Erev Rosh Hashanah 5777- Making Dreams Become a Reality

Many of you know that I have participated in archaeological digs in Israel. I pay particular attention to the archaeological news and, sometimes, people come to fanciful conclusions about what has been uncovered.

For example, I remember seeing a report on Facebook of a discovery of a chariot in the Red Sea. Never mind that the report wasn’t true, there was no such discovery, people were sharing the fake news report and suggesting that it confirmed the Exodus narrative of Pharaoh’s army being swallowed by the sea. The TV show Ancient Aliens, which attempts to prove that aliens visited our planet in ancient times, currently airs on the History Channel and has aired for eleven seasons. Each of its 118 episodes have been watched by well-over one million people. So I was not surprised when I recently, I came upon this report:

After having dug to a depth of 50 meters last year, French scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 1,000 years. Some people have come to the conclusion that the Franks had a telephone network all those centuries ago!
Not to be outdone, British geologists digging to a depth of 100 meters found fiber optic cable! Stories in U. K. newspapers read: “English archaeologists find fiber-optic cable in a 2,000 year-old sediment layer” and some have concluded that their ancestors had an advanced high-tech digital communications network a thousand years before the French supposed telephone network!

Never mind, that the fiber optic cables were new and buried in an earlier layer, we’re not talking about academic archaeology here!
One week later, Israeli Newspapers reported the following:

“After digging a hundred meters down in a Jerusalem marketplace, through three thousand of years of history, scientists found absolutely no wiring at all. They have therefore concluded that, 3,000 years ago, Jews were using wireless technology!”

Connected to Israel, some would believe that if it was reported by someone theoretically not telling a joke as I was. We have ancient aliens in Egypt. Why not ancient wireless communication by the Cohanim in the Temple?

After all, the cell phone is an Israeli invention, a response to the need to call up military reserves at a moment’s notice. Motorola in Israel invented cellular technology. The first cellular call was made only a few months before the 1973 Yom Kippur War, on April 3, 1973. Things in Israel can move from the realm of dreams to reality pretty quickly.

This evening, I would like to talk with you about exactly that, how our dreams can become realities.

This March, I had the opportunity to attend the Central Conference of American Rabbis convention in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv this year along with about 400 of my colleagues from around the world. We were able to interact with many national leaders and get a good feel for the political environment, especially as it relates to Reform Judaism.

Spending time in both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem allows for a different perspective on Israel than most tours would provide. The cities are nothing alike. Jerusalem feels religious and oozes history.  Much of the city, the cobble stone streets, are well worn. Tel Aviv is very secular and feels as modern as it is, not only new, but up to the minute, under construction, and unfinished.

Jerusalem is the city of religious Jews, historians, and tourists, people significantly concerned about the past. Tel Aviv is the city of Shimon Peres. Shimon Peres said that for him “Dreaming (was) simply being pragmatic.” Tel Aviv is a city always dreaming, but practical at the same time, a center of technology and business, ever moving forward. The city lives out Shimon Peres’ directive that, “We should use our imagination more than our memory.” We join with all of the people of Israel in mourning his recent passing. This Rosh Hashanah is the first in seven decades that Shimon Peres has not been considered among the top cadre of leaders of Israel. He will be dearly missed.

While there were a number of memorable experiences on my recent trip, the highlight of my visit to Tel Aviv and of the trip as a whole was the Tel Aviv Half Marathon, which was, not much of a surprise, sponsored by a cell phone company, Samsung.

About three dozen of the rabbis in attendance at our conference participated in the races that day. One ran the full marathon, ten or so of us ran the half marathon, and the rest ran or walked the 5k. We all wore red running shirts that said, “Running for Reform! Supporting Reform Judaism in Israel!” that were provided to us by the Reform movement.

We were running and walking billboards.

I had many people run by me and offer a thumbs up, some saying, “Yalla Reformim!” “Go Reform Jews!” Several walked with me and told me about the congregations in which they grew up in Hartford, New York, Chicago and other places. Some talked about their Reform congregations in Israel.

I began with the first group of runners, crossing the start line about 500^th. I finished the race in 6,800^th place. Around 6,300 people were able to read my shirt when they passed me by! I was by far the best running and walking advertisement participating in the race. But unlike almost 1,000 people, I finished the race.

There were a number of things during the race that made it the highlight of the trip for me. The race reminded me of what Israel is really like, not the tourist Israel, not the idealized religious Israel.

Running with my colleagues for Reform Judaism made the run more than just a race. With a number of recent problematic decisions by rabbinical authorities that make life more difficult for Reform Jews in Israel, showing our public support was not insignificant. Our running was also a form of advocacy.

