Yom Kippur Yizkor

2011 – 5772

Rabbi Randall J. Konigsburg

1. Shabbat Shalom and Gemar Tov

2. There was a Hasidic Rabbi who insisted that everything in the world had a lesson in it if we would only look closely and learn. His students were skeptical and put the Rabbi to the test: “What can we learn from the Telegraph?” they asked. The Rebbe replied, “Every word is counted and charged.” “What can we learn from a train?” asked the students? “One hot one can pull many cold ones.” was the Rebbe’s answer. “What can we learn from a telephone?” asked the students. “What is said here is heard there.” replied the Rebbe. The Rebbe thus taught his students not that the world is as important as Torah, but that Torah incorporates the whole world.

3. This past year was the year that the terrorist Osama bin Laden finally met the justice he long deserved. He was killed in a United States commando operation, his body removed from his home, positively identified and then buried at sea lest later terrorists make his tomb a place of pilgrimage. The commandos who were chosen for this special raid in Pakistan were members of the elite Navy Seal Team Six. The commando team that trains to do operations that otherwise would be impossible. Not one of the team members was hurt or killed in the operation and they became instant heroes in our country, even though they are so undercover that we are not permitted even to know their names.

4. Rabbi Wayne Allen, my colleague in Toronto recently sent out a sermon where he does something similar to the Hasidic Rabbi in my story. He found some important lessons in the soldiers of Seal Team Six. Just about the same time as the raid in Pakistan, a former member of Seal Team Six, a man who retired from the unit before they were sent to kill bin Laden, wrote a book about the team and how they train to become the elite of the elite among our commando forces. Howard Wasdin was interviewed by Time Magazine about his book and in the answers he gave inspired Rabbi Allen, and frankly they should inspire us all.

5. The first thing Mr. Wasdin noted was that the Seals trained every day, carrying fifty pounds of equipment and firearms and told to run up and down stairs all day long, learning how to clear rooms of potential threats. They keep up this training day after day until they are summoned to go on a mission. Many people are surprised that what makes a commando better than any other soldier is that he trains daily over and over again. What makes Seal Team Six so special? It is not in the psychology of the men or in their hidden talents, but that they train relentlessly so that they are prepared for whatever may come. They don’t have super-human traits, they don’t have sharper reflexes or better skills than anyone else, they just never stop learning and practicing.

6. What should we learn from this constant training? We should understand that the soldiers don’t consider this training boring, useless or monotonous. The members of the team understand that their training could be the difference between life and death as well as to the success or failure of their mission. By sharpening their skills, they know that they are ready for whatever they may encounter when called upon by their country. So Rabbi Allen notes that the first lesson we learn from Seal Team Six is that “Training, and practice and repetition do not make us bored they make us better.”

7. There is a story of two men with little education and culture who decided to visit Paris and the Louvre museum to see what all the fuss was about the art there. As the docent took their tour through the artwork, they were not very impressed with what they saw. Every painting evoked a comment like “my grandchildren can paint better than this” or “I’ve seen better colors at the paint store” on and on they “critiqued” the paintings until finally the docent could take it no more. “Gentlemen, let me tell you that every painting in this museum has been examined and critiqued by some of the greatest artists and critics in the history of the world. Each painting has passed their test and been chosen as one of arts greatest treasures. They are not here for you to judge them. Instead, they are here to judge how cultured you are.”

8. If you were to ask any of the thirty men and women who are the core of our “Minyanaires” why they come to minyan every day, day after day, in rain and heat and in spite of busy days, I think they would give you the same answer as the soldiers of Seal Team Six, the daily recitation of prayers, the study of Jewish texts and the practice of Jewish ritual every morning and every evening, does not make them bored, they will tell you that it makes them better. Their daily Jewish practice makes them better parents and grandparents. It makes them better Jews and human beings. It is not monotonous or repetitive; it is part of the essence of life and living. They don’t look at the siddur and say “What kind of a silly prayer is this” or “I can’t believe I am reading this stuff. They don’t say, “I read this Parsha already” or “What has this lesson to do with my life?” They know that the siddur has passed the test of time. That centuries of scholars found meaning and important lessons in each page of the Mishna and Midrash. They understand that each ritual is designed to help someone rise spiritually higher and higher. Prayer, Study and Ritual help us to see the world from God’s point of view. It is this kind of practice, if we make it a regular part of our life, that can help us deal with all the challenges that life throws at us. When we pray every day, when we learn Torah, when we take upon ourselves the regimen of the daily rituals that define a Jewish way of life, this is the kind of training that helps us to face tragedy and uncertainty, to confront our fears and to overcome disasters. It is the lifelong practice of Judaism that is always there for us to help us, throughout our life, move forward.

9. The second thing we can learn from the Navy Seals is that their training is designed so that they can learn to react instantly and reflexively. The term that former Seal Wasdin used is “muscle memory” that if we practice some activity enough, our muscles will eventually respond with the speed of our reflexes. Wasdin noted in the interview that even ten years after he retired from the Navy Seals, his muscle memory was so good that at a shooting range he still could group all his shots within a quarters diameter of the bull’s-eye. Athletes also use this kind of muscle memory to improve their performance and reactions in their competitions.

10. Clearly Judaism is not about “muscle” memory, but Rabbi Allen notes that our religion is instead about “goodness” memory – that is repeating acts of nobility, kindness and compassion so that they become second nature to us.” The Rabbis of the Talmud did not live in a fantasy world. They knew from personal experience that the world can be a hard place and that people will do what is in their own best interest and trample underfoot whoever might get in their way. If humanity was created with two inclinations, a good inclination and an evil inclination, a yetzer tov and a yetzer ra, the sages understood that the inclination to do evil, the yetzer ra was by far, the strongest of the two. If human beings were to want to be good, we would need to find a way to nurture and support our yetzer tov, our good inclination.

11. That is the role of Torah, the role of Jewish law. When we know what God wants of us we can use that instruction, that call from God to be better, to overcome our evil nature. We want to take our better nature and we want to be able to activate it reflexively. We have to not only know that we are to treat our neighbor as we would treat ourselves, but we need to practice the acts of kindness called for until those actions become instinctive. We need to notice when a friend is missing from services, we need to immediately call them to find out if they are OK. We need to offer them what they might need in order to quickly come back and take their seat. They may need someone to take them to the doctor, someone to pick up something from the pharmacy, someone who can help them get to a beauty parlor or to the supermarket. Maybe they need a ride to shul or maybe they just need a friend to sit with them at the kiddush and listen to what went on in their world this week. I know that sometimes we all are there when we are needed but if we are to learn the lesson from Seal Team Six, we will need to respond with our own “goodness memory” acting instinctively and reflexively to provide for others all that they need.

12. The third lesson from the Seals is the lesson of teamwork. There is no one person in the world that can do these missions by themselves. Each member of the team not only has his own role to play on a mission, but he must know many other roles he might have to perform should the mission have unexpected problems. The missions are too complex and demanding for one man alone. There was only one soldier who shot and killed Osama bin Laden, but it was the members of his team that made that shot possible. Judaism is all about the obligations we have to each other. The Talmud teaches, “All Jews are responsible for each other” and our entire faith is built around those responsibilities.

13. At a recent program, my friend and colleague Rabbi Irwin Kula noted that the Kol Nidre service that we attended last night is a service to release us from our obligations. At Kol Nidre we solemnly release the entire congregation from the vows and promises that were made in the past year. Rabbis like to teach that this release is only for vows and promises made to God, and that the vows between us and our fellow human beings are not annulled on Kol Nidre. But Rabbi Kula took this lesson a bit further. He asked us to think about all our obligations and what it would mean to be released from them. What would it mean if Kol Nidre was saying to us “I release you from your obligations as a parent. I release you from your obligations as a spouse. I release you from your obligation as a brother or sister. I release you from your obligations as a friend. I release you from all your obligations from your organizations. I release you from all your obligations from life.

14. How does it feel to be released from all our obligations, from all our vows and promises? Maybe for just a moment there is a feeling of release, but it doesn’t last long. The only people who have no obligations are the dead. We the living are defined by our obligations. So let us reaffirm our obligations, but let us reaffirm them one by one. Are there obligations that we gladly reaffirm? Are there some obligations we would prefer to leave behind? When we reaffirm an obligation we suddenly realize how important it is to us and we can no longer take it for granted. Do we take our obligations as a spouse, a parent, a friend or as a Jew seriously enough? What can we do in the new year to show how important these vows are in our lives? It is important to show how much we appreciate the vows we have taken.

15. The final lesson from Seal Team Six is that without the ability to plan and anticipate we are all doomed. It is not enough to know where we are and what we can do. We have to be prepared for whatever might come. When the Seal Team attacked the compound in Abbottabad, one of the two helicopters had an engine failure and crash landed. The Navy Seals had anticipated all the things that could go wrong so they were able to complete the mission using just the second helicopter. How does the nursery rhyme go… for want of a nail the Kingdom was lost? Seal Team Six had a backup for every nail.

16. Jewish wisdom literature tells us that wisdom is the ability to foresee the outcome of an event. The patriarch Jacob, on his deathbed tells his sons, “come together that I may tell you what is to befall you in the days to come” Rashi, the great Torah commentator notes that “He desired to reveal Israel’s future but the Divine Presence withdrew from him”, in other words, Jacob wanted to tell about the future but all he could speak about was the present. Judaism does not believe that the future can be seen by human beings; astrology, Tarot Cards, tea leaves and other ways to see into the future just don’t work. The reason they don’t work is because the future does not exist until we make the decisions that give it existence. The future is just the consequences of our present.

17. There is a story about a man named Sam who was going to work one morning when he saw his neighbor dressed up and walking down the street. “Good morning, where are you going all dressed up today?” he asked. The neighbor looked at the man with a puzzled look, “ I am going to shul, it is Shavuot today, did you forget that today is a Jewish Holiday”. Sam was stunned. He HAD forgotten the holiday. If he would not have met his neighbor he would have gone to work and violated an important holiday, one that celebrates the giving of the Torah at Sinai. Sam was very upset. He went to daven in shul but his mind was elsewhere. He just could not believe that he could have forgotten a major Jewish holiday. When the holiday was over he went to see his Rabbi and told him what had happened and asked to be forgiven. The Rabbi looked at Sam and said, “You made an honest mistake and for that you don’t need to be forgiven. But I sense that there is more to this story than just being forgetful.” Sam sighed and said, “I just can’t believe that I could forget such an important thing. How could I be so distracted that I almost forgot a major Jewish Holiday?” The Rabbi put his hand on Sam’s shoulder, “When something is important to us, we always find a way to remember. If this is so important, than you will find a way to make sure you never miss a holiday again.” Sam realized the Rabbi was right and finally figured out a way to make sure he never missed a Jewish holiday again. He quit his job and took the position of gabbai at the synagogue. Working in the shul, he never again had to worry about forgetting Shavuot or any other holy day.

