Rabbiblog

Teach us to Count Our Days Rightly: An Account of the Sharing of an Ethical Will

2011-03-14T12:55:00.001-07:00

"Teach us to count our days rightly,

That we may obtain a wise heart."

Psalm 90:12

Recently my extended family gathered for a Bar Mitzvah on the East Coast. About a month before the simchah I sat with my parents and suggested that they consider gathering with the family after Shabbat to have a conversation with family members about end of life issues. This had never been discussed by my parents in any organized way. I thought that this could be an occasion to bring the family closer and to also give them an opportunity to begin preparing an ethical will-Tzeva'ot.

An ethical will is a Jewish tradition that goes all the way back to the patriarch Jacob. In Egypt as he was approaching death, he gathered his children to pronounce his blessings over them and his final wishes. (Genesis 49:1-33). In the middle ages and into modern times, the ethical will has been a feature of Jewish life. In recent years there have appeared a number of books about the writing of ethical wills. In "Let Your Values Live On" by Reimer and Stampfer, we find the will of Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon, the translator and friend of Maimonides (about 1190). He writes to his children, "Avoid bad society, make thy books thy companions, let thy book-cases and shelves be thy gardens and pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If thy soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will thy desire renew itself, and thy soul be satisfied with delight."

An ethical will is a very special gift a parent can give to children and grandchildren. To prepare one takes a certain degree of courage and a commitment to making time with family to discuss "end of life" issues. I know from rabbinical experience that families can have great difficulty focusing on this discussion. Like other families in America, our family members are widely dispersed and lead very busy lives. But my parents agreed to begin preparing an ethical will and to put their affairs in order to be able to share with all of us essential information. We decided that the family gathering at my nephew's Bar Mitzvah would be a good occasion to start a conversation.

We gathered on Sunday morning in my brother's living room. The three brothers were there with their spouses. Three grandchildren also joined the conversation. My parents began by sharing with us their medical directives, their wills, and other documents. They brought to the gathering a wonderful sense of humor and a certain fearlessness. Much laughter was heard and many tears were shed. The morning culminated with my mother's first draft of her ethical will. She briefly went over our family history including joyful milestones and sorrowful benchmarks. She offered a very moving narrative of her life and ended with these words.

"But the words I want to leave you with are those of gratefulness, appreciation and thankfulness for all that my boys, their wives and children have given me. I am filled with awe at their accomplishments, their good deeds, their charitable natures to others in need, their awareness of the world around them and their concern for us. And to my love, I can only say there has never been a man to equal you in your tenderness, your thoughtfulness and your caring for me. You have taught me so much, and for that, I am eternally grateful. I am so lucky to have found you when I did.

You all are a blessing in my life and a celebration in my heart."

It was such a special moment, a great gift was given to all of us and we hugged each other for what seemed an eternity. I would ask all my readers to consider doing this process with your family. To some this is very frightening, because it involves imagining the conclusion of our lives. But it is also a time in which to celebrate the enduring ties and legacies of families. During my parent's presentation I looked over at my son and saw the smile on his face and the tear in his eyes. I was so grateful to my parents for giving him this gift and to inspiring me to give this gift to my children at a future time.

Some Reflections on the Tensions of Rabbinic Leadership

2011-02-17T19:01:00.001-08:00

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers this week on Ki Tisa an wonderful reflection on the nature of rabbinic leadership in his study of Aaron and Moses. I share a paraphrased version of his observations followed by a personal response to his insights. RDG

Ki Tissa tells of one of the most shocking moments of the forty years in the wilderness when – less than six weeks after the greatest revelation in the history of religion, Israel's encounter with God at Mount Sinai – they made a golden calf. Either this was idolatry or perilously close to it, and it caused God to say to Moses, who was with him on the mountain, "Now do not try to stop Me when I unleash my wrath against them to destroy them" (32: 10).

What is the role played by Aaron in this incident? He who was the de facto leader of the people in the absence of Moses, and it is he whom the Israelites approached with their proposal:

The people began to realize that Moses was taking a long time to come down from the mountain. They gathered around Aaron and said to him, 'Make us a god [or an oracle] to lead us. We have no idea what happened to Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt.' (32: 1)

It was Aaron who should have seen the danger, Aaron who should have stopped them, Aaron who should have told them to wait, have patience and trust. Instead this is what happened:

Aaron answered them, "Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me." So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and fashioned it with a graving tool, and made it a molten calf. Then they said, "'This, Israel, is your god, who brought you out of Egypt,' When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, "Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord." So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented peace offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. (32: 2-6)

The Torah itself seems to blame Aaron, if not for what he did then at least for what he allowed to happen:

Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. (32: 25)

Keep in mind that Aaron was not an insignificant figure in the Torah. He had shared the burden of leadership with Moses ever since God promised him to help a reluctant Moses back at the burning bush. He had either already become or was about to be appointed High Priest. What then was in his mind while this drama was being enacted?

Essentially there are three lines of defence in the Midrash, the Zohar and the medieval commentators. According to the first, Aaron was playing for time. His actions were a series of delaying tactics. He told the people to take the gold earrings their wives, sons and daughters were wearing, reasoning to himself: "While they are quarrelling with their children and wives about the gold, there will be a delay and Moses will come" (Zohar).

The second defence is to be found in the Talmud and is based on the fact that when Moses departed to ascend the mountain he left not just Aaron but also Hur in charge of the people (Ex. 24: 14). Yet Hur does not figure in the narrative of the golden calf. According to the Talmud, Hur had opposed the people, telling them that what they were about to do was wrong, and was then killed by them. Aaron saw this and decided that proceeding with the making of the calf was the lesser of two evils:

Aaron saw Hur lying slain before him and said to himself: If I do not obey them, they will do to me what they did to Hur, and so will be fulfilled [the fear of] the prophet, "Shall the priest [=Aaron] and the prophet [=Hur] be slain in the Sanctuary of God?" (Lamentations 2: 20). If that happens, they will never be forgiven. Better let them worship the golden calf, for which they may yet find forgiveness through repentance. (Sanhedrin 7a)

The third, argued by Ibn Ezra, is that the calf was not an idol at all, and what the Israelites did was, in Aaron's view, permissible. After all, their initial complaint was, "We have no idea what happened to Moses." They did not want a god-substitute but a Moses-substitute, an oracle, something through which they could discern God's instructions – not unlike the function of the Urim and Tummim that were later given to the High Priest. Ibn Ezra explains the verse that says, , "This is your god who brought you out of Egypt," as the claims of a small minority – – and for them Aaron could not be blamed.

So there is a systematic attempt in the history of interpretation to mitigate or minimise Aaron's culpability – inevitably so, since we do not find explicitly that Aaron was punished for the golden calf. But we come away from these apologetics with the definite impression that Aaron was weak.

"Do not be angry, my lord," Aaron answered. "You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me, 'Make us a god who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don't know what has happened to him.' So I told them, 'Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.' Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!" (32: 22-24)

Aaron blames the people. He suggests he had no choice. He was passive. Things happened. He minimizes the significance of what has transpired. This is weakness, not leadership.

This depiction in the Torah does not square with the way later tradition made Aaron a hero, most famously in the words of Rabbi Hillel quoted in Pirkei Avot:

Be like the disciples of Aaron, loving peace, pursuing peace, loving people and drawing them close to the Torah. (Avot 1: 12)

There are famous aggadic traditions about Aaron and how he was able to turn enemies into friends and sinners into observers of the law. The Sifra says that Aaron never said to anyone, "You have sinned" – all the more remarkable since one of the tasks of the High Priest was, once a year on Yom Kippur, to atone for the sins of the nation.

Yet these Midrashic flourishes are explicitly absent in the Humash.

We may get more insight from this observation in Talmud Sanhedrin 6b on the topic of the preferability of mediation as opposed to litigation in disputes. The Talmud presents this as a conflict between two role models, Moses and Aaron:

Moses's motto was: Let the law pierce the mountain. Aaron, however, loved peace and pursued peace and made peace between man and man.

Moses was a man of law, Aaron of mediation . Moses was a man of truth, Aaron of peace. Moses sought justice, Aaron sought conflict resolution. There is a real difference between these two approaches. Truth, justice, law: these are zero-sum equations. If X is true, Y is false. If X is in the right, Y is in the wrong. Mediation, conflict resolution, compromise, the Aaron-type virtues, are all attempts at a non-zero outcome in which both sides feel that they have been heard and their claim has, at least in part, been honoured. The Talmud puts it brilliantly by way of a comment on the phrase:

אֱמֶת וּמִשְׁפַּט שָׁלוֹם שִׁפְטוּ בְּשַׁעֲרֵיכֶם:

"Judge truth and the justice of peace in your gates" (Zechariah 8: 16):

On this the Talmud asks what the phrase "the justice of peace" can possibly mean. "If there is justice, there is no peace. If there is peace, there is no justice. What is the 'justice of peace'? This means mediation."

Now let's go back to Moses, Aaron and the golden calf. Although it is clear that God and Moses regarded the calf as a major sin, Aaron's willingness to pacify the people – trying to delay them, sensing that if he simply said No they would kill him and make it anyway – was not wholly wrong. To be sure, at that moment the people needed a Moses, not an Aaron. But under other circumstances and in the long run they needed both: Moses as the voice of truth and justice, Aaron with the people-skills to conciliate and make peace.

That is how Aaron eventually emerged in the long hindsight of tradition, as the peace-maker. Peace is not the only virtue, and peacemaking not the only task of leadership. We must never forget that when Aaron was left to lead, the people made a golden calf. But never think, either, that a passion for truth and justice is sufficient. Moses needed an Aaron to hold the people together. In short, leadership is the capacity to hold together different temperaments, conflicting voices and clashing values.

Jonathan Sacks makes a lovely observation to conclude his commentary,

Every leadership team needs both a Moses and an Aaron, a voice of truth and a force for peace.

Rabbi Gartenberg's Conclusion (Mah Nafka Mina)

Rabbi Sacks observations are very pertinent to any congregation seeking rabbinic leadership. The problem is that congregations can't hire both Moshe and Aaron. While every rabbi ought to strive to be a splendid integration of Moshe and Aaron, the truth is that every rabbi leans toward one or the other approach. Rabbis take these roles seriously and try to integrate the two as best as possible. But it is very hard even though congregants expect a lot out of their rabbis; perhaps more than is reasonable.

As TBS searches for a new Rabbi it might be good to ask yourselves whether you need a more priestly Rabbi in the tradition of Aaron, or a prophetic Rabbi in the tradition of Moshe. It is very had to have both in one person. That is a hard question to answer, but worth thinking about to make the best choice possible moving forward.

B'hatzlacha,

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

2011-02-11 Catch Me I'm Falling: Judaism and Mental Illness

2011-02-16T09:39:00.001-08:00

This sermon is dedicated in memory of Scott Peck who passed away last year and struggled his adult life with serious mental illness. May he be remembered for a blessing.

This is an excerpt from a song from the Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Next to Normal called Catch Me, I'm Falling.

Maybe I'll let myself fall

Watch me I'm falling

(overlapping)

Maybe the falling

Isn't so bad after all

Watch me I'm falling

Watch me I'm flying

Somehow surviving

DR. MADDEN (spoken, overlapping)

We may need to look at

A new drug regimen

You have to continue taking medicine

(unknown)

If you leave it untreated, it may be catastrophic.

Diana (spoken)

I've had this lovely and fascinating relationship with you doctors

and your treatments for 16 years but now I think

I'm done.

DR. MADDEN (spoken)

Diana, medicine isn't perfect, but it's what we have.

DIANA (spoken)

Goodbye Dr. Madden.

Diana is a mother who refuses to let go of the illusion that her dead son is still alive after 16 years. She suffers from delusions and depression. They are a very vivid example of our popular culture confronting the impact of mental illness on families.

Our tradition acknowledges the pain and impact of mental illness. As Rabbi Jeffrey Rosen writes,

"All the gates are locked except for the gates of ona'ah [a person crying out in pain]

Baba Metziah 59B

This statement from Baba Metziah poignantly highlights the anguish which is so often felt by

both families and individuals who experience mental illness. Because of the stigma and fears

associated with mental illness, both the person with the disease and their family feel isolated and

shamed. Those who suffer from mental illness often speak of the feeling of being a pariah, of feeling excluded. Of all the parts of the body, the mind is the one least well known – almost as if a line has been drawn across the neck and everything below is researched and the mind is left alone. Only at the end of the twentieth century has any significant money has been applied to brain research." (For a sterling example of education on this matter, see Charlie Rose's The Brain Series)

According to Rabbi Jeffrey Rosen who is also a mental health researcher, mental illness is an equal-opportunity disease knowing no distinction according to wealth, social class or education. One in four families knows the pain when someone in their family experiences serious and prolonged mental illness. One in ten people experiences some form of mental illness in their lives, the most pronounced form being clinical depression, which is a biological disease like diabetes.

If it is true that one in four families are affected by prolonged mental illness, it must be the case that of our 165 households at least 40 would be affected by mental illness. Yet very few people disclose this unique challenge to their rabbis. Many of my colleagues corroborate my experience in synagogues. We generally know when someone has cancer or heart disease or one of many physical ailments, but we hardly hear of congregants suffering from depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or the variety of serious mental ailments that can afflict us.

The first onset of mental illness is on average at the age of 18 to 19. In contrast to when a family has a child affected by autism or down syndrome, the condition is identified early in the child's life. Families make painful adjustments in the expectations they have for that child. It is vastly different for the family who experiences mental illness. The child has often travelled through the normal stages of

development with perhaps some minor hiccups. The parents develop dreams – and what good

Jewish parent does not have dreams for their child?

Then suddenly or over time a disabling condition emerges. Their child struggles for years which often includes failure in school, difficulties with peers, or maladaptive behavior. These require seeking the right medical help, trying to find the right medications, treatment, or even special programs that deal with the illness. Families spend years living on the treatment roller coaster as a family member goes in and out of hospitals and treatment facilities. This also places enormous financial strain on families which discover that mental illness is not covered in the way that physical illness is.

Meanwhile the mentally ill person struggles to live a normal life, or even pursue ambitious goals, but is often waylaid by a depression or psychosis. In unfortunately many cases the mental illness are so debilitating that a person's dreams are shattered and he is unable to live a normal life.

Next to Normal gives testimony to the long struggle that a family faces as the mother goes up and down while the father and the daughter struggle to maintain.

What is mental illness?

Mental illness is a term used to describe a group of disorders causing severe disturbances in

thinking, feeling and/or relating. Often the result is a substantially diminished capacity for

coping with the ordinary demands of life. The causes of mental illness are not fully understood.

The evidence shows that the brain's neurotransmitters do not function properly due to a

chemical imbalance in the brain. This is comparable to other imbalances that cause illnesses in

other parts of the body. Other factors which may contribute in vulnerable people include

heredity and stress, and the use of 'recreational drugs', alcohol, or tramua of various kinds.

There are different types of mental illness. They differ in their symptoms, their degree of

severity, and their effects on each person's life. The effect is not only on the person but those

around them, the family as well as the work environment. Schizophrenia is not multiple

personality disorder but rather a situation where the person has delusions and hallucinations

and is often coupled with paranoia. One person in a hundred experiences schizophrenia. The

mood disorders include mania, manic depression and clinical depression (which is different from

episodal depression). One in ten people experiences clinical depression in their lifetime. Among

all psychiatric disorders, people suffering depression are most prone to suicide, Anxiety

disorders cover a wide range of mental illnesses and include phobias, general anxiety disorder,

panic disorders, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress. Approximately one

in twelve people are affected by one of the anxiety disorders.

Adding together these proportions, we discern that approximately one in every five people

experiences one form of mental illness or another. The cost to society due to lost wages,

demands on health care systems, social service needs, etc. are enormous, and in the United States

have been estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Since the causes of mental illness are not fully known, there is little effective prevention.

As with diabetes and many other physical diseases, many symptoms of mental illness can be

controlled with medication, and there is an ever-widening array of medications available for

mental illness. While drugs are not cures, they markedly reduce symptoms for most people.

Research to determine the causes and to plan strategies for prevention and rehabilitation are

progressing. Proper treatment may substantially improve the functioning of persons with these

illnesses, and in some cases the patient may completely recover.

A Jewish Understanding of Mental Illness

Rabbi Rosen helps us to understand the challenge of mental illness in his retelling of the famous Talmudic story of the four rabbis who enter 'pardes'. Just as Ben Azzai, Ben Zomma, Elisha ben Abuya and Rabbi Akiba experienced different outcomes in paradise; there are different possible outcomes for the person experiencing mental illness. Rabbi Akiba represents those who recover completely (about one-third of people who experience schizophrenia only have one episode); Ben Zoma may symbolize those who can be part of society with the help of medication while suffering periodic breakdowns and disruptions to their lives. Rabbi Elisha Ben Abuye symbolizes those who live, but suffer chronically and whose outlook on life has changed permanently from their illness. Ben Azzai who died upon reaching paradise represents those who and some never return from their own

world to be part of ours.

Theologically we all struggle when these diseases occur. It is obviously not a struggle between

the Yetzer Hara [evil inclination] and the Yetzer Tov [good inclination]. The biological process

which leads to mental illness is something over which the person has no control. We think of the

world as something created by God, but left in human hands. Chemical imbalances and genetic

predisposition to mental illness are unfortunate realities of this imperfect world. Maimonides understood this reality of the world as" kminhago ha'olam nohag. - The world continues according to its way." While God created the Universe and watches over it, God lets things progress, including genetic change.

How then should we be sensitive to mental illness in our congregation and in communal Jewish life? Our tradition challenges us to bring all Jews into the community of Israel. The Jewish community has made improvements in supporting people with mental retardation and developmental disabilities. But we have not been so effective with persons with mental illness. It is only when we confront the stigmas of our society that we will enable the days of the messiah to approach, for our congregations will be a 'house of prayer for all peoples'7 without discrimination and open to Klal Yisrael.

As someone who has experienced severe mental illness in my family, I have as a rabbi tried to model a specific rabbinic response to mental illness. These insights I share with Rabbi Rosen.

• be an information and referral source;

• let the family know they are not alone;

• avoid being judgmental;

• refrain from offering simplistic solutions to complex problems;

• be supportive of the entire family, including those members who infrequently come to

services, as these are the people who may feel the most isolated;

• encourage the family to continue to be a part of congregational life.

On a congregational level, we need to be compassionate. That is why it is important that we have a Hevrat Hesed in the congregation to help families facing both physical and mental illness. One example in mental illness cases is providing meals for a family in which a family member is hospitalized for a mental illness. Oftentimes these stays are longer than hospital stays for other types of illnesses, thus the strain on families is greater.

Congregants should encourage fellow congregants who suffer from mental illness or their families to come to speak to the Rabbi and to come to worship and other gatherings at the synagogue. Be a companion, offer an ear, discourage isolation and negativity.

In the Book of Genesis, we read the story of the three angels visiting Abraham and Sarah. The

story is poignant and we think more about the message that the messengers brought to this

couple. Perhaps more important is what was going on with Sarah and Abraham. According to

the Rabbis, Abraham is recovering from his recent circumcision. Abraham is sitting at the tent

door in the heat of the day when he looks up and sees three strangers. He welcomes the

travellers without preconditions and does not ask their yichus [a Yiddish expression implying a

mixture of social status, wealth and genealogy]. We are challenged to open the doors of our

synagogues to all and offer a place ''at the table' just as Abraham did.

Also in Genesis we read: 'Shall not the Judge of all the world, judge justly?' The story revolves

around how the people of Sodom and Gomorrah treated strangers or visitors. The Rabbis

suggest that the punishment of destructions was meted out because there was no hospitality

shown by those who lived there. Hospitality takes many forms. The most obvious is that given to

the wayfarer. So many of those who experience mental illness are also 'strangers within your

gates', for even if we once knew them they are strangers to us now. Some of that change is due to

their experiences with mental illness; some is just the normal growing process each of us

experiences. Our challenge is not to be like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah but to offer

hospitality and openness to each person who enters our doors.

Mental Illness is not just a lack of willpower but rather something which demands justice as well

as a just response.

I end with the poignant cry of the mother, Diana, in Next to Normal. Her cry is the cry of the mentally ill. We need to heighten our awareness of their suffering and work together to reduce this unique type of pain.

Catch me I'm falling

Flying head first into fate

Catch me I'm falling

Please hear me calling

Catch me before it's too late

Egypt's Revolution: It is Not about Us

2011-02-11T09:07:00.000-08:00

Posted on Facebook by an Israeli:
“Dear Egyptian rioters, please don't damage the pyramids. We will not rebuild. Thank you.”

This brief message went viral, at least in Israel and the Jewish world. I had a good laugh, but after a few days something gnawed at me. First, the reference to Egyptian rioters seemed way off base. The protests in Egypt have been markedly devoid of rioting and violence up to this point. The massive gatherings at Tahrir square have been unusual in the commitment to non violence by the protesters and in the clarity of their demands for democracy and the end of dictatorship.

Second, and noted by many reporters, Israel is not in the forefront of the protesters consciousness, far overshadowed by the demonstrators' concerns about the state of their own country. Yes, there will be implications for Israel down for the line if there is regime change, but it appears that these outpourings originate in the internal politics and social realities of Egyptians and their relationship to their government.

Third, the viral message is striking in its Jewish ethnocentrism. We are taught from childhood that the Jew will not go back down to Egypt to become a slave to Pharoah again. It is completely understandable why a Jew would say this because our central narrative is about gaining our freedom from Egyptian enslavement through God's liberating miracles. God brought us out of Egypt, the ancient embodiment of tyranny and cruelty, to become a free people serving only the God of Israel.

Every national culture has it's own narrative, its story of origin and uniqueness. It is so often the case that our national narratives do not mesh, This is a source of great misunderstanding between cultures. Egyptians have trouble understanding Americans, or Americans cannot 'get' Chinese and so forth.

I think the fascinating issue for Jews in light of the Egyptian revolution is that we have no place in our own narrative for Egyptians rising up for their own freedom in the face of their autocrats. This does not make sense given our own narrative of the passivity of the Egyptian people before Pharaoh. Our narrative is dependent on the memory of an Egyptian ruler, cruel and powerful, who is ultimately humiliated by God and who is forced to let the people of Israel go. Can you imagine Egyptians singing in Tahrir square, "Let my people go!"

My observations are not geopolitical, but cultural. But they are important for understanding the Israeli and widespread Jewish distrust of the popular uprising against Mubarak. We don't have in our narrative a place for an Egyptian lover of democracy and freedom. We assume that Egyptians are all Islamicists and seek an Islamic Republic. Or we would prefer for the sake of the peace treaty that the regime remain stable and in full control.

But what I think is necessary is some empathy for the huge crowds of peaceful protesters who come from every sector of Egyptian society. Today Mubarak stepped down as the new narrative of the Egyptian revolution continues to evolve right before the world's eye. A new narrative is being born, one we hope leads Egypt and its people to true freedom, democracy, tolerance, and rights.

Jews have valued freedom for over 3000 years and have through our narrative refined the gifts of freedom which are deeply embedded in our culture. We should take a moment to step out of our narrative and our understandable anxiety about the future to appreciate the momentous and hopefully lasting narrative of freedom emerging from the people of Egypt.

In the Torah we read the instructions of freedom .
You shalt not pervert the justice due to the stranger, or to the fatherless; nor take the widow's raiment to pledge. (Deut. 24:17

But the Torah then refers back to the narrative of the Jewish people
But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this thing. (Deut 24:18)

May the new Egyptian narrative of freedom, just as our own narrative, serve as a touchstone for a more just, fair, and free society.

Jacob's Bucket List

2010-12-10T17:20:00.000-08:00

Jacob's Bucket List

In this week's portion, Vayigash, Jacob is told by his sons, "Joseph is still alive; yes, he is ruler over the whole land of Egypt." (Gen 45:26). Jacob, who thought Joseph was dead for years, is transformed. He says to his sons, 'Enough!' (rav)said Israel. 'My son Joseph is still alive! I must go and see him before I die.'"

Robert Alter in his commentary on the Torah writes, "The brief seizure that Jacob has just undergone is of course evidence of his physical frailty. Jacob's story, like David's is virtually unique in ancient literature in its searching representation of the radical transformation a person undergoes in the slow course of time. The powerful young man who made his way across the Jordan to Mesopotamia with only his walking staff, who wrestled with stones and men and divine beings, is now an old man tottering on the brink of the grave, bearing the deep wounds of a long life."

In Jacob's advanced age he discovers a lost treasure. When presented with the revelation of his son's existence, he does not hesitate to make a move. He must make the long dangerous journey to Egypt to see his son before he dies. This is astounding coming from Jacob who is failing in health, who knows he will die soon.

The Torah teaches us to value special moments when we can recover lost objects, rediscover hidden treasures, find yearned for concealments. This is Torah's teaching about spiritual alertness. Growing older affords us the opportunity to more readily know what is important, what is lost and what is found. We modern Americans call this "a bucket list" as if the we have a bucket full of diminishing opportunities to experience before our ends. . But the Torah spells out this moment with the word "rav". One commentary translate it as "Enough". Another translater suggests "So much". Rav means in Hebrew great or much. Jacob is saying to all. "So many feelings at this moment. So much lost and squandered time, so many hopeless seasons."

In a moments notice we can understand the necessities of our lives. One of my teachers said spiritual awareness is not like a crossing a bridge, but walking through a shattered wall. It is sudden, shocking, and the moment requires our full attention and decisiveness.

May we be worthy to have such moments in our lives and have the courage to move forward with determination as Jacob/Israel does in our portion.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

2010-11-12T13:01:00.001-08:00

Past Good Deeds Reappear
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

Genesis 12:8. And he (Abraham) moved from there to a mountain in the east of Beth-El, and pitched his tent, having Beth-El on the west, and Hai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.

Genesis 28:10. And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran.
11. And he lighted upon a certain place, and remained there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. 12. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. 13. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, to you will I give it, and to your seed; 14. And your seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south; and in you and in your seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. 15. And, behold, I am with you, and will keep you in all places where you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you, until I have done that about which I have spoken to you.
16. And Jacob awoke from his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. 17. And he was afraid, and said, How awesome is this place! this is no other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. 18. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon its top. 19. And he called the name of that place Beth-El; but the name of that city was called Luz at the first.

Midrashic tradition claims that Jacob revisited the place where Abraham pitched his tent, built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. In this week's portion Jacob stays in Beth El for the night and sleeps on one of the stones and dreams a momentous dream. He was not aware of God's presence and apparently he was unaware of Abraham's previous act. Sometimes the good that we do reappears later in unforeseen ways. That happened this week to me.

When I was a seventeen in Redlands, California I heard about a "Big Brother" program for teens to mentor younger boys who did not have fathers in their lives. I signed up for the program and was assigned to mentor a 5 year old Hispanic boy in the projects. I saw him every week and played with him and took him on trips with my family and friends. I stayed in touch with him when I went to college, but lost contact after a few years.

My time with William was very important to me because it made me realize many of my ideals and passions in life. I discovered my love of teaching, mentoring, and fathering. My experience with him also had a direct influence on my eventual choice to become a rabbi.

On Wednesday of this week I was in Seattle taking my son, Moriel on a day trip. I had come up to help a family with the funeral of their beloved father/husband. Rob Bernstein died too young at 57. He was a tremendous father and husband. I admired his fathering, especially for his wonderful playfulness with and attention to his children who have grown into fine human beings.

I was doing my own fathering up in Seattle. Everytime I visit I spend a day with my son, who lives in a group home. He is autistic and needs full time attention. I love to be with him and give him my full attention. Here is a picture from our trip to Whidbey island taken by a friend, Mayim Nickerson.

On the way back to Seattle with Mori I noticed an email on my Iphone from a William Garcia. I recognized the name as the 5 year old boy who I mentored as a Big Brother when I was 17. I called him immediately and had a most amazing 1/2 an hour conversation. I learned about his life, his family. He told me the huge impact I had played in his life, providing a father figure at a vulnerable time. I told him how my time with him had inspired me to later become a father and Rabbi. William told me that he had found me on Facebook. There was a 36 year hiatus in our relationship, but thanks to Facebook, we were able to reconnect. Despite my recent critical High Holiday sermon about Facebook, there are amazing ways it can reconcile and reconnect people in ways unimaginable years ago.

As Mori and I got on the Cathlamet Ferry back to Edmonds I sat with him as the sun set over the Olympics in the West and reflected about fathering, being a rabbi, and the beautiful fatherhood of Rob Bernstein. I thanked God for bringing William back into my life and keeping Mori in mine and the hidden and revealed legacies of good fatherhood in the world. I thought about Rob's beautiful legacy. I thought about Yakov returning to Beth El and sleeping in the place where Abraham pitched his tent, made an altar, and called on the name of the Lord. Past good deeds do reappear when you least expect them and remind you where you started.

On the 15th Anniversary of the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

2010-10-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

On the 15th Anniversary of the Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin

"You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies." (Yitzhak Rabin)

This next week Israel marks the 15th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin's (za'l) assassination at the hands of an Israeli nationalist settler. This was a tragedy and trauma for the entire Jewish people. Even if one did not support Rabin's policies as prime minister, the use of violence to alter a democratic form of government is an extremist anti-democratic act. Israeli democracy has survived the trauma, but it has left lots of scars and even a few festering sores.

I bring Rabin's well known quote because I think it is still true. Peace remains elusive in the Middle East. Rabin, in my opinion, demonstrated the courage to forge the prospects of peace despite years of bitter war and terror. He did foster a dialogue with the Palestinians, which while badly frayed, continues to this day. Rabin was credible because he was a warrior. He was a leading general of the IDF and had fought in all of Israel's wars of its first two decades. He was a tough leader, but as a peace maker he commanded credibility.

He also aroused harsh venom of his Israeli enemies, especially the extremist Jewish settlers and the National Religious right. In 1994, the year after the Oslo accords and the year before his assassination, I had a sabbatical in Israel with my family. I recall the incendiary posters in every Jerusalem neighborhood depicting Rabin, the prime minister, in Nazi uniform or wearing the kafiyeh of a Palestinian terrorist. Settler Rabbis and extremists were calling for violent resistance and dramatic acts. I remember the vitriolic and irresponsible statements of various politicians during this period. When Rabin was assassinated the next year, I was beside myself, but not surprised given the ominous political atmosphere that I witnessed in Israel in the months prior to the tragic event.

Democracies are vulnerable when the political dialogue become poisonous, venomous, and demagogic. I see some worrisome signs in our own political culture, especially in the extreme and outlandish characterizations of President Obama. It is one thing to oppose his policies, it is another to call him a Muslim in order to manipulate prejudices, to gain votes, or to create general hysteria.

