one there for them to help them.

This situation in many ways, has made me a stronger person, and a better and more appreciative person I believe. Someone who is happy is not necessarily laughing or having great fun but can accept things the way they are and accepts themselves for who they are, as well as others.

For my mitzvah project I’ve been volunteered at Brighton Gardens, doing activities with the residents there. I know that I can make them happy, since they too have gone through lots of life’s ups and downs.

The Zoomerang has taught me to appreciate not only the good stuff that awaits me at the end of the struggle, but also to enjoy the ride itself.

Friday, October 17, 2008

TBE Bar/ Bat Mitzvah Commentary:Justin Virgulak on Parashat Ha'azinu

My portion includes Moses final poem to his people, which he read them just before his death. One of the verses there really hits home for me. It’s verse seven, where Moses says, “Remember the days of old, consider the years of generations; ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will inform you.”

I’ve always liked to ask my parents and grandparents about the past – especially when it comes to sports.

I especially love baseball history. I’ve tried to learn the lineups of every team going back over twenty years. My favorite player from the past is Johnny Bench. My grandfather and uncle love Mickey Mantle best. As for my dad, he’s always admired Lou Gehrig. They’ve all passed their favorite stories down to me and this year, with Yankee Stadium closing, I’ve learned even more stories about the great Yankee teams of the past.

Today is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return. At this time of year, many people return to their synagogues in the same way that we return to old baseball stadiums like Polo Grounds or Ebbets Field. The more we connect to old things, the more meaning we gain from them.

The past has its place, but the past is not enough. I love hearing about the great players of another time, but the players are pretty god now too. My favorite players of today are Justin Upton, Alex Gordon, Joba Chamberlain and Josh Beckett (except for when he’s facing the Yankees).

I also love football and especially the Patriots, Saints and Redskins. One of my most prized possessions is a signed photo of the former Patriot quarterback Steve Grogan.

We’re always returning to those old stories of our parents’ heroes.

But history means very little unless it helps us to appreciate the present and inspires us to have an impact on the future. The commentator Rashi said that very thing about our verse from my portion, although he probably wasn’t a Patriots fan, since he lived in the 11th century.

So I know that someday I’ll be telling the next generation about my favorite players. I’ll tell them about how well Josh Beckett pitched in the postseason or how Joba heroically fought off all those bugs in Cleveland.

By having a healthy respect for the past we can help to preserve things we cherish for the future. I sometimes wear a t-shirt that says, “The record is still 61.” That’s because I was disappointed that those who broke the home run record had to do it with the help of steroids.

Similarly, by bar mitzvah and reading from the Torah I’m also helping to preserve ancient traditions.

That also happens by performing mitzvot. My mitzvah project, the Make A Wish Foundation, will help other kids not as fortunate as me to make special memories of their own. I’ll also be donation stuffed animals to David’s Closet for patients who are in the Pediatric ward of Stamford Hospital.

Friday, October 10, 2008

TBE Bar/ Bat Mitzvah Commentary: Eden Castle on Parashat Netzavim

It was two years ago, in my fifth grade Hebrew School class, when I first heard the rumor. Someone said that they had heard that Shakira, the famous singer, had stated that she would rather sing in front of 100 pigs than 1 Jew.

The class was buzzing about this news, and soon the entire school was talking about it. They even started making posters to protest.

When I first heard this, it just didn’t ring true. I didn’t think that someone so famous would say something like that to put her career in jeopardy.

So, I asked the Rabbi if it was true. After some research, we found out that the rumor wasn’t true. The Rabbi then put the story in his weekly e-mail to the congregation.

I have long understood that it is important to be able to take a stand when the need arises. This incident reminded me of that important lesson. Sometimes, that can mean standing up all by yourself, when everyone else is following the crowd.

Nitzavim, the name of my portion, means “standing”, but it also can mean to take a stand.
In my portion, Moses is saying, “You who are standing here today have accepted this covenant with God.” In saying this, he makes clear that this includes those who weren’t there on that day. Even though our generation wasn’t there, by taking a stand, it’s as if we were.

Here I am, standing here, as a Bat Mitzvah, accepting the Torah for myself and my generation. It’s important for all of us to do this. Those who know me know that I don’t just accept blindly things that I am told to do. For my Bat Mitzvah to be meaningful to myself and the world, I have to take a stand. Today, I have decided to take a stand for the environment.

It may be because I am named Eden, but I have always had an interest in nature. When I was younger, I used to stop kids from stepping on ants and killing bees in the playground. I wish people would realize that bees are becoming endangered, and we couldn’t live without them.

They pollinate fruits and flowers, as well as making honey. Colony Collapse Disorder is causing lots of trouble to bees. Bees are getting sick, going out to pollinate and never coming back. When this happens, the hive collapses. This is a major problem, because nobody knows what’s causing it.

I am concerned about the Earth, from global warming to recycling. You might have noticed my Bat Mitzvah booklet is only a page. I did this to remind everyone of the need to conserve resources.

This week is Rosh Hashana, the birthday of the world. This reminds us to keep the world clean and beautiful. My mitzvah project was volunteering with Keep Stamford Beautiful, an organization that plants flowers and trees, cleans up beaches, and paints public parks. I have been keeping a flower bed near the entrance to Scalzi Park, helped plant flowers at Cove Island, and paint bleachers at Scalzi.

As I become a Bat Mitzvah today, I am taking a stand for the little things like Shakira’s reputation and the big things like the future of our planet.

TBE Bar/ Bat Mitzvah Commentary: Alison Wolff on Parashat Vayelech

Shabbat Shalom and Happy New Year!

I always love this time of year because I get to spend time with family and friends. And now my bat mitzvah gives us even more of a reason to celebrate together. I’m just glad that my bat mitzvah is not on Yom Kippur, which would have led to a very long service and a very short party.

As important as my Torah portion is, it is also very short. It is only 30 verses long. But they are some of the most powerful verses of the entire Torah, because Moses is preparing to die and pass down his leadership to Joshua, after 40 years as the chief. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to do.

When you are so passionate about something, it is very hard to give it up. I can only imagine what it would be like for me to give up something that I love so much.

Something like dancing. Those who know me know how much I love to dance. I’ve dancing since I was three – ballet, jazz and for a while tap. I’ve always loved it. It helps me to express who I am and what’s important to me. Every dance style sends a different message and expresses a different mood. Each one says how wonderful it is to be alive, in a way that can’t be expressed in words. I also enjoy doing different kinds of artwork and each one is a different way of showing who I am and what’s important to me.

