<!–[if !mso]>st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } <![endif]–>

Eighth Day of Pesach

Yizkor Sermon

2012

1. Hag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom

2. The beginning of Pesach is all about the Exodus from Egypt. We read about the plagues, the final dinner, the death of the first born and the redemption that came so quickly that our ancestors did not even have time to bake bread for their journey. It is this journey from slavery to freedom that takes up the first two days of Pesach. Here at the end of Pesach, however, the focus of our holiday is on the miracle of the Reed Sea.

3. The Torah tells us that the splitting of the Reed Sea and the escape of our ancestors from the Egyptian army took place on the last day of Pesach. This one moment in history is, without question, the greatest miracle of all time. The people of Israel never forgot how God saved them from certain death at the hands of the enemy and then destroyed that enemy without Israel having to lift a finger. The Torah tells us that the people saw the dead bodies of the Egyptians washing ashore and then they realized the great miracle they had just witnessed and they believed at that moment in God and in God’s servant, Moses. And so the people, led perhaps by Miriam and the women, sang a song of Thanks and Praise for the great deliverance they had encountered. Whatever doubts they may have had about God and Moses, those doubts were washed away with the Egyptian army.

4. After all the singing and dancing was done, Moses then leads the people away from the sea onward in their journey to Mt. Sinai. Only the text here has a strange anomaly. Verse 22 uses the verb, “Vayasa” a word that has the connotation that the people left the sea reluctantly. Why were they so attached to this place? Why didn’t they want to get as far away from Egypt as they could? Why didn’t they set their face to the future and to whatever lies ahead?

5. The Midrash comes to tell us that the Egyptian soldiers decorated their horses and chariots with gold, silver and precious jewels. The Israelites would gather on the shore of the sea every morning to see what precious stones might have washed ashore overnight. The Midrash claims that the reason the people of Israel were reluctant to leave was because they wanted to see if the sea would yield up more of the riches that had sunk to the bottom.

6. My colleague Rabbi Neil Kurshan noted that this is the way many of us feel. It does not matter if it is a moment of happiness or sadness. We always want to stay where we are and hold on to the feelings of the moment. A child will want to hold on to a familiar doll or blanket to fight feelings of insecurity. A teenager will hold on to tickets or a corsage that reminds her of a very special date with a friend. We spend hundreds of dollars on a wedding album and video so we will remember every moment of this most happy day in our lives. We keep locks of hair from our children’s first haircut and their first school pictures to remember these important moments in their lives. And yes, even after the death of a loved one, we hold on to something that reminds us of the one we have lost. In each of these cases we cling to the memory, the moment and the object and we do not allow ourselves to move on in life.

7. You see, it may not have been greed that kept our ancestors on the shore of the sea. Perhaps they were only looking for a memento of that moment in their lives. Just like we collect the jewelry, artwork or other tangible reminders of important moments in our life, so too the Israelites were looking for a way to keep the memory of that moment alive by acquiring something that would remind them of this extraordinary event.

8. The movie, Top Gun is about the lives of military fighter pilots. The hero’s best friend and co-pilot is killed in a training accident. The pilot blames himself for the death even though a military tribunal clears him of all blame. It was only an accident, one that could not have been prevented no matter what the pilot might have done. Still, the pilot holds on to the dog tags of his friend and he can no longer trust himself in a combat situation. Where once he was the most skilled pilot on the aircraft carrier, now he is timid and unable to engage the enemy in combat. It is only when the other pilots are in extreme danger, does he finally get past his guilt and anger and saves those who were relying on his skills. Only then can he throw away the dog tags of his friend and let the memory rest in peace.

9. We are all here today because we are like the ancient Israelites. We hold on to the tokens of the lives of those we have lost. We hang on so that the memory will stay with us forever. We do not want to forget a single moment in the lives of those we once loved. It could be a picture, a piece of jewelry, a family heirloom, a tool our father once used. A bowl that once decorated our mother’s table. We look on the object and we are transported back to the moments when their presence filled our lives and our love for them was full and alive.

10. The problem is that time does march on. The memories in our heads are of a loved one as they were five, ten or twenty years ago. If we are 80 years old today, our parents would be over 110. We have forgotten the illnesses, the accidents, the ravages of time that those we once loved suffered. Maybe they were ready to let go of life, maybe not. But when they slipped away from us, we froze their memory in a happier place. All too often, we refuse to travel on from that place and face our own future.

11. Moses had to gently move Israel from the shore of the sea into the desert to face new dangers and new miracles. Yizkor, the service we are about to begin, calls to us in much the same way. It is true, our loved one once sat at our Seder table, once joined with us in chanting the Haggada and helping us to steal the afikoman. The challenge to us, as we recite the memorial prayers, is not to hang on to a token of their lives, but to translate their lives into some meaningful action in our own world. That our lives should testify to the kind of life they once lived. In this way their memory is not frozen in a moment, but alive in every action we perform.

12. When I give charity in memory of my father, many people understand that the way he lived his life taught his children to be charitable. When I make a contribution in his memory, I am keeping the meaning of his life alive. When I dedicate my writing to the memory of my father, I keep alive in my heart that which he shared with me from his. My father insisted that he arrive for every Shabbat service before it began, and I still arrive early to shul as a living testimony of what I learned at his side.

13. Yizkor is not a ritual that helps us cling to old memories. It is a chance to make that memory come alive again in our lives. The point of this service is not just to cry at what we have lost, but to also rejoice over what we still have, what we still carry in our hearts. When I think of my father and my brother as I recite the prayers of Yizkor, I think not of how they once said these words, but I think about how much pride and satisfaction they would get, knowing that I have never forgotten the lessons they taught me.

