Yom Kippur 2019/5780 Lessons of a Retiree Rabbi

Now retired after a long career, the newly ordained rabbi said, “on one hand, you are at a stage of life where you have already raised your kids.  When I finish my rabbinical degree, I do expect to find work.  I’d like to earn money to spoil my grandkids.  Basically, this is a point in my life where I am lucky to get the chance to do things I have always wanted to do.”

These words were not spoken by our own Rabbi Margie Cella, no, these words were spoken by David Goodman, a retired journalist who was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College after having been a life-long synagogue goer and prayer leader. 

But the fact that his story meant there were at least two people out there who had taken on the great challenge to enter rabbinical school at a later stage in life struck me when I learned of Goodman’s story in a Forward article about how many Jewish Baby Boomers are “Rewiring” and not “Retiring” through a reconnection to Jewish life and in particular to synagogue life. 

The fact that we had our own parallel to that story, and that our congregation has many other examples of related stories, really spoke to me, and I though it might speak to you. 

Because we see, here and across America, that ever since “60 became the new 30” (mark my words in another 30 years it will be “90 is the new 30” as the Boomers hit that milestone), the elders on the Jewish family tree are finding unique and creative ways to be the keepers of the faith, the person sitting at the head of the Passover Seder table, the one who shares with the grandkids the lighting of the menorah.  The ones who continue to join and stay members of synagogues – finding meaning that through a willingness to be the elders in new and fresh ways will benefit and inspire the rest of us, too. 

After the holiday, look up the Jewish Grandparent Network.  It has found that with relatively high annual incomes, with relatively high synagogue affiliation rates, today’s young Jews will definitely share fond and loving memories of their childhoods now, being taken to synagogue by today’s grandparents.  And they will share how when they got there, they learned that their Poppa, Grandma, Bubbie, Zayde, was an important person – a person who taught in the Hebrew School, gave Bar Mitzvah lessons, studied Hebrew, read Torah.  Think about what that is going to do for today’s kids to see today’s grandparents doing all that.  Heck – I already see it and I’m consistently impressed by it!

Why should we all not be impressed and inspired, and even perhaps relieved by it?  I’m not giving away secrets to you all to say that American Jew under 50 don’t affiliate with synagogues the same way that members of that age cohort did fifty years ago.  But that study and my own experiences with all of you tell me that the kids of today’s unaffiliated “young” Jews are still getting their Jewish education, their Jewish pride, their Jewish experiences – because their hip, happening, and Jewishly-connected grandparents are giving it to them and making it possible for them. 

And that synagogues, including our own, are being re-energized by new members – new members who are Baby Boomer Jews now looking for social, communal, educational, and spiritual Jewish connections and coming back to synagogue.  We have had a very successful Gift of the Heart campaign, encouraging current members to bestow the gift of a free membership on a friend.  Our five-year, long-range plan from 2015-6 anticipated that at the current rates, we would have only 360 member units.  Today we have more like 400.  That is not just stability, that is growth – at a time when synagogues generally and Conservative synagogues in particular, aren’t growing.  Now, not all those people are Baby Boomers, and not all those people are Gift of the Heart members, but a lot of them, I know, are the friends or relatives of our “BB” members who’ve come to join their peers in synagogue life – and we all benefit from it. 

We benefit from it through the involvement and enthusiasm of these members, and we benefit because many of these members want to give back financially, too.  I find it highly worthy of praise that anyone, that all of you, choose to support the synagogue, and I’m not shy to talk about it.  And that after living good lives, full lives, Baby Boomer Jews want to show it through support of institutions like ours.  It is again, I think, no surprise that our Kol Nidrei campaign in recent years has exceeded annual expectations and I fully expect it to do so again.  Not because I’m being crass or greedy, but because financial donations to the synagogue aren’t grubby money matters – they represent someone whose life is being lit up by what the synagogue does and by someone who wants to see that light shine a little brighter for the next person who enters it.  I thank everyone of whatever age who lights up our synagogue in that way.

As I said, the example being set by today’s grandparents, today’s cool Zaydes and Bubbes, today’s Baby Boomers is not just for them.  It is for all of us.  For what, after all, is the meaning of teshuvah, of “repentance?”  In Lamentations we encounter a verse that shows up elsewhere in our tradition and liturgy:

הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ יְהוָה אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶדֶם.

21 Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return; renew our days as of old.