18. Wisdom is not knowing the future, it is creating a future that we can be proud of. It means, like Jacob and his sons, knowing who we are and what are our strengths and weaknesses so we can prepare for whatever the future may hold. If we are forgetful, we can plan to have reminders of the things we wish to remember. If we are shy we can learn from others to be more outgoing. If we are afraid of public speaking we can join a club like Toastmasters to learn the art of making speeches. If we never had the chance to go to Religious School we can sign up for Adult Education. If we never learned to daven, we can find a teacher to train us. If we always wanted to read a haftarah, then there is always a way to acquire the skill. We can compensate for all our deficiencies if we take the time to plan for the future. If we can envision what can go wrong, we can also envision how to make it right.

19. If we are serious about having a good new year, we could learn a lot from the lessons of the Navy’s Seal Team Six. Faithful practice of Judaism, with daily prayer, study and the practice of Jewish rituals. Reflexively acting for the good of the world. Seeing our obligations and vows as our commitment to the “team” of the Jewish people and looking ahead to make our faith stronger and safe. This works not just on a personal level, it will also work to make the Jewish People better as well. Just as the soldiers of Seal Team Six not only make up a successful anti-terrorist squadron, but they make our country stronger, so too if we do our part for our people and our faith, then Judaism will be the stronger for our efforts.

20. Thirty-five years ago, in 1976 we took pride in Israeli Commandos who rescued 102 hostages at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. Then as now, the lessons of practice, sharp reflexes, teamwork and planning made that rescue mission one that is still remembered as the most effective counter-terrorism raid in modern history. Perhaps we also remember with pride and honor the commandos of the Palmach that made possible the modern state of Israel thirty years earlier. At the beginning of the twentieth century all Jews looked with pride to the early Zionists who were the first Jews to settle in what was then Palestine. In every generation the lessons of practice, trained reflexes, teamwork and looking to the future made modern Judaism possible. If we wish to secure the blessings of our faith to future generations, we need only follow the lessons of our ancestors, the lessons of the modern Seal Team Six. If we can make these lessons part of the core of our religious life, we will create a strong, vibrant faith to pass on to the generations yet to come.

May the lessons of faith, mitzvot, peoplehood and preparation serve us this year and every year as we say … Amen and Gemar Tov

21. Jews do not set foot in the future without acknowledging the past. We cannot enter the new year without remembering the lives that have past, the lives of those we loved, the lives of our parents, loved ones, mentors and heroes who shaped our lives as much as we have shaped the lives of those who will follow us. On every major Jewish holiday, we cannot end our celebration until we have remembered the empty seats at our table, the empty chairs in our synagogue and empty places in our hearts.

22. Before we turn our gaze to fully embrace 5772, let us take this time of Yizkor, this time of memory, to call to mind those who made our lives possible and our faith strong. Perhaps there are still lessons as we remember their lives that can help us as we enter a new year.

Please rise as we prepare for the prayers of Yizkor

Kon Nidre Sermon

2011 – 5772

1. Gemar Hatima Tova – May we be sealed for a good year.

2. In the Talmud, Bava Metzia 59a, there is recorded a dispute among the sages. Rabbi Eliezer was a lone vote against all of his other colleagues. On that day Rabbi Eliezer brought forward every imaginable argument but they did not accept them. Said Rabbi Eliezer, “If the law agrees with me let this carob tree prove it.” Immediately the carob tree was torn 100 cubits out of its place … “No proof can be brought from a carob tree” the sages replied. Said Rabbi Eliezer, “if the law agrees with me let this stream of water prove it.” Immediately the stream of water began to flow backwards. “No proof can be brought from a stream of water.” the other Sages responded. Said Rabbi Eliezer, “If the law agrees with me let the walls of this study hall prove it.” Immediately the walls began to lean. Rabbi Joshua rebuked them, “When the scholars are engaged in a dispute, what right do you walls have to interfere?” So they did not fall in deference to Rabbi Joshua but they did not stand straight in deference to Rabbi Eliezer. Said Rabbi Eliezer, “If the law agrees with me let there be a sign from heaven.” Immediately a divine voice was heard saying, “Why do you argue with Rabbi Eliezer since in matters of the law he is always right?” Rabbi Joshua arose and quoted the Torah saying, “Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven.” (meaning that the Torah had already been given at Mt. Sinai so we no longer pay any attention to a voice from heaven and we follow instead the Torah Law, to follow the majority.) … Rabbi Natan later asked Elijah the prophet what did God do when Rabbi Joshua rebuked him? Elijah replied, “God clapped the divine hands in joy and shouted, ‘My children have defeated me, My children have defeated me!’

3. Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven. The law is not in heaven. It is here on earth. It is here where human beings can see it, read it, contemplate it, discuss it, argue it and confront it. It is not in heaven. We look at the scrolls of Torah and we see a holy book. We see a sacred text. We see words given to us by God that are eternal and unbreakable. On Yom Kippur we examine our lives against what the Torah demands of us and we pray that our violations of the law, our sins of the past year, be forgiven by a compassionate and understanding God. But the Law is not in heaven. It is here. The Torah, in Parshat Nitzavim that we read just last week, reminds us that it is not far away so that anyone would have to go and bring it back. It is not in heaven that someone has to go up and bring it down. It is right here, near at hand. Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven.

4. The Torah is here for us to consider and to interpret. There is no law that is unchangeable over time. Life is full of transitions and variations. People find new ways to live, die, entertain and do business. The law must keep up with the changes. Traffic laws for the horse and buggy era cannot be used in the age of automobiles. Shabbat laws about fire may or may not apply to electricity and electric appliances. Jewish Law is not in heaven. It is right here with us and as Rabbi Eliezer discovered, that the Sages can make it mean what they want it to mean if there is a good reason for Torah to change.

5. Who has the right to interpret Jewish law? Is it a duty only for pious Jews, learned Jews, observant Jews? Perhaps we can learn Jewish Law from any Jew who has something to teach us. Nathan Cardozo, in his blog reprinted in the Jerusalem Post wrote: “ For Jews to bring their fellow men back to Judaism there is a need to celebrate the mitzvot that the “secular” Jew has been observing all or part of his life, not condemn his failure to observe some others. … The foundation should be humility, not arrogance…There is little doubt that “secular” Jews, consciously or unconsciously, keep a large number of commandments. Many of them may not be in the field of rituals, but there is massive evidence that interpersonal mitzvot enjoy a major commitment by “secular” Jews. Beneath the divisiveness of traditional commitment lie underpinnings of religion such as compassion, humility, awe and even faith. Different are the pledges, but equal are the devotions. It may well be that the meeting of minds is lacking between the religious and non- religious Jews but their spirits touch. Who will deny that “secular” Jews have a sense of mystery, forgiveness, beauty and gentleness? … Each of these is the deepest of religious values.”

6. All Jews have something to teach us and we have things to teach them. We can learn from every human being on how to bring values and ethics into our study of Torah. We have to find the teachers and we have to identify the lessons. It does not matter if the person is Jew or non-Jew, learned or unschooled, smart or clever; we all have something we need to teach each other about Torah. It is neither for God to teach us or for us to follow what is in the past. Lo Bashamiyim Hi – The Torah is not in heaven

7. We think of the Torah as the great unifier of Jews, that all Jews follow the Torah. It is the common denominator that unites us. But how we interpret Torah is very different across the denominations. Why do we have different kinds of Jews? What possible use could there be for the different communities of Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Humanist, secular, Sephardic, and the Jews who opt out of our religion? Dr. Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary recently wrote in his blog, “Why do we need denominations? Because substantial differences among Jews, for all the hurt and damage they engender, are not only inevitable but, on balance, essential to the survival of our tradition. The Torah opens opportunities to Jews and makes demands upon Jews that shape the ways we think, eat, celebrate, mourn, raise our kids, treat our spouses, do business, stand before God and work to repair the world. It matters greatly how these gifts and responsibilities are pursued. Will women be fully a part of Jewish learning, practice and leadership? Will Hebrew, Shabbat and kashrut be central pillars? Will Jews stand simultaneously apart from and as an integral part of the larger society and culture? Will we take on the discipline of ritual practice – and insist that it remains inseparable from an ethical practice of individual virtue and social justice? These and other dividing lines among our movements are not trivial; compromise concerning them is not always possible. One cannot be all things to all people if one wants to be a Jew.”

8. It is precisely our commitment to Torah that makes denominations possible and healthy. It opens conversations and debate; it gives us many different interpretations so we can contemplate for ourselves how we will interpret the law. Many people find this strange. Why should we struggle to make moral and ethical sense of the law? If we don’t engage in this struggle with Torah, others who see themselves as “most pious” will come and wrest control of Jewish law claiming to speak in God’s name so that no change will ever be possible. It is not for God to tell us anymore what is right and what is wrong in Jewish law, Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven.

9. In a recent commercial for spaghetti sauce, a woman, taking a blind taste test, picks out a different sauce than her usual choice. It makes her wonder about all her other choices. When the world changes, when life calls, we too are called to make difficult choices between what is familiar and traditional and what is clearly the right thing to do. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner served for many years in Sudbury, Massachusetts until his recent retirement. In his new book, “I’m God, You’re Not: Observations on Organized Religion and Other Disguises of the Ego” he writes about how he came to decide an important point of Jewish Law. He writes, “A decade before my decision, I had got myself into an argument with an Orthodox friend. To tell the truth, I have forgotten most of the details. It had something to do with how to treat someone. I explained my position; he explained his. His position struck both of us as, at best, ethically tenuous. “How can you say such a thing?” I asked. “I have no choice,” he replied, “It’s the halacha – Jewish Law.” Not wishing to be disrespectful, I allowed him to have the last word. But later, alone in the car, I found myself continuing the argument: “Oh, and because you claim you have no choice, that’s the end of it? You are off the hook? I’m supposed to cave in, back away in shame before the tradition? No (I wished I would have said), you choose to believe what you want and you choose to do what you do. First comes life, then comes law. You are still responsible. … the test of my resolve came a few years later when two members of my congregation asked me if I would help them consecrate their – what shall I call it? Union? Commitment? – gimme a break, it was a marriage. What could I say? “I’m not permitted?” “I’m sorry the tradition doesn’t allow it?” “My hands are tied?” “Excuse me while I hide in a book?” Of course the tradition is sacred; of course it has more to do with God than any of us can imagine; but it can never be an excuse for not looking another human being in the eyes or oneself in the mirror. … I guess I believe, in retrospect, that it was commanded of me.”

10. What does it mean to be commanded? Are the commandments a path from which we must not stray or do they teach us lessons in right and wrong that we can translate into modern life? When life changes, the law too has to change. And while Moses did bring the tablets down from Mt. Sinai, the law is not written in stone. It is written in our words and deeds and how we translate the Torah into our personal lives. In the end, we once again see, when it comes to Torah, Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven.