There are 613 mitzvot in the Torah and the last two of them are found in my portion. One is the commandment to gather the nation together to hear a reading of the Torah. At my dance recitals, there are usually as many people watching as there are people here today. Having lots of people there gets me a little nervous, but when at the end I hear everyone’s reaction, I realize that I’ve touched a lot of people and that I did well. Both the Torah lessons and a dance performance are pointless unless they are shared with others.

The other mitzvah found in my portion is to write a Torah scroll, just as Moses did. Since most people don’t actually copy over the whole Torah scroll, I think it means something different. I think that our lives are like Torah scrolls and with every good deed we are writing something new into it. And like Moses, by writing our scroll, it means we should live with a special passion, a love for what we do. So for me, dancing is the way that I write my own Torah scroll.

I also do it by performing other mitzvot. Last spring I ran a blood drive for Beth El Cares. I called almost every member of the congregation to get them to donate and in the end, we got 40 pints of blood. I may have been too young to give my own blood, but I feel that in a way I was able to write 40 different people into the Book of Life. I’ll never know who they are but it doesn’t matter.

When I called people I told them that it is very important to donate blood because it is a big mitzvah to save a life. To save a single life is like to save the whole world.

When I think about it, it seems fitting that I raised 40 pints of blood, since Moses led the people for 40 years. I tried to put the same kind of passion into this project that he put into his entire career.

As I now become a Bat Mitzvah, I realize that I am now a leader too, like Moses was. I hope that I will be able to set and example for others, both in what I say and in what I do. But as a dancer, I understand that sometimes actions speak much louder than words.

Yom Kippur Sermons 5769

Kol Nidre Audio

Yom Kippur Day Audio

Kol Nidre 5769
Let Zusya Be Zusya

An archaeologist was digging in central Israel and came upon a casket containing a mummy. After examining it, he called the curator of the Israel museum in Jerusalem.

"I've just discovered a 3,000 year old mummy of a man who died of heart failure!" the excited scientist exclaimed.

To which the curator replied, "Bring him in. We'll check it out."

A week later, the amazed curator called the archaeologist. "You were right about both the mummy's age and cause of death. How in the world did you know?"

"Easy. There was a piece of paper in his hand that said, '10,000 Shekels on Goliath.'"

If only it were always so easy to determine the authenticity of an artifact. If it only it were so easy to determine the authenticity of anything, in fact!

Last week, I spoke about identity and inclusiveness as major themes in our lives these days, themes derived from or new banner – another key buzzword we see is authenticity.

It’s everywhere. We see it in advertising, where “real people” are suddenly being favored to promote products. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Debbie Phelps is now the spokesperson for Chicos.

The opposite of a real person is a celebrity. We have a bottomless obsession with celebrities. Last Saturday, with the economy falling apart and the bailout bill just having been signed, the Advocate had on the top of its front page an article about Britney Spears going shopping in Greenwich. Of course, Britney Spears, along with Paris Hilton, embodies all that is wrong with the cult of celebrity. Celebrity is considered superficial and fake, and therefore evil. On a good day, Spears and Hilton must violate about half the al chets, and we violate the other half in our obsession with gossiping about them. No wonder the McCain campaign tried to paint Barack Obama with that brush, until their campaign took on a celebrity of its own.

All the candidates are marketing themselves as real people, rather than celebrities. The fact is that all four of the presidential and vice presidential candidates have compelling, poignant and real biographies. But they are also celebrities; that is, they are famous people, someone who is celebrated, which is what the word means. The party that wins will likely be the one that convinces the most people that the other presidential candidate is faking it more – is not showing his or her true stripes, and when they do, watch out! That’s how much we’ve come to value authenticity.

AL CHET SHE’CHATANU L’FANECHA B’GILUI U’V’SATER: “For the sin that we have committed before you by what is revealed and what is hidden.”

We hide so much. One candidate who didn’t pass muster in regard to authenticity is John Edwards. It’s ironic, in that his very downfall was precipitated by his attempt to create a documentary Web video that would enable voters to see him, in his words, “As I really am.” He hired Rielle Hunter to do just that, and, as we discovered, the Hunter soon became the hunted.

As Newsweek described it, Hunter’s crusade was to not only change Edwards’ image, but to refine his soul – she saw in him the potential to be another Gandhi or Martin Luther King – if only he could let go of the ego, tap into his heart more and use his head less – to be infused with the wisdom of spiritual guru Eckhart Tolle and the “Power of Now.”

Well, she was able to get him part way home: He certainly used his head less.

Tolle’s books were a mass marketing phenomenon even before he caught Oprah’s eye and this year hit the stratosphere. His book “The Power of Now” emphasizes the need to live for the moment. We Jews have another name for it: Yom Kippur. The Jewish power of now is, well… right now!

But it is Tolle’s most recent book that is most relevant to this discussion. “A New Earth: Awaking to Your Life’s Purpose,” explores how we can discover our true, authentic selves – to cut through all the layers of falsehood that cover up who we really are. The word “Authentic” after all comes from the Greek autos which means self.

In a confusing world where virtual relationships online can at times be far more real than our so called real ones; where even non celebrities can live very public lives, carefully constructing false images of themselves on Facebook, in the blogosphere and just walking down the street, we hunger for the real as never before – and we vilify that which is not. No wonder Universal is now doing a movie about the Mili Vanili lip synching scandal of the 1990s. We are troubled as never before when we hear that Dr. Phil is not licensed to practice psychology, when it turns out that Hillary Clinton didn’t have to dodge sniper fire on the tarmac in Bosnia, or when the cute little 9 year old at the Opening Ceremonies of the Olympics wasn’t actually the girl who was singing – and she appeared only because the real singer, 7 year old girl, Yang Peiyi was deemed not photogenic enough by the Chinese thought police. It never seemed to bother us when Natalie Wood wasn’t really doing the singing in “West Side Story.” But it bothers us now. And then there’s Amy Bruce, the courageous 7 year old cancer survivor, who wrote a touching and magnificent poem that has circled the Cyber-globe endlessly. Only problem: not only did Amy Bruce not write the poem; Amy Bruce doesn’t exist.

