While spending my junior year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem I met a young man who wanted to be a writer. Sharing a love of books and of the written word we quickly became friends.
Years later, we met again in Jerusalem. I was starting rabbinical school. He was working on a book of short stories. We shared many an evening talking about Judaism and the state of the Jewish community. I became a rabbi and my friend, Nathan Englander became a writer.
Now, 21 years later, Nathan has released his third book, and a New American Haggadah that is getting lots of press.
Working with Jonathan Safran Foer and the current crop of Jewish American writers, Englander served as translator for the New American Haggadah. He thought this project would take a matter of weeks. Realizing the significance of the Haggadah to the Jewish psyche and how each word contains layers of meaning upon meaning, it took him three years. What is particularly interesting about this Haggadah is that it is intended to be a book of living memory. For this, it contains a timeline of Jewish history running across the top with artistic Hebrew letterforms on each page reflecting those used in the period reflected in that timeline itself.
Yet this Haggadah goes deeper than just being another Haggadah. As Foer writes in the introduction, "The need for new Haggadahs does not imply the failure of existing ones, but the struggle to engage everyone at the table in a time that is unlike any that has come before is what is needed. Our translation must know our idiom, our commentaries must wrestle with our conflicts, our design must respond to how our world looks and feels. This Haggadah makes no attempt to redefine what a Haggadah is, or overlay any particular political or regional agenda. Like all Haggadahs before it, this one hopes to excite the mind and heart."
An example of the translation knowing our idiom is in the translation of God. Instead of translating Elohenihu as "Our God", Englander translates it as "God-of-us," reminding us that its not about ownership of God or possession. And if the commentary must wrestle with our conflicts, this Haggadah looks to the likes of Nathaniel Deutsch, Jeffrey Goldberg, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein and Lemony Snicket to add color and flavor.
When I sing Dayeinu at the Seder, I look upon each item as a different picture in the album of Jewish memory. There is the moment of leaving Egypt, the event at Sinai, the giving of mannah, the coming to Israel. But the song doesn't end with the last Dayeinu. Our album contains the memorable and not so memorable events in our story - the destruction of the Temples and their reconstruction, the expulsion from Spain, 350 years of Jewish presence in America, the establishment of Israel in 1948. We are still adding photos and pages to that album of the Jewish people including pictures and images from our own experiences.
The Haggadah too is an album of our people; therefore it need not be a closed book. The Haggadah comes alive because it continues to tell our story. This New American Haggadah is another chapter of that story and as the editor says, "this one [too] hopes to be replaced."
New haggadot are constantly being written. That is one more reason that makes Judaism compelling and relevant... we are not done. Haggadot will continue to be written until our destiny is fulfilled and there is no more need to say "Next Year in Jerusalem."
So this year, and this Pesach, get your hands on a new Haggadah - either this one or another - and if time doesn't permit, do something, anything, to bring something fresh and new to your Seder table, as the opening prose of the Haggadah reminds us, "All who are expansive in their telling of the Exodus from Egypt are worthy of praise." (translation from New American Haggadah p 022)
Tamara, Elijah, Shai and Noa join me along with the staff and lay leadership of CSR in wishing you and your loved ones a zeisen pesach - a sweet (and renewed) Passover.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
A day ba midbar
When we ask Jews which book of the Torah is BaMidbar they often answer "Numbers.". This is correct. BaMidbar, or Numbers in English is the 4th book of the Torah; however, BaMidbar means desert or wilderness. This is where much of the 40 years of wandering takes place and it was here, in the wilderness of Zin that we spent much of our day. BaMidbar can also be re-vocalized as B'medaber as is 'in the speaking.'. It is here that we heard/experienced/found God and in the vastness and emptiness that is Israel's wilderness one can understand why. It is also in the midbar that one can discover oneself.
It was a very early wake up at 6:30 am. This after yesterday's service, excursion to the Ayalon Institute, site of a Pre-1948 clandestine ammunition factory, and quick walk through very windy and cold Jaffa (Let's just say this is the coldest trip I have ever taken to Israel).
We pulled out of the hotel at 8 am and headed south. Our first stop was Maresha or Beit Guvrin. This is an active dig that sifts through garbage from the time of the Maccabees.
You climb down a steep ladder into a cave of chalky limestone that has already been excavated. You take a shovel, a small pick and a bucket and begin sifting through dirt looking for small bits of pottery and bone. The bones are leftovers from someone's dinner 2100 years ago. This is where the idumeans lived. They fled from there when the Hasmoneans told them to convert, leave or die. As they left they destroyed their housed and dumped their trash into the caves (ir their basements) below. When you touch the pottery you are the first one to touch it in 2100 years. I found many shards, some that would have been lips to plates or bowls. One girl found a side of pottery with an intact handle. Our guide told us this would have been the handle of a small jug that contained a day's worth of oil. And you got an image of how much oil the legend of Hanukkah is talking about!
We departed Beit Guvrin for a place called the Salad Trail just kilometers from the Gaza Strip. After a very healthy lunch we learned how these Israeli farmers grow tomatoes of all varieties, herbs, carrots and strawberries in the desert sand using little water and only natural materials. We picked tomatoes and cucumbers from the vine, purple, white and yes, orange carrots from the ground and ate strawberries that grow in troughs suspended from the ceiling of greenhouses. This produce was amazing. It puts most organic produce to shame yet I was able to put in a plug for our Community Synagogue of Rye CSA. You can learn more about the Salad Trail on line.
Our trek continued south to the edge of Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev. We came upon Chan HaShayarot (which happens to be the place I stayed for the Gladstone/Wine/Silverberg reunion during Pesach 2012). The camels were waiting for us. In the freezing cold with blowing rain we mounted the camels, two to a camel and went for a short trek. It was so cold - thank goodness for fleece and Gore-Tex. Following that we headed into a Bedouin tent for a wonderful meal of salatim (humus, eggplant, tehinah, Jerusalem salad, pita) and then roast chicken and lamb meatballs. Yes, we eat well in Israel! We learned about the Bedouin and their way of life.
Now we are at Mitzpe Ramon on the edge of the Machtesh that we will hike in tomorrow morning. From there it will be to Kibbutz Lotan our sister community in the Arava. I can't wait to see Alex Cicelsky and to drink the chocolate milk at Yotvata.
I never tire of this country, the language or the constantly changing topography. It might be cold and wet and windy for us but for Israel it's a blessing. They NEED the rain. And when it rains the desert really blooms as Ben Gurion wanted. We really get to see the desert bloom at this time of year.
Living the dream. Laila Tov.
It was a very early wake up at 6:30 am. This after yesterday's service, excursion to the Ayalon Institute, site of a Pre-1948 clandestine ammunition factory, and quick walk through very windy and cold Jaffa (Let's just say this is the coldest trip I have ever taken to Israel).
We pulled out of the hotel at 8 am and headed south. Our first stop was Maresha or Beit Guvrin. This is an active dig that sifts through garbage from the time of the Maccabees.
You climb down a steep ladder into a cave of chalky limestone that has already been excavated. You take a shovel, a small pick and a bucket and begin sifting through dirt looking for small bits of pottery and bone. The bones are leftovers from someone's dinner 2100 years ago. This is where the idumeans lived. They fled from there when the Hasmoneans told them to convert, leave or die. As they left they destroyed their housed and dumped their trash into the caves (ir their basements) below. When you touch the pottery you are the first one to touch it in 2100 years. I found many shards, some that would have been lips to plates or bowls. One girl found a side of pottery with an intact handle. Our guide told us this would have been the handle of a small jug that contained a day's worth of oil. And you got an image of how much oil the legend of Hanukkah is talking about!
We departed Beit Guvrin for a place called the Salad Trail just kilometers from the Gaza Strip. After a very healthy lunch we learned how these Israeli farmers grow tomatoes of all varieties, herbs, carrots and strawberries in the desert sand using little water and only natural materials. We picked tomatoes and cucumbers from the vine, purple, white and yes, orange carrots from the ground and ate strawberries that grow in troughs suspended from the ceiling of greenhouses. This produce was amazing. It puts most organic produce to shame yet I was able to put in a plug for our Community Synagogue of Rye CSA. You can learn more about the Salad Trail on line.
Our trek continued south to the edge of Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev. We came upon Chan HaShayarot (which happens to be the place I stayed for the Gladstone/Wine/Silverberg reunion during Pesach 2012). The camels were waiting for us. In the freezing cold with blowing rain we mounted the camels, two to a camel and went for a short trek. It was so cold - thank goodness for fleece and Gore-Tex. Following that we headed into a Bedouin tent for a wonderful meal of salatim (humus, eggplant, tehinah, Jerusalem salad, pita) and then roast chicken and lamb meatballs. Yes, we eat well in Israel! We learned about the Bedouin and their way of life.
Now we are at Mitzpe Ramon on the edge of the Machtesh that we will hike in tomorrow morning. From there it will be to Kibbutz Lotan our sister community in the Arava. I can't wait to see Alex Cicelsky and to drink the chocolate milk at Yotvata.
I never tire of this country, the language or the constantly changing topography. It might be cold and wet and windy for us but for Israel it's a blessing. They NEED the rain. And when it rains the desert really blooms as Ben Gurion wanted. We really get to see the desert bloom at this time of year.
Living the dream. Laila Tov.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Day one in Israel
When one thinks of the weather in Israel, rain and wind are not usually in the equation. Today bucked that trend.
We landed safely at Ben Gurion airport and were met by our wonderful Da'at guides Mike and Muki. After boarding the bus and exiting the airport we drove to Ne'Ot Kedumim, an outdoor educational center dedicated to teaching nature through the lens of the Bible. We toured and came in touch with the land and I learned two new things. Kedem means ancient (as in good old days), not east and heaven is from sham mayim (water there) as water comes from the heavens and the heavens are "over there." I learn something new each time I come here.
We then put our hands into the ground and planted trees indigenous to Israel. I planted an oak in honor of my new cousin Sophie.
For lunch we ate as Israelis do often do, at a mall. However, how many malls in America serve plates of Hummus, Falafel, burgers where cheese is not an option? The mall was abuzz as Israel is getting ready for Shabbat. Soon we will too.
We will go to Reform congregation Beit Daniel for services and then back to our hotel for dinner.
It is great to be in Israel, especially in the rain - it reminds you how creation is ongoing and enduring.
Shabbat Shalom
We landed safely at Ben Gurion airport and were met by our wonderful Da'at guides Mike and Muki. After boarding the bus and exiting the airport we drove to Ne'Ot Kedumim, an outdoor educational center dedicated to teaching nature through the lens of the Bible. We toured and came in touch with the land and I learned two new things. Kedem means ancient (as in good old days), not east and heaven is from sham mayim (water there) as water comes from the heavens and the heavens are "over there." I learn something new each time I come here.
We then put our hands into the ground and planted trees indigenous to Israel. I planted an oak in honor of my new cousin Sophie.
For lunch we ate as Israelis do often do, at a mall. However, how many malls in America serve plates of Hummus, Falafel, burgers where cheese is not an option? The mall was abuzz as Israel is getting ready for Shabbat. Soon we will too.
We will go to Reform congregation Beit Daniel for services and then back to our hotel for dinner.
It is great to be in Israel, especially in the rain - it reminds you how creation is ongoing and enduring.
Shabbat Shalom
Saturday, January 7, 2012
It's Time To Become Rosa Parkstein
January is a tough month. The tinsel and sheen have faded. People start to remove holiday lights from their homes. Discarded Christmas trees lay on sidewalks waitingFTP be picked up. We return our Chanukiyot to their storage places for another year and remove any wax that still sticks to our countertops. Yet with the last memory of the Chanukah candles still burning in our mind's eye, I'd like to return to Hanukkah for a moment.
We know the story. In 167 bce, at the time of the second temple in Jerusalem, Antiochus IV outlawed Jewish services and ordered that an altar be built to Zeus. Pigs were sacrificed in the holy of holies; Brit milah and Torah study were banned on punishment of death. Those who saw a negative outcome of this situation developed the concept of the afterlife (yes, the Jews invented Heaven!) while a small band who saw things differently - called the Maccabees - organized a revolt. You know who won that war.