14. We should not use this time wishing we could go back in time to happier days. We can no more go back in time as the Israelites could go back to the shore of the sea. We should use this time of Yizkor to rededicate our lives to the values they stood for. To live for ourselves the lessons we learned from them. We should use this moment of remembrance to remember how they have shaped our lives and how we are the real memorial to who they were and what they accomplished in life. This hour is not about what we have lost, but about all that we are because of the memories we carry inside. It is about what we can do today to make our lives a living memorial to theirs.

15. Do we only have a plaque on the wall in their memory, or have we dedicated a siddur or bible in their memory that others can use in their hour of prayer or praise? Will we donate to our synagogue like they once donated to theirs? Will we reach out to the soup kitchen or food pantry as a way of creating a living legacy of their live? Will we sponsor some learning, a page of Torah, or sponsor some kind of a living tribute to their memory because they once considered such things important? Do we have enough pride in who we are and all we have become that we can make a Yizkor contribution to Temple Emeth as our way of keeping our memories alive? You have the envelope in your hand. Think about what you can do in honor those we remember today. $150 will buy six prayer books or two bibles that will carry their names. Take the envelopes home and mail them back to Temple Emeth after the holiday.

16. We don’t have to go back to remember those we have lost. We can carry their memories into the future. We can make, in their names, a better, kinder and more just world. And that is the greatest legacy we can receive from their memories and then we can turn and give that legacy to our own children.

May the memories we recall this day inspire us to deepen the meaning of our own lives and then let us turn and leave these values as an inheritance for those who will someday remember us.

May we always look to the future and not live in the past as we say …

AMEN, SHABBAT SHALOM AND HAG SAMEACH

Second Day Pesach

Sermon

2012

1. Hag Sameach

2. Every day, at daily minyan, we have been studying Mishna together. Ever since last Hanukah, we have studied Massechet Pesachin, the section of the Mishna that deals with Pesach. We finished it just last Friday morning, just in time to be used as the focus of our Siyyun Bechor, the text we finish so we can celebrate its completion and allow the first born men and women in our community to not have to fast the day before Pesach.

3. Massechet Pesachin is organized in a chronological sequence. The first chapter deals with the search for Hametz on the 13^th day of Nisan and then, it talks about the Paschal sacrifice, what has to be done, when it has to be done and how it is to be done for the next eight chapters. We don’t sacrifice a Paschal lamb or goat anymore. We stopped sacrifices when the second Temple was destroyed over 2000 years ago. But, for our ancestors, this Paschal sacrifice was the centerpiece of the ritual for Pesach; without it, one could not sit down to a Seder.

4. In spite of the fact that Judaism no longer sacrifices any animals, we have spent the last four weeks, as we concluded the book of Shemot and began the book of Vayikra, reading about how the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary our ancestors built in the wilderness was constructed and how sacrifices were to be performed there. Two weeks from now, when we get back to our weekly Torah reading, we will read about how the priests were installed, the sacrifices they performed and the deadly consequences of their making a mistake. Sacrifices may be gone from Jewish worship but they are not forgotten. We may have replaced them with the words of prayer but their lessons still echo in Jewish life. We need no further evidence of this than the shank bone and roasted egg that were on our Seder plates last night.

5. My friend and colleague in San Francisco, Rabbi Menachem Creditor, recently pointed out an interesting lesson from Torah in relationship to the korbanot/sacrifices. When the Mishkan is finished and assembled at the end of sefer Shemot, the cloud of God’s glory fills the holy of holies and is so thick that Moses is unable to enter the tent. The tent is so full of God that there is no room for Moses!

6. But the first thing that God does at the beginning of sefer Vayikra, is to call to Moses so he will come and listen to God’s words. How is it possible now for Moses to enter the tent if it is filled with the glory of God? Jewish mystics explain that the only way Moses can enter the tent is if God performs “tzimtzum” a contraction, making space for Moses by contracting God contracting the divine self. Perhaps this is why the word “Vayikra” which gives the book of Leviticus its name, is spelled with a small aleph at the end. The letter is contracted in size just as God contracted to call Moses forward.

7. Jewish Mysticism takes this understanding of tzimtzum even further. We all know that God is everywhere, but if God is everywhere, how can there be room for everything else? If God’s presence fills the universe, where is there room for the universe? Rabbi Isaac Luria in the 16^th century first taught the concept of tzimtzum as a way of understanding how the world is possible. God contracts/tzimtzum the divine self, creating the void in which the world is created. Just as in the case of Moses, God contracts in order to make room for the rest of us. It is a sign of how much God loves us that God performed tzimtzum so that we could have the room we need to exist.

8. I remember Sedarim with my family when I was a child. My grandfather always led the service, sitting at the head of the table on a throne of pillows. Under those pillows he stashed the Afikomen and we children had to sneak up on him and steal it out from under him. We used the Maxwell House Haggada because it was given away free and we never skipped a word.

9. I was already in college when my grandfather died. I had always assumed that my father would take up leading the Seder when Grandpa could no longer lead. I was surprised and a bit shocked when my father, knowing that already I was thinking about Rabbinical School, turned to me to lead the family Seder. I wanted to do it just like my grandfather did it. My little nephew was trying to steal the Afikomen from under my pillow and was not trying too hard. I kept telling him to try harder. My brother took him in the next room, dressed him up like a bandit with a toy pistol and the next thing I knew, he had stolen the Afikomen at gunpoint!

