Unetaneh Tokef. Life Happens.

***Six weeks before delivering this sermon, I had quadruple bypass surgery.***

Many things have happened in this past year, some good, some not so good. On the bright side, this past year, over the past couple of months, I learned to be less concerned about having my blood drawn.

I am thankful to be able to be here today. I’m not 100% yet. It isn’t an easy or short recovery. My voice isn’t what it normally is and you’ll have to bear with me coughing now and then.

Before I continue, I wanted to thank you for the tremendous amount of support that my family and I have received. So many people have reached out in concern, sent notes of support, and made donations for my recovery. Your support has meant a great deal. Thank you. 

[Personal thank yous to my family, friends, and congregational leaders followed, which I have not included here.]

Today, in the context of what happened to me, I want to talk about a traditional prayer that is difficult for most of us to deal with conceptually. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer tells us that God determines not only who lives and who dies, inscribing some in the Book of Life and not others. We are told:

On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed,

And on Yom Kippur it is sealed.

How many shall pass away and how many shall be born,

Who shall live and who shall die,

Who shall reach the end of his days and who shall not,

Who shall perish by water and who by fire,

Who by sword and who by wild beast,

Who by famine and who by thirst,

Who by earthquake and who by plague…

The statement concludes:

But repentance, prayer and righteousness avert the severe decree.

Most of us do not believe in this sort of theodicy, this sort of understanding of divine judgement, the causing of blessing or curse, with reward or punishment. I have long argued against this concept as traditionally understood. With my recent ailment, though I’m still not a believer in this idea, I’ve come to see this portion of our service in a slightly different way.

The purpose of this prayer is truly to try to help us to find order in what otherwise would appear to be chaos, seemingly random chance. We know that bad things happen. We know too that they don’t just happen to bad people; they happen to good people as well. And more importantly than this abstract conception:

They happen to us and they can happen suddenly.

• ·      We live in a world in which we can set the temperature of our homes and cars to whatever temperature we like.
• ·      We can wear clothing that is impervious to rain, keeping us dry in the worst of downpours.
• ·      We can have food from just about every restaurant in town delivered to our homes for a nominal delivery fee or even for free!
• ·      We know about and can monitor and treat high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
• ·      We can use a laser to fix our eyesight in addition to wearing glasses.
• ·      We have ways to treat some of the worst of diseases, ones that once would have taken lives before we were even aware of them.
• ·      We can ask a wireless device in our homes to turn on the lights, open the shades, play our favorite music, read us a book, change the channel, or order us a new pair of jeans to be delivered free of charge to our doorstep in less than two days. We can even do these things from wherever we are on our cell phones.

We appear to be in control of our lives, much of the time. But we’re not. We’re truly not. It’s an illusion.

Life happens. Some people prefer to use a different word than “life” in that statement, especially when the results are not good ones. Life happens and sometimes what life brings isn’t remotely ideal.

This High Holidays, Jews around the world remember those who were killed over the past year, simply because they were Jews. It has not been a good year for us as a people.

Lori Kaye was shot and killed in the shooting in Poway, California five months ago. It’s hard to believe it was only at the end of April. Lori evidently confronted the shooter near the door. In addition to supporting the synagogue, Lori was heavily involved in raising money to combat Childhood Cancer and for Chai Lifeline which aids families with seriously ill children. By all accounts, she was an eishet chayil, a woman of valor, a woman of courage. She fought her own battle with illness and was doing well. A few months prior, she celebrated her 60^th Birthday and posted about it on Facebook. She wrote:

"Fearless at 60! As I enter a new decade, I am full of "gratitude" & thankfulness for the many blessings in my life. As I said on my 40th & 50th birthdays:

Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

Unetaneh Tokef. “The moments that take our breath away.”

So many of us here have our own lived examples and those of our loved ones, times when life happened. Unetaneh Tokef is a painful prayer. It makes us remember. It makes us think about seeming randomness, chaos, and things beyond our control that happen to us, to our friends and family members, or to others. It’s both the hurricanes far away from us and the whirlwinds that strike our homes.

Some of us have had the opportunity to live in times of blessing, of prosperity and relative security. For others, the Kol Nidrei prayer, for which this evening’s service is named, was a way of coping with being forced to face and do what they neither wanted to face or do. Living under threat, they had to swear oaths that they did not believe and act as they would not or could not act.

Unetaneh Tokef. Life in the places and times they lived brought them challenges, difficulties, threats, not just opportunities and blessings.

The Unetaneh Tokef prayer is both about those who died before their time and those who lived ad meah v’esrim, to 120. It’s about those whose businesses became successful and those who tried, tried again, and failed over and over. It’s also about those who have been struck with illness. Some of us, this past year, found out that we weren’t quite as healthy as we thought and suddenly faced severe challenges.

Unetaneh Tokef. You need surgery. Or

Unetaneh Tokef. You need radiation. Or

Unetaneh Tokef. You need to radically change your diet, your lifestyle. No more fried cheesecake at the fair for you! No more rushing from task to task while barely taking the time to breathe or taking time to care for yourself.

New priorities---- breathe. Take time for yourself to make yourself what you need to be. Prioritize your health.

But Unetaneh Tokef. Sometimes, no matter what you do… Life happens.

You can get out there and run, three times a week. Three 10Ks a week. You can run Half Marathons. You can be on the right medicines and seeing a doctor regularly.

Unetaneh Tokef. Do you have a family history? Yes.

“You won the lottery,” the doctor said, “Genetics.” Control is a delusion. No matter how much control we think we have, we really don’t have the ability to bring it all under our control. We may not have much of an ability to control at all.

Unetaneh Tokef. Life happens.

What we can do is do our best to adapt to it in the best ways. How we respond when life happens is really what defines who we are.