There is, however, a part of the Hanukkah story that is rarely told, one that sadly in Israel today is currently being played out in the ongoing clash between extreme ultra-Orthodoxy and non-Orthodox Jews. This is the part of the story of what happened next, after the Maccabees rededicated the temple, after that legendary oil burned out.
A couple of years ago David Brooks wrote a wonderful op-Ed in the times retelling the story of Hanukkah. After reminding his readers of the familiar parts he wrote:
The Maccabees are best understood as moderate fanatics. They were not in total revolt against Greek culture. They used Greek constitutional language to explain themselves. They created a festival to commemorate their triumph (which is part of Greek, not Jewish, culture). Before long, they were electing their priests.
On the other hand, they were fighting heroically for their traditions and the survival of their faith. If they found uncircumcised Jews, they performed forced circumcisions. They had no interest in religious liberty within the Jewish community and believed religion was a collective regimen, not an individual choice.
They were not the last bunch of angry, bearded religious guys to win an insurgency campaign against a great power in the Middle East, but they may have been among the first. They retook Jerusalem in 164 B.C. and rededicated the temple. Their regime quickly became corrupt, brutal and reactionary. The concept of reform had been discredited by the Hellenizing extremists. Practice stagnated. Scholarship withered. The Maccabees became religious oppressors themselves, fatefully inviting the Romans into Jerusalem.
Brooks may have been writing about West Bank settlers. He may have been writing about the Taliban. In either case it was a warning against religious extremism and fanaticism of any kind; a warning I believe that must be sounded whenever extremism or fanaticism raises its intolerant and exclusionary head. And if Brooks were writing in 2012 instead of 2009 as he did, he might have been writing about some of the ultra orthodox in Beit Shemesh, Bnai Brak and Jerusalem.
In six short weeks, 50 pilgrims will join me for ten awesome days in Israel. We will explore her routes and will deepen our roots to our Jewish homeland. While a visit to Beit Shemesh, where 8 year old Na'amah Margolis was spat on for not wearing modest enough clothing and where owners of women's stores have been warned by the orthodox fundamentalists to only stock one color is not on the itinerary, we will participate in our own action, our own protest against this growing fundamentalism so that Israel does not decline into the type of state it once was under Hasmonean rule.
We all know that orthodox Jews demand gender separation in worship, learning and other aspects of life. Well, in Israel this separation has extended to which side of the street you walk on and where you sit on a bus. Like the American south of the Pre civil rights era, many buses that travel through ultra orthodox neighborhoods are now segregated by gender. Not only is this immoral and unegalitariatn, it is also illegal in Israel. Yet it persists as many bus drivers accede to demands of orthodox men to segregate women and orthodox women do not feel emboldened enough to sit at the front of the bus where the law and Jewish tradition says they can.
We all know the story of Rosa Parks. Well, when we go to Israel in 6 weeks we will become modern Rosa Parksteins.
In an act of protest, we will participate in a freedom ride. Like American Rabbis of the 1960s who joined Martin Luther King jr. in the struggle for civil rights, like rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who, after marching on Selma said that his legs were praying, we too will speak truth to power through our actions. We will board public buses and will sit, men and women and children in the front of the bus, modeling what is right and empowering other women to sit up front where they deserve to be.
This freedom ride we will participate in, is ultimately not about who gets to sit where. It is not a fight over one little girl’s walk to school or what people should or should not wear. . It is a struggle that could shape the future character and soul of Israel, against ultra-Orthodox zealots who have been increasingly encroaching on the public sphere with their strict interpretation of modesty rules, enforcing gender segregation and the exclusion of women.
If we do not stand up and take action then the threat to Israel's existence will not come from external forces like Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran who are clearly bent on israel's destruction, it will come from within, from an internal civil war that will pit Jew against Jew. The rabbis teach that Jerusalem was destroyed because of Sinat Hinam -senseless hatred between different Jewish factions. That's the diplomatic story which spreads the blame evenly. Truth is, Jerusalem was destroyed because of the fanatics who refused to let anyone leave the city on pain of death. They would rather see Jerusalem burn than compromise and allow for its survival. If nothing is done, I fear history will repeat itself.
It is time to return to the wisdom of Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, an extremely Orthodox Jew himself. He loved both the yeshiva bochers and the kibbutznikim. He worked to build a society where tolerance of Jewish differences and differentiated ways of life all worked for the rebuilding of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. The Charedi no longer are part of the Kook equation. They are outside the acceptable parameters of a modern Jewish democratic society which was envisioned in the Israel Declaration of Independence.
We have the responsibility and obligation to support Israel’s security needs while fighting for its spiritual soul. We take seriously the words of Rab Kook “What is old you will make new and what is new you will make holy”.
We may share the same historical religious DNA as these religious extremists but their Judaism is not mine. My Judaism is tolerant, open minded, pluralistic, democratic, egalitarian, creative and forward looking. This is the Judaism I want to fight for. This is the Jewish State that i want israel to be This is what I celebrate at Hanukkah - a tradition that dispels darkness with light - and this is why this February I will board a bus in Jerusalem to sit at the front with my wife, my daughter and my sons. Shabbat Shalom.
We know the story. In 167 bce, at the time of the second temple in Jerusalem, Antiochus IV outlawed Jewish services and ordered that an altar be built to Zeus. Pigs were sacrificed in the holy of holies; Brit milah and Torah study were banned on punishment of death. Those who saw a negative outcome of this situation developed the concept of the afterlife (yes, the Jews invented Heaven!) while a small band who saw things differently - called the Maccabees - organized a revolt. You know who won that war.
There is, however, a part of the Hanukkah story that is rarely told, one that sadly in Israel today is currently being played out in the ongoing clash between extreme ultra-Orthodoxy and non-Orthodox Jews. This is the part of the story of what happened next, after the Maccabees rededicated the temple, after that legendary oil burned out.
A couple of years ago David Brooks wrote a wonderful op-Ed in the times retelling the story of Hanukkah. After reminding his readers of the familiar parts he wrote:
The Maccabees are best understood as moderate fanatics. They were not in total revolt against Greek culture. They used Greek constitutional language to explain themselves. They created a festival to commemorate their triumph (which is part of Greek, not Jewish, culture). Before long, they were electing their priests.
On the other hand, they were fighting heroically for their traditions and the survival of their faith. If they found uncircumcised Jews, they performed forced circumcisions. They had no interest in religious liberty within the Jewish community and believed religion was a collective regimen, not an individual choice.
They were not the last bunch of angry, bearded religious guys to win an insurgency campaign against a great power in the Middle East, but they may have been among the first. They retook Jerusalem in 164 B.C. and rededicated the temple. Their regime quickly became corrupt, brutal and reactionary. The concept of reform had been discredited by the Hellenizing extremists. Practice stagnated. Scholarship withered. The Maccabees became religious oppressors themselves, fatefully inviting the Romans into Jerusalem.
Brooks may have been writing about West Bank settlers. He may have been writing about the Taliban. In either case it was a warning against religious extremism and fanaticism of any kind; a warning I believe that must be sounded whenever extremism or fanaticism raises its intolerant and exclusionary head. And if Brooks were writing in 2012 instead of 2009 as he did, he might have been writing about some of the ultra orthodox in Beit Shemesh, Bnai Brak and Jerusalem.
In six short weeks, 50 pilgrims will join me for ten awesome days in Israel. We will explore her routes and will deepen our roots to our Jewish homeland. While a visit to Beit Shemesh, where 8 year old Na'amah Margolis was spat on for not wearing modest enough clothing and where owners of women's stores have been warned by the orthodox fundamentalists to only stock one color is not on the itinerary, we will participate in our own action, our own protest against this growing fundamentalism so that Israel does not decline into the type of state it once was under Hasmonean rule.
We all know that orthodox Jews demand gender separation in worship, learning and other aspects of life. Well, in Israel this separation has extended to which side of the street you walk on and where you sit on a bus. Like the American south of the Pre civil rights era, many buses that travel through ultra orthodox neighborhoods are now segregated by gender. Not only is this immoral and unegalitariatn, it is also illegal in Israel. Yet it persists as many bus drivers accede to demands of orthodox men to segregate women and orthodox women do not feel emboldened enough to sit at the front of the bus where the law and Jewish tradition says they can.
We all know the story of Rosa Parks. Well, when we go to Israel in 6 weeks we will become modern Rosa Parksteins.
In an act of protest, we will participate in a freedom ride. Like American Rabbis of the 1960s who joined Martin Luther King jr. in the struggle for civil rights, like rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who, after marching on Selma said that his legs were praying, we too will speak truth to power through our actions. We will board public buses and will sit, men and women and children in the front of the bus, modeling what is right and empowering other women to sit up front where they deserve to be.
This freedom ride we will participate in, is ultimately not about who gets to sit where. It is not a fight over one little girl’s walk to school or what people should or should not wear. . It is a struggle that could shape the future character and soul of Israel, against ultra-Orthodox zealots who have been increasingly encroaching on the public sphere with their strict interpretation of modesty rules, enforcing gender segregation and the exclusion of women.
If we do not stand up and take action then the threat to Israel's existence will not come from external forces like Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran who are clearly bent on israel's destruction, it will come from within, from an internal civil war that will pit Jew against Jew. The rabbis teach that Jerusalem was destroyed because of Sinat Hinam -senseless hatred between different Jewish factions. That's the diplomatic story which spreads the blame evenly. Truth is, Jerusalem was destroyed because of the fanatics who refused to let anyone leave the city on pain of death. They would rather see Jerusalem burn than compromise and allow for its survival. If nothing is done, I fear history will repeat itself.
It is time to return to the wisdom of Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, an extremely Orthodox Jew himself. He loved both the yeshiva bochers and the kibbutznikim. He worked to build a society where tolerance of Jewish differences and differentiated ways of life all worked for the rebuilding of the Land of Israel and the State of Israel. The Charedi no longer are part of the Kook equation. They are outside the acceptable parameters of a modern Jewish democratic society which was envisioned in the Israel Declaration of Independence.
We have the responsibility and obligation to support Israel’s security needs while fighting for its spiritual soul. We take seriously the words of Rab Kook “What is old you will make new and what is new you will make holy”.
We may share the same historical religious DNA as these religious extremists but their Judaism is not mine. My Judaism is tolerant, open minded, pluralistic, democratic, egalitarian, creative and forward looking. This is the Judaism I want to fight for. This is the Jewish State that i want israel to be This is what I celebrate at Hanukkah - a tradition that dispels darkness with light - and this is why this February I will board a bus in Jerusalem to sit at the front with my wife, my daughter and my sons. Shabbat Shalom.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Time for a Paradigm Shift (or: This Path is No Longer the Right One)
This path is no longer the right one… Erev Rosh Hashanah 5772
Community Synagogue
Rabbi Daniel Gropper
A Story: Once there was a man who went for a walk in the forest and got lost. He wandered around for hours trying to find his way out, trying one path after another, but none of them worked. Suddenly he came across another walking through the forest. He cried out, Thank God for another human being. Can you show me the way back to town? The other man replied, No, I’m lost, too, the ways I have been exploring have led nowhere. But we can help each other by telling which paths we’ve already tried and been disappointed in. That will help us find the one that leads out.
A second story: One day Author Steven Covey was visiting New York City and was traveling by subway. A man boarded the train with his two sons and they all sat down. In no time, the sons were running all over the place, bothering others on the train, climbing on the seats, making a commotion. Becoming increasingly irritated as he tried to focus on his presentation, Covey finally got up to ask the father why he wasn’t doing something to control his kids. The father replied, "We just got back from the hospital where their mother died. I don't know how to handle it and I guess they don't either." (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)
Imagine you are Covey. Suddenly you see everything differently. We call this a paradigm shift. They are the same kids yelling and screaming in the subway, but you look at them and understand them in a different way. Sometimes when you are lost and it seems like you are going in circles, it’s better to stop and look for a fresh path. Sometimes it’s best to change the paradigm. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we need a new paradigm. We need to find a new path out of the forest. And if we don’t change it, it will likely be changed for us.