10. A few years later I attended my first Seder outside my family. It opened my eyes to the realm of possibilities that the Seder offered. I learned new tunes, new questions to ask, and new readings to add. For the first time I used a different Haggada. Soon the things I had learned at other tables came home to our family Sedarim as well. This was NOT my grandfather’s Seder. It was mine.

11. This is how tzimtzum played out in my family. The memory of my grandfather had to contract so that there would be room for me to create a new family Seder for a new generation of the Konigsburg family. New Haggadot came to our table and we stopped having the Seder at the dining room table, moving it to the living room where we could sit in comfort and discuss the meaning of slavery and freedom.

12. Four years ago we went to Ramah Darom where my Rabbi daughter spends Pesach with professors from JTS. I have to tell you, Michelle loved not having to cook and while there was a large public Seder in the next room, we held our own Seder with one of Ashira’s professors. It was a wonderful discussion, on all levels of scholarship, and at the end of the night we didn’t even have to wash any dishes. Ashria looked at me to see if I approved of the way she was doing the Seder. Remembering the days when I started, I gave her the room she needed to make her Seder her own.

13. Pesach is not a “shul” holiday. It is a holiday of families. So many of our members are away this week, celebrating Seder with their families and so many other families are here celebrating Seder together with their grandparents. Generations join with each other and family traditions are born. But something else happens at the same time. Just as God had to contract to make humanity possible so to do we have to perform tzimtzum in our lives as well.

14. Rabbi Creditor writes:”I think of my precious children. If I wasn’t ready to do tzimtzum, to contract myself enough to give them the room to make their own decisions – decisions that I might not make nor approve of – I shouldn’t have had a child. If we aren’t ready to do tzimtzum and thereby provide “space” for for our partners to act and think independently from us we aren’t prepared to be a couple. All healthy relationships include tzimtzum and are infused with the obligation to grant others the right to inhabit their own place. “

15. But Rabbi Creditor goes on and sees even a bigger picture. He writes, “tzimtzum is the heart of a mindful, relational practice. When I recognize the power of someone close to self-determine, my life changes. I become freer. A quest for God requires honest and open self reflection and the recognition that God’s image is just as surely in the face of another as it is in mine is key. Did I give up some control over my life by becoming a father or a life-partner? Absolutely. Am I willing to continue working on my own tzimtzum? With all my heart.”

16. I still can imitate, to this day the way my grandfather sang the Kiddush. But I will never be him. I have my own way to sing Kiddush, and sometimes, I have Michelle or my children recite it, just to hear how they might do it differently. When I pull myself out of the way, I have found I have learned new lessons from my family and can see how my teachings have found new life in their lives. As we sit together with our families this Pesach, whether last night at the Seder or today for lunch after this service. We need to remember that each member of our family is not required to be just like us or to do things exactly the way we would do them. We need to contract so they can have the space they need to grow and so they can find new love for us in their hearts.

17. We should never tell anyone, “Hey, you are doing that wrong.” We should instead do a little tzimtzum and give them the space to try something different. It will help our children and family find their own way in the world and it will help us grow wiser too. Every generation has to find their own way to tell the story of the Exodus. And we are given the gift each year, to hear it in new ways from new hearts.

May your Pesach be a holiday of love, learning and respect. As we make way for the next generation, may our tzimtzum also be a lesson, one that our children will cherish forever.

Hag Sameach

First Day of Pesach

Sermon

2012

1. Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameach

2. One of the hardest commandments associated with Pesach is the Mitzvah that we should conduct our Sedarim as if we were the ones being liberated from Egypt. The only way possible to understand the meaning of freedom is to experience the slavery and once again know the moment of liberation, the sweetness that comes when we leave behind the darkness in our lives and once again stand tall by the light of day.

3. This is why we have to eat the Maror dipped in Haroset; to know the bitterness even if it is covered in the sweetness. The symbol of the matzah, a poor bread that had to be baked in a hurry because we had a master who demanded every moment of our time, turns into the bread of our redemption. We are still baking bread in a hurry, only now it is not a master who calls us but the spirit of liberation. We must not keep the miracle of freedom waiting.

4. Modern Sages do not talk about liberation from slavery nor from Egypt. There is still slavery in the world and there still is a nation of Egypt. Mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for Egypt, can be translated as “the narrow place” the place of constriction, of bondage, the place of imprisonment. It does not matter if we are no longer physically slaves of Pharaoh, but we are still slaves to our habits, our emotions; we are still slaves to our past and to our fears. The entire Torah is about how the physical slavery came to an end but the psychological slavery, the conviction of our people that they could not conquer the land, could not overcome their obstacles, could not be masters of their own destiny; this slavery remained with them. You could take the Israelites out of slavery but it was much harder to take the slavery out of Israel.

5. So it is in our lives. We who live in freedom all too often allow ourselves to be enslaved by the way things always have been. We stay in the narrow, restricted place and refuse to move into the open light of freedom. We repeat the slogans we hear on television or read in the news and never stop to think about how narrow our horizon has become.

6. Do we really think about what liberation means? Take Gilad Shalit. The soldier who spent five years as a captive of Hamas and was liberated this year. What kind of a Pesach Seder did he have last night? Five years as a prisoner, finally, at home with his family, can we see the meaning of freedom in his eyes? Can we experience the way he tastes the Maror and how he enjoys this year the taste of matzah? If a mixed multitude of assorted riff raff accompanied Israel out of Egypt, so too over a thousand convicted terrorists found their freedom with his. Last year he was a prisoner, today he is free. Gilad Shalit should be the face of Pesach this year.