• ·      It’s not difficult to smile when everything goes our way. It may be difficult to remain humble when everything and everyone around us seem to elevate us.
• ·      It’s not difficult to feel depressed or sad when everything is going wrong, when bad things have happened. It may be difficult to react with hopefulness and seek happiness, when they do.
• ·      It’s not difficult to avoid action when action is painful. “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” “Don’t do that.” So easy. But it may be difficult to get moving and endure it as we move on and get better. Rehab can be painful and tiring. But after rehab, hopefully, less pain and more energy.

Unetaneh Tokef. Life happens. The challenge before us when it does happen is to do what is difficult.

L’shanah Tovah Tikateivu v’teiteimu.

May we all be inscribed and sealed for a good and sweet and healthy and blessed New Year.

But if the coming year doesn’t bring some or even any of these things,

May we do our best to do the difficult and

Help and support each other as we do so, 

Just as you have done for me and for my family.

We’ll make the next year and the years to come, the best that we can make them.

Good yom tov.

Dvar Torah for 80th Anniversary of Krystallnacht

Tonight marks the 80th anniversary of Krystallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass  a day on which the persecution of the Jews of Germany took a giant leap toward the Holocaust to come. 276 Synagogues and 7,500 businesses were set aflame, countless homes were destroyed, 91 people were killed and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in camps.

It was a night of mass intimidation and brutality. And whereas, many Jews had assumed that others would rise to their defense, if attacked, it was a night not just of shattered glass, but of shattered hopes and perceptions, a shattered sense of well-being; a loud awakening to a frightening reality. It was also a night that shattered the idea that in the modern Western world, the pogroms of the old world could not and would not happen. We heard similar sentiments expressed about the recent attack at Eitz Chayim Synagogue. “I never thought it would happen here.”

Yesterday, I found a video of Peter Pintus, former Assistant to the Rabbi at the Temple, who passed away some years ago now, speaking about his experiences during the Holocaust for a class at Iowa State. I heard him talk about his experiences numerous times and remember clearly what he said happened on Krystallnacht. They lived in Berlin. Peter’s father was a wealthy Jewish industrialist. His mother was a Christian.

That night, the NAZIs came to the family apartment for his father, “the Jew Pintus,” who had heard about what might happen, and spent the night riding the subway instead of returning home. The Nazis who showed up terrorized and intimidated Peter and his mother. They damaged the furniture and tossed the apartment, but didn’t harm them. When the NAZIs visited their elderly Jewish neighbor, a single woman whom Peter had recalled collected Hummel figurines, they shattered every single piece in her prized collection, gleeful at the destruction, and the emotional turmoil that it caused her.

Peter talked of walking the streets near their home, seeing what had been wrought that horrible night. There was a burning synagogue with firemen outside, not trying to put out the flames in the synagogue, but protecting the surrounding buildings from catching on fire. Perhaps, some were distressed by not being able to do their jobs. But they let the synagogues burn.

Peter talked of passing by Jewish businesses, the glass windows shattered into the streets, anti-Jewish slogans scrawled in yellow paint on the walls.

It’s hard to imagine the level of fear that Jews in Berlin would have felt that night and in the days, weeks, months, and later years to come. They were forced to come to the realization that all that they had built up could so easily be taken away and destroyed, that so many people who could have helped, who could have said or done something, instead said and did nothing, and that so many others joined against them.

“Zachor!” “Remember!” is one of the most important themes in the Jewish tradition. We remember our journey from Egypt, from slavery to freedom. We remember how Amalek came after those who were vulnerable and we celebrate a holiday to remember the events in the story of Esther. We remember our family members and our martyrs during Yizkor services multiple times a year. We are constantly urged to remember.

Our tradition doesn’t just believe that “He who forgets history is destined to repeat it.” Instead, our tradition believes that history often repeats and those who forget or ignore the lessons of history, how to cope with threats as they unfold, will not long survive when they do.

Having seen the truth of our errors, we are a people who nonetheless strives to see the best in others and often, having trusted in others to stand up to evil, find ourselves far too regularly disappointed. We are like Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus, a professor at Hebrew Union College, who wrote in 1935 of the Rise of the Nazis to power in Germany:

There is doubt, however, that the fear of widespread pogroms at the present is well-grounded. It is probable that the masses of the Party, if not some of the leaders, original envisaged a program which would wipe out the entire Jewish community. The response of the world to the atrocity reports made it clear, however, that such a policy could never be put into execution.

It was so clear to him that the world would rise up in condemnation and action.

Over the centuries, we’ve learned all too well that people who threaten to do us harm and have the means to do so must be taken at their word. The greatest sin of our age is not indifference to the suffering of others, it is indifference to threats that lead to the preventable suffering of others and even of ourselves. It is seeing rail lines on their way to camps and not bombing them. It is watching genocide unfold and forming committees to discuss the events while hoping that sanity will prevail in the interim. Failure to act against those who threaten has time and again led to a byproduct of that failure, to discussions of how we should not “stand idly by” as those future threats are put into action.

We strive to make true the words of Professor Yehuda Bauer in reference to the Shoah, “Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a by-stander.”

We have both a justifiably paranoid tradition and a tradition that believes in miracles and preaches hope amid darkness. We too are like Anne Frank, a young woman hiding in an attic during some of the darkest days of our people’s history, saying, “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart” and “I must uphold my ideals, for perhaps the time will come when I will be able to carry them out.”

Amid our fears and sadness over the past couple of weeks, we have seen great compassion and goodwill, outreach from across the religious spectrum. Perhaps, the strongest support we have received has come from the Muslim refugee community here, people who know persecution and oppression.

We saw perhaps 1,000 people gather for our community vigil, including dozens of members of the clergy and political leaders from both parties. It was a tremendous showing of love and concern and we appreciated it very much.

But as we seemingly face both rising antisemitism and an increased willingness to act upon hatred, our challenge is to go beyond thoughts and prayers to effective actions.

The darkness of the age old hatred of Jews yet endures. We cannot ever forget that it is there, neither because it regularly resurfaces, nor because we always must be mindful that it could flourish in the right conditions.

