1. Shabbat Shalom

2. Whenever we talk about the Red Cow, the laws from the book of Bamidbar about purity and death, we usually talk about the mystery of the ritual. A fully red cow is burned to ash on the altar. When a small amount of these ashes are mixed with water and sprinkled on someone who has been contaminated by contact with a dead body, the most severe form of ritual contamination, the mixture removes that contamination and the affected person is restored to a state of ritual purity. But anyone who has to handle the red cow during the burning process, automatically is contaminated with a lesser form of ritual impurity and must go the the mikveh that night.

3. That mystery, why the ashes make pure the contaminated but contaminate the pure has been the subject of many sermons over the years; but I want to consider today another aspect of this odd sacrifice. The ashes of the red cow are the only way to remove the contamination that arises from contact with the dead. Death is something that human beings have feared probably since the beginning of time. We have extensive myths about what happens when we die and where our consciousness goes to after our body dies. One minute we are alive, body and soul, the next moment we are just a lifeless body. One minute we are breathing and alive, the next moment our breath is gone and no amount of help can make us alive again. God gives us our life when we are born and we are not sure how that happens. God takes our life when it is over and we are not sure how that happens either. It is all very mysterious, unexplainable and therefore frightening.

4. The sacrifice of the red cow is how we attempt to stop the inevitable march of death through our world. It was believed that if we get too close to death, death will come to us; the ashes of the red cow make that death go away, until the next time we have contact with it. We could discuss here the fact that ancient civilizations had no understanding of germs, disease and infection. We could discuss whether our ancestors really believed that the ashes of the red cow would help us cheat death. It would be a very fascinating discussion but I would like to take this in a very different direction. The red cow is not the only way humans can cheat death. There are many people, in all of history, who have given us life by giving up their own. Like the red cow, they are the heroes, who in death brought life to the world. And this week we had a number of heroes to remember.

5. This week was the 100th year since the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. I know that nobody here was alive and remembers that tragedy, but it was a single disaster and the deaths that occurred have saved many lives over the years. The details of the disaster should be well known. 146 people, mostly women, died in the disaster, from the fire, from asphyxiation, or from blunt trauma from jumping to escape the fire. The fire began on the eighth floor, in a bin full of cuttings from the the past weeks. The workers, mostly immigrant women but there were also 17 male workers, on the ninth floor had no warning of the blaze below them until it arrived. There were three exits from the floor plus the elevators. One of the exits was locked to prevent theft. The foreman on the floor escaped without unlocking the door. The outside fire escape was in poor condition and quickly fell from the side of the building killing all those who were on it. The elevator operators kept the elevators running saving as many as they could until the flames caused the rails of the elevator to buckle and they were no longer useable. Some of the victims pried open the elevator doors and jumped down the shaft to their deaths. The one last internal staircase within three minutes was filled with smoke and flame and then blocked by bodies both up and down.

6. The fire department arrived quickly but their ladders could only reach the sixth floor, well below the fire on the ninth. A crowd of people quickly gathered around the building and what they saw was a nightmare. To escape the flames, the women jumped from the windows only to die on the pavement below. Eyewitnesses said that they saw one couple, a man and a women, kiss and then jump together. There were safety nets held by firemen but they could not handle those jumping from such a high floor. Women in the crown fainted as they watched, one by one, the women jump to their deaths. Men charged the police line trying to get into the building to save those trapped inside.

7. When it was all over, it would take a long time to identify all of the bodies. In fact, the last six unidentified bodies were only given names this past February. There were huge funerals for the victims of the fires and thousands attended, and marched down the street in solidarity with those who died. The owners were tried for manslaughter but were acquitted in a criminal trial. There was a civil lawsuit and they did have to pay each of the victim’s family a fine; and there was an insurance settlement that also paid the families of the victims.

8. But there is more to this story. It was this tragedy, the worst industrial accident in the history of New York City, that accelerated the labor movement in this country. Labor Unions became strong advocates for safe working conditions and the rights of workers. The fire marshal of New York City initiated a citywide investigation and found over 200 other factories with similar conditions to the Triangle factory, placing their workers in similar danger. New York State and later many other states, began to pass fire safety laws designed to prevent another disaster like the Triangle fire. Today, whenever you see a sign in a store that reads, “This door must remain unlocked during regular business hours” it is a reminder of the lessons learned from the women who died in the Triangle fire. The exits in this room, the fire alarm equipment, the emergency lighting and the fire suppression equipment all are in place right here because of lessons learned in the Triangle fire. There is a monument to the disaster on the building in New York City, which was rebuilt and in use today, in memory of those who died. But their deaths have saved countless. Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of that tragedy.

9. In the recent tragedies in Haiti, Chile and Japan, we have seen a similar heroism. There are men and women from all over the world who have flown directly to the center of each disaster and worked in horrid conditions, to enter buildings and save the lives of those trapped inside. These rescue squads, with special dogs trained to sniff out the living and the dead, risk their own lives to help others. The rescuers in Japan I want to single out for special note because the quake in Japan was so great that there were some very severe aftershocks. Each aftershock brought another alarm about another possible tsunami. As soon as the danger passed, however, these brave rescue workers went back to their work to save more lives.

10. And in Japan, there are another breed of heroes. There are, right now, 50 men who are braving certain death to continue to work in the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan to prevent a meltdown and a mass radioactive contamination of the surrounding area, an area that may include Tokyo itself. This week, three of the men stepped in radioactive water, that seeped into their protective clothing and they had to be sent to the hospital to be treated for elevated radioactivity. They have struggled to enter the damaged buildings, to find ways to pump water into the reactors and to reattach power cables to get the safety equipment and the emergency sensing equipment working again. They have volunteered to endure long exposure to four times the usual limit of radiation, in order to save the lives of those who live within a fifty mile radius of the damaged plant. One by one, they are working to secure the radioactive reactor cores and the pools that hold the spent nuclear fuel. The reactors will never be able to be used again but these heroes work on to prevent the further escape of radiation. The lessons that are being learned from this emergency will be used in every other country to assess the risk and to discover new ways to keep humanity safe from nuclear radiation.

11. The priests of the Temple of Jerusalem endured their own brush with death, to create the ashes that would help save others from death’s contamination. To save a life, says our tradition, is to save the world. We could look at this ritual as a vestige of a bygone era, or we can see it as a lesson about heroism in the human spirit. Sometimes people die. Some tragically in fires and natural disasters. Some by running into danger to save the lives of others. I am privileged to work as a chaplain for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office. I get to work with these heroes often. Every day they go out, never knowing what the next hours may hold in store for them. Each time they say goodby, they remind each other, “Stay safe”. I put on my Kevlar vest for eight hours a month. They put theirs on for each 11 and 1/2 hour shift. They run into danger so we don’t have to. They too are heroes.

12. As I reflected on the history of the Triangle fire, I began to wonder how many more men and women would have to die before we can see real gun reform laws in this country? According to Newsweek magazine, since the killings in Tuscon, Arizona, over 2500 Americans have been killed by gun violence. How many more have to die before we can have some sensible gun control in this country?

13. Parshat Parah is our annual reminder that sometimes each of us are called upon to be a hero to someone else. Maybe we don’t risk our lives, but when we offer a hand to help those in need, we have also saved a life. A friend of mine once stated that a hero is just like anyone one else but he or she is brave just a few minutes longer. Let us brood this day, not on the mystery of how the ashes of the red cow worked, but on the mysterious part of the human psyche, which brings others to sacrifice their lives so that many others can live. We owe them all, this Shabbat, our deepest gratitude.

May God help us learn the lessons of life from the sacrifices of others, and may our lives be longer and better because they lived and died. Amen and Shabbat Shalom

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. In the Midrash, Bereshit Rabbah, it teaches that “Every blade of grass has its angel that strikes it and whispers, “Grow, grow.” The Midrash is telling us that part of the very essence of nature is that everything, and by extension everyone, must grow. I have always found this idea fascinating in that every living thing does not grow naturally, but the angel must strike it and insist that everything has to grow.

3. I thought of this quote this week as I contemplated the beginning of our third book of the Torah, the book of Vayikra, the book of Leviticus. As I have often mentioned, these weeks of the year are not easy weeks for us Rabbis to create sermons around them. The last two parshiyot of Exodus are basically a repeat of the three parshiyot that came before them. Now we will have two parshiyot dedicated to the why and how of sacrifices and then, after a short side story, we will go into the definition and care of skin diseases. I suspect that many of my colleagues will be turning this week to Libya, Wisconsin or Charlie Sheen rather than spend any time on which animals were to be brought to the altar, how they were to be slaughtered and how they were to be burned.

4. But I had occasion to speak this week with a member of our congregation about the siddurim that we are using. He was unhappy with the book because there were prayers inside that he felt did not belong in a siddur. I asked him what prayer does not belong in our Siddur and he noted that the translations were different and that he was not in favor of the inclusion of Imahot, the matriarchs in our Amida.

5. Now let me be clear that prayer is, by its very nature, a very personal activity. We may sing together some of our prayers, we may read responsively in English and listen attentively when the Amida is repeated aloud. But, the essence of prayer is not found in the words of our siddur but in the way these words enter our hearts. That is a very personal journey and praying is thus a very private and personal activity. We gather together to pray but we are solitary in our praying. As a poet once said, “each of us has prayers no one else can utter, each of us has thanks that no one else can offer.” We can strengthen each other when we pray together but we can not really pray unless we feel our prayers in our heart.

6. I understand that prayer is a very complicated activity and I did not fault my friend for his discomfort over a new prayer book. But it did get me thinking about how far prayer has come in Judaism and what will become of prayer in the future. It is an important topic and I want to address it this Shabbat and next Shabbat as well.