It was also a joyful experience. I can’t tell you how many times I smiled as children of all races and ethnicities who were watching the race cheered us on—in Hebrew, in English, in Russian and in some places in Arabic.

Then there was the variety of music along the way. I heard everything from American pop tunes to Hebrew hip-hop music and hard rock classics played roadside with guitar and drums. In one case, they were singing an America rock classic with lyrics in Hebrew, but I don’t remember the exact song.

·      There were several large groups of soldiers running in packs who flew by me while reciting their cadences.

·      There were religious Jews running with their tsitsit, their fringes, flapping in the breeze as they ran.

·      Muslims, Arabs and Druze, men and women, some of the latter wearing long sleeves and long pants beneath long skirts and with a hijab, a full head covering, in heat that reached well into the 70s.

·      And there were no few runners in the race pushing people in wheel chairs or people in racing wheel chairs moving themselves.

I had a pretty good idea of who was participating that day, because so many people passed me!

As the morning wore on, I started passing people myself. Runners began cramping up. In one case, I saw someone who just happened to be watching the race go over to a runner whose leg was cramping and who was standing by the side of the road to give them medical advice. Only in Israel. “Stretch it like this,” I heard the spectator tell a runner, in English, demonstrating.

The race was sponsored by Mai Eden, the Water of Eden bottled water company. Instead of giving us paper cups filled with water as you would find at races here. At this race, they were handing out small plastic bottles of water. Runners would, of course, as you would expect, twist the top off, throw it at the trash receptacle or just drop it, and then drink part or all of the bottle, either dropping it or throwing it at a trash can, sometimes actually getting it into the can. I often had to wade through bottle caps and bottles at each one of these stations. I can only imagine that more than a few people twisted ankles. At each location, several people were employed to use big shovels and brooms to sweep up the plastic and put it all in big bags to be recycled.

It was pointed out to me later that Israel has much more access to plastic than to paper. While it was strange to have all of these bottles tossed around, nothing would be wasted. Recycling is a normal thing in Israel now.

When I first began the race, we were tightly packed into a paddock that spanned a four lane road. About a quarter mile after we started, there was a backup on the left side near an overpass. I could see people veering to the left to look at whatever it was. People were nearly banging into each other. I was wondering what was going on. I thought that perhaps someone fell and was hurt.

As I got closer, I heard people clapping and cheering. There was a group of people with a young man who had stood up from his wheel chair and was using crutches to participate in part of the race. Runners were not swerving to avoid this person, they were swerving over to clap and shout encouragement as he took each step with difficulty. It brought tears to my eyes. I didn’t get a chance to see what the signs for the organization said, but I think it was the Israeli Make a Wish Foundation. Someone had a dream to participate in the race.

The Tel Aviv Marathon featured a large number of people participating for causes, pretty much every kind of medical issue was represented as well as numerous organizations promoting hunger relief, education, homeless shelters, support for wounded soldiers and more. It was a good representation of Israeli society and the Jewish world. Seeing all of this together was a deeply moving experience.

If you took a moment to think about it as you ran, and I had plenty of time to think, it was easy to see how many types of advocacy had been successful, many goals had been achieved. There was tolerance of difference- people of different religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations, nationalities, soldiers and civilians, Arabs and Jews, running together. There was the promotion of recycling, even if a bit awkwardly. And there was not only an attempt not to exclude people with disabilities, but a clear attempt to include them in a number of ways. Goals that people had worked to achieve through advocacy in past years and work to achieve in our country were on display. It was inspiring to behold.

As you can tell from my comments, I’m not the fastest runner. I’m pretty sure I was passed by a tortoise or two at some point. But finishing upright and being able to enjoy it is an accomplishment.

If you had asked me two years ago, I would have laughed out loud at the thought of running a race. Im Tirtzu, ein zo agadah! In the words of Theodore Herzl, “If you will it, it is no dream.”

In February of 2015, I started getting into shape, but saying that makes it sound like I was much further along than I was. Trying to improve from out of shape would be more like it. I had no intention of considering participating in a race. In fact, I had never run more than two miles at a time in my life and that was when I was in High School!

I started my “improvement” by walking three miles on the treadmill. After a while, I added a bit of jogging. After a while, forty-five minutes became an hour and an hour became an hour and a half and then two. Then last October, I ran and walked the Des Moines Half Marathon. My first official race of any kind. It took me over three hours. Now, having finished three other Half Marathons including that one in Tel Aviv, I signed myself up for the full 26.2 mile Des Moines Marathon in a couple of weeks. It will take me over six hours.