11. The list of elements of Jewish Law definable as morally questionable grows longer all the time. What should be the role of women in Jewish ritual? Should Jewish marriage expand to include gay couples? Can a modern Kohen marry a convert? Should women be permitted as a witness on Jewish documents? Is it enough to say that a Jew is anyone born to a Jewish mother or does Judaism today require a greater commitment of learning and piety? Should women be rabbis and cantors and torah readers and Shalichot Tzibor, prayer leaders for the congregation? What happens when ancient venerated Jewish law demands of us to act in ways that violate our basic feelings of humanity? Rabbi David Hartman, ordained as an Orthodox Rabbi at Yeshiva University, struggles with these two poles in Jewish life as he tries to find the right and ethical way to live. In his book “The God Who Hates Lies; Confronting and Rethinking Jewish Tradition” Rabbi Hartman writes, “I felt while in yeshiva that I was always on the right path, a true authentic historical path that nurtured the Jewish people and gave meaning to their everyday life. I never confronted with any depth, the idea of God or how one comes to accept a life devoted to the service of God. … For example, we never asked second-order questions: [such as]… What part of the tradition should be ascribed to revelation, what part to human creativity and what might be the implications of how this question is answered for the development of communal religious practice? … In response, I developed a theology, based on the concept of covenant, that understands the relationship between God and the Jewish People as one of intimacy and partnership. This covenantal model … describes a religious anthropology characterized not by slavishness and a howling sense of inadequacy in the face of an infinite commanding God. Instead it resurrects the vital and precocious religious spirit of the Talmudic Rabbis, who understood that the implementation of God’s will amid the complex considerations of human society and the psyche requires, at times, the full and fearless assertion of our intellectual independence. … The new stage of covenant would bring forms of personal and collective religious dignity yet unknown in Jewish history. Not only was the Torah no longer in heaven, as the Talmudic Rabbis declared, having been given over to human hands at Sinai; so too , the covenantal understanding of [the State of] Israel’s rebirth taught us that the direction of history was now included within the scope of human responsibility.”

12. Why should we be called to give up our critical faculties just because we want to be good Jews? Past generations of rabbis not only studied ancient texts but also brought to bear on Judaism the modern issues that they confronted. If our Judaism forces us to live one life when we are in synagogue and to have another life when we are at home or on the job, that will not be a meaningful version of our faith. We need to practice our religion with an open mind and not with a closed book. Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven.

13. Judaism is not just an intellectual faith. It is a faith that demands us to worship with every part of our body. The sages ask the deeper questions about what is a human being and for what purpose were we created. Jewish mystics see our lives as an important part of repairing our world and making it a better place. Rabbi Arthur Green, in his book “Ehyeh; A Kabbalah For Tomorrow” writes on the importance of humanity to the mystical structure of the world. He says, “Neshama is … breath. It is the place of connection between God and person, or between the small self of individual identity and the great Self of being. It is the aspect of us that never separated from our Source, that did not let go of its divine root in the course of that long process of individuation and alienation that we call human life. … The “journey” to God is nothing other than a return to our deepest self. The task is to seek out that innermost reality, to find it and to reshape the rest of our lives around that return. … How do we learn to forgive ourselves? And how do we use religion as a tool for greater self-acceptance rather than self-torment and guilt? Out of the mystical tradition, I believe, the Ba’al Shem Tov learned and taught that you should always keep your eyes on the big picture. We should not let ourselves get too caught up in the details nor let the means become ends in themselves. Despite what is often taught (and misunderstood), Judaism is not all about the details. It’s about loving God, sharing that love with God’s creatures, making the universe one and doing it through joy and celebration of life. That’s a pretty tall order. So we had better get to it and not let ourselves get distracted on the way. When religion gets in the way of those essential values, instead of being a vehicle to share and express them, it is time to reexamine where we stand.”

14. When it comes to sorting out the mitzvot and trying to put some kind of order into how they should fit in our lives, Rabbi Green is telling us that loving God is paramount, the rest is only details. There are many Jews who seek to find God in the religious minutia of Jewish Law. That somehow if one seeks perfection in practice, it will bring us closer to heaven. Rabbi Green teaches, however, that religion must not get in the way of true, essential values. When it does, then it is the religion which must give way. Life is not a text; Life is the way we choose to live the values we cherish. Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven.

15. The essential commandment of the Torah is “You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God am holy.” We are not God, we don’t create our own reality. We have to live in the reality of this world, a place of confusion, chaos and complexity. How can we be holy? How can our faith call us to action when the actions themselves sometimes seem so divorced of holiness? How are we to know what we are supposed to do? Rabbi Irwin Kula, the president of CLAL, the Center for Leadership and Learning, in his book “Yearnings; Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life” has written, “The sages taught that holiness is available to us in every moment, in every place. We often miss these moments because they can be subtle and get lost in the routine of life, or we may repress them because holy encounters sometimes can be unsettling, at times terrifying. Majestic and awesome one day, ordinary and sweet on another, only to be messy complex even chaotic on yet another. Holiness isn’t a state to be reached: it’s an ongoing act of creativity like the origins of the universe. … And the messes are the point. Joy and sorrow, good and evil, greatness and triviality, hope and anxiety, the ideal and the actual: the ability to live with these seeming contradictions and the ambivalence and tension they create is what gives rise to wisdom. Our most chaotic periods can be catalysts for understanding. Even our daily frustrations and desire, when we bring them to the surface and wrestle with them, can imbue our lives with meaning. And our moments of wonder and awe, of sheer delight can be so much greater when we’ve celebrated the multiplicity of life.”

16. Holiness finds its source in Torah. Torah is based on life. Life is messy. Holiness too, then is messy and the easy answers are not found in the text, but in how we struggle with all that life throws our way. When we have to choose between two difficult choices what will be the determining factor of which is right and which is wrong? Sometimes we have to choose between two rights and sometimes we have to choose between two wrongs. We choose, we evaluate the decision and we try to choose better tomorrow. That is the path we travel to bring ourselves closer to holiness and to God. The true path of holiness is not found only in the pages of the Torah, it is also found in how we handle the messiness of life. Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven.

17. Judaism is not a prison. Almost everywhere we turn, we are told by rabbis and sages that the fundamentals of our faith are not to be found in legal tomes and commentaries. These ancient texts are the guides left for us by our ancestors as they struggled to find meaning in every day and age. But their work is not designed to be the final word on how Jews worship God. We are commanded to “Love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our might.” That command cannot be reduced to measuring the volume of wine we have to drink at Kiddush and the true text of a service in a prayer book. Just because we have a set of instructions does not mean that it will fit every moment in life. Life changes and so must Jewish Law lest it become fossilized and useless.

18. When we talk about change in Judaism, we can see the dynamic of what is happening. It is not that the fundamentals of Torah have changed. We need to keep Torah in balance with our values. When we see women who are accomplished in their professional lives reduced to second class citizens in the synagogue, we know that something must change. When we come to understand that sexual orientation has no bearing on a persons ability in the workplace, in the marketplace, in the synagogue and in family life, then we know that something must change. When we work to create a Jewish State in Israel, based on the values of pluralism, democracy and capitalism and we only have rules for an agricultural monarchy, we know that something must change. In a world where Jews live Jewish lives based on different understandings of Jewish law, why must we insist that there be only one kind of a Jew who is a “real” Jew? When we are the ones written out of our faith as apostates, we know that something must change. If Torah does not change, how will we answer the most difficult questions of values that modern life throws at us?

19. What is Torah? If it is not in heaven, what is the essence of this central, sacred text of our people? Our Torah is Democratic, Pluralistic, Open, Diverse, Meaningful, Flexible, Loving and Messy. It is just like our lives are supposed to be. Should we really find this surprising? The Midrash teaches us that Moses took the Torah from heaven because it was directed to human beings and not the angels. Angels don’t eat so they don’t need to keep kosher. Angels don’t work so they don’t need rules of business and interest. Angels don’t get married and they don’t have children. The Torah is not meant to be in heaven, it is meant to be right here, guiding us on a path that will lead us to holiness. The Torah is all that we are and all that we aspire to be. It is not fixed, static, unchangeable or unchallengeable – it is Lo Bashamyim Hi -It is not in heaven.

May we challenge Torah this year and may we be challenged by Torah this year and may we be stronger and wiser from our struggles as we say … Amen and Gemar Tov.

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. I try to keep my Shabbat sermons to just one topic. After all, I have 52 Shabbatot a year to cover most of what is going on in the world. It is enough to focus on one topic a week. But this week, partly because it is Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of repentance, and partly because of a discussion I was a part of, I have two related topics I would like to cover.

3. A week ago Friday, I had the privilege, and it was a privilege, to be part of a Rabbinic delegation meeting with Vice President Biden when he was in Boca Raton for a fundraiser. He talked to us about the Obama administration and Israel and we had a chance to ask him some questions. He said something in reply to a question that has troubled me all week. The Vice President made a statement that, in his opinion, convicted spy Johnathan Pollard had committed an act of treason and should never be freed from prison. He added that he would never be in favor of letting him go because of the nature of his crime against his country. Only if something as big as Arab/Jewish peace were on the line would he even consider a pardon for Pollard.

4. He left no room for reply so we went on to other topics but I was unhappy with his statement. I can think of a half dozen reasons that Pollard has served enough time in jail for his crime. I fully understand the nature of Pollard’s crime and why he was given such a hard sentence. Johnathan Pollard endangered not only national security, but he revealed the names of others and placed their lives in jeopardy as well. I have no quarrel with the trial and the sentencing. I just feel that after all these years, what is the point of keeping him in jail?

5. It seems to me that the only reason left is the anger that those in government still have for him. And that anger serves our country no further purpose. There can be no national security issue that could be endangered since he has been in prison over 25 years. It is time to let the anger go and allow Pollard his teshuva. The government could still revoke his citizenship. They could still deport him; they could declare that he is not welcome in this country anymore. But keeping him in prison is just a waste of time and money. It hurt me to see the Vice President still angry over what was done so long ago, and still so vindictive. There has to be a better way to punish this man than to leave him to rot in jail. Other spies long ago were pardoned. Even if Pollard did twice the damage they did, there is no further purpose to keeping him in prison. I disagree with the Vice President. Let Johnathan Pollard go.

6. I also think that there is a larger issue here than just an American spy and the punishment for his treason. There is a great deal of anger these days in this country. People are either right or wrong, on my side or on the OTHER side, perfectly good or completely evil. This is a way of looking at the world that is very easy, very common and very wrong.

7. How did we get to this situation? First of all, we are now living in world that never forgets. There was a time when people no longer remembered things that people did wrong. It could take three to five years, but eventually we no longer cared what was in someone’s past. We felt that what he or she was doing now was more important than what they had done years before, during the time they were novices in their professions. There was a time we agreed that criminals who had served their time deserved a second chance at life; that politicians, who had lost their office over a scandal, were entitled to reform their lives and move on. Even if a businessman had a bankruptcy in his past, he could still start over and make something of himself. Today, who we are and what we have done seems to have eternal life on the internet. Even the foolish things that teenagers do and say can haunt them ten, twenty even thirty years into the future. So if anyone asks, yes, things were easier in the past when we were all young. There was no “permanent record” that could someday come back and bite us. Today there is such a record and everyone in the world has access to it.