We still do not fully appreciate the historical legacy of Yitzhak Rabin and his unfortunate end. His death was a national and historic tragedy. It will take years to fathom all the implications of his assassination as dramatic events continue to unfold in Israel and the Middle East. We can only hope that the trauma of his last day will be an eternal warning to the Jewish people not to resort to a violence between Jew and Jew. We can only hope that Israel will be fortunate to be led by courageous and wise leaders who can negotiate the tricky and complicated paths to maintain its security and well being.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

God Will Wait!

2010-10-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

Greater is Hospitality to Wayfarers than Receiving the Divine Presence.
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, Parshat Vayera 10/22/10
14 Heshvan, 5771

This week we are living with Parshat Vaera, one of the great portions of the Torah. It includes the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, the trials of Hagar and Yishmael, and the promise, birth, and the binding of Isaac. These chapters have received the attention of scholars, poets, musicians, and artists for centuries. I will add my small contribution by focusing this week on the beginning chapter, 18. Here are the first four verses.

1. And the Lord appeared to him [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre; and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; 2. And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself to the ground, 3. And said, My Lord, if now I have found favor in your sight, pass not away, I beseech you, from your servant;4. Let a little water, I beseech you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree;

In this text, we see Abraham getting up (he was actually hobbled from his circumcision according to Rashi) to greet the guests who we learn later are angels sent by God. The bolded "My Lord" is the word in Hebrew, "Adonai", not spelled with the tetragrammaton, the four letter name of God, but the Hebrew word alef dalet nun, yud, which actually means "my Lords" or "my Sirs". In Tractate Shevu'ot in the Talmud there is a debate on how to read this word. I bring the passage with footnotes from the Soncino translation of the Talmud.

"All the Names mentioned in Scripture in connection with Abraham are sacred, except this which is secular: it is said; And he said, My lord, if now I have found favor in thy sigh.8 Hanina, the son of R. Joshua's brother, and R. Eleazar b. Azariah in the name of R. Eliezer of Modin, said, this also is sacred.9 With whom will [the following] agree? Rab Judah said that Rab said: Greater is hospitality to wayfarers than receiving the Divine Presence. With whom [will this agree]? With this pair.10"

(8) Gen. XVIII, 3; Abraham was addressing the chief of the three men who came towards him: according to midrash they were the angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.
(9) He was addressing the Lord.
(10) R. Hanina and R. Eleazar who say that Abraham addressed the Lord, asking Him not to withdraw His Presence while he entertained the angels.

One view in the Talmud text sees "Adonai" as 'my sirs', which means that Abraham is talking to the men (angels). The other view is that Adonai is actually God, the same God who appeared to Abraham is being addressed by Abraham. Those who hold this view come up with a famous Talmudic and Jewish saying, " "Greater is hospitality to wayfarers than receiving the Divine Presence." Abraham has the Hutzpah to ask God who appeared to him to wait while he entertains his guests (who ironically are angels sent by God).

As many of you know, hospitality is my signature mitzvah, my most beloved mitzvah. I have emphasized this mitzvah in encouraging our members to host Shabbat dinners at home and at synagogue. I believe that this mitzvah is our "holy entertainment", our way of receiving people and sharing the holiness of Shabbat. God so loves this mitzvah, that he waits for Abraham to fulfill it.

My philosophy of community is centered on fostering a welcoming and inviting atmosphere that emphasizes the joy of Judaism and the joy of Shabbat. I think this one of the core teachings and practices of what it means to be a Jew. Without it our synagogues and homes lose the spark that make Judaism distinctive, beautiful, and attractive as a religious tradition. Consider making your home and our shul more welcoming. Make your table a place for celebration and welcoming guests. God will wait and actually if you notice carefully, will be in the room as you celebrate.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

Learn with Me: Two Worthy Torah Commentaries

2010-10-07T14:23:00.001-07:00

Two Rich Sources of Torah Insight for 5771/2010-11
Rabbi Gartenberg

Each year, as the Torah reading cycle starts anew I try to set aside time to study at least a commentary on the Torah I have not yet studied. This year I have chosen two commentaries, both modern, but very different. The first are the current writings of the brilliant Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, Jonathan Sacks. He has a weekly commentary on the Torah portion called "Covenant and Conversation" and a recent hard cover book with essays of his weekly commentaries on the Book of Genesis. I will be sharing insights from Rabbi Sacks on Shabbat mornings. You can directly access his illuminating writings on the weekly Torah portion at: http://www.chiefrabbi.org/Articles.aspx?id=485. You can follow his writings portion by portion. I encourage you to read along with me. I am also glad to sit with anyone to study these lovely writings filled with insight.

For this week I will be referring to a beautiful presentation on Noach. Look at this one by clicking on the link: http://www.chiefrabbi.org/UploadedFiles/thoughts/noach5767.pdf.

The second commentary I am studying is by a great and recently deceased Hasidic master,
R. Shalom Noach Berezovsky (1911-2000) who wrote Netivot Shalom (Paths of Peace). Here is a brief description of R. Shalom Noach's approach to illuminating the Torah by Rabbi Jonathan Slater,

I bring you a sample of R. Shalom Noach's insight on this week's portion, Noah. You may recall my Yom Kippur sermon on surfing. I think Reb Shalom Noach has some great insight about getting through hard times. I also point your attention to the underlined section below. On Sunday, Nov. 17th we begin the Mitzvah Initiative which will focus on the notion of Signature Mitzvah-what Reb Shalom Noach calls being fully devoted to one thing. This is a particularly striking description of what it means to be devoted to one Mitzvah that can define our lives. For more information about the Mitzvah Initiative go to: http://www.tbslb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/JTS_MitzvahFlyer_r4.pdf.

"There is yet another matter that we are to learn from the story of Noah’s Ark. The Torah is instruction for life, teaching each individual how to live. We might fall to a degree that we are like the generation of the Flood (in which the earth had become corrupt before God). We look at ourselves and see that we have sunk to the lowest depths, and are completely disfigured, the corruption surrounding our little world completely. Similarly, it may be that the whole of the Jewish people have fallen to such a low state. The response to this: “make yourself an ark”. Understand this in light of the teaching of my master, the tzaddik, the author of Birkat Avraham, on the verse (Ps. 37:10): “A little longer and there will be no wicked man (od me’at ve’ein rasha); [you will look at where he was— he will be gone]”. In every Jew there is some small bit that is still not bad (od me’at ve’ein rasha), a small portion of vitality due through which one is able to turn back and build one’s spiritual world once again. How loving of God to have planted in us even one spark from above from which we gain incomparable powers. No matter how coarse we may have become, it is in our power to rise up due to that spark in us.

That spark, that little bit that has still not become bad, can be a Noah’s Ark to save us from a generation like that of the Flood. This is the quality of being fully devoted to one thing (chasid ledavar echad), where we have one particular practice that we uphold and preserve no matter what, even in the worst possible circumstances, never turning back…. This can be likened to someone who is drowning in the sea, and a plank from the sunken ship floats by, which saves him. If we have even one thing that we keep with all of our might, no matter what, we can be saved from even the worst possible situations…. God gave us the power to choose and thereby implanted incomparable power in us, so that even in the worst situations (even when “The earth becomes corrupt before God”), we have the power to return to our root-source, which serves as our “Noah’s Ark”…. (Translation by Rabbi Jonathan Slater, Institute for Jewish Spirituality)

Anti Social

2010-10-05T11:21:00.000-07:00

Followup about Facebook

I came across this new computer application yesterday which caused me to laugh.

"Anti-Social is a neat little productivity application for Macs that turns off the social parts of the internet. When Anti-Social is running, you’re locked away from hundreds of distracting social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and other sites you specify. With Anti-Social, you’ll be amazed how much work you get done when you turn off your friends."
http://anti-social.cc/

Please read my High Holiday sermon about Too Many Friends on the theme of Facebook and Jewish notions of friendship. "Turn off your friends" used to have different connotations, but I sounds like social networks are getting out to control. As someone who writes a lot, I have had to learn some anti-social behavior. It used to be turning off the phone. Now it is turning off social network sites so I don't have to see what my "friends" are doing every minute of their days.

Speaking of Facebook, I saw Social Network on Sunday night. The film conveys the irony that the Facebook revolution was brought about by the genius and anti-social behavior of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. Even though the movie is fictional, it entertains by depicting the Facebook creator as a jerk who is self-serving, who runs through relationships like an icebreaker in the Arctic. The essential value that triumphs is the instrumental use of others for one's purposes. See below for a Jewish view that refuses to countenance instrumentality in relationships.

Recent sermon on Facebook

Too Many Friends

First Day Rosh Hashanah Sermon, 5771/2010

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

The other day I looked at my Facebook page. Facebook, for those who do not use computers, is an internet social network website with 500 million users. Facebook users can add people as friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. On a Facebook page you receive suggestions about people, using the parlance of our time, that you can ‘friend’.

The singer-songwriter, Debbie Friedman, appeared on my Facebook page as a prospective friend. Debbie and I have many ‘Facebook Friends’ in common. Since I have known Debbie since the 80s, I clicked on her photo to add her as a friend and got this message from Facebook. “Debbie Friedman has too many friends.”

It certainly is a milestone in the internet era when Facebook decides you have too many friends. That means you have 5000 friends, the trigger for the “too many friends” message. While social scientists tell us that the human brain can only sustain approximately 150 stable social relationships, friendship in the Facebook age has been totally redefined. One feature of the Facebook age is the rise of the social network of friends, a group of dozens, hundreds, or thousands who you communicate and share information with over the internet on a regular basis.

This change in the way people see social relations is aided by the ease in which we can maintain social relations with modern technology. Consider these advances.

I can skype my family and friends across continents. The limit of voice only communication has been overcome with the widely available technology to see and hear the person on your computer screen wherever she is. Connections are instantaneous, virtual, and visible and soon coming to your cellphone. (Imagine if Yosef and Yaakov had Skype during those 21 years of separation)
I can meet, befriend, and even establish relationships on the internet with its unique power of sites to filter and organize information. Most of the weddings I do these days are with couples who met on internet dating sites like Jdate or match.com. Sites like Jdate create a virtual social gathering where you meet people with likeminded interests. (Imagine if Samson had Jdate. He would have not had to date hostile Phillistine femme fatales.)
I can send tweets of 140 words about anything I want to my followers. This is why we had such a large counter rally earlier this year when we were picketed by a virulently anti-Semitic group, the Westboro Baptist Church. The hundred plus counter demonstrators used Twitter and Facebook to notify people of the picketing. Text messaging enables instantaneous organizing which explains why repressive governments make this technology illegal. (What would have happened if Moshe could tweet during his confrontations with Pharoah. “Frogs hopping, stay inside!”)
Speed Friending: It easy to make friends and to make them fast. The Facebook age is the quickened process for meeting, friending, and relating to others. Previous impediments of place, social circles, age hardly matter.
Friendship as a commodity. With Facebook we have the ability to quantify our friendships. Like anything quantifiable, people attach prestige and the aura of success based on accumulations like we do with money and things. Therefore a person who has 3000 friends is somehow better than someone who has 25.
Friendship can even become a fantasy. I can create a new identity on sites like Second Life in the form of an avatar and seek out virtual relationships with other avatars. We can now have fantasy friendships.

Even with all the social benefits that come with the Facebook Age, our tradition teaches us to be skeptical of the false gods that are promoted in every generation. Our generation is no different. Jewish teachings on friendship question the promises and allure of connection in the Facebook age. The Jewish understanding does not stem from a Luddite hatred of technology, but a wise view on the nature and limits of true friendship.

Consider this passage in Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of the Sages), “Get yourself a friend.” Kneh Lecha Haver.

Pirkei Avot is a compendium of the moral and spiritual wisdom from the Rabbis of antiquity. It establishes a fact about friendship. You have to make an effort to make and sustain friendships. The attachment of friendship is a good. But how do we acquire a friend?

A commentary to Pirkei Avot elaborates. To acquire a friend “implies that a person is to get himself a companion who will eat with him, drink with him, read Scripture with him, study Mishnah with him, sleep next to him, and disclose all his secrets to him, secrets of Torah and secrets of worldly matters. Thus, when the two sit and occupy themselves with Torah, if one errs in Halakhah or in the substance of a chapter……his companion will bring him back [to right thinking], as is said, ‘Two are better than one, in that they have greater benefit from their labor’ (Eccles. 4:9). Avot 1:6; ARN 8.

The first on the list is eating and drinking together. That’s hard to do on the internet. What it means is face time. This seems obvious to us Neanderthals who lived before cyber reality, but no champion of virtual relationships can convince me that you can really befriend someone without face time. Physical presence is necessary for friendship to blossom.

This is how we can understand our text’s comment about the need to sleep next to one another. I don’t understand this in the erotic sense, but rather that friendship develops only after significant time, not just high moments, but of long hours of low energy, or simply being around each other in the unfolding of daily life.

Friending takes time. You can’t get around this. This text suggests that friending is a slow process of accumulated time spent getting to know another. Perhaps you have heard of the ‘Slow Eating’ Movement. The idea is to create an alternative to the fast food culture with the intention of restoring relaxed, healthy, and social gathering to the act of eating. Judaism offers the way of slow friending as an alternative to the contemporary culture’s embrace of fast friending or instantaneous social networking.

A friend according to the text is someone who sharpens my understanding. Thus the Havruta, the study partner, has the role of correcting his or her partner. But this correcting is face to face. One of the unfortunate features of the internet age is the ease, in which we can criticize, berate, and flame people without seeing their faces.

I read a story recently about the decline of social amity among college freshman roommates. It appears that the internet generation has lost the ability to resolve roommate conflicts through face to face discussion. The article reports that more often than not roommates in conflict resort to email or Facebook page confrontations. College officials note that this reliance on internet communications leads to higher rates of conflict in which dorm RAs are forced to intervene to resolve.

The power of internet communications to create havoc and destroy relationships is all around us, even in synagogue life in which I have seen all too many times relationships torn asunder by nasty and accusatory emails. The Internet is as destabilizing of relationships and communities as it is constructive in speeding communications and collaboration.

People use the internet to express anger or criticism, because it is easier to communicate this way than face to face. But real friendship or resolution of conflict is best resolved face to face as the commentary to Pirkei Avot points out. Face to face correction allows people in strained relationships to take in all emotional and sensory inputs and to apply some self-restraint in the delivery of criticism and the response to it.

What have we learned about Jewish views of friendship?

Friendship doesn’t just happen. It requires effort, significant together time, and physical presence. Friendship requires periods of unrushed, non-instrumental time, the suspension of the regular marketplace and working conditions we live in during most of our week and most of our lives. Jewish tradition teaches that when we alter our pace of life on a regular basis we create the conditions for true friendship to flourish.

True friendship involves the ability to lovingly disagree or criticize our friends. Jewish sources see friendship as more than sharing information or personal chemistry. Friendship develops from time spent together engaged in a mutually shared common pursuit in which two persons acquire wisdom, pursue a common cause, or share a common life. To really live we must be open to challenging and questioning each other in the pursuit of truth and understanding.

The internet technologies of the 21st century are truly amazing and bring many benefits. Many of us love our gadgets and the amazing things they do. But I am a great believer in the Jewish teaching of slow and honest friendship remains true despite all the allure of new social technologies.

Jewish notions of friendship should instill in us wariness about the claims and promises of technologically driven relationships. Our tradition wisely identifies the conditions for establishing enduring, deep, and meaningful relationships and friendships.

On this Rosh Hashannah we begin the effort to make Teshuvah-to repair the most important relationships in our lives. This is the time when we should also give attention to our dearest friends. Perhaps we have neglected them. Perhaps we have been unkind. Perhaps we have taken them for granted. Make Teshuvah with your friends, not by email or Facebook, but face to face if you can, or at least with a phone or a skype call. This is no idle matter. The Rabbis were fond of saying. Havruta or Mituta. Friendship or Death. Without true friendship it is as if we are dead.

It is therefore not surprising to understand that Jewish tradition conceives of the human and divine relationship as a friendship. True, on the Days of Awe we depict God as a King or a Father, but on Shabbat we sing to God as a Yedid Nefesh-the friend of our soul. Can we indeed ‘friend’ God? Not on Facebook and not in the impoverished way our age understands friendship. Rather to friend God is to know that God desires true and enduring human fellowship and friendship. By cultivating authentic friendship we imitate God and also create the opportunity to friend God in our quest for the most enduring relationship possible.

The Apikorus of Vilna: The Middle Ground for Religious and Cultural Jews

2008-12-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

The Apikorus of Vilna: The Middle Ground for Religious and Cultural Jews
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, 12/13/08, Temple Beth Shalom of Long Beach

In our portion, Vayishlach, Jacob wrestles with a mysterious figure at night. In his victorious struggle, Jacob receives a new name: Yisrael. “For you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” (Gen 32:29) Many commentators have pointed out the implications of this name. Jews carry on Jacob’s heritage of God wrestling. God is at the center of our religion and our tradition, yet our collective and individual relationships with God are not characterized by a blind or unquestioning faith. Jewish wrestling with God takes many forms and has many results.
Last Shabbat as a Shabbat animator, I was asked to wrestle and lead a conversation with this question: Can you be a good Jew and not believe in God? There were people at the table struggling with this question. It is a good Jewish question. Why? Jews are more concerned about goodness than belief in God. Being good is crucial in a world more than the belief in God’s goodness. The Talmud has a famous passage to suggest that it is better spurn God than to spurn his commandments. This is because doing the commandments produces concrete good in the world, but belief in God does not necessarily lead to this.
The Jewish preoccupation with good behavior over proper belief is illustrated in this story from the old country.
An apikorus (a blasphemer) from Yennesvelt had heard of the great Apikorus of Vilna. Like all good Jews he wanted to ‘kaneh lecha rav’-acquire a master teacher for himself. He decided to travel to Vilna to learn from the great Apikorus of Vilna. He chose to visit him on the holiest day of the year when he imagined his heroic master would be engaged in the most astonishing apikorsus imaginable. So he packed his wagon and traveled to Vilna, spending most of Yom Kippur on the road. He ate his pork sandwiches on the way reveling in his anticipated encounter with the great apikorus.
When he reached Vilna, he kept asking the irritated religious Jews on his way where he could find the Apikorus of Vilna. They curtly pointed toward the city center, wishing to avoid contact with this small town apikorus who gleefully showed contempt for them and their holy day. When he reached city center, he was directed toward the Grand Synagogue of Vilna. The Apikorus of Yennesvelt was perplexed what his hero would be doing at the Grand Synagogue, but he thought it must be completely outrageous.
When he walked into the Grand Synagogue at the hour of Neilah he discovered that the Apikorus of Vilna was in front of the congregation, draped in Tallit, serving as Shaliah Tzibbur for the holiest service of the year. The scene was astonishing: The Apikorus of Vilna chanted the prayers with fervor, the congregation wept in prayer, and the room was filled with yearning and hope. Our Apikorus of Yennesvelt was completely stunned, unable to comprehend why the most famous Jewish blasphemer was leading the holiest service of the year.
When the service ended with the dramatic Shofar blasts and people with shining faces left extending greetings of Shanah Tovah, our apikorus made his way to the Bimah to confront his hero. He reached the Apikorus of Vilna as he was folding his beautiful tallis into his bag and eating a morsel to end his fast. The Apikorus of Yennesvelt confronted him: “How can you, an apikorus’ lead the Neilah service at Yom Kippur?” The Apikorus of Vilna smiled and gave his pupil the first lesson in apikorsus. “The difference between you and me is simple. I am an apikorus. You are an am Haaretz (an ignoramus). “
This old story from the late 19th century Eastern Europe helps to answer our question. Yes, you can be a good Jew and not believe in God. The reason is that Judaism does not focus on proper belief, but on mitzvot and actions that improve the human condition. Moreover, an apikorus despite his doubt in God can see in certain aspects of religious life specific goods and needs that should be honored. Does he think his prayers will be heard by God? Maybe not. But the Neilah service helps people to be hopeful about their lives and to feel connected to each other. So it is a good to be honored and supported.
Upon deeper reflection on our story suggests a couple of things about the tradition of skepticism in Judaism. A skeptical (apikorus) Jews could be both a learned and practicing Jew. At the very least the skeptical apikorus had a profound respect for the religious traditions and behaviors and often could be an exemplary practitioner, an observant Jew in every respect.
Another revealing side of the story is that the Apikorus of Vilna was given the honor of leading the holiest service of the year in a religious community. The implication is that this religious community held this man in the highest esteem, since traditionally the person chosen to be Shaliach Tzibbur (prayer leader) for the Days of Awe was chosen from among the most respected persons in the community (He was not necessarily a professional Hazzan as is contemporary practice.) The religious community depicted in our story is also tolerant and lives by a broader standard of what a good person is.
There was a rich middle ground in Jewish life recalled by this story which seems harder to achieve, in our own times, but is a worthy goal. One of the sad realities of contemporary synagogue life is the loss of this middle ground in which religious and cultural Jews interacted and shared a common way of life. But I believe that recreating this rich middle ground is critical for Conservative synagogues and the spiritual life they aspire to. Let me share with you briefly a number of approaches how we might help create and sustain this middle ground in our congregation.
1. Emphasize within the congregation Judaism’s imperative to pursue the good and to practice Hesed-kindness regardless of whether you believe in God or not.
2. The life of mitzvot is the Jewish way of focusing on individual and collective practice on living a good life and finding a common language for doing so. Can we restore to centrality the life of mitzvah as the common language and way of Jews regardless of whether we are ‘religious or cultural’?
3. Give reasons for doing mitzvot that integrate religious and humane motivations. People who do not believe can be moved by cultural, psychological and humanistic reasons for doing mitzvot. We can encourage people to do Shabbat to respect the environment, make quality time for friends and family, avoid enslavement to our working lives, and express gratitude to those we love as well as to frame this holy day as a Day for the Lord.
4. Help people to gain depth and knowledge of practices that reduce embarrassment and increase meaningful participation and a sense of the broad commitment to goodness central to Judaism. I do believe that when people have some mastery of Jewish practice and language they feel a strong attraction to our Jewish way of life.
5. Work with our knowledgeable and traditional members to cultivate a tolerant, non judgmental, flexible, encouraging, and generous stance with others who are not religiously inclined or Jewishly knowledgeable. I have worked on myself to embrace these characteristics throughout my rabbinate. I understand this as “Torah and Derech Eretz”.
6. Encourage younger parents to learn, try practice, and model devotion to practice with their children. At the same time parents need to encourage questions their children raise. Modeling the Jewish middle ground for our children is a very deep, challenging, and rewarding way of parenting.
7. Make it safe to talk about God where people can express skepticism, doubt, disbelief, and faith and encourage all parties to listen to each other with respect. Also when talking about God, we must learn about and share the remarkable diversity and depth of approaches to God in Judaism.
At the dinner we held last week the discussion we had about God and goodness was long and engaging. I don’t know if the skeptical persons around the table were moved, but I do know that they were relieved not to have been judged harshly for their skepticism. One of the lessons I learn from doing lots of Shabbatot at people’s homes is that the table conversation about Judaism, God, and the purpose of life is a precious opportunity to explore these questions interactively. This sermon that emerged from that conversation is a by product to the all important conversation that I hope continues with those who joined me at their table that night.
Our conversations about God and living a good life has a direct ancestor in our God wrestling ancestor, Yisrael who we read about in this week’s portion. The name of our people comes out of this wrestling. When we wrestle with these issues we encourage our loved ones and friends to join us, we carry on the authentic tradition of our people and our relationship to God. The Apikorus of Vilna lived in this tradition and whether we are filled with faith and filled with doubt, we all can participate in being Bnai Yisrael.

The Synagogue and the Secular Jew: The Challenge of Being Spiritually Relevant in a Skeptical Time

2008-12-05T15:44:00.000-08:00

The Synagogue and the Secular Jew: The Challenge of Being Spiritually Relevant in a Skeptical Time: Summary-Jews are the most secular "religious community" in America. Jews pray less than any other religious grouping. Why are Jews so Secular and how does it impact communal religious life? How then do synagogues which are religious institutions by definition connect with a largely secular Jewish public?

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, Temple Beth Shalom, Long Beach, CA
Sermon Given: 12/6/08
Copies are at the synagogue website: rabbi@tbslb.org
Our portion, Vayetze opens with a collision of sorts. “Vayifga bamakom-Jacob collided with this place.” It is on his hurried journey to escape the wrath of his brother Esau who wants to kill him. The Torah proceeds to describe Jacob’s unexpected night encounter with God. The Rabbi’s interpreted the phrase: Vayifga Bamakom as a proof text that Jacob introduced the evening prayer (Maariv). No one, according to the Rabbis, had ever tried praying at night. According to the rabbinic imagination, Jacob’s grandfather had introduced Morning Prayer (Shahrit) and his father, Isaac, fathered the Afternoon Prayer (Minchah). But Jacob completed the triad of Jewish prayer by praying in darkness.

Thus according to tradition the template of worship was laid out by our forefathers. Our patriarchs are depicted as inventors of a sort, innovators of prayer. Their startup religion, the religion of Yahweh, centered on prayer-the human approach and encounter with God.

It is with great irony then that in 21st century America, Jews are the religious group least likely to be found in its houses of worship. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life recently published data on religion in America (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/876/religion-america-part-two ) showing that Jews are closer in their behaviors to the unaffiliated Americans than to religiously defined Americans of Christian denominations. While Jewish identity tends to be relatively strong, religious practice is much weaker. This is also evident in Israel, where most Israeli Jews are decidedly secular, rarely attend synagogue, do not observe Shabbat and more and more do not observe dietary laws. Over my career I have probably converted over 500 people. The most common perplexity of almost every convert I ever mentored was why most of the Jews they knew were less religious than they aspired to be as new Jews. How curious this perplexity. How miraculous that these new Jews hear the music of Jewish religious insight, but so many born Jews are tone deaf, unmoved by the songs of their legacy.

What is the impact on a Jewish community in which most of its people are secular? What are the implications for synagogues as religious institutions? These questions are often not honestly faced in synagogues? We sweep them under the rug? Or we let the Rabbi serve as the lightning rod for these unresolved communal issues. The reason is that there is an uncomfortable accommodation, especially in Conservative Synagogues between those who are more on the so called religious spectrum and those who are more comfortable on the secular side. Orthodox synagogues don’t suffer from these tensions as much because they are unambiguously religious in orientation and demand more strict observance from their members. Reform also has less ambiguity since they assume the secularity of the great majority of their members. Conservative congregations wobble, built on shaky coalitions so called traditionally oriented persons, but in reality a very broad spectrum of culturally oriented secular Jews and traditionally leaning Jews who find Orthodoxy too stringent or closed minded.

Who are secular Jews? The term itself is broad. They are variously described as unaffiliated, but the truth is that many are affiliated. Sometimes secular are described as non-religious. But even the so called religious in a Conservative congregation are selective in their observance of commandments, like coming to services but not having a kosher home or only observing some Shabbat laws. The term ‘apikorus’ is rarely used but helped previous generations portray secular Jews as non-believers, open atheists who still maintained an ardent loyalty to their people. I prefer the nomenclature of ‘cultural Jew’. Cultural Jews have an affinity to many aspects of Judaism including many of its religious dimensions, but are not pious or meticulous in their commitment to the traditional commandments.

This in turn helps us to describe a religious person. There is no term for religious in classic Hebrew. Rather a person who was devoted to a religious life was described as Shomer Mitzvot-a guardian of the commandments. In Conservative synagogues the underlying tension is between those who shomer-guard certain communal commandments like the koshrut of the kitchen or the laws of the Shabbat services in contrast to the members who don’t guard those traditions with equal fervor. Thus there is often a tension in a Conservative synagogue between those who piously value attending services and those who don’t often attend or who casually attend based on reasons other than a sense of religious personal obligation.

As a congregational rabbi I have to mediate these often subterranean tensions. I have had 25 years to think through this problem and here are some principles I have arrived at.

1. There are many mitzvot in the Torah. The Torah does not generally prioritize them, so my role is to praise and validate whatever mitzvot a Jew has taken on to do.

2. I believe every Jew does some mitzvot. So called cultural Jews do mitzvot. Jews who attend synagogue do other mitzvot. Jews who work in social action do mitzvot. Jews who go to Israel do mitzvot. They all deserve praise.

3. While I think the mitzvot connected to communal synagogue life such as prayer are very important, I do not guilt trip, browbeat, and condescend to cultural Jews who do not focus on these mitzvot. I will also not function as a DGT (designated guilt tripper) on behalf of congregants who think the rabbi should do this. I encourage people to perform these mitzvot and teach people who are willing to listen why they are important.

4. I acknowledge that there is a lot of alienation from the synagogue by cultural Jews and realize that one of the ways to connect to them is in other places than synagogues: at their home tables, at their workplaces, in supermarkets, and at social justice events. Therefore I believe that rabbinic work involves serving as a rabbi in these contexts.

5. Most important, most Jews are agnostic and atheistic. Therefore they have often unarticulated or sometimes highly thought through opinon about prayer, God talk, and rituals that assume belief and affirmation of the God of Israel. Assuming that everyone has resolved this issue in their minds when we conduct public rituals strikes many Jews as either arrogant or pure obliviousness. I hate to be viewed as just another oblivious rabbi, so I try to work hard to acknowledge this ambivalence on the part of most Jews.

6. Our services should be places for people to express their faith and doubt. Jewish prayer has one great advantage over worship in other traditions. It is highly participatory and allows for people with different levels of faith to participate and to feel involved. This beautiful flexibility has led me to emphasize giving as many people as possible roles in public worship that overcome resistance to the religious ideas and expectations of the prayers. The more people participating the better. They become stakeholders and ‘spiritual citizens of the minyan’.

My friend and colleague, Rabbi Larwence Kushner beautifully expressed how synagogues should accommodate and support different types of Jews. I believe his words are very important for Conservative synagogues and creating a climate of communal purpose, toleration, and collaboration.

“Jews need one another, and therefore congregations, to do primary religious acts which they should not and probably cannot, do alone. Doing primary religious acts is the only way we have of growing as Jews. Consequently, it is also the only justification for the existence of a congregation. Everything else congregations do, Jews can always do cheaper, easier, and better somewhere else. “

“There are three ancient kinds of primary Jewish acts: communal prayer, holy study, and good deeds, or in the classical language of Pirke Avot: Avodah, Torah, and G'milut Hasadim. This is not a capricious categorization. Prayer is emotional: song, candles, dance, meditation, and silence. A matter of the heart. Study is intellectual reading, questioning, discussion, rigorous logic and argument. A matter of the head. And good deeds are public acts: helping, repairing, matching, fighting, and doing. Matters of the hand. Only rare individuals are able to do all three with equal fervor and skill. And so our membership in a congregation and association with a broad spectrum of Jews will compensate for our personal deficiencies. “

In our portion, Jacob after his ‘collision’ with the places has a dream. He wakes up and says: “God was in this place, and I, I did not know.” The challenge of modern synagogue is to create ‘collisions’ in which people end up saying Jacob’s words. Right now, many Jews don’t expect to find God in the synagogue, much less anywhere else. All we can do is open the many doors of Jewish life for our fellow Jews and hope that they have a Jacob-like collision. That is the holy work I have committed myself to and I hope you will join me.