I am running that marathon, not only as a way to challenge myself, but also to raise awareness of and money for our youth programs so that we may better support the many children in our congregation who want to spend a month of their summer at Goldman Union Camp Institute, to go on the NFTY in Israel six-week long summer program, or to attend NFTY Kallot regionally and nationally. These things are important for Jewish teens no matter where they live, but for Jewish teens living in Des Moines, Iowa, they are a primary connection to the broader Jewish world. We do our best to make sure that anyone who would like to participate in these programs is able to financially do so.

That said, what one realizes in training to run long races when starting out as a relatively, if not significantly, out of shape adult, is that it takes commitment to train, a willingness to change, the right fuel and gear. In the words of the 1980s Nike commercial, “It’s all about the shoes!” But also the various bands and wraps that keep aging knees doing what they’re supposed to be doing and the dietary supplements, the gel packs, salts, and chews, that keep your electrolytes up and keep you going on a run. You might not need many or any of these extra things for a short run, but for the long run, the further you hope to go, the more you require.

I’ve also thought about how similar all of this to other areas of life. It isn’t just someone training for a marathon who benefits from a mindset that they can accomplish their goals. There are good reasons that motivational speakers are hired to speak by companies and organizations. Attitude matters…a lot. The attitude that you bring to your work will go a long way to determining how successful you will be.

And training? Practice makes perfect. Getting in shape matters. If you’re not in shape, practice is going to be limited. If you’re in pain, you may not practice at all. So if you’re out of shape, you’re likely to give up quickly or practice in such a way that adapts to your limitations rather than your goals.

I was there a year and a half ago. I thought I couldn’t. And I was out of shape enough to easily convince myself I was correct. My mindset had to change before anything else. I think I can, I think I can.

Then there’s gear. Some people may be able to run a long way and for a long time without gear. Some of us can’t. Looking for solutions rather than accepting and accommodating problems makes a difference. Get shin splints? Try calf compression sleeves. Run out of energy? Try gels and electrolyte boosts. Worried about your heart rate? Talk with your doctor about it. Wear a monitor.

Every problem is not easy to overcome. Some are not possible to overcome. But some are. The lesson? Don’t give up on what you can improve on or overcome, and you’ll find that you will overcome quite a bit.

One can apply all of these things to organizations as well. Attitude and motivation matter. Training makes a difference. Having the fuel an organization needs, money, workers, and volunteers, keeps an organization going. The right gear, the adaptations that help an organization overcome systemic or situational challenges, can help an organization thrive amid difficulty.

And in thinking about it, we see these things in the Torah as well.

Motivation? How about the directive in the portion that we will read on Yom Kippur morning, “Choose life that you and your people may live!” and all of the blessings that come with living in the right way?

Of course the Jewish tradition has gear, things we use to perform the rituals. We have the tallit, the shofar, the menorah and more.

Training? How about the words of v’ahavtah? To summarize, “Devote yourself to these things with all of your heart and soul and mind. Constantly be mindful of them in whatever you’re doing. Teach them to your children.”

In general, it takes learning and practice to be able to maximize participation in Jewish life, learning prayers and songs, perhaps studying Hebrew, maybe even experimenting with making mazah balls or latkes a few times before getting the right mix of fluffiness and taste. We know that it doesn’t happen without some learning. Jews are life-long learners. For us, studying, training, is literally a commandment.

Am Yisrael, the people of Israel, we are the people running the marathon. We are diverse. Among us are fast and slow runners, the women in traditionally modest dress, the soldiers chanting cadence, the racing wheel-chair competitors flying along the course, the runners bent over in exhaustion, the young man using crutches to take a few momentous steps, the people swerving over to cheer, the American Reform rabbis running for Reform in Israel and the children of every color in the human rainbow celebrating as we passed. We are all different. Some of us too, like at the race, aren’t just onlookers to the Judaism of family members and friends, but are caring and loving supporters, actively helpful. Everyone together makes it all work best.

There I was, running through the streets of the largest Jewish city in the world, the largest Jewish city in history, located in the Promised Land of old, living out Theodore Herzl’s statement in so many ways.

“Im tirtzu, ein zo agadah. If you will it, it is no dream.”

The lesson for which life reminds us time and again is that between those two things,

Wanting it, willing it, on the one hand, and

Achieving your goals and dreams on the other,

Is often a good bit of hard work, training, study and commitment.

In the coming year, may we set our goals high and strive to achieve them.

May we pledge to do what is needed to accomplish what we set out to do and fulfill our pledges.

May we find success and blessing as we journey along all our paths.

Shanah Tova u’Metukah! May we all have a good and sweet New Year!

Kein yehi ratson! May it be God’s will!