We hate fakers. Don’t even ask me about Roger Clemens. When Jayson Blair plagiarizes and besmirches the name of the New York Times, it bothers us. And it is so easy to plagiarize these days – as simple as cut and paste – so easy that many student papers now have to be vetted by online scanners before their professors will read them. As one high school senior told Westhill’s newspaper “The Westword” last year, “Cheating has become the norm to maintain the status quo. It’s so ingrained in our lives; half the time we don’t even realize the implications of our actions. It doesn’t seem immoral on the surface—you do what you have to.”

According to research from the Society for Human Resource Managers, 53% of people lie on their résumé in some way. And I’m not proud to confess, on Yom Kippur, no less, that I just lifted that entire last sentence from Forbes.com.

Millions of Skype users worldwide will soon have access to the newly developed KishKish lie-detector. This free Internet service, developed in Israel, of course, based on voice stress analysis (a technique, commonly used in criminal investigations), will be able to measure just how truthful that person on the other end of the line, really is.

With all of that faking going on, we are literally hungry for what is authentic. Next time you are in the supermarket, take note of how many times you see the words “authentic” and “real,” and you’ll see what I mean. I can recall my high school chemistry teacher once joking about an ad he had seen for Ivory soap, claiming that the product is “99 44/100 percent pure.” He looked at the class and, deadpan, asked, “Pure WHAT?” Ivory has had this trademark since the 19th century – so our obsession with purity is hardly new.

But it’s taken on a new urgency. Last spring, a Time magazine article entitled “Ten ideas that are changing the world,” featured a consulting firm called the Aurora Group, whose leaders, James Gilmore and Joseph Pine are preaching to businesses the gospel of authenticity. "The dominant reason people buy today is their perception of what's real or fake," Gilmore told an Ohio newspaper. "Reality ain't what it used to be."

Gilmore's book, "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want," has spent a good deal of time at the top of business book sales charts. It speaks of how we are moving from what he calls a “service culture” to an “experience culture.” Customers want to be engaged personally. The only problem is that he is teaching businesses how to LOOK authentic, not necessarily to BE authentic. So what’s authentic about that?

I picked up a cute little spoof at Barnes and Noble a couple of months ago, because its title seemed to fit in with this sermon: it’s called “Faking it: How to Seem Like a Better Person Without Actually Improving Yourself.” “The important thing isn’t who you ARE,” this book reminds us, “it’s who other people THINK you are.”

No wonder we’ve seen the revival this year of the old saying, “Fake it ‘til you make it.”

There is something to be said for faking it ‘til you make it. Twelve step programs utilize that principle, and it also is used by motivators to build self esteem. If you pretend to have self confidence and repeat an activity enough times, that confidence eventually kicks in. It also works with Jewish observance. Our ancestors at Sinai said “Na’ase v’nishma,” meaning we will do and THEN, we will understand.

Sometimes we have to suspend disbelief before beginning to observe a new mitzvah, like lighting candles, for example – and eventually that mitzvah will gain meaning for us.

But there are limits to faking it. I can recall once when I was having Shabbat dinner at the home of a family with elementary school aged children. We began with the kids reciting the blessings – the Kiddush, the motzi - flawlessly. As I remarked at how impressed I was with their knowledge of the blessings, the mother said to me, “We’re making memories.” The implication being that the dinner was somewhat staged so that the kids would recall it later on, when they grew up. That’s admirable, but for these memories to indeed be indelible, they have to be of events that are in and of themselves meaningful, and not merely staged for future reference. It’s got to be more than just for the children.

In other words, it’s not about LEAVING your legacy so much as LIVING your legacy.

There’s that joke about a man who is chased into a cave by a bear. He is trapped and so, with his back to the wall, as the bear is closing in, the man closes his eyes and begins to recite the Sh’ma, expecting that this is his final moment. He opens his eyes and sees the bear in front of him also has HIS eyes closed and is praying. The man is overjoyed. He says to himself, “How lucky I am to have been cornered by the world’s only Jewish bear. He prays! He’s OBSERVANT! I’m saved!” But then, he listens a little more closely and hears the bear saying, “Ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz.”

Now that’s one authentic Jewish bear. That bear wasn’t making memories. He was making dinner. He wasn’t living for the future; he was living for this moment – the Power of Now. And he was to his own self being true.

Those pretending to be what they aren’t have become ironic heroes in this culture. People like the “Wedding Crashers,” who just sort of blend in to every crowd and family. You’ll never guess who is the fourth most trusted journalist in America: John Stewart, who follows only the big three network anchors. We’re finding authenticity, somehow, in fake news delivered by a fake anchor. There’s nothing deceptive in “The Daily Show” – and in some ways it seems more real than the network news, because there the masks are put on so tight that they actually come off.

So who is more real? Sarah Palin or Tina Fey?

With so many people passing themselves as something they aren’t, we now can understand why Yom Kip-purim, which literally can be translated as “a day like Purim,” is considered the antidote to that holiday that seems its polar opposite. On Purim we put on masks. On Yom Kippur, we take them off. Tonight’s service begins with a painful admission:

Ah…God? All those vows we took last year – and the ones we’re about to make this coming year – well, God, we didn’t mean it!! Sorry! All the promises we made are not really promises. We simply couldn’t keep them.

In America we have a word for that these days, unfortunately: a mortgage. But it points out, from the very beginning of the Yom Kippur service, that we are putting up with no fakery here. Today the masks come off. Today only complete transparency will do! We know that we’re going to make pledges that we will not be able to keep, like those Jews who pretended to have converted in medieval Europe in order to save their lives. We take our promises seriously – and we acknowledge our imperfections openly.

Classic Hasidic literature places a premium on authenticity. The authentic person is the one who is fully present, fully focused on the present act – much as Tolle would describe the Power of Now. Hasidic authenticity also prizes simplicity over pretense – or what some in our politically charged environment call elitism. The early Hasids were real populists, championing the real people over the intellectual elites of the great rabbinic academies. But simplicity for the Hasidim never meant superficiality or emotional immaturity.

In his new book, “The Quest for Authenticity,” Michael Ross tells the story of Reb Simcha Bunim of Pesischa, who lived died in 1827, one of the great Hasidic leaders of his generation. He was such a real person that when he became a rebbe, he didn’t give up his day job. He was a pharmacist who also refused to forsake western dress even when other Hasidim did. And he could spot a fraud a mile away.