On this anniversary of the night of broken glass, we must remember that our Shalom, the peace in our lives, which our tradition likens to a Sukkah, is very much like crystal glass as well. The whole shatters when but a small piece is pierced. We have learned through the generations to sweep up, to make repairs, and to go on with life. But we go on remembering, ever mindful, ever aware.

Tonight, as we remember the events of 80 years ago and those in recent weeks, we also need to remember what has happened since, that we have survived the utter darkness and we once again thrive as a Jewish people.

·      We have made a difference and brought goodness into the world.

·      We re-established a Jewish nation a decade after Krystallnacht.

·      We have gathered threatened exiles from a myriad of nations and helped them create new homes with new hopes.

·      We danced Hava Nagilah on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem within a few years of the last flames of the furnaces being extinguished.

·      Our culture thrives.

·      Our religious traditions are maintained and expanded.

·      Our contributions to science and the arts have been taken to yet new heights.

·      The Jewish state is strong and secure, as is the Jewish community in the United States of America.

·      There is a bright Jewish future.

But tonight, around the country, the Jewish community is fearful enough that security is a priority and armed guards are seen by many as an absolute necessity. In Europe, for many years now, that has been the case. I do not know that our community will always feel that necessity, but we feel it now. We feel a need for the extra security cameras and the locked doors as well.

This Shabbat, as we read of the story of two nations battling each other in Rebecca’s womb, of Jacob and Esau, each representing competing characteristics, let us choose to be joyful and idealistic instead of sad, angry, and fearful. Let us, like Ann Frank, go forward trusting in the goodness of those who show us caring and not allow ourselves to so easily succumb to cynicism.

There is indeed evil in the world. We don’t need to look too hard to find it.

Our challenge, today, as it has been time and again in our past,

Will be to not become lost to our fears,

But to maintain our commitment to our values:

To welcome with audacious hospitality rather than wariness,

To respond to hatred with Remember the stranger and Love thy neighbor,

Rather than to become haters ourselves,

To kindle light amid the darkness and

Even walking through the darkest valleys,

The valleys darkened by the shadow of death,

May we ever focus on that light.

We are Jews.

We remember.

Shabbat Shalom.

We Look On In Awe - A Dvar Torah on the Power of Nature

This weekend, Florida faces Hurricane Irma. It is striking as one of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the US mainland and has already devastated a number of islands in the Caribbean. In Florida, millions of people have been asked to evacuate to more secure locations, hundreds of thousands more are joining them. Million more people will be impacted. This morning, the first ever tropical storm warning was issued for Atlanta, Georgia.

Hurricane Irma is hitting just after Hurricane Harvey brought extensive damage and extreme flooding to southern Texas, almost certainly causing the most damage of any weather event in the history of the United States, dwarfing the damage done by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It hasn’t been a good few weeks.

On Monday, people in Iowa woke up to a bizarre sky. It was as if the light spectrum had shifted. Everything was tinted orange. This strange situation was caused by the jet-stream carrying the vast quantity of smoke from wildfires in Montana and Canada eastward across the nation. The wildfires have been so substantial that one could easily see them from space.

Speaking of space, last month, we looked into the sky and saw the sun blotted out, a full solar eclipse. Day turned to night. It has been quite a month of special events, most, unlike the eclipse, ones that we would rather not have had.

Last night, one of the most powerful earthquakes to strike Mexico, registering 8.1 on the Richter Scale. An unknown but substantial number of people were killed. Tsunami warnings were issued, fortunately, not coming to fruition.

In Southeast Asia, in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, at the same time that Harvey was inundating Texas, many thousands of people were killed by flooding.

In our modern world, we often feel like we have mastered nature. Indoors, our air is conditioned. We can keep it 72 degrees Fahrenheit all year round, if we’d like. We have weather forecasts that can tell us well in advance whether or not it would be a good idea to go camping over the coming weekend. We can see hurricanes coming from a thousand miles away and offer cones of probability of exactly where they might strike. We even have some ability to estimate when earthquakes might strike or volcanoes might erupt, though usually within a much longer period of time. We can institute flood control measures and build our buildings, bridges, and roads to adapt to wind, water, rain, and the shaking caused by significant earthquakes.

But for all of these things, the hurricanes, the great floods, the fires, and the earthquakes, the primary things that we can do are the same things we have always been able to do, namely get out of the way or hunker down before or during an event and deal with impact as best we can after it is over. Today, we simply have a much better ability to effectively do those things.

The power of the natural world is far beyond our own. In truth, we are not all that unlike our distant ancestors, looking on in awe. We see in Psalm 29:

¹ Ascribe to Adonai, you heavenly beings,
    ascribe to Adonai glory and strength.
² Ascribe to Adonai the glory due God’s name;
    worship Adonai in the splendor of God’s holiness.

³ The voice of Adonai is over the waters;
    the God of glory thunders,
    Adonai thunders over the mighty waters.
⁴ The voice of Adonai is powerful;
    the voice of Adonai is majestic.
⁵ The voice of Adonai breaks the cedars;
    Adonai breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon.
⁶ God makes Lebanon leap like a calf,
    Sirion like a young wild ox.
⁷ The voice of Adonai strikes
    with flashes of lightning.
⁸ The voice of Adonai shakes the desert;
    Adonai shakes the Desert of Kadesh.
⁹ The voice of Adonai twists the oaks
    and strips the forests bare.
And in his temple all cry, “Glory!”

¹⁰ Adonai sits enthroned over the flood;
    Adonai is enthroned as ruler forever.

Our tradition sees these powers of God as part of God’s nature. The nearer to God’s presence, the more powerful the natural wonders.

We find in 1 Kings 19, where Adonai is speaking to Elijah:

¹¹ Adonai said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of Adonai, for Adonai is about to pass by.”

Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before Adonai, but Adonai was not in the wind.