8. We are also living in a world that never forgives. It might not be so bad that our deeds are inscribed forever if we could still count on forgiveness. In the movie “Sweet Charity” one of the last lines spoken is “I can change the way I dress and I can change the way I talk but don’t ask me to change my past because that cannot be changed.” Today, our unchangeable past is more indelible then ever. Candidates during debates, bring up decisions made by their opponents that are 20 years old. These decisions are held up as if this is what a candidate might do today. Employers look at the internet presence of prospective employees and see if there are any reasons in the past why they might not want this person to work for them, even if that incident was long ago resolved. Any blemish on our record is never forgotten and never forgiven. It is a terrible way to have to go through life, having always to be perfect.

9. Some of the greatest inventors and innovators in this country’s history have long records of failure. Abraham Lincoln, if he ran today, would be unelectable with his long record of failure. Thomas Edison was a genius but his failures far exceeded his successes. The famous writer JK Rowlings once had to live out of her car and in a homeless shelter because she could not take care of her family. The greatest thinkers in our country are those who are not afraid to take a chance. In the book, “Start Up Nation”, Israel’s economic miracle is said to be based on a culture where failure is not considered a fault, as long as we learn from our failures. A failure gives us important information we can use to work for even greater success.

10. The essence of this season in Judaism is that everyone is entitled to a chance to start over. These Days of Awe are designed with the idea that God does not hold us accountable for every sin. Only God is perfect. The rest of us are all flawed. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner has written that we are all put in this life with some blessings and some disabilities. The main point of life and the main point of this season of the year is to be grateful for what we have and to work hard to turn our disabilities into blessings.

11. Football legend Mercury Morris was arrested and convicted of cocaine use and dealing drugs. He was sentenced to prison and by the time he got out, there was no longer a possibility of playing football anymore. But Mercury Morris was no longer interested in football. He was interested in programs that would keep young people out of trouble and away from drugs. He became a well respected advocate for teaching teens about the dangers of drug use and counseled them on how to beat their addictions. Eventually he won a pardon from the Governor of Florida so that he could get the certification he needed to establish a program of his own. He literally worked his way back to acceptance because he learned from his mistake and showed that he could be better.

12. I am not saying that every criminal should have the benefit of “forgive and forget”. This should be reserved for those who admit their errors and work their way back into honest society. I do believe, however, that everyone deserves the chance to start over. I am also not implying that we should make it easy, but we do have an obligation to treat others as we would want to be treated if we were in the same situation. If we want God to forgive us as the New Year begins, we must be prepared to forgive others. No matter how angry they may make us, we must forgive even if we can’t forget. There but for the grace of God go I.

13. I believe that Vice President Biden is entitled to his opinion of Johnathan Pollard. He has every right to be appalled and angry. But the Vice President should be forgiving anyway. Pollard should have a chance to get on with his life and perhaps show some repentance for what he has done. I doubt that anyone will accept him as a conquering hero. That is the way it is with spies; the country you commit treason against, never accepts you back and the one you gave the secrets to, they also feel you can’t be trusted. Once we damage our reputation, it remains very hard to rebuild it.

14. On this Shabbat Shuva, we understand that we are not like Pollard; there is still hope that we can return to a happy, healthy and prosperous life. But we will need to make the changes necessary for that to happen. Nobody will do it for us. We have to seek out those who we have offended and get forgiveness from them and from ourselves. I would not set up the Vice President as a role model in this area. We need to let go of our anger and find our way back to trust in those we have betrayed. We can work to free Johnathan Pollard from the Federal Penitentiary, but from the prison he created for himself with his treason, he will have to liberate himself. Keeping Pollard in jail and keeping ourselves imprisoned in our guilt will not help us grow and change for the better. Now is the time for us to make our apologies. We need to find the freedom that comes with repentance and return.

May God help us return to our family, our friends and our faith at this important time of the year as we say … Amen and Shabbat Shalom

1. L’shana Tova

2. Earlier this month, National Public Radio had a report by Alix Spiegel called, “For the Dying, A Chance to Rewrite Life.” It was a long report but here are some of the things it said “For several decades, psychiatrists who work with the dying have been trying to come up with new psychotherapies that can help people cope with the reality of their death. One of these therapies asks the dying to tell the story of their life. This end-of-life treatment (is) called dignity therapy … (the) need people have to assert themselves in the face of death. … The patients would be asked a series of questions about their life history, and the parts they remember most or think are most important. Their answers would be transcribed and presented to them for editing until, after going back and forth with the therapist, a polished document resulted that could be passed on to the people that they loved.” The report went on to say that those family members who read these documents, often carried them around wherever they would go as a way of holding on to a parent or loved one who had died.

3. The therapists who designed these dignity documents were trying to give their dying patients a chance to asses their lives and make clear the lessons they had learned and the path they recommended to those of the next generation. In this sense, these dignity documents are just an updated version of a very ancient Jewish practice called, Ethical Wills. A regular will disposes of the property of the deceased. An ethical will dispenses advice and lessons to those who are important in our lives. Both ethical wills and dignity documents, are one way we can speak from beyond the grave to those who wish to have one more moment with someone they love. I know one man who claimed that he had written emails to his children that were scheduled to be sent out 20 to 30 years after he had died in order to drive his children and grandchildren crazy. I don’t know about email but I suspect that there are many people who would love to get one more letter, one more phone call from their parent who died long ago. An ethical will is one way we can continually reach out to our children from beyond the grave. Every time the children read it, they will discover new insights for the changing times in their lives.

4. Here, at the beginning of the new year, we have to ask ourselves, why do we need to wait until we are near death to reach out and teach our children? Why don’t we use the time that we have to speak of important topics and give much needed advice? I know that sometimes, unless we are asked, our children don’t really want our advice, but I am not talking about advice over a given problem they may encounter in life. What about the real lessons from our life that we would want to share with our family? Why do we wait so long to share those stories with our children?

5. One of the problems with sharing life lessons with our children is where are we supposed to go to have this kind of a conversation? Should we have it while we sit with them at the pool or on the beach? Is the mall the right place to have these important conversations? When the family sits down for a holiday or family party, is this the time to have a meaningful discussion? One of my favorite stories from the comedian Myron Cohen is when he confronted his father, an avowed atheist, as to why his father went to shul every Shabbat. The father replied “There are lots of reasons people go to synagogue. My friend Garfinkle goes to synagogue to speak to God. I go to synagogue to speak to Garfinkle.

6. The famous Rabbi Harold Kushner commented on this story noting that the synagogue is one of the few places we can go to where we can have important conversations. Just being in shul, with others who are worshiping changes the very nature of the conversations we are having and it raises them to a higher plane. Myron Cohen’s father understood that only in shul could he have the special kinds of discussions he craved from his friend.

7. In a recent discussion at the American Jewish University, Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Temple Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles asked where we are supposed to go in this day and age, to participate in conversations that really matter? He is not talking about getting the latest gossip or the hot investment tips of the day, nor does he want to know where on TV or radio he can find a pundit who will tell him what he should think. He wanted to know where we should go to discuss Israel in a serious manner, to talk about politics, the war between the sexes, the status of Judaism in America, the kinds of discussions that can affect the way we view the world and the way we look at ourselves. Where do we go to have these kinds of meaningful discussions?

8. Rabbi Feinstein noted that when he was a child, there was only one place he could go to have these important discussions. That was at his parents’ Shabbat table. Around that table, he said, we could talk about anything and everything. We could find out what our parents thought about the issues of the day and they challenged us to articulate our own position and to defend it to my family. Did anyone here have a similar experience? I know that when my children were very little they could not wait to get away from our Shabbat table and the boring adult conversations there. But as they grew, slowly they stayed longer and longer, eventually offering up their own ideas and opinions. When we are together for Shabbat and Holidays, we still use that time for deeply meaningful conversations.

9. I should mention here that these discussions were just that, discussions. I did not use the time to indoctrinate my children to my point of view. I really wanted to know what they saw in the world and what they thought of it. They respected my positions and I respected theirs. They gave me some room to explain from my long experiences, and I gave them my attention and my appreciation for their candor and their thinking. We sometimes argued a point or two, but mostly we explained our position and tried to understand each other.

10. Best selling author Wendy Mogel, who was also a participant in the AJU roundtable, noted that we live today in a world that is very impatient. We do not like to wait for anything. We want instant access to our computers, to our contact list on our smart phone, to music from our ipod and to books on our Kindle. People today expect instant gratification. But Judaism is not about instant anything. Judaism teaches us that for the things that really count, we will have to learn to wait.

11. We are the students of a lifetime of learning. Some of that learning we did in school, some we learned from our parents and mentors and some we learned in the College of Hard Knocks. There is a lot of information we have to share with those who might really appreciate the knowledge we have to give. But if we don’t find the place to have the conversation, there is a real possibility that we may never have the chance to communicate with those we love the lessons from and of our lives. On Yom Kippur we implore God “Al tashlichaynu l’ayt Zichnanu – Don’t cast us away in our old age” We still have much to teach, so don’t let us go too soon. It is not enough to share the photographs of our life, we need to let our children and grandchildren know that our memories and experiences are very relevant to their own lives.

12. We read today the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. This is a story that we can discuss at lunch today as we gather with our family. Can we put ourselves in the shoes of Abraham? He is setting out to do the unthinkable, to sacrifice his son, his only child, to God. What was he thinking? How do you think Abraham would describe what he had done to his family before he died? According to the Torah, after this event on Mt. Moriah, he would never talk to Sarah, his wife, again because she will die before he returns. He will never talk to Isaac again; the Torah does not recall any further conversations between father and son. And the Torah also fails to record any more contact between Abraham and God. It is as if God and Abraham’s family never want to talk again to the man who almost sacrificed his beloved son.

13. What do you think Abraham would say to his family in his dignity document? What would he record in his ethical will about the lessons he learned from this pivotal moment in his life? Would he claim that he was loyal to God to the very end, following exactly what God wanted from him? Or, would Abraham say that in his blindness of faith in God, that his piety almost destroyed his family and that he failed God’s test? Then again, maybe Abraham might claim that while God was testing him, he was testing God, that if God would require such a sacrifice, then that call would be the rift that would end Abraham’s connection to the Divine. It is even possible that Abraham was the paradigm for religious fanatics, he had such a strong faith in God that even if he martyred his son, God would return his son to life.

14. Which explanation do you think, is the true motivation for Abraham? The answer to that question is not found in the Torah, it depends on the kind of person who is reading and interpreting the story. When we read this story, it is our own personal character that we imprint into the life of our Patriarch. WE are Abraham. So the real question we have to answer is, “Why did WE do it? Why did we go out to sacrifice our beloved child?

