Parshat Vayiggash

Sermon Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. Biblical commentators all struggle with a startling question in the story of Joseph and his brothers. It is not hard to understand why Joseph’s brothers are angry with him. He is a spoiled boy who seems to take delight in tattling to his father all the deficiencies of his brothers. He has dreams of being the family ruler in spite of his being the second to last child, with ten other brothers ahead of him in line to lead the family. That the brothers only sell him into slavery and not kill him is only a quirk of fate. Almost any one of the brothers (except maybe Reuben and Judah) were ready to murder the boy and murder his dreams as well.

3. Of the twenty-one years he will spend in Egypt, the sages say that he spent seven of those years as a slave in the house of Potipher. The next seven years he was in prison. Only in the final seven is he raised to the rank of ruler in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. Five of those years he prepared for the famine to come. At the end of the seventh year, his brothers return and he is set to have his vengeance. First he accuses the brothers of being spies, and imprisons his brother Simeon. Next he sets up Benjamin to make him look like an ungrateful thief. Unable to return to their father without his beloved Benjamin, Judah steps forward to plead on behalf of his youngest brother. And we see the results; Joseph and his brothers are reunited and all is forgiven.

4. So what is the big question? Why did Joseph wait so long to contact his father? When he was a slave and a prisoner for 14 years, we can understand why he never contacted Jacob. Even so, it seems as if he could have sent a message back to his father somehow. But certainly when he is raised to leadership, why does he not immediately send a servant to tell his father where he is and what has happened? If they had such a close bond, you would think that he would get word to Jacob as quickly as possible. Yet, for all of 21 years, there is no attempt by Joseph to contact his father.

5. The great Bible scholar, Nechama Leibowitz offers a striking answer. Joseph, sold into slavery is expecting his father, at any minute, to ride to his rescue and save him from his fate. Day after day he must have waited, thinking to himself that when Jacob comes, these people who are his masters will finally pay for the way they treat him. But as the years go by, Jacob never comes. Joseph becomes angry and bitter. Maybe he is thinking that the whole plot to sell Joseph into slavery was his father’s idea. After all, Jacob was the one who sent him on his ill fated mission to check up on his brothers. Maybe his father never really loved him at all. Slowly he stops waiting for his father and begins to plot his revenge should he ever get the chance to get even for all that they have done.

6. For 21 long years he has plotted what he would do to his family should they ever show up in Egypt. After all, Joseph’s great grandfather had come to Egypt during a famine. Joseph would wait until they were helpless and then he would have his revenge on all of them, Jacob, and all of is brothers, except of course, Benjamin, who was too small to be in on the plot. Benjamin was his only full brother, both the sons of Rachel. He would snatch Benjamin for himself and then have his revenge.

7. What changes Joseph’s mind? Why does he, in the end forgive his father and his brothers? It is true that Judah gives a heart wrenching speech designed to make even the hardest man cry, but, he also says something that shocks Joseph to his core. Judah mentions, for the first time, at the beginning of his speech, the fact that they all believe that Joseph is dead. That he was killed by a wild animal. I don’t think Joseph heard the rest of that speech. When he hears that Jacob has thought, all these years, that Joseph is dead, Joseph realizes why Jacob had never come looking for him. Joseph had assumed that they all hated him. But they never came looking because they thought he was dead. It was a possibility that Joseph had never considered. His anger disappears, his thoughts of vengeance dissolve and Joseph breaks down into tears.

8. “I am Joseph” he says at last. “I am not dead, you sent me away in anger but God clearly wanted me to be here to do good.” Joseph suddenly sees, for the first time, the hand of God in his life story. Everyone and everything had been a part of God’s plan to save the life of his family. The dreams, the slavery, the prison, all of it, just part of a destiny ordained by God. After 21 years of pain and hatred, Joseph finally finds the love in his family he has always wanted.

9. I like to tell this story because it is not just the story of Joseph and his brothers. It is our story as well. We experience difficult moments in our lives and we are quick to blame others for our struggles in life. We get angry; we rehearse how we will get even for the misdeeds that caused us so much hurt. Maybe we became estranged from our parents because they always wanted to control our lives. Maybe we are nursing a grudge with a brother or sister who was not there for us when we needed them. Maybe we have been hurt by our children because they seem to be so unconcerned about our welfare. Maybe we had a best friend who turned out to be unreliable. We can be just like Joseph. We are so sure we know all the answers, all the reasons why others have let the terrible things happen to us. And we review the hurt, day after day, to make sure that we will never be tempted to forgive them.

10. But like Joseph, we don’t always know all of the story. Maybe it is better sometimes that we don’t. If we really knew the fears our parents lived with; if we really understood the difficult decisions our brothers and sisters had to make; if we could understand the awful choices our own children have to make as they struggle to deal with issues in their own families; if only we could see how our best friend cried the day he realized that he could not help us in our time of need. . . Could we still carry so much bitterness in our hearts?

11. I have been a Rabbi long enough to know that there are some people who are unreliable and too self centered to think of anyone other than themselves. I can tell you that if you are itching for revenge against such people, you are wasting your time. They really don’t care about you or what you wish you could do to them.

12. So the real question that we need to contemplate as our secular year prepares to end and as 2012 is about to begin is “Why do we want to carry that kind of anger and hurt into the newyear?” Why should we think we understand everything when it is likely we understand nothing. We don’t really know the intentions of others and we certainly don’t know what God has planned for our lives. What if we judged others charitably, assuming good motivations rather than an evil plot against us? What if our anger is all about a misunderstanding? What if the others never really knew how much we were hurt? Because, if they really knew, they would have indeed come when we called.