A student once complained to him: "The Talmudic sages say that, 'if a person runs away from greatness, greatness pursues him.' Well, I've been running from greatness all my life, but it has yet to pursue me!" Rabbi Bunim replied: "I've no doubt that greatness is pursuing you, in the manner that the sages promised. The problem is that when you turn around to check if it is running after you, you frighten it away."

His student, the Kotzker rebbe, also had little patience for false piety. He was a champion of authenticity, almost to a fault. At age nine, he is said to have come across a woman in the market who was selling apples, with the ripe ones on top and rotten ones beneath, he turned the barrel over, so people would see what was really there.

In Kotzk, they prayed when they felt like praying, which drew criticism, to which he said, “That’s because in your town they have clocks, in Kotzk they have souls.” And he added, “He who prays today because he prayed yesterday, a scoundrel is he.” On Purim, he once screamed at his disciples, “Your masks wear your faces.” On Pesach he praised Pharaoh, of all people, because at least he stayed true to himself – plague after plague, he didn’t waver. He was wrong, but at least he was honest! And for the first chapter of Genesis, where it says, "VaYivra et ha’adam b’tzalmo, betzelem Elohim bara oto,” the Kotzker’s commentary had an unusual twist. “The human being was created in his image,” – “HIS” meaning his own, not God’s. According to this interpretation, everybody is first made in his or her own image. Everyone has an innate character to which we can be true, and then you add the spark of God. And our task in life is to illuminate that which is unique to each of us. This is our true self.

Reb Meshullam Zusya of Anipoli was a descendent of the Kotzk dynasty and he embodied that same approach. His students revered him so much that they compared him to Moses. And in response, his most famous line was that when he gets to the Heavenly Court, they will not ask him, “Why were you not Moses?” but “Why were you not Zusya?” In today’s parlance, we would be saying, “Let Zusya be Zusya.”

e.e. cummings wrote, “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”

The world lost one of our most authentic people this past year; Tim Russert.

In learning the importance of being real, Russert sat at the feet of a master, his father, Big Russ – who embodied the Hasidic ideal of simplicity. In writing about his dad, Tim Russert’s quoted a line from a Gail Godwin novel, “He lived his life by the grace of daily obligations.” He is a man who championed the dignity of living by delivering newspapers and driving a garbage truck.

Big Russ never missed a day of work. When it came time to retire, he had to figure out what to do with 200 accrued sick days. “Two hundred? Why didn’t you take them?” Tim asked. Hi dad’s reply:
 
“Because I wasn’t sick!”

Big Russ is a hero, but perhaps the role model of most value to us is Tim himself. He demonstrated that you can be part of the so-called Washington media elite – and no one was more a part of that world than he was, and yet still be a real person. Yes, you can be both an intellectual and real, eastern and real, beltway and real. Being authentic, then, has little to do with where you live or how much you know, or whether you can down a six pack, smoke a cigarette, wear Birkenstocks, shoot hoops, field dress a moose, sip martinis or bowl. Being real doesn’t mean any of that.

What then does it mean? Big Russ knows: Being real means living life by the grace of daily obligations. Nothing more, nothing less.

But if we are trying to be true to ourselves, then some might be asking, to quote the venerable Admiral Stockdale, “Who am I? And why am I here?”

Radio host Ira Glass, who once said his rabbi’s sermons were an inspiration for his program “This American Life,” nonetheless now feels very uncomfortable at synagogue: “I don’t believe in God,” he said, “and so I feel like a fraud (there). I feel like somebody who’s in a theme park of my own childhood. I know all the songs, and it makes me feel really warm and nostalgic, and it’s incredibly comforting. But then I think that I don’t believe anything that’s being said here. And so, I have no business here. This is for somebody else. This is perfectly pleasant, but it seems a little sleazy — to be there, where other people are having a relationship with God, and I’m there because I like the music. That seems like other people are putting on a show for me or something. That’s not right. That’s not what that’s for. It’s nice hanging around with other people, but, you know — I’ve got a wife for that.”

He then confesses, “To this day, I feel very Jewish — I couldn't be anything but a Jew. But when I go to services, it's not clear why I should be there."

The first think Glass should do is read my sermon from the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

When services don’t feel authentic to us, what do we do? One solution is to “fake it til you make it.” That works for a lot of people, who are able to pray fervently even though they have no idea what it means or they violently disagree. But eventually, the act of praying sort of takes on a meaning of its own.

Another solution is to struggle with the service – challenge the prayers, reinterpret them, tinker with the music, maybe even change some parts that are most objectionable. That too is perfectly legit.

For I have big news for you and Ira: There is no one authentic Judaism. There are many Judaisms, all clinging to some crucial common threads; but Judaism is evolving – and it lives and breathes through each of us. Among those threads are some of the things we’ve been talking about – kindness, inclusiveness, justice, Shabbat, kashrut, prayer – but these are very broad areas with a wide range of meanings that have changed over time.

From time immemorial Jews have incorporated ancient artifacts to feel authentic. We continued to use a Torah scroll long after the world traded in scrolls for books. We use a quill to inscribe it, even though society has leapfrogged beyond the pen to the word processor, to the computer.

But our tradition picks and chooses what outmoded technologies to keep. “Old” does not always equal “authentic.” For example, when the Israelites first crossed over into the Promised Land they were circumcised with flint knives, and this was long after the Iron Age had begun. Why use an outmoded technology like flint? Tradition. Authenticity. Fortunately, we no longer use flint knives for circumcision. Simply using old things doesn’t make us more authentic, whether it is flint knives, Maxwell House Haggadahs, or the furry hats and frock coats once worn by Polish nobility.

But old things often do often gain meaning with age. The best example of that is the Hebrew language – 4,000 years old and it links us to every communications culture that has existed on this planet since hieroglyphics. It is crucial for Jews to learn Hebrew to fully participate in this Jewish adventure. It unifies all of us. And that’s why we included Hebrew in our logo. But the rabbis said that we can pray in our own language too.

Let’s look on our banner and see what else makes for an authentic Jew:

We see books. Now there’s an outmoded technology. But we are the People of the Book, even in the Age of the Notebook. Let’s focus, though, on the people. Everyone on that ladder is authentic in my book, everyone has a story to tell, a history to share. THE AUTHENTICITY STEMS FROM CHOOSING TO BE ON THE LADDER, AND EVEN MORE, FROM OUR CHOOSING TO HOLD HANDS AND HELP THE OTHER TO ASCEND.