15. And let us not be so quick to say that we would NEVER do such a thing to our children. If we look at the facts of our lives, we don’t always see the pretty picture we all too often paint of ourselves. We have some very difficult questions we need to answer in our own lives before we can point a finger at Abraham. The first question is: Did we sacrifice our children for our work? Did we miss out on all the important moments in their lives because we were busy earning a living and climbing the social ladder? Did we miss out on the important moments when they needed our guidance and support? The second question: Did we sacrifice our children to our need to succeed? It was not enough that we were successful in our lives, we needed our children to match our success with successes of their own. Today we have “Tiger Moms” who know best what their kids need and force their children to give up what they want so that Mom will be proud. Did we let our children go their own way in life or did we decide for them how their lives would unfold? The third question: Did we sacrifice our children to our own need to be loved? Did we convince them that nobody would ever love them like we do? Did we teach them that they had a loyalty to the family, to their parents that came before anything else in their lives? Did we show them that we would NEVER let them go and that they were destined to sacrifice their lives for us? Finally there is the question: Did I sacrifice them to others who paid more attention to them than I did? While I was looking after my own life, were they being raised by the parents of friends, or the other kids in the street or maybe they were raised by television. Have we forfeited our standards and gave them only the lessons of the media: movies, gossip and sports? Modern culture demands that if we don’t give proper values to our children, the values of Media culture will fill their lives. Are these the values that we want them to pass on to our grandchildren?

16. Now we understand that if we are to put ourselves in Abraham’s shoes, we need to understand Abraham’s character. And if his character is a projection of our character, we have some important questions that need to be asked even before we are ready to pass our values down to the next generation and to the one beyond that. This time of year calls us to do a Heshbone HaNefesh, a full examination of our soul. Only if we fully understand who we are, what we stand for and what gives our lives meaning can we hope to transfer those values into the lives of those we love.

17. What do we really want for our children? We want them to be happy. We can only teach them about happiness if we ourselves are happy with our lives. The therapists understood that, at the end of life, documenting all the happy times and important events puts all of life into perspective. It is a lesson that not only do our children need to hear, it is a lesson that they want to hear. But to find out what makes us happy, and to teach happiness to others, we will find that we need to redefine all of the things we think will make us happy

18. The Sages of the Talmud noted two thousand years ago that the things we think will make us happy will only do so if we radically redefine what they stand for. Ben Zoma redefined the meaning of wealth, strength, wisdom and honor. We think that these four things will make us happy. That having money, athletic ability, wisdom and honor are the marks of accomplishment in this world. But they only will make us happy if we can learn to see them in a different light, A Jewish light that is quite different from the way they are defined in popular culture.

19. Wealth will not make us happy until we realize that we are rich only when we are happy with what we already have. Mitch Albom, the best selling author in his book, “Have a Little Faith” writes, “Wanting what you can’t have, looking for self worth in a mirror, layering work on top of work and still wondering why you weren’t satisfied – before working some more (are problems not solved by taking pills). I knew. I had done all that. There was a stretch where I could not have worked more hours in the day without eliminating sleep altogether. I piled on accomplishments. I made money. I earned accolades. And the longer I went at it, the emptier I began to feel, like pumping air faster and faster into a torn tire. … I didn’t turn things over to fate or faith. I recoiled from people who put their daily affairs in divine hands. … Such surrender seemed silly to me. I felt that I knew better. But privately, I couldn’t say I felt any happier than they did. So I noted how, for all the milligrams of medication he required, (my Rabbi) never popped a pill for his peace of mind. He loved to smile, he avoided anger. … He knew why he was here; He said: to give to others, to celebrate God, and to enjoy and honor the world he was put in. His morning prayers began with ‘Thank you Lord for returning my soul to me.’ When you start that way, the rest of the day is a bonus.”

20. Wisdom is not about knowing, it is about learning. Rabbi Neil Kurshan in his book “Raising Your Child To Be A Mensch” writes, “A friend who grew up in Boston received daily Bible lessons from his grandmother who lived with the family. A self-educated, deeply religious woman, she found teaching her grandson was an uphill struggle. He was frequently distracted by the other children playing outside, and his eyes and mind would drift out the window. She would chide him gently, ‘David, David, you will have so much time to play ball during your life, but will you find time to become a mentch?’” What good is knowledge if we think we know it all?

21. What is honor? Rabbi Feinstein tells a story about honor. The Rabbi went to Victoria, British Columbia and visited the famous Butchart Gardens. They are extraordinary gardens that reflect beautifully every season of the year. Robert Butchart made his fortune in cement. He became a leading figure in Victoria and ran for public office. He died in 1943 and there are very few people who remember him just two generations later. His wife, Jennie, set out to reclaim the old limestone quarry and created there beautiful sunken gardens. Section by section the gardens were developed and today, while her husband’s accomplishments are forgotten, her gardens are known around the world and visitors come to see what she created. The garden is an everlasting testament to her memory. Honor is not what you get, it is what you give.

22. Real strength is not what you move around on the outside, but what you are able to control on the inside. Remember when your children were very small, and you had to go and tuck them in at night? Sometimes, when you thought they were asleep, you walked out of the room and they would yell to bring you back inside, “There is an alligator under my bed!” And if you were a good parent, you went back into the room, looked under the bed and said, “there is no alligator here, tomorrow is another day, you need your sleep, good night” But now, just ask yourself, who was right? Was there an alligator under the bed? Is the world filled with random violence and disease, does the darkness of night contain unseen dangers? Who was right, your child or you, who left the room claiming that there will always be a tomorrow? The child may be right, the world is a very dangerous place, but we teach them to control their fears by giving them the faith in tomorrow.

23. And I think that is where I want to leave you, all of you who are my children. I know that tomorrow is not guaranteed to anyone. Maybe it is already written who will live and who will die. But I want us to go forward into the new year with the faith that there will always be a tomorrow. I don’t want anyone to think that they have only a little time to work on their dignity document or their ethical will. You have all the time in the world. What I ask everyone to do, starting tomorrow, is to examine your own life, the story that someday your family will cherish, and if you don’t like the story so far, there is still time to create a better ending. We need to examine our lives, not to find the things we need to repent, but to find the lessons we have learned and the moments that give our life meaning. What matters most is not the mistakes; we all make mistakes, but the lessons learned and the meaning we give to all we have accomplished. Life is not about races won, books published or money made; it is about happiness and love. Don’t spend any time worrying about the time you have lost, pay attention to the moments you have today. If you start every day with the prayer, “Modeh Ani Lefanecha She-hechezarta bi Nishmati – Thank you God for returning my soul to me” if you start out there, no matter the weather, the trial or the tribulations, if you start out grateful to God for your soul, then all the accomplishments of the rest of the day will be for you, a very treasured bonus.

24. L’shana Tova tikatevu – may all of us be inscribed for good and for life in the new year.

1. L’shana Tova – May you be inscribed for a good year.

2. Turn to Page 125 in Machzor – Middle of the page, the prayer before we begin our Musaf Amidah.. Adonai S’fatai Tiftach U’fee Yagid T’hilatecha “God Open My Lips and My Mouth Will Declare Your Praise.” Before we pray, we pray that God will give us the right words. There is a melody for this line. (teach melody from Craig Taubman)

3. There was a man who came to visit a beautiful garden. Overcome with emotion he cried out, “Take a look at all of God’s creation!” The gardener heard him and shook his head, “You should have seen what this place looked like when God cared for it by himself.” I don’t think that I would take away from God the beauty of a garden but I also know that without human help, the best garden can quickly go to weeds. I am thankful for the partnership between God and humanity that leads to beautiful gardens and a more beautiful world.

4. As I stand here I also want to call out, “Take a Look at this wonderful congregation.” But if I do then I am sure I will hear a voice from the back in reply, “You should have seen this place at 8:30”. In case you came late to service today, at 8:30 this place looked like the last inning of a Marlins home game when they are behind 17-1.

5. Why do we all come to services so late? When I had a congregation that had a Bar Mitzvah every week, I could rely on the fact that at the beginning of the service, the only people who were present when the service began was the non-Jewish guests of the Bar Mitzvah. They were never told that you are supposed to come to services about an hour or so after the posted start time. Only those most dedicated to prayer or those who are feeling really guilty about something they have done make it to services on time. Why is this? Why do we arrive late? Would we have to do a drawing for cash prizes between 8:30 and 9 in order to get people to arrive on time? Some of the most meaningful prayers are found at the beginning of our service and most of us have never heard them.

6. And don’t think this is a modern problem. The Talmud records that the proper order of blessings during the Torah service SHOULD be the blessing before the reading is recited by the persn called for the first Aliyah, and the blessing after the Torah reading should be recited after the reading by the one called up for the last Aliyah. That is all that is necessary. But the Sages worried that those who arrived late would never know that there was a blessing before the Torah was read, and those leaving early might never know that there also was a blessing at the end. So they ruled that each person should recite the blessings both before and after each Aliyah, a repetition made necessary because people came late to shul.

7. If you are laughing nervously about the answer to the question, don’t worry, I already know why Jews come late to services, on the High Holy Days and on Shabbat as well. There is no great secret here that anyone is keeping from the Rabbi. There are three reasons why we don’t arrive on time. First of all, we find the service boring. One of my colleagues, much senior to me, used to visit other synagogues and usually described them as “a beautiful sanctuary that sleeps 500.” There is a chance that the Rabbi could say something interesting, and there is a chance we could get an honor on the Bima, but you don’t have to arrive early to meet those goals. The rest of the service is just “stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down”.

8. The second reason we arrive late for services is that services are way too long. The people on the TV show, CSI can solve an entire case in 60 minutes. Why does praying take so long? My favorite movie is only two and a half hours, or maybe three. But a three and a half hour Shabbat service and a service over five hours long on the High Holy Days? Nobody should have to sit that long? There is nothing in the world that is interesting for so long except maybe a football game that goes into overtime. This is not even nearly as exciting.

9. The third reason we arrive late is because prayer is so hard. When we look at a page of the Machzor like Page 164-5, we have to wonder what this book is all about. Who can make any sense over a pages like these? Trying to understand a prayer book is like trying to read War and Peace in Russian. Even the English in this Machzor may as well be from Moscow. After a few minutes of trying to decipher the prayers in either English or Hebrew, we just get a headache and quit. Maybe we should pass out in the synagogue a book like “The Idiot’s Guide to Praying” In a multi-media world, we need a multi-media service, otherwise, we can’t wait to get out the door.

10. My friend and colleague, Rabbi Gail Labovitz, sums up the entire problem when she writes, “One particularly memorable personal insight came several years ago, during a ‘debriefing’ session after a Protestant prayer service. Someone asked about the difference between “high church’ and ‘low church’ forms of worship in Protestant denominations. The student who fielded the question answered roughly as follows: ‘Imagine walking into a church. If there are high, soaring ceilings, fixed pews, stained-glass windows – the message is that God is transcendent and awesome, and that is high church. On the other hand, if the ceiling is low, the chairs aren’t fixed in place, perhaps the space isn’t even regularly or exclusively used as a prayer space – God is immanent, and your in a low church environment.’ A little light bulb went off in my head – bing! -I’m a ‘low church’ Jew.”