Throughout our history there have been a number of these paradigm shifts, sometimes by our making, sometimes as a response to the actions of others. At age 75, Abraham chose a radical leaving, having heard lech l’cha - go forth. His act changed the face of history. After 400 years of bondage in Egypt, we threw off the shackles of slavery and wandered into the wilderness. There we learned what it meant to be a covenant people. In the year 70, as Jerusalem lay burning, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, the leading sage of his day, approached Vespasian and asked to build a school in the little city of Yavne, just south of where Tel Aviv is today. This move saved Judaism but it did more. It changed the paradigm. As Rich Cohen, author of Israel is Real writes: “Judaism became portable in those years, a religion that could live out of a suitcase. They created the Jewish canon, the Tanakh. This meant that all Jews, no matter where they lived, would read the same words and tell the same stories.... In this way the Book replaced the city. In this way, the Temple became a book. In this way, study of the Book became as holy as worship in the Temple. In this way the exterior Jerusalem of hills and valleys was replaced by an interior Jerusalem.” (Israel is Real pp., 49, 57)
That was it for almost 2000 years. We moved from land to land, literally living out of suitcases. Commentaries were added yet little changed. Our story became one of victimhood, and we learned to play the role. “Shah. Still. Don’t make waves.” We looked inward and devoted ourselves to our own culture. We didn’t lead. How could we? We had no sovereignty. We bemoaned our predicament. We waited for God to save us as our scriptures said He would, but that’s not how God works.
Then suddenly, with the embers of the Shoah still warm, the paradigm shifted again. On the 23rd of November, 1947, The United Nations, passed resolution 181 and partitioned Palestine. We were home, free, living in the land of Zion and Jerusalem. People danced in the streets, sang Hatikvah from the rooftops. Some here I am sure recall that day like it was yesterday.
The state of Israel challenged the old Jewish paradigm of victimhood. If we wanted this new Jewish state to succeed, we had to make it succeed. Modern Orthodox Theologian and pluralist David Hartman writes, “Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel were a new expression of covenantal empowerment. What the Jews decided is this: Exile will end when we take responsibility for history. We have to learn banking. We have to learn agriculture. We have to learn self-defense. Only through our initiative will there be a change in Jewish homelessness.” (Jews and Judaism in the 21st Century) We built Israel but did it build us? The Jew was rebuilt from the outside but has Israel changed our inner psyche?
How do we respond to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Like a person who has not yet matured, we point fingers, blame others, and say, “It’s not our fault.”
We like to say that the Arabs don’t really want peace. We seem content with the long time practice of convening Jewish assemblies in which we talk to ourselves and bemoan the injustice. We continue to utter Abba Eban’s famous line of how the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. We say that before 1948 there was no such thing as Palestinian people. We tell the story of how the Arab nations told the local Arab population to leave. We tell how, in 1967, after capturing the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Sinai, we were willing to give it all up for unilateral peace but the Arabs rejected it. We point out how in 2000, the Palestinians, presented with a breakthrough two-state solution plan by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, spurned it. We point out how, in 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert went even further, giving the Palestinians 98% of what they sought, and once again, the Palestinians walked away. We talk about how the Palestinians going to the UN to seek recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state will not end the conflict and might make it worse. We play the victim card to the U.S., our most important ally, reminding the administration that we are its only reliable ally in the region and we keep saying, “it’s their fault. They won’t negotiate. They won’t recognize us. They don’t want peace.”
Take two children, raise them in the same home, with the same parents. Feed them the same food and send them to the same schools. Each will tell a different tale of their childhood. To each one, it is his or her own truth. As we tell our story, the Palestinians tell theirs, one that is equally true as ours. The Palestinians say that Israeli forces expelled Palestinian Arabs from their homes in 1947 to ensure a decisive Jewish majority. They say that Israel’s goal is take over the West Bank with the building of settlements. “Just look at the maps,” they say. They say that twenty years of talking has gotten them no where so in desperation, they are going to the UN for recognition and legitimacy.
Someone asked me, “is Abbas’ going to the UN a stunt?” “No,” I said, “It’s symbolism. But it doesn’t end the conflict. You don’t become a state because the UN votes you in. Israel became a state because they won the war of independence. Palestine can only become a state because the Israelis and Palestinians reach an agreement. But going to the UN certainly changes the paradigm.
The end point is very clear. We know that the only solution is two states for two people - Israel for the Jews and Palestine for the Arabs. No other solution will allow Israel to be both Jewish and democratic. We know that these states must be based on the 1967 borders with mutually agreeable land swaps. Jerusalem will likely be the capital of both states with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem where the Arabs live and an Israeli capital in West Jerusalem where the Jews live. So why can’t we get there?
Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai once wrote:
An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion and on the opposite mountain I am searching for my little boy. An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father both in their temporary failure. Our voices meet above the Sultan's Pool in the valley between us. Neither of us wants the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels of the terrible Had Gadya machine.
We hear these words and think of the Akeida, the binding of Isaac. It makes us think of parent’s, both Jew and Arab who sacrifice - and lose - their children in the name of something larger. It reminds us that this issue in Israel isn’t about lines on a map. It is about people: parents, children, their successes and failures.
Amichai writes that neither wants the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels of the terrible Had Gadya machine. Neither wants that which is precious to them to get caught in this never ending cycle of violence. You know the story of Had Gadya - one little goat. (sing): Chad Gadya... Chad Gadya, my father bought for two zuzim, chad gadya, chad gadya. It’s the Jewish version of the Lady who swallowed a fly but with a very different message. In Chad Gadya the cat eats the goat, the dog eats the cat, the stick beats the dog, the fire burns the stick, the water quenches the fire, the ox drinks the water, the butcher slaughters the ox, the angel of death kills the butcher, and God kills the angel of death. All because of one little goat. Of course, there are many ways to read Chad Gadya. The classic interpretation is that chad gadya is about the different nations that have conquered the land of Israel. The goat symbolizes us. We are the world’s scapegoat. The cat is Assyria; the dog, Babylon; the stick, Persia; the fire, Macedonia; the water, Rome; the ox, the Saracens; the slaughterer, the Crusaders; the angel of death, the Turks. At the end, God returns to send the Jews back to Israel. A nice happy, hopeful ending.
Amichai sees it differently. To him, the Chad Gadya machine is what we see in the Middle East. You hit me, I pick up a rock to hit you, then you pull out a dagger and I take a sword and so on, until you are in a never ending cycle. And Amichai notes that neither the Arab nor the Jew wants that which is precious to them to get caught in this cycle but because it is a machine, it operates without feeling, without conscience, without morality and that, in and of itself is immoral. As I read chad gadya this year with Amichai’s poem in mind, I noticed that God kills the angel of death and I wondered, so who kills God? Do we? Do the Palestinians with their truth and the Israelis with their truth conspire, even unconsciously to kill God, here in the hills of that holy city of Jerusalem?
Sometimes when you are in a seemingly never ending cycle the only thing to do is to break it, to create a new paradigm, a new reality. Can it be done? Can Netanyahu and Abbas transcend their own psycho-biographies? Can Abbas get past the formative story of his youth, the one where he, at 13, was forced to leave his home in Tzfat and flee to Syria where he lived in a tent, dreaming to return to his homeland? (“The Long Overdue Palestinian State,” NY Times Op-Ed, May 17, 2011) Can Netanyahu in his intransigence, leave behind the right-wing revisionist ideology of his father, Benzion, a historian of the Spanish Inquisition? Can either of them be like Nixon, who set aside Cold War ideology and Red-baiting to visit China in the interest of practical global politics? Or will we continue to get caught in wheels of the terrible Chad Gadya machine?
Rabbi Donniel Hartman, son of Rabbi David Hartman raises an important question for us. He writes, “The fundamental challenge we face today as a people is how to respond, how to live within this existential reality which we know so well. Because it is so akin to our exilic past do we respond as a people in exile or as a people with sovereignty? And if it is the latter, how do we give expression to our sovereignty and power?” (“A Time to Lead” YNETNews.com, September 25, 2011)
One possibility is to remain mired in that same chad gadya machine, as the little helpless goat, continuing to be the victim. Since we are not responsible for our predicament, no actions are called for other than reinforcing our lines of defense, be it with the help of the Israeli military or the US Congress. But these sanctions are still laced with tinges of Jewish victimhood. We are the victims of history. We turn to those with more power to once again come to our rescue.
Yet if we do this, then the experiment of Israel has failed more than succeeded. It has failed to change the psyche of the Jew. Max Nordau may have written about the new Jew who is strong and self-reliant instead of cowering, weak and afraid. But if the psyche is still one of victimhood and our present reality is still viewed through the familiar lenses of the exilic narrative, then we remain in exile, even if we have our own homeland.
But we, as Jews, as demonstrated by the tent protests this spring, are no long a people in exile. The gift of sovereignty and power provides new opportunities and resources to which we can avail ourselves. It would have been wonderful if all of our conflicts were resolved at the negotiating table and the rest of the world viewed the Palestinian bid at the UN as the affront that it is to friendship and true partnership. But alas that has not been our destiny. So now what do we do? A sovereign people begins to lead. A sovereign people fights for its destiny. A sovereign people never gives up hope, while at the same time, never allowing itself the naiveté bred by those who either deny reality or forget our past. (“A Time to Lead” Donniel Hartman, YNETnews.com 09/25/2011)
Tomorrow we read the binding of Isaac, a tale that is truly the pinnacle of Abraham’s life. We focus on the characters: a testing God, a subservient Abraham, an obedient Isaac, a grieving Sarah. I know one rabbi who once gave an entire sermon from the point of view of the ram. But what of the mountain? The mountain is a character too.
The power of the Akeida is that as a story it was meant to be a counter cultural. As pagans brought their sons to be sacrificed in the valley of Hinom, Abraham brought his son up to Mount Moriah. The Valley of Hinom in Hebrew is known as Gai ben Hinom. Over time, Gai ben Hinom was shortened to Gai Hinom and then Gehenna, or hell. This valley where children were sacrificed in the fires to Moloch was Hell’s gate. Moriah, the mount where Abraham brought Isaac stands in contrast to Gai Hinom. If Hell is a place of nightmares where liberties do not exist, Moriah is its opposite. Moriah means vision. Moriah is a place of dreams, of different paradigms. Yes, blood was spilled upon and for this mountain, but it need not be. Moriah can serve as a beacon of hope sitting just at the edge of the horizon for us. Moriah can stand as a vision of a world as it should be, not the world as it is. For if we turn away from moriah we end up in gehinom and only get caught in the Chad gadya machine, condemned to burn in the valley below.
It is time then to change the paradigm. To do some cheshbon hanefesh, some real soul searching and to do some teshuvah, not repentance for our past actions but a corrective U-Turn for our future decisions, our own lives and in the life of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If I was Netanyahu, here is what I would do. I would stop talking about negotiations. I would stop inviting Abbas to join me at the table without preconditions, where ever and when ever he wanted. If I were Netanyahu I would change the paradigm. Here’s what I would say:
“President Abbas, I want to try something different. I want to publicly declare that the path we have been traveling is not working. I have come to realize the following, Palestinian statehood is an Israeli interest as long as it can be accompanied by peace and security. I admit and declare that the fulfillment of our rights to all the land of Israel cannot be fully expressed if we do not allow the Palestinian peoples’ rights to be respected as well.
“President Abbas, not only do I have no desire to expand settlements but I recognize and declare that many of those settlements - in particular those not connected to Jerusalem or located in one of the three settlement blocs - have no future and that Israel’s political, moral and Jewish interests lie in dismantling them. And because I recognize this, I will put a complete freeze on settlement building for six months. Besides, what is six months in the history of a 5000 year old people?” (last sentence from “2 for 2, or 2 for 1?” Thomas Friedman, NY Times, September 27, 2011)
Could you imagine such a statement? The truth be told, none of us know if such declarations or policies would be helpful. The Palestinians have to agree to end the conflict, to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, to fight terror and hatred both in their streets and in their textbooks and to once and for all relinquish their aspirations to return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
Uncertainty, however, is no excuse for passivity, but the impetus for action. While our enemies may not have changed, we have. It is time to stop counting all the injustices, enumerating all that which is unfair, telling over and again to anyone who can hear that it is not our fault.
It is time for us to take responsibility for our destiny, a destiny not necessarily defined by that which is forced upon us but which will reflect who we want to be. It is time to bring an end to the defeatist mourning for and incessant talking about what should have and could have been. It is time to stop the self-defeating and paralyzing fear and reconnect to the reality of Israel and the dream of what Israel was supposed to be, a light to the nations, and to claim our rightful place at the negotiating table – the place of the leader. What does leadership require? It requires vision. Leadership requires taking bold steps. Leadership requires a willingness to take risks. It takes innovation. Leadership asks us also to be humble, to admit that we don’t have all the answers and don’t always know exactly what the end point will look like. And leadership requires action.
Just as we all know where we were on that fateful day in September some ten years ago, I could tell you exactly where I was when I heard that Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat were going to shake hands on the White House Lawn. That year, as a rabbinic student serving a student pulpit, I said something about this being the year where peace would finally come. I was certainly naive.
This year I received a high holiday card from relatives in Israel. It was a picture of a dove with an olive branch in its beak. Their note said that you can’t tell if the dove is coming or going and while they feel that it is going, they certainly pray that it is coming.
So this year I am - hopefully - less naive than I was. But this year I am more concerned than ever. Inspired by Abbas’ speech at the UN and the vote that is surely to come, emboldened by the results of the Arab Spring and maybe feeling that there is nothing to lose, I am concerned that the anger and vitriol that lives just below the surface in so many Palestinian towns and villages may spill over into violence. And then, defending itself as any sovereign nation would, civilians may be injured or worse, killed. I am concerned that this would serve as a flashpoint for those in Arab nations, who, also emboldened by the Arab Spring, would turn their frustration and anger against Israel What then? Could Israel survive if the world turned against her? Would Israel not go down without a fight? Would Israel not unleash untold damage on her neighbors? On whose side would the rest of the world be on? Where would that lead? This is why we need Israel to seek a different path, to change the paradigm, to stop playing the victim, to lead.
Israel must never feel alone. It is not their exclusive struggle. It is also ours. Our faith speaks of Zion and Jerusalem. Those places are in Israel. Our tradition teaches us collective responsibility. Nearly half the world's Jews live in Israel. Our value system is rooted in the defense of democracy. Israel is such a democracy. Israel strengthens our sense of Jewish identity. She helps make us more than just another religion in the marketplace of American religions. Israel makes us a people.
This is a time where we all must be involved to support Israel. Join an Israel advocacy group. I don’t care if it’s AIPAC or J-Street or American Jewish Committee or ARZA or the New Israel Fund. Just join one. Stay informed, to help those around you understand what's going on and why it's so important to friends of Israel and, more generally, to democratic nations.
We must, and I don’t often use that word, buy Israeli products and invest in Israeli
companies. This ‘Start up Nation’ boasts one of the fastest growing economies in the world but with various organizations continuing to push for divestment from Israel without even handedly divesting or calling for divestment from Iran, Israel must know that people, especially her people stand with her. And we must travel to Israel. Going to Israel is a pilgrimage, it is a homecoming, it is privilege, it is perhaps, the best way to support her. It is safe. Join us this February on our congregational trip. If this February won’t work, make plans to join us in November 2012 for our first ever adult only trip. However you do it, get to Israel and send your kids there. Send your grandchildren there after 10th or 11th grade. On the eve of this Jewish new year, allow yourself to be pulled a little closer to the center, just as your eyes scan the horizon for the promise of a new tomorrow.
What will it take to get the Israelis and the Palestinians talking again? It will take, I believe, a new paradigm, a new path. It will take us resolving to stop the chad gadya machine from spinning out of control. It will require us to change our psyche from that of victim to that of leader.
There was once a man who went for a walk in the forest and got lost. He wandered around for hours trying to find his way out, trying one path after another, but none of them worked. Suddenly he came across another walking through the forest. He cried out, Thank God for another human being. Can you show me the way back to town? The other man replied, No, I’m lost, too, the ways I have been exploring have led nowhere. But we can help each other by telling which paths we’ve already tried and been disappointed in. That will help us find the one that leads out.
There is so much to be concerned about in our world. The economy seems ever to be on the verge of faltering. Israel remains in so many ways in danger. And yet at the same time we remain optimistic. Our Jewish religious tradition is one that is always marked by tikvah, by hope. So as this new year begins, let us hold onto that hope, let us remain optimistic, let us find the inner strength and courage to chart new pathways, to seek new beginnings and to be willing to change old paradigms. And as we seek to lead and impress upon the leadership of Israel to take responsibility for its future and to lead as a robust sovereign nation must lead, let us work for the day when the nations will be one and at peace. Amen.
(With many thanks to Rabbi Donniel Hartman to his wonderful article “A Time to Lead” that inspired much of the thinking in this sermon and to Yossi Alpher’s op-ed in the NY Times - September 11, 2011 - “An Israeli Case for a Palestinian State” that formed the notion of needing a paradigm shift).
Community Synagogue
Rabbi Daniel Gropper
A Story: Once there was a man who went for a walk in the forest and got lost. He wandered around for hours trying to find his way out, trying one path after another, but none of them worked. Suddenly he came across another walking through the forest. He cried out, Thank God for another human being. Can you show me the way back to town? The other man replied, No, I’m lost, too, the ways I have been exploring have led nowhere. But we can help each other by telling which paths we’ve already tried and been disappointed in. That will help us find the one that leads out.
A second story: One day Author Steven Covey was visiting New York City and was traveling by subway. A man boarded the train with his two sons and they all sat down. In no time, the sons were running all over the place, bothering others on the train, climbing on the seats, making a commotion. Becoming increasingly irritated as he tried to focus on his presentation, Covey finally got up to ask the father why he wasn’t doing something to control his kids. The father replied, "We just got back from the hospital where their mother died. I don't know how to handle it and I guess they don't either." (Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)
Imagine you are Covey. Suddenly you see everything differently. We call this a paradigm shift. They are the same kids yelling and screaming in the subway, but you look at them and understand them in a different way. Sometimes when you are lost and it seems like you are going in circles, it’s better to stop and look for a fresh path. Sometimes it’s best to change the paradigm. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we need a new paradigm. We need to find a new path out of the forest. And if we don’t change it, it will likely be changed for us.
Throughout our history there have been a number of these paradigm shifts, sometimes by our making, sometimes as a response to the actions of others. At age 75, Abraham chose a radical leaving, having heard lech l’cha - go forth. His act changed the face of history. After 400 years of bondage in Egypt, we threw off the shackles of slavery and wandered into the wilderness. There we learned what it meant to be a covenant people. In the year 70, as Jerusalem lay burning, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, the leading sage of his day, approached Vespasian and asked to build a school in the little city of Yavne, just south of where Tel Aviv is today. This move saved Judaism but it did more. It changed the paradigm. As Rich Cohen, author of Israel is Real writes: “Judaism became portable in those years, a religion that could live out of a suitcase. They created the Jewish canon, the Tanakh. This meant that all Jews, no matter where they lived, would read the same words and tell the same stories.... In this way the Book replaced the city. In this way, the Temple became a book. In this way, study of the Book became as holy as worship in the Temple. In this way the exterior Jerusalem of hills and valleys was replaced by an interior Jerusalem.” (Israel is Real pp., 49, 57)
That was it for almost 2000 years. We moved from land to land, literally living out of suitcases. Commentaries were added yet little changed. Our story became one of victimhood, and we learned to play the role. “Shah. Still. Don’t make waves.” We looked inward and devoted ourselves to our own culture. We didn’t lead. How could we? We had no sovereignty. We bemoaned our predicament. We waited for God to save us as our scriptures said He would, but that’s not how God works.
Then suddenly, with the embers of the Shoah still warm, the paradigm shifted again. On the 23rd of November, 1947, The United Nations, passed resolution 181 and partitioned Palestine. We were home, free, living in the land of Zion and Jerusalem. People danced in the streets, sang Hatikvah from the rooftops. Some here I am sure recall that day like it was yesterday.
The state of Israel challenged the old Jewish paradigm of victimhood. If we wanted this new Jewish state to succeed, we had to make it succeed. Modern Orthodox Theologian and pluralist David Hartman writes, “Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel were a new expression of covenantal empowerment. What the Jews decided is this: Exile will end when we take responsibility for history. We have to learn banking. We have to learn agriculture. We have to learn self-defense. Only through our initiative will there be a change in Jewish homelessness.” (Jews and Judaism in the 21st Century) We built Israel but did it build us? The Jew was rebuilt from the outside but has Israel changed our inner psyche?
How do we respond to the Arab-Israeli conflict? Like a person who has not yet matured, we point fingers, blame others, and say, “It’s not our fault.”
We like to say that the Arabs don’t really want peace. We seem content with the long time practice of convening Jewish assemblies in which we talk to ourselves and bemoan the injustice. We continue to utter Abba Eban’s famous line of how the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. We say that before 1948 there was no such thing as Palestinian people. We tell the story of how the Arab nations told the local Arab population to leave. We tell how, in 1967, after capturing the West Bank, the Golan Heights and the Sinai, we were willing to give it all up for unilateral peace but the Arabs rejected it. We point out how in 2000, the Palestinians, presented with a breakthrough two-state solution plan by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, spurned it. We point out how, in 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert went even further, giving the Palestinians 98% of what they sought, and once again, the Palestinians walked away. We talk about how the Palestinians going to the UN to seek recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state will not end the conflict and might make it worse. We play the victim card to the U.S., our most important ally, reminding the administration that we are its only reliable ally in the region and we keep saying, “it’s their fault. They won’t negotiate. They won’t recognize us. They don’t want peace.”
Take two children, raise them in the same home, with the same parents. Feed them the same food and send them to the same schools. Each will tell a different tale of their childhood. To each one, it is his or her own truth. As we tell our story, the Palestinians tell theirs, one that is equally true as ours. The Palestinians say that Israeli forces expelled Palestinian Arabs from their homes in 1947 to ensure a decisive Jewish majority. They say that Israel’s goal is take over the West Bank with the building of settlements. “Just look at the maps,” they say. They say that twenty years of talking has gotten them no where so in desperation, they are going to the UN for recognition and legitimacy.
Someone asked me, “is Abbas’ going to the UN a stunt?” “No,” I said, “It’s symbolism. But it doesn’t end the conflict. You don’t become a state because the UN votes you in. Israel became a state because they won the war of independence. Palestine can only become a state because the Israelis and Palestinians reach an agreement. But going to the UN certainly changes the paradigm.
The end point is very clear. We know that the only solution is two states for two people - Israel for the Jews and Palestine for the Arabs. No other solution will allow Israel to be both Jewish and democratic. We know that these states must be based on the 1967 borders with mutually agreeable land swaps. Jerusalem will likely be the capital of both states with a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem where the Arabs live and an Israeli capital in West Jerusalem where the Jews live. So why can’t we get there?
Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai once wrote:
An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion and on the opposite mountain I am searching for my little boy. An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father both in their temporary failure. Our voices meet above the Sultan's Pool in the valley between us. Neither of us wants the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels of the terrible Had Gadya machine.
We hear these words and think of the Akeida, the binding of Isaac. It makes us think of parent’s, both Jew and Arab who sacrifice - and lose - their children in the name of something larger. It reminds us that this issue in Israel isn’t about lines on a map. It is about people: parents, children, their successes and failures.
Amichai writes that neither wants the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels of the terrible Had Gadya machine. Neither wants that which is precious to them to get caught in this never ending cycle of violence. You know the story of Had Gadya - one little goat. (sing): Chad Gadya... Chad Gadya, my father bought for two zuzim, chad gadya, chad gadya. It’s the Jewish version of the Lady who swallowed a fly but with a very different message. In Chad Gadya the cat eats the goat, the dog eats the cat, the stick beats the dog, the fire burns the stick, the water quenches the fire, the ox drinks the water, the butcher slaughters the ox, the angel of death kills the butcher, and God kills the angel of death. All because of one little goat. Of course, there are many ways to read Chad Gadya. The classic interpretation is that chad gadya is about the different nations that have conquered the land of Israel. The goat symbolizes us. We are the world’s scapegoat. The cat is Assyria; the dog, Babylon; the stick, Persia; the fire, Macedonia; the water, Rome; the ox, the Saracens; the slaughterer, the Crusaders; the angel of death, the Turks. At the end, God returns to send the Jews back to Israel. A nice happy, hopeful ending.
Amichai sees it differently. To him, the Chad Gadya machine is what we see in the Middle East. You hit me, I pick up a rock to hit you, then you pull out a dagger and I take a sword and so on, until you are in a never ending cycle. And Amichai notes that neither the Arab nor the Jew wants that which is precious to them to get caught in this cycle but because it is a machine, it operates without feeling, without conscience, without morality and that, in and of itself is immoral. As I read chad gadya this year with Amichai’s poem in mind, I noticed that God kills the angel of death and I wondered, so who kills God? Do we? Do the Palestinians with their truth and the Israelis with their truth conspire, even unconsciously to kill God, here in the hills of that holy city of Jerusalem?
Sometimes when you are in a seemingly never ending cycle the only thing to do is to break it, to create a new paradigm, a new reality. Can it be done? Can Netanyahu and Abbas transcend their own psycho-biographies? Can Abbas get past the formative story of his youth, the one where he, at 13, was forced to leave his home in Tzfat and flee to Syria where he lived in a tent, dreaming to return to his homeland? (“The Long Overdue Palestinian State,” NY Times Op-Ed, May 17, 2011) Can Netanyahu in his intransigence, leave behind the right-wing revisionist ideology of his father, Benzion, a historian of the Spanish Inquisition? Can either of them be like Nixon, who set aside Cold War ideology and Red-baiting to visit China in the interest of practical global politics? Or will we continue to get caught in wheels of the terrible Chad Gadya machine?
Rabbi Donniel Hartman, son of Rabbi David Hartman raises an important question for us. He writes, “The fundamental challenge we face today as a people is how to respond, how to live within this existential reality which we know so well. Because it is so akin to our exilic past do we respond as a people in exile or as a people with sovereignty? And if it is the latter, how do we give expression to our sovereignty and power?” (“A Time to Lead” YNETNews.com, September 25, 2011)
One possibility is to remain mired in that same chad gadya machine, as the little helpless goat, continuing to be the victim. Since we are not responsible for our predicament, no actions are called for other than reinforcing our lines of defense, be it with the help of the Israeli military or the US Congress. But these sanctions are still laced with tinges of Jewish victimhood. We are the victims of history. We turn to those with more power to once again come to our rescue.
Yet if we do this, then the experiment of Israel has failed more than succeeded. It has failed to change the psyche of the Jew. Max Nordau may have written about the new Jew who is strong and self-reliant instead of cowering, weak and afraid. But if the psyche is still one of victimhood and our present reality is still viewed through the familiar lenses of the exilic narrative, then we remain in exile, even if we have our own homeland.
But we, as Jews, as demonstrated by the tent protests this spring, are no long a people in exile. The gift of sovereignty and power provides new opportunities and resources to which we can avail ourselves. It would have been wonderful if all of our conflicts were resolved at the negotiating table and the rest of the world viewed the Palestinian bid at the UN as the affront that it is to friendship and true partnership. But alas that has not been our destiny. So now what do we do? A sovereign people begins to lead. A sovereign people fights for its destiny. A sovereign people never gives up hope, while at the same time, never allowing itself the naiveté bred by those who either deny reality or forget our past. (“A Time to Lead” Donniel Hartman, YNETnews.com 09/25/2011)
Tomorrow we read the binding of Isaac, a tale that is truly the pinnacle of Abraham’s life. We focus on the characters: a testing God, a subservient Abraham, an obedient Isaac, a grieving Sarah. I know one rabbi who once gave an entire sermon from the point of view of the ram. But what of the mountain? The mountain is a character too.
The power of the Akeida is that as a story it was meant to be a counter cultural. As pagans brought their sons to be sacrificed in the valley of Hinom, Abraham brought his son up to Mount Moriah. The Valley of Hinom in Hebrew is known as Gai ben Hinom. Over time, Gai ben Hinom was shortened to Gai Hinom and then Gehenna, or hell. This valley where children were sacrificed in the fires to Moloch was Hell’s gate. Moriah, the mount where Abraham brought Isaac stands in contrast to Gai Hinom. If Hell is a place of nightmares where liberties do not exist, Moriah is its opposite. Moriah means vision. Moriah is a place of dreams, of different paradigms. Yes, blood was spilled upon and for this mountain, but it need not be. Moriah can serve as a beacon of hope sitting just at the edge of the horizon for us. Moriah can stand as a vision of a world as it should be, not the world as it is. For if we turn away from moriah we end up in gehinom and only get caught in the Chad gadya machine, condemned to burn in the valley below.
It is time then to change the paradigm. To do some cheshbon hanefesh, some real soul searching and to do some teshuvah, not repentance for our past actions but a corrective U-Turn for our future decisions, our own lives and in the life of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
If I was Netanyahu, here is what I would do. I would stop talking about negotiations. I would stop inviting Abbas to join me at the table without preconditions, where ever and when ever he wanted. If I were Netanyahu I would change the paradigm. Here’s what I would say:
“President Abbas, I want to try something different. I want to publicly declare that the path we have been traveling is not working. I have come to realize the following, Palestinian statehood is an Israeli interest as long as it can be accompanied by peace and security. I admit and declare that the fulfillment of our rights to all the land of Israel cannot be fully expressed if we do not allow the Palestinian peoples’ rights to be respected as well.
“President Abbas, not only do I have no desire to expand settlements but I recognize and declare that many of those settlements - in particular those not connected to Jerusalem or located in one of the three settlement blocs - have no future and that Israel’s political, moral and Jewish interests lie in dismantling them. And because I recognize this, I will put a complete freeze on settlement building for six months. Besides, what is six months in the history of a 5000 year old people?” (last sentence from “2 for 2, or 2 for 1?” Thomas Friedman, NY Times, September 27, 2011)
Could you imagine such a statement? The truth be told, none of us know if such declarations or policies would be helpful. The Palestinians have to agree to end the conflict, to recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, to fight terror and hatred both in their streets and in their textbooks and to once and for all relinquish their aspirations to return to Israel’s pre-1967 borders.
Uncertainty, however, is no excuse for passivity, but the impetus for action. While our enemies may not have changed, we have. It is time to stop counting all the injustices, enumerating all that which is unfair, telling over and again to anyone who can hear that it is not our fault.
It is time for us to take responsibility for our destiny, a destiny not necessarily defined by that which is forced upon us but which will reflect who we want to be. It is time to bring an end to the defeatist mourning for and incessant talking about what should have and could have been. It is time to stop the self-defeating and paralyzing fear and reconnect to the reality of Israel and the dream of what Israel was supposed to be, a light to the nations, and to claim our rightful place at the negotiating table – the place of the leader. What does leadership require? It requires vision. Leadership requires taking bold steps. Leadership requires a willingness to take risks. It takes innovation. Leadership asks us also to be humble, to admit that we don’t have all the answers and don’t always know exactly what the end point will look like. And leadership requires action.
Just as we all know where we were on that fateful day in September some ten years ago, I could tell you exactly where I was when I heard that Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat were going to shake hands on the White House Lawn. That year, as a rabbinic student serving a student pulpit, I said something about this being the year where peace would finally come. I was certainly naive.
This year I received a high holiday card from relatives in Israel. It was a picture of a dove with an olive branch in its beak. Their note said that you can’t tell if the dove is coming or going and while they feel that it is going, they certainly pray that it is coming.
So this year I am - hopefully - less naive than I was. But this year I am more concerned than ever. Inspired by Abbas’ speech at the UN and the vote that is surely to come, emboldened by the results of the Arab Spring and maybe feeling that there is nothing to lose, I am concerned that the anger and vitriol that lives just below the surface in so many Palestinian towns and villages may spill over into violence. And then, defending itself as any sovereign nation would, civilians may be injured or worse, killed. I am concerned that this would serve as a flashpoint for those in Arab nations, who, also emboldened by the Arab Spring, would turn their frustration and anger against Israel What then? Could Israel survive if the world turned against her? Would Israel not go down without a fight? Would Israel not unleash untold damage on her neighbors? On whose side would the rest of the world be on? Where would that lead? This is why we need Israel to seek a different path, to change the paradigm, to stop playing the victim, to lead.
Israel must never feel alone. It is not their exclusive struggle. It is also ours. Our faith speaks of Zion and Jerusalem. Those places are in Israel. Our tradition teaches us collective responsibility. Nearly half the world's Jews live in Israel. Our value system is rooted in the defense of democracy. Israel is such a democracy. Israel strengthens our sense of Jewish identity. She helps make us more than just another religion in the marketplace of American religions. Israel makes us a people.
This is a time where we all must be involved to support Israel. Join an Israel advocacy group. I don’t care if it’s AIPAC or J-Street or American Jewish Committee or ARZA or the New Israel Fund. Just join one. Stay informed, to help those around you understand what's going on and why it's so important to friends of Israel and, more generally, to democratic nations.
We must, and I don’t often use that word, buy Israeli products and invest in Israeli
companies. This ‘Start up Nation’ boasts one of the fastest growing economies in the world but with various organizations continuing to push for divestment from Israel without even handedly divesting or calling for divestment from Iran, Israel must know that people, especially her people stand with her. And we must travel to Israel. Going to Israel is a pilgrimage, it is a homecoming, it is privilege, it is perhaps, the best way to support her. It is safe. Join us this February on our congregational trip. If this February won’t work, make plans to join us in November 2012 for our first ever adult only trip. However you do it, get to Israel and send your kids there. Send your grandchildren there after 10th or 11th grade. On the eve of this Jewish new year, allow yourself to be pulled a little closer to the center, just as your eyes scan the horizon for the promise of a new tomorrow.
What will it take to get the Israelis and the Palestinians talking again? It will take, I believe, a new paradigm, a new path. It will take us resolving to stop the chad gadya machine from spinning out of control. It will require us to change our psyche from that of victim to that of leader.
There was once a man who went for a walk in the forest and got lost. He wandered around for hours trying to find his way out, trying one path after another, but none of them worked. Suddenly he came across another walking through the forest. He cried out, Thank God for another human being. Can you show me the way back to town? The other man replied, No, I’m lost, too, the ways I have been exploring have led nowhere. But we can help each other by telling which paths we’ve already tried and been disappointed in. That will help us find the one that leads out.
There is so much to be concerned about in our world. The economy seems ever to be on the verge of faltering. Israel remains in so many ways in danger. And yet at the same time we remain optimistic. Our Jewish religious tradition is one that is always marked by tikvah, by hope. So as this new year begins, let us hold onto that hope, let us remain optimistic, let us find the inner strength and courage to chart new pathways, to seek new beginnings and to be willing to change old paradigms. And as we seek to lead and impress upon the leadership of Israel to take responsibility for its future and to lead as a robust sovereign nation must lead, let us work for the day when the nations will be one and at peace. Amen.
(With many thanks to Rabbi Donniel Hartman to his wonderful article “A Time to Lead” that inspired much of the thinking in this sermon and to Yossi Alpher’s op-ed in the NY Times - September 11, 2011 - “An Israeli Case for a Palestinian State” that formed the notion of needing a paradigm shift).
All Learning Begins with a Question
All Learning Begins with a Question
Rosh Hashanah Morning, 5772
Community Synagogue of Rye
Rabbi Daniel Gropper
Woody Allen, that great Jewish sage, once took a course in existential philosophy. When he walked in for the final exam, there was a table with a coke bottle on it. On the chalk board was a single question. “Prove the existence of this Coke Bottle.” Woody sat down, took his pencil in hand and wrote three words, “What Coke Bottle?” He got up and left. He got an A.
At its heart, Woody was standing in a long line of Jewish philosophers and sages. You know the old joke: someone asks a Jewish friend “why do Jews always answer a question with a question?” – and the Jew responds, “Why not?”
Judaism expects us to ask questions. There is a famous story in the Midrash: A heathen once asked R. Joshua b. Karhah: Why did God choose a thorn-bush from which to speak to Moses? He replied: Were it a carob tree or a sycamore tree, you would have asked the same question; but to dismiss you without any reply is not right, so I will tell you why. To teach you that no place is devoid of God's presence, not even a thorn-bush. (Shemot Rabbah II:5).
No place is devoid of God’s presence, and so, Rabbi Joshua teaches us, no question is without the potential for revealing truth. Perhaps that is why Judaism has elevated the art of questioning to the status of holiness, and enshrined questions in our holiest books and our holiest moments.
In preparing for this sermon I did a quick search of the Talmud the other day (it is good to live in the Digital Age). In the standard English translation, the word “question” appears 3,216 times, the word answer less than half as many. Perhaps this is to teach us that there are some questions to which there are no ready answers. And perhaps it is to remind us of how important asking good questions is for our own learning and growth.
As a rabbi I get asked lots of questions. Some are really easy. Are string beans kosher for Passover? Yes. If I can’t make it for my mother’s yahrzeit next week, can her name be read the week after? Of course.
Every now and then, I get harder ones, ones that require more consideration:
“I research Alzheimer’s disease, which requires live tissue, available only by harvesting from aborted fetuses. Is this acceptable in Judaism?”
“Is produce picked by underpaid migrant workers kosher?”
“Do I have to say kaddish for my father who abused me?
These are all real questions posed to me over the years. The answers, by the way, are: yes, such research is acceptable, with some caveats; no, such produce is not kosher; and no - despite the Jewish emphasis on honoring one’s parents, an abusive parent releases their child from the obligation to say Kaddish.
But let me tell you that none of these questions compare to the one a friend of mine was asked.
Ten years ago, in mid September of 2001, my friend, Rabbi Jeff Salkin, then of a congregation in the New York area, was on his way to visit someone in the hospital when a woman stopped him in the corridor of the synagogue. She said, "Rabbi, I have a question." He answered, "Yes, what is it? But please, make it quick if you can, I’m already late."
"Rabbi,” she said, “I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and my windows are covered with the grime that has drifted uptown since ‘you know what’ happened. I need to clean my windows, but I am afraid there may be remains of the dead in that dust. If there are, it doesn’t seem right to just have the windows cleaned. What should I do?"
The question stopped him in his tracks.
Knowing that this question was much too serious to quickly brush off, Rabbi Salkin stopped and thought, and then he gave her a brilliant answer. "You’re right, you shouldn’t just clean the windows as if it was any other time — this is what you should do. Take some paper towels and warm water and carefully wipe the windows clean, as clean as you can. Then carefully put the towels into an envelope and take them to a Jewish funeral home. Tell them what they are and ask them to bury them the next time they have a funeral."
The woman nodded, thanked him, and that is precisely what she did.
Somehow she knew, there was a Jewish answer out there. She knew that even in this incomparable and unprecedented situation, there was a choice to make, a blessing to choose, a way to sanctify life, to choose life. And whether it was serendipity or providence, she encountered someone who had an answer.
At its heart, these are the types of questions we look to Judaism to answer. Yet it seems that far too often, we haven’t developed, in our children or in ourselves, the capacity to keep asking questions. Instead of viewing Judaism as a tradition that can help us seek answers for the questions of daily life, we relegate our Judaism to experiences for our kids, holiday observances, and the occasional life cycle experience - hardly something to sustain a religious tradition that was intended to be quotidian.
Why did we stop asking? One reason is that we were told not to. The Talmud speaks of something known as the ta’amei ha’mitzvot, the rationale for the commandments and cautions us about spending too much time pondering the reasons for doing them (Sanhedrin 21b). Why? Well, if you think about it too much, you might never get to observing them and Judaism is a religion of deed, not creed. Second, if you spend too much time thinking about why you do something, you might just come up with reasons not to do it. Better not to ask.
Rabbi Harold Schulweis tells a story from his own life that gets at the heart of this. “I think back on my own early Jewish education,” he says. “My zayde was my first teacher. He taught me Chumash and Rashi and later Gemara. He answered my questions but only some questions, only those that had to do with translation and the literal texts. But when I asked him questions that I suspect all of us had, about the speaking serpent of the Garden of Eden or the menagerie of animals packed in Noah's ark or the abdominal hospitality the whale offered the fugitive Jonah — he smiled benignly, gave me a “knip in bekel,” (pinch in cheek) and whispered “Shpeter” — later. When I asked him what kind of God orders the murder of his child and what kind of hero accepts the command, or whether God “really” answer prayers, and if so, how come so many worthy petitions were not answered, zayde fell back on his standard response, “Shpeter” — later.”
But when we don’t answer these questions for our children and for ourselves, when we just say shpeter, we come to teach a difficult lesson - that Judaism, in all its beauty and wisdom maybe can’t provide the answers for daily life. Or maybe the truth is that we don’t answer because we can’t. We don’t know the answer and our lack of knowing only points up our lack of Jewish education. We feel that because we are knowledgeable in all sorts of subjects and because we are Jewish we should have this knowledge but we don’t. Lacking the knowledge makes us feel inadequate. Instead of saying, “I don’t know, let’s look for an answer together,” we do what we can to avoid the question altogether.
Consider other ways we respond to our kids and the implications of those answers. One is to respond with an invisible instant omniscience and quick piety. It occurs during the earliest years. Why is the sky blue? God. Why are babies born? God. Why did grandpa die? Why was there an earthquake? God. There was a Sunday school teacher who used God to explain almost any question. Once she asked the children “What is a small, brown furry animal who hides acorns during the winter months?” An eager child raises his hand and says, “I know the answer is God but it sure sounds like a squirrel.” The child has caught on. It is bad theology that uses God as a short-cut and it cuts off real questions.
Or we answer in a way that is honest but not necessarily truthful. Consider a fictional girl. Let’s call her Lisa. When Lisa prayed for a doll for Chanukah and didn't receive it, she asked her teacher if God hears prayers and if God answers them. The teacher dutifully said, “God, indeed hears and answers prayers.” “But,” says Lisa, “God didn't answer my prayers.” “Yes He did” said the teacher, “He said, 'no'.” That terse theology will shut up Lisa. Not only does it perpetuate a false rabbinic theology, it will harm Lisa the rest of her spiritual life. Years later, when Lisa’s mother lies dying in the hospital, she will pray for her recovery, or maybe she won’t pray at all, because either she had a lousy childhood experience with prayer or no one showed her that prayer could be more than just reading words form a book. Her mother will die. Did God say, “no”? And if so, was it because of something she had done or something that her mother had done? The early answers in the formative years form building blocks out of which Lisa’s religious credulity is shaped. There is a short line that leads to the answer about praying for a doll for Chanukah and the trauma of the Holocaust. The answers we give early have an afterlife of their own. Flippant answers can create the ominous silence of disbelief.
How would I have answered Lisa? I would have first told her it’s a great question and then would have said, “I don’t know, let’s look for some different answers together, try a few on and see what you like best. In searching I might remind her that God is not a cosmic butler, there to attend to our every whim and desire. I might explore with her the Hebrew word for prayer, l’hitpalel, which means, to judge yourself, to hold up a mirror, to ask the same question God asked Adam in the Garden, “ayekah? Where are you?” How are you doing? Are you being honest with yourself? I might show her that the same word l’hitpalel also contains the root pheleh meaning wonders; that another purpose of prayer is to make us more aware of our surroundings so that we might recognize the wonders of God’s creation and come to see our role in tending to God’s garden. I might expose her to the limits that the Rabbis of the Talmud put on acceptable prayer by saying that, for example, a pregnant woman cannot pray that her child be male or female, that to do so is to utter a tefillah shav -- a vain and blasphemous petition and that praying and wishing are two very different things.
Depending on Lisa’s age, we might talk about the rabbinic reality principle that reminds us how nature is morally neutral. I might show her that remarkable Talmudic discussion that asks: Suppose a man steals a measure of wheat and sows it in his own field. “It would be right that the wheat not grow. After all, it is stolen seed. But the rabbis conclude “Olam k'minhago noheg -- nature pursues its own course. Suppose a man has intercourse with his neighbor's wife? It would be right that she should not conceive. But Olam k'minhago noheg, nature pursues its own course (Avodah Zarah 54b). This introduces a theology that our young should learn now, not “later.” If we don’t answer our children, even with “I don’t know let’s look together,” they will stop asking and say religion has no purpose or will go looking to other faiths for the answers.
Recently, I’ve seen some excellent research on what helps students learn. In a new book called “Why Don’t Students Like School?”, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, emphasizes that to improve learning, it's much more important for the teachers to know how to pose the right questions than for students to know all the answers. He explains:
“I sometimes feel that we, as teachers, are so focused on getting to the answer, we spend insufficient time making sure that students understand the question and appreciate its significance.” (Willingham, 75)
If all we do is fill our kids with information instead of asking them good questions, questions that force them to wrestle with ideas and that model for them that the question is often more important than the answer.
If we can change the focus in religious education from "what we need to teach" to "what our students ask," our young people may find the resources they want and need to strengthen their moral sense, and to own it more deeply.
When I think about world Judaism, I harbor many concerns: the future and safety of Israel, the events occurring in Egypt and Turkey, the UN vote on the Palestinians, the important need for negotiation and continued peace talks, and a fear of a nuclear Iran. But I am also fearful for the future of Judaism in America. According to a recent study, Jews are the most broadly popular religious group in America today (American Grace) yet we are shrinking. We have an average of 1.86 kids as opposed to the national average of 2.2. Intermarriage is an opportunity but the reality is that only 1/3 of intermarried couples raise their children as Jews. Studies show that ethnic cohesiveness is decreasing in this country while we become more concerned with individualism and respect for the sovereign self. If all you’ve lived is a Judaism that revolves around food, as you grow up, you may realize it’s not that filling. If we don’t create space within our communities and within our tradition to wrestle with the most significant questions of our lives and allow ourselves to see that Judaism CAN provide answers to the questions of daily life, then we risk the threat of Jews melding completely into American society. It is high time to show those Jews who feel unsure about their Jewishness and inadequate in their Jewish knowledge a path back to the table. We need to give them the tools, the resources and most importantly the courage to ask the questions.
Nine years ago, I gave a sermon entitled, “Ending Hebrew School As We Know It.” I imagined a synagogue that was like a bee hive, humming with activity where people knew and cared for one another, where all of us were both learners and teachers. I reminded all of us that the current model most synagogues use was created by Rebecca Gratz in 1838!
We created J-Life, a program that brought parents into the synagogue on Shabbat mornings to learn alongside their children and asked them to be teachers as well as students. J-life is succeeding by giving many of you a taste of Jewish learning. It is creating greater connections between adults in this congregation and bringing forward new congregational leaders who otherwise might have gone unnoticed. J-Life is modeling to your children that Judaism is not a pediatric pursuit. Some of you have been inspired to elevate your own Jewish knowledge. It is even allowing for some intergenerational learning. Yet I’m not sure if it is going far enough. Is J-Life really engaging you as an adult learner? Is it influencing how you behave, the decisions you make? Is it answering the questions and challenges of daily life that confront you on an ongoing basis, the questions fictional Lisa had as a child that still go unanswered as an adult? For J-Life to be transformational it needs to start doing all this.
Allow me then to share a little of what we are doing to raise up the questions. You heard our president Alan Shepard mention a Chavurah program for 5th and 6th graders. What makes this program different from a traditional Hebrew school model is that there is no set curriculum and no permanent classroom. They will meet where real learning takes place: in the supermarket, at a yoga studio, at food pantries, in people’s kitchens. Their learning will be based on the questions of the learners, not on what we think or feel they should know.
To reach the younger questioners in our congregation (and their families), we partnered with PJ Library. Thanks to some angels in this congregation, families with children ages 3-8, will each month be sent a different Jewish book, along with a discussion guide so that parents can be teachers. We will coordinate communal activities to create a common language and to hopefully, elicit more questions. All in the name of increasing Jewish engagement at a level that is honest and meaningful.
To reach those in their 20s and 30s, we have joined with a consortium of New York area congregations in an exciting collaborative project called Next Dor NYC. This interdenominational initiative created by the Union for Reform Judaism is intended to bring young Jews together to connect with one another and to build relationships and community. It is a vibrant participant-driven Jewish address for those seeking meaning, spirituality and Jewish community in a Reform context. Next Dor NYC's offerings have ranged from Shabbat dinners, to fun and spirited services, to community service opportunities and to larger social events related to Jewish holidays. Next Dor NYC is open to Jews in their 20s and 30s, and non-Jewish friends and significant others are warmly encouraged to participate as well.
Now you might be wondering, “why do the kids get to have all the fun? I have questions. I’d love the opportunity to sit and struggle and seek the answers to the questions of daily life. How can Jewish teachings help me navigate the ethical challenges of the workplace, the feelings of envy as I drive through town and look in neighbors driveways, the bombardment of messages of what my body should look like, how my clothes should fit, what I should buy? How can Jewish teachings help me to raise self-reliant children or resilient teenagers? How can Jewish teachings help me deal with aging parents? How can Jewish teachings inform the decisions I need to make as I approach the autumn and winter of my life?” We all have questions that Jewish teachings can come to answer. Not everyone has the motivation or the luxury of time to sign up for a multisession class. What about one night or one breakfast or one lunch hour? When you go to Starbucks, sometimes you don’t need the Grande mocha soy latte. Sometimes a single shot of espresso will do the trick. We are launching something called “Single Shot Judaism.” Here’s how it works. Get 10 people together. Call me or Cantor Cooperman or Rabbinic Intern Leora Frankel. We will find a time to get together for questions and answers - not something we want to teach but stuff you want to talk about. I can guarantee good stories, powerful moments of connection, maybe even some laughter and tears. All I’m asking for is a single shot. This is something we could never do if we weren’t moving towards engaging a second rabbi for this congregation.
I believe that Jewish learning starts with questions, not answers. The Jewish philosopher Franz Rosensweig understood this inside out thinking. Almost a hundred years ago, on the opening of the Lehrhaus in Berlin, he said: “A new ‘learning’ is about to be born--rather, it has been born. It is a learning in reverse order. A learning that no longer starts from the Torah and leads into life, but the other way round: from life, from a world that knows nothing of the Law, or pretends to know nothing, back to the Torah. That is the sign of the time...From the periphery back to the center; from the outside, in.”
This is what we are beginning to do here. Start from life. Start from a world that knows nothing of the Torah - or pretends to know nothing and moves back to the Torah. Start with the questions. Develop an outside-in Judaism.
If we want to talk about Judaism starting from life, let’s talk about that one thing that is central to life. Food. Growing up, organic food meant that your tomatoes were spotted, CSA stood for Canadaian Standards Association and coffee was instant and came in a jar. Now organic food is beautiful, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and we want our coffee to be fair trade. Books by Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer address the treatment of animals and how we should eat. Other books like Postville or Kosher Nation emphasize the need for an eco kashrut that demands a higher ethical and environmental awareness of what we eat. The way we eat today raises questions that we never asked a generation ago, questions to which Jewish teachings can supply some answers.
Let me ask you, have you ever passed a bread field? Of course not. To make bread we need soil, sun, rain, seeds, the intellect to grow wheat and then to mill it. Fossil fuels to power the trains and trucks for shipping, the business interactions among farmer, miller, grocer, and so on. The journey from farm to table involves many moving parts, all needing to connect one with the others.
Yet the motzi, that simple prayer said before any meal, praises God “who brings forth bread from the Earth.” Why? God doesn’t make bread appear straight from the earth. There are no bread orchards. I think the motzi reminds us to be both thankful for our food and aware of the connectivity of all things, of the effort it takes to go from farm to table, and of the responsibility we have to ensure that the land and its workers are treated well. You see, saying motzi is not just about the food before us. It’s much larger than that. It’s about our connection to the whole system. And saying Motzi each time is a simple act to make Judaism a quotidian habit in our busy lives.
Imagine, if you said motzi - baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, ha motzi lechem min ha’aretz, even muttered it under your breath 3 times a day, it would take approximately 7 seconds each time. If you are fortunate enough to each three meals a day, you can express your Judaism in 21 second a day. That’s it. That’s not asking for much.
Can you do this? Can you commit to saying motzi three times a day? I don’t care what you are eating. For all you gluten free folks like me out there, I don’t care if you’re having bread or not. Just say Motzi. You see, saying this simple prayer might cause us to ask more questions of our tradition that can only lead to greater discoveries. Saying this prayer three times a day will make us more connected with the earth, with humanity, with the responsibilities we have as God’s covenental partners.
So there it is, a little bit of Judaism I promise will make your life more peaceful and more meaningful. You don’t have to buy anything. You don’t have to go anywhere, and you don’t have to learn anything very complicated.
I believe so strongly that this simple act will lead to a more engaged Judaism, that when you leave today you will receive a gift. Community Synagogue has partnered with congregants Jeff and Jennifer Kohn, owners of The Kneaded Bread Bakery in Port Chester, to give you all a little card. On one side are the words of the motzi. On the other side is a statement entitling you to one free roll from the Kneaded Bread, every time you visit. You don’t have to buy anything else. The point is not the bread, it’s about giving each of us the tools, resources, and opportunity to say this prayer whenever you eat.
Today we celebrate the birth day of the universe. On that first day, within moments after they were formed, the first humans ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; fruit they had been prohibited from eating. Embarrassed and ashamed, they hid among the trees. God called to them with the first question in the Torah. A single word that asked much more than physical location. Ayekah? Where are you? It is a question that is eternal in time. And the affirmative answer to Ayekah should always be the same, it is the answer that the shofar calls us to utter. Hineini, here I am. There are some who are afraid of the question or of cultivating the question. But as the Yiddish expression states, “Fum a kashe ken men nisht shtarbem.” -- “From a question no one dies.” But this is only half right. It’s when you ask a question that you really begin to live.
Rosh Hashanah Morning, 5772
Community Synagogue of Rye
Rabbi Daniel Gropper
Woody Allen, that great Jewish sage, once took a course in existential philosophy. When he walked in for the final exam, there was a table with a coke bottle on it. On the chalk board was a single question. “Prove the existence of this Coke Bottle.” Woody sat down, took his pencil in hand and wrote three words, “What Coke Bottle?” He got up and left. He got an A.
At its heart, Woody was standing in a long line of Jewish philosophers and sages. You know the old joke: someone asks a Jewish friend “why do Jews always answer a question with a question?” – and the Jew responds, “Why not?”
Judaism expects us to ask questions. There is a famous story in the Midrash: A heathen once asked R. Joshua b. Karhah: Why did God choose a thorn-bush from which to speak to Moses? He replied: Were it a carob tree or a sycamore tree, you would have asked the same question; but to dismiss you without any reply is not right, so I will tell you why. To teach you that no place is devoid of God's presence, not even a thorn-bush. (Shemot Rabbah II:5).
No place is devoid of God’s presence, and so, Rabbi Joshua teaches us, no question is without the potential for revealing truth. Perhaps that is why Judaism has elevated the art of questioning to the status of holiness, and enshrined questions in our holiest books and our holiest moments.
In preparing for this sermon I did a quick search of the Talmud the other day (it is good to live in the Digital Age). In the standard English translation, the word “question” appears 3,216 times, the word answer less than half as many. Perhaps this is to teach us that there are some questions to which there are no ready answers. And perhaps it is to remind us of how important asking good questions is for our own learning and growth.
As a rabbi I get asked lots of questions. Some are really easy. Are string beans kosher for Passover? Yes. If I can’t make it for my mother’s yahrzeit next week, can her name be read the week after? Of course.
Every now and then, I get harder ones, ones that require more consideration:
“I research Alzheimer’s disease, which requires live tissue, available only by harvesting from aborted fetuses. Is this acceptable in Judaism?”
“Is produce picked by underpaid migrant workers kosher?”
“Do I have to say kaddish for my father who abused me?
These are all real questions posed to me over the years. The answers, by the way, are: yes, such research is acceptable, with some caveats; no, such produce is not kosher; and no - despite the Jewish emphasis on honoring one’s parents, an abusive parent releases their child from the obligation to say Kaddish.
But let me tell you that none of these questions compare to the one a friend of mine was asked.
Ten years ago, in mid September of 2001, my friend, Rabbi Jeff Salkin, then of a congregation in the New York area, was on his way to visit someone in the hospital when a woman stopped him in the corridor of the synagogue. She said, "Rabbi, I have a question." He answered, "Yes, what is it? But please, make it quick if you can, I’m already late."
"Rabbi,” she said, “I live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and my windows are covered with the grime that has drifted uptown since ‘you know what’ happened. I need to clean my windows, but I am afraid there may be remains of the dead in that dust. If there are, it doesn’t seem right to just have the windows cleaned. What should I do?"
The question stopped him in his tracks.
Knowing that this question was much too serious to quickly brush off, Rabbi Salkin stopped and thought, and then he gave her a brilliant answer. "You’re right, you shouldn’t just clean the windows as if it was any other time — this is what you should do. Take some paper towels and warm water and carefully wipe the windows clean, as clean as you can. Then carefully put the towels into an envelope and take them to a Jewish funeral home. Tell them what they are and ask them to bury them the next time they have a funeral."
The woman nodded, thanked him, and that is precisely what she did.
Somehow she knew, there was a Jewish answer out there. She knew that even in this incomparable and unprecedented situation, there was a choice to make, a blessing to choose, a way to sanctify life, to choose life. And whether it was serendipity or providence, she encountered someone who had an answer.
At its heart, these are the types of questions we look to Judaism to answer. Yet it seems that far too often, we haven’t developed, in our children or in ourselves, the capacity to keep asking questions. Instead of viewing Judaism as a tradition that can help us seek answers for the questions of daily life, we relegate our Judaism to experiences for our kids, holiday observances, and the occasional life cycle experience - hardly something to sustain a religious tradition that was intended to be quotidian.
Why did we stop asking? One reason is that we were told not to. The Talmud speaks of something known as the ta’amei ha’mitzvot, the rationale for the commandments and cautions us about spending too much time pondering the reasons for doing them (Sanhedrin 21b). Why? Well, if you think about it too much, you might never get to observing them and Judaism is a religion of deed, not creed. Second, if you spend too much time thinking about why you do something, you might just come up with reasons not to do it. Better not to ask.
Rabbi Harold Schulweis tells a story from his own life that gets at the heart of this. “I think back on my own early Jewish education,” he says. “My zayde was my first teacher. He taught me Chumash and Rashi and later Gemara. He answered my questions but only some questions, only those that had to do with translation and the literal texts. But when I asked him questions that I suspect all of us had, about the speaking serpent of the Garden of Eden or the menagerie of animals packed in Noah's ark or the abdominal hospitality the whale offered the fugitive Jonah — he smiled benignly, gave me a “knip in bekel,” (pinch in cheek) and whispered “Shpeter” — later. When I asked him what kind of God orders the murder of his child and what kind of hero accepts the command, or whether God “really” answer prayers, and if so, how come so many worthy petitions were not answered, zayde fell back on his standard response, “Shpeter” — later.”
But when we don’t answer these questions for our children and for ourselves, when we just say shpeter, we come to teach a difficult lesson - that Judaism, in all its beauty and wisdom maybe can’t provide the answers for daily life. Or maybe the truth is that we don’t answer because we can’t. We don’t know the answer and our lack of knowing only points up our lack of Jewish education. We feel that because we are knowledgeable in all sorts of subjects and because we are Jewish we should have this knowledge but we don’t. Lacking the knowledge makes us feel inadequate. Instead of saying, “I don’t know, let’s look for an answer together,” we do what we can to avoid the question altogether.
Consider other ways we respond to our kids and the implications of those answers. One is to respond with an invisible instant omniscience and quick piety. It occurs during the earliest years. Why is the sky blue? God. Why are babies born? God. Why did grandpa die? Why was there an earthquake? God. There was a Sunday school teacher who used God to explain almost any question. Once she asked the children “What is a small, brown furry animal who hides acorns during the winter months?” An eager child raises his hand and says, “I know the answer is God but it sure sounds like a squirrel.” The child has caught on. It is bad theology that uses God as a short-cut and it cuts off real questions.
Or we answer in a way that is honest but not necessarily truthful. Consider a fictional girl. Let’s call her Lisa. When Lisa prayed for a doll for Chanukah and didn't receive it, she asked her teacher if God hears prayers and if God answers them. The teacher dutifully said, “God, indeed hears and answers prayers.” “But,” says Lisa, “God didn't answer my prayers.” “Yes He did” said the teacher, “He said, 'no'.” That terse theology will shut up Lisa. Not only does it perpetuate a false rabbinic theology, it will harm Lisa the rest of her spiritual life. Years later, when Lisa’s mother lies dying in the hospital, she will pray for her recovery, or maybe she won’t pray at all, because either she had a lousy childhood experience with prayer or no one showed her that prayer could be more than just reading words form a book. Her mother will die. Did God say, “no”? And if so, was it because of something she had done or something that her mother had done? The early answers in the formative years form building blocks out of which Lisa’s religious credulity is shaped. There is a short line that leads to the answer about praying for a doll for Chanukah and the trauma of the Holocaust. The answers we give early have an afterlife of their own. Flippant answers can create the ominous silence of disbelief.
How would I have answered Lisa? I would have first told her it’s a great question and then would have said, “I don’t know, let’s look for some different answers together, try a few on and see what you like best. In searching I might remind her that God is not a cosmic butler, there to attend to our every whim and desire. I might explore with her the Hebrew word for prayer, l’hitpalel, which means, to judge yourself, to hold up a mirror, to ask the same question God asked Adam in the Garden, “ayekah? Where are you?” How are you doing? Are you being honest with yourself? I might show her that the same word l’hitpalel also contains the root pheleh meaning wonders; that another purpose of prayer is to make us more aware of our surroundings so that we might recognize the wonders of God’s creation and come to see our role in tending to God’s garden. I might expose her to the limits that the Rabbis of the Talmud put on acceptable prayer by saying that, for example, a pregnant woman cannot pray that her child be male or female, that to do so is to utter a tefillah shav -- a vain and blasphemous petition and that praying and wishing are two very different things.
Depending on Lisa’s age, we might talk about the rabbinic reality principle that reminds us how nature is morally neutral. I might show her that remarkable Talmudic discussion that asks: Suppose a man steals a measure of wheat and sows it in his own field. “It would be right that the wheat not grow. After all, it is stolen seed. But the rabbis conclude “Olam k'minhago noheg -- nature pursues its own course. Suppose a man has intercourse with his neighbor's wife? It would be right that she should not conceive. But Olam k'minhago noheg, nature pursues its own course (Avodah Zarah 54b). This introduces a theology that our young should learn now, not “later.” If we don’t answer our children, even with “I don’t know let’s look together,” they will stop asking and say religion has no purpose or will go looking to other faiths for the answers.
Recently, I’ve seen some excellent research on what helps students learn. In a new book called “Why Don’t Students Like School?”, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, emphasizes that to improve learning, it's much more important for the teachers to know how to pose the right questions than for students to know all the answers. He explains:
“I sometimes feel that we, as teachers, are so focused on getting to the answer, we spend insufficient time making sure that students understand the question and appreciate its significance.” (Willingham, 75)
If all we do is fill our kids with information instead of asking them good questions, questions that force them to wrestle with ideas and that model for them that the question is often more important than the answer.
If we can change the focus in religious education from "what we need to teach" to "what our students ask," our young people may find the resources they want and need to strengthen their moral sense, and to own it more deeply.
When I think about world Judaism, I harbor many concerns: the future and safety of Israel, the events occurring in Egypt and Turkey, the UN vote on the Palestinians, the important need for negotiation and continued peace talks, and a fear of a nuclear Iran. But I am also fearful for the future of Judaism in America. According to a recent study, Jews are the most broadly popular religious group in America today (American Grace) yet we are shrinking. We have an average of 1.86 kids as opposed to the national average of 2.2. Intermarriage is an opportunity but the reality is that only 1/3 of intermarried couples raise their children as Jews. Studies show that ethnic cohesiveness is decreasing in this country while we become more concerned with individualism and respect for the sovereign self. If all you’ve lived is a Judaism that revolves around food, as you grow up, you may realize it’s not that filling. If we don’t create space within our communities and within our tradition to wrestle with the most significant questions of our lives and allow ourselves to see that Judaism CAN provide answers to the questions of daily life, then we risk the threat of Jews melding completely into American society. It is high time to show those Jews who feel unsure about their Jewishness and inadequate in their Jewish knowledge a path back to the table. We need to give them the tools, the resources and most importantly the courage to ask the questions.
Nine years ago, I gave a sermon entitled, “Ending Hebrew School As We Know It.” I imagined a synagogue that was like a bee hive, humming with activity where people knew and cared for one another, where all of us were both learners and teachers. I reminded all of us that the current model most synagogues use was created by Rebecca Gratz in 1838!
We created J-Life, a program that brought parents into the synagogue on Shabbat mornings to learn alongside their children and asked them to be teachers as well as students. J-life is succeeding by giving many of you a taste of Jewish learning. It is creating greater connections between adults in this congregation and bringing forward new congregational leaders who otherwise might have gone unnoticed. J-Life is modeling to your children that Judaism is not a pediatric pursuit. Some of you have been inspired to elevate your own Jewish knowledge. It is even allowing for some intergenerational learning. Yet I’m not sure if it is going far enough. Is J-Life really engaging you as an adult learner? Is it influencing how you behave, the decisions you make? Is it answering the questions and challenges of daily life that confront you on an ongoing basis, the questions fictional Lisa had as a child that still go unanswered as an adult? For J-Life to be transformational it needs to start doing all this.
Allow me then to share a little of what we are doing to raise up the questions. You heard our president Alan Shepard mention a Chavurah program for 5th and 6th graders. What makes this program different from a traditional Hebrew school model is that there is no set curriculum and no permanent classroom. They will meet where real learning takes place: in the supermarket, at a yoga studio, at food pantries, in people’s kitchens. Their learning will be based on the questions of the learners, not on what we think or feel they should know.
To reach the younger questioners in our congregation (and their families), we partnered with PJ Library. Thanks to some angels in this congregation, families with children ages 3-8, will each month be sent a different Jewish book, along with a discussion guide so that parents can be teachers. We will coordinate communal activities to create a common language and to hopefully, elicit more questions. All in the name of increasing Jewish engagement at a level that is honest and meaningful.
To reach those in their 20s and 30s, we have joined with a consortium of New York area congregations in an exciting collaborative project called Next Dor NYC. This interdenominational initiative created by the Union for Reform Judaism is intended to bring young Jews together to connect with one another and to build relationships and community. It is a vibrant participant-driven Jewish address for those seeking meaning, spirituality and Jewish community in a Reform context. Next Dor NYC's offerings have ranged from Shabbat dinners, to fun and spirited services, to community service opportunities and to larger social events related to Jewish holidays. Next Dor NYC is open to Jews in their 20s and 30s, and non-Jewish friends and significant others are warmly encouraged to participate as well.
Now you might be wondering, “why do the kids get to have all the fun? I have questions. I’d love the opportunity to sit and struggle and seek the answers to the questions of daily life. How can Jewish teachings help me navigate the ethical challenges of the workplace, the feelings of envy as I drive through town and look in neighbors driveways, the bombardment of messages of what my body should look like, how my clothes should fit, what I should buy? How can Jewish teachings help me to raise self-reliant children or resilient teenagers? How can Jewish teachings help me deal with aging parents? How can Jewish teachings inform the decisions I need to make as I approach the autumn and winter of my life?” We all have questions that Jewish teachings can come to answer. Not everyone has the motivation or the luxury of time to sign up for a multisession class. What about one night or one breakfast or one lunch hour? When you go to Starbucks, sometimes you don’t need the Grande mocha soy latte. Sometimes a single shot of espresso will do the trick. We are launching something called “Single Shot Judaism.” Here’s how it works. Get 10 people together. Call me or Cantor Cooperman or Rabbinic Intern Leora Frankel. We will find a time to get together for questions and answers - not something we want to teach but stuff you want to talk about. I can guarantee good stories, powerful moments of connection, maybe even some laughter and tears. All I’m asking for is a single shot. This is something we could never do if we weren’t moving towards engaging a second rabbi for this congregation.
I believe that Jewish learning starts with questions, not answers. The Jewish philosopher Franz Rosensweig understood this inside out thinking. Almost a hundred years ago, on the opening of the Lehrhaus in Berlin, he said: “A new ‘learning’ is about to be born--rather, it has been born. It is a learning in reverse order. A learning that no longer starts from the Torah and leads into life, but the other way round: from life, from a world that knows nothing of the Law, or pretends to know nothing, back to the Torah. That is the sign of the time...From the periphery back to the center; from the outside, in.”
This is what we are beginning to do here. Start from life. Start from a world that knows nothing of the Torah - or pretends to know nothing and moves back to the Torah. Start with the questions. Develop an outside-in Judaism.
If we want to talk about Judaism starting from life, let’s talk about that one thing that is central to life. Food. Growing up, organic food meant that your tomatoes were spotted, CSA stood for Canadaian Standards Association and coffee was instant and came in a jar. Now organic food is beautiful, CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture and we want our coffee to be fair trade. Books by Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer address the treatment of animals and how we should eat. Other books like Postville or Kosher Nation emphasize the need for an eco kashrut that demands a higher ethical and environmental awareness of what we eat. The way we eat today raises questions that we never asked a generation ago, questions to which Jewish teachings can supply some answers.
Let me ask you, have you ever passed a bread field? Of course not. To make bread we need soil, sun, rain, seeds, the intellect to grow wheat and then to mill it. Fossil fuels to power the trains and trucks for shipping, the business interactions among farmer, miller, grocer, and so on. The journey from farm to table involves many moving parts, all needing to connect one with the others.
Yet the motzi, that simple prayer said before any meal, praises God “who brings forth bread from the Earth.” Why? God doesn’t make bread appear straight from the earth. There are no bread orchards. I think the motzi reminds us to be both thankful for our food and aware of the connectivity of all things, of the effort it takes to go from farm to table, and of the responsibility we have to ensure that the land and its workers are treated well. You see, saying motzi is not just about the food before us. It’s much larger than that. It’s about our connection to the whole system. And saying Motzi each time is a simple act to make Judaism a quotidian habit in our busy lives.
Imagine, if you said motzi - baruch atah adonai, eloheinu melech ha’olam, ha motzi lechem min ha’aretz, even muttered it under your breath 3 times a day, it would take approximately 7 seconds each time. If you are fortunate enough to each three meals a day, you can express your Judaism in 21 second a day. That’s it. That’s not asking for much.
Can you do this? Can you commit to saying motzi three times a day? I don’t care what you are eating. For all you gluten free folks like me out there, I don’t care if you’re having bread or not. Just say Motzi. You see, saying this simple prayer might cause us to ask more questions of our tradition that can only lead to greater discoveries. Saying this prayer three times a day will make us more connected with the earth, with humanity, with the responsibilities we have as God’s covenental partners.
So there it is, a little bit of Judaism I promise will make your life more peaceful and more meaningful. You don’t have to buy anything. You don’t have to go anywhere, and you don’t have to learn anything very complicated.
I believe so strongly that this simple act will lead to a more engaged Judaism, that when you leave today you will receive a gift. Community Synagogue has partnered with congregants Jeff and Jennifer Kohn, owners of The Kneaded Bread Bakery in Port Chester, to give you all a little card. On one side are the words of the motzi. On the other side is a statement entitling you to one free roll from the Kneaded Bread, every time you visit. You don’t have to buy anything else. The point is not the bread, it’s about giving each of us the tools, resources, and opportunity to say this prayer whenever you eat.
Today we celebrate the birth day of the universe. On that first day, within moments after they were formed, the first humans ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; fruit they had been prohibited from eating. Embarrassed and ashamed, they hid among the trees. God called to them with the first question in the Torah. A single word that asked much more than physical location. Ayekah? Where are you? It is a question that is eternal in time. And the affirmative answer to Ayekah should always be the same, it is the answer that the shofar calls us to utter. Hineini, here I am. There are some who are afraid of the question or of cultivating the question. But as the Yiddish expression states, “Fum a kashe ken men nisht shtarbem.” -- “From a question no one dies.” But this is only half right. It’s when you ask a question that you really begin to live.
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