Our greatest rabbis said this long ago, that they essence of Judaism is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Everything else is commentary. AN AUTHENTIC JEWISH LIFE CANNOT BE MEASURED IN HOW LONG YOUR TZITZIS ARE OR EVEN WHETHER YOU ARE WEARING A TALLIS (see that only two have them on – one student thought they were wings) OR ON HOW MUCH YOU’VE CHANGED THE WORLD (though each of us should try); but rather IN HOW WE EACH FIND IT WITHIN OURSELVES TO CHANGE A SINGLE LIFE – THE LIFE OF THE ONE WHOM WE ARE HELPING TO CLIMB WITH US.

Everyone on that ladder is authentic! At a recent conference, I asked a noted scholar of liturgy, Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman about authenticity. He called it a useless term. There’s no such thing as an authentic Jew, he said. It’s not like a Rembrandt, where you can ascertain its authenticity. Its only purpose, he added, is argumentative. In other words, the only use for the term “authentic” is so that you can claim to be a better Jew than someone else. And since I would claim that the essence of Judaism is to love our neighbor as ourselves, it therefore is not in the spirit of authentic Judaism to talk about your form of Judaism being more authentic.

Get it?

Can you imagine a Jewish world where no one was claiming to be more authentically Jewish than anyone else? It would be as impossible as having two Jews on a desert island without three synagogues – one they would never set foot in. In my book, if you have two Jews, you shouldn’t need more than one synagogue – one that would accept each person unconditionally. Let Zusya be Zusya.

In my mind, an authentic congregation lives by the vision of this banner: It is one where generations mingle and are not segregated, where we embrace the occasional cry of children disrupting services – and indeed embrace the children – but where children learn to respect all adults, even those whom they don’t know. It’s where we all FEEL related. It’s not a country club or the Triple A. It goes from womb to tomb – people grow up in a congregation – you don’t grow up in the Triple A. The fact that God is in this place means that RELATIONSHIP is in this place – LOVE is in this place. We are part of an immortal band, linked together for generations, for millennia, for eternity.

You don’t get this from many other affiliations. That is why you cast your lot with a synagogue – not simply to drop off and pick up, not simply for the bar mitzvah and see you later – not simply for three days a year – AND NOT SIMPLY FOR A SINGLE LIFETIME – but for multiple generations, for the lifetime of our people, for eternity. That’s why federations have recently rediscovered the power of synagogue affiliation and are funding initiatives to help unaffiliated Jews and synagogue communities find each other. They there is nothing more powerful, no more authentic way to tap into the ageless and ever replenishing Jewish wellspring.

Ira Glass, “C’mon down!”

There’s no fakery going on here, and certainly no superficiality. We are all tapping into to something more powerful than that. And it all begins with our returning to the ideals that sustained us in our days of youth and living life by the grace of our daily obligations.

In a short story by Somerset Maugham called “The Colonel’s Lady,” a stodgy British colonel is confronted with his wife’s sudden fame as a poet. He took little interest in it until one day at a cocktail party, someone came up to him, not knowing that he was the husband and said, “These poems are so passionate, she must have had one unbelievable affair to have written them.” This notion gnaws away at him until finally he asks his wife at breakfast, “Who are these poems written about?” And she says “You don’t want to know.”

Finally she gives in and says, “They’re about you – the way you used to be.”

There’s a message here for all of us. Each of us has a self that has been lost, or simply has just been covered over by all the masks we wear. We now have a gift: 25 hours to get it back, to rediscover who we really are, to set new expectations for ourselves for the coming year, even if we know ahead of time that we won’t be able to keep those vows. We’re already covered for that. We’ve done Kol Nidre.

I’ve long since learned that as a rabbi, father, husband and friend, I will never be able to meet everyone else’s expectations. But if I can understand who I am, always try to improve and refine myself, be honest and open to the ideas of others but never compromise on my integrity, I am what I am and I’ll be what I’ll be. That’s a good way for each of us to live,, and we have a good role model: God. That’s how God choose to be introduced to Moses at the burning bush. “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh.”

But I don’t need to be God. Nor should I be Moses. Nor, in fact, do I event want to be Zusya or Britney, or Paris or John or Barack or Eckhart or Manny be Manny or even Sammy Davis Junior singing “I’ve Got To Be Me.” Or even Shakespeare, who said, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”

I want to live life gracefully and authentically.

And I want to be thy guy who put 10,000 Shekels on David.


Yom Kippur Day 5769
Leaping Souls, Intimate Numbness and Spiritual Audacity

If you know your book of Genesis, a question may have occurred to you in looking at our banner. In Jacob’s dream, angels are both climbing and descending the ladder to heaven. But the figures in our banner seem only to be going up. There’s one guy on the third rung who is turned around.
But he too, seems to be climbing.

I don’t know about you, but given a choice of going up or down, I’d prefer down, thank you very much. Given the choice between scaling Everest and a toboggan ride the other way, I’d choose the toboggan. You can be Sisyphus. I’ll be Jean Claude Killy. You can climb the snake path; I’ll take the cable car. Better yet, I’ll stay in the gift shop down below.

Morris Margolis wrote about Jacob’s ladder in his book, “A Gathering of Angels: Angels in Jewish Life and Literature.” He tells us that “life is two-directional. Its valleys are as normal as its peaks, its defeats as frequent as its triumphs…If you have faith that God is by your side wherever you are, and that even when you hit the bottom rung of the ladder, you are still in the company of angels.”

Margolis clearly wasn’t on Wall Street this week, but his advice is timely for those of us wondering if we will ever hit the bottom rung.

Indeed life is two directional, but our ladder describes not life as it is, but life as it should be: A life of continual ascent. Judaism believes in an upward sweep to history, one that defies gravity, yet so often we get stuck looking down, looking back, like Lot’s wife - turning ourselves into pillars of paralysis.

According to the Kotzker rebbe, God fashions a ladder from heaven to earth and sends people down at the time of birth and the whole idea of life is climb back up that ladder. But what happens is that after we climb down, God pulls the ladder back up and most people give up because they don’t see the ladder. Some of them leap but they become quickly discouraged because it doesn’t come to them instantly. Others keep jumping, knowing that if God sees leaping souls, God will have mercy and will lift them up – Our task in life, then, is to be leaping souls.