What we are trying to do over the holiday season, the spirit with which we are to enter the new year – is that we seek to “recalibrate” we “turn the dial” to where it should be pointed, from wherever it had gotten to – maybe not necessarily a bad place, but get it pointed now towards an even better direction.  A direction, that, as the verse says, can make us, even if years have gone by “like new.”  As NSJC seems to be a fine example of a trend across American Judaism in which a new generation, the Baby Boomer generation, reinvents itself, and in so doing, finds creates new meaning suited to today, for today, for themselves and their families, in organized Jewish life, - enriching, educating and inspiring them and others – that is a chapter in the Book of Life being written right now that we should be hopeful could make the future for Generation X, Millenials, Gen Z and beyond, be similarly “like new” when it comes to their Jewish experiences in this new year ahead and for many years to come.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah – May you all be sealed in the book of life for good!

Yom Kippur 5780/2019 - The Yeshiva of Five Students

Fall, 1942 – the Germans were at the gates of Moscow in a push east that seemed unstoppable.  Their drive across North Africa while slowed in Egypt equally showed no signs of being foiled.  The fateful battles of El Alamein and Stalingrad were still yet to come.  Jews were being murdered all across Europe and even Mandatory Palestine was not safe – the city of Tel Aviv had even been bombed by the Italians and some 130 people killed.

In Tel Aviv at that time was the young Rabbi Shalom Noah Berezovsky.  A Slonimer chasid of great promise, he had been the choizer, the one appointed to memorize the teachings given on Shabbat by the Slonimer Rebbe, so they could be transcribed later.  In the mid-1930s the Rebbe had sent his student to the land of Israel where Rabbi Berezovsky was chosen because of his talent to head the Chabad yeshiva in Tel Aviv – the only yeshiva in the city at that time. 

As news of destruction and hopelessness arrived in Tel Aviv, Rabbi Berezovsky would write (and I owe the scholar Tzipora Weinberg for her translations of these quotations), “all was bleaker than bleak, collapsing under oppressive sorrow and anguish, overwhelmed by the feeling that you are alive in a world that is sinking to the depths, everything falling apart. In these days I could find no peace. Slonim is being destroyed, all those close to me, my parents and teachers, brothers and friends led to the slaughter, day in and day out. The entire world is enveloped in pain, and I? Where am I to go? I felt then that I was enduring my own demise, unable to continue.”

Then, Rabbi Berezovsky made a bold decision, he quit the prominent position he held, moved to Jerusalem and opened a new yeshiva dedicated to the teachings of Slonim, his sect.  He had five students.  “If we cannot save the lives; we must save the spirit; we will continue to do what they can do no longer, so that their teachings will not disappear from this earth… This was an effort born of unadulterated emunah [faith], since there was no possible chance that we could succeed under the circumstances that prevailed at the time.”

If Catholicism is a religion of “sacraments,” Protestantism one of “faith,” Islam of “submission” and Buddhism “serenity,” then Judaism is one of “action.”  But just acting cannot be enough.  How should one act?  And why should one act?  The actions must be guided by a story, a cause, and work towards a purpose, a goal.   

And that in Judaism is the cause to of holiness in world, of bringing God’s will, our story, into the world through the sanctification of time, of space, and of our relationships.  We do all three through our reliance on Judaism’s conviction that:

1) All human beings require a Story, and ours is the Torah – in the broadest sense – all of God’s Revelation, all of Jewish Wisdom, from Leviticus to Larry David, capturing what holiness, what our cause, looks like.   

2) That a Story demands Action– for us, yes through the mitzvot specifically, whose wonder and mystery needn’t reveal any practical benefit to us or worldly delight other than their merely being the poetic expressions of our story come to be.  But they alone are not even the limit of our actions.  For more broadly through a Jewish spirit motivating how and why we do in all things we must also act. 

3) And finally that those Actions and that Story are rooted in the fundamental necessity that human beings act from a place of gratitude, of wonder and awe, of respect and love towards their fellow human beings and the world that we should, at all times, be surprised and shocked to find exists and ourselves existing in at all.  That is our Cause, our Goal – that is Holiness.

Rabbi Berezovsky’s case adds one more piece to our lesson as well.  The commitment to the Cause – to the Actions that will invite our Story of Holiness into being – like him, we do not act predicated on “victory” on “finishing.”  Judaism knows of none.  We do a mitzvah so we can do another mitzvah.  We celebrate Yom Kippur now; we celebrate it next year even better.  We are taught that the understanding that comes from studying a passage 100 times cannot be matched by the understanding that comes from studying it for the 101^st time.   Founding a yeshiva then, when the fate of World Jewry was itself in question, what else should one do? 

Hence Abraham Joshua Heschel taught us “Judaism requires not a leap of faith but a leap of action.”  No wonder he marched alongside Martin Luther King and felt his “feet were praying” as he did so.  No wonder he spoke against atomic warfare.  Did he believe that his one voice would turn the tide?  Did he think the world was bound to get better?  Perhaps, I don’t know.  But I am certain in saying he felt that ours is a history and tradition that insists you speak, you march, you protest, for what is right regardless. 

I pause to mention that this rubric, this plan, is not limited in its application merely to our religious lives.  It applies to how we approach family, work, politics.  It applies to all these because for us as Jews there should be no distinction between what is religious and what is secular.  Could you really run your business in a way antithetical to Jewish law and ethics?  Could you really operate in a political manner with hatred burning in your heart for “the other” as you seek to show him how he himself is wrong for feeling the exact same way?  Our call to bring the Story of Holiness into the world remains our call and our cause throughout all these.

Now it is always easy to look backwards and see when the Call of the Cause was clear and the Need to Act immediate.  But in our own lives, it can be far from obvious.  Rabbi Berezovsky can teach us about this, too.  He was known, both before the founding of the yeshiva and after it, as a very deliberative man and rabbi.  He always sought the guidance of great sages and other rabbis when he was planning to do something, in his rabbinic career as well as in his personal life.  It was, uniquely in his lifetime, the founding of the yeshiva when he acted boldly and independently.  In this it seems to me we learn a lesson, but of all my remarks today, which I believe are the truest things I can say to you at this time, this one observation I will allow may not be.  It seems to me that we should be like Rabbi Shalom Noah, generally being thoughtful, because much of life does allow for us to be thoughtful when it comes to acting in accordance with our cause – but that when we come upon those handful of moments in life when it really is time to make a bold step, like Rabbi Berezovsky, like Nachson ben Amminadab at the Red Sea, like Heschel and King, you just do it. 

And if your life has many such moments in it?  Then I hope you know when and how to act if you are given so many chances to do so?  And if you aren’t?  Then act you must still, but with calm and consideration as you add to the beauty of holiness in the world. 

About the Holocaust, Rabbi Berezovsky would write, “this chapter is a mystery within mysteries; utterly ineffable. Any attempt to approach it, our minds, our hearts will fail to grasp it- in effect they fall short in want of capacity to decipher what has befallen us.”

What then happened to Rabbi Berezovsky?  The yeshiva succeeded beyond all expectations and is now housed in a large and imposing building, sort of north of Zion Square at the end of Ben Yehuda where it hits Jaffa, past the ORT College…  And Rabbi Berezovsky?  His father-in-law was to become the Slonimer Rebbe and upon his death Rabbi Berezovsky became Slonimer Rebbe in his own right.  And while today, many years after his death, the Slonimer Chasidim are split into competing B’nei Brak and Jerusalem sects, outside of their world when one speaks of “The Slonimer Rebbe” our Rabbi Berezovsky is meant.  His magnum opus, Netivot Shalom, is a favorite of Chassidic thought across the Jewish world, imbued with a thoughtfulness and openness that speaks even to the non-religious who seek spiritual enrichment.

But of course, the Slonimer Rebbe didn’t know he’d be the Slonimer Rebbe or famous across the 21^st century Jewish world or that there would even be a 21^st century Jewish world when he Acted in accordance with our Story of Holiness during his day.  All the more reason his example is one for us to follow as we face the universal human challenges of life.  Let us end with one final passage of his, “At the apex of our deepest loss, there dawns the moment of our rejuvenation. We are but emissaries for those who came before us, dedicating ourselves to carry out what they began. Their light will shine the way for us as we follow in their footsteps.”

G’mar Chatimah Tovah

Parshat Ki Tetse, "Not Rebellious at All"

Parshat Ki Tetse, "Not Rebellious at All" - The portion this week sets out a number of laws governing personal conduct and relationships.  We find among these laws that of the ben sorer u’moreh, the “wayward and rebellious son.” Chapter 21:18-21 describe to us how if such a son is born to you and he cannot be controlled, then he is to be stoned to death.  It is hard to imagine even the worst of children deserving that fate, so how do we reconcile this law in our Torah with what we feel is right?

We can turn to our rabbis for help.  In this instance, the rabbis of the Talmud had just as much trouble with such a terrible punishment as we still do today.  They curtail the law’s applicability (Sanhedrin 70a-71a) by making the limits to which the troublesome child would have to go to be worthy of execution impossible to reach.  Countless Jewish teenagers no doubt thank them for that.

But this brings up another dilemma for us, even if it does save Jewish children from being executed by their own parents.  The Torah seems pretty clear.  It says rebellious children are to be executed by the rabbis say that’s not what the Torah says.  It’s as if, when we don’t like something in the Torah, we can just explain that it does not mean what it appears to and ignore it.  What does that do for the Torah’s authority or ability to guide as a community?

The first answer squaring this circle teaches us to remember that although we venerate the Torah as the record of God’s revelation to us, it is only the outline the Teacher passed out to the class.  The class notes that flesh it out are found in how the rabbis over time, and particularly in the Talmud, have explained the Torah.  Of course the outline can’t be changed, but in detail and scope an outline is limited and needs further explanation, so too with our Torah.

But even beyond this answer is another.  Just like anything important and serious in life, religion is complicated.  It doesn’t always have neat, nice, black and white components.  It can be hard to understand sometimes, and we must struggle to have its meaning be important to us, but that is how it is supposed to be.  That is why we are called Israel, “to wrestle with God.” 

Shabbat Shalom

Mattot-Massei: Actions Speak Louder than Words Speak Louder than Actions

Mattot-Massei:  Actions Speak Louder than Words Speak Louder than Actions

At the transition point between the two combined portions we read this Shabbat, the tribes of Reuben and Gad approach Moses with a request. Rather than be assigned land within Israel, they wish to settle on the opposite side of the Jordan because, "pens will we build for our cattle here, and cities for our little ones" (Num. 32:16).  Moses agrees with their requesting, telling them, "build for yourselves cities for your little ones and pens for your flocks" (32:24).

The switch Moses makes when he agrees is significant.  Midrash Rabbah, a classic rabbinic work, notes that Moses wanted to be sure the two tribes have their priorities straight.  While cattle and the profit derived from them are important, human life is even more important, so he mentions the little ones first. 

Yet isn't this just a question of words?  Aren't they both saying the same things?  This is why Moses adds further to them, "and what has come from your mouth you shall do" (32:24).  In Judaism, actions are what counts.  Knowing about the mitzvot, the commandments, is nothing like performing them and in so doing seeking to make the world actually reflect God's will. 

At the same time, it can't possibly right that just going through the motions of doing the right things, or worse, doing the right things with bad intentions, can be okay. 

It is to guard against this concern when it comes to Judaism's emphasis on actions that Moses speaks in the manner in which he does.  It's as if he's saying, "think about the words that came out of your mouths, and now those that came out of mine, what were your intentions really?  What will your priorities be when you finally do act?"

There was a pious rabbi, Rabbi Nechunya ben Hakkanah, who would pray before the prayer service began, that "there may be no error on my part when I pray" (Berachot 28b). 

Moses' reminder is that our intentions (kavannah) when we act are important.  Sometimes, beginning with a statement of intention, can shape our actions for the better, instilling in them the proper awareness and meaning we should want them always to have.  And perhaps even more challenging is Rabbi Nechunya's model, where we treat our words and actions as truly being equally important, and so we must pause before them as well to be sure of our intentions before we even speak about what our actions will be.

Shabbat Shalom!

Parshat Balak - Being Able to "Sees"

Parshat Balak, “Being Able to ‘Sees’” The importance of being able to see more than one thing at a time is particularly important to us – as we learn in this Parshah:

“And he took up his parable and said, ‘Balaam the son of Beor has said, and the man whose eye is open has said…”

 נְאֻם בִּלְעָם בְּנוֹ בְעֹר, וּנְאֻם הַגֶּבֶר שְׁתֻם הָעָיִן.

Rabbis understand to mean Balaam had one eye – literally and figuratively. 

What did Balaam do?  He was able to communicate with God and he did give the mah tovu blessing to the Jewish People. 

But… we understand that he still sought to defeat the Jews by non-supernatural means and was eventually killed because of it.  Our tradition understands him to be an evil character. 

How could this be?  He was able to see God and the truth about God.  But, he was unable to see that he himself was not a good man.

In Judaism it is very important to see with TWO EYES, one to recognize God and to know what God wants.  But even more important, two to see how well you are fitting into what God wants.  It’s easy to point out the flaws in everyone else, and how they fall short of God’s wishes, but we must be able to cast an eye on ourselves also.

Being able to see how well we measure up is more than just “half” of what we need to see.  We are truly “blinded” if we are unable to perceive our own faults and shortcomings.  Being able to see these, and then also being able to see what we should aspire to achieve and be like (in God’s eyes) allows us to have “complete vision” and “clear eyes.”

Chukkat - What's the Difference?

Parshat Chukkat - What’s the Difference?  Numbers 20 tells us of the deaths of Miriam and Aaron, Moses older sister and brother and two of the key leaders of the Exodus.  Miriam’s death is told all in the first verse, “In the first month [of the fortieth year] the whole Israelite community arrived at the Desert of Zin, and they stayed at Kadesh. There Miriam died and was buried.” 

Aaron’s death comes at the end and is described like this:

“²³ At Mount Hor, near the border of Edom, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ²⁴ “Aaron will be gathered to his people. He will not enter the land I give the Israelites, because both of you rebelled against my command at the waters of Meribah. ²⁵ Get Aaron and his son Eleazar and take them up Mount Hor. ²⁶ Remove Aaron’s garments and put them on his son Eleazar, for Aaron will be gathered to his people; he will die there.”

²⁷ Moses did as the Lord commanded: They went up Mount Hor in the sight of the whole community. ²⁸ Moses removed Aaron’s garments and put them on his son Eleazar. And Aaron died there on top of the mountain. Then Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain,²⁹ and when the whole community learned that Aaron had died, all the Israelites mourned for him thirty days.

Big difference between the two of them.  It would be easy to chalk the difference up to Aaron being a man and Miriam a woman and thus Aaron gets more attention, and that may very well be a big part of what is going on here and shouldn’t be discounted.  However, if that’s all we see going on, we may perhaps miss other lessons these passages attempt to teach.

Right after Miriam dies the people complain they have no water, and tradition tells us that they merited water from a special well during Miriam’s lifetime but lost that gift when she died.  Perhaps the urgent need to find water in the desert is part of the difference?

Aaron is the inaugural High Priest, a very public figure. Miriam, though a leader and a prophet in her own right, comes across in the text as perhaps less of the public figure and a little more of a behind the scenes or supporting player.  Is there a reason or a need to mourn public figures of the type like Aaron differently than private ones like Miriam might have been? 

Furthermore, people are just different, in life and in death.  Has every member of your family lived a similar life?  Have those you loved and lost always had similar funerals? 

I think the Torah wants us to consider all these possibilities to draw us further into the story.  I also believe the Torah leaves the answer unspoken because at different times in our lives we will need the emphasis in a given story to be different depending on where we are. 

But I also believe very keenly in the importance, in death, of celebrating each life in a manner that best suits the individual, regardless of their rank or family.  It is one of the most important ways we show our love and respect for them when we do this. 

And if it is important to do that when a loved one dies – well perhaps we needn’t wait that long to recognize and appreciate all the unique gifts our loved ones possess.  Shabbat Shalom.

Korach - First and Foremost

Parshat Korach - First and Foremost:  When memorizing a list of items, people usually get the first one or two and maybe the last couple, but in a long list, the middle gets forgotten.  It’s just something about the way humans and their minds work that the first makes an impression.  It’s the same with a collection of valuables, the one that we get first is often most prized. 

And according to Sefer ha-Chinuch, the medieval book about the mitzvot, the same can be said when a person first becomes a parent, that first child is simply special for being the first and so transformative for the family and everyone concerned.  Our Torah portion this week wraps up with a reminder of the law stated earlier that a first-born son must be redeemed by his family from the kohanim, the priests.  This is, according to Chinuch, a reminder of both the days when the first-born were the priests, but also because, “we acknowledge that whatever we posses in reality belongs to God.  A person’s first acquisition is usually the most precious in his eyes, therefore in giving the “first” to God we demonstrate that we remember this important fact.”

What benefit is it to “give” the “first,” most “precious” to God?  We human beings can easily fall victim to our own sense of self-importance, we can let our egos and what’s “ours” to get in the way of what’s right or actually best.  When we let this happen, we can harm relationships and the world around us, unnecessarily defending “ours” against everything and everyone else.  Let’s not be too quick to do that.  And remembering that what we think is ours is really God’s, is a good place to start.  That doesn’t mean we can’t still care passionately or love that which is God’s, nor does it mean that we can’t fall victim to standing up for what is God’s when God doesn’t need the help (let alone using the notion that we are defending “God’s” when really we are back to defending what we think is ours again). 

So, when you feel threatened or on the attack, or overly anxious about things, try to remember that it all belongs to God, that its okay to be strong by not fighting, by even surrendering sometimes.  Going back to the parshah’s example, our kids are our responsibility, it’s true.  But they will grow and develop, have interests and personalities that may be different and even at odds with our own.  Do we need to bend them back to being what we think they should be?  Or do we need to foster and nurture what God saw fit to add to the world by bringing them into it?  The parshah tells us it’s the latter – and it’s true as much about our first child as the last child of someone else.