7. The Torah is very clear in our Parsha; if we wish to bring our hearts near to God, we need to bring to the altar, something of some value to us. A cow, a ram, a goat or even a couple of birds that the poor might bring, are not inexpensive offerings. One had to give something meaningful if one expected God to take note of the offering. In the very beginning of the Torah, in Genesis and the story of Cain and Abel, Cain brings an offering of fruits and vegetables from his garden, but Abel brings the choicest firstling from his flock. God notes the special value of Abel’s sacrifice and does not accept the mediocre offering of Cain and thus jealousy comes into the world, followed by death.

8. As we can imagine, if we know that God wants a valuable offering, then, people being human, after all, soon become competitive as to who can bring the most valuable offering. My ram beats your goat. My ox trumps your ram. Before you know it, children are being sacrificed in order to be that much closer to God. Were it not for the explicit refusal of God to allow Isaac to be sacrificed by his father, I wonder if the people of Israel might have also crossed this line.

9. Many Sages note that the reason there is so much detail in Leviticus over sacrifices is to limit the one upmanship that subverts all that the sacrifice is about. It is not the offering that makes the difference in our approach to God. What makes the sacrifice meaningful is the meaning we give it in our hearts. There were those who brought sacrifices to the Temple in order to atone for their sins. They had no intention of stopping their sinning but the expensive sacrifice would absolve them of guilt over the past so they could go on sinning. A man who cheated his customers in business all the time could bring an ox to sacrifice and be cleared of all guilt. He could then go on cheating his customers. The sacrifice was just “the cost of doing business.” Is it any wonder the Prophets of the Bible insist that the person who sins, repents and sins again, will not find forgiveness, even on Yom Kippur. To draw close to God, you have to feel the need for God in your heart.

10. Every morning and every afternoon the priests in the Temple offered a daily sacrifice. The people of Israel believed that as long as these sacrifices continued, God would be happy with the people of Israel and would not let any catastrophe overtake them. Should these daily sacrifices stop, then surely doom would come to Jerusalem and to the Jewish People. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE and then again in 70 CE, was as traumatic an event as one could ever imagine. That it would no longer be possible to sacrifice to God would mean that we would not just be exiled from our land, but we would be banished from the presence of God. How could we possibly pray without bringing an offering? As the Romans burned the Temple, the Sages were gathering in Yavne to try and save as much of our faith as they could. They could have allowed other altars as our people had done before Moses was commanded to build the Mishkan in the desert. But they did not. The Sages of Yavne decided that service of the heart is more important than service at the altar.

11. As I explained to those who study with me every morning before minyan, these early prayers were not fixed prayers. In much the same way as the Rabbis did not tell a person what kind of animal to bring to sacrifice, they did not tell a person what words to pray. The sages did teach the proper formula for a blessing but the words of prayer were not set in the time of the Talmud. The great Rabbi Eliezer said, “If a man makes his prayer a fixed task, his prayer is no prayer.” Another Sage taught, “Prayer should not be recited as if a man were reading a document.” And Rabbi Acha said, “a new (i.e. different) prayer should be said every day.” If we are to pray with our hearts, we must use words that rise from our hearts. In the time of the Talmud, they did not have a prayerbook. The service was led by a man trained to make his prayers fresh every day.

12. But that is not the end of this story. The Midrash then explains this free style of prayer in more detail. We read in the Midrash, “It happened once that a disciple was reading the Amida in the presence of Rabbi Eliezer and shortened his prayers. The other students said, “Master, do you see how he as shortened the prayers?” But Rabbi Eliezer said, “He has not been shorter than Moses who said in the Torah “Heal her, O Lord, I pray” (Numbers 12:13). At another time, another student in a similar situation prolonged his prayers. The other students said to Rabbi Eliezer, “Master, did you notice how he prolonged his prayers?” but Rabbi Eliezer said, “He did not prolong his prayer more than Moses, when he says in the Torah, “I fell down in prayer before the Lord for forty days and forty nights” for Moses said to himself, there is a time to shorten prayers and a time to prolong them.”

13. As the centuries went by, there were poets that seemed to compete as to who could make the longest, most beautiful poetry for prayer. The services, using these complicated piyutim, grew longer and longer. Later Rabbis, abbreviated these piyutim to save time in the service. El Adon that we recite in our Shacharit service on Shabbat is just a small remnant of a much longer, complex piyut. On Yom Kippur, Unetane Tokef is also just the last part of a long complicated piyut that has fallen mostly into disuse. The Birkat Hamazon has a different beginning if two people are reciting it, if three people are reciting it or if ten people are reciting the Birkat. There were also additional beginning formulas for when there were a hundred or a thousand reciting the prayer together. The beginning for these large groups fell into disuse. There just was no need to gather that many together to thank God for a meal.

14. By the time printing was first used to create a prayerbook, the Jewish world already had two different kinds of prayer. The Sefardim of the Middle East and North Africa had one tradition of prayer and the Ashkenazim of Europe had a different tradition for the words and order of the prayers. And yet, both traditions allowed for new prayers to be added to the service and, when the service got too long, they took out the prayers that no longer were needed. Groups felt free to add and subtract from the siddur as they pleased. The ability to put together the service any way one wanted explains how the Hasidim of Eastern Europe, following the lead of the Rabbi Isaac Luria in Sfat, began to use the Sephardic siddur instead of the Ashkenazic siddur in use by Jews in the rest of Europe.

15. Modern Jewish philosophers note that every time someone wants to create a new denomination in Judaism, the first changes they make are in the siddur. The Reform movement in Europe created a new prayer book and they have the tradition of rewriting that book every couple of decades or so. Our Conservative movement began with each congregation printing their own siddur. Eventually, Rabbi Morris Silverman adapted the book he used in his synagogue and eventually his book became accepted in the entire movement. The Sim Shalom prayerbook we use is the second attempt to create a new siddur in our movement. The first attempt was a one volume siddur for daily, Shabbat and holiday use. Now there are two volumes of Sim Shalom, one for daily minyan and one for Shabbat and Festivals. When Mordechai Kaplan decided to break with Conservative Judaism and begin a Reconstructionist movement, the first book he wrote was the Siddur. In the Orthodox world today there is a transition going on from the old Art Scroll siddur to the more compact and easy to read Koren Siddur.

16. The history of prayer is not the history of one book, but it is the poetic history of how Jews have released the feelings for God that they have in their hearts. It all began with a sacrifice, but it evolved away from killing animals to offering our words as true expressions of what we feel inside. Some people still pine for the Temple that is gone but most Jews today, of all denominations, would not like to see a return to animal sacrifices. Rambam says that sacrifices were just a concession by God to those who needed a tangible way to worship. Jews who lived in the time of Maimonides, were far too sophisticated to need to offer an animal to feel close to God.

17. Next Shabbat we will look to how Jews today look at prayer and the prayerbook. For now let us be content that we neither have to dash the blood of our sacrifices toward the curtain of our ark nor do we have to fall on our faces in prayer forty days and forty nights. It is enough just to direct our hearts to God and let the yearning of our heart, draw us closer, in holiness to God.

May God help us find the best words to express the longing in our heats and may our prayers be as acceptable before our Creator as once our ancestor’s sacrifices were accepted. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

1. SHABBAT SHALOM

2. Shabbat Shekalim always falls just before the beginning of the last month of the Jewish Year. We are used to thinking that Tishri, the month of Rosh Hashana is the new year, but the Torah considers the month of our independence, Nisan, the month of Pesach, as the real first month. Shabbat Shekalim always falls on the Shabbat before Adar, or second Adar when we are in a leap year.

3. As we enter the last month of the year, we are reminded that taxes are due. The Torah teaches us that every adult Jew owes one half shekel at the end of every year. This Shabbat is our reminder that this tax is due. It was a flat tax on every adult and it served not only to fund the Temple but as a way of counting citizens. It was the same tax for the rich and poor alike and so by counting the money, we would know how many adult taxpayers were in the country.

4. There actually are many different kinds of taxes in Judaism. Maaser was the first ten percent of the crops that were due to the priests. Every third year there was a tax that would go to the poor. There was a tax of the harvest that was supposed to be transported and consumed in Jerusalem to improve the economy in the Holy City. First fruits from a tree and the first born of animals were to be given to the Temple. Kings in Israel could impose a labor tax; not money but a certain number of days that able bodied men or women would be required to perform state functions. What we would call “Charity” today is not so much a voluntary contribution but a requirement of God that we owe those in need in our community. That is why it was called, Tzedakah, or “Justice” because turning your back on the helpless and poor was considered injustice and a sin.

5. From ancient times to the present, taxes have always been a source of controversy and sometimes pain. The kingdom of Solomon was divided over the high taxes his son wanted to impose on the people of Israel. Jews in the ghettos of Europe were often taxed to pay the salaries of those that would oppress them. Americans fought our Revolutionary War over the problem of taxation without representation. In Israel today, there are those who criticize Israel because some Orthodox Jews who pay little or no taxes seem to get a disproportionate amount of tax dollars to support themselves and their yeshivot. The proverb teaches us that the only sure things in life are death and taxes. The difference between death and taxes though, is that death does not get any worse every time Congress meets!

6. Taxes today are a big part of our news. Ever since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, taxes have been labeled very bad by our political leaders. It is a common belief that we pay too much money in taxes and that the government wastes our money so we never get any tax money returned. I remember well the first time my daughter got a paycheck. She called me that day and asked me about taxes. She had no idea that taxes would be taken out of her paycheck. She had counted on her salary but not on the payroll deductions. She understood the concept but was not happy about how it reduced what she had hoped to earn.

7. Unlike the flat tax of the Bible, most taxes in this country are “progressive” taxes. The more you earn the more taxes you pay. A greater burden of taxes are thus collected from those who can afford to pay them. Judaism teaches us that even the poor need to give Tzedakah, but clearly the mitzvah / obligation of giving Tzedakah is greater the more money we have. I like to remind my students that if somebody earns $10,000, and has to pay 10% in taxes, or $1000, that is a huge bite out of the money he has earned. On the other hand, a person who earns 10 million dollars, and has to pay 10% in taxes, has to pay a million dollars in taxes, but since he still has nine million in the bank, it has not cramped his style at all.

8. Taxing the rich therefore has always been a favorite target in Congress. Those who have more, pay more. It is a simple system and it has only one major problem. It is a lot less interesting to tax the rich when we start to earn enough to be a part of that club. Rich people spend a lot of their money on finding ways not to pay taxes. Sometimes these deductions are legitimate and the tax savings are legal. Sometimes these deductions are not legitimate and the failure to pay taxes on the money is criminal. Judaism is very clear on the subject of taxes. We are entitled to every legitimate tax deduction possible. Jewish law, however, does not let us refuse to pay legitimate taxes owed. We have a religious duty to pay what we owe and to pay it on time. This is not only a law for the rich, but a law for all of us. The price of living in this country is the taxes we pay.

9. The other side of the tax discussion is what we spend our taxes on. Judaism has its laws regarding what a government is supposed to provide. Government provides us with safety and security, it must help those who are poor, punish those who break the law, regulate business so that nobody can claim an unfair advantage over another and provide for schools, hospitals and other public services. If we depend on a public service, we must also be prepared to pay taxes to support it. This week a group of Christian ministers wrote an article for a newspaper that federal, state and local budgets should be “moral documents”. The article was the source of much discussion on the radio this week. Should religious values and morals have a place in our budget debate? The reporters were claiming a separation of church and state made certain that religious values not be considered in the deliberations of government. But we forget that the separation of church and state only goes one way, government is not allowed to spend tax money on religious institutions of any kind, but religion can advise our representatives on what our priorities should be.

10. Budgeting, for a family, for a synagogue, for a state and for the federal government is all the same. A budget always reflects our values. What we value most, we make sure is funded in our budget. That which is of little value, is pushed to the back. Classic budget battles are over which programs we value most. In the case of the federal budget, do we value defense spending over heating oil for poor families? In a state budget, we can argue about paying more for teachers or for police officers. Creating a budget is always about weighing the different values we have and assessing a price tag for each one.

11. If your family budget is anything like mine, there are two types of budget items. Those that are fixed and those that are discretionary. I do not have much control over my electric or water bill. Unless I am prepared to do without air conditioning and hot water, there is really little I can do to make these expenses lower. Discretionary income, like my bill for cable television and my credit card bill, I have more direct control over. The only problem is that they represent only a small part of my budget. If we really want to control our budget, we will have to directly face the major expenses. We may have to move into a less expensive home. We may have to purchase a more modern air conditioner that is more energy efficient. We may have to replace our toilet and shower head to consume less water. We may have to drive less to get a handle on the ever increasing cost of gasoline. For most of our budget, we will have to make some serious changes to our lifestyle if we hope to get our spending really under control.

12. Government has pretty much the same problems. Most of what they need to cut would require great changes in the way American’s live their lives. Should Social Security be for everyone or only for seniors who have no other retirement plan? Should the government take more control of healthcare to contain health costs? How much defense spending is too much, which military equipment is necessary for our troops and which items are expensive wastes of money? Much of government’s discretionary spending is such a small part of the budget, it is almost useless to try and use it to reduce the deficit unless we are talking a ten to twenty year time frame.

13. Budget battles get nasty when, as in the case of the State of Wisconsin, one side tries to undermine the values of the other. Minorities often filibuster or shut down government to secure some compromises from the majority party. When there is a spirit of cooperation, a budget battle rarely will cause much confrontation. But in these days of toxic relations between parties, nobody wants to compromise an inch, and the only people happy are the news media who get a juicy story to cover. I think, however, that I would have more compassion for the governor in this battle if had not, just before he presented his budget, given the rich in his state a huge tax reduction. If he is so determined to balance the budget, why does he feel the need to do it off the backs of public employees?

14. There is a lot of talk these days of tight budgets to change our tax structure to something fairer and simpler. A value added tax may make more sense than a regressive sales tax that is a greater burden on the poor. Eliminating all deductions on Federal Income Tax would insure that everyone would pay taxes and they would be lower for everyone. Taxes have to be high because so many people take advantage of all the deductions. If we remove the deductions and everyone would pay their fair share, then it would mean we would not need to tax at such a high rate. Tax deductions are the way our representatives show us that they are looking out for our needs. Demanding services and then expecting to have exemptions so we don’t have to pay for them is bad budgeting and part of the reason that we are in so much tax and budget trouble today.

15. The half shekel tax for the Temple is no longer collected. The Temple was destroyed two thousand years ago and the need to support it stopped. The early Zionist movement talked about using the half shekel as a membership fee to bring about the redemption of Israel. It has long been a custom on Purim to give a half dollar as a symbolic half shekel to provide for the synagogue or for the poor. The half shekel may no longer be an official tax but it still can do much good in the world, from support of Israel to strengthening our local Jewish community. Complaining about taxes may be our favorite occupation but taxes can do a world of good in our lives and for the world. In ancient times as well as in our modern era, the problem is not about the money, but in the way people feel about it.

May God help us to use our taxes wisely to bring peace and prosperity to our nation and may we gladly pay for the government that we need and for the protection that it secures on our behalf. May our taxes no longer be a source of contention or strife, but the doorway to a better life for all as we say….

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

Parshat Tetzaveh

Sermon Saturday Morning

2011

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. When studying Torah, one of the first lessons we learn is that everything in the Torah is important. What is written is important. What is missing from the text is important. Every word and every letter is important. The Talmud teaches us that the sages were able to derive all manner of laws from every little nuance in the written text of the Torah. In fact, we learn that the great Rabbi Akiva was so adept at this style of learning that he could infer great heaps of laws from the decorative crowns that adorned the letters.

3. We have a textual anomaly at the very beginning of this week’s Parsha. God commands Aaron to bring pure olive oil to the Mishkan in order to have a light continually burning in the Menorah. The problem is that the text uses two different words to convey the same thought. “L’meir L’ha-alot” To kindle and to light – Why is the same command used in two different ways?

4. Sampson Raphael Hirsch, in his extensive Torah Commentary, makes note of the double wording in the text and he makes this comment: “This term for kindling lights (L’ha-alot) is used only in connection with the care of the Menorah. It precisely describes the task of the keepers of the flame; i.e. to hold the kindling flame against the wick to be kindled until the wick ‘continues burning on its own.’ The task of the Torah teacher is to render his services unnecessary. His task is not to keep the ‘laity’ forever dependent upon him. This is meant as an admonition to both teachers and students that they should be patient and persevering.”

5. Writing almost 200 years ago, I think Hirsch is on to something here. One of the great issues in education is all about the role of the educator. There is a midrash about a pagan who came to the great sage Hillel and asked him to convert him to Judaism on the condition that Hillel only teach the Written Law to the student and not the Oral Law. The man only wanted to learn Torah and not Mishna or Midrash Halacha. Hillel accepted the condition and the next day the man came for a lesson. The first lesson was learning Hebrew so Hillel taught him “Aleph, Bet, Gimmel…” The next day, the second lesson, was “Gimmel, Bet, Aleph” “You taught it to me differently yesterday,” complained the student. Hillel replied, “Just as you must depend on me to teach you the letters, you must also depend on me to teach you Torah through the Oral Law.”

6. One way of looking at education is to find a teacher who can enlighten us as to what Torah is all about. Whenever we have questions, we go to our teacher and we learn the answer to the mysteries at hand. Teachers are very powerful people. We learn to see the world through the eyes of our teacher and we come to appreciate how our teacher combines knowledge and logic to find the answers, not only to the great questions of the past, but to questions that are new and difficult to understand. Such a teacher can make us feel at home in the world, safe with the knowledge that every problem does indeed have a solution and every question has an answer. If we don’t know what to do, we can always rely on our teacher to set us on the right path.

7. I understand the reason why people would want to have all the answers; it really makes living much easier. To know that every problem has a simple solution makes all of our problems disappear. If I don’t know the answer I need, I can go to my teacher and the teacher will tell me what I need to know to solve the challenges I face. But as one philosopher notes, “Every problem has a simple solution; that is usually wrong.” Aristotle, the great Greek teacher taught that if you were to drop a stone and a feather, the stone would fall faster than the feather. Heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. Over a thousand years later, Galileo, the Italian scientist, decided to finally test the teachings of Aristotle. He took iron balls of different weights and had them dropped from the tower in Pisa. The heavier balls should have landed first, but every time he tested the theory, they landed together in one thump. Galileo had no choice but to say that Aristotle was wrong, and no matter what the weight of an object, gravity pulls on them with the same force.

8. Hundreds of years later an Apollo astronaut, standing on the moon, a planet with no atmosphere to disrupt the fall of a feather, dropped a hammer and a feather and both landed at the same time. Aristotle’s answer was not the right answer. It took a greater understanding of gravity, to finally see where Aristotle had gone wrong.

9. Hillel is not the only kind of teacher in Judaism. There is, in our faith, another model for educators. The philosopher, Martin Buber tells a story of a man who came to the Kotzker Rebbe with a problem. “I keep brooding and brooding and I am unable to stop!” “What do you brood about? Asked the Rabbi. “I keep brooding about whether there really is a judgment and a judge.” “Does it matter to you?” asked the Rabbi. “Rabbi! If there is no judgment and no judge, then what does all of creation mean?” “Does that matter to you?” asked the Rabbi. “Rabbi! If there is no judgment and no judge, then what do the words of the Torah mean?” “Does that matter to you?” asked the Rabbi. “Rabbi! Does it matter to me? What do you think? What else could matter to me?” “Well, if it matters to you so greatly,” said the Kotzker Rebbe, “then you are a good Jew after all. And it is quite all right for a good Jew to brood; nothing can go wrong with him.”

10. The Kotzker Rebbe was a very different kind of an educator. He was not interested in teaching facts to his student. He was all about asking questions. He did not instruct the man, he guided the man to understand his questions better and to see his concern not as a problem at all, but as an opportunity to really live his life as a good Jew. Through his constant questioning of the student, the student was able to step away from his brooding long enough to see that it was not taking him in the wrong direction in life, rather his brooding was the logical result of one who has learned many facts but is now struggling with the very essence of life. The learning, says the Kotzker Rebbe, is not in the facts and not in the answers, but the learning is found in the struggle to understand.

11. Just as there are different kinds of teachers, there are also different kinds of learners. When a student who wants to know the answers to questions, looks for a teacher, the student is looking for someone who will give him or her all the answers. If such a student were to find a teacher who only asked questions, he or she might find that teacher very difficult to understand. In the same way a student who is looking for a mentor and guide needs a teacher who will gently guide the student to find the answers for him or her self using basic questions and principles. If that student were to have a teacher who only gives the facts the student might find that teacher and his teachings very frustrating.

12. Rabbi Hirsch teaches us with his comment on the Torah that he is a follower of the style of the Kotzker Rebbe. One needs to teach basic principles and then get out of the way, as the student finds his way through the world. In some ways, this is the more mature way of teaching students. When we are young children, the question is always “Why? Why? Why?” demanding answers from our parents and teachers. Later, as we grow, we try to use our knowledge to understand more difficult problems, testing our understanding with experiments and with sharp discussions with those who disagree. As we mature, the answers are less important than the way we arrive at our answers. It is not enough to learn one haftara, we want to learn the Trop, the ancient musical markings so we will be able to read, on our own, any haftara.

13. One of the effects of internet and cable television is that there is more information available to us than ever before. Every minute there is another talking head telling us some facts about something he thinks is important. Since news is always on, the newscasters must always have something to say, there must be a constant flow of facts to match the images and the news as it unfolds all over the world. For some people this constant flow of information is wonderful. These people live for facts and they collect them as one would collect stamps or coins. But what can they do with their facts? They need the advisers, the experts and the pundits to tell them what all the facts mean. They rely on their teacher to show them what they should do.

14. But others are not seeking facts, they are seeking light. They don’t want anyone to tell them how to think or what to think; they want to hear and form their own opinions. They do not rely on one line of thinking or another, but take what they know and weave their own outlook on the world. It is true, that from time to time they find that they have drawn wrong conclusions, but they are less interested in the conclusions than they are in the process of how they can decide between differing possibilities.

15. What makes this approach interesting is that each person who is added to the discussion is like another candle lit up against the darkness. All it takes is one candle to push back the darkness, but if one candle lights other candles, the light of the first one is not diminished; in fact, as more and more candles are added to the room, the light only increases and the darkness is pushed back to the farthest corners of the room. So it is with learning. The more a teacher helps a student understand difficult concepts, the more light is added to the discussion and the darkness of ignorance is pushed farther and farther back. Even if the student is far from his teacher, the light of learning never really abandons him to the dark. Like the Menorah in the Temple, the light of wisdom burns eternally.

16. Rabbi Hirsch has given us great insight into the workings of a good teacher. Light the lamp of learning in your students and then get out of the way. Let them grow and find their own answers to life’s most difficult problems. The meaning of life is not found in the answers, but in the way we search for our answers. As we share our light, we spread more light throughout the world.

May God give us the learning we will need to find our way in the world. And the proper teachers, who may not give us the answers we seek, but who will challenge us by asking, “Why do you want to know?”

Amen and Shabbat Shalom

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. When it comes to spiritual terminology, the English language always leaves something to be desired. Every language has certain terminologies that it uses very well and some words whose definitions that leave more questions than answers. French is considered a language of love. German is a technical language that is useful in science. Latin was used for years to describe many different branches of botany and biology. English is the language of capitalism and is very useful in describing financial instruments and the details between similar items for sale. For example, English has more words to describe cars than any other language.

3. But English is less useful for describing God and religion. We use words like blessing, divine, spiritual and prayer, but we only have a vague idea of what these words mean. How would we define what it means to “bless” someone? What exactly are we doing when we “pray”? It is kind of like trying to define a color, like Red or Blue. We know what colors are but they seem impossible to define.

4. “Holy” is one of these words that English has so much trouble with. What do we mean when we say that something is holy? We talk about holy books, but what is actually the difference between holy books and secular books? We can point to the “holy ark” but what makes this ark more “holy” than any other ark (by the way, what exactly is an “ark” anyway?) The Hebrew language is a better language for spiritual terminology than English. The Hebrew word for “holy” is “kadosh” and it implies that something is separate, set apart as special.

5. In the Torah, there are only three things that are called “kadosh”. The first is the seventh day, Shabbat. In the book of Genesis, God creates Shabbat and declares it a holy block of time. The second use of “kadosh” is found in the term “am kadosh” a “holy people.” The People of Israel are designated holy, set apart from all the other nations of the world. The third “kadosh” of the Torah is found in this week’s parsha. Moses is commanded to design and build the Mishkan, a sanctuary to God. God has commanded us to set apart a holy space.

6. Pagan cultures have always had a hard time with the Jewish concept of holy space. This is not because Pagans did not have temples and other holy sites. It is because the space designated as “holy” in Judaism is not any one space. Pagans would latch on to a tree, a mountain, a large stone and declare that it is a holy site. The People of Israel built a Mishkan, a holy site that was PORTABLE; it moved from place to place. Any place where it was set up was, for that time, “holy space” and when the Mishkan was moved, the physical space was no longer set apart. Only when King Solomon built the Temple of Jerusalem, did one space become holy for Jews. Until that time, wherever the tent, the Mishkan, was set up, that would be separate and sacred space until the tent was folded up and moved to another site.

7. God does declare another place holy. When Moses discovers the burning bush, he is commanded to remove his shoes because the ground upon which he stands is holy. Once the revelation ends, Moses can put his shoes back on as the sanctity of the place is gone. The priests who officiated in the Mishkan wore elaborate robes and headdresses, but they did not wear shoes; the land upon which they officiated was holy. Once the Mishkan was packed up and moved, they could put their shoes back on and the land returned to its normal state.

8. Perhaps now we can understand why, for two thousand years, we mourned the destruction of our Temple and the violation of our sacred space. It was one of the three original holy items in the world. When the Temple was destroyed, sacrifices stopped, Temple worship stopped and the pilgrimage stopped. The only way of prayer our ancestors knew was gone. Synagogues were important and became central to the Jewish community, but they never replaced the Temple of Jerusalem. We can even say that the Judaism we know today was built on the ashes of despair our people felt when the sacred space of Israel was destroyed.

9. If you have ever visited Israel (and if you have not visited Israel, you should) you know that when you visit the Kotel HaMaarivi, the Western Wall, the only remaining wall from the Temple of Jerusalem, there are big signs that inform Jews that it is forbidden to go up to the top of the Temple Mount, lest someone who is not a High Priest walk on the place where the Holy of Holies once stood. There are some very super pious rabbis who think that the place the High Priest only entered once a year should still be off limits for ordinary Jews.

10. But we must remember that once the Temple was destroyed, there was no lingering sanctity of the space. We don’t recall any of the places the Mishkan was set up, nor do we consider those places holy once the Mishkan moved on, so too, once the Temple was destroyed, there should be no lingering holiness that Jews or anyone else should fear. To venerate the Temple Mount as the last place the great Temple of Jerusalem stood is a worthy activity, but to suggest that Jews should not go there because it once was holy ground is flawed. There may be good reasons not to go on the Temple Mount, not the least of which is a matter of personal safety, but I don’t believe that it is holy ground anymore.

11. We live today in a world where sometimes it seems as if there are no holy spaces. Security cameras view our every move when we move from place to place in our cities. Many a famous athlete has found pictures and video of what he thought was done behind closed doors posted on the internet. Even politicians have found their secrets published for all to see, both for good and for bad. Stores have cameras that watch who goes in and out of the public bathrooms and dressing rooms; and to get on a plane today, we have the virtual equivalent of a strip search. There is no sacred space.

12. In fact, the only place where one can really be anonymous is in the virtual world. Hiding behind a screen and a keyboard, we can pretend to be whoever we want to be in a world so vast that it is very hard to discover who is behind what we see, hear and read on the internet. It is a world where secret people reveal the secrets of others. The internet, however, is certainly not a sacred space.

13. So where is the holy space for Jews today? The answer may surprise you. First of all, the Sages of the Talmud, who lived through the destruction of the Temple and had to face an uncertain future, declared that the new Jewish holy place would be the homes where Jews lived. That the family dinner table was the new alter, the food served there as if they were holy sacrifices and the rituals of the Table mirrored the destroyed Temple with its Hamotzi over bread and salt and closing with a Birkat Hamazon, prayers of thanks for not only the food but for the spiritual time of eating a meal in the presence of God. This holy meal, when served on the holy Shabbat was set apart from every other meal and the tradition tells us that for Shabbat dinner, angels escort us home from the synagogue so that we may eat our Shabbat meal in peace.

14. Getting back to our Parsha, Rabbis today have discovered the truth in the story of the Mishkan. Any space where a person seeks to find God can be holy space. At that moment, for that man or woman, when he or she opens a heart to all the spiritual possibilities, that space becomes Kadosh. It is not the particular place that matters; it is the heart of the person who is standing there. If we are standing on the beach watching a sunrise, or witnessing a sunset or if we see majestic mountains or gaze up to the starry night sky, the place we stand may be awesome but it is not holy until we utter a blessing “Oshe Maase Berayshit” for “ making the glorious works of creation”.

15. People come to synagogue for many reasons. Some come here to see friends they have not seen all week. Some come to shul to celebrate personal or family life cycle events. Some people come to synagogue to catch up on the latest gossip or to get the latest investment tips. Some come to shul for the outstanding brownies that we serve during the Kiddush and some come because they need to say Kaddish for a loved one. But the synagogue is not a holy space until we open our hearts in prayer. It is not enough to just read the words in the Siddur, we must let the words and their meaning open our heart, mind and soul to the sacred that is beyond. Only then can we say that the ground upon which we stand is holy.

16. God declares that the seventh day is Holy and God is the one who anoints the People of Israel as holy, but in any place we open our hearts to God, to the wonders of God’s creation, to the possibilities of God in our life; when we open our hearts to fulfill the Mitzvot, including the commands to love God and to love humanity, at that moment, the place we stand becomes holy ground.

17. We can turn any place into a holy place and any moment can become a sanctuary to God. It all depends on what we are doing in that place and in that moment. It is possible to make every place we stand holy and every moment a Temple to God. All we need to do is to use every minute of our life as if we are standing in the presence of God. It is not as hard as you might think. All it takes is the decision to turn our thoughts to God.

May we find God in the places we stand. And when we find ourselves feeling lost and alone, may we open our hearts, and the ground underneath us will become holy ground. Just don’t forget to take off your shoes!

Shabbat Shalom

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. In the Fourteenth chapter of Exodus, we come to one of the great climaxes of the story of the Exodus from Egypt. Three days have passed and even though Moses promised Pharaoh that they would return after three days, they do not return and the Egyptians send out the army, a host of chariots, to attack the former slaves and bring them back to Egypt.

3. When the People of Israel look up and see the Egyptian army advancing in the distance, they react as you might expect, with panic. In one of the less flattering moments in the Torah, Israel turns on their leaders and on Moses with all kinds of accusations. “Why did you bring us out into this wilderness?” “Why did you bring us here to die?” “Didn’t we tell you that we wanted to stay and serve the Egyptians rather than leave and die in the wilderness?” My favorite accusation was “There were not enough tombs in Egypt that you needed to bring us here to die?” Considering that Egypt was the classic land of tombs, it is a really ironic complaint.

4. Moses tries to calm them down and they stop complaining to see what Moses wants them to do. But Moses really doesn’t know what to do. God has not given him any instructions. So Moses turns to God to ask, “What should we do?” The Rabbis of the Talmud say that there was a difference of opinion as to what the best course of action should be. Should they stand and fight? Should they surrender and go back to slavery? Should they run? If so, where should they run? If they run north they will encounter the border garrison of Egyptian soldiers. If they run south they will enter a sandy desert. If they run west they will encounter the attacking army. If they run east, they will drown in the sea. What should they do?

5. God finally says to Moses, “What are you doing, wasting time and praying to me? Lead the people into the sea and hold your hand over it and see what happens.” Moses does and the greatest miracle the world has ever known opens up before them as the water parts, giving Israel a path to freedom and serving as a grave to the Egyptian soldiers.

6. This is just the first time that Israel will get nasty with their leaders. By the end of our Parsha they are complaining about the lack of good food and water. No matter what God does for them they have something new to complain about. There is never a council where the leaders and representatives of the people gather to discuss the challenges that they are facing and how best to address them. The people act spoiled and mean. It always seems to be about “What has God done for us lately?” Moses says one thing and the people often do the opposite. Finally, God will get so disgusted with the people that God decrees that they will all die in the wilderness and only their children will inherit the Promised Land.

7. This was not a really good week here in the United States. Last Shabbat, a lone gunman attempted to assassinate the member of Congress who represents Tucson, AZ. She did not die but seven others who were with her, including a nine year old child, were killed, and Representative Giffords and a dozen others were wounded and taken to the hospital. Only Ms. Giffords remains in critical condition but she appears to be making remarkable progress, a miracle that I am sure her family sees as great a miracle as the crossing of the sea. The deranged shooter was tackled by some bystanders, a small woman wrestled the ammunition away from the shooter so he could not reload his gun and a young aide ran to save Ms. Gifford’s life. In those horrifying minutes, there were heroes, or maybe angels, who rushed in to save lives.

8. Just like our ancestors, the entire country then erupted into a debate on the reasons for the shooting and how it could have been prevented. Is this a good example of why we need better gun safety laws? Is this a good example of how our mental health programs are lacking? Is this a testimony to how limited our law enforcement officers are in handling criminals since they stopped him for running a red light but all they could do was give him a ticket? If they had arrested him, the tragedy could have been averted.

9. I can tell you now that I am a big supporter of better gun laws in this country, and I do believe that we could treat those with mental illnesses better. But the real issue, both for President Obama and for former governor Sarah Palin, the real issue is civil discourse. What used to be intelligent debates about real issues in this country, has mostly settled down into two sides shouting at each other, not listening to what the other side has to say and not caring that the other may have a few good points. It is all about yelling the loudest and getting your opinion out on the right cable or radio news talk station.

10. We like to think that such raucous debates are only in the political realm, but it can be found almost everywhere these days. The news shows often feature one side shouting at the other side. Talk show hosts regularly shout down the people who disagree with their opinions. People will publish on the internet and in letters to the editor the most vicious attacks on those who do not agree with their position. Most people with an idea or a position, if they don’t want to be attacked, keep their heads down and their mouths shut, thus cutting off the kind of debate that is the heart and soul of democracy. Town hall meetings, city council meetings, county commission meetings even condo owners meetings, can quickly escalate out of control as people scream that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

11. Some people say that this state of affairs is because we no longer have the relationships with our neighbors that we used to have. We spend our time watching TV, listening to the radio and surfing the internet that we don’t have regular human contact anymore. I have to remind everyone that we need to welcome the Temple Emeth newcomers that we do not know. We are no longer practiced at welcoming strangers. Politicians don’t live in Washington DC anymore; they finish their work and fly back home to their families, to their local offices and to the fund- raising they need to do. If we don’t talk to each other, we end up shouting at each other. How can we have civil discourse if we don’t practice often what it means to be civil?

12. The Talmud is based on Sages debating the issues with each other. They were very good at debating points of law and sometimes they are so good, that we can’t really tell which side finally won the debate and which opinion is to be considered the law. The Sages debated with people they liked, with people they did not like, with Jews and with Romans, with friends and foes and they even debated with Sages who lived in the generations before their own. Only a few times did the debate erupt into personal attacks; when it did, it never ended well. A mean word from one Rabbi resulted in the death of his closest friend. A moment of disrespect caused the head of the rabbinical court to resign and they only reinstated him after some serious repentance and a commitment to living a more humble life. In the Bible, a mean word from King David brought about the death of a great Jewish general. The sages teach us that “Life and Death are in the Power of the Tongue”

13. In the race toward ever more shocking attacks, political enemies begin to start contemplating not just destroying their opponents ideas, but destroying the opponent as well. And if we complain that this kind of incitement could cause serious repercussions, we are laughed at and accused of being just like the opponent and worthy of being destroyed as well. This is far from civil discourse. This is no different than speaking inappropriately in public. Freedom of speech may be one of the four freedoms we celebrate in this country, but it does not give us the right to hurt others either physically or emotionally. We can hurt feelings as easily as we can hurt bodies.

14. Judaism reminds us that we need to watch what comes out of our mouths as much as we watch what goes into our mouths. We are not genetically disposed to be mean and cruel to others. We are not hard wired to be kind. We need to learn how to do both and Judaism would have us practice being kind and concerned rather than combative and angry. Judaism still encourages students to study with partners, debating back and forth the meaning of Jewish texts and learning from the position that each of us takes. Calling names does not resolve a problem. Only speaking clearly and listening to others will bring about the resolution of issues.

15. There is a story told of a man who on a dark and stormy night gets a flat tire on a dark country road. As the rain pours down, the man tries to change the tire. The darkness is only broken by flashes of lightning followed by the crash of the thunder. The man is completely miserable and the repair takes a very long time. Finally as the lightning gets brighter and the thunder louder, the man finally turns his eyes to heaven saying, “Dear God, I could use a little more light and a lot less noise.”

16. Last weekend a Congresswoman stopped to talk to voters in front of a supermarket. As she spoke to a young girl, shots were fired. The killer clearly wanted to murder the congresswoman. This deranged man might have killed with or without the highly charged speeches of the most recent election in Arizona. There is no evidence that civil speech would have saved lives that morning in Tucson. But civil speech can save our country, making it a better place for each other, a better place for the sharing of ideas and a better place for democracy. Let us resolve to be the one who listens at least as much as we speak. Let each of us be responsible to bringing more light into our discussions and removing the noise that isolates us. Let us resolve to make our words strong, informative and passionate, but never hurtful, mean or inciting. Only if we can hear what our opponents say, can we hope to have them hear what we have to say. And when we listen to each other, we can solve problems, make friends and literally change the world.

May God help us make our words a blessing and not a curse, and may we use them to build bridges between ourselves and others, and not tear apart the ties that bind us to each other in freedom and blessing

As we say Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. With a mandate from God, Moses and Aaron appear for the first time, before Pharaoh, the ruler of all Egypt, and demand that Pharaoh let the people of Israel go from their slavery. But Pharaoh throws all their hopes out the window and asks a cold and perhaps cruel question.

“Who is the Lord that I should heed Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord nor will I let Israel go.”

3. I have always held that when the Torah has someone ask a question in the text, the question is not only about moving the plot of the story along, but that question is being addressed to us. For example, the first question in the Torah is God asking humanity, “Where are you?” The story of Joseph hangs on a question asked by a stranger, “Who are you looking for?” In the story of the Exodus from Egypt, it all hangs on this one question Pharaoh asks “Who is the Lord that I should heed Him?

4. All ten plagues are God’s answer to this one question. As each plague comes, Pharaoh begins to understand that Moses is neither a rival for the throne of Egypt, nor is he a rebel seeking to overthrow the king. Pharaoh says at the end of last week’s Parsha “I stand guilty this time. The Lord is in the right and I and my people are in the wrong. Plead with the Lord that there may be an end of God’s thunder and of hail. I will let you go; you need stay no longer.” Pharaoh has given up; he now knows exactly who God is and what God is capable of doing. Pharaoh knows who the Lord is and why he needs to let Israel go. But he will once again change his mind. He may know God, but he is not yet prepared to capitulate to God. His heart will harden and there will be three more horrible plagues until the Exodus can happen.

5. There is no shortage of people today who ask the same question as Pharaoh every day. “Who is the Lord that I should listen to Him?” After all, this Lord is a very demanding God. God tells us when we can work and when we must rest. God tells us what we can eat and when we can eat it. God gives us laws to observe and sends punishments when we disobey. If we were to read our Siddur carefully, we would find a God that is very demanding, violent and seems to be in need of a lot of praise. Is it any wonder that people ask themselves about who is this God who requires my worship?

6. God seems to be jealous, demanding our full attention and not permitting any other “god” in our lives. God seems to be a punishing God. The second paragraph of the Shema tells us that communal disaster will result from the sins of just one person. The Torah teaches us that every time the people of Israel sinned, they were met with plague, war and disaster. God does not seem to forgive the Canaanites for their sins, requiring that the Canaanites and the Amalakites be entirely exterminated. For a minor infraction, Moses will be denied entrance into the promised land.

7. We too have had our moments when we have wondered about what kind of a God we worship. This loyalty to God is a great burden. It is not easy to be an observant Jew. Even the most pious person has doubts about the worship of God toward the end of Yom Kippur and a long day of fasting and prayer. What Jew, in the final dash to make our homes ready for Shabbat or to clean our homes of Hametz before Pesach, has not wondered if all of this work is worth the effort? We thank God with a blessing for just about everything imaginable. And, when we watch our friends and loved ones, who seem so innocent of any wrongdoing, suffer terribly with illness, can we say that we understand ourselves who God is that we should keep God’s commandments? It sometimes seems easier to just forget the whole thing and do whatever we want.

8. And yet, we realize that throughout history, Jews have been prepared to die in the name of our God. In every generation there have been those who have risen up against us, demanding that we forget God, defame God, reject our God or deny God. For thousands of years our people have been rock solid in our faith, facing torture, inquisition, pogroms and gas chambers rather than deny who we are and the God who is central to our lives.

9. Even the Torah admits that it is not the persecutions that will bring us to deny God, but the blessings we receive. It is when we are settled in our land, safe in our homes, when we are well fed and prosperous that we begin to think that “My own hand as gotten me all of this” and we forget God, reject God and ignore God’s commandments. Like in the Fable of Aesop, when the winds blow cold and hard, we cling to our faith and hold on tight. But when the sun shines down on us, warming us in its rays, we shed our faith as we might take off a coat, leaving ourselves and our families unprepared for whatever challenges may come next.

10. That is why it remains so important for us to consider the question of Pharaoh. Who is God that we should be listening to God’s voice? The Rabbis and Sages in every generation have given us many reasons to stay loyal to the God of Israel. Many times in our liturgy we are reminded that God was there for us when our people were enslaved in Egypt. That God rescued us from our prison there, bringing us from slavery to freedom. Each Pesach we proclaim that WE ourselves were slaves and that God rescued us.

11. Judaism teaches us that life is a blessing and that we have at least 100 reasons each day to express our gratitude to God. Not because God needs to hear our praise, but because we need the lesson in humility. If we can find 100 reasons each day to thank God, we will find that life is not about chasing success or material goods. Life is about being thankful for all the good things in life that we often overlook or forget.

12. Sometimes, we complain about all the commandments that God places on our shoulders. There are holidays to observe throughout the entire year, there is Shabbat that calls us every week and there are a host of Mitzvot that we are called to perform every day, beginning from the moment we awaken to the last Shema we recite before we go to bed. And yet, if we stop to consider what we are being called to do in God’s name: To be kind and considerate, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to care for the sick, the homeless and the mourner; God requires that we give charity to the poor, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, teach our children, care for our parents, pay attention to what we eat and take time from our busy day to pray; We are commanded to stop working one day in seven, to study Torah, be faithful to our spouse and then pray three times a day so we don’t forget what is really important in life; If we consider all of this, we realize that Mitzvot are not designed to be a yoke around our necks, but a reminder of our responsibilities to ourselves, to those we love and to the stranger and those helpless in society.

13. And there is one more freedom that we are given that we must not forget. God gives us the freedom to choose if we will follow the path that God gives us or not. When the Torah comes to its concluding words, we hear these final lessons from Moses: “Surely this Torah 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 heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, 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. See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity. … I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life – if you and your offspring would live – by loving the Lord your God, heeding His commandments and holding fast to Him.”

14. The entire Torah is one long answer to the question of Pharaoh. The history of the Jewish People is one long answer to the question of Pharaoh. And we have to decide each day if our lives will be part of the eternal answer to the question, “Who is the Lord that I should heed Him?” How will you answer Pharaoh’s question? Your answer will make all the difference in your life, in this synagogue and it may make the difference in the lives of many people all over the world.

May we search our souls for the answer to this question and may God grant us the strength, wisdom and faith to be true to what we believe as we say…. Amen and Shabbat Shalom

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. When Jacob stretched out his hand to bless his grandchildren, Ephraim and Menashe, he blessed them saying, “In them may my name be recalled, and the names of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, and may they be teeming multitudes upon the earth.” (Gen. 48:16) Jacob is saying that through these two young men, the names of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will be remembered forever.

3. The founder of Chabad Hasidim, the very first Lubavitcher Rebbe, Shneur Zalman of Lyady, makes this great observation on Jacob’s blessing. Shneur Zalman says; “May God bless them as long as they call themselves by traditional biblical names. The most valuable legacy we can leave our children and grandchildren is bequeathing to them the faith that sustained us.” I don’t quote the Lubavitcher Rebbe very often but I thought that this was a remarkable insight. If our children and grandchildren will remain true to our faith, then they will find that the faith that sustains us, will sustain them as well.

4. So let me cut right to the chase here. There are Rabbis today, who don’t seem to understand that they should pass on to our children the faith of our ancestors; they instead preach and practice a faith that, instead of sustaining our children, will be a faith that will destroy them. I am not referring to Reform or Reconstructionist rabbis, not even to the New Age rabbis who don’t seem to connect their faith to much of anything traditional. I turn my attention today to the Ultra-Orthodox rabbis, both here and in Israel, who speak of a faith of fear rather than a faith of hope and who teach bigotry rather than peace. To these extremist rabbis on the far Right, no Jew is good enough. Jews have to be weighted down with every conceivable law to prevent them from going astray.

5. When I first went to college, and began my studies of history, I found historians who noted that the reason the Pilgrims and Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony had so many laws that regulated their life was because they feared every moment was an opportunity to go astray. That is the way things are in any religion that seeks to control its members. But it is impossible to create a law for every possible action. We human beings are way too complex to be able to restrict in every fashion. Eventually there is rebellion and the pendulum swings back, away from the extreme, and back to the center.

6. For the past 30 years, from the time I first started Rabbinical School, I understood right away that the trend in Orthodoxy to shift to the Right would be a dead end street for them. I like to apply what I call “the Gunfighter Rule” to their understanding of Jewish Law. A gunfighter in the old west always knew that someday, he would meet another gunfighter who was quicker on the draw than he was. Probably it would be the last person he met. The problem with the Orthodox shift to the Right was that no matter how strict a person could be with Jewish Law in their life, it was inevitable that someday they would find someone else who was stricter than they were.

7. First you had to be Kosher. Then you had to be Glatt Kosher. Now even Glatt is not enough, and there are, in Israel, stricter rules for meat; and even the OU is not good enough for them anymore. Food not only needs to be supervised, but it needs to be supervised by someone who is stringent enough or else, even if he has been supervising for 80 years, his word is no longer good enough. It is not enough that there is a certificate of Kashrut in the window, it has to be the RIGHT certificate or it means nothing.

8. But if we are just arguing about food, then we just have a difference of opinion. However when it comes to personal status issues, then it involves people’s lives. Until about 50 years ago, it was assumed that a Yeshiva student would spend many years in school, even after he was married, but eventually, he would go into business and earn a living to support his family and provide for his retirement. Today, it is expected that the student will remain a student all of his life and his wife, or the parents, will provide him with money to allow him to study full time. If they cannot do this, in Israel this means that they will be subsidized by the State for their studies and live off the taxes of others.

9. Such students don’t serve in the Israeli Army. There are Yeshivot, called “Hesder” Yeshivot, where study is combined with military service. But to these Ultra-Orthodox Jews, such students who serve the State of Israel are not the kind of Jews they would allow their daughters to marry. There are also soldiers who serve in the Israeli Army and convert to Judaism as a result of their service to Israel. The rabbis of the Israel Defense Forces do these conversions all the time. The ultra-Orthodox rabbis refuse to accept their conversions. This week, in the Knesset, a bill passed its first reading that would force the Ultra-Orthodox rabbis to accept these conversions. Shas is now threatening to break out of the coalition. Israel Beiteinu, the party of Russian Jews, who are the ones most likely to be converted in the IDF, insists that they must be accepted.

10. And then, there were, among the Ultra-Orthodox rabbis, a petition, signed by 300 rabbis who are paid by the Chief Rabbanut as municipal rabbis for the different cities and communities in Israel, a petition that declared that it is forbidden to rent an apartment in Israel to a non-Jew. Anyone who rents his or her apartment to a non-Jew would be told that it is forbidden and if they rent it anyway, they would be shunned and refused permission to daven or have an aliyah in shul. I should add that this ruling is against the law in the United States and in Israel. Such a blatant form of bigotry is forbidden by the declaration of independence in Israel and now the Attorney General of Israel is considering charges against these municipal rabbis. Thousands of rabbis all over the world have decried this ruling. But the Ultra-Orthodox rabbis don’t care because they are their own law. They don’t follow Israeli law. They only follow God’s Law, as they interpret it.

11. This is what happens in every case where religious authorities are given political power. Such power eventually brought down the Hasmonean family, the descendants of the Maccabees, who became so corrupt that the Romans eventually came and took over the country from them. It was this kind of political power that brought down the Pope because of the Mortata affair, when he refused to release a child back to a Jewish family after the boy had been kidnapped and converted. Political power among Muslims has led some very wealthy countries to remain, for all purposes, stuck in a medieval mentality, unable to function in the modern world. These two issues in Israel, may finally lead to the end of the Chief Rabbanut in Israel, a governmental body that is so routinely ignored that Israelis don’t pay any attention to their Judaism at all anymore.

12. Religion is a path for each of us to find peace in our lives and peace in living with each other. It is not a contest to see which denomination is the best. Our only task is to see how well we live by the tenets of our faith. Just because someone is stricter in his or her observance, does not make them a better person. A mentch is someone, no matter how meticulous they may be in their observance, is kind, caring and considerate. I would love to see more Jews eat kosher. I would love to see more Jews observe Shabbat and come to pray three times a day. I would love it if every Jew took the time to have a Seder, build a Sukkah and study Torah for at least a few hours every day. But I would prefer that all Jews be mentchen. An observant Jew who is a bigot, racist or prejudiced performs a Hillul HaShem, he desecrates the Name of God. A Jew who cares more about what goes into his mouth than what comes out of his mouth, does a Hillul HaShem, he desecrates God’s name.

13. I started this with a quote from Shneur Zalman, the first Lubavitcher rebbe. I have lots of issues with Chabad, but this is not one of them. They are dedicated to living in the real world. I am not an Orthodox Jew but I understand their position in Judaism and while I don’t share their stand, I know that every Jew has to find the way to God that works for them. If Orthodox Judaism works in their life, then that is fine. But when Ultra-Orthodox Jews define themselves as the only true Jews and all the rest of us are sinners, and not worthy of their time and attention, when they claim that their path is the only correct path, when they use political power to force everyone into compliance, they are not significantly different from the religious Right in this country who are constantly trying to write their religious positions into the law for everyone.

14. There must be a full separation of church and state, in this country, and full separation of synagogue and state in Israel. This will not damage the Jewish nature of Israel, in fact, it will strengthen it. When Israelis are finally able to practice Judaism in a way that meets their own spiritual needs, they will turn to Judaism as a place to find peace in their hearts, peace in their communities and peace in their corner of the world.

15. I don’t know if land for peace will really bring peace or not. I don’t know if Israel has a real partner for peace in the region or not. I don’t know what it will take to have secure borders under a two state solution. That is for the politicians to decide. For Jews, we should be preparing for that day, when we will live in peace with our enemies and thus pave the way for the Messianic age. That is the Judaism that I know. That is the Judaism I preach and that is the Judaism that I live every day of my life. I pray that our children attach themselves to this kind of Judaism, the Judaism of our ancestors, and not the kind of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism that brings dishonor to the memories of our Patriarchs.

A faith that would make us bigots and tyrants is no faith for me. I pray that we give up political power to free us so we may live by God’s law in a way that will bring love to our homes, peace to our communities and will bring God into our hearts. May this be our constant prayer.

AMEN AND SHABBAT SHALOM

1. Shabbat Shalom

2. There are times when a Rabbi has to really dig deep into Rabbinic Literature to find a topic to speak about for Shabbat. Sometimes we have to look for obscure commentators or arcane literature to find a topic that would interest the congregation. This is not one of those weeks. It is not only Shabbat, it is also Hanukah; it is the holiday season and we are rapidly approaching the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. There is even the obscure date of December 5th that will occur this weekend, one of the few solar dates, a date not connected to the Jewish lunar calendar, that changes the wording of our liturgy. There is no shortage of topics that we can talk about this morning.

3. Last week, in our Parsha, we saw Joseph who had dreams of glory, fall, not just into a pit, but sold into slavery. We saw him rise again in the house of Potiphar, only to fall again into prison after being falsely accused. This week we see him rise again to be the second most powerful man in Egypt, but we see him also fall in the way he treats his brothers when they come to Egypt looking for food. That is the story of Joseph, it is a roller coaster ride of success and failure, but he keeps picking himself up, learning from his mistakes and slowly growing into the greatest of the Patriarchs.

4. This week we saw, in the news, the fall of those who are in power. The name “Wikileaks” will never again be confused with water dripping or some internet shopping site. After publishing the secret documents that showed the world the kind of war we were fighting in Iraq, this week the internet site released over a quarter of a million secret diplomatic documents that revealed the workings of our State Department and the Embassies that do our diplomatic work around the world. There were no documents that were categorized as Top Secret or Highly Classified. Virtually all of the documents were simply privileged or not for publication. They were the diplomatic correspondence between the Embassies and the State Department assessing the situation in foreign countries around the world and the sources of the information that was being shared. It had private opinions of diplomats and ambassadors and some very sensitive ideas that were the thinking behind the foreign policy decisions of our government.

5. Some of the documents endangered important sources that our Government relies upon to get sensitive information. To their credit, the New York Times and other newspapers carefully edited out those documents that would endanger lives. They made a distinction between the papers that placed sources in peril from those that were simply embarrassing to the author. Newspapers print embarrassing documents all the time. But they didn’t want to jeopardize the lives of the sources and they also understood that nobody would ever become a confidential source to our diplomatic corps ever again if their words would not be anonymous. But even with this “editing” of the papers, the publishing of these papers rocked diplomatic circles around the world.

6. Many foreign rulers were discovered to have private feelings quite different from their public pronouncements. It turns out that Israel has many allies in its “existential” fear of Iran. Many other Arab states quietly agree that Iran is a very dangerous state and they encouraged the United States to attack the Iranian nuclear facilities. It seemed almost comical to me that diplomats, who are trained to choose their words carefully as they negotiate agreements between governments, in private are not only candid but almost reckless with their opinions. I am sure that there were many ambassadors who had to call their counterparts in other governments to apologize, to explain and to try and mitigate the embarrassment and damage from the release of these private papers. It seems as if one low level office worker in Army Intelligence was the source of these leaks and he will face court-marital and jail. There is also many looking for the head of Wikileaks to bring him to trial for publishing the documents that were marked as secret. He has disappeared. There was also an attack over the internet on the computers that Wikileaks uses, in an attempt to prevent them from publishing anything at all.

7. So what is the Jewish angle to this sudden opening of the curtain behind the diplomatic dance that we see every day? Some of my colleagues see this as an example of Genivat Daat, the stealing of ideas and thoughts. They may be right. This may be the real sin behind the release of these documents. But I see a different lesson here.

8. A student once asked his Rabbi, “What Jewish lesson can we learn from a telephone?” The Rabbi thought and replied, “What is said here, is heard there.” We have this idea in our heads that words that we say in private, will remain private forever. I just hope that nobody in this room, with all the life experience that is represented here, still thinks that “What is said here, stays here.” The motto of Las Vegas may be “What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas” but it is just not true. If someone is important enough and does something stupid in Vegas, you can be sure there will be someone to sell the words and pictures to the press.

9. A teacher once told me that I should only speak sweet words, in case I should have to eat them later. This is really good advice. There is a difference between candor and being offensive. There was no doubt that President Nixon was a tough politician. But when we heard all the swearing on the White House Tapes, it did not make us any more proud of our President. Presidential candidate Gary Hart thought that his private liaisons with a woman other than his wife would never become known to the public, and when they did, he gave up any chance he had of being elected again. Colonel Oliver North, testified before Congress that his conversations with the Nicaraguan Contras and the illegal sale of arms to Afghanistan rebels, had been carefully deleted from the National Intelligence computers. What he didn’t know that, for security reasons, there was a backup of all conversations on a different computer. And it all came out at his trial and almost brought down President Reagan.

10. The most embarrassing papers in the Wikileaks release are those that were basically unnecessary. Diplomats said things that should have never been said. They gave voice to opinions that should have never been voiced. They made a record of their thoughts thinking that they would never become known. But they did and now they have to eat their words. Judaism teaches us to watch our words. To say what we mean and not speak words that are hurtful or mean. We must speak with candor and not be afraid to tell the powerful that they are wrong and need to change their ways. But there is no excuse for words that hurt another person or words that tear them down. Our inner words should be the same as our published words. Just as our inner thoughts should be the same as our outer actions. What is said here, is heard there. If not by the one we hurt, by the God who hears all that we have to say.

11. What we see in these diplomatic papers is what amounts to Global Gossip; people who should know better writing things that should never be written. They thought that their words were read and then destroyed, but they were not destroyed and now they have destroyed reputations, friendships and feelings.

12. I am quite sure, that our State Department will officially apologize for the embarrassing letters and they will be forgiven because, in the Foreign Affairs department in every country of the world, they probably use similar language in their own diplomatic cables thinking that their words will never become public. Even in totalitarian regimes, the truth will eventually come out. We can save ourselves embarrassment and shame if we just watch the words we speak and print.

13. Rabbi Yani once heard a street vender hawking “the elixir of life.” When the Rabbi inquired as to what this elixir was, he was given this verse from Psalms, “Who is the man that desires life and desires many days that he may enjoy good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.” And Rabbi Yani replied with a verse from Proverbs, “He who keeps his mouth and tongue, keeps himself out of trouble.” The Rabbis declare that words are like an arrow, that once they are shot into the air, there is no way to retrieve them. The Mussar literature also teaches, “The tongue is your slave as long as you keep quiet. After you have spoken, you are its slave”.

14. This week there are many important people in the world, including our Secretary of State who wish they could call back the words that were leaked to the press. The thoughts shared may be true, but the words were written carelessly and hurtfully. If we wish to avoid their mistake, we need to follow the advice of Psalms, “Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.”

May God help us to watch our words, those spoken and those in print, and may we speak sweetly at all times, lest we one day have to eat what we have spoken.

Amen and Shabbat Shalom

1. SHABBAT SHALOM

2. The difference between Jacob at the beginning of our Parsha and Jacob at the end is as different as night and day. By the end of Vayetzi, Jacob is the father of 12 children, 11 boys and one girl (he will have one more boy later), he is the husband of two sisters and he is a very wealthy man, having acquired many sheep and goats. He is a man of means and power. He has an entourage of many shepherds and servants and although he has to flee from the presence of his father-in-law when he is pursued, he stands his ground and defends his family.

3. At the end of the parsha, Jacob is a strong and powerful man. At the beginning he is alone and weak. He is sleeping out under the stars, fleeing from his angry brother and certain he will never see his family again. Without the protection of his family, he worries about bandits robbing him, he worries about where his next meal will come from and he wonders who will hire someone with the kind of reputation for deceit and deception that he carried in his character.

4. It is the weak, defenseless and alone Jacob that goes to sleep and dreams of a ladder spanning earth and heaven. It is the scared and worried young man that hears God’s voice in a dream telling him that he is destined for greatness. In the morning, armed with nothing more than this promise, he vows that “IF God will protect me and give me the food and necessities that I need, THEN I will be loyal to God and will give God a tithe of all that I have.” We have to ask, why does Jacob make such a vow to God when God has already promised him divine protection? Is this Jacob, the deceiver, once again trying to manipulate someone to do what Jacob wants? Does Jacob ask for too much or does he only ask for what he needs? Just what kind of a man is Jacob? Has he learned the lesson from his deceit of his father or is being a con man, now going to be a part of his character? Jacob has a difficult journey ahead of him, as Jacob slowly but surely rebuilds his character, hour by hour one day at a time.

5. Character is not a word that we hear about very often. In fact, the only time we really hear about it is when someone is questioning the character of someone else. We endured a political season when everyone was disparaging the character of his or her opponent; each thought that they would build up their own character by tearing down the character of their opponent. But the reality is that when we try to destroy the character of someone else, we are, in reality only destroying our own character. Our character is the only real thing that we own. And no matter what someone else says, nobody can take it away from us. It can only be tarnished by our own deeds and the way we conduct our own lives.

6. Usually we talk about the “worth” of a person. When we talk about how much a person is “worth” we think we are talking about net worth, the amount of money that man or woman earns and how well they have invested their savings. By this gauge, Jacob, at the beginning of the Parsha, is not worth very much. He has no money, no valuables and no real job training. Shepherds were the low wage earners in his day. How much training does it take to watch sheep? Jacob has never hunted nor has he had any job outside the family chores. But if we only see Jacob’s net worth, we miss the most important part of the story.

7. As the Parsha unfolds, we see that Jacob is not all that bad a guy. When he alone moves the rock from off the well, a rock that usually needed four or five men to move, we see that he is not as weak as we were led to believe. He proves to be kind and sensitive, a rare trait in ancient days for men, and it will be a trait that serves Jacob well. While he has a reputation for defrauding others, we find him now honest and, if anything, a bit too trusting of his father-in-law. He is a good husband, a good father and a really good shepherd.

8. Net worth is really not a very good indicator of character. Sam Waltman, who became one of the richest men in the world, on his death, left a legacy of his children fighting over his fortune. All of his wealth did not prevent his family from unraveling after his death. Or perhaps we should look at Microsoft’s founder, Bill Gates. For a while, it seemed that his legacy would be a company that devoured all the competition. Who would have guessed that Bill Gates would retire so that he could manage the charitable foundation he founded, a foundation that gives away more money than some countries have in their national budget! Bill Gates no longer stands for the corporate boss; he is now one of the world’s premier philanthropists. It is not about how much money one has, it is about what we do with whatever money we have.

9. Newsweek recently reported that the amount of money it takes to make people happy in the United States of America, is $75,000 a year. More than that does not make anyone any happier. Even Warren Buffet, the man who is the most successful investor in the country, wants to be remembered as the man who encouraged others to give away part of their wealth. “Who is rich?” asks the Mishna, “The one who is satisfied with what he has.” The person who only wants more, who only wants everything that everyone else has, will never be happy. Being rich is a state of mind, not a balance in a checkbook. What is important is character.

10. We can say the same thing about fame as we say about fortune. The many famous people who have checked themselves into Rehab for drugs and alcohol grows longer every year. Movie stars and athletes rise fast and fall even faster. Tabloids feed us a constant stream of lurid affairs and nasty divorces, of families touched by tragedy and disaster because the famous think that fame will protect them. They get invited to all the fanciest parties but they can’t take control of their lives. “Who is honored?” asks the Mishna, “The one who honors others.” it is not what you get but what you give that matters.

11. Paul Newman had a long and storied career. He was an actor who was in great demand his whole life. He had his choice of what roles he would play and had so many awards for his acting that he became a legend in Hollywood. He was also married to only one woman his whole life. Apparently, he didn’t let his fame intrude on his love of family. He made a living acting, so when he decided to go into business and use his name and face to sell groceries, all the proceeds of those sales, all the profits that they generated, went directly to charity. While others wanted to wax rich through their endorsements, Paul Newman used his endorsements to make the world a better place. It is all about character.

12. I like to tell the story of a young girl who listened in as her mother entertained an elderly woman known for her kindness and concern for others. When the elderly lady left, the little girl said to her mother, “If that is what being old is all about, I wouldn’t mind getting old at all!” The mother watched the gentle lady walk down the street and said to her daughter, if you want to be like her, you better get started right away. She does not impress me as someone who became that kind and gentle overnight.”

13. Character is not something that we can obtain at a store. We can’t order character on the internet and have it delivered right to our home. Character is something that we build, every day we are alive. It is the result of a lifetime of good decisions, of kind responses and being open and honest with others. Character is not only what we give, but what we forgive. Character is not just about what we get, but what we choose to forget. Character is knowing that “nice guys finish last” and still being nice – and realizing that being first is not always that important.

14. A person of character understands that real “net worth” is not about money but in how much we give of ourselves to our community. A person of character understands that business is not as important as family. A person of character does not assign value to things, but assigns the highest value to his or her relationship with others. The late Rabbi Bernard Raskas once wrote, “it is not what we have but what we are that makes life worthwhile. All the riches in the world cannot gild poverty of character. The worth of a person is determined by the way he relates to his responsibilities in life. We should measure worth not in financial terms, but in spiritual terms, in all major areas of personal responsibility.”

15. Everyone here knows that retirement can be just one long vacation, days spent lounging and gossiping at the pool, nights spent eating out and being entertained at the clubhouse. But that kind of retirement is not the life of a man or woman of character. Even in retirement, the time we donate to good causes, the time we spend helping our neighbors and extending our hands to those in need, giving rides to those who don’t drive, giving comfort to those who are alone, sick or grieving, and standing up for those who can’t speak for themselves, these actions are the building blocks of a person of honor. If we make these actions a part of our lives, the actions will then speak of our character.

16. Jacob has some serious flaws in his character, flaws about deceit and fraud that will follow him his whole life. But he learns to grow beyond his flaws and, in the end, it is not his flaws that we remember. It will not be Jacob the trickster who will become famous; it will be Israel, the Man Who Struggled with God, who will be the patriarch of the People of Israel. Therefore, we have no need to worry that we are not perfect and that we may have made some terrible decisions in our lives. We should not dwell on the mistakes that we have made, but we should focus on how the lessons of our failures can help us grow in the future. We can still leave a legacy of kindness and compassion, but only if we start today. Character is not something that can be built overnight. It is built, one deed at a time, day by day, hour by hour until the day that we die.

May we all live good, honest and faithful lives, lives decorated with kindness and caring, and may we leave that as our most precious legacy to our children and grandchildren. As we say,

Amen and Shabbat Shalom.