We add an emphatic push upward to the kaddish on the High Holidays, an idea that was emblazoned on our source books long before we had this banner. “Ever upward.” L’ayla L’ayla."

When we move to Israel, we call it aliyah – going up. And we fly there on El Al - "Above and Beyond." When we come to the Torah, we go up as well, and also call that aliyah. It’s always about climbing. And we never stop the climb. The Market appears to have no bottom; well, our ladder has no top. Someone suggested that we call it our “ladder to nowhere” but indeed it is going somewhere – and that somewhere is UP.

“Esah aynay el he-harim may-ayin yavo ezri.” “I lift my eyes up to the mountains, from where will my help come?”

Another way of interpreting that verse from Psalms is that our help will come from the mere act of lifting our eyes! The mountains are a target – to look at mountains you HAVE to look up.
But lifting eyes is not enough. We must be lifting our entire bodies. On the banner, even the person in the wheelchair is ascending. Just as a rising tide lifts all ships, an ascending congregation lifts all spirits.

Leaping, climbing, always looking ahead and gazing skyward; toward the mountains. But it is so hard! Which raises an interesting question:

Why do people climb?

That question was brought home tragically for us this summer, when 11 explorers perished near what has been called the world’s most dangerous mountain, K-2, in the Himalayas, near the Pakistan – Chinese border. What an appropriate place to scale the heights, so close to where the human suffering is so great here on earth.

Why do people do it, why do they risk the avalanches, the cold, the ice, the thin air; why challenge themselves to such a degree, beyond human capacity?

The old answers just don’t cut it – “Because it is there” isn’t enough. One American climber explained it this way: “It’s a selfish act if it ends with you,” said Chris Warner, a seasoned American mountaineer who climbed K2 last year. “But guys go back and are deeply humbled by the experience that they have and they are much more capable of being husbands, brothers, people. There is a part of the whole experience that is ultimately metaphysical. Whenever you push the limits of ability, there is a lesson in there for all of us.”

That is why we climb. That is the reason for this daring desire to ascend, to the mountains, to the moon for that matter, to infinity and beyond. Because having gone there will make us bolder and better back home.

When President Kennedy invited Abraham Joshua Heschel to a meeting of religious leaders to discuss Civil Rights in 1963, Heschel telegraphed his reply: “I look forward to privilege of being present at the meeting tomorrow. I propose that you Mr. President declare state of moral emergency... The hour calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity."

Years before anyone with presidential aspirations wrote about the audacity of hope, Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote about the audacity of the spirit. And he claimed that the opposite of love is not hate – but indifference.

Indeed, this hour is one where we must climb, not merely for the sake of climbing, not merely “because it is there,” but to lift our society with us, to reach where we have never reached, for this hour too calls for moral grandeur and spiritual audacity. It calls for leaping souls.

But it is so difficult!

Wouldn’t it be easier to be part of a less demanding faith tradition, one that simply allows us to be happy with things as they are?


A British journalist named Richard Williams was asked why he embarked on a quixotic attempt to complete the British stage of the Tour de France last year. His reply: “there are currently aches in places where I didn’t even know I had places, along with what might be described as an intimate numbness.”

There are in fact, two types of numbness, one that happens when you see or feel too much – the cold is too great, the pain too horrible to bear, the air too thin, the climb too difficult. The other numbness comes while we are sitting in our comfy chairs and, facing an avalanche of appeals for help from all across the globe, our capacity to empathize simply shuts down.

We need to replace that second type of numbness with the first. When the climber’s feet are frostbitten, he is numb, but intimately so – he can feel the pain, still – and the pain of not being able to fully feel it. Too many of us are now tobogganing rather than climbing, and we are descending from numb to number.

There are moments when we feel like we are going to snap. Too many demands! Too much to do! There’s Joey’s soccer game and this or that committee meeting and food shopping for the weekend and on top of that I’ve got to care about the people in Darfur and hungry people for Person to Person and the Iraqis and the Jews of Kazakhstan and – what’s next? The dog has ticks.

There is simply no way to keep climbing in the midst of that numbing headwind. How can we continue to care when we are in such a constant state of overload. Our inbox is full – like Jim Carrey’s, when he got to be God for a day in “Bruce Almighty.” We’re all expected to be God – and we can’t.

Yes, the headwind is as cold and numbing as what they faced on K2. But we can’t stop leaping
forward.

I think all of us have had those moments when the pressures became just too great – when we face what seems like the ultimate challenge to our ability to be fully present. I get maybe a half dozen of those every week. On a given Shabbat, I might be feeling under the weather. And I have to remind myself, that for that day’s bar or bat mitzvah, this is IT. There will not be a second take. This is the most important day of his or her life to that point. The same holds true for any lifecycle event, and indeed for any encounter that I have, whether professional or personal. It all matters. Every little act. Every gesture.

There’s a story about a well known rabbi, who was visited by one of his students and his wife. The student felt that he shouldn’t have to take out the trash – that it was beneath his dignity. He was a full time Torah student. But the wife felt that he should take out the trash. Asked is there anything in Jewish law that says that the husband has to take out the trash, the rabbi said no.

The next morning the rabbi came to their door. His student opened the door and said “Oh my God, it’s such a great honor to have you, please come in and have something to eat.” “No, I didn’t come here to eat,” the rabbi said. “I came to take out the trash. It may be beneath YOUR dignity, but it’s not beneath mine.”

(If you look next door, by the way, you’ll see that I took out our trash yesterday).
Every little act has the potential for ultimate meaning.

On the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King preached in Memphis about his ascent to the mountaintop and how he, like Moses, had seen the Promised Land. In a lesser known section of that same speech, Dr. King read a letter written by a 9th grade girl from White Plains, New York. It was regarding an incident several years before when King had been stabbed in New York City. It later came out that X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of his aorta, and had he even sneezed, he would have died. The girl wrote,

While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.

King then went on to say that he too was glad that he didn’t sneeze. Had he sneezed, he would not have gone on to witness the freedom ride of 1961, the March on Washington and the Civil Rights Bill a couple of years later. But because he had not sneezed, because he had not died back then, his eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Imagine what he would be saying right now!

Each of us has had at least one of those moments that changed our lives forever. A moment where one action, however simple, or maybe one lack of action – like a sneeze – made all the difference.