After the wind there was an earthquake, but Adonai was not in the earthquake.¹² 

After the earthquake came a fire, but Adonai was not in the fire.

And after the fire, a still small voice. 

God is in that voice, the feeling of compassion that we feel when we look upon all of those suffering in the aftermath of the great winds, the shattered rocks, the quaking, and the fires, [the flooding too, that’s not in the story of Elijah because it takes place on a mountain].

The powers of the natural world inspired awe, fear and trembling. We are mere mortals, as we are reminded this time of year. Life is so precious. Our blessings so fleeting. The winds and water, the fire and the quaking, can take all of them away. They can wipe entire cities from the face of the earth. As we see the images of the events ravaging our nation and our world, we are humbled.

We can see the hurricanes approaching on radar. In Texas, friends received text messages about the rising water and the evacuation. Several streamed video live on Facebook pages as the waters were rising. But in the end, when the real flooding came, for one friend, after he had been told to shelter in place and the waters rose above the first floor of his home, it was a boat that saved him and his family. It was as if he was living in an ancient story, rescued by a boat amid a flood. Indeed, the natural world humbles us as it did our ancestors.

Today, we think of all of those continuing to suffer from the aftereffects of Hurricane Harvey, whose homes and communities were devastated by flooding. We think of those whose communities were impacted by the earthquake in Mexico or which are affected with the wildfires that continue to burn in the western portion of our nation. Most of all today, our thoughts are with the people of Florida facing Hurricane Irma.

May our prayers for their safety be joined with theirs.

Right after Psalm 29 notes that God is enthroned above the flood, that God controls the awesome power of the waters, to use to concept from the creation narrative, the waters above and waters below the land upon which we live, the Psalm concludes with words with which we traditionally conclude the blessing after meals:

“Adonai oz l’amo yitein, Adonai yivarekh et amo va-shalom.”

¹¹ Adonai gives strength to God’s people;
    Adonai blesses God’s people with peace.

God can manipulate the waters, even, according to our tradition, parting them and holding them at bay. God thunders. God can bring the winds. God can cause the world to shake. God is the one who controls the great floods being held back so that we might live and thrive in their midst. All of this is beyond us.

Yet God also helps to give us the strength to deal with the aftermath and bring peace into our lives. Tonight O God, we hope and pray that you’ll bring shalom into the lives of all of those whose homes and lives are endangered. May our prayers be as that still small voice for them, echoing across the vast expanse, helping those who suffer know that others care.

Kein Yehi Ratson, May it be God’s will.

And let us say, Amen. Shabbat Shalom

Erev Yom Kippur 5776-2015 – Healing Relationships

Tonight, I’d like to speak about relationships and specifically about healing relationships. How do we go about healing our relationships with the divine, with other people, and with our highest selves, that part of us that expects the most and best of us? Let’s begin with a story.

The Whistle

It was late Yom Kippur afternoon, during the Ne’ilah service, the concluding service for the day. The synagogue was filled to capacity. Everyone in the village was there, praying intently. The Baal Shem Tov stood in the front of the sanctuary before the Holy Ark with all of his attention drawn toward heaven. The members of the community believed deeply in their hearts that even if their own prayers would fall short, the intensity and devotion of the great Baal Shem Tov’s prayers would make up for their own and the whole community would be blessed. “Su Shearim!” The people shouted. “Open your gates!”

At that moment a young shepherd, an orphan, was walking by the synagogue. He had just taken the sheep from the field and put them in the pen. Now, he was walking home. His family had not been particularly religious and he was not particularly knowledgeable about Judaism, yet the boy knew that this was the holiest of days. Others had told him. He wanted to experience it all. But every year, he had to work. The sheep needed tending. One could not pray and sing praises instead of caring for them! So while others went to the synagogue, Nachum, the shepherd tended to the flock.

This day, he had finished his work before sundown and decided to come to the synagogue. He had not been to a service before. He had not even been home to change from his work clothes. The sheep might not have noticed the smell, but those in the synagogue did. As he entered their midst, eyes turned from the Holy Ark, from the Baal Shem Tov, from the pages of the Machzorim and glared at the boy who came to the holiest of services dirty and smelly.

“Su Shearim!” The Baal Shem Tov chanted, but fewer and fewer voices were joining him as more and more attention was paid to the boy and more and more people were distracted as he wandered up the aisle and SAT on the top step of the bimah looking, not at the Ark, but at the Baal Shem Tov, then out at them! Mortified rumblings were growing louder.

Then suddenly, the boy took out a wooden whistle and sounded a few notes ending with a piercing shrill! The uproar grew! The Baal Shem Tov turned his head to look at the boy as two men rushed to grab his arms to carry him bodily away. “Stop!” the rabbi cried. “Stop!” “Dear friends, you have not turned, have not performed teshuvah, yet. You are too focused on your own purposes and your own ways. We have shouted our prayers with great intention to open the gates, but this boy, not aware of what we say or do, sounded a note that woke us from our slumber, opened the gates, and went straight to heaven, taking our prayers and our hopes along with his own.”

At the end of the service, the Baal Shem Tov invited the young man to join him at his table for the Break the Fast meal, an honored guest at his right hand.

[How much more focusing of our prayers on a day when we are bid to consider our mortality and to reach forth in earnestness was it to hear the words, “Call 911,” said in earnestness and to begin our service with an emotional Mishebeirach prayer?]

Imperfection

While the story of the shepherd and the whistle is about the worthiness of prayers and importance of intention and earnestness, it also reminds us of the fact that our tradition believes that God does not expect us to be perfect, to know our prayers and be able to recite them well, for our prayers to be received. The prayer that reaches God is the one offered with intentionality and fervency, not necessarily the one that is worded perfectly. Neither are we expected to be perfect in order to make an offering.