Yom Kippur 5776-2015 – Feeling Abandoned and Afraid

On Yom Kippur Day, the traditional focus is on sinfulness and transgressions. This emphasis recalls the story of Noah and the Flood. We read in Genesis 6, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people in his time. Noah walked faithfully with God.” Then the Torah tells us that because the rest of the world was corrupt, God was bringing a flood to cover the whole earth. That is certainly divine punishment for sinfulness.

While on Yom Kippur day, our focus tends to be on individual sinfulness and repentance, we cannot forget the larger theme of human sinfulness. The story of Jonah, which we will read this afternoon, certainly brings up that idea as well. Yet the story of Noah and the flood is the prime of example of a time when God turned away, when blessings were removed and curses were all too present.

This morning, I would will talk about times when we feel abandoned and afraid. I will begin by going back to the story of the Flood and our relationship with God in the Jewish tradition. Then I will address times when we, as Jews, have been abandoned by other people in our time of distress. Finally, I will talk about times when we are left alone as individuals and how our tradition guides us in overcoming our fears at those times.

It is hard for us in the modern world and, particularly, as Reform Jews who emphasize reason in our understanding of Jewish texts to connect to a story as miraculous as the Flood narrative. We are more likely to joke about it. This is my version of one of my favorite flood jokes.

A New Flood is Coming

God reaches out to all of the major religious and political leaders in the world. The Eternal One has had it with how humanity is behaving. Promise or no promise, God is again going to bring a flood. People have a year to prepare for the deluge which will cover the whole face of the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.

Most of the world’s leaders simply panic, especially those who were surprised to find out that the Jews had it more or less right all along. They prayed for salvation and no few begin evangelizing in the hope that by getting others to believe in God and follow more religious laws and rituals, that God’s wrath might be turned.

“Repent! For the end is nigh!” signs begin to appear everywhere.

Jewish leaders, rabbis, politicians, businessmen, engineers and scientists all get together in Jerusalem at the invitation of the Prime Minister. The meeting begins with prayers of repentance.

After a few days of deliberations, the leaders emerge and hold a press conference. A huge crowd has gathered and people from all around the world watch on television, listen on the radio, and access the live feed via the internet.

“Surely the Jews will know how to respond to God!”

One of the scientists from the Technion in Haifa, an engineering professor, had been elected the leader of the group they were calling YaM, which was an abbreviation for Yehudim al HaMabul, “Jews about the Flood,” and came forward to address the media.

“We understand that there are calls for to build a new Ark or even several that would float upon the coming floodwaters, much like Noah’s Ark, except much bigger. Others call for a great space going vessel to take people and animals to colonize Mars or the moon. We know that other peoples are pursuing such efforts. But we Jews are unwilling to choose who shall live and who shall die. That is God’s work. There will be no Ark for us.”

There was a great rumbling of distress among the gathered media. Were the Jewish leaders simply giving up?

“Some have suggested that we should do our best to make God feel guilty about breaking the promise to Noah, that we should copy the argument used by Abraham avinu, ‘Adonai, what if there are 50 righteous souls among us? 40? 30? 20? 10?’ Perhaps, then God would relent? But who is truly righteous? Are we not all imperfect? Have we not all sinned? Such is the lesson of the Day of Atonement. How can we dispute it?”

“So you’re just giving up???” one of the members of the assembled press asked in no bit of distress.

“No, not at all!” replied the scientist.

“We’re all going to learn—how to live—underwater!”

The joke is, of course, about how we would deal with the fear of destruction on a large scale today. Yet in our people’s history, we have faced no few disasters and no little strife. We have had to learn to live underwater, to survive in the face of persecutions, invading armies, exiles and genocide.

We have certainly felt abandoned and afraid. But the reassuring words of Isaiah chapter 54 resonate through the generations.

Isaiah 54: 7-10

“For a brief moment I abandoned you,
    but with deep compassion I will bring you back.
⁸ In a surge of anger
    I hid my face from you for a moment,
but with everlasting kindness
    I will have compassion on you,”
    says the Lord your Redeemer.

⁹ “To me this is like the days of Noah,
    when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth.
So now I have sworn not to be angry with you,
    never to rebuke you again.
¹⁰ Though the mountains be shaken
    and the hills be removed,
yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken
    nor my covenant of peace be removed,”
    says the Lord, who has compassion on you.

We see these words in the Rosh Hashanah Shofar service, reminding us that even though seemingly eternally stable things like mountains and hills may be shaken and moved, neither God’s love for the people Israel, nor God’s covenant with the survivors of the flood, the Covenant of Peace, will end. God has compassion for us. God cares about us.

The rabbinic tradition argues that God’s presence is blessing and God’s absence is curse. For God to show us mercy and compassion, God must bless us with God’s presence first. This passage in Isaiah is the likely origin of this tradition. In essence, Isaiah informs us that God, who had abandoned us out of anger, hiding God’s face from us, and therefore allowing curses to happen to us, has decided to have compassion on us and bless us with God’s presence once again.