It can be the simplest thing – a phone call or an email from a long lost friend. It could be something traumatic, like an auto accident or near miss. Something that changes the meaning of all that has been and all that will be. Invariably, this incident, this near sneeze, wakes us from our slumber to a life of service, a life overflowing with meaning, a life of leaping souls, intimate numbness and spiritual audacity.

I had one of those moments this past year, one of those life-changing moments of clarity, when all the climbing, that had seemed for naught, yielded a new level of insight and wisdom.

For years, I’ve spoken about how hard it is in my profession to juggle the needs of the congregation with the needs of my family. Now that the overwhelming majority of professionals also consider themselves to be working 24-7, clergy are no longer alone in this; but there is a big difference in the degree of difficulty – there are many more balls in the air, and each one is a human life - and never was that tested more than one weekend last spring.

We had to bring Ethan down to the emergency room for something that, thank God, didn’t turn out to be serious, but at the time we didn’t know. I’ve visited the ER many times, of course, but he had never seen it – I can only imagine what he was feeling as he waited to be seen and the curtain pulled at his cubicle. As if on cue, at that moment a congregant family was also there, facing the most intense scenario imaginable. I was faced with the ultimate dilemma for a father and a rabbi. I had every excuse to ignore the other family. But I simply couldn’t do that. Nor could I give my own child short shrift. For four nightmarish hours I found myself shuttling from cubicle to cubicle, switching roles from rabbi to dad and back again. I couldn’t be there for just one — I had to be there for all. If we had been in the delivery room it would have been a sitcom. But this took place far from Labor and Delivery.

This was a moment where it is so easy to snap. The only way to survive such raw terror is to avert its direct gaze. I had to help everyone else get through while maintaining my own sanity. To have to be there for everyone in such a helpless situation, one that is not at all about me, but in a sense is all about me…it can push you to the breaking point. It would have been easy to bury myself so deep inside my role as to cease feeling anything at all. There was no easy road out – no alternative in fact, but to feel completely and utterly inadequate, incapable of alleviating a pain that cannot be alleviated.

What kind of parent leaves his child in an emergency room to go to work? What kind of rabbi leaves a family in extreme distress in order to attend to personal matters? Never before, not even at my kids’ Bar Mitzvahs, have the boundaries between work and family become so blurred, and never before had I faced such a rabbinic Sophie’s Choice. My choice that night was either to be a horrible parent, a horrible pastor - or both. And I chose both. Because that choice carried within it the only possibility, however slight, of a fourth choice: neither.

I was intrigued to read about how mega church Pastor Rick Warren juggles so many causes. He said he’s a good time manager. Well, I realized something that night in the ER. Anyone, be it a he or a she, clergy, doctor, lawyer or politician, or anything else – anyone who says that they can have it all – do a 24/7 job and always be there for their family – is lying. I don’t believe it. I’m sure Pastor Rick is a good husband and family man, in his own way, but something has to give.

When Joe Biden choked up for a moment at least week’s debate while talking about his family tragedies, it told me that we’ve come a long way from the time when Ed Muskie cried in New Hampshire and it ruined his presidential run. Not only are men now allowed to show vulnerability, but we can also acknowledge that no one, man or woman, can have it all.

Something always has to give. And it’s OK to acknowledge that.

I’ve been an abysmal parent AND an insufficient rabbi, and a pretty lousy husband, son and brother too. There is no denying it. Pretty bad friend as well. After that night in the ER, I realized that there is no avoiding it. At the same time, I’ve also neglected horribly the suffering in Darfur – I should have spent four sermons just on that! And the injustices of China. Israel faces the greatest threat it has ever faced and I had the chance these past ten days to hammer that message home, again and again, so that you would go right home tonight and do something about it. Blew it. If God forbid something happens there this year over there, I’ll never forgive myself. And what about all the suffering at home, from hurricanes and hunger, homelessness and hopelessness. We’ve had kids who have nearly died from drinking and nearly expelled for cheating. What have I done for them? And we have congregants suffering from horrible illnesses, destructive relationships – people who have lost spouses and parents and children – kids who have lost their first pets – a seventh grade this past year that attended almost as many funerals as bar mitzvahs. And where have I been?

But then at that moment, in the emergency room last spring, I was redeemed. I was sitting there with Ethan and the curtain swung open and there was the congregant, who, in the midst of the most chaotic and numbing despair of her life, asked him how he was feeling.

I knew then that I was not alone in my bewilderment. An angel was with me on the bottom rung. A fellow soul was leaping alongside. Somehow it would all be OK.

The wounds are raw. The scars are fresh. The wind is biting cold.

But the soul is still leaping! Like moths drawn to a flame, we are drawn to the lights of dawn shining from the beyond the top of our ladder – upward and upward. These are the rays of promise and hope.

What we all need to do, is take the lethargic numbness that envelopes us when there just seems to be too much pain to bear – and turn it into that intimate numbness – the kind we feel when we’ve biked the tour de France or climbed K-2 – OR COMPLETED YOM KIPPUR. What we’ll feel tonight at the end of Ne’ilah is precisely that numbness. A little back pain, a slight limp – like Jacob’s limp when he fought the angel – a scarred soul, another ring around the trunk, a few more leaves fallen in the October wind. We’ll feel it.

And then we gather ourselves, grab a bagel or two, and immediately look forward and look up toward the mountaintop. It is customary to begin building the Sukkah right after we leave here – tonight. No rest for the weary. The first thing we do, then is to pull out the ladder – and climb.

Each of us has had a moment that has shaken us to the core, be it profound, like a First Response stick turned blue, a devastating CT-Scan or a Dear John e-mail, or simple, like a sneeze that wasn’t. Or maybe this moment, right here, right now. These are the moments that hit us like a shrill Shofar blast, whose purpose, according to Maimonides is to rouse us from our slumber. When it happens, my only advice is this:

Take that intimate numbness, sling it behind your back, take hold of your neighbor’s hand, look up to the tops of the mountains from where your help will come, and climb. Feel the wind against your faces and the pulse beating in the warm hand you are holding. Feel their pain and your own, as best you can, for no one can feel it all, and forgive yourself and others for the times when the wrong form of numbness takes hold. Lovingly embrace the miracle of being alive and be thankful that even on the bottom rung, you are in the company of angels.