13. Joseph’s troubles began with a multicolored coat. Maybe that is the metaphor that we are looking for. We naturally use our clothing to make ourselves look good. We can look at ourselves standing naked in the mirror, and find we are embarrassed about who we are and what we look like. We choose our clothes for the day to hide what we are ashamed of.

14. But our clothing can be more than just a cover for our embarrassment. Our bodies are also a gift from God. What we may see as signs of decline, wrinkles and gray hair, others see as signs of perseverance and wisdom. Joseph may have hidden his insecurity as a youngest child under the gift from his father, but when he is dressed royally again, this time by Pharaoh, he is ready to assume the responsibilities that come with the tunic. So too when we are ready to accept ourselves for who we are, we can wear our clothing as a statement of the strong inner person we have become. When we give up the garb of the “person who has been wronged” we can begin to wear a wardrobe of understanding and love.

15. Just because we have reacted to someone with anger, does not mean we have to be angry. Just because someone has been unkind or rude, we don’t have to give back to them in spades. We don’t need to understand why others do what they do to us. We need to love them anyway. Maybe they will come to repent the way they treated us, maybe not, but we will always be the one admired for our patience, our kindness and our concern. It is not about letting others take advantage of us, instead, we need to learn our lessons and move on with our life. Taking the anger into another year will not change the past nor will it let us heal. Maybe those others who hurt us don’t deserve our forgiveness, but we should forgive them anyway. If not for their sake, for the sake of our own peace of mind.

16. Let us wear the coat of menchlichite, of a kind, caring and compassionate human being. And let us resolve to wear it every day in the year ahead. Let us be guided in the new year not by anger but by understanding and love. In this way we can make the secular new year not only a good year, but a year of making ourselves and our world a better place. Let us forget the hurts of 2011 and concentrate on the ways we can heal the hurts of others. If we can just do this one thing, 2012 will be a great year indeed.

May God help us get past the anger and find the love in our hearts as we say ….

AMEN, SHABBAT SHALOM AND A HAPPY SECULAR NEW YEAR

Parshat Miketz

Sermon Saturday Morning

2011

1. SHABBAT SHALOM

2. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, my neighbors, on both sides of my house, got together and started putting up their Christmas lights. Lorraine always makes her house festive and beautiful without going over the top. This year, in exchange for help in putting up her own lights, she worked on my other neighbor’s house as well so I now have on both sides of my home beautiful reminders of the spirit of this holiday season.

3. You don’t have to go far to find homes lit up for the holiday season. Between now and January, many neighborhoods are beautifully decorated. This week, however, new decorations went up, decorations in honor of Hanukah. I know that there are some homes that go all out, putting up lights and displays in honor of our festival of lights. It makes a certain kind of sense to decorate our homes with lights at this time of year. Hanukah celebrates light during the darkest days of winter. On that one level alone it seems appropriate on Hanukah to “light up the night”.

4. Rabbi Lori Foreman, a colleague of mine in New York, once noted that there was a time, long before electric lighting, when people spent most of their nights in the dark. We are so used to having all the lights we need in our homes, but in the not too distant past, candles were just a small circle of light in the darkness. When the sun went down, candles would give people a chance to finish whatever they may be working on, but it was unusual to stay up late. Candlelight could not push back the darkness for long. People would just go to bed early and wake again at first light.

5. Hanukah was the major exception to this. The holiday may actually be older than the story of the Maccabees. There is a Midrash that the first human beings, Adam and Eve, got more and more concerned as the days grew shorter. They thought that perhaps the world was coming to an end; that eventually the sun would disappear never to return, leaving them and all the animals in perpetual darkness. Adam then lit a candle to bring some light back into the night. Each night he lit another candle and soon he noticed that the days were getting longer again. At first he thought that by lighting the candles, he had reminded to sun to come back to the world. Eventually he realized that the length of the days and nights were just part of the natural order of the world. He continued to light the candles, however, as a sign of anticipation of the return of light to the world.

6. Historically, Hanukah is a very complicated holiday. We like to think of these days as a commemoration of the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian Greeks. It is not that easy. The war the Maccabees fought was as much a battle against the Jewish people who had adopted the religion of the Greeks as much as it was against the army of Antiocus IV. It some ways it could be seen as a religious revival among the pious against those who had assimilated themselves into Greek culture.

7. On another level, Hanukah marks the beginning of a theocracy in Israel. For a thousand years, the house of David ruled in Jerusalem and the descendants of Aaron, served as priests in the Temple. The Hasmonian dynasty, begun by Judah Maccabee and established by his brother Simon after the war, was the first time the priests had taken on the kingship of the Jewish people. They easily succeeded in establishing Judaism as the official religion of the land, but they insisted that Judaism should be what they said it should be. The Hasmonian dynasty for example, was not supportive of what the Rabbis thought Judaism should be. Later Hasmonian kings, especially Alexander Jannai, persecuted the Rabbis. Many Rabbis were killed in these persecutions. Later Hasmonian kings engaged in a civil war that eventually lead to the hated Romans coming and taking over the country. No wonder later Rabbis were not very fond of Hanukah as a commemoration of the Hasmonian victory. The story of the jar of oil is a nice way of deflecting the meaning of the holiday away from the bad feelings the Rabbis had for the priest/kings of the Hasmonian dynasty.

8. Maybe Hanukah is also about Judaism delayed. The Temple was rededicated after being defiled by Antiocus. Long history taught the Jews that the standard re-consecration ceremony was usually done the week before Sukkot. Hanukah, with its eight days, could be a delayed celebration of Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. The eight days were seen as a familiar way to traditionally mark the renewal of the sacrificial service in the restored Temple.