The concept that presence, that paying attention, can make a positive difference and bring blessings is not one limited our relationship with God. This summer, many of my rabbinical colleagues participated in a march from Selma, Alabama to Washington D.C. that was organized by the NAACP and supported by many other organizations including the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. They called the march, “America’s Journey for Justice” and it was part of the NAACP’s “Justice Summer.” The goal was to raise awareness about issues of race and justice in America and in particular to raise awareness about attempts to limit voting rights.

Torah scrolls were carried by rabbis along the route and the idea of “praying with one’s feet,” recalling the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was stated time and again by rabbis discussing their participation in the journey. Those engaged in Tikkun Olam and particularly those engaged in ongoing advocacy for Civil Rights often recall the image of Rabbi Heschel participating in a similar march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

However, few remember that another Rabbi, Joakim Prinz, spoke in Washington D.C. immediately before Dr. King at the March on Washington in 1963. Rabbi Prinz had been a rabbi in Berlin during the 1930s and could not but place the discrimination that he saw in America into the context of that which he had seen in Nazi Germany. He felt obligated to speak out about prejudice and inequality. Serving as President of the American Jewish Congress, he represented the Jewish community as one of the organizers of the 1963 March. Rabbi Prinz’s words have not been quite as well remembered as those spoken by Dr. King that day, but they were quite poignant and should not be forgotten. Rabbi Prinz said:

When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.

A great people which had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass murder.

To use the language of blessing and curse, Rabbi Prinz might have said that they hid their faces.

Among the things we learn in our tradition is that God acts through us. When we speak of God uplifting the fallen, feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked, it is we who do that. We reach out our arms and do the lifting. We provide food for the hungry. We donate clothing for those who do not have it. We do that. We pay attention. We bring blessings into their lives.

But we can also hide our faces. We can abandon those in need. We can become frustrated and hopeless and angry. We can give up. We can silently ignore with the best of them.

The question for us today is “will we?” Will we hide our faces and turn them to watch and act upon what we see? Will we help those who are alone?

Andrew Ferguson, in the last chapter of his book, Land of Lincoln, tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who visited Springfield, Illinois. This story was relayed by the manager of guest relations at the Hilton Hotel there. It seems that the man, whose name was Henri Dubin, who was quite elderly and frail at the time of his visit, was from Czechoslovakia. Evidently, he was having trouble entering his room.

Henri spoke broken English and the front desk attendant was having difficulty understanding him. So the manager came to help. That is what people in helping professions and hospitality services do, they pay attention. They help. When the manager, whose name was Frank, helped Henri into his room, Henri invited him in and showed him a letter from the mayor of Springfield.

The mayor had sent a letter to Henri thanking him for his interest in Abraham Lincoln and inviting him to Springfield as his guest. It said, “When you come here and see the home and the tomb and the Lincoln shrines as our guest, we’ll give you the key to the city.” The letter had been written in 1965. 40 years later, in 2005, the man was able to make the journey.

Frank said that the man suddenly stood up straight and said, he’d been in a concentration camp. Henri pulled up his sleeve several times to show the number on his arm. The man said he knew about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington when he learned about them as a child in school. And he told Frank that when he was in the concentration camp, without mentioning which one, he was all alone in his cell or perhaps feeling abandoned and afraid among others feeling the same, it was the worst time in his life and he didn’t think he could go on anymore. Then, Mr. Dubin said, Abraham Lincoln came to him.

Mr. Lincoln stood right in front of him, the man told Frank, and said:

You never forget: All men are created equal. This is true for all men for all times. And these men who would do this thing to you, who put you here, they’re no better than you. You are their equal, because all men are created equal. You keep remembering this, and you persevere, you’ll be all right.

Henri Dubin said that from that point onward, he knew he would be. And he vowed that if he ever got out of that concentration camp, he would come to Springfield to thank Mr. Lincoln, because he was so grateful. And he’d written a poem that he needed to recite for him. He needed to go to Lincoln’s Tomb to bring him flowers and to recite the poem.

Learning all of this, Frank went straight downstairs and called the mayor’s office and then the visitor’s bureau. Alicia from the bureau whose specialty was helping foreign tour groups reached out to Henri who was insistent that he visit the tomb that day, because he had to fly back home the next day.

Alicia responded right away. She came to the hotel and took him to the tomb in her own car. There, having looked at each of the statues and busts in the shrine, when he reached the tomb itself, Henri got down on his knees, placed the flowers there, and then stood up straight and recited his poem.

The next morning, he was taken to the airport, where he boarded a plane for his journey home.