7. Or maybe he was the face of Pesach last year. He has completed his journey from the narrow place to the promised land. Gilad Shalit does not say “Next year in Jerusalem”. He has already been redeemed. He has returned to his family and has rejoined their Seder. We celebrate with the Shalit family their liberation. Who then is the one who is still in darkness who needs us to show him the way out of the dungeon?

8. There are many who could serve as the face of our Pesach this year. There are the citizens of the many Arab countries, especially Syria who live in the darkness of dictatorships and who long for the fresh air of freedom. There are the child slaves of Indonesia, who work for virtually no pay producing the goods that sell so well in Western countries. They are in the darkness of the greed of their masters and who yearn to be in the light of freedom and dignity. There are the child brides of India and other countries who are sold to their husbands by their own fathers, who endure rape, torture and slavery every day as they yearn to live normal lives, in freedom to live and love as their hearts demand.

9. But there is one Jew who is still a prisoner. One who has languished in jail for over 26 years. He is not a prisoner of terrorists or of a rogue nation. He is a prisoner of the United States. His name is Jonathan Pollard. He was convicted of spying and given a life sentence. He continues to serve his sentence long after other spies were long ago set free. The anger of some in our own government is as strong today as it was way back in 1985 when he was first convicted.

10. Do we even remember the story of Jonathan Pollard? He was convicted not of spying for Russia or N. Korea, our enemies of the 1980’s. He was sentenced for giving state secrets to an American ally. He gave top secret information to Israel, a nation with whom we often shared important intelligence. The normal sentence for this crime should have been 14 years in prison. Instead he was given a life sentence. To fully understand his fate, we have to fully understand his crime.

11. It was against the law to give to the government of Israel classified documents. Jonathan Pollard felt that the United States was not being fair to Israel, by withholding information that he felt was crucial to their security. We do not know what information he released. That remains classified information. What we do know was that the information he released contained the identities of many intelligence agents working for the United States. It was possible that their work could be compromised and their lives endangered. As far as we know, no operative lost his life in this breach of security. But the possibility of putting their lives in the open brought about calls from American Security personnel for harsh punishment.

12. He was given a life sentence. And since 1985 he has been serving his time as a model prisoner. He was not permitted to attend the funeral of his father in Israel. Now his health is in decline. We now have to ask ourselves why, after 27 years, Jonathan Pollard is still in prison?

13. There are now a number of former government officials who have asked our President to grant clemency to Jonathan Pollard. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has written a letter and gone public with his support for Pollard. He says that there is no security or national interest in keeping Jonathan Pollard in jail. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and George Schultz both have written that Pollard should be released. After 27 years, the Soviet Union is no more, our enemies are now terrorists not Communists and our methods of collecting intelligence is so different that whatever state secrets Pollard once knew, they are now all irrelevant.

14. Vice President Joe Biden said recently that he does not believe that Jonathan Pollard will ever deserve clemency. There are now a growing chorus of officials who disagree. Today, spies who pass information to allies or neutral countries are only given ten year sentences. Justice is not served by keeping Jonathan Pollard locked up anymore. What does our country gain by keeping this man in jail?

15. Please send a card or letter to President Obama asking for clemency for Jonathan Pollard and ask our congressman and senators to put his release from prison on their agenda. Who knows, maybe our efforts will tip the balance and convince our government that the time has come to forgive and let justice give way to compassion.

16. This Pesach, let us reach out and help Jonathan Pollard as he seeks to leave his place of confinement and find freedom. If we celebrate our freedom today, let us be determined to help Pollard find freedom as well. May he soon taste the bread of redemption. May he celebrate Pesach next year in Jerusalem, and may we merit to celebrate it with him there as we say …

Amen – Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameach

Parshat Tetzaveh

Shabbat Zachor

Saturday Morning

2012

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. This Shabbat is Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat before Purim where we remember not only the deeds of Amalek when our ancestors came out of Egypt, but we remember this Shabbat all the acts of those who have hated our faith and our people and who have plotted our destruction from ancient times until the Modern Age.

3. Our Maftir this morning is from parshat Ki Tetzeh in the Book of Devarim/Deuteronomy. It is an interesting place to find the commandment to remember Amalek. The original story of the attack of the Amalekites is found in Exodus, where it only tells us that they attacked us and we went to war with them and defeated them. There we are commanded to remember what they did to us when we came out of Egypt. It is in Devarim where we discover the reason why we were commanded to destroy them. “How, undeterred by fear of God he surprised you on the march when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear.”

4. The reason for the command to destroy Amalek is not because he attacked us, but because he attacked the rear of the march, he attacked the stragglers and the weak rather than making war on the people. For this inhumane act, we were commanded to destroy the people from off the face of the earth, a command that was fulfilled by King Saul as recorded in our Haftara. While the nation was destroyed, there are still, in every generation, those who have inherited the ways of Amalek, who have attacked our people when we were weak and struggling and who have been destroyed by those who God sent to deliver us. It is a fact of life that those who have attacked the Jewish people are no more, but the Jews always live on.

5. To be honest, I have a lot of problems when we talk of God as an avenging God; when we speak of a God who would destroy a nation, men/women/children. I can see not wanting to take even a shoelace as spoils from that war, but why kill innocent children? I just don’t get it. And then to remember this war every year does not make me, anyway, more proud of my Judaism or of God. For a long time I just did not “get” parshat Zachor and the commandment to remember Amalek and to wipe all memory of Amalek from the face of the earth.