And then we can chase the sun. For Judaism believes in an upward sweep to history. Ever upward. Yes, there is plenty that is negative out there. The economy is a shambles, the world seems as unstable as ever. Tom Brady is injured. But with a little bit of faith, we can continue to climb until the clouds clear – and then we can see….

Yes, there is good news out there. Lift up your eyes and by definition, things are already looking up. Despite the news from Wall Street, despite the real dangers that abound in the Middle East, despite all the personal suffering that we have endured, despite global warming, there are reasons to be looking up. In essay in Commentary late last year, Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin wrote, “A strange thing (has)happened on the way to Gomorrah. Just when it seemed as if the storm clouds were about to burst, they began to part. ….In a number of key categories, the amount of ground gained or regained since the early 1990’s is truly stunning. Crime, especially, has plummeted… Teenage drug use, which moved relentlessly upward throughout the 1990’s, declined thereafter by an impressive 23 percent, and for a number of specific drugs it has fallen still lower.” Abortions are down, the teenage birthrate has fallen, divorce rates are down and educational test scores are up. And this upsweep isn’t merely an American phenomenon. We all deplore the Chinese abuses of human rights, but the Olympics showed the world that 1.3 billion Chinese are freer now than in many generations.

Even with their notorious efficiency at putting up firewalls of censorship, Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times wrote last month,” “China has around 30 million active blogs, and as long as they don’t trigger political problems, the government doesn’t care.”…many Chinese are quite adept at building technological ladders over the Great Firewall of China…. The Chinese are building ladders, and so must we.

Our journey’s last stop is an obituary I saw in early August online. When I first read it I couldn’t believe it, so I checked it out and it is totally legit. It appeared in a newspaper in California. And the paper checked out the story and even asked for the death certificate before printing it, because it is unlike any obituary you have ever seen:

Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on August 7, 2008. She will be met in the afterlife by her husband, Raymond, her son, Paul Jr., and daughter, Ruby.
She is survived by her daughters Marietta, Mitzi, Stella, Beatrice, Virginia and Ramona, and son Billy; grandchildren, Donnelle, Joe, Mitzie, Maria, Mario, Marty, Tynette, Tania, Leta, Alexandria, Tommy, Billy, Mathew, Raymond, Kenny, Javier, Lisa, Ashlie and Michael; great-grandchildren, Brendan, Joseph, Karissa, Jacob, Delaney, Shawn, Cienna, Bailey, Christian, Andre Jr., Andrea, Keith, Saeed, Nujaymah, Salma, Merissa, Emily, Jayci, Isabella, Samantha and Emily. I apologize if I missed anyone.


Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing.

Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself. As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again.


There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM.

All those great grandchildren – such naches!

What was it that took what should have been a blessed, long life and turned it into such a nightmare? What made this disconnect so complete? We can only speculate. Perhaps she never had one of those sneezeless moments that reminded her of what is important and what is not. Perhaps she put her profession over her family – but evidently she had no vocation except for driving her children crazy. Maybe no one in that huge family ever took the moment to pull her over and say, “Grandma. I love you just as you are. We all love you.

Now shut up!”

And then I thought – there is something just too familiar sounding about this scene – although taken to an extreme – that I’ve seen this picture before. A lot.

Could this family possibly be Jewish?

And my mind flashed back to that early summer evening at Plaza Mayor in Old Madrid, where I sipped Sangria in the spot where, centuries ago, crypto Jews were herded to their death by fire, or, if they were lucky, they pretended to be Christian and snuck off with an explorer named Columbus for worlds unknown.

Some of these conversos ended up in what later came to be called the United States; and in particular, a state called New Mexico. I searched more. The name Aguilar was at that time a common Sephardic Jewish name. The name comes from a Latin word meaning ‘haunt of eagles.’

Centuries later, there is Dolores, who apparently knew nothing of her family heritage, no matter what it was – who in fact had no roots, and without roots, her soul never could soar like an eagle’s.

And so, if indeed this is a tale of conversos, they all could have been Jewish: Marietta, Mitzi, Stella, Beatrice, Virginia and Ramona, and son Billy; Donnelle, Joe, Mitzie, Maria, Mario, Marty, Tynette, Tania, Leta, Alexandria, Tommy, Billy, Mathew, Raymond, Kenny, Javier, Lisa, Ashlie and Michael; Brendan, Joseph, Karissa, Jacob, Delaney, Shawn, Cienna, Bailey, Christian (OK, maybe not Christian), Andre Jr., Andrea, Keith, Saeed, Nujaymah, Salma, Merissa, Emily, Jayci, Isabella, Samantha and Emily.

But that begs the point. For the point is, they all could have soared. Without the roots, this family crashed and burned. A 21st century Auto de fe.

Next spring, something is going to happen in the Jewish world that takes place only once every 28 years. On Wednesday, April 9, the day before Passover, we will mark the day where, according to the Talmud, the sun returns to the exact position it was at the moment of Creation.

The sage who came up with these calculations was named Shmuel ha-Yarchi – his last name ironically means “of the moon,” but the blessing recited is all about the sun. We’ll be celebrating that moment here on that day, using a special prayer book that is being published just for that event, including poetry, songs, commentary by the Communications Manager of NASA’s International Space Station, a 21st century analysis of rabbinic astronomy and reflections of the relevance of “The Blessing of the Sun” as it relates to solar power and environmental concerns.

All I can say is don’t miss it. Really. You’ll have to wait 28 more years for the next one.
So we’ve come full circle, in effect. The sun has been doing all that climbing and climbing in the the sky, and we’ve been doing all that climbing and climbing on that ladder; but in the end, while the sun will have returned to where it began, we’ll have pursued our relentless and audacious ascent.

But as I conclude this sermonic cycle, we do return now, having come full circle, to our logo and its fourfold message: Identity, inclusivity, authenticity and finally, ascent.

Be leaping souls, continue climbing, always looking ahead and gazing skyward; toward the mountains, toward the rising sun just over those hilltops.

For we have not yet been to the mountaintop. We have not yet seen the Promised Land. But despite it all, despite all the suffering, with each waking, working moment, we are inching ever closer.

Let is ascend and let us do it joyously – in a dance. Let’s climb as high as we can and let’s do it now – for tomorrow may rain, so we’ll follow the sun. Let us do it joyously and lovingly, let us ascend – together and let this become, for all the world, a Beit El, a house of God.