11. Rabbi Labovitz understands that the same issues that our Christian colleagues face is the same one we face. We have ‘high church’ services for ‘low church’ Jews. When we come to shul we have all kinds of expectations that we have accumulated over the years and sure enough, we find them all in shul and it gives us another reason to be late next week, or to skip the program altogether. Somehow we never really get the chance to think about what could make our prayers more inviting and meaningful. We just put in our time and remember why we stopped coming in the first place. We are all ‘low church’ Jews attending a ‘high church’ service. We want our God to be close and personal and we find in our service that God is far away and unapproachable. We have become indifferent to what should be of crucial importance.

12. So how am I doing? Did I describe what is happening out there? I am not angry that anyone came late, I certainly don’t keep track of who comes to shul at what time. It is a free country and we are free to spend as much time in prayer as we want. I only see a problem where people come to synagogue and want to pray, they want to have a close, personal and meaningful encounter with God and faith and we are not providing what they need. We are leading a service that was constructed for past generations and bygone days.

13. I come to shul for the very beginning of the service. Not because I have to, but because I want to. Those of us who do come for the beginning are all friends and we share an understanding of what prayer means to us and why it is important in our lives. Just like you, we could be spending the extra time in bed, over breakfast or watching TV but we choose to attend early because of the spiritual fulfillment we get here. Everyone can feel that spiritual connection but we will have to work on our expectations.

14. As you can imagine, Rabbis have been working on boring services for thousands of years. The reason that services have not improved over the centuries is because of one important factor. Rabbi Mike Comins, in his book “Making Prayer Real, Why Prayer is Difficult and What You Can Do About It.” writes in the introduction, “My prayer life changed when I took ownership of it and no longer left my heart’s expression in the hands of rabbis, cantors, the Siddur, the building architect, the community or whether a baby happens to be crying in the sanctuary today. … If I go to services expecting the rabbi to impress me with her words, and the cantor to move me with his musicianship, I am like a critic at a movie. When a good film touches me, I am spiritually enriched, if not, not. It mostly depends on the film. But if I pray like a painter about the draw on her canvas, I am responsible for finding my inspiration and engaging the practice. … the critical point: it depends mostly on me – my longing , my desire, my creativity, my talent, my sincerity, my devotion to the art. We have a choice: to consume art or to become an artist; to consume the synagogue product or to become a prayer-person, an artist of the soul whose sincere prayer serves the community as much as the community supports our prayer.”

15. There is no reason for us to abdicate our role in prayer the minute we walk in the door. We can pick up this Machzor, or we can find a different one that we like and bring it with us, and pray however we feel like praying. We don’t all have to be on the same page. We don’t all have to rise and sit on command. If we find something that speaks to us we can linger on the page and let the rest of the congregation go on without us until we are good and ready to catch up. Mary J. Blige, the Grammy award winning singer has written, “The seeking of spiritual light is gained through having faith and trust in God. Prayer provides the path, leading to inner strength and pushing us toward greater honesty with ourselves. With honesty come clarity, as we come to see the truth of our condition. We can then change what we can and accept what we can’t. Whatever it is that you have, you must make it work for you. In this way, we keep moving toward the light. When we minimize our own talents, when we envy what other have, when we give in to despair, we choose darkness. When we do so, we should always remember this is a choice, it is not a destiny. The light is always there if we have the courage to seek it. And, with faith and trust in God, we need never seek it alone.”

16. The length of services is another issue that Rabbis and congregations have struggled with for hundreds of years. The problem is that the term, “too long” is as subjective as you can get. Waiting five minutes in a grocery store line seems very long. The same time hugging our spouse or grandchildren is way too short. The issue is not the time we spend praying but how engaged we are when we take the time to pray.

17. There are lots of ways that we can make prayer more engaging. We could do what most churches do and hire a band, something with an electric guitar, drums and maybe a bass, an electric organ is very versatile here. We could play modern pop music, klezmer music, there are also Jewish gospel songs that can really get a shul up and dancing. We could go the other way and have more time for spiritual reflection, silent personal prayer or meditation. We could add modern poetry and prayers, or create a learning environment where we explain what the prayers are about. Rabbi Jack Reimer told the local Rabbinical Association that anyone that does not explain the prayers as we go seriously is derelict in his or her duty as a rabbi.

18. The reality of our service is that this is what Jews have been doing since the time of the Talmud. Most of what is in our Machzor are prayers and poetry that have stood the test of time. Maybe some of the metaphors don’t speak to us as they once did to our ancestors, but the needs and desires of human beings as one year closes and another begins have not changed that much over the years. We still worry about what the new year will bring. We do sincerely want to improve our lives, leaving our deficiencies in the past and we want to strengthen our resolve to do better in the future. We want to know that mistakes have been forgiven and we have a chance to start over in the new year. It is not easy to write the prayer and poetry that will speak to Jews in every age and time. So we put them all together in a Machzor and ask each of us to find something that we can relate to. One rabbi I know says he never reads all the sins in the confessional anymore. He picks one or two he wants to work on and stays with them. I try to translate our Machzor to recognize more gender neutral language. How would you rewrite the prayers? How could you translate them into more relevant language? This is certainly easier than spending $32,000 for the new Machzor that does all that work for us.

19. Finally, Prayer is hard. Like going to the opera or the symphony, we have to do a bit of homework if we are to get the most out of our experience. If we can understand the structure of the service; where it gets personal and where it demands international actions. Where we turn to God and where we turn inward, then we discover that the Machzor is designed to get us not just to read a prayer, but to react to the prayer as well.

20. Take the central prayer of this day, the one we will soon recite “Unetane Tokef” is there something in this prayer that bothers us? Do we believe in destiny? Do all our actions find their way into God’s book? We can sing and we can interpret the prayer but do we really mean what we say? Will our answers to these questions satisfy the questions of our children or grandchildren? How might they look at Unetane Tokef”? If refusing to say it is not an option, how should we reinterpret it for a modern congregation?

21. If we don’t like “Avinu Malkaynu” would we like it better if it was “Imenu Achotaynu – our Mother our Sister”? What would this list of prayers look like if God were called a mother rather than a father? Would God be more merciful, more understanding of our faults if God were our mother and not our father and king?

22. My friend, Dr. Lewis Newman, in his book “Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuva” writes, “And so we find so many prayers asking that we be freed from shame, which is the feeling that we are unworthy of redemption. We need some divine assurance that there is, indeed, a way forward, for we ourselves have lost touch with that reality. If we can come to believe that forgiveness is a possibility, that God will take us back despite our moral failings, the all is not lost after all. Therefore, we pray to have our hearts opened tho that message of hope that can come to us only from somewhere beyond our own experience. The psalmist cries out, ‘I said, Lord be gracious to me, heal me, for I have sinned against you.’ (Psalm 41). The individual journey of repentance recapitulates the national experience of liberation from slavery, for in fact, it is a version of the same struggle. Like the Israelites in Egypt, we need to be able to break free from complacency and awaken to the fact that we are in need of liberation. First, we have to believe that such liberation is more than an idealized goal; it is a genuine possibility. Then we need the courage to pursue that goal even when we revert to our former slave mentality.” This is not kid stuff. This is hard work.

23. Now perhaps we can see why some of us come early and stay to the end. Why some of us prepare for Rosh Hashana not just for a day or two, or a week or two, but at least for a month and maybe, we are thinking about sin, forgiveness and liberation all year long and these days only guide us on our way. We who come early see this service as a ladder upon which we can climb our way to the level we wish to attain in the new year. But coming early and staying late is not the key to a meaningful prayer experience. It is only the result of a change of perspective and a change of heart. We need to open ourselves up to the possibility of prayer. We need to open our hearts to the spiritual needs we hide there. We need to open our souls to the healing that prayer can bring. But most of all, we need to open our mouths and find the words that God has placed there.

24. Sing Adonai S’fatai Tiftach U’fee Yagid T’hilatecha “God Open My Lips and My Mouth Will Declare Your Praise.”

Parshat Nitzavim

Saturday Morning

2011

1. There is a story, of a man who lived in South Africa; he owned a farm there but the land was poor and filled with rocks and he had to work very hard to earn a living. He wanted to be rich and to seek his fortune in the world so he sold his farm and with the money traveled to many places to seek his fortune. He tried his hand at many kinds of work and investments but slowly his money disappeared and he was left penniless and begging in the streets. The man who bought his farm however took a closer look at the rocks on the farm and discovered that they were all diamonds and the land was a large diamond mine. He was the one who became wealthy and powerful.

2. How often do we go out looking for our fortune and miss the treasures we already have? This is not about wanting more and more, never being happy with what we have. This is about those who think that their fortune must lie far away and they will have to go to great lengths to acquire it. There certainly are people who have sold off what they thought were old collections of comic books and baseball cards only to discover that they had given away the one comic or the one baseball card that was worth thousands of dollars. Remember the man who was browsing a garage sale and found a painting that he liked selling for ten dollars? He bought it and cleaned it up only to discover it was a lost painting of a famous artist and was worth ten thousand dollars! Imagine how the family holding the garage sale felt that what they valued the least was, in fact, the most valuable possession they owned?

3. The stock market is another place we can kick ourselves for wishing we knew then, what we know now. It is so easy to invest in something, tire of it and sell it just before it takes off. We keep our eyes on the blue chip investments but, once upon a time Microsoft, Apple and even Home Depot stock could be bought cheap. Today they are all exceedingly valuable. Sometimes we have to hang on to what we believe in longer in order to see a great return on our investment. Sometimes we have to take a longer view to discover the ultimate worth of our investments.

4. We don’t need to only talk about money either. Some things are just more valuable than money. Yes it is good to have enough to live on. Enough to feed the family keep a roof over our heads and provide for some comforts in life. But sometimes we overlook things that are more valuable than money. I know of people in their quest for fortune who abandoned the love of a spouse. The real meaning of the tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge is not that he will die, but that he will die unloved and forgotten. It is not what you get that is often important, it is also what you give. If we take the time to love, our spouse and our children, then we have real wealth. My daughter’s name is Ashira. Most Israelis assume that it is spelled, in Hebrew, with an Aleph, and it means happy. She certainly is a happy person. But we spelled her name with an “Ayin” and her name means, “wealth”. She is our living reminder that Michelle and I are very wealthy where it is most important, in the love of our children.

5. So what if I told you that everyone here has an inheritance coming to them and all they have to do is claim it? No, this is not a takeoff of the Oprah Winfry show where she gave away cars to everyone in the audience. And I am not talking about going on the internet to put your name into a website to see if you have any money or accounts that have been forgotten over time. I am talking about an inheritance from your parents and grandparents that is waiting for you to claim it.

6. If this inheritance were money, what would you do with the money you are inheriting? Would you go out and spend it on stuff that would make you feel happy? Would you eat at more expensive restaurants? Buy a fancier car? Go shopping for expensive clothing or jewelry? Perhaps you would save it for a rainy day in the future when you might need the cash, sometime when you may be ill, or when your income no longer is enough to pay the bills. Maybe you might invest the money from your inheritance, letting it grow so that later you might live off the investment income or have it as a gift for your children or grandchildren. What would you do with money you suddenly discovered you had inherited?