9. In the end, the story of the last jar of oil, which should have lasted one day, but through a miracle lasted eight, has now become the real meaning of Hanukah. The little light that grows each night until the darkness is defeated, could symbolize the few Maccabees who grew in strength until they were able to defeat the dark power of the Greeks. Or maybe it is the small light of faith that overcomes the dark forces that drive us away from God. Or perhaps it is the light of God that illuminates our journey through the darkness of our world; a small flame that grows and grows until our path in life becomes clear. Or, perhaps, like Adam and Eve, the candles represent our hope that no matter how much darkness there is in the world, lighting candles will push back the darkness until the light of day returns.

10. My friend Rabbi Yaakov Thompson in Sunrise, wrote this week in the Jewish Journal, “I believe this is the most inspiring aspect of Hanukkah. We celebrate the bravery of a group of our ancestors who had to face a monumental decision: What does being Jewish mean? Is it only a label, one that can be discarded if need be? Is it something so deep that I refuse to live without it? Most of us are lucky enough not to have to face that question ourselves. What is incumbent upon us is to reflect on the courage of those who did face such a decision. When we celebrate Hanukkah, we celebrate the strength of their faith and the resolve of their decisions.”

11. We do face the decision of how to live Jewishly every day. When we decide to come to shul on Shabbat, we are making that decision. When we decide to put our Hanukia in the window for all to see, that too is a decision to live a Jewish life. We decide to live our Jewish life any time we light Shabbat candles, invite friends to a Shabbat dinner, spend the day in shul on Yom Kippur and when we hold our own Passover Seder. When a member of our congregation tells me that they will NOT be in shul on Shabbat because friends or family will be coming to visit, that too is a Jewish decision, a decision to put Judaism aside for the day. But faith is not something we can have one day and ignore another.
12. Many times I am asked by those who attend synagogue regularly why so many of their friends choose not to attend services. I suppose that there are many excuses given by Jews who don’t want to be connected to their faith. When we don’t want to be involved, one excuse is just as good as another. Rabbi Thompson reminds us that this too is a decision, one that makes assimilation possible and a decision that will undermine all that Judaism stands for. There were two sides in the fight of the Maccabees. There were the Hellenists who decided that it was easier to live a Greek life rather than a Jewish one; and those of the pious who refused to say that their faith was, in any way, inferior to that of the surrounding culture. At this season of the year, we celebrate the victory of the faithful over the conformists. A victory that has made all the difference in Judaism from their time until today.

13. It is a good thing that we live in a free country. It is a good thing that we have the freedom to worship God as we see fit. It is a good thing that our government does not dictate to us, as the Syrian Greeks did some 5500 years ago, how we should worship and which rituals we must reject. But freedom of religion means that we have to choose every day, to see the world through our Jewish eyes and live our lives by Jewish values. When we light these lights at this time of year, and put them in the window where the whole world can see them, we are saying that we have made our choice and we are prepared to live with the consequences of our decision.

14. As we contemplate the meaning for Hanukkah that we prefer, this week is a good time to go out and see the lights in our neighborhood. Not the Christmas lights that adorn the houses of our Christian friends, but to go out and see the Hanukah candles that are burning in Jewish windows in honor of this beautiful holiday. Take the time to notice your Jewish neighbors. Take the time to wish them a happy Hanukah. We don’t get the chance to proclaim our faith in public very often. Perhaps after years of persecution in Europe and around the world, we can’t be blamed if we usually keep our faith as a private matter. But on Hanukah, we can celebrate in pubic our victory over the darkness. As we walk the streets each night, let us notice how the light keeps increasing. As Rabbi Foreman writes, “These candles are a statement of hope and faith during the darkest time of the year, a visible sign to ourselves and to others of our ability to overcome hardship and adversity.”

15. As we contemplate our own lights and those of our neighbors, let us thank God for the freedom to practice our faith in peace, for the determination of Jews who fought to preserve our religion in the face of every foe and let us thank God for all the miracles that God performed on behalf of our ancestors in ancient times at this season of the year. She’asa Nissim L’avotaynu bayamim Hahem lazman hazeh.

AMEN, SHABBAT SHALOM AND A HAPPY HANUKAH TO EVERYONE.

Parshat Toldot

Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. One of the most puzzling aspects of the Book of Genesis is the nature of its main characters. One of my colleagues once challenged me by noting that there is not one person in the entire book that you would want to have as a friend. Abraham and Sarah are not very nice to Hagar and Ishmael. Isaac and Rebecca play favorites with their children and conspire against each other so that their “favorite” child gets all the benefits. Jacob’s household is filled with intrigue, jealousy, sibling rivalry, deception and anger. And these are the founders of our people!

3. And when it comes to faith, they are also not very faithful to God. Abraham and Isaac resort to lying when they fear for their lives in a foreign land. Jacob gets what he wants by deceit. They all seem to think that they will have to act to secure God’s blessing for their children and not trust that God will make everything turn out okay in the end. And I guess I would feel bad that these first families of our religion are not very nice people but when we compare them to Adam, Eve, Cain, Noah and Lot, they really are a significant improvement. Still, our matriarchs and patriarchs have a long way to go to meet any basic definition of holy or spiritual people.

4. But before I answer the question about why God chose this family to introduce what will become Judaism into the world, there is a more basic question that needs to be asked. What is the Torah trying to tell us with the story of these families that reads like a soap opera or a tele-novella? How are we supposed to react to their scheming, lying and deceptions? Or perhaps we should each ask ourselves the question, what am I to think when God blesses people whom I don’t approve of?

5. While we have pretty good idea about the lives of our patriarchs, we have less information about other people in history and about others who live nearby. I think that we have to be careful when we look at how God blesses others. First of all, sometimes it is easier to see the blessings that others have and not see the blessings that exist in our own lives. It is always dangerous for our well being to see the advantages that others have and not see the gifts that are ours. We often put down our strongest assets and instead covet what we think others have.

6. Maybe this is why our society is so addicted to gossip. We have this primal need to know that others who are wealthier than we are, who are more beautiful than we are, who have more in their lives than we will ever have, also are more miserable than we are, have more unhappiness in their lives and are squandering the blessings they have. When we see famous people making a mess of their lives, we get this smug satisfaction that we may not be rich and powerful but we have it better than they do.

7. The problem of course is that wealth, fame and beauty are not necessary ingredients to mess up one’s life. There are, of course many rich and famous people who are happy, well adjusted, who love their spouse and children and who are also generous, kind, charitable and socially conscience. We don’t need to leave the confines of King’s Point or Coral Lakes to find divorce, misery, unhappy lives, pain and sorrow. All of these things can happen to everyone, no matter if they seem blessed or not. Our first realization, therefore is to understand that when we see someone who seems to be blessed, we need to understand that they may not really be as blessed as we think they are. Or, conversely, maybe they are more worthy of God’s blessing than we know.

8. Another aspect of God’s blessing is that we are not really in a position to realize that what may be a blessing to one person may not be a blessing to someone else. I know a story of a man who was working at a summer job at a ranch and was unhappy with the quality of the food that was being served. He complained about the food constantly until another older man, a holocaust survivor, reminded him that compared to what was served to the inmates in Germany, this was a feast. How can we who have never been blind understand the blessing of sight? How can we complain that we have a loud and boisterous family when there are so many who have nobody to care about them in this world? My wife was shopping in Publix and the price of something she wanted to buy would not come up on the register. The cashier asked Michelle if she knew what the price of the item was. Michelle said that she had no idea of the item’s price. The cashier responded, “It is a blessing not to have to know the price of something before you buy it.” It was a stark reminder that not everyone can buy what they want, eat out when they want and travel where they choose. In these hard times we must not forget to count blessings that we take for granted.

9. I believe that we need to pay more attention, not to the trashy people who mess up their lives, but to the real menchen of the world who overcome their challenges and rise above their misfortunes. We find very little published about the families that overcome great sorrow to find meaning in life. I have a very good friend whose son died in a tragic medical mistake at a hospital. Rather than sue everyone involved, they set out to do good in the name of their son. They have donated, over the years, millions to causes they believe in and have helped raise millions more. Yes, it is true that some families descend into a dark pit of despair that tears apart their family and their lives when tragedy strikes. But I find my inspiration in the families that rise above the pain and sorrow and bring good and joy into the lives of others. I read a story once about a couple who gave a huge donation to a good cause in the name of a son who had died in the war. Another woman, in the audience heard the donation and said to her husband, “let’s make a similar donation in honor of our own son.” Her husband was puzzled, “But our son didn’t die in the war.” “Exactly,” said his wife, “We need to give in thanks for that blessing.”

10. Going back to my original question; what are we supposed to do when God blesses people whom we don’t approve of? First of all, we need to remember that we are not God. It is not for us to judge who is deserving of blessing and who is not. We don’t always understand why God does one thing or another. What we really need to do is to learn a lesson about the blessings we find in others, a lesson we can bring into our own lives. We need to see in others what makes them worthy of God’s blessing and then discover how we can bring that lesson into our life and the lives of our family. We always need to look close to see if what we are observing is a real blessing in their lives or perhaps it is a terrible curse that they bear. What you would consider heaven, might be hell to someone else. We may think it is wonderful to sit down in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon with a beer and watch a football game, but for someone who grew up in a home with an alcoholic mother or father, football and beer may call up terrible memories. We need to be careful about judging others until we fully understand what it is like to walk in their shoes.

11. So what happens when we do understand their lives? We have a record of the lives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We know from the Bible what motivated them and their wives to do what they did to themselves and to others. Why does God bless them when their lives are so far from the Bible’s idea of the perfect family? How could God justify some of the terrible things they did?

12. I think that this lesson is one of the most important in the entire Bible. The issue is not how could God bless those who were so flawed. The real issue is that God does bless them, in spite of their flaws. Abraham struggles to make sure that Isaac will inherit God’s blessing even though Abraham already knows that, no matter what may happen, God has promised the blessing to Isaac. At the beginning of the parsha this week, God clearly tells Isaac and Rebecca that the younger brother will rule over the older one. Why did Rivka need to resort to deception to make sure that Jacob got what God had promised? And why would God make that kind of a promise to bless a liar and con artist like Jacob? Clearly God sees more in Jacob than his actions as a young man. As he learns and grows, he matures into the the kind of person who is more worthy of the blessing.

13. We sometimes forget how young and reckless we once were in life. We have to stop and remind ourselves about the really dumb and dangerous things we once did when we were too young to really think about the consequences. We got lucky and didn’t get caught, didn’t get arrested, and learned important lessons from these mistakes, lessons that, when we pause to think about them, make us shudder about how close to the brink of disaster they once brought us. Tragedy has made us stronger. The mistakes we made, have made us wiser. We know what it means to rise above our faults and still live lives filled with meaning and compassion. God knows we are not perfect, and God has blessed us anyway, with food on our table, with a roof over our heads, with friends, synagogue, faith and family. What better blessings could we ask for?

14. No-one deserves tragedy in their lives, but tragedy comes to us anyway. How we respond to the tragedy can be a source of pain or a source of blessing. That is always our choice. We can make our pain into blessings for others if we choose to rise above our hurt and seek ways to ease the hurt of others. Blessings are not something that we see in someone else and wish we had what they have. Blessings are that which helps us rise above what we might be so that we can be so much more. Judaism teaches us that each and every one of us has over 100 reasons to say a blessing each day. One hundred blessings that we need to acknowledge before God each and every day we are alive. We don’t need to covet what others have, we only need to open our eyes to who we are and what we can be. If we can just do that which will bring meaning into our life and joy into the hearts of others, then we will clearly see how richly God has blessed us.

May God bless us everyday and may we treasure each and every blessing in our lives as we say….

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Parshat Veyera

Sermon Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. One of the difficulties that many people have with the study of the Bible is that there is so much inside the text that is very hard to comprehend. There are many people who get stuck right from the beginning, with the creation story, trying to figure out how a seven day creation has any meaning in our world of Darwin and the dinosaurs. Adam and Eve and their eating of the forbidden fruit, why does God punish them so severely? If there are only three people in the world, Adam, Eve and their son Cain, who does Cain marry? The list goes on and on. We want to read the Bible as the story of the beginning of humanity but it is not a coherent narrative. If God wrote the Bible then why is it so difficult? If God didn’t write the Bible, why do I care at all what it says?

3. I am not going to answer those questions today; I want to call attention, to another difficult text in the Torah. For centuries, Jews and non-Jews have tried to understand the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac. How does a father go to sacrifice his son? How could Abraham raise a knife to his son’s throat? What kind of a God asks a father to sacrifice a son? The Torah calls this a test, but what kind of a test does God need to understand humanity? If God already understands us, why does God need to make the test?

4. Most of these questions we can dismiss rather easily. The Torah does not teach us history nor does it want to be an accurate recording of what goes on in the world. The Torah is a book of morality; it tries to tell us, directly or through parables, what we should do and what we should not do. Sometimes, when we face difficult choices, we need to know that while there may not be any one right answer, there are some wrong answers. We need to be able to identify the wrong answers and focus on making good decisions. So what is the lesson that we are supposed to learn from the Akedah?

5. Some say that we are supposed to carry away from this story that God does not want us to sacrifice our children. The purpose of the story is to show that animal sacrifice is permitted but human sacrifice is not. If this is the real purpose then clearly Abraham failed that test. God was asking Abraham to stand his ground, to refuse to sacrifice his son, to tell God that if he was required to sacrifice his son, then he would withdraw from the covenant between Abraham and God. Let God give the land to someone else.

6. Abraham, of course, does nothing of the kind. Abraham is told to sacrifice his son, so he gets up early the next day and takes what he needs from the house; takes his son and heads out to the place where he will sacrifice the boy to God. When Isaac questions his father about what is to happen, Abraham does not fill his son in on the reason for the journey. I don’t know if Isaac figures out what is going to happen right then or if he finds out just before he is put on the alter. Either way, Isaac can’t be happy with the news. In the end, the story is about Abraham and not Isaac. Abraham leaves alone. His son will no longer travel with him. Abraham will remain alone; his wife dies when he returns home and even God will no longer speak to Abraham, not even to console him on the death of Sarah.

7. But in the end, the story is not even about Abraham. We must never lose sight of the real purpose of the Torah, to teach us valuable lessons in life. The main character in the story may be Abraham, but the real focus of the story is us. We are Abraham. We are the ones being asked to sacrifice our children. How do we respond to that call? What must we do to pass God’s test?

8. During the eleventh century, Europeans gathered to liberate the Holy Land from the Muslims. On their way to the Middle East, they found cities with Jews in the Rhine Valley. Why go all the way to the Middle East to kill unbelievers when there were Jews right there in Europe who didn’t believe in their religion? Entire cities of Jews will be slaughtered before the governments who were supposed to protect them, finally move against the Crusaders. Whole families, who are given the “choice” to convert to Christianity or die, choose to die by their own hand rather than be tortured by the enemy. Many of the parents said to their children before they killed them with their own hands “Go tell Father Abraham, that he was told to sacrifice one child to God, we are sacrificing all our children. His sacrifice was a test, ours is a reality. If Abraham merited blessings, so too do we deserve God’s blessing.”

9. Is it really a surprise that after the Holocaust, where over one million children were killed, suffocated and burned, that the first thing many survivors wanted to do was to have more children? They had made the ultimate sacrifice but they were prepared to live on, and see to it that while they could not prevent the death of so many children, they would not give up on the eternity of the Jewish people. This past week was the anniversary of Kristalnacht, the night of broken glass, that marks the beginning of the slaughter of our people in Europe. Our parsha, in one respect, declares that we are the end of that dark story. We are all not survivors, but we are all the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.

10. However, I don’t believe that the Akedah is a story about rising from the ashes, about the resurrection of our people after the sacrifice. That would be a very dark story, darker than most other stories in the Torah. There has to be another way to see what Abraham’s journey has to say to us.

11. I know that we all think that we would never sacrifice our children to God, like Abraham, but I am sometimes not so sure that we really mean it. There are times where life would have us sacrifice our children and we are tested in those moments as Abraham was tested.

12. There are people who sacrifice their children for their own needs. These people hold their children back when they want to go out and find their way in the world. These parents feel that it is more important that they stay with us, that they show their love for us by never leaving us. “How can you leave me after all that I have done for you?” They ask. They ask their children to sacrifice their lives to care for the selfish needs of the parents.

13. There are other parents in our country, who sacrificed their children for their career. In the name of getting ahead, making more money and being a better provider, they were never there for their children. They sacrificed the needs of their children for their own career advancement. They were never there to see their child’s accomplishments, nor were they there to dry the tears of frustration and defeat when their children were hurt. How many children never knew a parents love because the parent was too busy “sacrificing for their children”. Little did they know that in reality, they were sacrificing their children.

14. Finally, how can we blame Abraham for not loving his son enough, when there are those whom we know who, for all kinds of absurd reasons, stop loving their children. In the heat of anger, words of hate and frustration are spoken and a rift opens up between parent and child. The hurt cuts so deep that they are prepared to cut all ties to their children, to sacrifice their love for the anger of a moment. Pride becomes more important than love, and we sacrifice our children while we wait for an apology. Yes, I know that sometimes children are the ones who create the rift between us. Sometimes they create the rift that rips apart our family and our hearts. We did not push them away, and it is their anger that enforces the separation. Still, no matter what or why, we must never let go of the love and the hope that someday that gap will be bridged. Maybe we can’t force them to love us and to forgive us, but we have to be always open for a child who wants to find his or her way back into the family. A parent should not be the barrier to a child who wants to come home.

15. The Akedah teaches us, in the end, that nothing should sever the connection between a parent and a child. Life is a long and sometimes difficult journey, but we must never let go of our child’s hand. Yes they have to grow and go their own way. Yes they have to find love for themselves, find a spouse, raise a family, understand what it means to be a parent. But we must always have our hearts open to them, to be able to look them in the eye and share love. Abraham may not have actually sacrificed his son on the alter to God, but just raising the knife was enough to create the rift between father and son.

16. I believe that there is another way for this story to end. The Jewish Poet, Danny Siegel tells his own story of what happened on the mountain top so long ago. He says that he prefers the story to end with Abraham turning to Isaac, realizing what an awful thing he is being asked to do, and then throwing all the instruments for the sacrifice on the ground and saying to his son, “Forget it Isaac, lets go home.” Before we lose our temper with our children, before we compound the mistakes that we make by defending self or sacrifice over family, before we create a rift so great that it will take years to bridge the gap, let us take a deep breath, let the love we have for our children fill our hearts. Let us throw down all that would stand between us, hold out our hands and say, “Forget it my child, lets go home!”

May God always turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents and may there always be love in our homes and in our lives as we say …

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Parshat Noach 2011

Shabbat Morning

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. I mentioned last week that one of the problems with the stories of Genesis/Berayshit is that we see them as “merely” children’s stories. We learned about Noah and the flood in elementary school. We may have decorated our own children’s bedrooms with pictures of Noah and the ark or the ark and the rainbow. We make jokes about having all those animals in one place and having to feed and clean up after all of them. This does not seem to be, in our eyes, a serious story. After all, it is just a myth. There is no evidence that the flood really happened anyway.

3. I don’t know if there was an historical flood or not. I don’t know if the “whole world” was flooded or just all of Noah’s world. I don’t know if there really was an ark that someone can find buried in the mountains of Ararat or if there was any way all those animals could have fit into one really big ship. I don’t know about any of this and I really don’t care either. This story, like most of the stories of Genesis, are not meant to be historical narratives, but they are lessons in human morality.

4. As a morality story, there are some really big problems with the flood. My colleague Rabbi Brad Artson has written about the flood “There is still something disquieting about the whole episode. Even if every single human soul was wicked and cruel, why did God have to kill all those innocent animals? Why did fish survive the deluge just because they know how to swim? Couldn’t some of the people have been given a good scare and then told to do better? Why did there have to be so much death?”

5. How do you think our children really feel about a God who gets angry with the world and destroys everything? Does this story teach them to love one another? Does it teach them God will always be there to protect them and comfort them? This is a really hard story for children. It is a hard story for us adults too. And while we can argue over why Noah was so good that he was worth saving, we have a much harder time wondering why some other people, who were good but maybe just not as good as Noah, were also not spared the flood.

6. The ancient commentators had a simple solution to the “angry” God. The commentators believed that just as a man who shoots an arrow, can’t bring it back after it has been launched, so too, once God lets loose one of the “divine arrows”, God no longer has the power to alter its course. This means that once the destruction is let loose, it destroys everything, no matter if it is good or bad. If the Israelites in Egypt did not stay in the home protected by the blood of the lamb on their door, then the death that claimed the lives of the first born of Eygpt, would also be the vehicle of the Israelite’s death as well. This means that it is a good thing that God is forgiving, because, when God gets angry, both the good and bad people in the world will feel the sting of God’s wrath.

7. This kind of a explanation leaves us feeling bewildered. Is God not omnipotent? Can’t God save the innocent people and animals from destruction? Human beings may not be able to stop the destroyer but we expect that God has the power to turn the destruction both on and off. The Torah, however, seems to be pretty consistent; when God punishes the world, both the good and the evil are swept away together. What moral lesson can we learn from this depressing lesson?

8. I hear from many people, online, in this community and in this congregation, a constant demand for biblical justice. We require an eye for an eye. If our enemies would hit us we will hit them back ten times/twenty times harder. Our enemies do not care about us so why should we care about them? They kill women and children and never regret their actions, why should we hesitate to kill their women and children? Let us take off the gloves, just kill them all and let God sort them out.

9. Biblical justice is what some people are always demanding. The families of someone murdered want to see the killer die in the electric chair. The killer should suffer just like the murdered suffered. Criminals should be thrown in jail and we should throw away the key. If the courts won’t convict him, then we will take the law into our own hands. Terrorists have no right because they refuse to honor the rights of anyone else. If he destroys my eye, I will take his eye; if he destroys my tooth, then I will knock out his teeth. We don’t believe in “turning the other cheek”; if my enemy hits me, I will hit him back so hard that he will never think about hitting me again. I am not a dyed in the wool pacifist, I know that there are some evil people who only understand violence, but I think it is important that we make sure that we never become one of them.

10. The lesson here is that once the destroyer is set loose, it is impossible for there to be a distinction between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. Everyone is swept up in the destruction. Good people get arrested in crime sweeps through a neighborhood. Innocent people are sometimes used as human shields for terrorists to hide behind when they are attacked. History is filled with those innocent who died trying to save loved ones from unrestrained violence. War is filled with what we now call “collateral damage”, meaning innocent victims whose only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yes, there are grotesque examples of evil in this world. Only a ruthless dictator like Quadaffi could kill innocent hospital patients, and plant their bodies in the ruins of a recently bombed building and claim that NATO killed “innocent” people. And yet, in every war, there will be atrocities. That is the way of war. Some who died are innocent civilians who were killed by loyalist forces. The freedom fighters of Libya killed foreign mercenary soldiers as well as foreign guest workers just because they all have the same color skin. Once humans descend into the chaos of killing, the good gets swept away with the bad.

11. I know that there are many people who disagree with me on this but the flood story is telling us that violence only breeds more violence. Hitting someone back, capital punishment, war and retaliation only breed more hurt and more killing. Revenge sounds sweet but it never changes anything and it only causes a call for more revenge. If we want peace on the streets of our cities, if we want peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, if we want peace in Israel, we will have to find a way to stop the cycle of killing and make peace with our enemies.

12. Trading over a thousand killers for one lone Israeli soldier does sound like a really bad deal. Some of those terrorists were welcomed home as heroes and they called to their supporters for more killing and more terror. It violates our sense of justice and fair play to see these killers rewarded for the blood on their hands. But the Israeli government made a stronger point inside Israel and around the world. Bringing home a captured soldier is the most sacred vow a country can make to those who defend her from attack. It is not just Gilad Shalit who is grateful that Israel made this disgusting trade, but every soldier in Israel is happy that their country was prepared to do whatever was needed to bring a soldier home. Last week the world learned that a civilized nation sometimes does hold its collective nose in order to do what is right and just.

13. The reason there were a thousand prisoners to exchange for Shalit is because Israel does not have a death penalty. No matter how much blood is on the hands of the terrorists, they are not killed in retaliation by Israel. In spite of the talk of the nationalist parties that the only thing an Arab understands is the point of a gun and an iron fist, there are no shortage of others who are prepared to meet with Palestinian Arabs, learn from each other and who try and see an opposing point of view. It is not easy. It is not always fun. It means being open, candid, articulate and one has to be a really good listener. We all know how easy it is to resort to violence; This week’s parsha is asking us if humanity can overcome its violent nature in order to cultivate understanding and peace? It is really easy to talk tough, but can we talk peace when we need to? It is possible to beat a person into submission. They may fear their attacker but they cannot be forced to love. Love comes with trust and understanding.

14. The flood story teaches us that even though God destroyed the world, it was not the end of violence and strife. The newly repopulated world soon was filled again with war and aggression. The flood story is followed by the story of the Tower of Babel, and the strife that project brought into the world. It will be another ten generations until Abraham comes to plead with God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Only then do we learn that there is another way to confront the wickedness of the world. If we wish to be among those who “seek peace and pursue it”, if we want to work to bring peace as hard as others work to bring war, then maybe, someday, perhaps not in our lifetime and perhaps not in the lifetime of our children, but someday there will be a world filled with kindness and peace. That is the messianic promise and that is the mission and goal of all life. It is all too easy to destroy life, but one who saves a life is considered as if he or she has saved the world.

15. This is the promise of the Noah and the rainbow. This is the lesson of the flood and the dove. God regrets destroying life, and we should regret it too. Let us do all we can do, this day and every day, in this country and abroad, in Israel and around the world, to let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.

Amen and Shabbat Shalom

Shemini Atzeret Yizkor

Rabbi Randall J. Konigsburg

2011

1. Hag Sameach

2. Yizkor always comes at the end of major Jewish Holidays. If we pause to think about this, it is a rather surprising time for Yizkor. When we think of holidays we usually think of celebrations, festive meals, impressive synagogue services, and the scope of Jewish history. With all the joy of the holiday we might think that it would be out of place to dwell on those who have died. After all, the pain in our hearts never really goes away. We learn to live with the ache in our hearts and we try to move on. Why should we pause our holiday festivities to remember the dead?

3. But Judaism looks at our holidays differently. All through the year we can busy ourselves with our work, our family, a host of distractions, clubs and organizations so we don’t have to dwell on the memories of those we have lost. But the hardest times of the year, when the memories can no longer be suppressed, is on holidays, when we gather together and there is an empty chair at the table. The family table now has one less setting. The friends gathering have one less companion to share the joy. The normal course of conversation will eventually include memories of holiday celebrations when our loved ones were still alive.

4. Yizkor gives us a time to pay attention to these memories. They cannot be the elephant in the room, filling the space but nobody is allowed to talk about it. There is no reason to tell someone “Don’t think about who you have lost, it will dampen the mood of the holiday” because it will not help to deny the feelings. Jewish ritual has us confront our memories, we gather in synagogue and we recite the words of Yizkor to help sharpen what we desire to remember.

5. Judaism gives us this time, at the end of the holiday so we don’t have to struggle to forget; we have this time aside to remember. The dead may not be able to be a part of our holiday, but their memory and the lessons they taught us are a priceless possession and these memories rightly belong in this small part of our holiday service we call Yizkor.

6. Psychologists tell us that repressing the memories does not make them go away, they always come back, sometimes when we least expect it and sometimes at inappropriate times. We all need a year or more, they tell us, to fully heal from the pain of loss. Long before psychology, however, Judaism understood that death is not an evil that has to be avoided as if it were a plague. It is a natural part of life and it is not to be feared. It just takes time to heal. No matter how calm or traumatic a death may be, Judaism teaches us that that we have duties to those who have died and we have duties to ourselves as we journey through the “valley of the shadow of death”. We cut short these rituals at our own peril, cutting us off from the source of our healing.

7. So many people think Shiva is a bother because it is so long; a whole week of sitting and mourning. At a time when we want to be far away from people, Judaism teaches us that we need to be with people. We need to hear the stories of our loved one told by others and they need to hear our stories too. It is not a time to go to work, or run around doing errands all over town. Shiva teaches us that we need to stop our life and first let the healing in. The healing that comes when our friends and family gather to support us in our hour of pain. Everyone I know who has sat Shiva for the whole seven days, is always glad that they made the decision to sit. There is no reason to rush. There is no reason to be somewhere else. We sometimes feel we want to hurry and remove all the memories of this painful death right away but Judaism has us wait, until our hearts have begun to heal before we begin to go through the possessions of the deceased. Jewish ritual gives us all the time we need to mourn our loss and slowly ease back into the routines of daily life. Shiva ends with a walk outside, symbolizing our re-entering the everyday world.

8. Sheloshim, the 30 day period that follows the funeral, is directed to our emotional state. We may be ready to get back into routines, but some aspects of life still feel strange when we have recently suffered a loss. Parties and music just feel wrong when we are mourners. How can we say Kaddish three times a day and then turn around and attend a concert or dance at a wedding? Sheloshim gives us extra time to stand apart until we are ready to rejoin the rest of society.

9. For an entire year, we are given the responsibility to pray on behalf of a parent or loved one. We still have to face a year’s worth of celebrations; birthdays, anniversaries, favorite holidays, long weekends, all of these will give us reason to cry anew and Kaddish helps us travel a minefield of memories that sometimes can trip us at surprising moments. Finding a way to get to a minyan and say kaddish is an action we can do to honor the one who has died. Maybe it is impossible to say Kaddish every day, but in our quest to say Kaddish daily, we are not remembering the dead so much as we are remembering why they made such a difference in our lives. The Kaddish is not about death, it is about the glory of God, the God who sends us healing, the God who comforts us for our loss and the God who gives us the strength to go on.

10. What is surprising, however, in this comforting passage that we call Jewish mourning, is that there is no ritual for the end of the year. We say Kaddish for our 11 months, we observe the first Yahrtzeit but it will be just like every other Yahrtzeit; there is nothing to set apart the first one. One day we are still saying Kaddish, the next it is all over. Should there be a ritual for the end of Kaddish? Should there be a special ceremony for the first Yahrtzeit? We don’t have one now but perhaps we can create one that will bring us the comfort we need at that crossroad from mourner to one who’s sorrow has healed.

11. On the one hand, maybe there can be no such “end of Kaddish” ritual. We never really fully heal from our loss. Sometimes, we will find ourselves crying when we see an object that reminds us suddenly of the one who is gone. For the rest of our lives we will think of who we have lost and we may even catch ourselves wishing we could talk to them, get some more advice, share another secret with them just one more time. Maybe there can be no ritual because the pain never really ends, we just learn to live with our loss weighing heavily in our hearts.

12. And yet we understand that this is a moment that somehow needs to be marked by Jewish ritual. An important part of our life has come to an end, the active mourning of the death of a loved one, and a new part is just beginning, normal life infused with important memories. It seems as if we need to mark this transition. From this time on we will only have Yahrtzeit and Yizkor to get us through the year.

13. Maybe this is the time to start to write a personal memoir of the deceased. Maybe this is the time to begin to record the memories of our parents so that their grandchildren and great grandchildren will know something about the generation that is gone. It may be that a baby born soon after the death will be given the name of the one who has died. What a wonderful legacy our memories can be to the child who one day will grow up and come to know important lessons from the life of their namesake. Showing the child who carries the name pictures and lessons from the life that has gone, can inspire the children to carry on the lessons learned into the next generation.

14. If our parents left for us documents about their lives and the meaning they found in their activities, I am sure that we will have read this ethical will soon after the death. But at the end of the year, maybe it is time to read it again. If they did not leave such a document, maybe it is time to write it on their behalf, to record the lessons they taught us when they were alive, a document we can then read to the next generation and maybe even read to ourselves on important dates in the future; for example, when a grandchild marries, or on the Yahrtzeit or each year on their birthday. The written document becomes a legacy of their life that we can share as we wish with others.

15. Maybe we need to recite a blessing when Shiva is over. Maybe the shehechiyanu should be recited when we light the Yahrtzeit candle for the very first Yahrtzeit; we’ve made it through a difficult year and are ready to begin a new phase in our life; or perhaps we should again intone “Baruch Dayan Emet” and affirm, a year later that God is a righteous judge. Another possibility is perhaps we should say a blessing over a new article of clothing, symbolic of the torn garment or ribbon that marked the beginning of our mourning. I know a man who had a jacket that he tore when his mother died. When the mourning was over, he sat down and sewed up the tear. The jacket was repaired but the scar was still visible, a reminder of the days of sorrow that had ended. Rabbi Naomi Levy noted that death makes us feel finite, but we are comforted when we realize we are part of something infinite. A person may die, but their memory lives on as long as there are those who remember.

16. So as we rise for Yizkor, let us contemplate what might make up for us, a ritual to mark that day when the tear in our heart was healed and we went on, scarred but still standing, emerging from the “Valley of the Shadow of Death” and back into the sunshine at the top of a new mountain. Maybe it is not too late, we can still write a memoir of our parents or loved ones, as a testament for our own children and grandchildren. Passing on the lessons we learned, is our connection to eternity. Yizkor is here to remind us of memories that have shaped our lives. Let us use those memories and weave them permanently into the tapestry of our family’s memory.

May we always be blessed with good memories and may we do all we can to keep these memories alive as we say …

Amen, and Hag Sameach

Let us rise at this time, for our Yizkor Service