6. But let me explain this Mitzvah from a different point of view. In both places where Amalek is mentioned, in Parshat Beshallach and Parshat Ki Teitze, the command is found at the very end of the parsha. In Beshallach, the main part of the parsha is about the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and the great miracle that happens there. In Parshat Ki Tetze we have more Mitzvot than in any other Parsha in the Torah. There are 72 Mitzvot that we are commanded to perform in this Parsha, and Amalek is the very last of the entire list. Perhaps God is trying to tell us something about Amalek and about who and what we remember.

7. Among the many pithy sayings on the walls of Ben’s restaurant, is the old joke, “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.” For many of us that is the summary of Jewish history. In every generation; from Amalek, to Haman, to the Syrian Greeks, the Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, the Catholic church, England, France, Germany in the Middle ages. Spain and Portugal, Poland and Russia, Nazi and Communists; this is the rogues gallery of places and people who plotted against us in every generation. It is not a pretty journey through the history books. Time after time we were attacked by armies, and accused of blood libels, of child murder, well poisonings and of the corruption of all the important values of western civilization. It did not matter that we were responsible for teaching all those ideals that the west values. We represented to our enemies, all that was evil and wrong with the world and we needed to be destroyed. And in every generation Jews gave up their lives as martyrs and we persevered.

8. I would like to claim, however, that this concept of Jewish history is wrong. It is not wrong because it never happened; it did happen. It is wrong because it is not what the vast majority of Judaism and Jewish history is all about. I used to ask Bar Mitzvah students to draw a picture of what a Jew looks like. These children coming of age in twenty first century America would draw for me the most anti-semitic drawings. The Jews they drew had long noses, funny hats and coats and scraggly beards. When I called them on it and asked them if they knew any Jew who looked like these pictures, they had no idea what I was talking about. I said to them. You have to understand, if you want to draw a picture of a Jew, you have to draw a picture of yourself. We can see what kind of self portrait our own children and grandchildren carry inside of them, the portraits that, in many cases, we have given to them through our lopsided view of history.

9. It does not have to be this way, and it should not be this way. I am a student of History and I can tell you that there is a lot more to Jewish history than pogroms and murder. There is more to being Jewish than remembering Amalak and all those in every generation who tried to destroy us. We need to remember all the other Jewish parts of our lives if we are to be true to who we are and to be true to our faith.

10. Judaism is not about those who tried to destroy us; it is about how we find God in every generation. Abraham found God by the terebinth of Mamre. Moses found God in the burning bush. David found God in the music of harp and psalm. Ancient Rabbis found God in their discussions of what Jewish Law is all about. Sages in the ninth century counted every word and letter of the Torah. The tenth century saw a Golden Age in Spain and Islamic countries. The eleventh century was a Golden Age in Italy. Rashi and Nachmanides lived and taught in the twelfth century. The fifteenth century saw a flowering of Jewish culture in Poland; the seventeenth century saw the beginning of Hasidism, with the Baal Shem Tov and Isaac Luria. The eighteen hundreds saw the rise of the great Yeshivot of Poland and the ninteeth and twentieth centuries saw the growth and development of Judaism in the Americas.

11. Jewish history is filled with Jews who contributed to the advancement of arts and sciences. Do we know the names of Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael? Can we identify Rabbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish or Beruryah? Every Jew in the world should not only recognize the names of Maimonidies, Joseph Karo, Moses Isserles, Abarvanel, Rabbenu Tam, Abraham ibn Ezra, Shmuel HaNagid, Glukel of Hamlin, the Maggid of Mezrich, Shlomo Alkabez, Yehuda HaLevy, the Vilna Gaon, Nachman of Bratzlav, Levi Yitzchak of Berdichiv, Shlomo Alter of Ger, Theodore Hertzl, Chaim Weitzman, David Ben Gurion, Gold Meir, Achad HaAm, the Hafetz Hayim, Zacharia Frankel, Abraham Geiger, Zev Jabotinsky, Col. Micky Marcus, Moshe Dayan, Henrietta Szold, Emma Lazerus, Solomon Schechter, Louis Finkelstein, Justice Louis Brandeis, Hank Greenberg, Groucho Marx, Monty Hall, Benjamin Netanyahu, Tzipi Livni, Deborah Wasserman Shultz, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, Amy Eilberg, Arnold Eisen, Rabbi Julie Schoenberg; not only should we recognize all of these names but we should also know their contribution to Jewish History. If you don’t know all these names you better get yourself to the library this week and get started on getting caught up.

12. How dare we bemoan the tragedies of Jewish history if we don’t also remember the triumph of Judaism in the world? Is it any wonder that young people today don’t understand the tragedies of Jewish history? It is because we never teach them the joy of being Jewish and we never teach them about the great leaders who have inspired Jews in every generation! To fully remember Amalek, one must first remember the heroes of every age. Only if we fully understand how far we could rise in history, can we comprehend how much destruction our enemies brought to our people.

13. This is why the commandment to remember Amalek is at the end of both parshiot. We can only fight Amalek as we did in Exodus, after we have witnessed the glory of God and the salvation of our people. We can fight our enemies successfully only when we fully understand what Judaism is and why it is worth fighting for. Amalek is mentioned only at the end of Ki Teitze, at the end of a list of some 71 other Mitzvot to teach us that for every enemy we recall, we need to find 71 positive reasons to practice our Judaism. Our religion is not about destruction; it is about how we establish the foundation upon which all of Western Civilization is built.

14. Memory of Amalak can only make sense if we remember the positive commandments of our faith. We can only talk about the destruction of our enemies when we are fully immersed in the practices of our religion. To teach Jewish defense without teaching what we are fighting for is an empty lesson. Certainly to fully understand Judaism we need to know who tried to destroy us and how we can fight to defend our honor. To teach Judaism without Anti Semitism is to put our heads in the sand. To teach anti Semitism without teaching the principles of our faith is to lose our identity to those who hate us. We need both. Shabbat Zachor only comes once a year. We need to use the other 53 parshiot to learn about what there is to love about our faith.

15. Only if we know who we are and where we come from, can we then learn the lessons of history from those who hate us. Let us not wipe the name of Amalek off the earth only after we have wiped the names of our heroes out of Jewish History. The greatness of Moses is the Torah that we read every day; and he is found in the pride we feel that he was a leader of our people, the man who brought our ancestors from slavery to freedom. The power of the Judaism Moses taught, was the reason, in every age we were victorious over Amalek. Only when we consider ourselves Jewishly literate, can we fully understand why we have always triumphed over evil.

May we dedicate ourselves on this Shabbat of Remembrance, to remember who we are and to commit some time, every day, to a study of all things Jewish. We can begin with becoming a patron of our Scholar in Residence which will be in just two more weeks. And may we not only find our way through the ups and downs of Jewish History, but may our Jewish studies bring us closer to God as well as we say …

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Parshat Yitro

Saturday Morning

2012

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. It is hard to figure out sometimes the relationship between Moses and his father in law, Yitro. I don’t mean to disparage Yitro, but his son in law surely must have been more educated and worldly than the desert sheik whose daughter he had married. But for the mission that Moses found himself on, bringing the fickle and unruly people of Israel to the Promised Land, Yitro certainly had the experience of traveling in the desert and the practical knowledge of human nature that were qualities that Moses had yet to learn. Yitro arrives at the camp of Israel having heard the wonders that God had performed for them and he wanted to help Moses learn how to transform the band of former slaves into a free people.

3. When it comes to Israel today, the land and the people, to understand what is happening in the State, one needs an expert who has experience in the land and a practical knowledge of who the people of the land are all about. I spent this past week in Israel, following my guide who tried to give me a deeper understanding about what modern Israel is all about. The news from Israel is often bad news. A lot of terrorism and rioting. But even the United States has its problems of terror and rioting as do many countries in Europe. Israel can’t be just about the bad news. I went to Israel to see for myself what is going on in our homeland.

4. My guide and host was Israel Bonds. We were all members of the Israel Bonds Rabbinic Cabinet, Rabbis from all over the USA who had come to see for ourselves the story of Israel under the story we read about in the news. This would be a three and a half day intensive look into what is going on In Israel.

5. I had wanted to arrive early to join the group preparing food for a homeless shelter in Yerocham. But sometimes what happens somewhere else affects others in ways that are surprising; the record snowfall in London closed the airports there, delaying my plane from reaching NY on time. The three hour delay made me miss this important part of the program. The best I could do, after arriving so late, was to donate the tzedaka money to Yerocham, the money I had been given as a Shaliach Mitzvah.

6. The Rabbis I met on the trip were from all over the USA. Some were Conservative Rabbis I knew from other times, some were older colleagues; they were Orthodox and Reform, men and women, who all came on this trip to try and understand the deeper reality of Israel. We were based in Jerusalem and returned to our base every evening; we didn’t have to travel far to the north or far to the south to see the reality of modern Israel. One day we were in Ashkelon, another day we were in Tel Aviv and one day we made it only as far as Modin, the new city half way between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea.

7. In Ashkelon we tackled the important issue of water in the Middle East. Israel relies on the Kineret for most of its water supply. That supply depends on rain and this year, the rain has come late and only because there was a severe storm a couple of weeks ago, there is still much concern about water. We visited in Ashkelon the world’s largest plant to desalinate water. We later talked to a professor from the Arava Institute about how Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians are working to resolve the issues of sharing limited water resources. They hope to have a plan where the water can all be shared and maybe an industrial byproduct of that agreement could be peace.

8. In Modin we planted trees with school children from a very special school. A religious boy’s school shares its space with a secular mixed school and the older Orthodox boys take time from their day to tutor some of the younger children from the mixed school. It was hard to believe that in the same small State of Israel, where a nearby town has children spitting at each other, here there is harmony and cooperation. They had a tree planting ceremony where they sang songs and danced together and they invited us to help them plant the trees on their new campus.

9. In Tel Aviv, we spoke to an embassy official about the peace process. We asked if the current administration believed that Israel has a partner for peace. She told us that Abbas does have many reasons to want to bring peace between Palestinians and Israel but this new unity government with Hamas will be a problem. If Hamas does indeed join the Palestinian government then there will be no partner to talk peace with Israel. She noted that there is no friction that she is aware of between Netanyahu and Obama and she noted that even if there should be a problem, the ties between Israel and the United States are much stronger than the feelings of two individuals.

10. The most meaningful part of this trip, for me, was a visit to the Shalom Hartman institute in Jerusalem. There we met with the President of the Institute, Doniel Hartman, who is the son of the founder Rabbi David Hartman. Doniel Hartman, who is also a Rabbi, shared with us a new way of teaching and speaking about Israel. He said that until now, the discussion about Israel has always been a secular argument. We talk about the right to exist, existential threats and the survival of the Jewish State. But what does any of this have to do with Religion in general and Judaism in particular? We talk a lot about how important Israel is as a Jewish State but we never give a religious answer as to why it is important. We are unhappy when there is friction between secular and ultra Orthodox Jews but we don’t know if there can be any solution to the problem. In a new book, written by Rabbi David Hartman, he notes that to the Orthodox community, the establishment of the State of Israel, after over 2000 years of exile, has made no difference in the way they practice their Judaism. The loss of our holy land 2000 years ago had a terrible effect on the way Judaism was practiced. Now that it is again in Jewish hands, what new ways should we have that reflect the spiritual significance of the State of Israel?

11. For example, we always talk about the problem of Israel being a Jewish state and being a democracy. How can it possibly be both? Such a country could not be like the United States but there are many examples of democracy in the world that do not feel as if they have to choose one side or the other. England is a democracy and the Queen of England is also the head of the Church of England. France sees itself as a Catholic country. Greece, the cradle of democracy is attached to the Greek Orthodox Church. In fact, many European countries have majority religions and are quite democratic. The issue is not the religion and state (which is the unique problem in the United States) but how to prevent the majority from pushing its religious agenda on the minority, and how to prevent the minority from insisting on its agenda against the majority.

12. Recently France, a Catholic country had a huge problem with Islam. The French government thought that Muslim women should not cover their heads in public. The issue was the use of ID cards and whether the women could be identified by the picture on her card if her hair or face were fully or partially covered. It was a case where the needs of the majority and the needs of the minority clashed and the French government had to find a way to sort it all out.

13. So too, Israel will have to find a way to live in peace with its Ultra Orthodox citizens, its Armenian citizens , its Arab citizens and the many Jewish refugees from so many different countries who all have different ways of looking at Judaism and have customs that differ from the usual Ashkenazi or Sephardi customs. In a democracy, it is usual for a minority to push for its agenda with the government. It is also part of the process for the majority to push back when they push too hard.

14. The real surprise is that Jewish law does have rules that apply in these kinds of cases. We have Talmudic law as to make sure there is justice for every citizen without forcing them to leave and without damaging the faith and practice of the majority. Rabbi Hartman pointed to the most basic law of the Talmud, the place where almost every student of Talmud begins. At the beginning of Bava Batra the Mishna teaches, “Two men grab hold of a tallit. Each ones says that it belongs to me. The law mandates that they divide the cloth. So too, in our Jewish state, when each side demands full rights that will take rights away from others who claim full rights, they will have to compromise and perhaps only walk away with half of what they wanted.

15. Judaism and democracy are both possible at the same time. Israel is not just a one-dimensional land. It is full of complex ideas and rival directions. There is a way to resolve the issues, no matter what the media may report. We get all upset when MK Liberman wanted only non-Jews to have to take a loyalty oath to the State. But he was only one voice. Democracy won when the Israel Attorney General said that while the Knesset could pass any bill they wished, the Attorney General’s office would refuse to defend the lawsuits that would surely come. The matter was dropped.

16. Israel, even thousands of years since our ancestors crossed the Sea of Reeds ,still need the experience and advice of those who have come before us to give us the reason and direction that we need so much in these turbulent times. It is true that Yitro, the father in law of Moses is not with us to guide us through this wilderness. But Moses, Yitro and the other ancient leaders of our people left us a record of the lessons they learned so we would never be left groping in the dark. We have Torah and Talmud, we have Midrash and Halacha; the idea is not to just follow the law blindly but to discover the ways that Judaism can show the way to the future.

May God bless us always with those who are wise and experienced like Yitro as well as those who are strong and confident as Moses and may we as a people always draw the best from life through the lessons we learn from our faith and from our leaders as we say…

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Parshat Beshallach

Saturday Morning

2012

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. Let the celebration begin! Everyone does realize that this weekend will be the Super Bowl, the grand championship of Football. In the United States, Football means something else than how it is defined anywhere else in the world. In the rest of the world, “Football” is what we call Soccer. “American Football” is what the rest of the world calls taking an oblong ball from one side of the field to the other by either running, passing or kicking it down field.

3. American Football is a very big business in the fall. Millions of dollars change hands in television contracts, player contracts, sponsorships, endorsements and game tickets. The games are played surrounded by tailgate parties before hand, half-time shows in the middle and evaluations by the spectators after the game. It is not kid stuff. There are huge underground betting operations on every game and large betting pools at many businesses. The game itself is just a small part of the business that has grown up around the sport.

4. If all of this is done for a regular game, we can imagine what must be done for the final grand championship. It takes two full weeks for the media and the fans to get ready to watch the game. Sponsors begin months in advance preparing new and clever commercials to show during the game; commercials which are discussed after the game almost as much as the game itself. All of this adds to the flashing lights, the music, the commentary, the pre game and post game pundits; these all are part of the joyful noise of celebration that leads to and accompanies Super Bowl Sunday.

5. This is Shabbat Shira, the Sabbath of Song. Not because of the Super Bowl nor the halftime show that promises to be a musical extravaganza. This is Shabbat Shira because, in our Parsha, the people of Israel make a miraculous escape from the feared Egyptian army that leaves the people safe on the shore of the sea and in a blink, wipes out the entire army that was in pursuit. For the former slave population, having the Egyptian army, perhaps the source of the greatest terror that they could image, be instantly destroyed in the blink of an eye, that is the definition of a great miracle. It is no wonder the People of Israel, men and women, break out in song and celebration.

6. We celebrate with noise the beginning of the secular year. We celebrate with noise the Independence Day of our country. We celebrate with noise the festival of Purim as we use our groggers to drown out the name of our enemy. Noise is an important part of our life.

7. But is there too much noise in our world? It is said that there are very few places you can go in the world anymore and not hear the sound of a motor in the background. It could be a passing car, an air conditioner fan, a lawn mower or an airplane. There is a commercial on television for a car that has a group of men trying to drive to a place that does not have a cell phone signal. All too often, no matter where we may go, out into nature or inside a religious service or musical presentation, we will eventually hear the sound of a cell phone ringing. Certainly there are some sounds that are not so bothersome, like the sound of birds chirping, or crickets, or a babbling brook or the rush of the ocean’s waves.

8. And yet, there is still so much noise that we are never really able to sit in silence. If we were to find a place that actually had no noise, our ears would need some time to stop hearing sounds that are not really there, the echoes of the noises we try to block out everyday. Our ears do not always know how to process the sound of nothing. If we were to sit in place without any noise at all, would that make us feel any different than we do with all the noise? Which is better, for us to live in our noisy world or to sit in silence? Silence may be nice for a while but would we want to live there?

9. Rabbi Akiva, in the Mishna makes an interesting observation. He says, “ Silence is a fence for wisdom.” Rabbi Kerry Olitzky of New York notes that this is a funny thing for a rabbi to say. After all, rabbinic wisdom is attained and transmitted through words, through the sound of teachers and students talking. Some of you may know that last summer I went on a silent meditation retreat. We didn’t talk for ten days. I had all the time I needed to meditate, to contemplate and listen to the sounds of the world. The only time I really missed speaking was during the time of day allotted for learning. How could it be possible to learn without the give and take between teachers and students? To learn without being able to speak was my least favorite part of the day.

10. But notice, the great Rabbi Akiva did not say that silence was the SOURCE of wisdom. He did not say that silence is the FOUNDATION of wisdom. He calls silence a fence, a rather unusual metaphor for silence. Maybe we need to think about what a fence is if we are to understand the line between sound and silence.

11. Does a fence keep things out or does it keep things in? We put our homes behind fences and gates, but is that to keep the danger out of our community or to keep us from crossing out into the dangerous world? Does the fence at the zoo keep the animals in or does it keep the people out? Do prison fences just keep the prisoners in or does it also keep intruders out? There is no real answer to these questions. The answer depends on your perspective; it comes from where you are standing and where you want to go. Is the fence keeping you in or does it keep you out? It all depends on your point of view.

12. What is Rabbi Akiva trying to tell us? Does the noise of life make learning easier or does it prevent us from acquiring knowledge? On the one hand, we cannot gain wisdom if we are always talking, always making noise. One scholar noted that we have two ears and only one mouth, to teach that we should listen twice as much as we speak. Maybe the silence we encounter is a form of wisdom itself. Maybe we can learn knowledge in speech but then when we encounter the silence, we have the space we need to transform what we know into true wisdom.

13. Perhaps this is why, at the end of the day, as we lay quietly in our beds, our minds finally have the time to process all that we have learned over the course of a day. In the quiet of the night we are able to put the pieces of our life together and discover if we are building our lives on the path we wish to follow, or if we are being dragged down a path we don’t want to walk. In the silence of the night we find the wisdom to guide our steps the next day, to make sure we are going where we want to go.

14. The biblical book of Kohelet reminds us that “there is a time for speech and a time for silence.” Sometimes we are required to fill the silence with words and sometimes we need to let the words echo and not say a thing. I am reminded of a pianist who was asked how he could play the notes of the concerto so well. The pianist replied, “I don’t play the notes any better or worse than anyone else. But the spaces between the notes, Ah … That is where the art is found.” the Midrash tells us that Moses received the Torah as black fire written on white fire. The Hasidim teach us that not only do the words and letters of Torah have truth to teach, but so does the spaces between the words. The white, blank spaces of the Torah are also letters and maybe, in the time of the Messiah, we will learn to read the blank spaces and understand the Torah and the mysteries of the Divine in a deeper, more intimate manner.

15. Judaism is all about this kind of balance. We have many prayers to daven in our service. We have psalms to recite, blessings to give and a Torah to read. We have to declare our faith, twice each day, out loud and in public by reciting Shema Yisroel. But our service also includes an Amidah, a prayer that is said standing and in silence. We use this time to express what is in our hearts that has no sound, that cannot be expressed, the very essence of who we are that we need to offer in humility to God. In speech and in silence, using both, we are able to pray to God.

16. Similarly, we are able to make all the noise we want for six days of the week, but Shabbat is a time we put the noise of work behind us. There is a story of a King who wanted to find the sweetest sound in the world. He had all kinds of people make all kinds of noise, speaking poetry and making music but in the end it was all noise. Thinking the whole is greater than its parts, he tried having everyone talk and play their instruments at the same time but all he got was a headache. As the sun went down that Friday, a woman came and told everyone to be quiet and she lit her candles for Shabbat. Finally there was silence and that was the sweetest sound of all. On Shabbat we turn off all the motors and devices that bring so mush noise into our lives and we find ourselves and we find God in the silence of Shabbat.

17. It seems that there is a time for the Super Bowl and a time for quiet reading. There is a time for a symphony or a rock concert, and a time for listening to the birds singing in the early morning dawn. There is a time to watch fireworks exploding in the sky and there is a time to sit quietly and contemplate the stars. There is a time for watching politicians debate the issues of our world and a time to sit in the library in silence. There is a time to tell our beloved the many ways in which we love them and a time to just gently hold their hand.

18. Which side of the fence can wisdom be found? I guess it depends on what side you are on and on what is on the opposite side. There is wisdom to be found in watching a football game and there is wisdom to be found in the study of Torah. It all depends on how you use the sounds and how you use the silence.

May God give us many reasons to rejoice loudly and many reasons to enjoy the silence and may we be blessed to find the wisdom in both as we say …

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM