Episodios
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On the morning of Kol Nidrei—Friday, October 11 to be exact—my colleagues and I were doing a Kabbalat Shabbat service with our youngest learners, our preschool children who range in age from 15 months to 5 years old. Yom Kippur was in the air. Kol Nidrei with all its solemnity, was in 9 hours. How to convey Kol Nidrei intensity to our youngest learners?
So I asked them: what is your favorite Jewish holiday? One hand after another shot up. The first young child answered: Halloween! The second learner spoke up: Halloween! And so it would go. Surprisingly, not a single child said Yom Kippur was their favorite Jewish holiday. No three-year-old said I just love Unetaneh Tokef. The clear choice for favorite Jewish holiday of our youngest learners is Halloween.
I have been thinking about their response, and while of course Halloween is not a Jewish holiday, in a deep way, they are right. Holidays are supposed to be joyful. What is more joyful than Halloween the way we practice it today? It’s about parents and children planning out costumes, walking the streets together in search of candy bars, and dividing the spoils at the end of the night. It’s about neighborhood and community. It’s about creativity. So many families really do up Halloween with intricate gothic scenes. It’s about fun. And of course it is about Heath Bars, Butterfingers, Snickers Bars, Kit Kats. All good stuff. Maybe our youngest learners are on to something.
There is only one problem. The Halloween so many of us observe, sweet neighbors giving sweet children sweets, works great for children. But in the real world adults face complexity. Joy does not come so easily for us.
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The biblical character Lot presents a unique challenge. He appears in three portions, Noach this week, Lekh L’kha next week, and Va-yera two weeks from now. He is a supporting actor in multiple chapters in Genesis: chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, and 19.And yet no one ever talks about him. We don’t mine his story. We avoid him.There is good reason why we stay away from Lot. The end of his story is gross, in fact doubly gross. Incomprehensibly, he offers his two virgin daughters to the rapists of Sodom in a bizarre attempt to protect the visitor/angels from being raped. After God destroys Sodom, and Lot and his daughters escape to a cave, those daughters get him drunk, sleep with him, get pregnant, and thereby create the nations of the Moabites and Ammonites.Yuck. The cringe factor of these two concluding Lot stories explains why we never talk about Lot.But Lot has a lot to teach us. What do we learn from the early and middle parts of his story that can help explain its unspeakable end? Lot’s story is a cautionary tale. What are its lessons? To answer these questions, we will consult an evocative and wise passage from Rambam's Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot De'ah, 6:1-2.
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The question always is, what’s next? And the answer is, let’s be together.
What’s next? This is a question that weighs on me in every facet of my life. My son Avishai, who many of you know well after his many years at Hebrew school here and around at services, for a long time would have the same question for us when we first woke up. “What’s for dinner?” And, truthfully, we hardly ever knew. It’s hard enough to keep of track of who is getting who to where they need to be when. So the thought of what any combination of us will be eating, 12 hours later, is impossibly daunting.
Despite our best efforts to have a routine for the five of us, we find ourselves taking it one day at a time, one hour at a time, one moment at a time.
My phone is constantly reminding me, what’s next. Meetings, appointments, commitments - I feel very busy. And when I speak to my friends in my age group and demographic, they also project as being very busy. We sometimes wear busy-ness as a badge of honor, proof that we are worthy of the blessings of life that we have been bestowed. And more often we use busy-ness as a shield, an excuse, for why we haven’t lived up to other commitments or why we haven’t stayed in touch.
“You know, the start of school is so busy, and then it’s so busy right before the holidays, then it’s really busy during the holidays, then it’s really busy right after the holidays then it’s really busy before break,” and so on. What’s next? I find that my contemporaries, and I would surmise, anecdotally, all people ever, are always keeping busy with the next thing. Asking, what’s next?
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How are we to understand the death of the leader of Hamas, and the mastermind and architect of October 7, Yahya Sinwar?
Does his death mean that an end to the war, and the beginning of the day after, is closer? Or should Israel’s military continue the fight? What will Sinwar’s death mean for our hostages? These questions are hugely important and above my pay grade.
Our question this morning is how do Jewish values help us interpret this moment?
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Sukkot
October 18, 2024
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When I was growing up, we spent a lot of time with my Grandpa Gene feeding the geese. My Mom kept a 50 lb. bag of birdseed in the car, and, even when Sir Grandfather, as he liked to be called, was not feeling well, we would drive to the pond, and he would sit and watch from the front seat as we tossed out birdseed to grateful honks. My grandfather also had this superpower. He could spot any flock of birds in the sky and would just know exactly the number of birds in an instant. He would look up and say 39 or 17 or 22 and we would start counting and a minute later, we would confirm his internal knowing.
I loved my grandfather, and I loved the time we spent together, but I did not love birds. My mom and sister spent hours learning the different names and calls and colorings of all the local birds, but not me. I did not want to learn more. If someone would say to me, “wow, that’s a beautiful bird—do you know what kind it is?” I would always say definitively, “yes, that’s a mongor.” If they really didn’t know, then I seemed smart, and we could move on to more interesting topics of conversation. And if they did know, well then, they would laugh, and then we could move on to more interesting topics of conversation.
When Eder was born, we named him after my Grandpa Gene. It’s funny, whenever I meet with soon-to-be parents and they want to talk about how to name their children, I always tell them that when you give your child the name of an ancestor, it’s more than a name. I share that according to Jewish tradition, each one of us accrues blessings in our lifetime that live far longer than we do. When you name a child after someone you love, it’s like giving them a spiritual trust fund. They get all the mitzvah points that their ancestor accrued during their lifetime, and they also earn their own mitzvah points with a great interest rate.
I believed in this Torah, but I didn’t fully get it. In my mind, by naming Eder after my grandfather, I was trying to create a link so that my grandpa could be connected to this little one even though they would never meet in real life. I wanted to create opportunities to talk about my grandfather and the qualities I hope Eder will emulate when he’s older. I never could have predicted what has actually happened.
Eder is 17 months old. He is just starting to express himself and to share his preferences. What does he love more than almost anything in the world?
Birds.
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One quiet Shabbat morning in August, a long-time member comes in and says, Rabbi, I turn 93 today. Can I have an Aliyah? I said of course. We’d love to give you an Aliyah. Just want you to know one thing. You are a youngster.
A youngster? I’m turning 93 today. How is that a youngster?
I pointed in the direction of a woman who was sitting with her children, grandchildren and extended mishpacha. I said we are doing an Aliyah today for that woman surrounded by her family because she just turned 103.
Without skipping a beat, he says: Is she single?
That’s what I want to talk about today. The good stuff. The lightness, the laughter, the loveliness, that have been so hard to come by this past year. There has obviously been a deep heaviness all year. And we are not done with that heaviness. The wars are ongoing. Our worry is ongoing. The heartbreak caused by Helene and Milton is ongoing. And yet, we are not wired to live in heaviness indefinitely. We cannot live in heaviness indefinitely. We crave hope. We crave uplift. Even now. Especially now. And so I want to talk about finding hope, but with a particular angle. How do we find hope when it sometimes feels like hope is gone? What can I do, what can you do, what can we each do to make our world a more hopeful world?
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Rabbi David Wolpe tells a classic story of speaking to a group of American Jews in Tulsa, Oklahoma at their JCC about God. He was trying to make the case that God loves them. But he could see that his words were not resonating. Being the seasoned speaker that he is, he decided to take a bit of a gamble. He stopped his prepared remarks and said: If you think God loves you, please rise. In the entire large amphitheater which sat hundreds of people, exactly one person stood up. So Rabbi Wolpe tried again. If you think God loves you, please stand up. Nobody else got up. Just the one man standing. At last Rabbi Wolpe turned to that man and said, Sir, you believe that God loves you? I do indeed, he said. What is your name? Oral Roberts.
Oral Roberts was a Christian televangelist. He was the only one in the Jewish Community Center that believed that God loves us. That lack of ease with God is built into our very name: Israel, the one who struggles with God.
This story happened years before October 7. If it were hard for Jews to connect with a loving God before October 7, how much harder is it for us to believe in God’s love after October 7.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7, is there any God we can believe in?
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As the horrors of October 7th were unfolding, a common reaction was “ein milim,” no words. But it is not surprising that Hebrew poetry soon appeared that gave expression to the nation’s raw feelings and emotions.Our teacher Rachel Korazim, our member Michael Bohnen and Heather Silverman of California have recently published a moving anthology of those poems which they have translated to English. Their book, Shiva: Poems of October 7, is available on Amazon, and all royalties go to the Israel Trauma Coalition for their work with victims of that terrible day and its aftermath.This Shabbat morning, October 5, Michael leads us in a discussion of a selection of those poems. They cover a wide range of reactions to tragedy, including poems about:
• A voice mail message left on October 7• A depiction of terror• Challenging God• Praying for the return of a child taken hostage• Answering a child’s questions about death• A soldier emotionally impacted by his service returns home• A now sad poem of hope by Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s mom
View the poems HERE
But we think you would find the whole anthology a meaningful way to commemorate October 7 and support the work of the Israel Trauma Coalition.
See: https://a.co/d/5RoITJ8
A short, recorded introduction to each of the poems in the book is available HERE.“These pages take unimaginable pain and transmute them to art. The poems are powerful, important and remind us of the of the rawness and the resilience that poetry brings to our lives.” - Rabbi David Wolpe, Emeritus, Sinai Temple
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Years ago, I was talking with our preschool learners, 3- and 4-year-olds, about God. Not sure what I was thinking that day. I was a young rabbi, fresh out of the Seminary. So I turned to very young learners and asked: have you ever seen God? As you might predict, it did not go well. There was a long, awkward silence. Nobody raised their hand. Nobody said a word. I did not know how to get out of this jam. And then mercifully one child at last, sheepishly, raised her hand. I have seen God, she said. You did? You saw God? When did you see God? I saw God at Logan Airport when we came back from vacation. Logan Airport? Where at Logan Airport? In the bathroom. In the bathroom? How did you see God in the bathroom? I was on the potty. When I got up from the potty, God flushed my toilet.
How do we see what we see? How do we know what we know?
In his new book How to Know a Person, David Brooks offers the following thought experiment. Imagine that you are in a bedroom with your eyes closed. You are instructed to open your eyes and describe what you see. There is a chair, a bed, a desk, a window, a painting. If there were, say, ten people asked to describe the contents of this bedroom, would we expect that we would get a broadly consistent picture? After all, aren’t the people in this thought experiment just capturing objective reality? A chair is a chair. A window is a window.
But different people see differently. Different people see different things. The designer in the bedroom notes the interior decorating. The security specialist notes the window and the areas of vulnerability. The artist is focused on the painting. The personal trainer on whether there is an area in the bedroom for planks, burpees and pushups. We don’t only see with our eyes. We see with our whole soul.
This is our issue now. Whether it is the hard news of the day, or events in our own families, we may look at the same thing, but we see different things based upon our different experiences, beliefs and values.
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One fine August night, after I got home from evening minyan, I picked up the phone and called my sister Beth, who lives in Los Angeles, just to check in. Beth shared that one of her summer projects was to feng shui their house that she and her family had lived in for 50 years. Just that afternoon she was working on thecloset in her bedroom, one bag for goodwill, one bag for garbage, when she came upon a box in the bottom of her closet that she had not seen in years. She did not even remember that it existed. She opened the box, and itcontained old birthday cards. Determined to clear her home of clutter once and for all, she was preparing herself to throw out even these sentimental relics when she noticed that one of the birthday cards was in our father’s unmistakable handwriting.
Our father died in 1981. This card was very old. When she opened it up, it said simply: Dearest Beth, you are my rock. Happy Birthday, Love Dad.
So much for the feng shui. Beth took out her black marker and wrote on the whole box: family treasures! Never throw away!
You are my rock.
Those are words of love that have been offered throughout Jewish history. In the Torah Moses calls God hatzur, the rock.
When the founders of the State of Israel got together in Tel Aviv to sign Israel’s Declaration of Independence, they could not agree on whether God belonged in the Declaration of Independence. Religious Jews argued: how can we not include God? After 2,000 years the rebirth of the Jewish state is a miracle. SecularJews argued: how could we include God? The founding of the State was a secular impulse. In the end both sides agreed to put in Israel’s Declaration of Independence Tzur Yisrael, Rock of Israel. It would be a deliberate ambiguity. To the religious, the Rock of Israel meant God. To the secular, the Rock of Israel meant the Jewish people and Jewish history.
What would it look like for us to be a rock for the people in our lives? What would it look like for us, as we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7, to be a rock for Israel?
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What do we do when the way we feel on the inside doesn’t match what we feel we have to project on the outside? Or even more generally, what do we do when our insides don’t match our outsides?
I was thinking about this recently as I was reading a fascinating New York Times interview with Steve Burns, the actor on Blue’s Clues. If you weren’t tuned into preschool television in the late 90s and early 2000s, Blues Clues was a show on Nickelodeon wherein the host, Steve Burns, invited little kids to help figure out what Blue the dog had been up to by interpreting Blue’s pawprints.
On the show, Steve was a gregarious, curious, engaging adult who reveled in the joy of simple discovery. Viewers saw him ensconced in a cozy, cartoon living room and surrounded by friends including the cheery dog, Blue. Viewers saw him as a star—the show became immediately and wildly popular. In its heyday, it was the highest rated American tv show for preschoolers and was syndicated in 120 countries and translated into 15 languages.
But, in the interview, Steve shared that his experience on the show was very different. He would show up at work wearing his signature green shirt and walk into a plain blue room. There were no props, no pets, no visual stimulation, no one else—just him, the blue screens, and the cameras. And, because the show was designed to help kids to think creatively and to spark their own problem-solving skills, there wasn’t much to the script either. Much of his time was spent asking questions to the air and pretending to hear the responses. It was exhausting and intense. He says his years on the show were some of the loneliest years of his life. And yet, what is so interesting is that he got caught up in the hype of the show. At the time, he didn’t recognize what he was feeling. It was only years after he left the show that he began to process what it was like for him then. And it took decades for him to discover that he had been battling undiagnosed clinical depression for all that time.
In other words, here is someone who looks like he’s having fun and is so happy and fulfilled, who feels exhausted and depressed on the inside, and yet swallows those emotions to get through the day. That dichotomy is one that many of us can relate to. We too sometimes move through the world with seemingly happy smiles and cartoonish well-being that covers up the challenges we are struggling with on the inside. Or we’re filled with joy, but our inner happiness is juxtaposed against the world’s tsuris in a way that makes us feel like we shouldn’t be so happy. Or we’re trying to broadcast smart, capable professional all the while we feel on the inside like an imposter and a failure. No matter what the difference is between what other people see and what we feel, the experience of living in multiple realities can feel painful.
What do we do with this dichotomy?
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“The unexamined life, a philosopher said, is not worth living. No one who has genuinely experienced Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur lives an unexamined life.”Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Introduction to The Koren Rosh Hashanah Mahzor (2011)This coming Shabbat is our last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah. Our tradition bids us that we prepare ourselves for the Days of Awe by hearing the shofar every weekday morning, by reciting Psalm 27 every morning and every evening, and by attending Selikhot Saturday night (8:00 pm) that re-introduces us to the haunting liturgy and themes of our holiest days of the year.In Talmud class on Shabbat, I would like to add two additional moves. One is to read a part of the introduction of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks to The Koren Rosh Hashanah Mahzor, written in 2011. In a few pages, Rabbi Sacks captures ten principles of the human condition that are at the heart of Rosh Hashanah. His insight sparkles. He captures our lives in his words.The second move is to encounter a real story that concretizes Rabbi Sacks’s principles. Written by David Frum about the passing of his daughter Miranda at the age of 32, this story embodies the existential themes of the yamim noraim.If everything Rabbi Sacks writes is true—and every word is true—and if everything David Frum writes is true—and every word is true—how then shall we live our lives?
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In late August Joshua Leifer, author of Tablets Shattered, was going to be in dialogue about his new book with a local Brooklyn rabbi. They were infamously banned from the bookstore because they are Zionists. While the employee who tossed them was fired, it is sobering that in America, in New York, in August of 2024, an author could get banned for believing that the Jewish people have a right to a homeland. The day that Josh Leifer was banned by the bookstore I called him. His mother and Shira have been the best of friends for more than forty years, since they were roommates in college. I invited him to come to Temple Emanuel, and he said yes on the spot. Josh will be talking about his book on Wednesday night, September 18. His talk will be from 8:00pm to 9:00pm, and he will sell and sign books after his talk. This book brilliantly addresses two questions that people my age ask about our children: Jews in their 20s and 30s. Why are our adult children so seemingly disconnected from their Judaism? We brought them to shul. We gave them a good Jewish education. We went on family trips to Israel. They went to Jewish summer camp. And now, they don’t belong to a synagogue, and their Judaism does not seem relevant to their lives. What happened? Why the disconnect? Why are our adult children so neutral to negative to hostile towards Israel? This was a problem before October 7, and it has been exacerbated by October 7 and the subsequent almost year of war. Israel got attacked on October 7. Why can our adult children not muster empathy for fellow Jews who are literally fighting for their lives? Josh is of this generation. His book analyzes why the very pillars of 20th century post-war American Judaism have crumbled for his generation, and what to do about it so that the rising generation’s commitments to the Jewish people, to Jewish practice, and to Israel can be renewed and strengthened.Josh’s voice on Israel is left-of-center. He uses the word “occupation” which may make many in our congregation uncomfortable. His critique of the Israeli government for the occupation, and his sympathy for the rights of Palestinians, may make many in our congregation uncomfortable. But if we want to understand the feelings of our children and grandchildren on Israel, we have to be able listen to this point of view. Josh and his new bride are spending their first year of marriage in Israel. He votes with his feet, and we need to hear him and the views of many in his generation. If not, we will stare at our children and grandchildren with mutual incomprehension.This is a rare opportunity to hear from a major new voice.
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This morning has been so beautiful. And an example of life imitating art. The prophet Isaiah talks about a great light shining. Ari and Zoe talked about that light. And they embody that light. Our bride and groom, Beth and Adam, and their parents Marlene and Errol, may he rest in peace, and Cindy and Jon, embody that light. We know what to do with this light and this simcha: savor it, feel it deeply, do not let it go unappreciated.
This morning reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a good friend I have known for over forty years. We were at a wedding in Lakewood, New Jersey, after the chuppah, before dinner. We were sharing a scotch and reflecting on one curious aspect of the human condition. Both of us are in our early 60s. He said I have so much good in my life. So much joy and blessing. And, I also have a lot of sorrows, problems that do not have solutions, pain that just is and must be borne. I know what to do with the joy, he said. But I always wonder: what am I supposed to do with the sorrows?
What are we supposed to do with our sorrows? Other than doing our best to not let our sorrows derail our life, is there some helpful way to think about how to handle our sorrows?
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In How to Know a Person, David Brooks devotes an entire chapter to what he calls life stories.https://files.constantcontact.com/d3875897501/1021ea46-026b-4259-9de3-6f87a6cefd69.pdf?rdr=true "Coming up with a personal story is centrally important to leading a meaningful life. You can’t know who you are unless you know how to tell your story. You can’t have a stable identity unless you take the inchoate events of your life and give your life meaning by turning the events into a coherent story. You can know what to do next only if you know what story you are a part of. And you can endure present pains only if you can see them as part of a story that will yield future benefits. “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story,” as the Danish writer Isak Dinesen said. (p. 217)" Our Torah reading this week offers the official, canonical life story of the Jewish people. This story is so central that it is the heart of the the Haggadah and the foundation of our Passover seder. https://files.constantcontact.com/d3875897501/9e518f3e-016a-4427-b935-e9cbaa5a6b31.pdf?rdr=true In Brooks’ analysis, a life story has low points, high points, and transition points. So too the Jewish people’s story: low points (slavery in Egypt), high points (the Exodus), and transition points (entry into the land of Israel).https://files.constantcontact.com/d3875897501/d1c8d370-7521-4ebc-984e-f1638f904429.pdf?rdr=true As we prepare ourselves for Rosh Hashanah, how is your life story going? Is this current chapter a low point, a high point, a transition point, or some combination of the above? Where do you want your life story to go in this next year? Brooks puts it nicely: it is good to see our life as a “noble struggle.” What is our “noble struggle” now?
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Last Sunday evening Shira and I were in Lakewood, New Jersey for a wedding. Lakewood is the capital of the charedi, or ultra-Orthodox, world in America. Lakewood boasts a world-famous charedi yeshiva called Beth Medrash Govoha which is the second largest yeshiva in the world, second only to the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. The wedding was charedi. Men and women sat separately during the wedding. Men and women danced separately after the wedding. There was a thick wall separating the men and women dancing. And a strong majority of the men wore black hats. It was the first black hat wedding we had ever attended.
Being at this wedding called to mind, for me, a famous story about Dr. Paul Farmer in Tracy Kidder’s biography called Mountains Beyond Mountains. Paul Farmer would go to impoverished third world nations and provide modern health care to people who otherwise did not have access to modern medicine. One day Paul Farmer is in Haiti where there had been a tuberculosis outbreak. Many locals believed that tuberculosis is caused by sorcery, by an enemy casting a spell upon them, the response to which was to ask a Voodoo priest to cast a curse upon your enemy in retaliation for causing your illness. Paul Farmer tries to make the case that tuberculosis is a disease caused by germs, not an illness caused by curses; and that the most helpful response is antibiotics, not mobilizing a Voodoo priest to cast a counter curse. Paul Farmer meets a woman afflicted by tuberculosis who is persuaded to take medication. She recovers. Afterwards she tells Paul Farmer, “I know TB is caused by germs.” And she also says I know which enemy cursed me so I asked my Voodoo priest to get revenge. Paul Farmer responded, if you believe it was an enemy that cast a curse upon you, why then did you take the antibiotics? To which this Haitian woman responded: “Honey, are you incapable of complexity?"
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