One need not look very hard at our tradition to see that even our tradition’s heroes are not perfect characters. We remember the story of Moses telling God that he has a problem speaking and we think of how that affected Moses’ ability to communicate with Pharaoh. But we forget that it did not get in the way of Moses’ communication with God. Moses doubts himself. “Why choose me? Someone who is not perfect?” we can imagine him saying. But God did choose him, imperfections and all.

And let us examine our Patriarchs and Matriarchs. How about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? None of them were exceptional parents. Abraham nearly sacrifices one son and abandons the other into the wilderness. Isaac is devoted only to Esau and blind to the needs of his other son, Jacob. Jacob favors Joseph so greatly that his siblings become extraordinarily jealous and hateful.

And the matriarchs? Sarah? How did she treat Hagar and Ishmael? She wanted them to be cast away.

Rebecca? How did she treat Esau, her eldest?

Leah? How did she treat her sister, Rachel, whom she knew wanted to marry Jacob?

Rachel? How did she treat her father, leaving his home have stolen his prized possessions, the family idols?

And shall we add in the pride-filled Joseph?

King David? The list is too long. Let’s just start with Uriah the Hittite and Bathsheba.

We are spiritually descended from people who were imperfect. They harbored anger, frustration, jealousy, pride, zealotry. They playing favorites… Yet our tradition tells us that they had relationships with the divine. We are shown that we, who succumb to many of the same sins, also can have a relationship with the divine in spite of our imperfections.

However, when life challenges us, we still doubt. We ask ourselves questions much like Moses did before the burning bush.

Questioning

Why me? What can I do? What more can I do?

Should I expect more of myself than I have become accustomed to accept?

Having transgressed, having sinned, having failed time and again…

Can I do it? Am I going to be able to meet the challenges that lie ahead for me?

If I stretch myself out,

If I yearn to reach out, to speak out,

If I step forward to try,

If I go before Pharaoh, me, not some mighty ruler with a great army, a mere mortal,

If I go back to the place and people from where and whom I have fled in fear,

If I am only myself as I always am, flawed and fragile, will I be good enough?

And often in Hillel’s words:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am for myself, what does that mean for me?

If not now, at this moment, at this opportunity, when?

We especially ask these questions at this time of year as we look back on decisions that we have made and consider decisions we have yet to make.

Tonight, we are reminded of the generations of Jews who faced some of the hardest of challenges, many of whom were forced to make decisions that they did not wish to make, to say, “Yes,” when they very much meant, “No.”

Our Relationship with God and Ourselves

The Kol Nidrei prayer is about healing our relationship with God when we have said or done something to upset God, but we can see the prayer as it relates to how we act toward the world and ourselves as well.

Some of us have an easier time engaging in spiritual dialogue than others. The dialogue of prayer is traditionally one of relationship between an individual and God, but it can be an internal dialogue between ourselves as we are and the selves we wish to be, our higher selves. Again, much of our dialogue today involves questions and answers.

Have we sincerely made promises that we have failed to keep? Even though we tried our best? Or did we fail to give a good effort?

Have we relapsed into behaviors that we vowed to change?

Have we been too willing to abandon our convictions to make our lives easier?

Have we kept up traditions that we have promised to keep?

Have we sought out ways to make or keep Jewish traditions and practices a part of our lives?

Have we given real thought about how we live our lives and the ways in which what we do affects others?

Do we make time for things that keep us healthy? Emotionally? Physically?

Are we treating our body well?

Do we hold ourselves to high enough standards? Too high standards?

How have we done at meeting our goals?

Are we willing to commit ourselves to do better?

Will we be able to walk through the doors of the sanctuary next year feeling good about our efforts?

Healing the relationship between ourselves and God or between our actual selves and our higher selves, that part of us that expects better of us, involves admitting fault, turning, changing our direction, and seeking forgiveness. We cannot move forward in the best way carrying the baggage of disdain. Seeking forgiveness from God or from ourselves is a good beginning step. Repentance, atonement, in this regard would involve us meeting or at least sincerely trying to meet our newly elevated goals.

Our Relationships with Other People

While we are reminded that Yom Kippur does not atone for transgressions made between people, it is a time when we focus on healing our relationships with people. Those relationships impact not only our relationship with God, according to the tradition, but they certainly impact how others view us and how we view ourselves.

That said, another story.

The rabbi was an obsessed golfer, but average at best. In his regular foursomes, he rarely finished better than the third best and most of the time took more than a few more strokes than the others. Just once, he wanted to beat them. Just once, perhaps the ball would bounce just right and he’d hit a hole-in-one like they all had.

So it happened, one Yom Kippur day that the weather was just right, the sun shining bright, the wind all but absent. It was a glorious day for golf. The rabbi retreated to his office letting people know that he wished to sleep and not be disturbed until the next service time came around. But he couldn’t sit in his office on such a glorious day. He could leave. He could sneak out. Who would disturb the rabbi on Yom Kippur? They wouldn’t know. Then he snuck out of his office and went to play nine holes at the public course. Just nine holes. He didn’t have much time, but there would be hardly anyone else on the course with the Jewish members of the community having a holiday.

He’d never birdied a hole before. Even par was a goal rarely matched. So when through the first eight holes he had four birdies and four pars, the rabbi was ecstatic!

“Just wait until the people hear about this round!” he thought proudly to himself.

Then on the par 3 ninth hole, he hit his tee-shot badly. It was heading right toward the big tree behind the green. “Oh no!” the rabbi exclaimed. Just then the ball rebounded off of the giant oak tree, flew over the sand trap next to the green, bounded onto the green, bounced twice, hit the flagpole and fell straight into the cup. The rabbi shouted in joy, “A hole-in-one! A hole-in-one! Amazing!”

Somewhere up in heaven, the angels with God asked, “O Eternal one, surely you cannot reward a rabbi for leaving the synagogue and going to play golf on the holiest day of the year!”

It is said that God simply replied, “Whom can he tell?”