7. In this week’s parsha we read, “Surely this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say ‘who among us can go up to the heaven and get it for us and impart it to us, so that we may observe it?’ Neither is it 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, in your mouth and in your heart to observe it.”

8. The inheritance we are talking about is not money, it is our religion, our faith, our way of looking at the world. Our parents or grandparents were steeped in this tradition and they hoped to teach us the ways of Judaism and the treasures that are in our way of living. We often become so distracted by the outside world that we forget that we have this inheritance, one that other people wish that they could inherit. We are often like the man from South Africa, we don’t really understand the treasure that we already own.

9. For some of us Judaism is not a treasure, it is a jail. Judaism has bars on its windows and a bolted door. It is filled with restrictions that seem to limit our every move. Don’t do this, Don’t do that. You must perform this ritual in exactly this way or else it doesn’t count. The modern world is evil and only Jews and Judaism can be trusted. This is the kind of faith that people run away from as soon as they are able to leave their home. When Jews came to this country at the beginning of the twentieth century, when they saw the Statue of Liberty, they not only rejoiced that they had left their lands of persecution, but I am told that the bottom of New York harbor was covered with tallesim and tephillin that were thrown overboard by Jews ready to start life anew without the burden of living as Jews. They were literally throwing their inheritance into the sea.

10. But that is not the real inheritance that we receive from our ancestors. Judaism is not a dark force that drains the life and love from our world. Judaism is what helps us see the world as it really is, and it gives us the tools to help make it even better. Generations of Jews have found joy and peace in their Jewish practice. They see Judaism as a way of making sense of a chaotic universe. They see Jewish ritual as a way to keep life organized, with the most important parts of life placed well ahead of everything else.

11. How can we inherit this living Judaism? This is a good question as the beginning of a new year will be next week. If we want to claim this inheritance, there are some things we should resolve to do. First of all we will need to know more about what we have been given. This means that in the new year we should resolve to read more Jewish books, not just novels, but books that will help us explore our Judaism in a deeper way. We use Jewish texts to sharpen our understanding of what it means to be a Jew.

12. Second, we should set time aside for conversations about our faith. Jewish learning is not done in a vacuum; it is done in conversation with others who share our desire to learn. Temple Emeth offers many opportunities to study and learn together and the conversations are always meaningful and stimulating. Think about joining us for an hour or so of give and take on Jewish topics in our Adult Studies program. If your previous Jewish education is missing something, we can help you fill in the gaps.

13. Once we take hold of our Jewish inheritance and learn how it can be important in our lives, we should then decide how we should use or how we should invest in what we have inherited. Temple Emeth is, at its core, a place where Judaism can not only be studied, but practiced. Find a day to join us for daily minyan. Extend your observance of Shabbat to include Mincha/Maariv and Havdala. Join us for a Shabbat Dinner, breakfast in the sukkah, or any other holiday celebration. We can learn here to read Hebrew, chant a haftara, lead a service, read from the Torah or many others ritual skills that will enhance our Jewish life. Certainly there are rituals that can be done at home and we can help you bring your Judaism into your own personal space.

14. Let this new year 5772 be the year that we all learn to appreciate what we have inherited from our families and received from God. Let us learn to be knowledgeable and committed Jews, comfortable at all times with the faith of our ancestors as a faith of our own. Let us discover for ourselves that one of the most precious things in our life is what we already have, our Judaism.

May God guide us as we seek to come closer to our faith and to our people as we say … Amen and Shabbat Shalom

Parshat Ki Tavo

Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. In the ancient world, all contracts and treaties would have a similar conclusion. After stating the terms of the agreement between both parties, there is a long list of curses called down upon anyone who would violate the terms of the agreement. As we are now approaching the end of the Torah, following ancient custom, there is a long list of curses and dooms called down upon the Jewish people if they should ever violate this covenant they have made with God. It is not the most beautiful part of the Torah, in fact, as you have seen, we read it quickly and quietly; but if you take the time to read it, it is quite effective in listing the awful things that come when we do not follow what God wants us to do.

3. Maybe, as we read this list of curses, we shake our heads and mutter that we don’t believe in that kind of a God anymore. We don’t believe in a God that punishes us for every sin, for every mistake that we make. We don’t want a God who punishes, we prefer a God who supports us in our moments of weakness and who forgives and pardons our transgressions. What kind of a God would bring these disasters down on humanity, punishing the good along side of the bad? There is no escaping the curses that are pronounced. When war and famine come, it not only consumes the saints with the sinners, it also consumes the innocent children and animals as well. What kind of a God punishes the innocent along with the guilty?

4. God might not punish the innocent with the guilty but that certainly is the history of humanity. When just a few of us sin, it is all of society that suffers. Only one company dumped toxic waste into the Love Canal 50 years ago, but the entire community that lived on its banks had to be uprooted and houses built there had to be destroyed. One country, China, still burns fossil fuel without cleaning the sulfur from the smoke, but that sulfur drifts on the winds of the upper atmosphere and falls as acid rain on the forests and trees here in the United States. An obscure agreement between the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and the terrorist organization Al Queda, was of no concern to anyone in the world until the terrorists hijacked and flew passenger jets into the World Trade Center.

5. Newsweek reported that the wildfires in Texas burning since December of 2010, have now consumed 3.6 million acres. That is an area that is close to the size of the state of Connecticut. Over 700 homes have been burned and four people have lost their lives. Newsweek goes on to say that six of the largest fires in Texas history have occurred this year. Why has this national tragedy occurred? Maybe it is because the Governor of Texas has cut funding for the volunteer firefighters, who are the first responders to these fires, by a whopping 75%. When we don’t have enough firefighters, why are we surprised when we have towering wildfires?

6. Newsweek also reported that the Governor of New Jersey is complaining that retired teachers in his state are getting pensions of $35,000 a year that the state has to pay. I don’t know why he is so unhappy that they are receiving those pensions. After all, not only did they earn the pension but they are responsible for the high school students in New Jersey having the highest Advanced Placement test scores in the nation. Would good teachers teach in New Jersey if they don’t have decent benefits to cover their retirement?

7. What really got me angry this week, was Sen. Ron Paul at the debate in Tampa on Monday. He was asked if a 30 year old who did not have health insurance and who became seriously ill, if society had any responsibility to that person. Ron Paul replied that the man made his decision and the country has no responsibility to heal him at all. It is not the government’s job to take care of the uninsured.

8. We can have a great discussion about whether or not government in this country is too big or too small. That would be a fantastic discussion. But to say that government has NO role to play in society is not just foolish, it is dangerous. It is dangerous to people who make poor choices and it is dangerous to those of us who try to follow all the rules. We all suffer when our government does not do its job. Judaism rightly points out that we need to pray on behalf of the government because without it, people would devour each other alive.

9. I want to be very clear; Judaism teaches us that government has responsibilities for the people and we have responsibilities for government. Rabbi Elliot Dorff, philosopher, author and bio-ethicist, lists, in order of importance, how Judaism sees the role that government is supposed to play. The first role of government is to redeem captives, especially women who are in danger of physical violation and those at risk of death. Second, government is responsible for medical care for people who need it, and this cost is more important than raising money to build a synagogue. Life and health take precedence over all other communal priorities. Third comes food for the poor. Fourth is clothing and housing for the poor. In the Middle East where the weather is moderate, clothing and housing are not as important as food. In North America, where there are very cold winters, this need is more urgent. Fifth comes money for the dowry for indigent brides and last is whatever is necessary to sustain a person’s dignity.

10. In addition, the Jewish community, when it governed itself, provided ways to prevent poverty. There were strict commercial rules that regulated how much profit a person could make on food and essential items being sold. There were also rules on how quickly laborers should be paid. They preferred that people work for their living and not live off the public till. Rather than give charity, often loans and or aid to help keep someone employed were better ways to preserve the dignity of those in distress.

11. Since everyone has these responsibilities to the poor, it becomes the duty of the community to gather the resources and provide for the poor on behalf of everyone. In effect, the Jewish community taxed its residents to provide a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter and a tzedaka collective to support those who need money or other supplies. The responsibility of how much to contribute was dependent on income. The more you earned, the more you owed. Even those who received charity were required to give charity. Those who could give more, were required to give more. Those who refused to give could be forced by the courts to give or their property could be confiscated.

12. These responsibilities are, first of all, a moral requirement. What separates us from animals is that we don’t leave our wounded, sick or elderly behind. It may be OK for a heard of antelope or wolves to weed out the sick and injured. It is not OK for human beings. We believe that we are all created in the image of God and that nobody is more deserving than anyone else. We don’t ration food or health care so that those who can’t afford it are left out. All Jews are responsible for each other. That is a fundamental part of our faith.

13. There is also a practical reason to provide for the poor. The poor are more likely to contract serious diseases that could affect all of public health. Do you remember the SARS scare in the 1990’s? It was so communicable that many people caught it from those who were waiting with them in hospital waiting rooms. When we make sure that everyone has proper health care we are preventing the uncontrolled spread of disease.

14. The same applies to doctors, firefighters and police officers. If we no longer provide an adequate number of professionals in our community, we should not be surprised by increases in disease, wildfires and crime. These also are the duties of government; we certainly don’t want private security or local vigilantes in charge of crime prevention. According to the Torah, the communal leaders had to offer a sacrifice if there was an unsolved murder in their jurisdiction. It was a penalty for not providing enough security for strangers and residents.

15. Let us never forget that there is a purpose for government. Our constitution teaches us that we have formed this union to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. For both Jewish and American law, we rely on our government to provide justice, fairness, a social safety net, security and freedom. I know that there are some today that say that the best government is one that stays out of the way. But that is not how Judaism sees the world. Judaism teaches us that government is the one resource that makes freedom and liberty possible. Nobody likes taxes and rules about how to live our lives. And maybe our government has gotten carried away in both areas. That is also a good debate to have from time to time. But when we pray for the government, we are praying that it does its job with justice and that it acts with rightful authority. Without government humanity has known only chaos.

16. As a rabbi, I must teach the important role that government plays in our lives. Ron Paul is entitled to his opinion, but as Jews, we must and should support the government in its duty to give aid to the poor, the homeless, the sick and the aged. That is our duty as Jews, as Americans and as human beings. Let us not get lost in campaign rhetoric and forget our responsibilities to others. That would be a crime against our humanity and a sin against God.

May God bless us with a good government that supports those in need of support and gives opportunity for all. May God bless us and our country as we say …

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

PARSHAT KI TETZE

Text :

ז שַׁלֵּחַ תְּשַׁלַּח אֶת-הָאֵם וְאֶת-הַבָּנִים תִּקַּח-לָךְ לְמַעַן יִיטַב לָךְ וְהַאֲרַכְתָּ יָמִים.