Hope. When things are really bleak, we need hope. We need to know that others stand with us, that they will not be silent onlookers to our suffering, that we will not be abandoned and left alone. We need people not to hide their faces from us.

Being left alone is a primal fear. Our world, especially, in ancient times, was not a place in which being alone was safe, especially not as a child. While that feeling may attenuate as we grow older and stronger and become more independent, it returns at times of difficulty in our lives.

All of us would be afraid in the situation in which Henri Dobin found himself. While Mr. Dobin came to believe that the presence of Abraham Lincoln visited him to bring him hope, it is not difficult to imagine that others in similar situations might have believed that God’s presence came to be with them in different forms and different ways.

In our tradition, we often refer to God as a parent, as father, or in the form of the Shechinah, the embracing presence of God, as mother. When someone dies, we offer the prayer El Malei Rachamim, which asks that God receive the soul of our loved one into God’s parental grasp.

In the Jewish tradition, we regularly remind ourselves of God’s eternality in part because if God is eternal, we will always have a parent to watch over us; we will never be truly alone.

Bad things happen. How we respond demonstrates our character. In the words of Psalm 23, when we walk through our darkest valleys, we shall fear no evil, for you are with us.

At the end of the day today, as we stand before the open ark, before the presence, let us remember that whether we believe that presence to be real or symbolic, we have the ability to make our own presence felt in the lives of others.

In the coming year, if a flood should come into our lives, may we strive to live underwater, if we cannot find a way to swim or float.

And when we see that others live in fear, let us not turn our faces away or remain silent, but instead march beside them and speak out. That is what our tradition and our history teach us.

This Yom Kippur day, may we be reminded of the caring and compassionate people who have made themselves present in our lives and brought us hope, inspiration, guidance and blessings: our fathers and mothers, our friends and family members, our teachers and leaders and maybe even President Abraham Lincoln.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah!

May we all be inscribed and sealed in the book of life for a good, sweet, and healthy new year!

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.

Faith, Trust, Skepticism and Doubt Rosh Hashanah Morning 2015-5776

In the middle of the night last night, I awoke to a story. I’m not sure if it was my subconscious saying, “You need a good story for your sermon” or perhaps it was my mother speaking to me. This is the kind of story she would have loved. It isn’t a true story. It didn’t actually happen in our household. It could have. But I had to tell it today, because it is the perfect introduction to a sermon about Faith, Trust, Skepticism and Doubt.

How many people here have at least two siblings? How many have at least three children? Everyone else, look at the nodding as I tell the story.

Sibling #2 would really like a big cup of hot chocolate but knows that there are only three packets and that mom and her siblings might want some.

“Mom, can I make hot chocolate? There are only three packets!”

Sib #1, “I’d like some too!” Sib #3, “Don’t forget me!”

Mom, giving up any hope for a share, responds by telling sib #2, “Make one for you and your brother and sister.”

Sib #2 complies. She takes up her own cup and places two steaming cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows pleasantly floating on their surface onto the table in her sibling’s traditional spots.

Sib #3 comes into the room, grabs his cup, and immediately starts drinking.

Sib #2, holding her own cup, picks up the cat and says, “Stay away from the hot chocolate!” just as Sib #1 enters the room.

“What happened?” Sib #1 says.

Sib #2 replies, “Well, our beloved cat just went to the bathroom and then jumped up on the table. I thought I saw him pawing at your hot chocolate. Maybe he was playing with the marshmallows or something.”

Sib #1 walks over and looks at the hot chocolate. “Really? There’s dark stuff on the marshmallow. Eeeewww! Well, so much for that.” Then she leaves the room.

Sib #2 puts the cat down, finishes the cup she’s holding, and puts it in the sink. Then she walks over and picks up the cup she made for Sib #1 and starts drinking it.

Sib #3 says, “Wait, I thought you said the cat messed with that right after going to the bathroom!”

Sib #2’s reply, “I don’t know about her, but I’m certain that I was just imagining things.”

There you have it; faith, trust, skepticism and doubt, all wrapped up in one story.

Why do we believe what we believe? This morning, I would like to talk a bit about faith and trust. I will speak about our Torah portion as well as about what Maimonides and the Rabbinic Tradition say about faith, about how our changing understanding of the world in which we live has impacted faith and trust in the modern world, and about the importance of questioning our assumptions.

“And after these things, Haelohim nisa et Avraham, the Divine tested Abraham.” With those words one of the most troubling texts in our tradition begins. I have spoken before on Rosh Hashanah about my own interpretation of the story; of how Abraham was doing what he believed was expected of him, while Adonai interceded and stopped the test by sending an angel and a ram. I would argue that this story, interpreted in this manner, is perhaps the very foundation of our people’s worship of Adonai apart from the divinities in which other people in ancient times believed.

I believe that in very ancient times, people understood that Abraham once had faith in those divine beings, or at least trusted this particular tradition connected with them, but he came have faith and trust primarily and then only in Adonai, the God who did not seek the death of his beloved son as a test. You won’t find that interpretation of the Akeidah explained anywhere else, because the Jewish tradition came to have faith in the ideal that Abraham was a monotheist long before the story of the Binding of Isaac. I contend, on the other hand, that what we see instead in the stories of Abraham’s life is the development of his faith in Adonai.

Maimonides says essentially that it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you keep all of the mitzvot. Judaism for him was about practice, not belief. Yet even that practice depends on having faith in the revelation that has come down to us, primarily as expressed through the Torah and the Prophets. Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith include that we must have faith that the Torah, the Law of Moses, is of divine origin and is immutable, unchanging over time. This belief lies at the heart of Orthodox Judaism.

For most of our people’s history, people had two choices, have faith or doubt. Most of the time, they could not investigate. People couldn’t simply “Google” the history of their ancestors, look at maps, or even better, telephone, Facetime or Skype with someone across the world. Neither could they access scientific inquiry, archaeology, and a plethora of historical texts all of which could help in the decision. Add that deciding to deny what you were taught in times not too distant could have led to persecution, excommunication, or worse, and even asking questions could have been considered a matter of life and death.

There is a version of Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles that is part of the traditionally daily liturgy called “Ani Ma’amim” which begins, “Ani Ma’amim, b’emunah shleimah,” “I believe with a perfect faith…” and then lists Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith. The song Yigdal Elohim Chai, which is part of our High Holiday liturgy, is a poetic version.

Yet, doubt and skepticism were always present. We are the people whose own texts describe how, having seen miracles, we were skeptical, doubting, and rebellious. I say, we, and not them, because if you’ll remember your Passover lessons, we are to always act as if we ourselves were there as slaves in Egypt, freed by wonders and miracles.

Most of us don’t have perfect faith and trust in much of anything that anyone might want us to believe or do, especially not if they claim to be speaking in the name of a higher power. In our age of technology, if someone claiming to be a modern day Moses came down a mountain with tablets he claimed to be inscribed by the finger of God, someone would ask why he didn’t just use email. Someone else would snap pictures or post a video showing Moses shattering the first set in anger at the people who protested against Aaron and built the golden calf.

Doubt and skepticism, we have aplenty. Reform Judaism originated among those who were skeptical of the origins of the traditions that been handed down to us, including those in our sacred texts. The founders of Reform sought meaning and relevance and eschewed those traditions that required faith and trust without the support of reason and modern understanding. They believed that in the modern world, we were beyond simply trusting what we are told by a source claiming to know the truth.

In this, they were wrong.

While we may question truths shared by people in the name of a higher power, we are the people who, in modern times, too often believe that because something is on the internet and people are sharing it, therefore it must be true. Maybe not the whole internet, maybe just on Facebook or Twitter.

And while we may question the words attributed to Moses, we tend to imbue other fictional characters with trust and then act as if the actors who play them should be so trusted.

Many of us remember the “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on tv?” commercial. “So why then are we hearing your opinion on a medical issue?” We ask rhetorically. The answer is that we develop a sort of trust from watching characters on television and in movies. That ad campaign, for Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup played upon the trust that we have for doctors, even fictional doctors.

How many products do we see advertised with someone claiming to be a doctor endorsing them? There is a massive industry of supplements and remedies. But that is not new. Coca Cola was introduced in 1886 as medicinal remedy containing cocaine, alcohol, and caffeine. It was originally called Pemberton’s French Wine Cocoa, but because of prohibition in many places, the alcohol was removed and a new formula introduced. Pemberton claimed that the formula cured many diseases including morphine addition, dyspepsia, headache and-you guessed it- impotence.

Woody Allen, in the movie Sleeper from 1973, made fun of our faith in health products. The doctors in the movie, Dr. Melik and Dr. Aragon, make fun of his character who wakes from cryostasis many years in the future.

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."

Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.

Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or... hot fudge?

Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

Dr. Melik: Incredible.

In this regard, I recently read an article about salads in the Washington Post. This quote caught me a bit off-guard. I expect it will impact many of you in the same way. After noting that lettuce is almost all water and has little nutritional content, the author stated that, “A head of iceberg lettuce has the same water content as a bottle of Evian (1-liter size: 96 percent water, 4 percent bottle) and is only marginally more nutritious.”

He added that:

Collard greens are 90 percent water, which still sounds like a lot. But it means that, compared with lettuce, every pound of collard greens contains about twice as much stuff that isn’t water, which, of course, is where the nutrition lives.

Meanwhile the author noted that:

Lots of what passes for salad in restaurants is just the same as the rest of the calorie-dense diabolically palatable food that’s making us fat, but with a few lettuce leaves tossed in. Next time you order a salad, engage in a little thought experiment: Picture the salad without the lettuce, cucumber and radish, which are nutritionally and calorically irrelevant. Is it a little pile of croutons and cheese, with a few carrot shavings and lots of ranch dressing? …Items labeled “salad” at chain restaurants are often as bad, if not worse, than pastas or sandwiches or burgers when it comes to calories. Take Applebee’s, where the Oriental Chicken Salad clocks in at 1,400 calories!

Why do we allow this to happen? Bret Thorn, columnist at Nation’s Restaurant News and longtime observer of the restaurant industry, said about salads that:

 Chefs are cognizant of what’s going on in the psychology of diners. They’re doing a kind of psychological health washing, not just with salads, but with labels like “fresh” and “natural,” and foods that are “local” and “seasonal.” “A chef is not a nutritionist, or public health advocate,” Thorn points out. They make food that customers want to buy.

And we want to buy things that are fried or creamy or salty or sweet, or all of those things. Which doesn’t mean that the right salad can’t be a good choice for a nutritious meal. It just means that it’s easy to get snookered.

The fried chicken finger salad covered in ranch dressing and cheese over lettuce and the giant taco salad, may be yummy, but they are not great dietary choices simply because they are called “salads” and have lettuce.

Meanwhile, with all of the options we have to get our news and analysis today, we often forget that a bit of skepticism is required there as well. Too often, we simply read the menu, order, and consume. Like our dietary choices, we tend to watch those stations that appeal to us. That may mean that we only access news sources that tell us what we want to hear and avoid the ones that make us question whether or not what we want to hear is correct. It is far too easy to be led astray, if we do that.

Let me suggest that the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe, is the time when we should take the time to listen to contrary voices, voices that make us question. The Hebrew term “Noraim” has within it the root for the verb “to look,” ra’eh. In fact, one could see “noraim” as a sort of causative reflexive, something that could make the term Yamim Noraim mean something like, “The days that cause us to look at ourselves.”

During these days, “Why do we believe the things that we believe?” is an important question to ask ourselves. Why do we trust? Why do we have faith? Why are we skeptical?

Do we doubt a source’s information and opinions simply because they differ from ours? Because they’re found on the wrong TV network or the in the wrong newspaper or webpage? Do we seek tonics to dull the pain of the criticism, perhaps applying labels or broad generalizations that help us negate challenging arguments?

Do we have faith in arguments supporting the positions we already hold because just as we like salty, creamy, goodness and having it be organic and on lettuce make us feel better about consuming it, we’re willing not to question arguments that make us feel good about what we want to believe?

Even more problematic, are will willing to follow expectations without question, even ones we don’t like, and climb the mountain walking alongside our loved one carrying a knife and wood.

Or instead, do we seek to respond to challenges without trying to brush them aside, looking at the ingredients of the argument without the lettuce that works to convince us that it is all okay?

It isn’t just our stomachs and our politics that work to convince us to agree. We are experts at convincing ourselves that our habits are acceptable, that we need not change. The Yamim Noraim, these days of looking within, challenge us. The shofar blast tells us to “Wake up! Open our eyes! Challenge ourselves!”

It is time to question our assumptions and expectations. Do our actions match our goals? Are we willing to question how we interact with others, how we perceive the world, how we defend our vices, how we support our causes or fail to do so, how we find excuses not to give, volunteer, or make sacrifices to help? Are we quick to excuse ourselves for our failures while swiftly convicting others? Are we pretending to diet while eating fried creamy fatty decadence over lettuce? Are we living and acting in ways opposite to what we truly know to be right?

When we look at Abraham ascending the mountain, our thoughts are not of praise for his faith. We ask instead, “How could he?” Yet, we too often act without question, following expectations, whether our own or those of others.

Let the coming days be ones in which we perform Heshbon Nefesh, taking an accounting of our souls, of our desires and actions, of how we go about our lives. Let us turn ourselves in the right direction, performing Teshuva.

Our tradition does indeed stress having faith in the traditions and beliefs that have come down to us, yet may we not simply rise early to meet expectations and to unquestioningly follow our assumptions.

The shofar reminds us that we need to listen to challenging voices, “Avraham! Avraham!” and that we need to consider possible alternatives to our direction, to question whether or not we or others to whom we listen are just “imagining things.” A new possibility and better understanding may be just beyond the thicket, if we but consider it.

L’shanah Tovah