The joke is a meaningful one. We are reminded that sometimes what we desire most is not the accomplishment, but being able to share it and to interact with others about it. Yes, the rabbi might feel a sense of pride in himself for having done what he did, though he might later feel more guilty about it than prideful, but not being able to share it with people with whom he deeply wished to do so would be agonizing.

The rabbi in the joke obviously has the wrong priorities. Yom Kippur is a day focused on ourselves in relationship, not merely on ourselves alone.

On Yom Kippur, just as we say that God does in relation to us, we need to consider what we’ve said and done and to look at our year’s ledger. When we find red marks, things that we would consider deficits, something we owe someone else, we should seek to remedy them.

While in the service for children, we tend to stress telling others that we’re sorry, the concept in the adult service is about reaching out and seeking forgiveness with contrition. On this day, God’s gates of repentance may be open, but human beings’ gates of accepting forgiveness require our effort to open. And once we do that, once we are able to reach out to offer forgiveness, we are required to do more than that, to atone, to make amends, to try to repair the damage.

The Day of Atonement isn’t about arguing, however. It isn’t the time to debate whether or not your apology is sincere enough or your attempts to make amends good enough. Today is a time for you to turn, to change your ways. Slichah and Teshuva are about turning instead of banging heads. To use the terminology of the day, the goal is at-one-ment, making whole. And that is done between persons by healing and embracing relationships, not by winning any argument.

While the focus for most of today is on the sinner, this day reminds us of our opportunities to offer forgiveness, to accept repentance, and atonement. There is a mutuality to this process.

We cannot go through life, as Martin Buber might have put it, seeing everyone as an “it”, something to be utilized or put to a purpose, with ourselves as calculating observers of the relationship. We must understand that the other person is a “thou”, someone like we are, and we are involved. The ways we respond to others impacts us in many ways. The simplest question in this regard is “How do we want to be treated by others when we seek forgiveness?”

I have little doubt that we would want our partner in this relationship to reach out to us, accept our apology, be swift to offer forgiveness and embrace our change rather than avoid us or push us away.

It is our obligation both to try to atone and to accept a reasonable remedy by others. After all, just as we want God to be merciful and compassionate unto us, and would like other people to act that way towards us, so we must act that way toward other people.

Adonai, Adonai, El rachum v’chanun, erekh apaim v’rav chesed v’emet. Notseir chesed la-a-laphim, nosei avon va-fesha v’hata’ah v’nakei.

Adonai, Adonai, merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and truth, showing kindness to multitudes, and forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, while granting pardon.

As we ask that of God in relation to us, so we must ask that of ourselves in relation to others.

Bearing grudges and withholding forgiveness and love is what we loathe in others; let us not be guilty of those behaviors ourselves. In the coming year, may we strive to heal all of our relationships. Let us be slow to anger and swift to forgive, abounding in kindness and mercy toward one another. If we do so, we will live much happier lives and our world will be a much better place.

L’shanah Tovah tikateivu v’teichateimu.

May we all be inscribed and sealed in the book of life for a good new year.

Boldly Go – In Memory of Leonard Nimoy

Tonight’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, is focused on the priestly raiments. We learn about the Ephod, the Breastpiece, the robe, a fringed tunic, headdress and sash, the kinds of yarns that are to be used and metals and gems for adornment.  There was a whole lot of commentary connected to this Torah partion today with people arguing about whether the priestly dress was white and gold or instead blue and black!

After describing the priestly vestments, the Torah speaks of the method of consecration, of the sacrificial practices that must be performed. Finally, we hear of where God will meet with the priests, in the Tent of Meeting which will be sanctified by God’s presence.

The specifics of the discussion of priestly garments are not directly appropriate to the matters of the day, or perhaps considering the many discussions about the color of that dress, all too appropriate. Yet, the Torah which was taught this afternoon was indeed connected to the priests. It focused on the Priestly Benediction and the hand gesture of the character Spock from Star Trek. The much beloved actor who portrayed Spock, Leonard Nimoy, passed away today at the age of 83.

Leonard Nimoy, who grew up Orthodox in Boston to Ukrainian immigrant parents, helped to bring Jewish ideals into millions of homes through Star Trek. Nimoy, actor, director, photographer, poet, ended up so connected to the character of Spock that he struggled to make his own way. His two autobiographies were entitled, “I am not Spock,” published in 1977 and “I am Spock,” published in 1995.

Star Trek, which debuted September 8, 1966 took on the social issues of the day though a campy sci-fi show set in the distant future. Star Trek challenged numerous social norms from women’s rights, to race, equality and much more. Spock’s character presented and represented several challenges to social norms.

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, called him the “conscience of Star Trek.” Spock was a vehicle used to bring science and reason to confront human emotional reactions and beliefs. Whenever a prejudice or some aspect of faith impacted a storyline, Spock was there to squash it or to highlight it.

My favorite Spock scene is one from the movie Wrath of Khan. Spoiler alert, I’m going to tell you how the movie ends. Plug your ears if you’d rather not hear.

The ship was crippled and the only way to save it was for Spock to enter a room full of a lethal level of radiation. The doctor discouraged Spock from entering. Spock incapacitated him, entered, and saved the ship along with all those onboard. When Captain Kirk arrived and interacted with Spock as he lay dying, Leonard Nimoy’s character explained himself by saying that, “Don’t grieve, Admiral. It is logical. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. I have been and always shall be your friend. Live long and prosper."

It’s a very Kantian message, based in science and reason.

Star Trek’s real message, however, is in Captain Kirk’s response, the Jewish response, set up by Spock’s statement. It is found in the following movie, “The Search for Spock,” which was directed by Nimoy. In it, the crew takes a great risk to recover Spock’s now resurrected body from "The Genesis Planet," I won’t even bother to comment on the obvious religious overtones of that.

Spock, not remembering what happened, asks Kirk, “Why would you do this?” “Why go through this great risk, put the whole crew at risk, to help me?” Captain Kirk responds with a rabbinical statement, “Because the needs of the one, outweigh the needs of the many.” It is a statement based on Mishnah Sanhedrin, which teaches, “Whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved an entire world.”

Nimoy’s character, Spock, was part of an inter-racial family--well, actually an inter-species family. Spock was part human and part Vulcan. His character and its narrative of nearly five decades of Star Trek episodes and movies about his character, helped people understand mixed-race, multi-cultural, and interfaith families. We followed many story lines about religious rites, cultural stereotypes, discrimination and prejudice. Star Trek taught tolerance and did so significantly through the character of Spock.

Spock showed that geeks could be leaders and helped make science cool. His was a character far ahead of his time, beloved by science fiction fans from the start.

Star Trek’s theme in its early incarnation was “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” The statement was about exploration, about human adventure. In retrospect, it was also what the show did in confronting the accepted ideas of its day. It was bold.

Commander Spock’s character, Start Trek as a show, and Leonard Nimoy throughout his life, went boldly forward and urged us to follow. “Lekh lekha!” Get up and boldly go from where you are used to being and what you are used to having around you. Things are going to change! It was a biblical message. It was the message of the 1960s. It was a Jewish message.

Today, was a day that fans of Star Trek have long dreaded. Leonard Nimoy’s Spock is now truly dead, not to be resurrected in the next movie.

His memory lives on. It was something special today, seeing people all around the world sharing a Jewish sign, the Priestly Benediction, with one another? How meaningful on this day of political argument, of fears of terrorism, of division, that so many offered each other a blessing? “Live long and prosper!”

Leonard Nimoy will always be remembered for his portrayal of the character of Spock, for his on stage portrayal of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, for his love of Judaism and for the many things he taught us all about how to live, to be proud of our Judaism, and to care for one another.

Live long and prosper, my friends. Live long and prosper! Shabbat Shalom.

Charlie Hebdo and The Jews - A Sermon for Shabbat Shemot

On Wednesday morning, three men, who are said to have claimed connection to Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula, also known as Al Qaeda of Yemen, attacked the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris, killing a dozen people and injuring eight more. The four prominent political cartoonists working for the controversial satirical magazine were all killed. Among them was Georges Wolinski, a French Jew born in Tunisia in 1934 to a Polish Jewish father and a Tunisian Jewish mother, whose family had come to Tunis from Italy. After his father was murdered in 1936, he and his mother moved to France where he became a political satirist and cartoonist.

Other victims of the terrorists included two unarmed police officers on patrol to prevent attacks against the previously attacked Charlie Hebdo offices. One of the officers executed by the terrorists was Ahmed Merabet, a Muslim. In the attack, the perpetrators killed a cross-section of France: Jews, Christians, Muslims, secularists, native born and immigrants.

Much of what Charlie Hebdo printed on its pages was offensive. It was not offensive in the way that National Lampoon or Saturday Night Live might offend. It was offensive in the way that the old Totally Tasteless Jokes books, for those who are familiar with them, could offend. It was offensive in the South Park sort of way, from the social and political left, but with explicitly graphic cartoons. Yes, Charlie Hebdo’s pages offended Muslims. They also offended Jews, Christians, and just about anyone else whom the magazine’s authors and cartoonists thought they could target.

The response to the massacre of the staff of Charlie Hebdo has been significant.

The French Islamic community, fearing a backlash because of this week’s attacks, has responded very strongly. The French news service AFP stated today that:

French imams condemned the violence committed in the name of Islam during Friday prayers as the country reels from the double hostage dramas that followed the massacre at Charlie Hebdo magazine on Wednesday.

The same message — distancing the country’s five million Muslims from the jihadists responsible for the attacks — was relayed at more than 2,300 mosques across France.

“We denounce the odious crimes committed by the terrorists, whose criminal action endangers our willingness to live together,” says the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur.

He also appeals to “all the Muslims of France” to take part in demonstrations planned for Sunday to pay homage to the 12 victims of the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the bloodiest in France in more than half a century.

Muslim theologian Tareq Oubrou, an imam in Bordeaux, in the southwest, said Muslims were furious that their religion had been “confiscated by crazies… and uneducated, unbalanced people”.

Numerous foreign leaders have said that they will attend the huge rally in Paris set for Sunday.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and Spanish Prime Minister Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, whose countries have suffered major terror attacks in the past decade, were among the first to say they would attend. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said they would also come.

President Obama stated today, “I want the people of France to know that the United States stands with you today, stands with you tomorrow,” and described France as America’s “oldest ally.” “We fight alongside you to uphold values that we share,” the President said.

Most of us who have offered our support for the value of free speech over the past few days would not also support the content of that speech as offered by Charlie Hebdo. In fact, most of us would decry much of it. Yet, we also must be concerned when the opportunity for us to become offended by the views of others is silenced, when protests and criticism that rattle us and disturb us are declared illegal or silenced by threat of violence. That is the highway to oppression. The hangman may well come for Charlie Hebdo first, but when the hangman comes, we know that there are others on the list as well, including us- selected for what we believe, what we say, how we look, where we're from... And in fact, in France this week, first they came for free speech and then they came for the Jews.

This morning we awoke to the news that two new people, Amedy Coulibaly and Hayat Boumeddienne, were wanted in connection with the robbery of a gas station and murder of French police officer that occurred yesterday. This afternoon, Amedy Coulibaly entered a Kosher Deli/Supermarket with two AK-47s. He took nineteen hostage. Coulibaly called FBM-TV in Paris this afternoon and stated that he chose the store because he was targeting Jews. Furthermore, he claimed to be part of the Islamic State, stating that he had orders from the Caliphate.

Four hostages eventually were killed along with Coulibaly. Of the fifteen survivors, four were critically wounded. Meyer Habib, a Jewish Member of Parliament in France, said that among the dead was his best friend and that he knew two others who were also killed in the store.

No few synagogues around Paris chose not to hold Shabbat services this evening and to close for the weekend out of fear: not all of them, but no few of them. Many members of the Jewish community are simply too afraid to go to Jewish places tonight. For the first time since World War II, synagogues in France have shuttered their doors on Shabbat out of fear.

While many proudly declare “Je suis Charlie!” It will be interesting to see how many also declare “Je suis Juif!” What sort of support will the Jewish community of France receive in the aftermath of this attack, an attack that comes in a year following a dramatic upsurge of Antisemitism in France complete with numerous attacks against synagogues, a year that saw the highest emigration of French Jews to Israel in many years. It is two years after an attack on a Jewish day school in Toulouse in which a rabbi and three children were killed by terrorists. It is also merely months after a Summer that saw mobs marching through the streets of France shouting “Death to the Jews” and “Hitler was right.”

My friend Rabbi Audrey Korotkin pointed out today in answering the question, “What has changed?” that it is simply that the target of such violence and hatred is no longer just Jews. France did not say, “Je suis Juif” then, nor did it the numerous other times when Jews were attacked and killed as Jews, and it probably will not now. Charlie Hebdo, the magazine filled with hate and derision, deserves love simply because the French cherish freedom of speech. Do the French cherish the lives and freedom of Jews? So far the answer seems to be silence.

Silence…a silence that brings us to this week’s Torah portion.

The Israelites were fertile and prolific. They multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them. Then new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

It has been four score years since a great evil took hold in Europe. In August of 1934, Germany came to have a Fuhrer. In September of 1935, it passed the Nuremberg Laws. We are of an age that has forgotten. It is not the good Joseph that we have forgotten, but the opposite, the evil, how it came to pass, how it grew and prospered. Europe has forgotten what allowing hatred to flourish in its streets can produce. We are the king who forgot.

The Nazis spread fear and hatred. They did not stand for enlightened modern values, but for contempt of many of them. Those Muslims who support and encourage participation in Al Qaeda, who seek the growth and spread of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, who advocate for the ascension to power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Arab nations through violent means also seek to spread fear and hatred. They do not support those values cherished in the west of Freedom of Speech and Religion or many others advocated by majorities in western nations. Many of them have as goals the completion of Hitler’s work in the genocide of the Jews and the domination of the globe.

There are voices seeking to bring change. My friend, Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy has spent much of the last three days being interviewed on national television. This is a link to one such appearance in Phoenix.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, who took power by ousting the elected Muslim Brotherhood government, who appears by all evidence to be a successor to Hosni Mubarak as a military strongman, is also the one leader in the Muslim world who perhaps is positioned to speak out in condemnation of religious radicals with whom he and his government are at war.

Last week, on New Year’s Day in fact, Al Sisi spoke at Al Azar University, one of the leading Sunni religious institutions in the world. He stated:

“It’s inconceivable that the thinking that we hold most sacred should cause the entire umma (multinational community of Muslim believers) to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing and destruction for the rest of the world. Impossible! That thinking – I am not saying ‘religion’ but ‘thinking’ – that corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years, to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible, is antagonizing the entire world. It’s antagonizing the entire world!

Is it possible that 1.6 billion [Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants – that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live? Impossible! … I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You, imams, are responsible before Allah. The entire world, I say it again, the entire world is waiting for your next move… because this umma is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost – and it is being lost by our own hands.”

Canadian Muslim women’s rights activist Farzana Hassan, yesterday offered words in the Toronto Star that we all should hear:

Muslim organizations have naturally denounced the attacks.

However, the attitudes of many Muslims remain steeped in an ancient mindset that is anathema to the secular West, and the usual rationalizations have diluted these so-called condemnations.

The implied argument is that the victims have in a sense helped to bring the tragedy on themselves, because if they offend the sentiments of over a billion people, there are bound to be some who will take up arms.

In other words, this terrorist outrage deserves to be condemned, but the West needs to understand that Islamic sensitivities need to be respected; how can so many non-believers just not get it?

Yet, Westerners do get it.

It is just that they quite rightly repudiate it.

It may sound trite to say that freedom of expression is the cornerstone of Western liberal democracy, but it is true. Mockery, satire, even blasphemy form a part of this.

Of what use is the right to say only what everyone wants to hear?

It is only in challenging many so-called sacred values that the West has made progress towards formulating the best of societies where rights are guaranteed — ironically, even the rights of religious people who would deny those rights to others…

We are now faced with a sad and stark dichotomy where two worlds, one that cherishes individual freedoms, the other that suppresses them at every opportunity, are constantly pitted against each other.

The West must defend its liberties.

Cowering under Islamist intolerance would dilute some of the most treasured aspects of its civilization.

Rabbi Korotkin notes, using the words of Martin Niemoller:

First the Islamists came for the Jews. But the world by and large did not speak out, because they were not Jews. Now the Islamists have come for the satirists. Does the world stand by, because most of them are not satirists? Do they think that the cartoonists of “Charlie Hebdo” are in a different category, because they, like Zionists, were asking for it?

As Rabbi Korotkin essentially asks, “Is Europe ready to confront a hangman that has come for the Jews and the satirists?”

This year will almost certainly see a dramatic increase in the number of Jews leaving France for safety in Israel. Will it be a year that sees Europe care about that fact? Or be less than happy about it if they do care? They will march, but will they only march? Will they watch the hangman come, and even, in the words of Maurice Ogden, serve him faithfully? Or will they, and we along with them, stand against him in public square?

Our thoughts are with the people of France tonight and with our Jewish brethren, once again facing both tragedy and ongoing threats. May light and not darkness come into the City of Light tonight and in the days and nights to come. May we support those who seek to bring light into the darkness of hate-filled minds and be successful in our efforts. May the prayers and songs for peace and comfort that we and Jews around the world have offered tonight bring strength to our people everywhere.

Tonight, Nous Sommes Juifs Francais. We are all French Jews. Chazak, Chazak, v’Nitchazeik, be strong, be strong, and let us strengthen one another.

Shabbat Shalom.