Let the mother go and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life. [Deut. 22:7]

Commentary:

(One evening as my wife and I were shopping for clothing for our children) I caught a glimpse of a tall, carefully made up, attractive woman out of the corner of my eye, she seemed, even at first glance, to be distraught. Pretending not to notice her as she moved into the aisle where I stood, I saw that she was very pregnant and accompanied by a man. They were discreetly moving toward me and she was trying to catch my eye. But even if she did, I would have feigned ignorance. Yes I know, I’m a rabbi, a public person, but gimme a break, this public person happens to be shopping for clothes.

It didn’t work. She was closing in and moving through the bright florescent lights like a guided missile. “Aren’t you Rabbi Kushner?” “Yes, I am; have we met?” “Not exactly; we attended a service that you did. My husband and I thought you were very nice.” She moved in for the kill. “Oh Rabbi, we were at the doctor’s this afternoon. The third opinion. He says I have an inoperable tumor. I’m going to die. He says the baby will be fine.”

They introduced themselves to me, gave me the details. They’d been thinking about joining my congregation. Their world had collapsed. Why has this happening? Would I do the funeral? They joined. She bore a daughter, she died. I did the funeral.

There are two ways to understand our relationship with God: God can be above us or we can be within God. In the first, it is possible for us to have a relationship with God. There are two discrete parties who can each behave freely and independently. And since God is other than the world, there must be some things which are not God; a devil, and evil instinct. . . .Evil has its own independent existence. It is in business for itself. In the second model, we are within God; we are one with God. God is everywhere and everything. All being derives its reality from God. According to this paradigm, if God is within all creation, then what appears as evil can only be a distant, albeit distorted, expression of the Divine. This doesn’t make it “good.” But nothing can be entirely separate from or independent of God. Everything, therefore, is the way it is “supposed” to be.

The stories with happy endings distract our attention from all the other painful stories. They say to us that somehow things work out, even though it often seems like they don’t.. For a moment, it seems possible that our grief may be due only to our own myopia. The seeds of giant redwoods, after all, are capable of germinating only once they have been through the intense heat of a forest fire.

Not long ago I was sitting with the other members of my synagogue’s high school faculty… My glance settled on a short vivacious, red haired girl of seventeen. She had just finished telling a joke or playing some kind of a prank. Everyone laughed with her. She is popular. I love that girl. I am honored that she looks up to me. That girl’s father never did remarry. Last week the father told me that his daughter was thinking of becoming a rabbi.

Look, I don’t think that God made a tumor grow in that girl’s mother’s brain. Or that God has anything to do with the choice of careers or where I used to shop for bargain basement clothing. But I can’t get it out of my head that somehow God is mixed up in the whole horrible, holy and joyous thing. [Lawrence Kushner; Invisible Lines of Connection, Jewish Lights Press, p. 136]

Questions:

A) How can the Torah promise long life for sending away the mother bird when we know that long life has nothing to do with sending birds away?

B) Can we explain evil in the world without denying God’s power or God’s knowledge of all things? Why must religion, in general and Judaism, in particular answer this question? What does this say about our faith in God?

C) Do you see God as above us or within us? What difference does our choice make in the way we act in the world?

Parshat Shoftim

Sermon Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. The Memphis Three were set free from jail this week. Three men, convicted almost 20 years ago for the killing of three children in an occult ritual, one of whom was given the death penalty; they walked out of jail as free men. After more than 19 years in prison, DNA evidence that was not available 20 years ago, convinced a judge that there was no way that these three men could have committed this terrible crime. Anyone who is not a part of this case, looking at the documents that convicted these three, is appalled that they could be convicted on such flimsy evidence. The man was convicted of capital murder by a jury of his “peers” based on a confession that was gained illegally. It was coerced from one of the defendants who was threatened by the police, without access to a lawyer and who recanted this so called confession the next day.

3. This miscarriage of justice was the result of police eager for a quick resolution of a terrible crime. It was the result of a prosecutor who wanted the publicity of a conviction. It was the result of judges who did not want to admit that they may have made a mistake. It took thousands of people, including some very famous people, who paid the lawyers who worked for years to get these three innocent men freed from prison. It is hard to imagine that in the country of justice and freedom, the land of law and order, the nation that is famous for its crime scene investigations, that this kind of railroad justice could even exist, let alone leave three innocent men in prison for nearly 20 years.

4. This is the kind of case that lies at the foundation of our Torah reading today. Judges and officials are to be appointed who will show no partiality to the rich or the poor; magistrates who will not accept bribes to find for one side of the case or the other. A conviction in Jewish courts requires two or three witnesses; one can’t be convicted on the testimony of just one person. Courts did not have juries, but they had a panel of three judges, who were supervised by a regional court of 23 judges, who were supervised by a national court of 71 judges.

5. Furthermore, witnesses that testified in a murder case would be required to throw the first stones when the time for execution arrived. Witnesses who conspired against someone were punished with the same punishment they intended for their victim. Witnesses were questioned separately and had to agree to what they saw. They could not be relatives of anyone involved in the case. And once acquitted, there could be no double jeopardy.

6. But even with all these safeguards, there were miscarriages of justice in the ancient world as well. Israelite royalty, King Ahab and Queen Jezebel had their neighbor executed for treason on the testimony of two bribed witnesses so that the King could seize the land and vineyard of the neighbor. Nobody said a word to the King until the prophet Elijah confronted them. King David was also punished for killing a man to avoid an embarrassing indiscretion. We see why our Parsha requires a Jewish king to write a copy of a Torah for his own use; to impress upon him the details of the law.

7. We like to think that we take our sense of justice seriously; that if we are called upon to serve on a jury, we would work extra hard to make sure that we made the just and right decision. Maybe some of us have served on a jury and actually had to decide a case. It is not as easy as it looks on TV. When we are the ones who have someone’s life in our hands, to send them to jail, to send them home or to put them on probation is not an easy decision. We hope we make the right choice, but often, even at the end of a case, we are unsure of what was the right thing to do.

8. Would we have convicted Casey Anthony if we had been on her jury? What about OJ Simpson? Would we have wanted to sit on the jury of the rape case of Dominique Strauss-Kahn? Could we have done a better job? Before you answer, it is important to remember that we do not have all the evidence in our hands that was presented in court. Even if we wanted to watch the proceedings of these sensational trials, we could not have seen all the information. Television only covers the “interesting” parts trials. The media only records what their experts say are important and relevant, but seeing the accused and hearing the tone of voice of the witnesses is also an important part of a trial. How can we possibly say what we might have done if we were not there?

9. I actually think that we often rush to judgment on the testimony of just one witness. We all too often allow the trial of someone in the court of public opinion. We convict those arrested without even seeing the evidence that needs to be presented. There was a crime, we have a suspect, if the police say he did it, than it must be true. Unless it is almost 20 years later and we can see that the police did it very wrong. I don’t even want to limit this to the sensational crimes in the news each week. We make far too many decisions based on just one opinion and we then cite that testimony as if it has to be true.

10. I get, almost every week, a story in my email about some sensational item in the news. The more fantastic the information the more likely that someone will forward it to me. Just about every one of these emails is filled with inaccuracy and falsehood. Just because we read it on the internet does not make it true. I have read terrible things about the government of Israel that never happened. I have seen horrific quotations attributed to the Koran that are completely imaginary. Did you get the email that said that Saudi Arabia Air is now part of the Star Alliance of airlines and it claimed that Delta Airlines would start refusing to take Jewish passengers? It was completely false. It never happened. It can never happen. This is a terrible example of bigotry against Muslims. We just can’t believe everything that we learn on the internet. There is in fact a site on the internet that is dedicated to debunking all these lies that are out there posing as facts for us to repeat.

11. So if you can’t trust what you read or see on Television, who can you trust? I have always been a believer in reading more than one source and then, comparing the information and making my own decision. I get my news from many sources. I watch the 11 pm news on TV most evenings. I read the news from many different sources. I read the headlines from the Miami Herald, the Sun Sentinel, ABC news, MSNBC news, CNN, and even the BBC. I have any news about Delray Beach, about Conservative Judaism and Rabbis automatically sent to my email. I read the Israeli paper Haaretz every day and I have national and international headlines from around the world sent to me for evaluation. I get the latest news about technology from a computer magazine. Of course I daily check the headlines for important stories in the New York Times and not just because my son works there.

12. I often check out local news in at least three of these sources before I feel ready to make a comment on it. I usually check out national news also in at least three sources, one of which is a foreign source to see how others look at the same information. The facts may be the same but the interpretations are widely different. It is a lot of work to be able to comment on politics, international news, and even local stories. I never judge a story in the news from just one source. Only if I have read the story in a number of places do I feel I understand what the story is about. I was annoyed this week because all the news stations were complaining that 1.5 million people who were in hurricane Irene are still without power. That may be true, but the number on Sunday was 5.5 million people without power, that is almost an 80% improvement in just a few short days. I agree that 1.5 million people is still a large number but I can’t fault the power companies and the politicians for not doing a good job.

13. And that applies all the more so to gossip. I don’t know why people want to share gossip with the Rabbi; I never comment on it or share it with others and more often than not I challenge the person telling the story to reveal his or her sources. If I do hear something troubling about someone I know, I call them right away and find out for myself if the information is true and if there is anything I can do to help them in their troubles. I don’t judge anyone on the testimony of one witness.

14. One of the things we need to be examining at this season of the year is if we are too quick to judge others based on flimsy testimony. Do we rush to judgment of those who show up in the evening news? Do we form opinions only because our “favorite” commentator endorses it? Do we look askance at our neighbors because of the latest rumors going around about them by the pool? If so, we will have much to atone for on Yom Kippur. Our Parsha challenges us all to be skeptical of what we read and what we hear. It asks us to consider other possibilities for the fantastic stories that we hear; and not let someone else “bribe” our minds with assorted half truths that will cloud our judgment when it comes to the bigger issues.

15. When you hear a talk show and there are people around the table who disagree and are given a chance to explain why they disagree, you have a reason to perk up your ears. If you hear a news personality apologize for getting a story wrong, it is OK to pay attention. But if you find a commentator who shouts down anyone who disagrees with him, it is best just to turn off the noise. There are way too many people in the media who seem to think that the louder they shout, the more people will believe them. That is why I never accept an opinion based on the testimony of one pundit.

16. It does not matter if you read a story in the Jewish Journal or the New York Times. It makes no difference if the news is in the Palm Beach Post or National Enquirer. If you can find the story only in one place, then there is good reason to ignore it and just turn the page. Our parsha says “Justice, Justice shall you pursue”; it says “justice” twice to tell us that it is hard work to know what the real answer is and you have to pursue it because the truth will not always be what it first appears to be. If we can make this our habit when reading the news or when we are “chit chatting” with our friends, then we will be doing our part in fulfilling the commandments of parshat Shoftim.

May God help us to use our minds to uncover the truth when all is false and to find what is real when everything seems too good to be true. May we judge all of life fairly as we say…

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM