Tetzaveh – What is Holiness?

by Salvador Litvak – Feb. 8, 2014 – 8 Adar I, 5774

Good Shabbos!

Eight weeks ago, Moses entered the Torah narrative when we read the first parshah (weekly Torah portion) of the book of Exodus. From that point on, his name appears in every parshah until the end of the Torah, with one exception: this week’s parshah, Tetzaveh.

Surprisingly, this parshah always falls out during the week of Moses’ birth and death. Traditionally, this coincidence is employed to teach that Judaism is not a cult of personality. We do not worship Moses, nor do we need him to intermediate between G-d and us.

That’s important to remember because what’s presently happening in the Torah narrative is that Moses is on top of Mt. Sinai, receiving the Torah, while down below, we, the children of Israel, are getting very nervous. We’re afraid that Moses will not return, and that the overwhelming Holiness we experienced just a few weeks ago during the Revelation will be our only channel to G-d in the future.

Recall that we said to Moses, “You speak with us, and we will hear, but let God not speak with us lest we die.” (Ex. 20:16)

That fear of being overwhelmed by G-d’s holiness is so strong that when Moses is just a few hours late coming down from Mt. Sinai in next week’s parshah, we panic and create a golden calf. We don’t create the calf to worship it; we create it to replace Moses as an intermediary between us and G-d’s Holiness.

What a tragic mistake that turns out to be.

And that’s why this week’s parshah is all about the proper way to approach holiness. The Hebrew root for holiness is spelled kuf-dalet-shin, and it appears 31 times in our parshah. Kodesh, kadosh, kedoshim, nekadesh, holy, sanctify, sanctuary – over and over we learn that our priests, our altar, our sacrifices, our tent of meeting, indeed our mission as the Jewish people is to pursue holiness.

When we reach Leviticus 20:26, this commandment will be made explicit: “You shall be holy to Me, for I, the Lord, am Holy, and I have distinguished you from the peoples, to be Mine.”

Why are we so afraid of holiness? Why do we resent people who are holier-than-thou? How do we obey this commandment to be holy?

In other words, what… is… holiness?

It’s a confusing question because holiness appears so often in Scripture and Rabbinic literature. The kodesh root appears in the Talmud 9,324 times. There are only 2,711 pages in the Talmud, so that’s a whole lot of attention to this idea. The problem is that the word means different things at different times.

In our parshah, we learn that those who are both wise-hearted and filled with a spirit of wisdom are capable of making holy garments. These garments will in turn make the priests who wear them holy (Ex. 28:3).

Now, wouldn’t you think that the priests become holy first, and then they transfer their holiness to the clothes?

A few verses later, we learn that we must also anoint them with holy oil, create a holy altar within a holy sanctuary, offer holy sacrifices upon it, and place a gold band upon the high priest’s head that reads, “Holy to G-d.”

Terumah

by Meyer Shwarzstein – Feb 1, 2014

In screenwriting class, I learned a term called Suspension of Disbelief. It means that your audience must be willing to ignore enough facts and logic to go along with a story. This Dvar Torah is going to require a lot of Suspension of Disbelief – I hope you’ll come with me on the ride.

I don’t think the desert is a very threatening place. I’ve been to Palm Springs, Las Vegas and Beersheba. They’re certainly not uninhabitable wildernesses. In fact, almost no place on Earth may provide that sense of wonder and foreboding, as the ancient Sinai desert did.

There’s a commentary that says the plagues in Egypt were not only for the benefit of the Egyptians. They were also used by God to convince the Israelites to leave their lives behind. If the Exodus were happening today, we’d have no trouble packing our cars and driving into the Sinai away from slavery.

What if we were told to enter a trip to outer space, and we weren’t coming back? Then, it may take 9 or 10 plagues to get us loaded on board the spaceship.

So, here it is, Exodus in Space.

Imagine that it is the year 2150 and the entire planet Earth is now ruled by an authoritarian government based in Egypt. Yes, I know it’s hard to imagine an authoritarian government in Egypt, but go with me here.

God frees a group of people on Egypt-controller Earth, the Israelites, from slavery. The Israelites, including the mixed multitude that accompany them, are chased by the Egyptians toward a spaceship that will take the Israelites on a journey to their new home planet. (Planetologists using the Keplar space telescope have already discovered dozens of planets in our galaxy that may be able to sustain life.)

Ok, we’re talking about 600,000 people on a ship living together. Most of them were slaves and they’re going to be traveling together for 40 years. How long can you and your family last on a car trip? Now, let’s add your relatives…and their relatives. And you’re going to be living together for 40 years. Feel like going back to slavery yet? Are we surprised that people complained about the food, the water, or the weather?

The Egyptians chase after the vessel as it spills across the asteroid belt, which opens a space for the vessel to glide thru. As you probably guessed, the space closes and the asteroids smash the Egyptian’s cool-looking transformer-like vessels. They don’t make it through.

Now, near the end of our solar system not far from Pluto is a semi-dwarf planet called Sinai. Why is this the first stop on the journey?

Because the most important thing that this people needed to make this long journey and make it to the promised planet is the Rule of Law. Without a code of civility and order, 600,000 unruly people may not last 2 weeks with each other.

That’s why Sinai is the first stop for these rescued people. Here they accept and are first given 10 laws. The Ramban gives a wonderful commentary on the Ten Commandments. He suggests that these laws are a sample not the most important laws; archetypes for the rest of the Torah’s commandments. He compares this sampling to the ones used by rabbis when they meet with converts. Rabbis give converts a sampling of the commandments, not all of them.

In fact, this is a mass conversion of the Israelites and the mixed multitude. Israel accepts the obligation to do whatever God commands them…and God makes a covenant with them…they thereby become a people to them and He their God. [1] The first commandment is exceedingly important for the journey. As any space traveler will tell you, the passengers and crew need to acknowledge the primacy of the captain. That’s the law of all ships – whether at sea or on the Starship Enterprise. Of course, this captain has his own GPS – God’s Pillars of Smoke.

As the ship is about to leave its position at this first stop at Sinai, the people are ordered to build a Mishkon. That is the subject of this week’s parsha.

Why do they need this building? Some commentators suggest that God didn’t think the Mishkon was necessary until the Golden Calf. People like to have a physical reminder of the existence of God.

Shmini Atzeret 5774

Jackie, the Jews, and Ethnicity in Post-War America

By Michael Berenbaum

Because Jackie was the first, he played for everyone who had been denied a chance, whose future was closed because of racism and segregation; he was the forerunner of the civil rights movement and the struggles by women and gays for equality that would follow. He would do anything to win.

I was but a toddler when Jackie broke in. My mother was often ill and my father, a decorated World War II veteran, struggled to make up for lost time in the post-war years. In 1945, the year I was born, he was 35 and just beginning his career, working all hours of the day and night – 24/6. So we had an African-American cleaning lady, Minnie—an intelligent, stately woman who in our era would have gone to school and become a professional, but in those days struggled to survive. Minnie loved me and she loved the Dodgers, and the Dodger she most loved was Jackie. My father loved Jackie too, and their admiration for Robinson was race blind, the great equalizer between men, women, and children of all backgrounds.

Robinson was chosen to overcome the weight of centuries. My father and Minnie understood his struggle. Orthodox Jew and underprivileged black, they both saw in his daily battle a mirror of their own life and the hope for future generations. If he made it, they could; if not them, then their children.

Pee Wee Reese was the Dodger Captain. Kentucky bred and almost a decade older than his teammates, he had come up before World War II and was a star before his career was interrupted by wartime duties. Reese was serving in World War II when he heard that the Dodgers were interested in Robinson as a shortstop, the next choice to replace him, and he was burning. The taunts of his fellow soldiers did not diminish his anger. But he decided then and there that if Robinson could beat him in competition for the job, then he deserved it. Combat, the defining experience of the “Greatest Generation,” was also a meritocracy. What you did earned the respect or the scorn of your comrades. So when Reese answered for Robinson,  when he braved the taunts of fans and the displeasure of his southern friends by embracing Robinson as a teammate, America took note.

Roy Campanella, the Dodger catcher, was all heart. In his every move one experienced the joy of the game, the love of baseball. Stocky and compact, Campy could be surprisingly swift on the base path and a stone wall protecting the plate. Campy would kibitz with the batters and the umpires. He was as masterful at banter as at handling pitchers, speaking to them not just with his mouth, but by pounding his fists, gesturing in every direction. Three times the National League’s Most Valuable Player, when Campy played well, the Dodgers would win.

Campanella was formed by his experience in the Negro Leagues. Prior to being signed by the Dodgers, Campy had played baseball year round. He reported to the Negro Leagues each spring; he barnstormed in the fall, and went down to Venezuela to play winter ball. His alternatives were few. With a bat in his hand, he would club his way to a future. Double headers were routine, and teams often played in two different cities during the same day. Negro Leaguers brought their own lights and polls to play nighttime baseball in unlit stadiums. Travel was by bus where players often ate and slept, denied entry into hotels in the segregated South and the inhospitable North. By the time he began his 10 year major league career, Campanella had played professional baseball for twelve long years. And until Robinson was signed, Campanella could not dream of a big league career. He forever remained grateful that he was given his chance just in time.

My father never spoke about his life in combat, never uttered a word about the enemy he faced and with two Bronze stars and a couple of Purple Hearts on his discharge papers, he must have fought the enemy fiercely and directly. But his children and theirs grew up hearing story after story about his pride in being Jewish and his refusal to let an antisemitic comment slide. Like Robinson — or so he taught us — you don’t put up with assaults on your pride or attacks on your people.

But that was not the only message told by father to son in the confusing 1950s.  In my New York Yeshiva on the tony Upper East Side, we were taught that a yarmulke was an indoor garment. Hats were to be worn in the street. Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, its formidable founder, wanted to show that Orthodoxy could be first rate, not only a practice restricted to poor accented Jews. Philip Roth was writing of Eli the Fanatic, the fearsome Jew who practiced his piety in public and embarrassed his assimilating neighbors. When our fathers also told us not to make waves, to celebrate how far we had come, to remember with gratitude the opportunities we had been afforded, we thought of Roy Campanella. Ever thankful, he could not be angry. So I did as I was told by my father; we flew the flag on Memorial Day or July 4^th so the non-Jewish neighbors would know that Jews are patriotic, and I had to mow the lawn so that they could see that Jews are proud of manual labor.

First generation Jews, Italians, and Irish and other ethnics understood Campy. The talented sons of pushcart peddlers and small merchants, of factory workers mechanics and machinists, were grateful to get their chance to attend City College, let alone Harvard or Yale. So while my father and Minnie rooted for Jackie; more often than not, they played the racial and ethnic game like Campy. Jackie was respected, Campy was loved.

Our loyalty to the Dodgers was ethnic. We Dodger fans never understood how the Yankees could arouse anyone’s passion. They were the WASPs, the prep school kids, corporate types! When the rich get richer, there is no drama, it offers little inspiration. Rooting for the Yankees in the 1950s was like rooting for General Motors. You respected the pin stripers’ class, elegance and talent, but how could you get passionate about them? They were the men in the gray suits–cold, ruthless, efficient. We understood Bronx Jews who rooted for them, they had to cheer for their neighbors. It was expected that Manhattan Jews from “certain” neighborhoods and the Jews of Westchester and Connecticut would root for their own kind.

But Brooklyn was for those who aspired to greatness and were but one or two games away. The Yankees won five pennants in a row, not once but twice.  Brooklyn was two games away from greatness. Had they won the last games of the 1950 and 1951 season, they too, like the Yankees, would have won five pennants in a row, but they lost the last game of the 1950 season to the Philadelphia Phillies and Bobby Thompson hit. the “shot  heard round the world,” ended the Dodger’s 1951 hopes.

We learned Jewish theology from the Dodgers. Twice a year, at the end of Yom Kippur and the conclusion of the Passover Seder, Jews chant “Next Year in Jerusalem.” Each year – except for that magical year of 1955, pious Dodger rooters called out “wait ‘til next year.”

We learned tribal loyalty from the Dodgers. Brooklyn Jews thought of the Giants as the primitive goyim – not polite gentiles — evil men set for a pogrom. Dodger-rooting Blacks thought of the Giants — even with Willie Mays — as ”white,” ready to dominate, destroy, rape, pillage. Catholics thought of the Giants as Protestants, renegades, rebellious, destructive. The Giants knew no shame. When Walter O’Malley traded Robinson, traded a legend, to the Giants at the end of the 1956 season, Robinson walked away from the game. He retired rather than don the hated uniform – the man would not, could not, convert.

And we learned Jewish history from the Dodgers, who went into exile after the 1957 season. The Dodgers followed the population shift westward and made the National Pastime into a coast-to-coast game. Prior to their departure, the furthest west a baseball had to travel was St. Louis, Chicago,  or Cincinnati. The Dodgers were not the first to abandon their city, the Boston Braves had moved to Milwaukee, the St. Louis Browns had gone to Baltimore where they became Orioles, but the Dodgers were different. They had been making money. The team had enjoyed fan support and, above all, the Dodgers were Brooklyn, inexplicably linked to the borough and its citizens.  It was betrayal, abandonment of the faithful.

Yom Kippur 5774

By Joel Grossman

When I was visiting my mother in Israel this past summer, her brother, my uncle Shimmy, also came by to visit. My Uncle Shimmy is a retired chazzan, and led High Holiday services at various shuls for many years. He told me the following story. One year, just before Kol Nidrei, the rabbi came up to him and said: “Shimmy, if I have done anything to hurt you during this past year, if I have said anything that might have offended you, if I mistreated you in any way during the past year, Shimmy. . . Get Over It!” So in that spirit I say to all of you in the kahal today, if I have done anything during this past year to offend you or hurt you in any way, please, GET OVER IT! Well, actually, please forgive me.

I want to note at the outset four inspirations for my dvar torah this morning. First is an article that appeared in the New Yorker this past January which concerned, among other things, whether the New York Jets football team was wise to keep quarterback Mark Sanchez. The second inspiration was the dvar torah given two weeks ago by Sal Litvak on parshat Nitzavim. Sal focused on a portion of Nitzavim, Chapter 30 of D’varim, that has always been a text that speaks to me, and Sal’s dvar torah was moving and meaningful. The third inspiration was a short dvar torah by Rabbi Matthew Berkowitz which appeared in the shul’s bulletin on the same Shabbat as Sal’s dvar torah, and which led me to a fascinating commentary by the Ramban, Nachmanides, that is at the center of my words today. And finally, the fourth inspiration is the first sentence of this morning’s Haftorah, from the book of Isaiah Chapter 57 verse 14 in which the prophet says, in God’s name: “solu solu panu derech harimu michshol miderech ami” meaning: build up, build up a highway, clear a road, remove all obstacles from the road of my people. In particular I will focus on the words harimu michshol– “remove all obstacles.”

Before going into these sources, I want to raise one question which has puzzled me: why doesn’t the yearly cycle of Torah readings, beginning with the first parsha in Bereshit and ending with the last parsha in D’varim, commence on Rosh Hashono? After all, it’s a new year, why not start the annual reading of the Torah then? Why wait for 3 weeks until Simchat Torah—a holiday not mentioned anywhere in the Torah– to conclude D’varim and begin Bereshit? I will come back to that question later.

Let me start with the very inspiring and moving words set forth in Chapter 30 of D’varim. Because this is a long passage, I will for the most part give you only the English translation, reading excerpts from verses 1 through 14:

“When all these things befall you—the blessing and the curse that I have set before you–…and you return to the Lord your God –v’shavta ad adosehm elokecha–…then the Lord will restore your fortunes and take you back in love. …then the Lord your God will open up your heart and the hearts of your children to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul –b’chol levavcha uv’chol nafshecha–. …For this commandment–ki hamitzvah ha’zot–which I command you this day is not too baffling for you nor is it beyond reach. Lo bashamayim hu…it is not in the heavens, that you should say who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us that we may observe it… v’lo me’ever layam hu—and it is not beyond the sea that you should say who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us that we may observe it. No, the thing is very close to you b’ficha u’vilvavcha la’asoto—it is in your mouth and in your heart to observe it.”

I found Sal’s discussion of these verses to be quite wonderful. The Torah, Jewish law, the great body of Jewish wisdom in the Talmud, the decision to live a Jewish life, may seem so hard to grasp, so intimidating, so far away from our own reality. But the Torah tells us lo bashamayim hu—it’s not up in heaven, v’lo me’ever layam hu—it’s not across the sea, ki karov elecha hadavar me’od—this thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart. Those two phrases—lo bashamayim hu—it’s not up in heaven, v’lo me’ever layam hu—and it’s not across the sea, ki karov elecha hadavar me’od—this thing is VERY close to you—have always been moving and comforting to me. And I have always viewed them as a reference to our entire religion. We are not a religion where only the priests or the clergy have access to the holy books and rituals. The Torah and all of Judaism is open to all of us, and it’s not far away, it’s very close to us.

After enjoying Sal’s dvar torah, I picked up the shul bulletin and read Rabbi Berkowitz’ dvar torah, which led me to the source, the Ramban’s commentary on the Torah. I came away with a whole new understanding of this passage, one that is particularly appropriate for Yom Kippur. The Ramban focuses on the literal meaning of the phrase ki hamitzvah hazot—for this commandment—is not in the heavens, or across the sea. He says that this passage is not about Judaism in general or the Torah in general but is about one specific mitzvah. And that mitzvah is t’shuva. The Ramban focuses on the very beginning of the passage in which God says “v’shavta ad hashem elockecha”—when you return to God, that is, when you do t’shuva. Since the passage begins, in effect, when you do t’shuva, and goes on to refer “hamitzvah hazot” to “this mitzvah” the passage is about t’shuva.

Let me mention for a moment the first verse of this morning’s haftorah, which I quoted early. Build a road and clear all obstacles from the road for my people—harimu michshol miderech ami. Clearly this passage refers to the obstacles to doing t’shuva. And there are many. Doing t’shuva can require an enormous effort to remove obstacles, obstacles which completely block our path.

One such obstacle is decribed in the New Yorker article which discusses the New York Jets and their quarterback, Mark Sanchez. The article, which is the financial column by James Surowicki, discusses what are referred to as “sunk costs.” As Surowicki explains, “sunk costs are hard to ignore… we often end up sticking with something when we’d be better off cutting our losses—sitting through a bad movie, say, just because we’ve paid for the ticket.” As an example he says that some people keep a foundering project alive because there’s always a chance that it will right itself. He tells us that some executives in the corporate world keep pursuing what is clearly a bad project because if they gave up the project it would be an admission that the project shouldn’t have been done in the first place. And of course, the writer uses Mark Sanchez as a prime example. Sanchez was a great college player, and he was drafted by the Jets with high expectations and a high salary. But he didn’t live up to those expectations. In March 2012, after he had a bad season, the Jets nevertheless renewed Sanchez’s contract for another year, guaranteeing him more than $8 million whether he plays or not. Of course, since this article was written last January, Surowicki could not have known that in fact the Jets would decide to start rookie Geno Smith instead of Sanchez, who would occupy a very expensive seat on the bench.

I found this article to be a wonderful illustration of what the prophet Isaiah meant when he said harimu michshol miderech ami—remove obstacles from the path of my people, obstacles to t’shuva. The obstacles have been placed there by us, and only we can remove them. Like the executive who planned a project, or like a football team that decided to renew the contract of a failing player, we have our own sunk costs. We have invested so much in who we are that it seems almost impossible for us to want to change.

This is where the Ramban’s understanding of the passage in Nitzavim is so powerful. Each of us has a vision of the person who we are right now, and each of us has a vision of the person who we want to be. Sometimes it seems that the second vision—the vision of who we want to be—is so far away it is hopeless to even try. We have our sunk costs, we are who we are, and we will not change. But, according to the Ramban, the Torah tells us that this mitzvah—the mitzvah of t’shuva—is not far from us. Let us go a little bit beyond the pshat, the literal meaning of the text. Lo bashamayim hu–That person who we want to be is not in the heavens. V’lo me’ever layam hu—and that person who we want to be is not across the sea. That person who we want to be is very very close to us. Harimu michshol miderech ami—let’s clear out the obstacles, the sunk costs, the overwhelming power of inertia, and the almost impossible task of saying “I was wrong.” “I need to cut my losses and move on.”

While that new person, that new vision of who we want to be seems so far away and unachievable, it’s not far at all. It’s very close. In fact, the Torah says, it’s b’ficha u’ vilvavcha la’asoto– it’s in our mouths and it’s in our hearts to do it. It’s already there. We have the tools, all we have to do is to use them.

It’s in our mouths—we can ask others for forgiveness, and we can tell others that we forgive them. Just as we have used our mouths to utter profanities and to hurt others we can use our power of speech to sing words of praise, to comfort others, to praise others. It’s not far from us, it’s right here inside us, la’asoto—we just have to do it. And just as we have used our hearts to love money, to love fame and glory, to love movie stars and baseball teams, so too we can use our hearts to love those around us, to love those we don’t even know but who need our help, and to love God. It’s not far from us. It’s right here inside us la-asoto—we can do it.

Let me conclude by going back to the question of why the Torah cycle ends and then re-starts on Simchat Torah, after the Yamim Noraim, and not with the beginning of the New Year. Right now in the Torah we are reading about the children of Israel, who have assembled to hear Moshe Rabbeinu’s final words. He is old, and God has told him that he will die soon, before the people enter the land of Canaan. The people are poised just outside the land, and they must be anxious. All they have known is slavery in Egypt and wandering in the desert. They have no idea what this new land will be like. In fact, 10 out of 12 spies told them it would be a disaster. And perhaps most terrifying, their leader, Moshe, has told them that he isn’t coming into the land with them. So Moshe takes this last opportunity to instruct them. He warns them of the consequences of abandoning God’s laws and entices them to follow the laws with the promise of great rewards. But most of all he tells them lo bashamayim hu—all that God asks of you is not far away.

Why do we read this story at this time of year? Because the children of Israel poised at the entrance to the new land is in so many ways just like us, poised to enter a new year, a year of unknown events and unknown challenges. We say in the U’Netaneh Tokef prayer mi yichye u’mi yamut, who will live and who will die, who will be raised up and who will be brought down? Our lives in 5774 may not be as different from our lives in 5773 as the children of Israel’s lives in Canaan as compared to their lives wandering in the desert. But we share with them an uneasiness, an anxiety as we face the new year, as we try to transform the person who we are to the person who we want to be. Let us be comforted, as presumably they were, by the words of Moshe Rabbeinu—lo bashamayim hu, that person is not up in heaven, v’lo me’ever layam hu—that person is not across the sea—ki b’ficha u’vilvavcha—that person is right here, in our mouths and in our hearts. And finally that last and most difficult word—la’asoto—to do it. The tools are there, within our reach. All we need to do is to do it.

Gmar chatima tova

Kol Nidre 5774

by Rabbi Ilana Grinblat

Tonight, on the holiest night of the Jewish year, we stand before God, stripped of our comforts – without food and drink. We don’t even have a text. As we don’t read Torah tonight, we don’t even have a story through which to connect to God. That’s because the text is our story. The text is our year. We look back at the year that has passed, and forward to our hopes and aspirations for the coming year.

Depending on what kind of year we’ve had, we come to this moment from a very different place. When it was a hard year of grief or struggle, we hope for a new, better chapter to begin and pray for strength. When it was a wonderful year, we are grateful for the year that has passed, and hope that joy will continue in the coming year. Much of the time, we come to this night somewhere in between. We have things that we’re struggling with, regrets, or sadness, and yet gratitude for our blessings.

For me, this past year has been one of those years – with real highs and real lows. When I look back on the year, I ask myself: what have I learned? I realize that there are three significant moments that stood out as spiritual lessons. All three of those moments took place because of people in this room – in the Library Minyan. And they actually all happened within one month of each other. They made me realize the blessing that this community is in my life. As an expression of my gratitude, I wanted to share with you what I learned this year from you and how you have collectively inspired me.

So tonight I’m going to share with you those three stories which I hope will inspire you as they did to me. In the Tanach, the word malachim (angels) – is often used to refer to people who impart an important message, and who are usually not referred to by name. Often, there are three of them. I too had threemalachim this year – people who shared important messages with me, and I too am not going to refer to them by name. The Torah readings for both days of Rosh Hashanah refer to a malach, so it’s a fitting time of year to ask ourselves: who have been our malachim this past year and what have they taught us?

I’ll share with you my three malachim tonight.

1) As background to the first story, let me tell you a little bit about my childhood. I went to Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, in Maryland, where our esteemed Rabbi Malkus has gone to lead. And yet I’m sure, the school has changed a lot since I went there.

When I was in the fifth grade, the girls in my grade divided themselves into groups. The popular girls formed a clique called the “Lavender Ladies.” If you were not popular enough to be in the Lavender Ladies, then some of the girls formed the “Purple People,” and “the Silver Satins.” These spin off groups worked for the Lavender Ladies. I wasn’t cool enough to be in any of these groups. So at recess, the silver satins would stand at different parts of the playground and tell me that I wasn’t allowed to go on those parts of the playground because it belonged to the Lavendar Ladies. My middle school years were lonely, but thankfully my parents let me switch to another school for high school instead.

Fast forward to three years ago, I got a phone call out of the blue from a woman named Shira who went to Jewish day school with me. She had become a rabbi. I assumed that the context of the phone call was that she wanted to connect as colleagues. However, a few minutes of schmoozing into the phone call, she explained that there was a different reason for her call. She had run into my father (who is friends with her family) in Washington. My dad asked her how she liked our day school, and she said she really liked it. My dad responded: “Ilana hated it so much that we pulled her out. There was a group there called the Lavender Ladies that made her miserable.” What my dad didn’t realize was that Shira was the head of the Lavender Ladies. So Shira had called to say: ‘It’s Elul. The high holidays are coming, so I wanted to say I’m sorry.’ I was surprised, but told her not to worry about it. It was a long time ago.

Now, fast forward three years to this year. In March, I got an email from my stepmother that a friend from the Library Minyan had posted an article on her Facebook page that she thought I would want to see. The person (who I’ll call angel #1) had simply posted the article because she thought it was a powerful article – not realizing that she knew the people in the story. The article was called: “I was a mean girl: before I was a rabbi, I was a Lavender Lady.” The article recounts (without our names) Shira’s conversation with my father, how she lost sleep that night, how she thinks of me often, and how she’s trying to teach her daughter to be kinder than she was when we were kids.

More even than the phone call, what impacted me about the article was that three years after her encounter with my father, Shira was still reflecting on her behavior as a child. This gave me a chance to email Shira, thank her for the article and offer her forgiveness in a way that I couldn’t when I was surprised on the phone. Her article created a measure of healing in me about a dark chapter of my life. I realized that I had been heard, and my feelings had mattered. Without realizing it, my first angel was able to impact healing within me and between Shira and me.

A few lessons that come out of this story for me:

The first is the power of the Internet. We often talk about the power of the Internet for bad and there’s plenty of lashon hara (degrading speech) on the Internet. We don’t talk as much about the power of the Internet for good, as an instrument of Torah and of healing. With a simple click of the mouse, we have the power to bring healing to those we don’t even realize need it most.

This reminds me of the Shofar. When blowing a shofar, one blows into the small end, and the sound comes out the big end. The noise that you make to blow a shofar is a small sound, but it comes out louder. That’s why the shofar is the symbol of this season. It teaches us that small actions can have a big impact. We can awaken and heal people’s hearts who we don’t even realize we are reaching. My father had no idea what impact his one sentence remark would make on Shira; my first angel had no idea that posting the article on her Facebook page would have such an impact on me. The message of the Shofar is: Don’t underestimate the positive power of the smallest action.

The second lesson that comes out of this story is about the power of our tradition. If this story didn’t happen in a Jewish context, Shira could have certainly called me to say she was sorry. But our tradition made it so much easier. She could say: It’s the High Holiday season, and therefore I wanted to call. Our tradition gave her an excuse to call and gave us a vocabulary to make up with one another – which is what this season is all about.

I want you to imagine for a moment: What if everyone in this room (within the next two weeks before this holiday season concludes) made one phone call– for some kind of slight we made – whether it was recent or twenty years ago. Imagine how much healing could ensue.

Actually the telephone receiver is the same shape as the shofar. Each one of us has the power to make a big difference with smallest action. Let’s follow Shira’s example and pick up the phone.

2) The first story was about the Internet. This second story is about the power of the spoken word. This story took place at a Library Minyan bar mitzvah. Guests came from all over; the occasion was a reunion of old friends. During lunch I sat with several friends—one from here and a mutual friend who was visiting from out of town. I was seated a few seats away from these friends, so while it was clear to everyone that I could hear them, I wasn’t part of the conversation. My friend was there with her new baby, and I guess the topic of having children came up.

The friend from out of town (who I’ll call Angel #2) recounted the difficulty she’d had in conceiving her children and said, “We normally take it for granted that whenever one wants to have a baby, then you can, but that’s not the case. Actually it’s a miracle. Getting pregnant is a miracle. Carrying the baby to term is a miracle, and every year that they continue to be healthy is a miracle too.”

This angel’s words stayed with me, and during subsequent struggles, I found myself returning to her words and found that they served to snap my life back into perspective.

In her recent memoir, Maya Angelou described a similar moment in her life.

Maya Angelou recounts that as a young, single mom, she once got entirely overwhelmed. She went to see her voice teacher Willie, who gave her a pad and told her to write down your blessings. He said: “Write down: I can hear; think of all the millions of people all over the world who cannot hear a choir, a symphony or their own babies crying. Write ‘I can hear: Thank God.’ Then write down that you can see this pad, and think of all the people around the world who cannot see a waterfall or flowers blooming or their loved ones’ face. Write ‘I can see – thank God.’ Then write down that you can read. Think of the millions of people around the world who cannot read the news of the day or a letter from home.” Maya Angelou filled up the yellow pad with her blessings, and she calmed down.

Just as Maya Angelou made her list that day, this Yom Kippur is a good time to take stock and make our own mental list of our blessings. This community and its many angels are surely high on my list.

On Rosh Hashanah, we blow the Shofar 100 times each day, which correspond to the 100 blessings that we are supposed to say every day. Perhaps that’s why we blow the Shofar often on Rosh Hashanah and not on Yom Kippur until the very end. On Yom Kippur, we realize that we’re the Shofar. The Shofar is actually shaped like human esophagus and mouth. Our words go further than we thought. My second angel wasn’t even speaking to me. Neither of us could have known how much her words would mean to me. We all have the power of shofar every time we speak – in our casual conversations – to awaken other’s hearts and remind us of our blessings.

3) The third story is about direct speech. In the other stories, the people didn’t intend to communicate with me. In this story, someone spoke to me directly.

In March, I was asked to lead the Musaf service. Musaf is just a few pages long, and it isn’t hard for me to do. I was asked to lead a couple days before, and I thought nothing of it. When I lead Musaf, it wasn’t special in any way. I didn’t prepare or find new melodies or do anything different with it. Afterwards, an older gentleman came up to me, and said: ‘You lead so beautifully. Where I come from in Europe women were never allowed to lead services, and it was just so wonderful to hear you.’

I considered this a spiritual turning point in my year because he gave me historical perspective on that moment. What seemed to me like no big deal was actually a huge deal in the context of Jewish history. I was raised in an Egalitarian synagogue; I lead the whole service at my bat mitzvah. To me, it was always a given that I could do that, but if I had been born any earlier or into a different community, it would not have been a given at all. The fact that I got to lead Musaf or that I get to speak to you tonight is an enormous blessing.

More broadly, the fact that we get to be here tonight, assemble and pray without being afraid for our safety is an enormous privilege in scope of Jewish history and contemporary world. Just as my second angel reminded me what a miracle my family is, this third angel reminded me what a privilege it is to be able to participate in our faith.

What I learned from this story is that while I need to pray with people my own age (who have kids to play with my kids), I also need to pray with older people so that they can share with me their life’s wisdom and their historical and spiritual perspective. This interaction with this gentleman reminded me how special the Library Minyan is. Nowadays, when there are many services at once in a synagogue, what often happens is that people separate by age, and each age group prays in a different area. The treasure of Library Minyan is that it’s a place where young and old pray together.

The most powerful service for me this year was when Miriam Elkins gave a drash about Israel Independence Day and how she felt when she was a child when the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948. Then Hannah Lande (who is in eighth grade) and her mother Mandy led Musaf, followed by the little kids who sang Adon Olam. We really had the feeling of dor l’dor, of generation to generation participating.

Whereas synagogue is a place to find people who have gone through what you have gone through, synagogue is also a place to find people who have gone through things you’ll never go through – who have lived in different times and places and who can provide perspective and help you appreciate the miracles in your life.

Some of you know that I gave a sermon last year where I gave a reading list of biblical novels. Recently, I’ve been reading memoirs and I made a list for you of these and the holiday on which I would recommend to read them. This change of genre began with Tom Fields-Meyer’s book, Following Ezra. I had known Tom for years at synagogue, and I was blown away by the wisdom of his story. This experience made me want to learn as much as I can from those around me. Looking around the room, I see collection of wisdom and life experience. My hope for the coming year is that we may learn from each others’ stories.

The stories I shared with you today all point to the same conclusion. We are all Shofars to one another. As we enter this New Year, share the Torah that’s in your heart. Listen to the Torah in other peoples’ hearts – whether in books, the Internet, the phone or by talking face to face. Let’s be angels to one another.

The high holiday liturgy teaches that: “B’shofar Gadol Yitakah v’kol dimmamah dakah yishamah: The great Shofar is sounded and a still, small voice is heard.” Actually, the reverse is also true. A small voice can be spoken and a Shofar blast can be heard. A word of wisdom, quietly spoken at Kiddush, on Facebook or at lunch can become a Shofar blast which awakens our hearts. In this coming year, may it be that Kol dimmamah dakah yitakah v’shofar gadol yishamah– A still small voice is spoken and a big shofar blast is heard. And let us say Amen.

Memoir List

Sukkot: Hope Will Find You by Rabbi Naomi Levi
Simchat Torah (or Father’s Day): Following Ezra by Tom Fields-Meyer
Chanukah: We Plan, God Laughs, by Rabbi Sherre Hirsch
Passover: Sacred Housekeeping by Harriet Rossetto
Yom Hashoah: How to Survive Anything by Rabbi David & Yetta Kane
Yom Ha’atsmaut: The 188^th Crybaby Brigade by Joel Chasnoff
Mother’s Day: Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou
Shavuot: Blessings and Baby Steps by Rabbi Ilana Grinblat
Tisha Ba’av and the Weeks of Consolation: Faith Unravels by Rabbi Daniel Greyber
Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur: The Holy Thief by Rabbi Mark Borovitz

Rosh Hashanah 5774: Writing Ourselves Into the Story

By Rabbi Miriyam Glazer

I’d like to begin today by sharing a poem with you, one that touches me deeply every time I read it. In “Remembering our Fathers,” Chava Pinchas Cohen weaves her own experience and memories into the core themes of our Rosh Hashanah Musaf. The poet wasn’t in shul for the holiday; she was in the delivery room, giving birth. To convey to you a sense of the rich texture of the poem but also so that non-Hebrew speakers can grasp it too, I’ll interweave some of the Hebrew with the English translation:

On Rosh Hashanah, I didn’t bow
My head for Malkhuyot, I was giving birth, the Melech was there alone.
I wrapped myself in Zichronot.. My father, my father –
Like a knight, he carried me on his shoulders
To see through the window of the Sephardic synagogue
At the end of Seven Mills street near the Yarkon
To be part of the kahal in white, breathing,
at the moment of Tru’ah
Blowing, contracting –
the hour of opening
And closing.

In the yard, flowering jasmine,
Mandarins and guava bore the fall with simple grace.
Rain has no fragrance; it’s the earth that gives forth
The smell of roots and of rot.
The rose petals flowing onto the airy soil
already knew that even if the wind sweeps away signs
Remembrance will come for goodness,
L’khayn, l’chesed, u’vikar l’rahamim,
grace, kindness, love, and above all,
tender mercy.

Did my father know then
Not to leave a child alone
Alongside a window noisy
From the blasts of the shofar within?
Did he know?

In a sudden moment of Elul
My father left –
And even when I have turned against him
My thoughts dwell on him still.

And so – though it’s not in the world’s order –
So many years later
At the moment of nursing [my baby]
I yearn for him still.

There it all is, the intimate integration of our human experience with the words, images, language of our sacred service, the finding of a pathway to deep truths about oneself, one’s longings, capacity to love, abiding sense of loss — in the powerful tropes of Zichronot – Memories, Remembrance — and Shofarot,the breath blown through the shofar to create a cry piercing our hearts and reaching to the heavens, like a mother crying out in the pain of labor, as her baby struggles to be born. Even when I have turned against him my thoughts dwell on him still, God says of us, God’s people, in Zichronot; in those words from the prophet Jeremiah, the poet finds language for the knotted complexity of her emotions about her own father.

If we are deeply attentive, if we allow ourselves to be as entirely present in our prayers, as entirely vulnerable as a woman in labor, we too can find truths of our being in Zichronot, the center of our Rosh Hashanah Musaf. We too can find truths about our own remembering and our being remembered, truths about the powerful call to Remember, and perhaps, too, truths about forgiveness.

Zichronot draws us into the heart of these Yamim Noraim because Remembering is the pulsebeat of the Jewish experience.

As Jews, Abraham Joshua Heschel reminds us, we are not commanded to believe, we are commanded “to remember.”

Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy.
Remember what Amalek did to you.

In the words of the psalmist, By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.

And, insistently, over and over again like a refrain, “Remember you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

169 times in our Bible, a version of the word Remember appears.

Paradoxically, however, as historian Yosef Haim Yerushalmi has written, our ability to remember is “the most fragile and capricious of our faculties” (as those of us who have reached a certain age undoubtedly can verify).

How do we deal with that paradox? On the one hand, we’re called upon, commanded, to remember, remember, remember, while, on the other, as vulnerable human beings our memories can be so askew, mere illusions, and we may so willfully fahggedaboudit?

How do we meet the challenge to make central to our way of being what is actually so fragile, so capricious, about us?

I believe that that our poets can show us the way …

For our contemporary poet, it was finding her own story of remembrance of childhood, loss, and love in the language of the Rosh Hashanah Musaf.

For a medieval poet, whose name has been lost to us, it was a way of seeing the Jewish story itself.

“A fire kindles within me as I recall – when I left Egypt,” he writes,

“But I raise laments as I remember – when I left Jerusalem…

Moses sang a song that would never be forgotten – when I left Egypt,

Jeremiah mourned and cried out in grief, when I left Jerusalem.”

I left Egypt. I left Jerusalem.

What a profoundly different conception of the “I” our medieval poet offers us from the one we are most familiar with. American individualism and the linear historical paradigm of modernity – our intellectually-constructed separation of past, present, future — collaborate to create an image for us of a supposedly unique, bounded, self, ultimately on its own, with its short-lived history, its desires, anxieties, disappointments, triumphs.

Yet that sense of self is just a self-created illusion. To begin with we are all “a little world made cunningly of elements,” the self-same elements that compose the stars. Every human cell embodies the history of the universe, the whole human story. We share 99% of our genes with chimpanzees – and 25% with bananas!

And just as we, as humans, share our fundamental make-up with other living creatures (and fruits!), so, as our medieval poet suggests so movingly, every Jew, whether Jew by birth or Jew by choice, embodies the whole story of our people. I left Egypt. I left Jerusalem.

And that leads us to the paradox and the power at the heart of our Musaf. For the Jewish story is not linear; it is not what we think of as “history.” We – not merely our ancestors – were slaves unto Pharoah in Egypt. We were brought out with a “strong hand and an outstretched arm.” We stood at Sinai – and every once in a while we meet someone and are absolutely sure it is they who was standing right next to us. Our modern selves imagine us as time-bound; our Jewish souls know better.

And so our liturgist, our poet of the holy, in the Zichronot verses gathers together the texts of our tradition to depict the God we pray to today as Ultimate Reality, Vehicle and Container of infinite memory, knowing all that was, and is and will be – every deed of every creature, “every mystery from the moment of creation.” But lest we say that such a God is way too far away from us, way too abstract, the poet remarkably infuses that image with immense compassion: drawing on verses from Torah, Psalms, and Prophets, the poet evokes God as One who remembers not only Noah, but the faultless animals locked up so long in an ark; the God who hears our “agonized cry” as oppressed slaves; the God who in the vision of our prophet Jeremiah admits that loving is not easy, anger is real, and compassion matters.. Even when I speak against him…my heart reaches out to him, say the lines.

God remembers.

And so the lines of Zichronot implicitly call upon us to remember as well, to write ourselves into the story. How, when, where, do we act with “immense compassion’ for the innocent, the most vulnerable, the desperate survivor?

“God has made wondrous works to be remembered,” says Zichronot – what sense of wonder, what moments of wonder, what appreciation for God’s wondrous works, do we remember? Let us call upon them, see them, celebrate them, fill our hearts with gratitude for the blessing of them, praise the Creator of the Universe for them.

Remembering the “chesed” of our youth as a people, God wrestles with the maelstrom of feelings for us, anger, compassion, and yes, sweet love – When do we remember such chesed? When have we opened ourselves to affection, to gentle lovingkindness, to trust? What does it take for us to overcome anger in our own lives, let our heart become vulnerable, and reach out in love? How, when, where, do we act with “immense compassion”?

Do we love others with the fullness our liturgy portrays God loving us?

And just as vital as the love is the passion to help the oppressed. God heard the cry of the slaves. How, when, where, do we hear the “agonized cry” of the millions of slaves in the world today, and what actions do we take to help free them? The cry of the the 1.6 million children homeless every year in the United States, the 82,000 people homeless every night in our city?

Let us write ourselves into the Zichronot story. Let us, too, Remember all that we are and can be as fully alive beings on this planet earth, as covenanted Jews.

In the words of the Baal Shem Tov, “Redemption lies in remembering.”

AhareiMot

By Barry Rosenblatt

Open this PDF.

And the old shall see visions Parashat Va’ era

By Rabbi Miriyam Glazer, January 17, 2015

And the old shall dream dreams, and the youth shall see visions,
And our hopes shall rise up to the sky.
We must live for today; we must build for tomorrow.
Give us time, give us strength, give us life.
(Debby Friedman)

Parashat Va’era begins in the middle of a conversation – more like an argument, actually. The Egyptians have intensified their demand on the Hebrew slaves, and the people, in turn, have complained bitterly to Moses and Aaron – “May God punish you!” they cry out.  At the end of Shmot, the previous parashah,Moses himself cries out to God,

Oh Lord, why did you bring harm upon this people? Why did you send me?

And our portion begins with the continuation of God’s response, and the recitation of the promises we return to each year at our Passover seders:

Say, therefore, to the Israelite people:  I am YHVH,
I will free you from the suffering imposed by the Egyptians
I will deliver you from slavery to them.
I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment
And I will take you as My people, and I will be your God,
And you shall know I am YHVH your God who freed you from the burdens of the Egyptians.
I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob… I am YHVH.

Dutifully, Moses repeats these promises to the people.  But they are too closed down, too depressed, too dispirited to even be able to hear Moses:  the Torah tells us they suffer from kotzer ruach.

Their spirits, crushed.  Constrained.  Not enough breath, not enough spirit, to breathe in the possibility of a new reality, a different truth, a possibility of change.

“They are not used to hearing anything other than the calls of their taskmasters and the groans of their own weary muscles,” writes Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg.   “This very inability to hear anything behond the very personal and immediate constricted quality of thir state keeps them enslaved, impervious to the possibility of an expansion of their awareness and their lives.”

And, indeed, as Rabbi Weinberg suggests, that description of “kotzer ruach” evokes a different kind of physical limitation as well – the sense of limitation that can happen to us too, as we age.  Our aches and pains can take over our attention; fatigue, in Rabbi Weinberg’s words, can
“lodge in our bones…”

Exercise, a healthy diet —  or even those more expensive options  botox…juvederm… and the rest of the plastic surgeon’s palette —  won’t mask the reality that

the old gray mare just ain’t what she used to be.   

Yet as Abraham Joshua Heschel has written, “The aged thinks of himself as belonging to the past.  But it is precisely the openness to the present that he must strive for.”

It is that message that our parashah comes so vividly to teach us.

How does it do so?

Let us go back to the story. The narrator interrupts the flow of the story to recite the long lineage of Moses and Aaron, and his recitation culminates with the words: “It is the same Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, Bring forth the Israelites from the land of Egypt….”  But Moses’ response to God’s demand was to immediately cite his limitations – why he couldn’t possibly carry out God’s demand.

But God, of course, is unrelenting  – Moses and Aaron will do it, they will play their role in God’s plan to redeem the Israelites from slavery to freedom.  But then, telling us that God refuses to take “no” for an answer, the narrator goes on to add a most unexpected line (7:6):

This Moses and Aaron did as  YHVH commanded them, so they did.  Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83, when they made their demand on Pharoah.

What is the point of telling us their age?

The medieval commentator Ibn Ezra, noting that this is the only time that the Bible interrupts the flow of the narration to tell us the age of a prophet, explains:

“It attributes greatness to Moses and Aaron beyond all other prophets for only to them did God appear, only to them was the Torah given…while all other prophets either predict the future or chastise behavior in the present….”

In other words, by telling us their age, the Torah is suggesting how  elevated in stature the brothers Moses and Aaron are.  The Torah is paying tribute to them.

It is not the young prince of Egypt but the more wizened and “wise-nd”  80 -year old and his 83-year-old  brother who will lead us  across the sea from the narrow place of Mitzrayim, the land of constricted consciousness, of shortness of breath, of being stuck in our own old ways, of being fearful of change –  across the sea, which will miraculously cease to be a hindrance once we have the courage to step into it.

And who knows how old the even older sister of Moses, Miriam, was  – 86 years old? 90? 95? — as she led the women in triumphant dance with drums and cymbals on the other side!

There are many older men and women in America today. In 2010, 40 million people age 65 and over lived in the United States, accounting for 13 percent of the total population. 40 million in 2010. The oldest-old population (those age 85 and over) grew from just over 100,000 in 1900 to 5.5 million in 2010.  In  15 years, 2030, the older population is predicted to grow from 35 million to 72 million and representing nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. population.

One of the most beautiful psalms in our liturgy speaks to that elderhood:

The just are as fertile as a date palm
And like a cedar on Mount Lebanon, they grow tall.
Planted in the House of Adonai, in the courtyard of our God,
They blossom –

They are fresh even in old age,
Fruitful
Luxuriant –
Telling that Adonai is true,
My Rock,
Flawless.

The psalm’s meaning becomes even more beautiful when we realize the significance of that image of a “date palm.”  Date palms are signs of an oasis, of water in the desert.  No part of a date palm is unused: Their fruits provide nourishment full of healthy energy; their pits make camel feed; their branches make shelter, and baskets to carry goods….

May we too, like the date palm, remain fresh even in old age, fruitful, luxuriant, in the gifts we can offer others, open to the present.

In the words of a contemporary writer:

“There will come a time when you believe everything is finished.  That will be the beginning.” (Louis L’Amour)