America’s Days of Awe

2008-10-15T16:08:00.001-07:00

America’s Days of Awe
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
Delivered 10/9/08 on Yom Kippur, 5769

Please understand that I offer the following words according to the traditional warning every responsible darshan must give to a congregation. I give these words, ‘lefi ani’ut daati’ according to the poverty of my opinion. Please accept it as heartfelt, and my best attempt to capture the momentous times we live in.
“On Rosh Hashannah it is written. On Yom Kippur it is sealed. How many will leave the world, and how may shall be born. “
These austere words come from the Unetaneh Tokef prayer which we chant on Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur. Unetaneh Tokef paints a vivid picture of a God sitting in judgment of His creation: “You review every living being, measuring the years and decreeing the destiny of every creature. “ Our fate hangs in the balance. Following a litany of couplets of opposing fates, life and death, health and sickness, serenity and depression, we respond with words of hope:
“But Repentance, prayer, and deeds of kindness can remove the severity of the decree.”
This is the prayer that captures the mood this season of the year and gives it the gravity and solemnity we associate with the Days of Awe. The gravity flows from our tradition’s view that at least once a year we really need to take stock of our lives and make a serious effort to change our direction. The truth is that like anything else, this annual ritual can become rote and thoughtless. But not this year.
Not this year, because we are witnessing a strange and powerful convergence. Our annual season of Teshuvah corresponds to a national perhaps a worldwide crisis of Teshuvah. What do I mean? During this season Jews are supposed to review our actions, overcome denial of our wrongful behaviors, apologize to those we have hurt, confess to these behaviors to God , and begin the arduous process of internal and external change which we call Teshuvah. We are not the only ones trying to do this during this season. Our entire nation is engaged in a sort of Teshuvah as it comes to terms with the truth concerning our situation. We are now in a crisis that is forcing us to review our past actions. We are compelled to confront our national denial. New realities have placed before us the true weight of the challenges ahead of us.
So this is the American Unetaneh Tokef prayer of 2008:
Who shall grow rich, who shall sink into poverty; who shall sleep securely in her bed, who will find herself on the street; who will draw from his savings, who will find his savings are no more; who will go to work every morning, who will have no job go to; who will go to his medical specialist; who will not see the doctor to save expenses; who will go bankrupt, who will have money to invest at the bottom of the market; who will lose his house to a hurricane, who will benefit from a climate change ; who will fear a terror strike, who will feel secure from violence; who will feel let down by his country, who will find new hope in his country; who will be proud of his country, who will feel betrayed by his country; who will gain faith in humanity, who will lose his faith in humanity.
Teshuvah, Tefilah, Tzedaka avert the harshness of the decree.
Our tradition uses the terms Teshuvah, tefilah, and tzedaka as actions that will avert the harshness of the decree. We know what these mean in our Jewish cultural-religious framework. What do they mean for a country that is at such a critical fork in the road, at a decisive moment in our history?
Our country needs to strive for Teshuvah. What does national teshuvah mean?
Teshuvah means to turn or change. Everyone is calling for change. Real change comes after we overcome denial. We have been in the relentless grip of denial.
First, we have been in denial about the consequences of our indebtedness. The economy in a tailspin has brought this denial into sharp and scary focus. In 1980 the ratio of national debt to the gross national product stood at 31%, the lowest since 1931. By 2006 public debt topped nine trillion or 70% of the gross national product. Take our own personal debt. In the postwar years personal savings had averaged a robust 8-10% of disposable income. After 1985 that 10% collapsed to what it is today: Zero.
According to a report on national debt: Between 1989 and 2001, credit-card debt nearly tripled, soaring from $238 billion to $692 billion. By last year, it was up to $937 billion. As the foreclosure crisis and the credit crisis has brought home, we have been living in a house of cards built on debt. We cannot deny this as we witness millions of people falling out of the middle class. This irresponsibility starts at the top. When Vice President Cheney was asked if cutting taxes might be at odds with invading Iraq, he said: “Deficits don’t matter.”
Second, we have been in the grips of a long standing denial about the consequences of our dependence on foreign oil.
In World War II, America was able to fully supply its energy needs. That is not hard for us to imagine in Long Beach since we see the remnant of the oil industry still pumping up and down in our neighborhood. We can go to the 60’s era Petroleum club building across the street on Linden and reminisce about a time of an energy independent America. But in 1972 domestic oil production peaked. At the end of Reagan’s presidency foreign oil constituted 41% of oil consumed in the United States. In 2005 60% of our oil came from outside the country and we consume 25% of the world’s oil supply.
As we fight two wars, our dependence on foreign oil also fuels those who are fighting our soldiers in Iraq and. As Tom Friedman writes, “our purchases enrich conservative Islamic governments where portions of their profits find their way to charities, mosques, religious schools that help sustain anti- American terrorist groups, suicide bombers, preachers, and anti- Semitic textbooks and propaganda. --- purchase are helpings to strengthen the most intolerant, anti-modern, anti-Western, anti-women’s rights and anti pluralistic strain of Islam. Our oil purchases are helping to finance a reversal of the democratic trends in Russia, Latin America, and elsewhere that was set in motion by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism. Our growing dependence on oil is fueling an ugly global energy scramble which is exemplified by China’s propping up of a murderous and genocidal dictatorship in oil-rich Sudan.” (from Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Tom Friedman)
Our oil addiction is even more destructive than this for as Friedman argues, “it makes global warming warmer, petro-dictators stronger, clean air dirtier, poor people poorer, democratic countries weaker and radical terrorists richer.”
Listen to these words: “We must end this intolerable dependence on foreign oil. Energy will be the immediate test of our ability to unite this Nation and it can also be the standard around which we rally. We can seize control again of our common destiny…. We need a federal agency to cut through the red tape, the delays and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.” (President Carter as quoted in Bacevich, The Limits of Power.)
These were not said on the campaign trails of 2008, but from a president in a national address to the nation in 1979.
We are paying big time for 30 years of denial. We have been in denial about how our consumption is undermining our nation and altering the earth.
Tom Friedman, quoting an environmental scientist, writes. “People don’t seem to realize, that it is not like we are on the Titanic and we have to avoid the iceberg. We’ve already hit the iceberg. The water is rushing down below. But some people don’t want to leave the dance floor; others don’t want to give up on the buffet. But if we don’t make the hard choices, nature will make them for us. Right now. “ p. 216.
What is it that stands before us, which we cannot deny:
In his excellent new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman, identifies five big problems which we can no longer ignore.
The growing demand for ever scarcer energy supplies and natural resources; a massive transfer of wealth to oil rich countries and their petrodictators; disruptive climate change; energy poverty, which is sharply dividing the world into electricity haves and electricity have nots; and rapidly accelerating biodiversity loss, as plants and animals go extinct at record rates. These five problems define the Energy-Climate Era we have entered. “ p. 26.
Teshuvah is overcoming our denial to face reality. Our next president will be judged on his ability to lead us toward facing these problems squarely. We cannot afford to wait another 30 years.
After Teshuvah, we are called to engage in Tefilah-prayer. But will prayer really help us. Take for instance the prayers for rain of the former Prime Minister of Australia. On April 19, 2007, in the face of the Big Dry, a seven year drought, John Howard asked his countrymen to put their hands together and beseech the Good Lord for a gully washing downpour. His prayers did not save Howard from voter wrath.
The election held in Australia later that year was the first election in history in which climate change-specifically the government’s failure to respond to it with policies rather than prayers, was among one of the issues. Howard and his party were defeated. The new prime minister ratified the climate change protocols of Kyoto immediately after his election which the previous administration had refused to do.
Prayer cannot overcome bad policy. Desperate prayer and the yearning for a messianic solution is a sign of people coming under the grip of an apocalyptic world view. This is a real danger, because apocalyptically generated prayers produce a passivity which will further undermine our efforts to stem the global crisis we face. Rather the prayer that is called, appeals to God to give us the strength to be courageous, to overcome complacency and despair, to act, to find ways to join with others to live purposely to fight against the impacts of global warming.
Which brings us to the final action that averts the harsh decree, Tzedaka. Tzedaka is not only charity or the giving of gifts to the poor. Tzedaka means to act justly, to right a wrong, to balance something that is imbalanced.
First, to live according to tzedaka we must pay attention and confront what we have denied. We are called upon to engage in what we have ignored and act to correct our errors.
In the case of our dependencies on oil and our environmental impacts, we have a lot to do. We must try to live as environmentally sustainable life as we can. We must make sure our environmental awareness and behavior is always improving. We need to consider the products we consume, the cars we drive, the way we eat, the causes we support. This will not suffice.
Tzedaka means to act with others to bring about improvement to the world because acting as individuals is not sufficient. Do you support organizations that work to address the issues I have placed before you? If not, you need to learn about them and support them. Does our congregation provide a way for people to come together to learn about what we can do? It is not right that we have no active Tikun Olam group in our congregation that educates our membership and helps us to act more powerfully as a collective. Are there people willing to step up to help our community participate in the most important cause of our lifetimes?
Tzedaka involves scrutinizing the causes we support and the leaders we choose to lead us. As Friedman suggests, “it is much more important to change your leaders than your lightbulbs.
One of the great debates of our time has been the role of government in helping or hindering the confrontation with our indebtedness, our dependency on foreign oil, and our exacerbating climate change. We must hold our leaders accountable for they write the rules and regulations. The rules and regulations shape markets and change the behavior and incentives of millions of people at once.
We need to hold our leaders accountable. Do they take action to face the situation or do they give excuses or fail to lead?
Tzedaka carries with it a connotation which applies to the enormous challenge before us. In Genesis God decides to reveal to a human being his innermost thoughts about the fate of Sodom and Gemora. This part of our Torah is unique in all of ancient literature because it depicts a God who desires to consult with a human being. How does God justify this consultation?
“I have singled him out that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the Lord by doing just what is just and right, in order that the Lord may bring about for Avraham what he promised him.” (Genesis. 18:19)
Abraham is chosen by God because of what he will do for his children. He will teach them tzedek and mishpat. The sign of a Jew is to model and educate the next generation into a life committed to doing what is right and just.
What kind of world are we are giving to our children and grandchildren? Have we shown to them that we care, that we have tried our very best to give them a sustainable world?
A 12 year old spoke these words at the Earth Summit in Rio De Janero a few years ago.
“In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rain forests full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry about these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. You don’t know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don’t know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can’t bring back the forest that once grew where there is now a dessert. If you don’t know how to fix it, please stop breaking it.
At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to share-not to be greedy. Then why do you go out and do things you tell us not to do? -----Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying everything is going to be alright; it’s not the end of the world. We are doing the best we can. But I don’t think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My dad always says, You are what you do, not what you say. Well what you do makes me cry at night. You grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you. Please make your actions reflect your words.” (P. 396 in Friedman)
God will avert the harshness of the decree when we act with all our energy to give a sustainable world to our children. I ask all of us? Are we doing enough?

Putting the Syn Back in Synagogue. Part 3: A Call to Hesed

2008-10-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

Putting the Syn Back in Synagogue. Part 3:
A Call to Hesed
Kol Nidre, 5769
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

A man comes to the Thursday morning minyan who is saying kaddish for his recently deceased father. To all of our disappointment on that particular morning, we fail to reach a minyan and he is unable to recite the kaddish for his father. He becomes upset. He complains to me that the synagogue has an obligation to provide a daily minyan, so mourners like himself can say kaddish.

I responded to him politely, “Did you ever attend the minyan before your father died?”
He said, “No, I did not have the time.”

I then asked him, “If you are not willing to help someone else say kaddish by attending the minyan, why do you expect others to do it for you?”

This story is a microcosm of our country. We have forgotten the virtue of sacrifice and service. One of the good things about this election cycle is that both candidates speak strongly to the value of sacrifice and service. They exemplify it by their personal biographies. One was a courageous war hero; the other was a fearless community organizer. Both served causes greater than themselves. Because of their example they will be better able to call on us to sacrifice and serve in ways that leaders in recent years failed to do.

The failure to lead by example is perhaps most evident after the catastrophe of 9/11. In the weeks and months after that horrible attack the most memorable message that came from the White House was to go back to shopping. The president, with the nation united behind him could have called on the country to wean itself off its oil dependency by imposing a stiff tax on gasoline and putting major government resources toward energy independence.
In the years that followed America entered two wars which were fought by a professional army that spared the country from the need to spread the heavy burden of fighting foreign wars from the bulk of the citizenry. Meanwhile at home we entered a housing bubble which caused a frenzy of greed and self dealing which we are only now beginning to see the consequences.

I believe that the peeved man at the minyan who complains about the synagogue’s failure to mount a minyan for him is an indirect result of a culture and an era in which sacrifice and service is overshadowed by selfishness and self dealing. This is not only reflected on the national level. As the story of the minyan demonstrates it is most evident on the local level in our communities, our activities, and our attitudes.

Why did we lose our way?

A prominent cultural critic reports about a survey of younger Americans. When they were asked if they would like to reserve the right to be tried by a jury of peers they all said 'of course'; then when they were asked if they would agree to serve on the jury, they said, 'no, of course not.'. They had more important things to do. We want benefits; we avoid responsibilities. This pervades all realms, politics, economics, and religion.
We lost our way because we look at our religious institutions just like we look at any other service we use in modern life.

get article about fungible property from Garret materials 2. Get Dione book on politics. 3. Get article about community from support group. 3. Read the good society by BellahI received a letter from a resigning member who expressed admiration for Beth Shalom, but then wrote in the next sentence: "Since we do not use the congregation we have decided to terminate our membership."
An astute observer of contemporary religion, Rabbi Larwence Hoffman, writes that we join organizations and hold them responsible, or liable, for a limited list of services. He calls these limited liability associations. Members see themselves as consumers of goods or "special experiences" - that is, we view the basis of our association with a synagogue in the same way we might join a health club for the exercise machines. You get what you pay for. Because market thinking and language so pervades the way we look at the world, we look now at our communities as entities that exchange value with us. They get our membership (i.e. our money and even our time) and we get their offerings and special goods. When we have no use for their services we discard community like an obsolete record player.

Institutions also treat their members as consumers. I recently read a promotion for a synagogue, which promises prospective members that by joining you can access the Rabbis for your personal and spiritual needs. The synagogue, like any business, exists to provide customer satisfaction and reinforces the perception that the community offers and provides for our needs, but does not make claims on us.

But perhaps the most devastating cause for the decline of sacrifice and service is the physical demographics of American life that weaken, even severe relationships. Americans experience change and disruption in our lives more than at any time in our history. We move an average of once every 5 years. Fewer and fewer Americans live near their parents or extended family. Every one of us knows someone (if not ourselves) whose life has been profoundly disrupted by divorce and family breakup. Economic factors wreak havoc on families who face sudden unemployment and sharp declines in the standard of living. Because of this reality people have less and less time to devote to community and volunteering.
At Beth Shalom over the years we have faced severe demographic realities that have altered our community and have weakened the ties that we have with each other. So many of our long term members no longer have children in the area. Many of our younger members are transplants whose parents and relatives live elsewhere.

The result of the trends in the culture and the demographics on the ground present us with real challenges in building community and a culture of service and sacrifice in our congregation. The single most difficult reality of our congregation is that the older generation and the younger generations do not know each other. Because we don’t know each other, it is more difficult to bring us together in common purpose.
Because of the different and disparate groups in our congregation, it is likely that someone in the congregation may feel their needs are not being met. And because we live in a culture where needs are more important than duties or sacrifice, there is a certain static of dissatisfaction which can hinder our ability to move forward to forge a stronger community.

There is a way out of this predicament.

“It was taught: Rabbi Meir used to say: What is meant by the Scriptural text, "It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all human beings, and the living will lay it to his heart, (Kohelet 7:2). What is meant by "and the living will lay it to his heart?" Let him realize that if a man mourns for other people others will also mourn for him; if he buries other people, others will also bury him; if he lifts up his voice to lament for others, others will lift up their voices to lament for him; if he escorts others to the grave others will also escort him; if he carries others to their last resting place others will carry him.”

This is the first step toward creating community. The foundation of community is the importance of relationships. When we give to someone else, it creates a chain reaction of mutuality. Note that the text does not say. “Let him realize that if a man mourns for his friends, his friends will mourn for him.” The text clearly says “other people”. The key to mutuality, sacrifice, and service in a community is the continual building of relationships between people where they have opportunities to help each other and to serve others. A community must constantly open new opportunities for new or renewed relationships that cut across generations, families, and groups and bind all of them together in common purpose and meaning.

It is in the context of relationships that we can make claims on others and that others make claims on us. The challenge for a congregation like ourselves is to find a common meeting ground for relationships to form and for people to have real opportunities to help each other.

As you may recall, the theme of my High Holiday sermons this year is to “Putting the Syn Back in Synagogue.” Syn, spelled, S-Y-N means to bring together. Our goal this year is to create both joyful and meaningful ways for relationships to form in our congregation. On Rosh Hashannah I spoke about our new approach to Shabbat which encourages people to celebrate Shabbat at home with friends and guests with the help of Shabbat Animators provided by our congregation. On the second day of Rosh Hashannah I spoke about new approaches to invigorate worship at Beth Shalom. The underlying thread to everything we do is to foster an environment where people meet each other, bridges are crossed, new relationships are forged. This is the precondition for a community where there is mutuality, sacrifice, and service.

Today I ask the congregation to step forward on the most important piece of our effort at communal renewal. We want to build community by inviting everyone in our community to engage in Gemilut Hasadim-acts of loving kindness within our community.

What is Gemilut Hasadim?

Gemilut Hasadim translates as acts of loving kindness. The Rabbi’s teach that we engage in Gemilut Hasadim because it is what God does.

"To walk in all His ways" (Deuteronomy 11:22). These are the ways of the Holy One: "gracious and compassionate, patient, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, assuring love for a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and granting pardon. . . ." (Exodus 34:6). This means that just as God is gracious and compassionate, you too must be gracious and compassionate. "The Lord is faithful in all His ways and loving in all His deeds" (Psalm 145:17). As the Holy One is faithful, you too must be faithful. As the Holy One is loving, you too must be loving.

The task of human beings is to imitate God. The Jewish conception of God as compassionate is even more important than the idea that God is One. Our notion is that God is good and that God’s goodness makes a claim on us to commit ourselves in every aspect of our lives to being good. We have a transcendent responsibility to act with loving kindness.

Gemilut Hasadim is greater than Tzedaka-a gift of money to the poor.

Our Rabbis taught: Deeds of loving kindness are superior to tzedaka in three respects. Tzedaka can be accomplished only with money; deeds of loving kindness can be accomplished through personal involvement as well as with money. Tzedaka can be given only to the poor; deeds of loving kindness can be done for both rich and poor. Tzedaka applies only to the living; deeds of loving kindness apply to both the living and the dead.

In other words, Gemilut Hasadim creates an arena of generosity and mutuality which enables people to help each other regardless of their income, or their age, or their standing in the community. It concentrates our acts of sacrifice and service on real people, creating relationships that bind each of us to another. And it is these acts more than prayer or ritual that bind us to God, whether we believe in God or not.

Our tradition even teaches us that if we don’t believe in God, we should act as if we did by engaging in acts of loving kindness. Gemilut Hasadim is an equal opportunity mitzvah. You don’t have to know Hebrew, be versed in Talmud, be a Jew by birth, or even believe in God. Yet our tradition sees a life built around Gemilut Hasadim as the most authentic Jewish way of living.

Today we introduce to the congregation the Temple Beth Shalom Hesed Society. (I ask Michele Sztraicher and Amanda Rudman who are chairing the Hesed Society to come forward). Michele, Amanda, and I invite members of TBS to join us as we strive to create a congregation wide commitment to gemilut hasadim. Our efforts initially will focus on 4 areas:

We need people to help prepare dishes and food, run errands and deliver meals, attend a shivah minyan, or serve as an occasional greeter at Shabbat services.

To succeed we will need people to volunteer on two levels. We ask every member to sign up to be on our help list when there is a need. We ask a smaller number of members to give a greater commitment to serve as neighborhood captains as we divide the congregation into at least 6 neighborhood groupings. The job of the neighborhood captains will be to coordinate neighborhood help for a member who is in need. Our coordinators will also ask people to serve as greeters at services to welcome members and guests to foster a more welcoming environment at our congregation.

More important is our call to all of you to let us know when you are in need. If you have a loss, or you are sick or injured, or you have a new baby, or you are going through a rough spot, please let us know. We ask you to make room for your congregation to help you in your time of need. By doing so you give opportunity for people to help you and to create a more caring community for everyone.

I hope in the future that you will be able to come to synagogue on this holiest day of the year and you will see people who came to your home to make it possible for you to say kaddish when you lost someone special, or you will see that person who visited you at the hospital when you were sick, or brought you a meal after your baby was born. I hope you will encounter people will come to you to express their gratitude for the kindness you extended to them in their time of need. We can then look at each other and truly revel in the sense of having fulfilled our purpose as a holy community. For in truly caring and sacrificing for each other we become a holy congregation.

Put the Syn Back in Synagogue: An Introduction

2008-10-03T10:54:00.000-07:00

Putting the Syn Back in Synagogue
Putting the Bayit Back in Beit Knesset
An Introduction to the High Holiday Sermons of 5769-2008
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

A traditional Conservative congregation in a Midwestern city needed to build a new sanctuary. When the sanctuary was completed it had a large center dome in which the building committee intended to install a chandelier. The congregation didn’t have enough money to finish it off, so they left the dome waiting from year to year. Many years passed. Eventually the shul came into some money. At a board meeting someone made a resolution that they should install the chandelier. One of the charter members, Mr. Goldfarb, stood up and turned to the people and said, “This is a traditional shul. It has always been a traditional shul and it will always be a traditional shul. There will be no chandelier in this shul.” He sat down, so obviously agitated, that the people on the board were afraid he was going to have a heart attack. They didn’t understand what he was so upset about, but in deference to Mr. Goldfarb, they voted down the installation of the chandelier.

A year passed. They brought the chandelier idea up again and, again, Mr. Goldfarb went apoplectic. As had happened the year before, the proposal went down in flames. Finally, three years later, the young Turks had taken over the Board, and despite Mr. Goldfarb’s protests, they voted for the installation of the chandelier. At the end of the dramatic meeting Mr. Goldfarb sat back resignedly in his chair and sighed, “All right, so tell me, who’s going to play the chandelier?”

Change is hard. Change brings on anxiety for we fear the bad things that change may bring. Most people are willing to live with something they don’t love which is familiar than to risk major disruption to try to bring something better to replace it. And as our story about the congregation demonstrates, people can be so aversive to change that they assume that any change represents a rejection of their long held values or practices.

But change is in the air. We live in a time of great insecurity and anxiety. The last two weeks have been described as a crisis on the scale that sparked the Great Depression. The country is led by a lame duck president whose approval ratings are the lowest of any American President in the history of these ratings. Two presidential candidates fight over who is going to be the leader who will bring change to the country. We know there will be change if either one wins, but we really don’t know what those changes will be much less their consequences. We truly live in a time of uncertainty.

This is a period of change for our congregation as well. The changes at Beth Shalom are both exciting but also disorienting. Many of the changes that have begun to take form here are very gratifying. We are enjoying during these High Holydays our newly renovated sanctuary. The synagogue completed just last month a newly renovated Beit Midrash and library. Most dramatic are the impending changes to our property as we enter the final stages of the sale of the North 40 project. These projects reflect the conviction of the synagogue leadership for the need to take dramatic action to put the synagogue on firmer financial footing and to address severe needs of our facility that was showing signs of serious wear and tear.

We do not only face structural changes, we also face demographic and generational issues that threaten the future viability of our congregation. During my first year at Temple Beth Shalom, I devoted much time to meet the members and to learn as much as possible about the forces at work on the congregation.

While our congregation faces many challenges we are truly blessed with a great asset and vital link to the congregation’s past as embodied by our Cantor Emeriti who have served the congregation for a continuous period since the 60s. Rabbi Hazzan David Kane and Rabbi Cantor Gelman (who by the way received his rabbinic smichah this past year) have defined the public worship of our congregation with their beautiful Hazanut and inspiring presences.

One of the challenges I observed after being here a year is the reality of a very fragmented congregation. We are fragmented along generational lines. We have circles of people who know each other well, but do not know other members who have joined the synagogue in recent years. Most of the younger families do not have parents or grandparents in the congregation and most of the older members do not have children or grandchildren active in the congregation. In short we are not yet a cohesive community. We are a congregation of clusters who are disconnected from each other with different needs and expectations.

My theme this year and during the High Holidays is Putting back the Syn (SYN) in synagogue. Putting the Bayit back in Beit Knesset.

Now I am sure putting the syn back in synagogue opened some eyebrows. No, it’s not what you think. Syn is spelled S-Y-N and means to bring together. Our goal this year is to help make our synagogue better at bringing people together.
The second part of our slogan is to put the Bayit back in Beit Knesset. The word for synagogue in Hebrew is Beit Knesset which has the word-Bayit-house embedded within it. That bayit stands for house, home, place of dwelling. As you will learn, we seek to bring Jewish life back home, to link the synagogue to the home.

Everything we are trying to do this year is to build a stronger sense of community in our congregation. Building community means finding new ways to bring people together. Building community means to create new and lasting bonds. Building community involves fostering selflessness, generosity, sacrifice, and support among all our members.

To do this I will propose in my sermons a renewed consideration of the spiritual building blocks of Jewish communal life:
Shabbat-the Sabbath; Tefilah-Prayer; and Gemilut Hasadim-acts of loving kindness. Tomorrow I will share with you my vision for renewing Shabbat at Beth Shalom. On the second day, I will explore with you the great challenges we face making communal prayer meaningful and how we may envision reinvigorating our worship at Beth Shalom. On Kol Nidre I will address how we can create a truly caring community through a renewed commitment on acts of loving kindness.

My last sermon on Yom Kippur will move from a local focus to sharing with you my sense of the unusual times that we are witnessing. We have as the Chinese are apt to say the fortune to live in interesting times.

These are times of heightened worry and uncertainty. We will need each other. We need family and friendship. We need people to lean on. We need a responsive community composed of members who are genuinely concerned about each other and are ready to be supportive in times of need.

The writer, Mitch Albom, who wrote the beautiful book, Tuesdays with Maury, captures the underlying purpose of the changes we will introduce to you these High Holidays. He wrote,

“The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” I seek to inspire you to focus anew on each of these critical areas of life: caring for others, serving community, and seeking meaning and purpose.

Please join us as we put the Syn back in synagogue and the Bayit back in Beit Knesset.

Putting the Syn Back in Synagogue: Part 1 We Make Shabbat Housecalls

2008-10-03T10:53:00.000-07:00

We Make Shabbat Housecalls
Rosh Hashannah, First Day 2008
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

The Talmud tells us,

“When the Second Temple stood, six blasts of the Shofar announced the approach of the Sabbath to the Jewish community.
The first blast signaled the farmers to stop their plowing, digging, or other work in the fields.
The second blast directed the merchants in the towns to place the shutters on their windows and close their shops.
The third blast meant that all the cooking must end and the time had come to light the Sabbath lamp.
Soon after, three more blasts proclaimed the official beginning of the Sabbath.”

While we associate the sound of the Shofar exclusively with Rosh Hashannah, our ancient forbears associated the sound of the Shofar as the siren for the commencement of Shabbat. The Shofar served as the alarm to end work and begin Shabbat. It called us to rest, to put aside our struggle for survival for a respite. The Shofar was a call to stop and turn in a new direction toward rest and freedom.

This year as we blow the Shofar we are particularly anxious. We are consumed with financial worries because of a teetering economy. We are stressed parents with jobs and family demands 24/7. We are business people with sleepless nights worrying about the viability of our enterprises. We are retirees who are terribly anxious about the fate of our nest eggs. We are all Americans witnessing our country in the midst of an historic election with fateful consequences. We are all Jews who worry about the future of Israel as it faces mortal threats to its existence. We are all humans worried about the impact of climate change and the consequences of our addiction to oil and environmentally degrading behaviors.

We can give up in hopelessness and despair, or we can do concrete things to help improve the world. We can also change our lives to live in better synch with our physical world and our fellows.

In this time of uncertainty the Shofar provides a hint to a source of a source of hope and relief. It points us to the Shabbat-the spiritual resource our tradition offers as a counterpoint to anxiety and the strains of living in a world of uncertainty.

My argument is straight forward. In these times of uncertainty and worry, of excess and degradation, we need to return to the time tested way we Jews have used to live in this world. We desperately need the Shabbat.

Why do we need Shabbat?

We need Shabbat because we have lost the capacity to rest. year 000
Here are a few examples:
Americans are working more than medieval peasants did, and more than the citizens of any other industrial country.
On average, we work nearly nine full weeks (350 hours) LONGER per year than our peers in Western Europe do.
Working Americans average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks. Many of us (including 37% of women earning less than $40,000 per year) get no paid vacation at all.
We need Shabbat because we need a pause from a pace of life that is making us sick and even is killing us.
Last week I had the opportunity to speak to parents at our new Shabbat afternoon program for the Torah school. I shared with them one of the main aims of Shabbat is to create an island of time free from stress and anxiety. I then asked them to share the anxieties that they carry with them that they would like to find a way to reduce. The litany of anxiety was striking, made even more severe by the absorbing and scary events of Wall Street in the past couple of weeks. The heaviness in the room was palpable as parent after parent confessed to their anxieties about money, work, and caring for the children. Their stress is echoed across America as people complain of unprecedented levels of busyness in everyday life. We worry about frenetic schedules, hurried children, no time to be together, or to share meals. We face an onslaught of "hidden work" from proliferating emails, phone calls at any moment of the day, and an endless information glut from the Internet.
We need Shabbat to rediscover how to be together with our families and friends

We live in a culture in which eating is crammed into a compressed, frenetic schedule. One study found that 1/5th of all eating of a typical American is in the car. Michael Polin, the chronicler of our national eating disorder, describes the typical family meal of 2008: “Mom might still cook something for herself and sit at the table for a while, but she’ll be alone for much of the time. That’s because dad and each of the kids are likely to prepare an entirely different entrée for themselves, preparing in this case being a synonym for microwaving a package. Each family member might then join mom at the table for as long as it takes to eat, but not necessarily all at the same time. Kraft and General Mills are now determining the portion sizes, not mom and the social value of sharing food is lost. A meal at home looks a lot more like a restaurant meal, where everyone orders his or her own dish.”

His account reminds me of the movie Avalon which depicts the changing fortunes of a Jewish immigrant family’s by depicting their festive meals and family gatherings from the early days of their immigrant ghettos to their eventual move to the suburbs. The last scenes show a fragmented family, glued to the TV set while eating their TV dinners, and unable to interact with each other anymore.

We don’t know how to share a meal together in a relaxed way. We don’t know how to turn off our anxiety. We don’t know how to stop working.

We have lost the WHOLENESS OF SHABBAT. That wholeness is captured by the Yiddish word: Shabbasdik. How many of you recall the word and what it meant. To say something was Shabbasdik indicated that it had an emotive connection to Shabbat. Gefilte Fish is shabbasdik. Sleep is shabbasdik, singing is shabbasdik. As one great Rabbi once wrote, It is the duty and the privilege of the Jew to be able to make the Sabbat, laasot, to Sabbath a Sabbath. His point is that Sabbath should not be considered a noun, but is a verb, a behavior, a way of living that we have lost. We must learn again to Sabbath a Sabbath.

We have lost the art of sabbathing a Sabbath because we have slipped into a reality in which we live to work, not work to live. We run because we no longer no how to walk. We rush because we feel compelled to keep up.

How do we recover the Wholeness of Shabbat, how do we relearn to Sabbath a Sabbath?

First, we can recover the full meaning of Shabbat by becoming intentional about leaving our anxiety and worry behind on Friday evening.

When I have people to my home for Shabbat, I pass out a basket and ask people to put in objects of the work week in it as a way of letting go of the devices that add to our daily stress. People put in their keys, their cell phones, their wallets, to spare themselves of the anxiety of the week for a few hours. I ask people what worry or anxiety they would like to let go of for Shabbat.

Authentic Jewish spirituality is tied to our ability to detach from the demands of our daily lives and to “rest”. Shabbat Menuchah-Sabbath Rest- is a Jewish mode of living in which we refocus on dimensions of our lives and those around us that the demands of survival prevent us from pursuing. Do we have the ability to elevate our lives? Do we know how to give quality time to those we love and like to be with? To Sabbath the Sabbath is to find joy in spiritual rest. A shabbasdik person has learned how to detach from the obsessions and distractions of labor, habits, and the daily grind.

Second, we can recover the wholeness of Shabbat if we strengthen our synagogue as a Shabbat gathering place where we experience rest, joy, and community: We have to ask ourselves, Do our services create community? Do they impart the spirit of Shabbat to us? Do they connect us one to another?

This year we have begun to rethink how Shabbat is experienced and presented at the synagogue. It is not sufficient to offer services, rather we have to think about how those services or anything we do on Shabbat creates a caring and mutual community and instills within us a love for the Sabbath day.

As part of this rethinking we have introduced two new initiatives: We are launching this fall a new Friday night service cycle featuring beautiful and spiritual moving musical services. We have found that the musical services led by Cantor Kripper bring joy and comfort to many of our congregants. People desire to sing and to participate at services. The new musical services make it easier for people to connect and to connect to each other. Rabbi Cantor Gelman is also planning on introducing an occasional musical Shabbat morning service as well along the lines of the music he has introduced for the first time on this Rosh Hashannah.

The second initiative involves our community of families. We have started on Shabbat afternoons a monthly family Shabbat program through the Torah School. It is called the Shavua Tov program and brings together all our families to share in a relaxing Shabbat afternoon together at the synagogue. Families learn, pray, play, eat, and hang out together for a whole afternoon. We have parallel activities for children and adults culminating in whole family Shabbat celebrations and Havdallah.

Third, we will rediscover the Wholeness of Shabbat if we bring it home.

Why do I urge that Shabbat be brought home? Isn’t it enough to go to Shabbat at the synagogue? One of the unintended consequences of the Conservative Movement’s decision in the 50s to permit driving to the synagogue was to make Shabbat too synagogue centered. Three generations of Conservative Jews learned that you only do Shabbat at synagogues to the point that most Conservative Jews no longer know how to Sabbath a Sabbath at their homes.

Our friends in Chabad saw early this empty space in the spiritual lives of Conservative Jews. Wherever Chabad established itself, its shelichim (representatives) started inviting Conservative and other non-Orthodox Jews to their homes for Shabbat meals. Over the decades Chabad built its stellar reputation on this commitment of sharing their Sabbath tables with any Jew who said yes to their frequent invitations. The Jewish demographer Stephen Cohen told me that the one of the most common markers of young Jews identifying with their Judaism is their having experienced Shabbat dinners in the homes of rabbis, Jewish educators, or fellow Jews.

We need to come home to having Sabbath at home. Beth Shalom is setting aside one Friday night a month to encourage our members to do Shabbat at home. We provide support to everyone who wants to host a Shabbat dinner and encourage them to invite friends and guests to their tables. But we go one step further. We help our members offer the most stimulating, fun, and engaging Shabbat meals by making available a special guest. This guest is available to come to your home with a Shabbat experience to share with your family, friends, and guests. They are called Shabbat Table Animators. We have recruited seven of them, including myself and our Education director, Rabbi Hanien. Each of us is available to make Shabbas house calls. Instead of you coming to the synagogue, the synagogue comes to you.

This idea was awarded a prestigious national renewable grant from the Legacy Heritage Innovation Fund. This initiative is called the Shalom Aleichem Shabbat Program after the beloved hymn that opens the Friday night Shabbat rituals. We hope that many of you will host at least one Shabbat dinner on one of the six Shalom Aleichem Shabbats over this coming year. Or if you are not ready to host, sign up to be a guest and experience some of the most enjoyable and inspiring Shabbat experiences.

(The details of this program and our new Friday night cycle are in the Shabbat Renewal Packets you have received when you entered this morning. )

The great Jewish philosopher, Abraham Joshua Heschel captured the essence of why Shabbat is the greatest idea and most beloved mitzvah of the Jewish people. I paraphrase a passage from his classic, The Sabbath

What is it to live the Sabbath? To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of war, a day for cultivating our spiritual selves, a day of detachment from commonplace concerns, of independence from draining obligations, a day on which we stop obsessing over the idols of technology, a day on which we turn away from money, a day of armistice in the economic struggle with our fellow human beings and the forces of blind nature.

As you now know, the Shofar was a call for Shabbat as well as an audial signpost for the arrival of the New Year. According to many Jewish commentators, the primary purpose of the blowing of Shofar on RH is to jar people to change-to turn-to make Teshuvah-the Hebrew term for turning away from sin. Change is at the heart of the blowing of Shofar before Shabbat in ancient times. The Shofar calls on the Jew to pivot: from sin to repentance, from labor to rest, from missing the mark to finding the way, from anxiety to joy.

Let us listen to the spiritual call of the Shofar and reclaim the spiritual capacity to pivot, to change, and to preserve holiness in our lives. Join us in our effort to reclaim the holiness of Shabbat at Beth Shalom.

Putting the Syn Back in Synagogue. Part 2: Must Prayer be Thoughtless

2008-10-03T10:52:00.001-07:00

Putting the SYN back in Synagogue: Must Prayer be Thoughtless?
2nd Day Rosh Hashannah, 5769
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

In a certain suburban neighborhood, there were two brothers, 8 and 10 years old, who were exceedingly mischievous. Whenever something went wrong in the neighborhood, it turned out they had a hand in it. Their parents were at their wits' end trying to control them. Hearing about a minister nearby who worked with delinquent boys, the mother suggested to the father that they ask the minister to talk with the boys. The father agreed.

The mother went to the minister and made her request. He agreed, but said he wanted to see the younger boy first and alone. So the mother sent him to the minister. The minister sat the boy down on the other side of his huge, impressive desk. For about five minutes they just sat and stared at each other.

Finally, the minister pointed his forefinger at the boy and asked, "Where is God?"
The boy looked under the desk, in the corners of the room, all around, but said nothing.

Again, louder, the minister pointed at the boy and asked, "Where is God?"

Again the boy looked all around but said nothing.

A third time, in a louder, firmer voice, the minister leaned far across the desk and put his forefinger almost to the boy's nose, and askedk, "Where is God?"

The boy panicked and ran all the way home. Finding his older brother, he dragged him upstairs to their room and into the closet, where they usually plotted their mischief. He finally said, "We are in B-I-I-I-I-G trouble now!"

The older boy asked, "What do you mean, B-I-I-I-I-G trouble?"

His brother replied, "God is missing and they think we did it."

God is missing and we did it. This is the issue with the way we pray. Despite our emotional attachment to the prayers of the High Holidays, we have a lot of trouble with the God part. I know that this is a controversial claim. But I want to speak the truth to you about the ambivalence that afflicts us during these many days of prayer.

The Jewish philosopher, Leon Wieseltier captures this ambivalence in this passage from his masterpiece, Kaddish.

“The rabbis famously say that those who cannot pray for the sake of praying should pray anyway, because it will bring them to pray for praying’s sake. I never liked this statement. It is behaviorism or it is opportunism, since it finds a religious utility for faithlessness and thereby steals the thunder from belief and unbelief.
Anyway it is obvious that many people who pray do not pray for prayer’s sake, and do not bring to prayer the philosophical propositions on which it must be premised. Are there times, then, when philosophy does not matter? Of course. the world would not work if it waited on philosophical understanding. It is a good thing that people act in the absence of reasons, or of clear reasons. Thoughtlessness is a lubricant of life.
And yet it will not do to say that we are muddling through and that is the end of it. It is always possible to muddle through less complacently. Even though one may act without reasons, one should search for reasons. Even though one may pray without meaning, one should mean it.”

Wieseltier expresses an insight about the problem of our communal and personal worship.

“The rabbis famously say that those who cannot pray for the sake of praying should pray anyway, because it will bring them to pray for praying’s sake.”
Our Rabbi’s accepted that our prayers might not come from the heart. It is better to go through the motions of prayer than to not pray at all. It’s OK to pray by rote. If we go through the motions then at some point we might catch spiritual fire and pray with fervency and intention. In other words, Fake it until you make it.
But then Wieseltier picks a fight with the Rabbis,
“I never liked this statement. It is behaviorism or it is opportunism, since it finds a religious utility for faithlessness and thereby steals the thunder from belief and unbelief.”

What is the cost of the rabbinic concession to rote worship? What happens when you say, Fake it until you make it? Accomodating rote worship causes the act of prayer to lose its spiritual and religious power. As AJ Heschel famously noted, rote worship becomes ‘ceremonial’ as opposed to a service of the heart. This is prayer on Prozac. The problem with ceremonial prayer is that it loses its power to deeply inspire a connection to God or to potentially provoke within us a real crisis of faith.

Have you ever prayed in a place where you knew everyone around you was praying fervently? Or do you remember moments when you or someone you knew reacted angrily to a religious ritual. By sanctioning insincere prayer, don’t we make it harder to achieve true belief and faith or an authentic grappling with whether God is listening to us?

Wieseltier then admits what many of us Rabbis discover early in our careers.
“Anyway it is obvious that many people who pray do not pray for prayer's sake, and do not bring to prayer the philosophical propositions on which it must be premised. Are there times, then, when philosophy does not matter? Of course. The world would not work if it waited on philosophical understanding. It is a good thing that people act in the absence of reasons, or of clear reasons. Thoughtlessness is a lubricant of life.”

At my former synagogue a visiting scholar in residence asked the Shabbat morning regulars to raise their hands if they believed in God. A few hands went up, but most remained down. He asked how many of them had taken a class on the meaning of Jewish prayer or had read a commentary on the prayer book. Most admitted they had not. He then asked if they loved the prayers or the service, and they all raised their hands. These congregants had an emotional attachment to the prayers which had little to do with any theological self consciousness or reflection.

Thoughtlessness is the lubricant of many who pray. Our fear of engaging the meaning of prayer leads some to a focus on form and the proper conduct of outer ritual. But thoughtlessness is also the lubricant of those who are not interested in prayer as well. The form and the ritual of prayer do not hold their interest or they are simply bored by the ritual intricacies of Jewish worship. We have failed with our patterns of worship to create a hunger for prayer or even a curiosity.
Why is this so?

The mitzvot and the halachot-laws about of prayer in Judaism make it one of the most demanding obligations for an observant Jew. An observant Jew (whether Orthodox or Conservative) who seeks a life of piety commits to praying three times a day, preferably in the company of a minyan. He wraps tefillin every weekday, offers blessings throughout the day as many as 100 times, and will add personal petitions and psalms when the need is felt

This world of personal or communal prayer is remote from us. We pray once in a while, only with a minyan, rarely in private, without tefillin, and lost in the fog of a prayer book that we hardly understand.

The struggle to maintain Jewish communal prayer in America has many causes. Most American Jews don't know Hebrew-so we can't fully engage or plumb the poetic power of the Hebrew liturgy. Some of us can read Hebrew phonetically, whatever we salvaged from religious school, but we cannot decipher or translate what we read. But truthfully, Israelis who know Hebrew, are not praying in droves either. Secular Israelis don’t relate to prayer book Hebrew that seems old and disconnected from their living reality. And because they understand what they are reading they come face to face with the problems of meaning that we Americans can dodge due to our lack of understanding.

The traditional Siddur and Mahzor are collections of prayers written by rabbis and poets expressing a theology of antiquity and the middle ages. It speaks of a personal God in patriarchal language who listens to prayers, intervenes in history, and protects the Jewish people in their exile, resurrects the dead, and ultimately sends to us a human messiah to redeem us. To most Bar Mitzvah kids I teach,, these ideas make absolutely no sense. They don’t have the interpretative skills or intellectual or emotional maturity to make sense of them. And since so many Jews stop receiving a Jewish Education after Bar Mitzvah, we retain an immature, underdeveloped understanding of prayer. Our prayer is pediatric; our insight is adolescent. The Jewish spiritual treasure house was locked and the key thrown away when we reached puberty. For some of us, that is a very long time ago.

Wieseltier recognizes this and reaches a sober observation:
“And yet it will not do to say that we are muddling through and that is the end of it. It is always possible to muddle through less complacently. Even though one may act without reasons, one should search for reasons. Even though one may pray without meaning, one should mean it.”

His point is that Jewish prayer is challenging to make sense to most people. Therefore the best we can do is attempt to make sense of it while recognizing that it will not come easily to most Jews. You know who get’s this? Chabad, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish missionaries to the Jewish people who get this. Anyone who has gone to the Chabad affiliated Shul by the Shore in our own community can see this understanding at work. This synagogue, run by a talented Chabad Rabbi for non Orthodox Jews, accommodates to the reality that modern Jews either don’t know how to pray or are not willing incorporate it into their lives. Shul by the Shore offers vastly shortened services with the rabbi’s entertaining running commentary and asides.

This may be hard to hear for those of us who love traditional worship as we have preserved it here at Beth Shalom. We very much want to preserve the traditional prayer service and cannot understand why the younger generation does not connect. Younger Jews who do not feel the same loyalty to the Conservative Movement are ambivalent about personal and public worship in general and have a very hard time connecting to traditional forms. The differing relationship to Jewish prayer has created a movement wide generation gap with many shuls trying to find ways to accommodate conflicting worship needs. Like many other Conservative congregations we are trying to find this way on this issue as well.

But there are efforts to renew prayer in Conservative congregations. Let me share a few examples.

A few years ago a dying congregation in Manhattan hired a rabbi from Argentina who introduced a unique musical service based on his years in South America. This synagogue, Bnai Jeshurun, pioneered the services with musical ensembles and vigorous congregational singing. The service was not conceived as an entertainment, but rather uses beautifully crafted music to create a spiritually meaningful and meditative experience. The service created at Bnai Jeshurun took the Upper West Side by storm and to this day attracts hundreds and hundreds of Jews of all ages. Cantor Kripper this year has introduced the Neshama Minyan and High Holiday Family service which are indebted to the innovative approach to services developed by Bnai Jeshurun.

Another contemporary attempt to revitalize prayer is the Independent Minyan movement. These minyans have sprouted all over the country and are formed by young people using classic community organizing methods. They start by recruiting a core of committed members, some with skills and others who want to learn. They teach themselves to daven and build a congregation from the foundation upwards. It is now possible to send minyan pioneers to a training center in New York City which specializes in Jewish worship startups.

Whether these models are right for our congregation is not yet clear, but I wanted to share with you that the challenges we face are also being faced by congregations everywhere. At Temple Beth Shalom we are entering a period of generational transition in our communal prayer. We want to preserve the link to our past, but we must find ways to make prayer relevant for a new generation.

We are blessed with extraordinary Cantor Emeriti who enliven traditional worship with their commanding voices and beautiful interpretations. We also have one of the finest talents, in Roni Kripper, who is introducing new ways to bring meaning to traditional worship.
Ultimately we must make an effort to deepen the experience of our congregational prayer. We must make a vigorous effort, even if we fail. Listen the words of the master, AJ Heschel, who speaks of those who try to pray, but fail.
“Those who honestly search, those who yearn and fail, we do not presume to judge. Let them pray to be able to pray, and if they do not succeed, if they have no tears to shed, let them yearn for tears, let them try to discover their heart and let them take strength from the certainty that this too is a high form of prayer.

A learned man lost all his sources of income and was looking for a way to earn a living. The members of his community, who admired him for his learning and piety, suggested to him to serve as their cantor on the Days of Awe. But he considered himself unworthy of serving as the messenger of the community, as the one who should bring the prayers of his fellow-men to the Almighty. He went to his master the Rabbi of Husiatin and told him of his sad plight, of the invitation to serve as a cantor on the Days of Awe, and of his being afraid to accept it and to pray for his congregation.
"Be afraid, and pray," was the answer of the rabbi."*
A. J. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone, p. 256.

Let us be afraid and pray.

A Day in the Life of Rabbi Gartenberg-Jewish Contractor and Dog Stories

2008-06-16T14:53:00.001-07:00

A Day in the Life of Rabbi Gartenberg

A woman called me last week.

She said, "Oh, Thank God, I found a Rabbi. You are the first one who answered the phone."

"My pleasure." I said, "How can I help you?"

"I have a Jewish contractor. He was very nice before I hired him. But since he started to work for me, he is very rude and inconsiderate. I felt that by speaking to a Rabbi, I might get advice on how to speak to him."

I said, "I think you should confront him, share with him the behavior you find unacceptable. Ask him to be considerate and respectful of your needs. If he continues to be rude, then you have every right to discontinue your business relationship."

She said, "I was hoping that I could tell him I spoke to a Rabbi who is prepared to speak to him directly about his behavior. "

I told her that I did not think I would be prepared to speak to him, but that she needed to do this herself. I told her that it was unlikely that he would listen to a rabbi he did not know. I asked her why she thought he would listen to a rabbi. She told me that he was Israeli. I told her that it was even less likely that he would listen to a rabbi. She continued to fret with a strangely cheery voice about how to deal with this contractor. She obviously did not know the Jewish art of 'kvetching'. I saw that this was a morass that I best not get involved in, apologized and wished her the best of luck.

When I got off the phone, I realized what I should have said to her.

Get a Jewish lawyer.

A good joke to pass on.

Morty visits Dr. Saul, the veterinarian, and says, "My dog has a problem."
Dr. Saul says, "So, tell me about the dog and the problem."
"It's a Jewish dog. His name is Irving and he can talk," says Morty.
"He can talk?" the doubting doctor asks.
"Watch this!" Morty points to the dog and commands: "Irving, Fetch!"
Irving, the dog, begins to walk toward the door, then turns around and says, "So why are you talking to me like that? You always order me around like I'm nothing. And you only call me when you want something. And then you make me sleep on the floor, with my arthritis. You give me this fahkahkta food with all the salt and fat, and you tell me it's a special diet. It tastes like dreck! YOU should eat it yourself! And do you ever take me for a decent walk? NO, it's out of the house, a short pish, and right back home. Maybe if I could stretch out a little, the sciatica wouldn't kill me so much! I should roll over and play dead for real for all you care!"
Dr. Saul is amazed, "This is remarkable! So, what's the problem?"
Morty says, "He has a hearing problem! I said 'Fetch,' not 'Kvetch".

Observations about Young at Heart, a Film

2008-05-27T07:08:00.001-07:00

Young at Heart, a film

May 26, 2008

I saw the film, Young at Heart the other night. It is documentary about a chorus of seniors that sings rock hits. The filmmaker spends 7 weeks filming them as they rehearse for a new show. It is much more than a film about a group of performers; it is a very moving portrayal of the will to live, the power of art and community, and the triumph of hope over despair. There are a couple of remarkable scenes. The performance at the jail by these octogenarians is a thing to behold. They had just lost a beloved member who died hours before the performance. Yet they sang their hearts out to the prisoners who were visibly moved to tears. The humanity of the moment comes through to the viewer. I was moved to tears. The many poignant moments of the documentary are marked by hilarious and touching interviews of chorus members and funny scenes from the rehearsals. The most remarkable person in Young at Heart is the director, Bob, who brings out remarkable performances from everyone while shepherding the group through loss and illness.

The film asks the question about how we serve others? It also asks the question about how we use our talents as we age? The film also makes us think of the mitzvah of Hidur Pnai Zaken-honoring the elderly. Young at Heart is a beautiful portrayal of this mitzvah in a society that neglects the old and fixates on the young.

I welcome comments to Rabbiblog.

My Stand on the Question of Gay and Lesbian Marriage in California

2008-05-25T07:01:00.001-07:00

My Stand on the Question of Gay and Lesbian Marriage in California

Given May 24, 2008

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

This past week we witnessed the historic decision of the California Supreme Court to legalize Gay and Lesbian civil marriage in our state. I support this decision and hope that any attempt to roll it back with a Constitutional amendment will be defeated by the electorate. I share with you my perspective on Gay and Lesbian union ceremonies with Jewish tradition so you can understand my perspective on this issue within Judaism.

Several years ago I was asked to perform a commitment ceremony for two Jewish Gay men who are members of my former congregation. This would be a private religious ceremony since the State of Washington had no provision for giving legal weight to their relationship. Their request led to my review of Jewish law and the contemporary deliberations on the issue of homosexuality and Jewish religious life.

The issues associated with consecrating a Gay or Lesbian relationship within Jewish tradition are very difficult and weighted by pejorative understandings of homosexuality going back to the Torah itself. For instance, in Lev. 18:22 we read, "Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence." In Lev 20:13 we read, "If a man lies with a male as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing; they shall be put to death-their bloodguilt is upon them." While all Conservative scholars have shown that the sanctions against homosexuality no longer hold, they disagree on whether to continue to view homosexual sexuality as a 'toevah'-an abomination. . The Movement welcomes Gays and Lesbians as synagogue members and is active in defending the rights of Gays and Lesbians in civil society. This past year the movement in a split decision decided to accept Gay and Lesbian candidates to its rabbinical school.

A few years ago the Law Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly invited several scholars in our Movement to submit essays concerning the question of homosexuality and Jewish law. The papers reveal the wide disparity of views within the movement. My teacher, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, composed the most convincing essay on the subject. He argues that compelling contemporary factors force us to reassess the biblical prohibition on homosexual relations. The biblical prohibition on homosexual behaviors assumes that homosexuality is a matter of choice. According to the predominant scientific opinion of our times, homosexuality is not a matter of choice; rather it is an irreversible orientation over which a person has no control. If this is the case, modern interpreters of Jewish law must take this into account when dealing with the issue of homosexuality.

Dorff argues that we cannot deny what our basic orientation dictates. Quoting a passage from the Talmud Rabbi Dorff suggests the matter is akin to a patient's need for food on Yom Kippur: "When a person says, "I need it," even a hundred doctors say that he does not need it, we listen to him, as Scripture says, 'The heart knows its own bitterness'.

Jewish law assumes that we cannot refrain from the most basic instincts such as eating and sexuality. It regulates, however, the circumstances in which these compulsions may be legitimately met. For example, we may eat, but we must follow the dietary laws and pronounce blessings over our food. We desire sex, but we engage in it within the framework of marriage. This is the Jewish way of sanctity-channeling our natural drives into a holy framework of behaviors and living.

Rabbi Dorff concludes that if homosexuality is an orientation over which a person has no choice, then modern interpreters of Jewish law should hold that homosexual acts, like heterosexual ones, be regulated such that some of these relationships can be sanctified (monogamous and exclusive) while others are regarded as sinful behavior (indiscriminate sex).

In addition to Rabbi Dorff's powerful reasoning, I have experienced directly the pain of many Gay and Lesbians and their families over their exclusion from Jewish life. If we give a message that homosexuals are welcome in the synagogue, but prevent them from sanctifying their committed relationships in our community we add to their suffering and sense of isolation. Let's approach this from the positive side. One of my brothers is Gay. I have seen him sustain a beautiful and loving relationship with his partner of twenty years. I believe that we are doing a great Mitzvah by making it possible for Gay and Lesbian couples to consecrate their relationships.

Rabbi Dorff's essay is a superb example of how a vital religious tradition absorbs new knowledge and evolving moral insights. We have to engage in a deep reading of the Torah to accomplish this, to ask questions not posed by previous generations. We embrace a way of reading the Torah that on the one hand recognizes its continuing sanctity and authority in our lives, while also recognizing the time and context of its outlook. The Torah is not just what is found in the Five Books or in the Talmud or in a Medieval commentary, but also in Rabbi Dorff's wedding of tradition and contemporary insight.

I still do make a distinction between commitment ceremonies and wedding ceremonies within the framework of Jewish law. When I am invited to sanctify the union of a Gay or Lesbian couple, I distinguish between Kiddushin (a wedding ceremony) and a commitment ceremony. I believe the traditional Kiddushin ceremony is built around deep assumptions of the union of a man and a woman. I support the creation of ceremonies and liturgies using blessings the sanctify Gay and Lesbian unions distinct from the Kiddushin ceremony, but carrying the same legal weight of consecration of the relationship in the eyes of Jewish law.

The ceremony that arose as a result of these reflections was also created in the same spirit. I worked with the couple on a commitment ceremony that was distinct from a wedding ceremony. We anchored the new ritual in the ritual language and the feel of a Jewish wedding ceremony, but we crafted language and ritual acts that made this commitment ceremony unique and original. I do look forward to doing similar ceremonies with the knowledge that they will also have the status of civil marriage in the State of California. I welcome Jewish Gay and Lesbian couples to invite me to officiate at their ceremonies and welcome them as couples and families within our congregation.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

May 24, 2008

Israel at 60: Is Israel the Beginning of the Sprouting of Our Redemption?

2008-05-25T07:00:00.001-07:00

Israel at 60: Is Israel the Beginning of the Sprouting of Our Redemption?

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

May 23, 2008

The prayer for the welfare of the State of Israel and the Harahaman prayer in the Grace after Meals for the State of Israel contain a formulation that we have said for many years. The formulation is found in many modern Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rites as well as in the public ceremonies of federations and Jewish community centers. The prayer was written by the Israeli chief rabbinate upon the creation of the state. I would like to reflect on this prayer and what we mean by it as we mark the 60^th birthday of the State of Israel.

"Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of the people Israel. Bless the State of Israel, the beginning of the sprouting of our redemption (or as translated in another text, the dawn of our redemption)."

What is the meaning of `reishit tzemichat geulateinu'. Reishit means `the beginning', while tzemichat describes the sprouting of a young plant. The word Tzemah is an allusion to the Messiah in Mishnaic Hebrew as found in the Amidah. In a sense the phrase is a redundancy. It could have read reishit geulateinu-the beginning of our redemption, or tzemichat geulateinu-the sprouting of our redemption. As we shall see, the curious phrase `reishit tzemichat geulateinu' reveals the language of compromise.

Geulah, meaning redemption is a traditional religious concept with different connotations. The traditional notion of redemption has these principle features:

Geulah will be an era of peace and prosperity ushered in by God through his messiah.
Geulah will be a time of justice and compassion between people.
With Geulah the Jewish people will regain their faith in God and will follow the Torah.
As a result of Geulah the Jews both living and dead will be brought back to the land of Israel where they will witness the restoration of the Jewish commonwealth, the Temple in Jerusalem and the Davidic monarchy.
The Jewish people will no longer be oppressed and will live in security in their land.

This phrase is not universally accepted by Israelis. .

For secular Zionists the phrase reishit tzemichat geulateinu is highly questionable if not totally objectionable. Most of the founders of the state were not traditional Jews in any way. The religious notion of redemption was anathema in their eyes. They blamed the suffering of Diaspora Jews on their submissive loyalty to the idea of a divinely dependent redemption. Traditional religious life had value as an instrument of Jewish preservation in the Diaspora. But now the new unfettered Jew living in Israel would bring on a sort of secular redemption without the help of God, by building up the land and creating the State of Israel.

For many secular Zionists, identification with the historical destiny of the Jewish State is not only necessary for being a Jew; it is also sufficient. Zionism is a more effective tool for making possible the continued existence of the Jewish people in history. A Jew's commitment to the state of Israel is the new substitute for traditional Judaism and its messianic vision.

Meanwhile, the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, both in Israel and the Diaspora, refuse to recite the prayer Reishit Tzemichat Geulateinu. Their objection derives from a discussion in the Talmud in tractate Ketuvot about the meaning of the Jewish dispersal among the nations. Based on an interpretation in the Song of Songs, Rabbi Zera of Babylonia teaches that Israel must remain in the Diaspora. God stipulates that:

First, the Jewish people shall not go up to the land of Israel all together as surrounded by a wall (that is they shall not return to Israel en masse); second, that the Holy One, Blessed be He adjured the Jewish people that they shall not rebel against the nations of the world; third is that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the idolaters that they shall not oppress the Jewish people too much while they dwell amongst them.

Rabbi Zera understands Israel fate amongst the nations as a sort of a three way covenant between the Jewish people, God and the nations. We promise according to Rabbi Zera not to go to Israel en masse unless God brings us there directly. Meanwhile we must stay amongst the nations and the nations will make our lives miserable, but not too miserable.

Our redemption and our return to the land of Israel will be on God's terms, not our own. The Ultra-Orthodox believe that the restoration of the Jewish nation will be the messianic culmination of the Torah and its vision of history. The authentic Jewish commonwealth will not share the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of the secular Jewish state. The messianic Jewish commonwealth will last forever. It will be free of all the tragic features of human history and most notably free from the historical sufferings of the Jewish people. .

Therefore, the Ultra-Orthodox do not see a promise of redemption in the secular return to Zion. Moreover, they vehemently reject any attempt to give religious significance to the modern state. The current state is one of heretical Jews and is no different than other nations in its spiritual standing. The Ultra-Orthodox refuse to say reishit tzemichat geulateinu because they do not believe a state started by apikorsim and compromised religious Jews can be the first step to the messianic ingathering of the Jewish people.

It was the modern religious Zionists, especially the settler movement which established the religious communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza advocated for the phrase reishit tzemichat geulateinu. In adopting these words they made an interpretive leap in their understanding of modern Jewish history and the significance of the return to the land. The modern state of Israel may have been settled and governed by secular, non-practicing Jews, but as the third commonwealth matures, God will divert the course of events, turning the Jewish state into a holy nation. Secular Jews planted the seed of the Messianic Days. By resettling the Land, they set the stage for God's dramatic culmination of history. The secular and religious views of the meaning of the modern Jewish state are thus welded together.

As we observe the 60^th birthday of Israel, how do we make sense of this phrase? The Ultra-Orthodox continue to refuse to say it, convinced more than ever that the Jewish State is not what is promised in the messianic teachings of the Talmud and Kabbalah. Many Ultra-Orthodox have come to terms with the reality of the State of Israel which serves as their benefactor, but they accommodate with it just as Jews accommodated with the nations they sojourned in the Diaspora.

The national religious Jews who embraced this phrase have lost faith in the phrase. The evacuation in Gaza and the growing unpopularity of the settlements in recent years have left many of these Jews alienated from the Jewish State. Many of them have a darker vision of Israel of defiant resistance against a compromising and anti religious Jewish state. They understand that the next decades will revolve around the fate of Jewish settlement in the territories.

More and more of them feel that the Messiah will not come from the liberation of the land, but in defense of those who refuse to follow the orders of the State that will likely at some point demand from them to give up their settlements.

For the majority of secular Israelis, the phrase `reishit tzemichat geulateinu' connotes little or no significance. This is not an idealistic time in Israel. Israelis don't see Geulah around the corner, whether religious or secular. Contemporary Israeli culture is focused on the here and now, on keeping the nation strong, while attempting to live as normal lives as possible. This is the modern crisis of meaning in Israel.

The challenge of the poet, the liturgists, the prophets, and the dreamers is to find a new phrase that encapsulates the hope of the Jewish people and the yearnings of our brothers and sisters in Israel. These yearnings may be found in the revival of interest in study of Jewish texts shared by a growing number of Israelis. These yearnings may be found in the spiritual searching that characterizes many secular Israelis. They may be found in the new story tellers such as Edgar Keret or the blossoming and greater popularity of Israel movies and TV shows.

As we reach the 60^th birthday of Israel, the phrase, reishit tzemichat geulateinu, no longer can convey the meaning of Israel for most Israelis. This is the spiritual challenge which is behind the challenge of physical survival that stands before Israel as it looks forward. Most Israelis have no patience for seeing themselves as the vanguard of the Messiah. They dream of having normal lives without fear of violence and war. They will fight for this, however long it takes. But they say emphatically to us, Cut out the messianic stuff.

This is beautifully expressed by the late poet, Yehuda Amichai

Tourists, Part 2
Once I was sitting on the steps near the gate at David's Citadel
and I put down my two heavy baskets beside me. A group of
tourists stood there around their guide, and I became their point
of reference. "You see the man over there with the baskets? A
little to the right of his head there's an arch from the Roman
period. A little to the right of his head." "But he's moving,
he's moving!" I said to myself: Redemption will come only when
they are told, "Do you see that arch over there from the Roman
period? It doesn't matter, but near it, a little to the left and
then down a bit, there's a man who has just bought fruit and
vegetables for his family."

A Davar Torah in Honor of the Smichah of Rabbi Hazzan Glenn Gelman

2008-04-18T14:12:00.001-07:00

A Davar Torah in Honor of the Smichah of Rabbi Cantor Glenn Gelman

Offered by Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

Shabbat Morning Services, April 12, 2008

A young rabbinical school graduate was hired as the second rabbi of a large Conservative congregation. One of his new duties was to officiate at an overflow service on Rosh Hashannah and Yom Kippur. The senior rabbi tells him "You must be aware of one thing. Our cantor is stubborn and refuses to permit us to hire a second cantor. Therefore the cantor prays with one congregation and his voice is piped into the other. We must make sure, therefore, that our sermons are of the exact same length. On the second day of Rosh Hashannah, the cantor is praying with your congregation. I have prepared a thirty two minute sermon. Make sure you do the same."

The young rabbi went home and prepared a 32 minute sermon. On the Second day of Rosh Hasahnnah as he was giving his sermon, he noticed that his digital watch had gone blank. He became nervous and lost his timing, but ultimately he finished the sermon. When he finished the talk he signaled to the cantor, who immediately began chanting the Kaddish for the Musaf service, "yitgadal veytkadash."

Unfortunately the new rabbi's nervousness caused him to deliver a 32 minute sermon in 26 minutes.

5 minutes later the senior rabbi came running in, yelling, "You made a fool out of me in front of my entire congregation!"

"What happened?" The new rabbi stammered.

"I had just reached the emotional high point of my speech. I was saying: 'Today there are those who say that God is dead. Is God dead?' And the cantor's voice piped in: 'Yitgadal veyitkadash.' "

This funny story illustrates the challenges that rabbis and cantors have sometimes when they work together. One of the pleasures of coming to Beth Shalom is to work and collaborate with Cantor Glenn Gelman. Glenn loves to share the pulpit, to include his colleagues and the congregation in worship. He is exquisitely sensitive to the needs of others and does not seek the limelight. Yet when he leads the service he brings a wonderful presence and spiritual beauty.

Now our beautiful Cantor has achieved a great milestone in his life. He has studied for the rabbinate and received smichah. In honor of this great accomplishment I would like to share some teachings about the rabbinate in honor of Rabbi Cantor Gelman.

Rabbi Akiva said:

If a person studied Torah in his youth,

He should also study Torah in his old age;

If he had students in his youth

He should also have them in his old age.

A verse indicates this,

"Sow your seed in the morning,

(and do not hold back you hand in the evening.)

Since you do not know which is going to succeed, the one of the other,

Or if both are equally good."

ו בַּבֹּקֶר זְרַע אֶת-זַרְעֶךָ, וְלָעֶרֶב אַל-תַּנַּח יָדֶךָ: כִּי אֵינְךָ יוֹדֵעַ אֵי זֶה יִכְשָׁר, הֲזֶה אוֹ-זֶה, וְאִם-שְׁנֵיהֶם כְּאֶחָד, טוֹבִים.

Kohelet 11:6

Yevamot 62b

One of the most impressive things about Rabbi Cantor Gelman's accomplishment is that it reveals his lifelong love of Torah. To be ordained as a rabbi requires hours and hours of study. We all know how busy you are, running an accounting business, caring for your family, and your continuing voluntary service to Beth Shalom. But despite all these demands, the love of Torah is central to your life.

Here is another teaching from Maimonides' Mishneh Torah

"Among the greatest sages of Israel were woodcutters, water drawers, and blind people. Nevertheless, they were involved in Torah study day and night."

The original rabbis were not professionals, who drew their livelihood from serving as rabbis in congregations. Maimonides himself, one of the greatest Rabbis of all times was a full time physician. Rabbi Cantor Gelman follows a great tradition of the rabbi who does not serve with expectation of financial reward, but instead serves out of the love of Torah and the love of the Jewish people.

Here is another text that illuminates a quality we love about Rabbi Cantor Gelman:

And raise many students (PA 1:1)

The School of Shammai says:

A person should teach only those who are wise, humble, a descendent of distinguished people, and wealthy.

The School of Hillel says:

A person should teach everyone, for there were many Jewish sinners who became attached to Torah study, and, as a result, righteous, pious, and decent people came from them. Avot De Rabbi Natan A3

Our Rabbi Cantor clearly follows the school of Hillel. You are a person who teaches all the people. You do not want to exclude anyone from your Torah. You are always concerned that your words and your melodies are accessible to all. You want to make your Torah and your Shirah like low hanging fruit, easy to pick, easy to enjoy.

I want to share with all of you another teaching from Maimonides about one of the vulnerabilities of the rabbinate and the cantorate:

"It is a duty to honor every scholar even if he is not one's teacher, as it is said, "You shall rise up before the hoary head, and honor the face of the old man"

מִפְּנֵי שֵׂיבָה תָּקוּם, וְהָדַרְתָּ פְּנֵי זָקֵן; וְיָרֵאתָ מֵּאֱלֹהֶיךָ, אֲנִי יְהוָה.

(Lev 19:32). "Old man refers to one who has acquired wisdom. (Hilchot Deot Talmud Torah 6:1)

The obligation to honor a Torah sage always caused problems, because it often caused many Rabbis and Cantors to conduct themselves as if they deserved honor because of their titles. In more traditional Jewish society-Rabbis especially- were revered and treated with the utmost deference. It is an understandable and very common foible for people with such a title to be become full of themselves and to laud it over everyone else.

This is illustrated by a Hasidic story:

R. David Moshe of Tchortkov once met R Aaron of Tchernobil. R. Aaron asked the former how may beadles he employed and received the answer that he had 5. R David then began to list their duties: "One of them stands on duty at the door of my study, the second is responsible for finding accommodation for my Hassidim, the third looks after the cleaning, the fourth sees to purchases, and the fifth oversees all travel arrangements. "

He then asked how may R Aaron had, and the latter replied that he had six. Five of them, he explained performed the same offices as those of R. David.

"What then is the function of the sixth? R David asked curiously.

"He is the most important of all." Replied R. Aaron. "He stands behind me all day and whenever I say anything, he murmurs devoutly, 'Wonderful, absolutely marvelous!'"

That is why Maimonides adds the following teaching concerning the honor due to sages.

"It is improper for a sage to not put the people to inconvenience by deliberately passing before them, so that they should have to stand up before him. He should use a short route and endeavor to avoid notice so that they should not be troubled to stand up. The sages were wont to use circuitous and exterior paths, where they were not likely to meet those who might recognize them, so as not to trouble them." (Hilchot Deot Talmud Torah 6:3)

This teaching of Maimonides made me think of you Rabbi Cantor Gelman, because you are the one who takes a circuitous path so as to not draw attention to yourself or to catch the virus of arrogance. You embody one of our tradition's great virtues-Tzniut-modesty. Your modesty is more than a virtue; it enables you to teach and to let others to shine for the good of the community and for the good of the Jewish people.

The Talmud has another wonderful expression which I have as a signature on all my emails. Rabbi Cantor Gelman, I aspire to it, but you embody it.

Yafeh Talmud Torah Im Derech Eretz

יפה תלמוד תורה עם דרך ארץ

The study of Torah combined with kindness is very beautiful.

Mazal Tov on becoming a Rabbi.

A Renewed Koshrut for American Jews

2008-04-18T14:10:00.001-07:00

A Renewed Koshrut for American Jews

Abandoning the Western Diet

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

4/4/08

As Jews we have a thing about food. Especially around Passover when we become a mass of food inspectors, looking for evidence of Hametz in our homes and in the foods we buy. No matter your relationship to koshrut, Jewish culture has a concern about the food we eat. Food for us is connected to story. The foods we eat on Passover remind us of the traumas of slavery and the going out from Egypt. Food serves as symbols that teach us empathy, the bitter herb helps us to remember the bitterness of the slaves, the matza connects us to the experience of the poor.

The regular kosher dietary laws also reflect a moral passion about food. We are supposed to drain the blood from an animal that we kill for food. The rabbis teach that if an animal is to be slaughtered for food, it must be killed in a way that reduces suffering to a minimum. The consumption of meat, while permitted as a concession to human natur,e is constrained by laws of slaughtering and the limitation of the number of animals that can be eaten. The level of detail of these laws leaves us with a proud legacy (something which I think many of us misunderstood) as a people that is very concerned about what enters our mouths and the impact of the way we eat both on creatures and the world around us.

I just finished an amazing book by the award winning author, Michael Pollan, called In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. It is a book of remarkable clarity and powerful argument about the ills caused by the way we eat in America.

"The chronic diseases that now kill most of us can be traced directly to the industrialization of our food: the rise of highly processed foods and refined grains: the use of chemicals to raise plants and animals in huge monocultures; the superabundance of cheap calories of sugar and fat produced by modern agriculture; and the narrowing of the biological diversity of human diet to a tiny handful of staple crops, notably wheat, corn, and soy."

"Various populations thrived on diets that were what we'd call high fat, low fat, or high carb; all meat or all plant; indeed here have been traditional diets based on just about any kind of whole food you can imagine. Lesson: That human animal is well adapted to a great many different diets. The Western diet is not one of them. "

"An American born in 2000 has a one in 3 chance of developing diabetes in his lifetime; the risk is even greater for a Hispanic American or African American. A diagnosis of diabetes subtracts 12 years from one's life and living with the condition incurs medical costs of $13,000 a year (compared with $2500 for someone without diabetes)."

"This is a global pandemic in the making, but a most unusual one, because it involves no virus or bacteria, no microbe of any kind-just a way of eating."

I know, because I am one of its victims. I found out last year that my body crossed the boundary to become vulnerable to Type two diabetes. There is no history of it in my family, no predisposition. I had to change my lifestyle or face the harsh realities of a condition that worsens over time. Most of all it made me aware of our food choices that are all around us.

Our ancestors accepted koshrut on themselves in part as a moral stance in relationship to their world and to affirm their identity as Jews. As modern Americans living with the ills of the Western diet we have an even more difficult challenge before us that demands a new koshrut. I want to introduce this to you tonight, albeit in a brief form. I urge you to get the book and read it with me. Here is one part of what Michael Pollan argues we must do to reverse the ills of the Western Diet.

There are three rules to this new Koshrut:

Just Eat Food:
Not Too Much
Mostly Plants

Under each of these categories there are several helpful rules-halachot. I just want to cover tonight in this short talk the rules of "Just Eat Food".

First we must acknowledge our confusion around food. The key to overcoming the confusion over food is to simplify and to avoid industrialized food.

"Real food has disappeared from large areas of the supermarket and from much of the rest of the eating world. Taking food's place on the shelves has been an unending stream of food like substitutes, some seventeen thousand new ones every year." Avoid as much as possible processed and refined foods. Here are 8 rule to start off with.

Don't eat anything your great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Because even our mother's and grandmothers are confused.

Don't eat anything incapable of rotting.

Avoid food products containing ingredients that are as unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number or that include high fructose corn syrup.

Consider Sara lee's Soft and Smooth Whole Grain White Bread

Enriched bleached flour [wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamin monoitrate (vitamin B,) riboflavin (vitamin B2), folic acid], water, whole grains [whole wheat flour, brown rice flour (rice flour, rice bran)] high fructose corn syrup, whey, wheat gluten, yeast, cellulose. Contains 2% or less of each of the following, calcium sulfate, vegetable oil (soybean and/or cottonseed oils) salt, butter, cream, salt) dough conditioners (may contain one or more of the following: mono-and diglycerides, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, ascorbic acid, enzymes, azordicarbonamide), guar gum, calcium propionate (preservative, distilled vinegar, yeast nutrients (monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate) corn starch, natural flavor, betacarotene (color), vitamin D, soy lecithin, soy flour.

The plastic wrapper ads: "Good source of whole grain and low fat".

Avoid food products that make health claims:

"for a food product to make health claims on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it's more likely to be a processed than a whole food. Don't forget that trans fat rich margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim it was healthier than traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. "

Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.

Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.

CSA box Community Supported Agriculture. Subscribe to a farm and receive a weekly box of produce or from your garden. Shake the hand that feeds you.

Food is about pleasure, about community, about family, and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world and about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology.

Sources of Inspiration for a Life in the Rabbinate

2008-03-07T10:42:00.001-08:00

Sermon on the Occasion of the Rabbi's Installation

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

Temple Beth Shalom of Long Beach

March 7,2008

Sources of Inspiration for a Life in the Rabbinate

Opening Remarks and Acknowledgments

Thank you, Sally, for your beautiful words. Sally Weber is one of the most respected Jewish professionals in our region. I belong to the army of rabbis, Jewish educators, Jewish communal professionals and major lay leaders who admire your vision, courage, and compassion. You are an amazing mother, spouse, and friend and hosts of the best Passover Seder in Los Angeles. I am honored that you are here tonight to install me as Rabbi at Beth Shalom.

When I was in Rabbinical school I was invited to be on an interfaith panel of seminarians from different faiths who were asked to tell their stories of their journeys to the clergy. The Protestant seminarian began by sharing how a number of years ago he was down and out on skid row. One night while lying in a drunken stupor on the street, he had a vision of his savior so powerful that he put back his life together and ultimately entered the seminary to train to become a minister.

He was followed by a Catholic priest in training who told us about his serving as a Navy fighter pilot flying missions over North Vietnam. On one particularly destructive bombing run, he had a vision of his savior. In the vision Jesus told him to stop his war making and instead, choose the path of peace. He left the Navy to become a priest and now he committed himself to a life of celibacy and peacemaking.

It was now my turn. Now the audience was on the edge of its seat waiting to hear the dramatic events that led me to the rabbinate. I admitted, " It was all because of my mother. " I went on to say that it was my parents who laid the groundwork for my becoming a rabbi. They brought me up in a home filled with love, characterized by intellectual curiosity, a commitment to social action and service, and a love of Judaism. While I chose a different religious movement than the one they brought me up in, I have always remained close to them. By coming to Long Beach, I am just down the road from them. I am so happy that they are close by and can share in this happy moment.

I also want to thank my wife, Robbie, who has been so supportive as we have maintained a long distance marriage during this first phase of my time here. She is the best virtual rebbetzin I know. Thank you to my friends and family including many of Robbie's family who are present tonight to share in this simchah.

Lastly, thank you to the congregants of Temple Beth Shalom who placed their trust in me to serve as your Rabbi. I have been thrilled to meet so many wonderful and devoted people during this first seven months. I add my words of praise to Eugene and Eva Schlesinger who we honor tomorrow night. I met them during my interview week and came away deeply impressed by them. They embody the incredible yiddishkeit and menthlichkeit of this congregation which led me to choose to come to Temple Beth Shalom back in April of last year.

The source of inspiration for my rabbinate flows from my distinguished predecessors, the Rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud. They speak to me through their stories and texts and illuminate difficult questions, nurture wisdom, and bring meaning to my life. Tonight I want to share with you four beloved texts from the Rabbis and why they inspire me as your Rabbi. Through them you can get to know me. I hope they inspire you as well.

My first story comes from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Eruvim 13b

R. Abba stated in the name of Samuel: For three years there was a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel over a matter of Jewish law. Beit Shammai asserted, 'The halachah is in agreement with our views' and Beit Hillel countered, 'The halachah is in agreement with our views'. Then a bat kol-a voice from Heaven- issued forth and announced: '[The utterances of] both are the words of the living God, but the halachah is in agreement with the rulings of Beit Hillel'.

The Talmud now pauses and asks, "Since, however, both are the words of the living God' why was Beit Hillel's position given precedence?"

The answer is given: Because they were kindly and modest, they studied their own rulings and those of Beth Shammai, and were even so [humble] as to mention the actions of Beth Shammai before theirs…..

אמר רבי אבא אמר שמואל: שלש שנים נחלקו בית שמאי ובית הלל, הללו אומרים הלכה
כמותנו והללו אומרים הלכה כמותנו. יצאה בת קול ואמרה: אלו ואלו דברי אלהים חיים הן, והלכה כבית הלל. וכי מאחר שאלו ואלו דברי אלהים חיים מפני מה זכו בית הלל לקבוע הלכה כמותן ־ מפני שנוחין ועלובין היו, ושונין דבריהן ודברי בית שמאי. ולא עוד אלא שמקדימין דברי בית שמאי לדבריהן

Have you ever had an argument for three years? If you are married you know this is very plausible. The Talmud is talking about an intractable dispute between two schools of thought. It doesn't even bother to introduce us to what they were arguing about. The Talmud is simply telling us about an irresolvable dispute that God decides to adjudicate. The Bat Kol is an indirect, but clarifying decision from on high, like the bailiff announcing the decision of a judge.

From this text we receive two wonderful teachings. There are disputes between human beings which carry truth-as expressed in our beautiful formulation: Elu v'elu divrei Elohim Hayim. We are quick in human relations to dismiss or ridicule the strongly held positions of the other. But there is truth to them. Recognizing that truth is the only chance for compromise.

But if God has to choose between two reasonable positions, then He takes regard of the behavior of the adversaries. Which one was civil? Which one was open minded? Which one was firm, but not arrogant about his position? For God according to this text esteems civility in conflict, open mindedness in the face of complexity, and modesty in one's personal demeanor. This text models us on how to disagree with others, yet to afford them dignity, respect, and consideration. There is a way to be a menstch in an argument.

*******************

My next text comes to us from the Jerusalem Talmud, Bava Metzia 8c (4th century CE)

Shimon ben Shetah traded in cotton. His students said to him: "Master, allow us to buy a donkey so that you will not have to labor so much." They went and bought him a donkey from a certain Syriac (non-Jew) and found upon it a precious stone.

They came and told him: "Now you need not labor ever again."

Said he: "Why so?'

They replied, "We have bought you a donkey from a certain Syriac, and found upon it a precious stone."

He asked" "But does the owner know of it?"

They replied: "No."

He told them: "Go and return it."

They responded to him, 'But did not Rav Huna Bivi Bar Gozlon say, quoting Rav, "It was stated in the presence of Rabbi (Judah, the Prince), ' Even according to the view that stealing from a pagan is forbidden, (appropriating) his lost property is permitted."'?

He looked them intently and said, "What do you think, that Shimon ben Shetah is a barbarian? Shimon b. Shetah preferred hearing, "Blessed be the God of the Jews" to all the riches of this world.

We all must face a God test. Does the God we believe in make sense to those around us? How do we know this? The God we believe in is evident in our actions and our behavior. It doesn't even matter if we don't believe in God. Our actions reveal our beliefs about the moral order of the universe. An avowed atheist who acts with moral impeccability is not an atheist from the Jewish point of view. For a Jew, according to Shimon Ben Shetah, our actions toward other people, especially those who are not of our faith should lead to a response: "Blessed be the God of the Jews."

Shimon Ben Shetah understood that we teach about God by our behavior more than our words and our statements of belief. How do you teach the love God? Engage in loving acts toward other human beings. How do you impart the hatred of God-be a jerk with other human beings. Our children, our neighbors, the strangers we encounter sense God by how we treat them and others. Does our behavior lead to the exclamation: Blessed be the God of the Jews?

********************

My third story comes from the Talmud Bavli, Shabbat

…It happened that a certain pagan came before Rabbi Shammai and said to him, 'Make me a convert to Judaism, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I balance on one foot.' Shammai dismissively pushed him out his door with a yardstick that was in his hand. The man then trekked to Rabbi Hillel and made the same request: 'Make me a convert to Judaism, on condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I balance on one foot.' Hillel said to him, 'What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor; that is the whole Torah, all those scrolls you see here in the Beit Midrash are commentary on that idea; Now go and learn from them.'

Empathy is a very important quality in the rabbinic tradition. Hillel could connect with the most marginal or unreasonable person and find the gist of what that person was seeking. He would take their strange requests and find the way to connect them to Judaism. Rabbi Hillel was not merely giving this pagan what they call in the modern marketing, an elevator pitch. Hillel grasped the greatness of Judaism and believed that it was his responsibility to help the others to grasp it, in a way that each person could understand it coming from his unique background and capacity.

He also understood that the opening to a life of Torah and Mitzvot consisted of a seed, a kernel, a shoot he needed to plant within the inquirer. Think about your own Jewish journey. Was there someone in your life who planted the seed within you? When was it? How was it planted? What did it lead to? Rabbi Shammai, as brilliant as he was, did not know how to do this. He only could deal with fully grown, pruned, and fertilized plants. Hillel knew how to plant and grow them. A good rabbi has to be a farmer and a gardener.

****************

My last text comes from Talmud Bavli, Berachot 32a:

The Talmud quotes a Midrash, a rabbinic commentary from the story of the Golden Calf in the Book of Exodus.

God, upon seeing the children of Israel dancing around the Golden Calf, says to Moses; "Now then, leave Me alone, that My rage may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them, and instead I will make of you a great nation." (Exodus 32). R. Abbahu comments about Moses subsequent response to God in the next sequence of Torah verses: Moses refuses God's offer of greatness and stands before God, imploring him to not destroy His people who He brought out of Egypt.

Rabbi Abahu says: Were it not explicitly written, it would be impossible to say such a thing: (In other words, this is a very radical Midrash.) Moses response to God is as if he took hold of the Holy One, blessed be He, like a man who seizes his fellow by his garment and said before Him: Sovereign of the Universe, I will not let You go until You forgive and pardon them.

Chutzpah is a religious quality. Chutzpah is an authentic spiritual quality that flows from our texts. Moses had Chutzpah. Avraham had Chutzpah. God is not a tyrant, but our partner. We can argue and disagree with our partner. God wants us to challenge Him and hold Him to a higher standard. Likewise we must challenge ourselves to a higher standard. If we are prepared to do that then we may also hold humanity to a higher standard. The God of the Torah and of rabbinic Judaism invites Chutzpah.

We are constructed as human beings by our stories. One of the privileges of being a rabbi is to have access to this great repository of human experience and wisdom. But more than learning this repository, we are commissioned to share it. I have described myself as a 'teaching rabbi'. This is really a redundancy. A rabbi, by definition is a teacher. The challenge of my career has been to not let the burdens and distractions of the modern rabbinate to cut me off from the stories and texts that are the source of my teaching and wisdom that ultimately I impart to you. I hope that in the coming years I can inspire you with these stories and many others. Together we will unfold our own Jewish story at Temple Beth Shalom. Shabbat Shalom and Rav Todot.

A Reorienting Jewish Experience: The Limmud Phenomenon

2008-02-26T08:25:00.001-08:00

A new blog entry from Rabbi Dov Gartenberg: Rabbiblog

A Reorienting Jewish Experience: The Limmud Phenomenon

(Click on the links to go get more information)

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in a groundbreaking event for LA Jews. It is called LimmudLA. It was one of the best Jewish experiences I have had in many years. What is it and why is it special?

Limmud in Hebrew means to learn or study. Limmud was started in Great Britain 25 years ago. Limmud UK has become an annual gathering of 2500 Jews from all around the world and is considered one of the most exciting events in modern Jewish life. The concept has begun to spread to new countries and cities. LimmudNY is now an established gathering. LimmudLA will be followed by LimmudColorado in May.

Limmud as described by the organizers in Great Britain aims to enable each participant to go one step further on their own Jewish journey by offering access to some of the world's most dynamic Jewish educators, performers and teachers. At Limmud you are exposed to all educational styles including lectures, workshops, text-study sessions, film, meditation, discussions, exhibits and performances to ensure that there is always 'something for everyone'. Indeed, the content of a typical Limmud event is as diverse as its participants. The concept of Limmud is to honor the diversity of modern Judaism by creating a gathering space for Jews of all stripes and ages to come together, learn with outstanding teachers, enjoy creative artists, and engage each other in countless ways. The organizers of Limmud resist other institutions or religious movements from being sponsors and thus keep the gathering free from ideological or religious agendas. It is one of the truly pluralistic events in modern Jewish life which is the source of its inspiration and uniqueness.

LimmudLA, as reported in the cover story of the LA Jewish Journal, was a huge effort. "More than 100 volunteers and one paid professional worked insanely long hours over the past two years to bring together more than 600 Jews from every denomination, age group and area of Southern California for 262 study sessions, 21 films, two concerts, a comedy show, an off-Broadway play and countless hours of connecting."

From Friday noon until Monday noon there was a buzz of excitement. Every hour gave you 10 choices of learning and arts. Over Shabbat there were multiple options for davening to accommodate the diversity. The meals were set up to maximize meeting. At every meal you met another 4 or 5 people. The beautiful thing about Limmud was the diversity of age groups with lots of college students mixed in with older adults.

Our Jewish lives are fragmented much of the time. Jewish life's strength and weakness is that our Jewish lives are local, centered around a shul or a JCC. Many Jews do not even have that, cut off from any Jewish communal experience beyond their families or friends. This leaves us to live in our little Jewish worlds often sucked dry of rich, authentic, and inspiring Jewish experiences. But we benefit greatly from being exposed to a wider Jewish world and to different approaches, forms of expression, and alternative perspectives of Jewish life. Each of us can benefit from the powerful renewal of a powerful multifaceted Jewish experience like Limmud. I hope you can find a way to a Limmud experience, either here in LA or in the many communities that are discovering the power of these unique Jewish gatherings.

08-01-23 'Outed' as a Reform Jew

2008-01-23T07:35:00.001-08:00

I was speaking to a nice woman at the JCC about our kids' college experiences. She told me this story. Her daughter and a friend, both high achieving high school students, found a site on Beliefnet, the spirituality website, called Beliefomatic. The site provides a questionnaire that ask about your basic religious beliefs. At the end of the test the site gives you a list of religions that best match up with the beliefs you indicated in the exam.

These two high schoolers, who were in their own religious quest, took the test and discovered that the religion that best matched up with their answers was Reform Judaism (both girls were not Jewish). They were surprised, but took the results very seriously. They got up the nerve and went to a local Reform Temple to inquire about an Introduction to Judaism class. They were told that indeed there was a class, but it cost $300. No scholarship was offered. As high schoolers they did not have this type of money. The ardor of their religious quest cooled and they never took the class. They are now both in college finding their own way in the world.

After hearing this story my curiosity drove me to explore the Beliefomatic site. I wondered what religions this site would recommend for me? So I answered the theological questionnaire. (You can find out your best fitting religion by clicking on: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html. ) My results are copied below. According to my answers I am 100% compatible with Reform Judaism. According to the test I should seriously check out Bahai, Sikhism, the Quakers, the Unitarians, and Islam before checking out Orthodox Judaism. I am starting to make calls today.

So I have been outed as a Reform Jew (I am a Conservative Rabbi.). Checking out the site I discovered they do not even have Conservative Judaism as a category which may say volumes about the standing of this movement in the eyes of the broader world. So anyone on a serious religious quest on Beliefomatic would never be steered to my Movement or to my synagogue. It is lonely being a Conservative Jew.

I thought about those two girls inquiring about Judaism. They probably came to the front office and were officiously given the information about the class, told about the cost, and left alone in the office to contemplate their next move. Obviously religion is much more about specific beliefs. It is also about how you are related to, how you are welcomed or regarded. The failure of the synagogue here is a failure of hospitality. It is a failure to understand that at the margins, one must be ready to keep the door open.

We live in a world where identity is so fluid and so confused that many of us try to figure out with the help of sites like Beliefomatic. Fewer of us are brought up in a richly contextual home, both filled with tradition, links to community, second languages (Robert Bellah) but also an openness to the world. Beliefomatic starts to make sense when we appreciate how wide open the world is. People want to find their place in it. But while Beliefomatic might send you careening in one direction, it all depends on the reaction of the unsuspecting person or institution who will encounter this cyber seeker.

As for me, Beliefomatic cannot quite grasp my nuanced identity. I am left wondering where nuanced people should turn religiously. Maybe I should start the Nuanced Religious Movement for people seeking interesting and eccentric religious groups that don't fit any conventional categories. Stay tuned.

Dov Gartenberg

Your Results:

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches your beliefs. However, even a score of 100% does not mean that your views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with your professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with your thinking.

How did the Belief-O-Matic do? Discuss your results on our
message boards.

1.	Reform Judaism (100%)
2.	Bahá'í Faith (87%)
3.	Sikhism (86%)
4.	Liberal Quakers (83%)
5.	Unitarian Universalism (78%)
6.	Islam (77%)
7.	Orthodox Judaism (77%)
8.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (75%)
9.	Neo-Pagan (63%)
10.	Jainism (59%)
11.	New Age (54%)
12.	Mahayana Buddhism (53%)
13.	Orthodox Quaker (51%)
14.	Scientology (51%)
15.	Secular Humanism (50%)
16.	New Thought (48%)
17.	Theravada Buddhism (44%)
18.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (43%)
19.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (41%)
20.	Hinduism (39%)
21.	Taoism (38%)
22.	Eastern Orthodox (37%)
23.	Roman Catholic (37%)
24.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (35%)
25.	Seventh Day Adventist (30%)
26.	Nontheist (30%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (27%)

Inserted from <http://www.selectsmart.com/PRO/beliefnet/index1.html?im_fact1=3&x=33&q4=8&im_fact10=2&q11=1&im_fact11=3&im_fact12=2&im_fact13=1&im_fact14=2&im_fact15=2&im_fact16=2&im_fact17=2&im_fact18=2&im_fact4=2&q5=2&q1=2&im_fact9=2&q17=1&im_fact7=2&q10=2&im_fact2=2&q3=3&q13=1&q2=1&y=8&q12_a8=8&q15=2&im_fact3=3&q6=2&q18=2&im_fact5=2&q7_a2=2&q8=1&q14=2&im_fact6=2&q16=2&im_fact8=2&q9=2&q19=2&im_fact19=2&q20=1&im_fact20=2&submit.x=25&submit.y=0&doit=1>

Rabbi Gartenberg's Beliefomatic Results

2008-01-23T06:43:00.001-08:00

Your Results:

How did the Belief-O-Matic do? Discuss your results on our
message boards.

1.	Reform Judaism (100%)
2.	Bahá'í Faith (87%)
3.	Sikhism (86%)
4.	Liberal Quakers (83%)
5.	Unitarian Universalism (78%)
6.	Islam (77%)
7.	Orthodox Judaism (77%)
8.	Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (75%)
9.	Neo-Pagan (63%)
10.	Jainism (59%)
11.	New Age (54%)
12.	Mahayana Buddhism (53%)
13.	Orthodox Quaker (51%)
14.	Scientology (51%)
15.	Secular Humanism (50%)
16.	New Thought (48%)
17.	Theravada Buddhism (44%)
18.	Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (43%)
19.	Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (41%)
20.	Hinduism (39%)
21.	Taoism (38%)
22.	Eastern Orthodox (37%)
23.	Roman Catholic (37%)
24.	Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (35%)
25.	Seventh Day Adventist (30%)
26.	Nontheist (30%)
27.	Jehovah's Witness (27%)

There is a long way which is short and a short way that is long.

2008-01-20T17:25:00.001-08:00

There Is A Long Way Which Is Short And A Short Way That Is Long
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg Parshat Beshalah
Given, 08-01-19

The Sidrah begins with the word Vayehi. The first two letter read וי
That is Woe!.
Pharaoh said, Woe, because the Israelites, his best workers had left;
Moses said Woe because when God led the people by the circuitous route, he knew they would misuse their freedom.
Israel said Woe because they now had to look after themselves.
God said Woe, because God knew Israel's weakness. (R. Hacohen)

This is the Oy parsha because it starts off in such a strange way
Let's consider the famous verses.

‘Vayehi’-Now when Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although it was nearer; for God said, "The people may have a change of heart when they see war, and return to Egypt.: So God led the people round about, ‘Vyasev elohim’, by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds. Es 13:17-18

Why did God not take Israel the shortest way to the land of Canaan and to escape a potential pursuit of the Egyptians? Why did God not consult Moses who would bear all the burdens of the people's wanderings? Why did God have so little faith in the people he liberated? What is the benefit in causing people to wander?

For generations students of the Torah have asked these questions. I share with you a few suggestions for your consideration.

This is an act of kindness and consideration on God's part. Ki karov hu " because God was near to them and loved them, and therefore, did not want to risk having some of them killed in a battle with the Philistines (Minhah blulah)

Rashi: God did not lead Israel through Philistine territory precisely because it was close, and it would have been too tempting to become discouraged and return to Egypt.

Nahmanides: Although the way to through the Phillistine territory was more direct, God was afraid that the people would be discouraged if they had to fight their way through.

All these commentators are aware of an older Midrash which gives specific reasons for God's fear of Israel's potential weakness.

"Israel had spent 180 years in Egypt, in peace and prosperity, not in the least molested by the people. Suddenly Ganon came, a descendant of Joseph of the tribe of Ephraim. He said, The Lord has appeared to me and He bade me to lead you forth out of Egypt. The Ephraimites were the only ones to heed his words. Proud of their royal lineage as direct descendants of Joseph and confident of their valor in war, for they were great heroes, they left the land and betook themselves to Palestine. They carried only weapons of gold and silver. They had no provisions, because they expected to buy food and drink on the way or capture them by force if the owners would not part with them for money.

After a days' march they found themselves in the neighborhood of Gat. There the local shepherds refused to provide provisions for the hungry and thirsty Ephraimites. Angry by the refusal, the Ephraimites attacked the shepherds of Gat, who then called on their fellow Philistines. They gathered a large army and annihilated the Ephraimites, leaving only 10 of them who escaped with their bare lives.

They returned to Egypt to bring all of Israel word of the disaster that had overtaken them. The disaster at Gat was followed by disgrace, for the bodies of the fallen lay unburied for many years on the battlefield. To add insult to injury, Pharaoh, alarmed over the possibility of all of Israel leaving initiated the first acts of oppression that led to Israel’s enslavement. Thereafter, the Egyptians exercised force to keep Israel in their land.

The Midrash concludes, Therefore, God chose the longer route to spare Israel of the sight of those dishonored corpses. Upon seeing the corpses the Israelites would become discouraged and would return to Egypt. (Legends of the Jews)

This Midrash (which has no historical basis) is fascinating because it suggests that God avoided the coastal route because of a previous traumatic incident. Think about this in your own lives. Have you ever steered a child or a spouse away from falling into a trap which you had fallen into yourself? How do the traumas of our past effect how we guide others today? How much do we hide those traumas to protect our children or grandchildren? Or should we allow our descendants to know about the trials of our past so they may learn as well.

In the case of this Midrash, God does not want them to see this indignity and guides them away from it. Going back to Egypt is not an option.

The final interpretation I will offer is my favorite.
The long route was necessary because the Israelites would need to develop qualities to be able to conquer and settle the Promised Land.
i. Ibn Ezra: God did not want them to arrive at the Promised Land too soon. Slaves could not conquer the land.
ii. Maimonides: God wanted to accustom them to hardship, to prepare them for the task of being a free persons and a free nation.
Maimonides writes, “ It is impossible to change a person instantaneously.” When a person or community undergoes a profound change in condition, it will take a long time for that person and that community to adjust to the new reality. Therefore God has Israel wander to help them adjust to the new reality of their freedom and their service to God.

Isn’t this true for us? We are not built for quick pivots or sudden turns. So much of the difficulties we have in modern life stem from this super fast pace of life in which our bodies and our minds have trouble keeping up. Modern life does not allow the wandering time for us to catch up. No wonder we feel so out of sorts so much of the time.

That is the wisdom of our passage today. God knows that we need time when faced with radical change. He let us wander so we can adjust and get used to the new reality. The Talmud captures this wisdom in a wonderful expression.

There is a long way which is short and a short way that is long. (BT Eruvim 53b)

Notes on Monday, 10/15/07

2007-10-15T21:08:00.001-07:00

Hanging Out with Jewish Emergents

I am attending a gathering of the Jewish Emergent Initiative Gathering which brings a group of 25 Jewish innovators from across the country to share ideas and approaches. I was invited to participate because of my work with Panim Hadashot-New Faces of Judaism in the Pacific Northwest. Most of the group is 20-30 somethings, so I am an elder statesmen of sorts. Or at least I am an older rabbi who still has creative juices. There are people here who are organizing social action coops, alternative congregations, rabbiless minyanim, and other cutting edge communities. Some have called us Jewish professional entrepreneurs. It’s an unusual consortium. I am enjoying the exchange, especially to see the emerging impact of a new generation on Jewish life. This particular conference centers on innovation in Jewish prayer. We have had discussions about pluralistic prayer, using acting and drama to highlight prayer, and understanding prayer cultures in congregations.

Jewish prayer in synagogues, in particular, is undergoing great changes and convulsion with chasms of expectations between older and younger generations. Younger generations do not relate to overly passive models of Jewish prayer and expect to participate in their worship. The use of music in Conservative and Reform congregations on Shabbat is becoming more and more common across the country, while more traditional Conservative communities are moving from cantorial-rabbinic led communities to lay led minyans run by minyan members. How this impacts us is not yet clear, but I hope to address the issue in future teachings.

I had a Jewish first today. I had a completely organic meal of produce harvested from the retreat center farm by a Jewish farmer. A shehechiynau is in order.

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

The Streimel: A Reflection on Teshuvah

2007-09-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Streimel: A Reflection on Teshuvah-Repentance
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
Yizkor, Temple Beth Shalom, Long Beach 5758

Twenty one years ago, at my former congregation in Venice, California, I delivered a Kol Nidre sermon about my brother, Philip. I had just visited him and his family in Jerusalem that summer to reestablish a strained connection. Over a number of years, my brother had become strongly attracted to the ultra-Orthodox community of Bratzlaver Hasidim. In the sermon I described an encounter with my brother which had deeply troubled me. At the time I was struggling to understand my brother’s emerging ultra-Orthodox practice and beliefs. But I did not ever have the opportunity to reflect on it further, because my zayde, Max Grouf, died of a heart attack on that Motzei Yom Kippur. A year later my brother died from complications due to a serious illness.

In September I observed the twentieth Yarhzeit of my brother, Philip. I thought about my two decade-old encounter with him. He was a passionately idealistic person who gave his all in everything he did. He was extremely bright, successful in his field of mathematics and computer science. He married an Israeli woman who came to the US to be with him as he finished his doctorate. My sister-in-law, like my brother, discovered traditional Judaism in adulthood and with him gradually embraced the ultra-Orthodox way of life. In the mid-80s my brother and his young family moved to Israel where he took a position as a professor of computer science at Tel Aviv University. The family chose to live in Jerusalem, however, because they wished to be close to the strong Orthodox communities that thrive in the Holy City.

When I saw my brother during the summer of 1986 it was so apparent that he had changed. I came to his house on a Friday afternoon to spend the Shabbat with his family. As I walked into their Jerusalem apartment I was greeted by the poster "Mitzvah Gedolah Lihiyot Sameach Tamid" - IT IS A GREAT PRECEPT TO BE JOYOUS ALWAYS. The house was a-bustle with Shabbat preparations. My sister-in-law was busily preparing the Sabbath meals and my brother involved himself with the household tasks, singing niggunim as he worked feverishly. As the time came to leave for Kabbalat Shabbat I saw my brother emerge from his room robed in a long brown Bratzlaver capote, his head covered by an impressive wide brown fur streimel.

I knew from letters that my brother had changed, but I was not prepared emotionally to see him in the clothing of his transformation. As I took in his altered appearance, we gathered up the children and began our walk to the Bratzlaver synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Old Katamon. I could not stop looking at my brother, a tall strapping man, as he walked joyfully in his capote and his streimel. He towered over the other Shabbat strollers making their way to the synagogues.

At the Bratzlaver Shtebel, there were about 100 people, mostly modern orthodox young men with twelve or so Bratzlavers in their capotes scattered throughout the room. My brother stood up front while I retreated to the rear. We began the Kabbalat Shabbat with blissful singing and swaying. By the time we reached Lcha Dodi, the whole room had become one body. The intensity of the prayer was astonishing; each stanza had a different melody, which was chanted with the utmost fervor. My brother was swaying wildly from end to end; his hands lifted upward, singing at the top of his lungs. He continued like this for almost the entire service, his eyes closed, his head bobbing and turning.
The service ended, and everyone streamed out wishing good Shabbas to one another. My brother’s wife and the children, who had been in the Ezrat Nashim, the women’s section, joined us for the walk back to the flat for Shabbat dinner. My brother, euphoric from his davening, took off his streimel with the intent of hoisting his five year old son up onto his shoulders. As he did so, he gently waved his streimel toward me and asked, "Dooby, can you put this on your head while I carry my son?"

I remember the moment vividly as he held out his streimel, and awaited my response. The years of our struggle to differentiate ourselves from each other passed before me while I figured what to do. The streimel was like a white hot object which I dared not touch without getting burned. After a long moment’s hesitation I told my brother, "No, Philip, I can't wear your streimel."

A year later my brother was gone. My sister-in-law has devotedly raised their four children. Although she moved away from the Bratzlaver community, she has brought up the children in the Jerusalem Lithuanian Haredi community. My nephews now married and with growing families, live in their own apartments and study in Yeshivot. Our relations with my brother’s family are loving, but greatly strained. As Haredi Jews they keep our way of life at arm’s length. Our contacts with each other can only be on their terms. As the children get older and start their families within the 4 cubits of the Haredi community there is less and less that we have in common except that we are family. While our children can enter their world, we know that they will never enter ours. My nephews and niece have grown up to view our world as foreign and forbidden. The abyss between the Ultra-Orthodox and the non-Orthodox in Israel is something that is very personal to me. Although I know my nephews would not throw rocks or hurl insults, they have been raised in a world that cannot fathom other ways to live religious Jewish lives.

I remember the offer and my refusal clearly that night. Twenty one years later I think of that moment and remember my brother. I was overcome then with anger over how much my brother had changed, how much he had grown distant from our family. But now with the benefit of time I realize that he was reaching out. For as I see it now, my brother, carried away by the joy of his prayer, simply wanted me to share that joy with him. He was no longer thinking about the difficulties in our relationship, and he was not trying to influence me. He was totally focused on the transporting joy of Shabbat prayer , and the sense of God’s presence. He was completely un-self-conscious in that moment. I imagine that the moment I refused him he did become self-conscious, aware of my discomfort and judgment. I really don’t know, because we never talked about this moment over the Shabbat we spent together or during that last year of his life.

As I reflect on that moment so many years later I find myself focusing on my brother’s passionate spirituality. Although he chose a very uncompromising spiritual path for himself, I realize that we both shared strong spiritual yearnings. Over the years, so many people have shared with me their spiritual yearnings and struggles. I see so many more people today that are spiritually hungry, seeking a path of meaning for their lives. I have seen people shocked by life’s sudden events and tragedies into an awareness of the spiritual void in their lives. I have seen people change directions as a result, moving through profound spiritual discoveries before my eyes. I have also seen people suffer great spiritual disappointments.

What is spirituality? Arthur Green writes that, “Spirituality is a view of religion that sees its primary task as cultivating and nourishing the human soul or spirit. Each person, according to this view, has an inner life that he or she may choose to develop; this ‘inwardness’ goes deeper than the usual object of psychological investigation and cannot fairly be explained in Freudian or other psychological terms. Ultimately, spirituality is ‘transpersonal,’ reaching deeply into the self but then extending through an inward reach beyond the individual and linking him to all other selves and to the single Spirit of the universe we call God.”

Like my brother I see the challenge of religious life as the cultivation and nourishing of our souls. I am not prepared to reduce his strivings to pure psychological need as I have been more willing to do in years past. I am no longer prepared to dismiss his experience as being too radical or extreme for me to respect. I am much more convinced now that his extending of his streimel was his sincere way of connecting to me in the moment of the uplift of his soul.

Green writes further that, “God is experientially accessible through the cultivation of this inner life, and awareness (da’at) of that access is a primary value of religion. External forms, important as they are, serve as instruments for development, disciplining, and fine tuning the awareness. Hasidic spirituality may present them as divinely ordained forms, but they are still recognized as a means (indeed, a gift of God to help us in our struggle), not as an end in themselves.”

My brother, who would not compromise his spiritual life and therefore chose the intense path of Bratzlav, had that evening sensed the presence of God. On that same evening I had experienced the burdensome presence of what Greene calls ‘the external forms.’ I was hung up on the streimel and could not see through it to the joy welling up within my brother.

I consider myself, like my brother, a spiritual seeker. In my youth I was not satisfied with the sterile, vapid presentation of Judaism I absorbed in my liberal synagogue. I seriously explored Buddhism during my college years. While in Israel in the mid 70s, I essentially lived in Orthodox environments and considered moving into that spiritual orbit. To this day I remain fascinated by different spiritual disciplines and approaches both within and outside Judaism. Like my brother I was not interested in the fashionable spiritualities that promised easy highs with little effort, or the solipsism that marks so much of what is call spirituality in American culture. We both recognized that real spirituality required discipline and regularity of practice, of training the mind to be aware and responsive to God.

We both found in Hasidism an authentic Jewish spirituality, but we parted ways on the degree to which we embraced that spiritual path. My brother became convinced that he needed to situate himself in the totality of a living Hasidic community. In this community he could live a life devoted to what Green beautifully summarizes as the essence of Hasidic spirituality: Avoides Hashem, the service of God, marked by an inward intensity (kavane) leading to attachment to God (devekus) and ultimately to the negation (bitel) of all else. The life of Torah and mitzvot, along with a zealous commitment to strict Orthodox interpretations of Halachah, constituted the Avoidas Hashem.

I knew and loved very deeply the world he chose to live in. By the time I was in my twenties the language of that world was no longer foreign to me. But the entry visa into that community includes embracing the belief that there is an exclusive relationship between God and the Jewish people. For as spiritually committed as I was to Torah and to its way of life I could not cross that threshold. I could not bring myself to deny the legitimacy of other faiths and paths in order to justify my own. I was not absolutely sure if my brother had begun to close off the rest of the world, but there were signs. I certainly was fearful that his journey was leading him in that direction. The truth is that I will never know because of his untimely death. However, my sister-in-law ultimately embraced the belief system of her Haredi community and my nephews and niece are safely ensconced within the high and well defended ramparts of its spiritual fortress.

As I reflect back to that moment in the summer of 1986 I regret that I didn’t take hold of his streimel and walked awkwardly a few hundred feet with it atop my head. I am sure I would have looked somewhat funny with my white shirt, beige slacks and sandals crowned by a black furry hat that was designed to compliment darker garb. No one in Jerusalem would have mistaken me for a real Bratzlaver, probably they would have thought me to be one of those crass tourists angling for a picture among the natives to take home to the Mishpache in America. But there really was a compelling reason to have received the streimel from his hand -- it would have been good to celebrate what we shared rather than to dwell on what separated us.

There are so many different paths in this world. We live at a time when we have so many choices about which paths we can take. Even in our own families, siblings and children and even parents take divergent paths and grow apart. But sometimes we are hasty to judge how far we have gone from each other and we enlarge the distance between us by our rejections. Sometimes Teshuvah involves a turning away. Sometimes Teshuvah involves a turning toward. Teshuvah is never formulaic, predictable, or automatic. Sometimes Teshuvah has to take place when the person you want to turn toward is no longer before you. Then you must direct your Teshuvah to those who remain before you and before God who stands before all of us.

Jpod Judaism

2007-09-24T10:23:00.000-07:00

Jpod Judaism
Yom Kippur 5758
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

Isn’t strange how Yom Kippur is a magnet? Jews everywhere converge on the synagogues. We converge on the synagogues during the High Holidays like sparrows returning to San Juan Capistrano. The Jewish crowds that come back to the synagogue for these holidays are not unlike the Jewish pilgrims of antiquity who ascended to Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate the pilgrimage festivals.

The pilgrimage is the religious experience of convergence. The religious experience of convergence draws its power from the center, a magnetic, holy place that attracts people to it. Convergence is the act of moving toward union. Convergence is the power of people coming from different directions toward one place.

Convergence is a very old and traditional dimension of religious experience, expressed in Judaism in the concentric circles of holiness.

The pilgrim was converging on the centers of holiness, getting closer to God as it were. Judaism differed from the pagan religions and their local shrines. Judaism of antiquity had a national center, a holy city, a holy temple, a holy priesthood, and a destination for pilgrimage. The Temple in Jerusalem was considered one of the wonders of the ancient world. The entire people would converge at special times of the year to share a common experience of Jewish people hood and the common worship of the God of Israel. On Pesah, Shavuot, and Sukkot, as well as the Yamim Noraim, Jerusalem was filled with pilgrims, hundreds of thousands of people.

Passover was the most popular of all these pilgrimages. Imagine you are living 1,942 years ago. It is the year 65CE and you are a young person making your way to Jerusalem with your family for the festival of Pesah. You are going up to the city with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims-Olim- to offer the Paschal sacrifice on the Temple Mount. Each family clan brings its lamb to be slaughtered, roasted, and eaten. The Temple mount is filled with the chorus of Levites chanting the psalms of the Hallel, patriarchs are retelling the story of the Exodus, repeating the Biblical verses. The smoke, the cacophony of sounds, the mass of humanity is stupendous and unforgettable. The joy and power of this moment is engraved in your memory and you will never forget it.

Little do you know that this is one of the last times that you or any of your family and friends will converge on Jerusalem to celebrate with the throngs. In five years, the Temple will be in ruins, your people will be defeated, and the future of your religion and nation will be in doubt.
The crushing of Jerusalem by the Roman armies destroyed not only the Temple but the powerful religious experience of convergence. This was a critical moment in Jewish history. This is when Judaism should have stopped breathing. It seemed that God had punished us by destroying the point of convergence where God and Israel came together.

How did we survive this historically crushing catastrophe? What transformation took place within the Jewish people that enabled us to overcome the loss of something so critical to our national identity?

Let’s jump ahead a few years to 75CE and imagine you are this young person who has now become an adult. Pesah is coming. In your mind you see the ruins of Jerusalem. The massive celebrations are becoming a distant memory. And the ritual of Pesah has become a void.

This year you have received an invitation from a Rabbi in Yavneh, the small town where the rabbis fled just before the destruction of Jerusalem. They established an academy there to keep the Torah alive. This hospitable rabbi has invited you to a special meal in his home in honor of Pesah.

You go full of trepidation and with a heavy heart, but you are surprised that this intimate gathering brings joy to you. The telling of the story of the Exodus is done like in the olden days, but the telling has some new elements you had never heard up on the Temple mount. There were lots of questions and surprises which kept the children’s attention. You eat Matzah and Maror like the old days. The Pesah-Paschal Lamb- is now only represented by a symbol. Along with your host and the other guests, you sing, you study, and you acknowledge the destruction of Jerusalem. With the others you express hope of returning to a Jerusalem and the Temple rebuilt. During the last five years there has been nothing but darkness. This celebration, while it was nothing compared to the pilgrimage, was every bit as powerful and memorable. You asked your host if you could bring it to your family the coming year.

We recognize the meal as a Seder. This simplified story highlights a theory advanced by scholars of Jewish antiquity. The Passover Seder as we know it emerged after the destruction of the Temple. It is a rite that replaced the Temple celebration. It takes elements from the original pilgrimage festival, but scales down the celebration to the setting of a home. The emerging Seder was ritually crafted by the rabbis to restore the joy of the celebration of the Passover. But the rabbis made the celebration more intimate, more accessible, more participatory, and ultimately portable for Jews wherever they wandered.

The home Seder replaced the lost practice of convergence. We could not be pilgrims, so instead there is a new emphasis on hospitality and a new religious experience centered on the table gathering. Instead of converging on Jerusalem, each household was to reach out and bring in. Each household became a source of Jewish storytelling. Each table became a source of Jewish energy. Instead of all the people gathered in one place, the people scattered into smaller groups, becoming Jewish storytelling pods where the great drama of God and the Jewish people was reenacted in living rooms wherever Jews lived. A pod is a small vessel. It is also a seed like, peapod. The Jews reacted to the destruction of their central gathering place by making every home a pod, a small vessel and seed of Jewish life. This was the Jpod generation. Except it was a 1900 year ago.

This is what the Jpod generation accomplished. In place of a single central dramatic reenactment in Jerusalem, the Jews discovered the power of the micro feast-a religious experience of unique power which could be transmitted family by family, from host to guest, from generation to generation.

Jews by necessity abandoned the Judaism of convergence for the Judaism of intimacy. We gave up the religion of mass gatherings to become a religion of dining rooms. We had to leave the central altar in favor of the family table, give up our identity as pilgrims going to high places to become sanctifiers of domestic spaces. Jews learned to cultivate religious experience around a group meal; we transferred the songs from the altar and brought them to the home table. We learned to tell our story through ritual playfulness. We realized that we could foster profound spirituality through homemade gastronomy.

The transition from Temple based Judaism to home centered Judaism forever altered the spiritual identity of the Jewish people. It is one of the greatest adaptations in the history of religion and culture.

Judaism actually never lost the spirituality of convergence. The synagogue served that purpose and we feel its power at this very moment as we converge to mark the great fast day. Yet the true uniqueness of Judaism that emerged after we lost our Temple was our capacity to locate the most powerful and memorable religious experiences in our homes and around our tables. We transmitted our religion by opening our homes and sharing these powerful experiences with extended family, friends, guests, and strangers.

Post Temple Judaism created a culture of the table: The rituals of the home Sabbath table emerged after the destruction. Festivals, once centered in Jerusalem, morphed into synagogue and home celebrations. Hospitality traditions developed around the Seders of Rosh Hashannah, the feast prior to Yom Kippur, the meals in the Sukkah and the parody feast of Purim, and the mother of all Seders, Pesah.

The Jewish culture of the table emerged as a response to crisis. Jews had to change or become extinct. We also live at a time of crisis. Sixty years ago we saw the mass destruction of ½ of our people. Over the last 100 years and especially after the Holocaust, millions of our people converged on the ancient land of the Jews to restore a Jewish commonwealth. This convergence was not a religious pilgrimage, but a powerful secular and national movement to bring power and security to the Jewish people.

We are living in the age of the third Jewish commonwealth. We live during the reemergence of Jewish convergence. But during this time of ingathering, we are also witnessing in the Diaspora an unraveling of our people . Nationally only 40% of Jews affiliate with synagogues or Jewish organizations. Of that 40%, 80% are minimally engaged by the synagogues and organizations they affiliate with or with other forms of Jewish life. Only a small number of Jews are engaged in Jewish life.

Where this is most evident is the decline of the Judaism of the table. There are many reasons for this. The loss of Jewish home practice is part of the broad decline of communal Jewish identity among millions of Diaspora Jews. Part of the reason Jewish home practice has declined is that Jewish institutions, synagogues and jccs since the 40s have emphasized building Temples and centers at the expense of Judaism of the home.
In a change with major demographic implications, Jews in America became widely dispersed. Most of us no longer live near our synagogue or in a Jewish neighborhood. American culture with its stress on individualism and the sovereign self has weakened the traditions of hospitality and the sharing of our Sabbath and festival table.

So many of don’t know or feel comfortable singing around the table. We have lost the art of Jewish table conversation. We don’t know how to share Torah with our friends and our guests. We would feel awkward having a stranger at our table for Shabbat. We are embarrassed at being too Jewish with our non Jewish friends. We are becoming strangers to the Jewish spirituality of home and hospitality.

Three years ago I left the pulpit to conduct an experiment. I wanted to see what would happen if I took a break from being a teacher from the Bimah and began to be a teacher at the table. The idea was simple. I would work with people to make their Shabbat and festival tables come alive with Jewish food, song, conversation, and fellowship. I would infuse new energy into homes which already marked Shabbat and work with less experienced households to ease them into home Shabbat meals and hospitality. I wanted to help Jews recover the capacity to make our homes a Jpod and to learn anew the mitzvah of hospitality.

For three years I convened over one hundred Shabbat feasts in homes. I worked with hosts and asked them to invite their circles of friends and guests who they thought would be moved by an authentic Jewish home experience. Many of those hosts continue to offer powerful experiences in their homes, and many of the guests who attended started to bring Shabbat and festival celebrations into their homes. I wanted to revive the Judaism of the Jpod.

I learned something very important in my initiative during the last three years. There was something special about a rabbi being a guest at a home Shabbat gathering. It subtly communicated that every Jew can bring holiness to his or her home. The host feels that the Rabbi honors our way of doing Shabbat and shares together with us the holiness of this table gathering. I knew that the admiration and support of Chabad in every community arose from the willingness of the Chabad rabbis to open up their homes and share their Shabbat tables. I wanted to take it further. I wanted to show that every Jew can do Shabbat in her home, that every Jew can make their home into a Jpod. I wanted to support my congregants committed to doing this by being there and accepting an invitation to attend and teach.

To me empowering a Jewish family to recover these Shabbat and festival table traditions and to share them with others is a far more powerful rabbinic tool than a 100 sermons. It meant compromising my long held practice of not driving on Shabbat. But if there is any chance of reviving the home as the center of Jewish life, I needed to get into homes to model what that looked like.

Every authentic and vital Jewish community I have ever seen has a strong Shabbat table culture. Dozens and dozens of households, Jpods, create beautiful Shabbat happenings and share their Shabbat with family, friends, and new faces. I would like to foster and expand our Shabbat table culture and restore the centrality of the holiness of the Jewish home in our congregation.

Our theme for the year is Jewish hospitality-Hachnasat Orchim. The core of this effort is to encourage people to celebrate Shabbat and festival meals at homes and to share these experiences with others in our congregational family and with new faces.

The Talmud speaks of the importance of reaching out to new faces. The word in Hebrew is Panim Hadashot meaning either new face or the plural, new faces. The Talmud’s teaching about Panim Hadashot reveals a core spiritual attribute of Judaism.

In Jewish tradition, a newly married couple celebrates seven days of feasts and parties after the Huppah ceremony. The name of the party is Seven Blessings-Sheva Berachot. These parties are seen as a great mitzvah and friends and the community rallied to hold them in different homes for the newlyweds. The Talmud sets two conditions for people to host a Sheva Berachot in their home. First you need a minyan, 10 Jews, to be able to chant in public the seven blessings.

Second you need to invite Panim Hadashot-a new face- to join you at the table, someone who was not at the Huppah. The requirement of a new face gets at the heart of the Judaism of Jpod. A Jewish home should ideally be a place of rich and joyful Judaism. Hospitality, the sharing of joy, follows from cultivating a warm Jewish home and table. Sometimes it works in reverse. The act of hospitality, sharing with others, brings out our best. Our Jewish celebrations become vital in the presence of guests and in sharing a mitzvah.
Judaism teaches that the best joy is the one that issues from our homes and tables, in the relationships we forge in this intimate setting and the hospitality we extend to guests and strangers.

After we lost our Temple we could not share with our fellow Jews the pageantry of pilgrimage. We only had our homes, our tables, our simchas, and our friendliness. Jews discovered that sharing joy with others during our most happy and holy times would sustain us. Sharing our joy would sustain our families, our communities and ultimately our people. Jewish hospitality centered on the Sabbath and festival table-JPod Judaism-is the time tested way Jews spread the joyful character of our unique religious tradition. It is our ethical foundation as well, for we are commanded in the Torah to treat the stranger with compassion, for we were strangers in Egypt.

As we gather together at this most solemn time, let us also not forget in this moment of convergence, in this moment of awe and self reflection, that we cannot sustain Judaism without a shared joyfulness, without opening our homes and our family table. Let us restore the joy of the Jewish home and share it with both those we love and with Panim Hadashot-new faces. Make your home a Jpod.

Making Teshuvah with Our Fellow Congregants

2007-09-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

Making Teshuvah with Our Fellow Congregants
Shabbat Shuvah 5768, September 15, 2007
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg of Temple Beth Shalom, Long Beach
rabbi@tbslb.org 562 426-6413

In rabbinical school I had the opportunity to study with an aged rabbi, David Aronson, a leading figure of the Conservative movement from Minneapolis who had retired in Los Angeles and taught at the University of Judaism. He was a fount of wisdom and experience. One of the stories I remember from him was a visit he made to a congregant during this season. The congregant was a wealthy member of the synagogue, but during a recent financial crisis the member had done nothing to help even though it was well within his means to do so. Rabbi Aronson had appealed to the members of the congregation for aid and support, but his words had not broken through to this member.

When Rabbi Aronson visited the man, he explained that he was coming to make Teshuvah since it was during the 10 days of repentance. The rabbi began by saying, “I have failed you, Mendel. I feel that as a rabbi my role is to inspire people to give tzedaka, and to give it generously especially in time of need. But I failed you as your rabbi, and I did not move you to fulfill the mitzvah of tzedaka. The man was quite disarmed with the words of Rabbi Aronson. Right there and then he gave a substantial gift to help the synagogue.

I mention this story because it demonstrates not only the rabbi’s effort to make Teshuvah, but the thoughtful way he did it in a difficult case. The other reason I mention this story is that it reminds us that one of the more important arenas of repairing relationships and making Teshuvah is within our congregation, with the people whom we share common community.

This Shabbat is Shabbat Shuvah-the Sabbath of Repentance, taking place in the middle of the Asseret Ymei Teshuvah-the 10 days of Repentance that begin with Rosh Hashannah and end with Yom Kippur. This is a particularly auspicious time to repair our most important relationships, with our family members, our work associates, our friends, and eventually our relationship with God.

But I want to focus on an obvious area where Teshuvah is very important and can have long and lasting impacts. How does one make Teshuvah with fellow congregants? How does one repair a relationship with a rabbi or a cantor?

One of the central metaphors of Judaism is the story of a leader guiding a troubled and anxious congregation through the wilderness. All congregations are imitations of the original story of Moses leading Bnai Yisrael through the Midbar (wilderness). So it is inevitable that conflict and ethical lapses will take place in a congregation. The challenge of this season is to face our relationships with people in our community and to seek healing, reconciliation, or an end to conflict.

One of the key aspects of the Mitzvah of Teshuvah is that each of us has to take responsibility for our role in a conflict or a troubled relationship. We often fail to do this because of what John Gottman, a world famous expert on marriage and relationships, teaches about human nature. We are guilty of ‘human attribution error,’ blaming the other for the problem. I’m Ok, you are defective.

The critical act of Teshuvah, as we see in the case of Rabbi Aronson, is identifying our part of the problem, taking responsibility for it, approaching the aggrieved party, renouncing one’s acts, and asking for forgiveness.

The key then is to overcome our tendency to only hold the other party accountable in a conflict or dispute. To help us identify what we may contribute toward a conflict in a community, I have assembled seven ‘averot’- sins we do that hurt others in our community. By identifying them we may be able to find the locus of our role in a conflict, own them, and be able to articulate to another we have done as the first step of repairing a relationship.

1. Blame: We find it easy to blame others in the congregation by projecting all the problems onto their behavior. In blaming others in a congregational dispute, we often misconstrue the motivations or intentions of the other. But in blaming others we fail to look seriously about how we contribute to the conflict.

2. Attack: Character assassination is the usual mode in synagogue disputes. In order to justify our position we may attack a person’s personality instead of the principle which a person holds to in expressing a different view.

3. Lashon Hara-Gossip: Attacking a person is usually done indirectly and amongst one’s friends. This is the transgression of Lashon Hara which receives a lot of attention from the sages as one of the most invidious problems of communal life. If we don’t like someone we may go to a friend or even the rabbi and rant about this person’s traits or behaviors. Such behavior is clearly unethical in Jewish law, because it spreads an impression of another that is usually distorted and hardens attitudes of both the listener and the speaker toward the person who is gossiped about.

4. Generalizing: This is when we transform a minor slight into a broader conviction of about the flaw of another. The classic case is when a congregant sees the rabbi in the store and the rabbi does not say hello. The congregant then assumes the rabbi does not like her. It might have been the case that the rabbi was preoccupied or did not recognize her, but we often we judge more harshly than necessary.

5. Keeping it Secret: “Nothing so paralyzes a social organism as secrets - especially those that are widely known yet never spoken.” (Kushner) A congregant does something hurtful to me. But I hold it within myself for months, even years. The resentment builds and becomes poisonous to the relationship and the wider community. Secret and not so secret grudges corrode communities and turn them into cauldrons of ill feeling. The Torah considers bearing a grudge to be a negative mitzvah. The prohibition on bearing a grudge comes just before “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19)

6. Anonymous Complaints: This often is directed at volunteers who take leadership roles or toward clergy. We get frustrated with the style or decisions of a person in authority. Instead of speaking directly to the person we may deliver criticism anonymously through a third party. The person in authority then never gets a clear idea of who is aggrieved or frustrated and does not have recourse to working out the issue directly with the complaining party.

7. Dropping Out: When people get frustrated they may choose to drop out. While in certain cases people realize that the congregation is not a good match for their needs, premature dropping out short circuits the process of repair that is possible in many circumstances.

Reflect on these common communal sins. This is the stuff of Teshuvah. If we have hurt or worsened a relationship with a fellow congregant by doing one of these behaviors, then we have an opportunity to do the mitzvah of Teshuvah. Even though the other congregant may have hurt us, we still have the obligation to do Teshuvah, to attempt to repair the relationship.

The aim here is not to become best friends with someone who was our adversary. Rather Teshuvah in a congregation is an effort to restore civility and decency to our relationship with a fellow congregant. We do this for the sake of community, for the sake of a higher purpose, and in reflection of God’s will.

The relationship between a rabbi and a congregant or between a cantor and a congregant also has all the features of congregant to congregant relationships, but has other issues too. People are very hesitant to speak openly to clergy. It is often the case that clergy are hesitant to speak with a member. But the true test of a healthy relationship in a congregation is the ability of congregants to speak privately with a rabbi or cantor about a complaint or a hurt. If I have one message to leave you today, it is that whether you are hurt by something I have done or whether you take responsibility for an act toward me as your rabbi, I hope that you will come speak to me in private. It does not have to only be during this season; you may approach me any time of year.

The spiritual quality and moral excellence of a community is based on the capacity for its members to make Teshuvah with each other. The congregation is more than a business; it is an assembly of people gathered for a common purpose, a holy enterprise. Teshuvah is the glue that holds a community together, and allows a community to heal from fractures or disputes. I certainly hope that by addressing the issue of Teshuvah in the synagogue early in my rabbinate with you, that all of you will take this to heart and know that Teshuvah is possible and a necessary part of the unfolding story of a community as we make our way through the wilderness.

Many of the things I have spoken of today are very hard to do. They also may fail because of hardened hearts and stubbornness or our own denial and evasions. Yet this is the most important Mitzvah of the season. I am also well aware that situations are complex and that more questions may be raised by my teaching when thinking of concrete situations. Please feel free to write to or approach me to discuss a specific situation. I hope you will share this also with your friends in the congregation to encourage the fulfillment of the mitzvah of Teshuvah among all our members.

Rabbi Larry Kushner writes in a short and brilliant essay about the nature of life in a congregation:
“The members of the congregation must nurture one another because they need one another. They simply cannot do it alone. Hermits and monasteries are noticeably absent from Jewish history; we are a hopelessly communal people. When the wilderness tabernacle is completed, near the end of the Book of Exodus, we are told, "And it came to pass that the tabernacle was 'one'" (Exodus 36:13).

Commenting on this curious expression, Rabbi Mordecai Yosef of Izbica (d. 1854) observes: In the building of the tabernacle, all Israel were joined in their hearts; no one felt superior to his fellow. At first, each skilled individual did his own part of the construction, and it seemed to each one that his work was extraordinary. Afterwards, once they saw how their several contributions to the "service" of the tabernacle were integrated - all the boards, the sockets, the curtains and the loops fit together as if one person had done it all, then they realized how each one of them had depended on the other. Then they understood how what all they had accomplished was not by virtue of their own skill alone but that the Holy One had guided the hands of everyone who had worked on the tabernacle. They had only later merely joined in completing its master building plan - so that "it came to pass that the tabernacle was one". (Exodus 36.13). Moreover, the one who made the Holy Ark itself was unable to feel superior to the one who had only made the courtyard tent pegs.

May we be worthy of this vision of community. Shabbat Shalom and Shannah Tovah.

A Person, A Poem, An Idea: Israel at 60

2007-09-15T23:01:00.001-07:00

A Person, A Poem, An Idea: Israel at 60
2nd Day Rosh Hashannah, 5768, September 14, 2007
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg Temple Beth Shalom
I thank my friend, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, for inspiring this sermon.

This appeared in the LA Times on Monday. “With eight young immigrants from the former Soviet Union under arrest, Israeli authorities said Sunday that they had broken up a violent neo-Nazi gang that desecrated synagogues and staged at least fifteen attacks on religious Jews, Asian workers, drug addicts, and homosexuals. Video said to have been taken by the skinhead gang to document its beatings was shown at Sunday’s Israel Cabinet meeting, triggering urgent debate over what to do about immigrants who came as Jewish offspring, but grew up to commit hate crimes and shout, ‘Heil Hitler!’. “

This was a big story in Israel with one paper printing on the front page headline just one word in large caps: “UNBELIEVABLE!”

This year we will celebrate the 60th birthday of the State of Israel. 60 years into its existence Israel has discovered it has a Neo-Nazi problem. How do we make sense of this great irony? Is the younger generation forgetting the story of creation of Israel? Have young people not been given the history of Israel’s emergence as a nation in the wake of the Holocaust?

But despite the neo-Nazis, most of the rest of the Jewish people have a very strong attachment to the Jewish people and to the land of Israel. My friend, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, shared with me this interesting observation. Let’s say that someone got up at services and proclaimed. “I am an atheist. I don’t believe in God. I don’t accept that God gave the Torah to Moses. I don’t believe that the Mitzvot are divine laws.” How would we react to such a public confession? Oh, we would say, “Goldberg, sit down already.” We might actually admire this person’s Hutzpah. Some of us would even agree with him.

But what about this alternative case? Let’s say the same person got up and proclaimed. “I am an anti-Zionist. I don’t believe in the State of Israel. I think the state of Israel is a cruel, monstrous state that oppresses the Palestinians. It has no right to exist. The Jews should return to Europe and let the Palestinians have their state.”

No one would yawn at that. The congregation would be outraged. And calls would be made to throw that person out the door. We would have to call a police escort.

The point I want to make is that 150 years ago the first public heretic, the God denier, the Kofer Ba’ikar, would outrage the congregation. But in our own times a Jew who does not believe in Israel, certainly a Jewish neo-Nazi, woe until him. While not all of us believe in God, the Jews overwhelmingly believe in Israel, in its right to exist, and its legitimacy as a Jewish state. We may be critical of Israel’s government or its policies, but the belief in the right for Israel to exist is as close a thing that Jews have to a dogma in our time.

Recent studies show that while there are few Jews who deny Israel, many younger American Jews are disconnected or indifferent to it. They may not get up and publicly deny Israel’s importance. They are certainly unlikely to become neo-Nazis. But the main concern is that many 20-30-somethings have little interest in Israel. Only 25% of American Jews have visited Israel. This alarming fact was so disturbing to leading Jewish philanthropists that they put their millions into a program called Birthright Israel which offers college age students free trips to Israel.
Many in this room were alive when Israel was founded. I know that moment changed your lives forever. But do your grandchildren feel the same way you do? How connected are they to Israel?

The creation of Israel is truly one of the great stories, not only of the Jews but of world history. But like any great story, it must be told over and over again and in new ways. Like Passover we have an obligation to pass it on to the next generation. Without knowing this story, those who follow us will not appreciate the remarkable courage and determination of the Jewish people to respond to catastrophe and to create a Jewish state.

In retelling this story I ask you, How has the existence of Israel changed you? What does Israel mean to you? How do we forge a stronger relationship with Israel as it enters one of the most critical periods of its existence?

Why is it that for 2000 years the Jewish people, scattered among the nations, never decided to return in Israel? Maimonides visited there and decided to live in Egypt. The expelled Jews of England in 1290 or the Jews of France in 1306 or the Jews in Spain in 1492 chose not to go settle there in mass. The Jews living amongst the Muslims chose the fleshpots of Baghdad or Fez or Cairo or Istanbul over the Holy land. But something changed in the late 19th and early 20th century. Jews moved from dreams to action and began to return in large numbers to the Promised Land.

The story of the creation Israel has infinite dimensions, but I want to look closely at only three. A person, a poem, and an idea. In telling the story of a person, a poem, and an idea we can understand the passion that led to the birth of Israel.

The story begins with a person. Why did an illiterate, assimilated Jew at the end of the 19th century begin a mass movement for Jews to return and create a Jewish state in the land of our ancestors? Theodore Herzl, despite being culturally assimilated and a leading public figure in Vienna in the latter half of the 19th century, experienced the indignities of being a Jew. Vienna like any major European had a long history of Jew hatred.

But the Jews of this era had hope and optimism. That hope lied in the West and that was France. Like many assimilated Jewish Europeans, Herzl admired France for its tolerance and legal acceptance of the Jews as full citizens. France was the paradigm of the future that he hoped would be imitated throughout Europe. The Jews of France had reached the highest levels of French society in literature, government, the military, the theatre, the arts, and in sport. Herzl believed that France pointed the way to the future of all of European Jewry. But he was in for a shock.

France got into an ill advised war with the emerging German nation state. France lost badly to Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian war. The mood in defeated France was ugly. People were looking for a scapegoat. No one thought that the identity of an officer accused of traitorous activity would matter, but when the officer, Albert Dreyfus, was accused of spying, the large mobs at the rallies calling for his punishment did not shout, “Down with the Traitor.” Rather, in rally after rally hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen shouted, “Death to the Jews”.

Herzl, covering the Dreyfus story for a Vienna newspaper, heard the cries of the mobs and never was the same man. In one shocking moment Herzl saw that the dream of emancipation for Europe’s Jews was a lie. The most progressive country in Europe seethed in the hatred of Jews. Herzl saw what no one else saw. He recognized that the Jew hatred stirred up by the Dreyfus case was not the old variety of the European-Christian kind. The Christians of Europe had for nearly 1500 years followed the teaching of the Christian sage, Augustine of Hippo (d430CE). He came up with the doctrine: Persecute the Jews, but do not destroy them. The Jews in their sorry state would be an enduring symbol to Christendom and to non-believers for their rejection of Christ.

But Herzl saw that the new Jew hatred was something different. It had been coined by others as anti-Semitism, a hatred of Jews based on economic, cultural and most of all popular racial theories of his time. The new anti-Semites in Europe saw no reason to preserve the existence of the Jews. Herzl realized that the new anti-Semites would ultimately insist on the annihilation of the Jewish people. Herzl anticipated Hitler’s final solution. He saw it as clear as day. Like one who was struck by lightning and survives to tell the tale, he became meshugeneh about getting the Jews out of Europe. There was no future there. He became an advocate for the Jews reestablishing a state of their own in a place of their own.

His initial ideas were quite astonishing. He was in such a hurry to find a place for the Jews that he developed a short list. Palestine, Azerbaijan, Uganda, Argentina, and Arizona. Any one would do. Herzl, already feeling that time was running out in 1898 went around Europe talking to any rich or influential man who would let him in the door.

The people around him thought he was crazy. Rothschild threw him out. Rulers sat amused as he laid out his dream. His friends sent him to a shrink in the capital of shrinkdom, Vienna. His shrink, Max Nordau, the most prominent psychologist besides another young man by the name of Freud, listened to the fervent idealist for three sessions and became a disciple, one of the early leaders of the Zionist movement.

Here is a passage from one of Herzl’s writings that summarizes his elevator pitch-what he tried to say to the influential people he met. They laughed. We cry.

“We are a people -- one people. We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes super-loyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands, where we have lived for centuries, we are still decried as aliens....The majority decide who the "alien" is; this and all else in the relations between peoples is a matter of power...In the world as it is now and will probably remain for an indefinite period, might takes precedence over right.

The whole plan is essentially quite simple...Let sovereignty be granted us over a portion of the globe adequate to meet our rightful national requirements; we will attend to the rest The governments of all countries scourged by anti-Semitism will be keenly interested in obtaining sovereignty for us.”

The Jewish people got a state by the skin of their teeth, and held onto it tenaciously. We have attended to the rest as Herzl said.

The second part of our story is about a poem. As Herzl push started the new Zionist movement, other forces were at work that would transform the passive, long suffering Jews. In 1903 a particularly horrible pogrom took place in the city of Kishniev. There was a Jewish poet, beloved by Eastern European Jews, who witnessed the pogrom. Hayim Nahman Bialik wrote a Hebrew poem, “The City of Slaughter”. Never has a poem left such a mark on a generation.

Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934) "The City of Slaughter" (1903)

“Arise and go now to the city of slaughter; into its courtyard wind your way;
There with your own hand touch, and with the eyes of your head,
Behold on tree, on stone, on fence, on mural clay, the spattered blood and dried brains of the dead... Descend then, to the cellars of the town, there where the virginal daughters of your folk were fouled, Where seven heathens flung a woman down,
The daughter in the presence of her mother, the mother in the presence of her daughter, With bloody axes in their paws compelled thy daughters yield.
Note also do not fail to note, in that dark corner, and behind that cask
Crouched husbands, bridegrooms, brothers, peering from the cracks,
Watching the sacred bodies struggling underneath the bestial breath,
Stifled in filth, and swallowing their blood! Watching from the darkness and its mesh. The lecherous rabble portioning for booty their kindred and their flesh!
Crushed in their shame, they saw it all; they did not stir nor move; they did not pluck their eyes out; They beat not their brains against the wall!
Perhaps, perhaps, each watcher had it in his heart to pray: A miracle, 0 Lord,—and spare my skin this day! Those who survived this foulness, who from their blood awoke, beheld their life polluted, the light of their world gone out— How did their menfolk bear it, how did they bear this yoke?
They crawled forth from their holes, they fled to the house of the Lord, they offered thanks to Him, the sweet benedictory word. The Cohanim sallied forth, to the Rabbi's house they flitted:
"Tell me, 0 Rabbi, tell, is my own wife permitted?"
The matter ends; and nothing more. And all is as it was before.
Come, now, and I will bring thee to their lairs the privies, outhouses and pigpens where the heirs of Hasmoneans lay, with trembling knees, Concealed and cowering,—the sons of the Maccabees!
The seed of saints, the scions of the lions! Who, crammed by scores in all the sanctuaries of their shame, So sanctified My name! It was the flight of mice they fled, the scurrying of roaches was their flight... They died like dogs, and they were dead!”

This is a poem about cowardly Jews, powerless Jews. The poet is disgusted with their cowardice, and shakes all his readers. This cannot go on.

What was Bialik saying to his generation? If we cannot defend our children, we are nothing. Powerlessness brings no dignity. Anyone who read and was struck by this poem came to one conclusion. Jews, need power to survive. Jews would have no dignity until they had power.

I read Bialik’s poem for the first time in 1975 during my junior year abroad in Israel for my advanced Hebrew class. This poem made me understand Israel’s special character which I could not fully appreciate growing up in America. The following year an Air France plane was high jacked. The terrorists landed the plane at the Entebbe airport in Uganda and immediately released the non-Jews and kept all the Jews as hostage. We know what happened next. Israel in a surprise raid freed the hostages, killed the terrorists, while losing one man, their commander, Yonatan Netanyahu. What was Israel saying to the world at Entebbe. Don’t mess with the Jews. We are no longer cowards. Bialik’s poem was answered.

The third part of our story is about an idea. There was this fellow name Asher Ginzberg. He was a dreamy fellow, not particularly social. But he had an idea and it possessed him. He was so inspired by the idea that he created a pen name which described his audience of readers: Achad Haam-literally ‘One of the People.’

Achad Haam was a very learned Jew. He was also a modern man. Achad Haam was troubled by the Jews in the Western Countries and by the Jews in the Eastern countries. The Jews of England, France, and Germany were assimilating, leaving traditional Judaism, abandoning its practice, its language, its culture. The Jews of the East, the Jews of Poland, Lithuania, Hungary, the Ukraine, and Russia were deeply steeped in Jewish learning but because of circumstance and choice, were completely cut off from modern Western culture. This combination, radically assimilated Jews in the West and narrowly parochial, isolated Jews in the East prevented the Jews from healthfully entering the modern world.

Ahad Haam believed fervently that Judaism had to change in order to reclaim its Jews. He believed that the central problem of Judaism in modernity was that it could not create a compelling modern culture which would hold the allegiance of Jews but would open up new ways. He wrote in one of his most famous essays,

"Law of the Heart" (1894) “A people of the book, is a slave to the book. It has surrendered its whole soul to the written word. The book ceases to be what it should be, a source of ever-new inspiration and moral strength; on the contrary, its function in life is to weaken and finally to crush all spontaneity of action and emotion, till men become incapable of responding to life without its permission and approval. The people stagnate...the book stagnates.
It is not only Jews who have to come out of the ghetto, Judaism has to come out, too. ... [Judaism] can no longer tolerate the Galut-Exilic form which it had to take on, in obedience to its will-to-live, when it was exiled from its own country; but, without that form, its life is in danger. So it seeks to return to its historic center, where it will be able to live a life developing in a natural way, to bring its powers to play in every department of human culture.
We must keep alive the idea of the national renaissance. Only then can the Jewish soul be freed from its shackles and regain contact with the broad stream of human life without having to pay for its freedom by the sacrifice of its individuality.”

For Achad Haam, the Jews were the people of the dead book. It wasn’t just that the Jews had to strive to be modern people, but Judaism had to be made modern as well. This could happen if the Jews gathered anew in their land. There, they could become a modern nation required to deal with all the issues of being a modern state and culture. Could Judaism take its place among the great cultures and engage people in all areas of human endeavor. Achad Haam believed that any re-gathering of the Jewish people required a makeover of Judaism. The new homeland cannot be just another ghetto. It had to be the starting place of a new renaissance.

Israel is the product of a Meshuggeneh person, an angry poem of protest, and a dreamy idea of a Jewish renaissance. The efforts of a Meshuggeneh person lit a fire in the Jewish people, created a movement, and helped to eventually fulfill Herzl’s dream. Bialik’s poem became a prism through which many Jews saw the Holocaust. The Holocaust could happen because the Jews had no power. Ahad Haam’s idea of a modern Jewish renaissance inspired many Jews in Israel and outside to experiment with modernizing Judaism. The efforts to find a secure modern Judaism remains the most elusive dream of Jewry. We are in the midst of many modern experiments to both modernize Judaism and to redefine the Jews. In fact, as a Conservative synagogue we are only one example of that ongoing experiment. Jews remain locked in a great cultural and religious turmoil about how to apply Judaism in the modern world.

In Israel the question of cultural renaissance was deferred in favor or a practical approach. Do what has to be done to create and run a Jewish state. So there are Jewish policeman, there are Jewish telephone repairman, there are Jewish cable installers, there are Jewish traffic controllers, there are Jewish economists, Jewish government officials, Jewish tax collectors, Jewish customs officers and Jewish generals. Jews embraced the challenge of building a workable state, a functioning democracy, a modern economic society. They have done this and they have spent huge amounts of their resources fighting and giving up their lives to preserve their accomplishment.

We who live in America have our own story as Jews who have succeeded in the most hospitable country to Jews in history. The story of Israel and America are intertwined and the lessons of one are important for the other. We enter an uncertain period in Israel’s history. The future of Israel is now inextricably linked to the United States. Israel is on the front lines of the war against a virulent Islamic ideology that seeks its destruction and the end of the Western world as we know it. The war in Iraq and the instability in the Middle East will test the resourcefulness and patience of our Jewish brothers and sisters like never before. And the emergence of a fascist Islamic state in Iraq, racing to get nuclear weapons is the greatest threat of our times, not just for Israel, but the entire world.

The discovery of Jewish neo-Nazis must be understood in context. The neo-Nazi Jews are another pathetic type of Jew, an angry alienated counterpart to the timid Jewish men of Kishniev. These disturbed youth, none of whom served in the Israeli army, sadly represent an ugly side of the reality of statehood. One of the prices of having a state is that some young people become alienated from it and drop off its edges. Israel is also old enough to reveal its shortcomings which as a state. It suffers from an ineffective education system and a poor safety net.

In my visits to Israel, my friends there always complain to me about people’s perception of it as a country under siege, bristling with guns, on edge for the next terror attack. This is simply an untrue characterization of Israeli life. One of our tasks as fellow Jews in America is to maintain a close relationship with our Israeli brothers and sisters. This means frequent trips, cultural and religious exchanges, opportunities for study and fun. Israel is family and the most important act we can do is stay in contact and interact with family.

We can also connect more deeply by rededicating ourselves to learning the Hebrew language. This is one of the great miracles of modern Israel. To participate in it means to return to the Hebrew language which is the most authentic expression of Jewish culture throughout the ages. I would love if everyone committed themselves to learning Hebrew well enough to enjoy the Joseph story in Genesis or to read a modern Israeli novelist.

One thing my friends in Israel yearn for more than anything is that they be treated like normal people trying to live good and productive lives. I end this story with another poem, that captures the the yearnings of many Israelis. This is the side of Israel we don’t see in the newspapers and on TV. It is the side of Israel we should strive to appreciate, just like spending a sustained time with a beloved family member.

Yehuda Amichai "Tourists"
Visits of condolence are all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb and on the top of Ammunition Hill. They weep over our sweet boys
And lust over our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.
Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets
at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their
target marker.
"You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head."
"But he's moving, he's moving!"
I said to myself. redemption will come only if their guide tells them,
"You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

Matanah Tovah: The Role of the Gift in Sustaining Community

2007-09-15T22:59:00.000-07:00

Matanah Tovah: The Role of the Gift in Sustaining Community
Rosh Hashannah 5768/2007
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, Temple Beth Shalom

Hayim, the beloved patriarch of the family, slipped into a coma. Everyone feared the worst. The family was called. The son flew in from New York. The daughter arrived from Boston. The aunts, the uncles, all sat despairing, waiting for the end.
Suddenly, a miracle occurred! Hayim opened his eyes. Weakly, he motioned for his son to approach so he could talk to him. Hayim was weak from the illness, so his voice was very faint as he asked,
"I've been ill?"
"Yes, Abba," replied the son with tears choking his voice, "Very ill."
Haim nodded and spoke again. "I had a dream. I was nearing death when I suddenly I smelled the aroma of your Imma’s potato kugel. I LOVE that kugel. As wonderful a cook as my Sarah is, that kugel is her masterpiece." He lied back against the pillows, weakened from the exertion of speaking.

"What a wonderful dream, Abba. But the smell is real. Mama just took the kugel out of the oven to cool."
"A miracle!" cried Hayim as he tried to rise, but weakly fell against the pillow. He turned to his son and said, "I'm still too weak to get up. Go to the kitchen and get for me a piece of your Imma's kugel."

The son obediently rose and left the room to fulfill his father's request. Those gathered around Hayim’s bed heard muffled words in the kitchen, but after a few minutes the son returned to his father’s bedside empty- handed.
Hayim looked at him and said, "Nu? Where is the kugel?"
The son replied, "I'm sorry, Abba. Imma says it’s for the Shivah.

Great joke, but it for the sake of a great line it ignores a really important part of the tradition of the Shivah-those seven days of mourning following the burial of a loved one. Friends and the community sustain the mourners with gifts of food during the Shivah, so that they need not be distracted or burdened during their mourning. Imma does not need to make the kugel. Her friends will make comfort food for her when the time comes. In Jewish tradition, gifts of food are intended to lift the yoke of despair off my shoulders when I am mired in grief.

The important point is that the friends and people in the community must bring the kugel, and the challah, the eggs, the bagels, the traditional foods of the shivah week. These are the gifts, according to Jewish tradition, that open the path of healing for one who is grief-stricken.

There are times in our lives when the presence of community can mean so much to us, when people’s presence saves us from despair and loneliness. We experience the holiness of community at these moments. That explains why the term for community in Hebrew is Kehilah Kedoshah-a holy community. A community becomes holy when it is engaged in the mitzvah of supporting each individual who is part of it during times of need and times of joy. This insight into community is one of the remarkable attributes of Judaism; it is one of the reasons, according to Gidi Grinstein, an Israeli scholar, for the mysterious survival and persistence of the Jewish people. Jews have a talent for creating, sustaining, and transplanting community wherever we find ourselves across this earth. There is a Jewish genius for creating community.

However, in America with all our affluence and comforts, our ability to create holy communities is greatly compromised. We live in a culture in which individualism, freedom, self fulfillment, and personal meaning trumps community. In the age of celebrity, our culture celebrates individual success and fame over communal effort and sacrifice.
The force of the market has taught us to look at things from the perspective of how we benefit. So people join churches and synagogues like they join an athletic club. I was reading the advertisements for the synagogues in the Orange County Jewish Magazine. I could not distinguish their ads from the pr for 24 hour fitness or Gold’s Gym. In fact most people relate to the synagogue as a commodity, the rabbi and cantor, service providers, the school, a way station for the kids. Ultimately such a utilitarian approach to communities vastly cheapens them. The members disappear when the benefits are no longer needed.
We live in the age of the Sovereign Self. The popular culture of America is about feeding, gorging, and stuffing the the individual in the hope that this will make him happy. Yet many of these very same people complain over and over about the lack of community, their loneliness, their deeply felt sense of isolation.
What is the alternative to our culture of self absorption? What makes for real a community? What is the ingredient of holiness in a holy community? What creates an authentically Jewish sense of community? What makes a community spiritually and morally excellent and transforming?

The answer to these questions begins with the simple act of a congregant bringing a kugel to the Shivah house. The preparing of food and bringing it to the shivah house is a gift. Gift giving is so common place that we never think about it. But gift giving is at the heart of what makes a community, indeed at the heart of all loving relationships. The gift is key to understanding Kehilah Kedosha-a holy community. What is the role of a gift in a community?
There are seven attributes to the gift within an authentic community.
Let me tell a story about the power of the gift to build community. A few years ago a congregant at my former congregation, named Mark, was in the middle of his struggle with cancer which ultimately would claim his life. At the time of this story he was shaky, but still strong enough to get about. He called me one day to ask me to visit with him to discuss arrangements for his final days. I mentioned to Mark that I would come over to his house that evening after going to a shivah minyan for another congregant who was mourning his father. Mark did not know the person well, but immediately asked for the address and told me he would be there to help make the minyan. I told him that he need not worry for the congregation’s Hesed Society had recruited enough people to make a minyan. But he said, ”See you there.” And a few minutes later Mark was there to my utter amazement and admiration. His presence was a gift.

Mark did not have an obligation to come to the minyan, but he knew that going to the minyan was a way of being generous, of giving of himself. It didn’t matter that he did not know the mourner that well. It did not matter if there was already a minyan. It did not matter that he was weak and uncomfortable because of his cancer. The situation presented itself and he saw this as the right thing to do.

Mark’s gift teaches us the first thing we should know about gift giving in a community: THERE IS A TIME AND CONTEXT TO GIVE A GIFT. Attending a Shivah is understood as a proper context in which to give a gift of food or of physical presence. Gift giving is made possible by certain situations that occur at intervals in our lives. Although the time of the gift may be unpredictable, once the circumstance arises we know the gift that is called for. Thus living consciously in a community is to know that you are on call to give gifts. So I know where to find my kugel recipe, when I hear news of a new mourner.

A second dimension about gifts is that WE KNOW WHAT IS CALLED FOR IN THE GIFT. Gifting in Judaism is quite straightforward. The gift may be my presence at a minyan, or a simple dish of food for a person in distress, or an invitation to my Shabbas table. The more you are at home in the culture, the clearer the idea of what gift is needed. (This is the challenge of teaching converts-how to know when to gift) Each community has a code, a language of what constitutes the gift. Those codes of giving once learned and understood, whether from childhood or as an adult allow us to fully enter the life of community.

There is third thing we should know about gift as illustrated in this story by Lewis Hyde.

“Imagine a scene. An Englishman in the colony of Massachusetts in the 17th century comes into an Indian lodge, and his hosts, wishing to make their guest feel welcome, ask him to share a pipe of tobacco. Carved from a soft red stone, the pipe itself is a peace offering that has traditionally circulated amongst the local tribes, staying in each lodge for a time but always given away again sooner or later. And so the Indians, as is only polite among their people, give the pipe to their guest when he leaves. The Englishman is tickled pink. What a nice thing to send back to the British Museum! He takes it home and sets it on the mantelpiece.

A time passes and the leaders of a neighboring tribe come to visit the colonist’s home. To his surprise he finds his guests have some expectation in regard to his pipe and his translator finally explains to him that if he wishes to show his goodwill he should offer them a smoke and give them the pipe. In consternation the Englishman invents a phrase to describe these people with such a limited sense of private property: The Indian-giver.

But our Indian giver understood a cardinal property of the gift: WHATEVER WE HAVE GIVEN IS SUPPOSED TO BE GIVEN AWAY AGAIN, NOT KEPT. Or, if it is kept, something of similar value should move on in its stead, the way a billiard ball may stop when it sends another scurrying across the felt, its momentum transferred. There are other forms of property that stand still, that mark a boundary or resist momentum, but the gift keeps going. THE GIFT MUST ALWAYS MOVE.

The kugel I bring to the shivah house is part of the movement of the gift. Although it is consumed, it continues to move when a few weeks later the mourner brings a challah to someone else who is sitting shivah. The spirit of the gift regenerates when we pass on another gift to the next person. This does not have to happen immediately. But the gift must not stay still with us. The movement must not be permanently interrupted. The gift or the value of the gift must always move.

But in order to keep the gift moving, doesn’t it make sense to reciprocate in response to the person who gave me the kugel? Shouldn’t it be both necessary and sufficient to send a thank you note, or maybe even to send a dish in return? But in communities the key is not the response to the donor; it is the direction you pass it on. GIFT GIVING IN AUTHENTIC COMMUNITIES IS CIRCULAR. This is the fourth attribute of the gift in a community.

When a gift moves in a circle in a community I do not give the gift to the person who gave it originally to me. I give a gift to the next person in need. The gift may very well return to me over time, but it will circulate through many people on its way around the circle. “It is as if the gift goes around a corner before it comes back. I have to give blindly and I will feel a sort of blind gratitude myself. When the gift moves in a circle its motion is beyond the control of the person, and so each bearer must be a part of the group and each donation is an act of social faith.” (Hyde) So after my mourning is over I get a call from the Sisterhood asking me to deliver a meal to a young couple with a new baby. A few months later that couple brings a Shabbat candles to someone who is sick in the hospital.

Gifts in communities move in a circular motion. This is hard to grasp because we think of gift giving as acts of reciprocity between two people. Two people in love give gifts back and forth in a way that sustains and regenerates love. But over time if they limit their gift giving to each other, their generosity will decline or they may start keeping score. A Kashmiri folk tale tells of two Brahmin women who tried to dispense with their charitable obligations by simply giving alms back and forth to each other. When they died, they returned to earth as two wells so poisoned that no one could take water from them.

This sad tale illustrates the spiritual bottleneck of clique within a community. A clique within a community extends gifts to their circle of family and friends. A clique in a community is like a partially blocked artery, it reduces the circular flow of gift giving in the wider community To sustain a community we must give gifts not only to our family and friends, but also to those outside our own circles.

Gift giving is a relay, extending the hand to the next one whose hand is open. The secret of community is that we must know to move the gift to the next worthy person. We are ready to give, but we also must be ready to receive. A gift circle will not work if a potential recipient refuses to accept the gifts of others.

Often a Jews tells me,. “I don’t want to trouble people with my loss.” But the community exists to be troubled and bothered. That is part of the unwritten contract of being in a community. You join a shul to be bothered, to be nudged, and to be pushed beyond yourself. You also join a shul to let people show their care for you. Lots of Jews nowadays don’t join shuls because they don’t have time or don’t want to be bothered. Or they don’t have time to receive the care and concern of strangers outside my immediate circle. Those of us who have chosen to join a synagogue have to demonstrate to our non-connected friends the value of being bothered, of being needed and of receptivity to the compassion of others.

The recipient of a gift is also doing a mitzvah. She is causing another person to become worthy of doing a mitzvah. She is unblocking the artery, the lifeblood of a community to flow freely and generously. That explains the custom of not knocking when coming to a Shivah house. You just enter. The mourner makes it easy to receive the gift of your presence.

The fifth attribute of the gift is that EVERY ONE CAN GIVE regardless of whether you are rich or poor. One mark of the genius of the Halachah-Jewish law is its moral concern for preventing the community from fragmenting along economic lines. The rich cannot separate from the poor. We are bound to a greater destiny than class or life circumstances. The giving of the gift must be available to all. The gift of the kugel is the same whether I am rich or poor. My presence at the minyan is not a function of my economic standing.

Our tradition makes a sharp distinction between two types of gifts, gifts of money-tzedaka and gifts of lovingkindness-gemilut hasadim. It says in Talmud Sukkot 49b: “Acts of gemilut hasadim are superior to tzedaka (gifts of money) in three respects. Tzedaka can be accomplished only with money; gemilut hasadim can be accomplished through personal involvement as well as with money. Tzedaka can be given only to the poor; gemilut hasadim can be exchanged between rich and poor. Tzedaka applies only to the living; gemilut hasadim applies to both the living and the dead.

The last line of this teaching reveals the sixth dimension we should know about gifts and community. The circle of giving goes beyond the living to include the dead. GIVING UNITES THE LIVING AND THE DEAD. When we extend gifts to others in our community we carry on the gifts of those who have gone before us. We remember our loved ones by the way they gave. In fact they taught us how to give. The other day Rabbi David and Yetta Kane invited me to their home for Shabbat dinner. The food was delicious and I asked Yetta where she learned to cook. She told the story of how her mother taught her to cook in the displacement camps after the war. She told me how her mother bartered for a goat in exchange for candy and chocolate so they could have milk. The delicious kugel I ate at her house on Shabbat made me think of that goat providing milk in the displacement camp, of Yetta’s courageous and nurturing mother and her gift of the art of cooking to her daughter. We are Jews because of the gifts of our ancestors, both immediate and distant. Avraham and Sarah’s hospitality for the wayfarer; Joseph’s loving burial of his father, Jacob; Moshe’s act of kindness of taking Joseph’s bones out of Egypt; Rabbi Hillel’s gentleness before the man who wanted to learn about Judaism while standing on one foot. Rabbi Meir’s compassion for his wayward colleague, Elisha ben Abuye.

The seventh and last attribute of a gift in a community is that GOD MUST BE BROUGHT INTO THE GIFT CIRCLE.

The gift circle must include God for it to become holy. All giving in a community must flow from a faith in the giving nature of God. God starts the circle and our gifts circle back to God and they keep on moving, flowing, and breathing.

The gifts we give are no other than imitations of God’s gifts to us.

“‘Follow the Lord your God (Deut. 13:5).’ What does this mean? Is it possible for a mortal to follow God’s Presence? The verse means to teach us that we should follow the attributes of the Holy One, praised by He. As He clothes the naked, you should clothe the naked. The Torah teaches that the Holy One visits the sick, you should visit the sick. The Holy One comforts those who mourn; you should comfort those who Mourn. The Holy One buries the dead; you should bury the dead.” Babylonian Talmud Sotah 14a

Let us remember these principles of the Matanah-The Gift. The secret of achieving holy community is:
1. THERE IS A TIME TO GIVE A GIFT
2. WE KNOW WHAT IS CALLED FOR IN THE GIFT.
3. THE GIFT MUST ALWAYS MOVE
4. THE GIFT MUST MOVE IN A CIRCLE.
5. EVERY ONE CAN GIVE
6. GIVING UNITES THE LIVING AND THE DEAD.
7. GOD MUST BE IN THE GIFT CIRCLE.

The ultimate gift that God gave the Jewish people is described in this famous passage from the Talmud. .

“That you may know that I the Lord sanctify you: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses, I have a precious gift-Matanah Tovah- in My treasure house, called the Sabbath, and desire to give it to Israel; go and inform them. (Talmud Bavli Berachot 10b)

The Torah claims that the eternal cycle of gift giving began with the Sabbath-the Matanah Tovah-the precious gift of God. How does a Jew testify to the giving God in the world? He does not set up missions to the gentiles, he does not preach to millions over the airwaves. He does not blow himself up inside a bus. He has you sit down with him at his Shabbas table. For when we bring guests to our Shabbat table we accept the precious gift God has given us and lovingly share it with those present at our table. And they, our kind guests also, God willing, will share their table with others. In this way God’s precious gift, the Sabbath, is passed on in a circle around the community, moving across the generations, and uniting us with past and future generations of Jews who guard it and give it in love.
It was tradition to for a sage to have his coffin made of his Sabbath table. I once shared this with my wife’s family who are in the furniture business and suggested they ought to sell tables by suggesting to people that it could also serve as a coffin. But kidding aside, this tradition is a recognition that the table which served as a welcoming place for probably thousands of people over a life time is deeply associated with us even after we die. The instrument of our gift giving is buried with us.
This year at Beth Shalom we hope to strengthen the culture of the gift in our congregation with a special emphasis on our theme for the year. Jewish hospitality. Please join us for the various efforts we will make to build a more caring and welcoming community. Attend a Shivah minyan, prepare some food for family with a new arrival, welcome a new member, have people to your table for a Shabbat meal.

Ponder this. The ability to build a community around gift giving is the secret to the longevity of the Jews. We move our gifts from generation by generation. May this new year renew your capacity to give, to receive the gifts of others, and to help fashion within all of us a Holy Community-a Kehilah Kedoshah that is worthy of the holy congregations of the Jewish people that have preceded us.

Five Phases of the Shofar

2007-09-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

The Five Phases of the Shofar
Erev Rosh Hashannah 5768 Sept. 12, 2007
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, Temple Beth Shalom

Do you remember the first time you heard the Shofar? How old were you? Where were you? Who were you with? How was it explained to you? How did you feel when you heard the blast? Were you scared? Were you exhilarated?

The Blowing of the Shofar is one of the most dramatic rituals in Judaism. The Mitzvah, however, is not the blowing of the Shofar; rather the Mitzvah is to listen to its sound. “Lishmoa Kol Shofar- to listen to the Shofar sound.” Many Mitzvot involve the intentional use of a physical and sensory capacity. In the case of the Shofar we are commanded to listen with our ears.

In the age of the Ipod, this is especially hard to do. Never have human beings lived in a time when they can fill their ears with every pleasurable sound and shut out the rest of the world. It used to be we had a few stations we could hear, but now you can personalize what you want to hear, mix your own music, listen to your designer station, fill your time with the airwaves at every moment. I heard a story of a driver who drove off a cliff. At first, the authorities thought it was a suicide, but later they concluded that he was in a daze, listening to his Ipod and simply did not notice the turn and went flying to his death.

This is a new high in blissful unawareness.

But the mitzvah of listening to the Shofar is something entirely different. There is something mysterious about listening to this sound. What are we listening for?

Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav said that when the Shofar blows one hundred times on Rosh Hashannah, a bridge is formed between heaven and earth. According to another sage, the Tiferet Uziel the sounds of the Shofar are a secret language that is only understood in Heaven. We might then imagine from these comments, that when we hear the sound of the Shofar, we are hearing the echoes of Heaven. We are, as it were, overhearing supernal worlds, capturing through a hint of God’s message, apprehending just barely the conversation of angels.

The heavenly voice of the Shofar is much more subtle than listening to the blasts on Rosh Hashannah. The blowing of the Shofar during this season does not all take place on Rosh Hashannah. In fact there are five phases to the Shofar season, some which feature the blast, some of which feature silence. All are part of the symphony of the Shofar, the movements of the Ram’s Horn that make it possible to hear Heaven a bit more clearly. What are these phases?

The first time we have the opportunity to listen to the Shofar is the period of thirty days prior to Rosh Hashannah. The first blast of the Shofar begins on the first day of the preceding month of Ellul. We blow the Shofar on each weekday morning after the daily minyan. We hear the notes, Tekiah-Shevarim-Teruah-Tekiah, but unlike Rosh Hashannah we do not hear the notes announced. Nor do we pronounce a blessing in advance of hearing the Shofar as on Rosh Hashannah.

Ellul in Jewish tradition is understood as an acronym for a verse in the Song of Songs, “I am my beloveds and my beloved is mine-Ani (alef) Ldodi (lamed) vdodi (vav) li (lamed)”, spelling Elul in Hebrew. This hints that Elul is a time of love and connection. The rabbis understood this time as an opportunity for renewed relationship with God. Any attempt to take God seriously in our lives involves self reflection. The Shofar blast is meant to trigger self reflection in us. There was a medieval tradition of taking an hour to meditate each day of Ellul after the blowing of the Shofar. Thus the Shofar during the month of Ellul serves as the equivalent of a mediation gong.

Phase two happens on Erev Rosh Hashannah, the day before the festival. Tradition has us refrain from blowing the Shofar. This abstinence parallels the practice of not eating Matza on Erev Pesah and not sitting in the Sukkah on Erev Sukkot. Listen to two explanations for this intentional omission.

“The ram's-horn is not blown after the prayer (on Erev Rosh Hashannah) as it is on the other days of Elul, in order to mark a halt between the optional blasts of Ellul and obligatory blasts of the New Year, that is to say, between the blasts during Elul which are but a custom, and the blasts on Rosh Hashannah, which the Torah commanded.” [Levush]

Another Explanation: “(The silence of the Shofar on Erev Rosh Hashannah) is done in order to confuse Satan, to keep him ignorant of the coming of Rosh Hashannah when he brings charges against men, and to deceive him to think that the Day of Judgment has already passed. “ [Mateh Moshe]

These sources claim that transitions matter. How we handle transitions is critical. Spiritual traditions value and give meaning to transitions. These passages cause in us an escalation of concern, a marked increase in anxiety, but also a window of opportunity. To help us do the mitzvah of Shofar listening, we must have a silence to get ready. . If Heaven is to become audible, we must have the quiet to listen. The absence of something helps us to feel it more strongly when it reappears. We should not become habituated to the Shofar, to become complacent to its shrill blast.

The tradition of confusing Satan feels more primitive and grates at our modern view of Judaism. But our ancestors felt very vulnerable, that their lives hung in the balance during this time. Rosh Hashannah is Yom Hadin-the Day of Judgment. Satan in Jewish tradition is not a devil, but serves as God’s DA, the prosecutor who presents the faults of each of us before God as Satan does to Job in the Bible. By not blowing the Shofar we ask the court to take a recess, to allow ourselves to prepare our case which we will present in full over the next 10 days.

Phase 3: On Rosh Hashannah the Shofar is blown 100 times. Because the blasts are critical to enabling people to fulfill the Mitzvah of listening, the laws concerning their placement, clarity, and accuracy are quite intricate. The main concern of the Halachah is that the Shofar be blown in a way that is distinct and clear. The law, as it were, wants us to invest in good speakers, to get a good surround sound system so we can hear well.

What is the purpose of the Mitzvah of listening to the Shofar on Rosh Hashannah? According to Maimonides the purpose of the 100 blasts serves to wake us up. He wrote,

“Despite the fact that the blowing of the ram's-horn on Rosh Hashanah is an explicit decree in the Scripture, it is also a crying out, as if to say: ‘Awake, O you sleepers, awake from your sleep! O you slumberers, awake from your slumber! Search your deeds and turn in Teshuvah. Remember your Creator, O you who forget the truth in the vanities of time and go astray all the year after vanity and folly that neither profit nor save. Look to your souls, and better your ways and actions. Let every one of you abandon his evil way and his wicked thought….’” [Maimonides, Hilkhot Teshuvah III.]

Phase 4: The critical period of the Days of Awe is neither Rosh Hashannah nor Yom Kippur. It is the days in between when we are commanded to seek Teshuvah- repentance. The tradition assumes that we have listened during the New Year and that we have moved it up a notch, gone into action mode. Thus the Shofar falls silent during the –‘Aseret Yemai Teshuvah-the 10 days of repentance.‘

This silence is as equally striking as the silence on Erev Rosh Hashannah. The blasts of Elul and Rosh Hashannah function as goads-like the irritating alarm tone in my bedroom alarm clock that grows louder and louder until my discomfort forces me to get out of bed and turn it off. The moment after I turn the darn thing off, I realize that I am standing there; I am out of bed; I am awake although very, very grouchy. This is the role of the Shofar and its immediate aftermath of sustained silence. I realize that I am standing there awake. I am grouchy, but I have work to do!

What are we waking to? I believe the voice of Heaven, the voice of the Shofar is God’s way of forcing us to see our reality without illusion. We can only change when we see the truth. Hearing the truth about ourselves can be very unpleasant.

Rabbi Alan Lew tells a story of a Rabbi who was invited to a congregant’s home to view the first showing of the videotape of the wedding he had recently performed for this man’s daughter. As the tape begins, the rabbi and the cantor are seen standing alone under the wedding canopy, blissfully unaware that the videotape is running. They can be heard making fun of both families and how poorly the parents are adapting to their new status as in-laws. Then the cantor makes a disparaging remark about the bride’s mother’s dress. He calls it a ‘shmatte’. Then the rabbi himself can be heard uttering a profane assessment of the groom’s uncle.

Now imagine if God was playing back an embarrassing tape of yourself and you are looking at it for the first time. We are looking at ourselves unmasked before the Holy of Holies. On the 10 days of Teshuvah, God invites us home to see the real tape, the tape we fool ourselves into thinking does not exist. But if we are awake then the tape is not so surprising. In fact we have taken action to repair the errors and mistakes and wrongs that are so blatantly revealed on the tape of life.

While the mitzvah to listen to the shofar blasts ideally awakens a new awareness within ourselves, the action plan of the 10 days is outwardly directed and focused on our relationships. Jewish tradition requires us to repair the broken human relationships in our lives during this period. We are commanded to face directly those we have wronged, renounce our sin, and ask for forgiveness.

On Yom Kippur we then return to our interior lives and face our relationship with God. On this long day of fasting, it is as if, God is playing back the tape of our behavior in which we assumed that God was not watching. Or better, God plays the tape of our actions in which we assumed we were God, that there was no one or no thing that could question what we were doing or cast doubt on the wisdom or righteousness of our actions. The tape that God plays back to us on the long hours of Yom Kippur is a record of our vanities, our arrogance, our self satisfaction, our obliviousness, our pig headedness, or insensitivity, our inhumanity, our stubbornness, our self-satisfaction. It is only after we have seen this tape that we can hear the Shofar again.

Phase 5 At Neilah, the concluding service of Yom Kippur, we listen to a singular blast of the Shofar, one long, prolonged note. The blast is preceded by the recitation of three short verses: the Shema Yisrael, the Baruch Shem, and finally a verse from 1st Kings, Chapter 18 from the narratives about Elijah the Prophet. In the story, the verse “Adonai Hu Haelohim-Adonai He is the God” are the words spoken by the people when they acknowledge the public miracle of God’s presence on Mt. Carmel. In that story 400 prophets of Baal receive silence to their offering, while Elijah the prophet’s sacrifice is accepted by God. Clearly the blowing of the Shofar at the end of Yom Kippur is meant to remind us of the greatest public vindication of God in the Jewish Bible. We are acknowledging at the end of the Yom Kippur that there is a recorder who makes and safeguards our tape. We are accountable for this tape; we are required to review the tape, make changes, and reconcile with people and God. And our tradition adds that God desires our reconciliation. Only we have to want it also.

The end of Yom Kippur is the purest monotheistic moment of all of Jewish ritual. It is the acknowledgment that there is a moral force in the universe greater than us to whom we are held accountable. The whole process I have described hangs on that very moment at the end of Yom Kippur and that final Tekiah Gedolah that concludes the cycle of the Shofar.

The Shofar cycle is a carefully layered ritual that both builds in intensity and sustains drama by an alternation between a blast of the sounds and silence. The teaching of the Shofar is that awareness must be nursed along. It does not come and go, but must be drawn out, teased out of us. It must be sustained and it must be let go. The ritual leads us to self-awareness and a reconnection with other human beings and ultimately with God.

This is captured by the blessing, a powerful catalyst for the harnessing of our awareness. At the very center of this process we hear the blessing of the Baal Tokea-the Shofar blower, “Baruch Ata Adoshem Eloheinu Melech Haolam Asher Kidshanu Bmitzvotav V’tzivanu Lishmoa Kol Shofar –Blessed are You Hashem, our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and has commanded us to listen to the sound of the Shofar.”

We must listen, during the short blasts, the long blasts, the single blasts and the multiple blasts, the silent blasts and the loud blasts. The blessing is the expression of hope for that we can really hear these blasts and these silences above the noise of our daily lived, the background music, the talk radio that mires us in mindlessness. To achieve this depends on our openness, our will, and our discipline to tune out the static, perform the mitzvah that enables us to hear the sounds of heaven.

Some Simple Ways to Build Community on the High Holidays

2007-08-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Giving People More of a Stake in High Holiday Services
15 Elul, 5768/29 September, 2007

As I prepare for my first High Holidays at Temple Beth Shalom, I wanted to give you a peek into some of the things I am planning for our services. There a few tweeks that I will make to give the services a special feeling. While I am spending a lot of time preparing sermons, I also give a considerable amount of time to plan the order of services, a sort of scripting. It is in this planning that you are able to add d imension and depth to a service. Ultimately the quality of the service will be determined by the ‘lev’-the heart that is felt by those who lead and how all of us participate in the service. Making openings for the heart to find expression is one of the keys to planning.

The High Holiday services are a unique opportunity to build a sense of community as well as to create a space for the individual to express his or her spiritual needs. There are a number of communal prayers that are recited just after the Haftarah-the prophetic reading which provide opportunities to acknowledge people who serve and people who have made significant transitions in their lives. During these prayers I will be asking people to come up on the Bimah to honor them. You might be among them, so now you are duly notified.

Rosh Hashannah First Day
Prayer for New Babies: This communal prayer custom is unique to TBS. We call on all parents and grandparents who celebrated the birth of a new child in their families during the past year.
Prayer for the Congregation: I will invite all new members and those who converted to Judaism during the past year to come up to be honored for their decision to join our community and our people.
Prayer for the Country: I will invite to the Bimah those who serve in our armed forces, veterans, civil servants, and public officials within our congregation who will receive our gratitude for serving our country.
Prayer for Jewish Communities: I will invite members of our congregations who come from Jewish communities outside the United States to acknowledge our diversity as a Jewish community.
Prayer for Israel: I will invite all of you who visited Israel during the past year to affirm our commitment as American Jews to the Jewish homeland.

Yom Kippur Day
Yekum Purkan (Prayer on behalf of Scholars) I will invite to the Bimah our members who have served the Jewish community as educators, professionals, and have taught Torah during the past year to wish them success and to extend honor to them for their efforts.
Prayer for the Congregation: I will invite to the Bimah our Board of Directors and all those who have served on synagogue committees during the past year to acknowledge their service to our community.
Prayer for Peace: I will call to the Bimah our worshippers who have volunteered with organizations to help improve the world. We want to acknowledge social activists in our midst who dedicate their lives to social justice and improving the human condition either as professionals or volunteers.

The Temple Beth Shalom Paginator: Hama’amad- (from the word amud-page)
As a kid I sat behind a wooden scoreboard at little league games and put numbers in the slots to tell the score. When I was a young man I went to a shul that had its own type of scoreboard. A child stood behind it and kept on flipping pages with large numbers on it. I wondered if there was some sort of competition on the Bimah between the cantor and the rabbi. Maybe they were keeping thetime of the service. Upon closer observation I saw that this scoreboard announced the pages so that the Rabbi or Cantor did not have to verbally announce the page and detract from the service. When I became a rabbi I commissioned a woodworker to make this contraption and called it a paginator or the Hebrew term Hama’amad.. I then recruited kids who could follow the service to sit on the Bimah and flip the pages so everyone in the congregation knew where we were in the Siddur.

One of my first official acts as rabbi at TBS was to commission a paginator to be made by Master Paginator Builder, Lyle Margulies, of the Northwest Jewish tribe of Seattle. (He is a member of another Beth Shalom up in Seattle, one of the Beth Shalom franchise shuls that dot our fine country.) He hopes to have it to us by the High Holidays where it will bless our Bimah and will help all of you not to lose your place at services ever again (unless the paginator operater falls asleep or misflips a page which will all cause us to be on the wrong page, God forbid.)

There is a method to my madness about something that seems inconsequential or quaint as a synagogue paginator. It is one of the methods I use to increase participation in our worship. It provides an opportunity for young persons to sit on the Bimah and to engage in the service. It removes anxiety from people who have trouble following Hebrew about where we are in the service. It allows the Rabbi and Cantor to focus on leading the prayers. It makes our service more accessible to newcomers. It may even allow us to keep score. I hope you enjoy our new paginator and that it enhances your worship experience at TBS.

Younger Persons: Become a Flipper or a Greeter Usher by joining the Future Mentches of Israel-FMI
The Future Mentches of Israel-FMI-is the name of our loose organization of young volunteers at Temple Beth Shalom. To join all you need to do is volunteer for the following. Parents and Teenagers: Please sign yourself or your children up by responding to this email or by calling and emailing the office before 9/7/07.

Paginator Flippers
I call upon our children to serve as ‘page flippers’ during High Holiday services. Children need to be available to sit at least one hour on the Bimah. Flippers will sit near the Rabbi who will help them to keep pace with the service and flip the correct pages. I recommend that the starting age for a flipper on the High Holidays be 10 and up or any child that has basic Hebrew reading ability. Even if you don’t, please volunteer. Younger children will be given an opportunity to be flippers on Shabbat. Paginating can be counted as community service for those who go to schools that require community service hours. We will be organizing a regular sign up process for services throughout the year after the holidays.

Young Adults as Greeter-Ushers
Speaking of community service, I call upon teenagers, post Bar Mitzvah and up, to serve as greeter ushers during the High Holiday services. All volunteer greeter ushers may apply this activity toward Junior High and High School community service hours. By ushering you get an automatic membership in FMI.
This invitation also goes out to adults at TBS, who want to enhance our services by making them more welcoming. I will be hosting a dessert and 1 hour orientation meeting on how to be a greeter-usher at the synagogue on Sunday, September 9th at 7:00pm in the Beit Midrash which is a prerequisite for getting community service credit. Please note that anyone who serves as a greeter usher is also fulfilling a mitzvah-hachnasat orchim-welcoming the guest. Jewish hospitality is the congregational theme this coming year.

My wife Robbie and I wish each of you a Shanah Tovah,
This will be posted to Rabbiblog. To see previous entries, please ciick http://rabbidovblog.blogspot.com/

Shalom,

Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

The Story of Eugene Schlesinger

2007-08-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

The most enjoyable aspect of coming to a new community is eliciting people’s stories and Jewish journeys. I have been doing a lot of listening, giving opportunities for people to tell their stories in private or in groups. Some of you are ready to tell your story. Others want more time. I hope to hear from all of you over time. Judaism is a story telling religion and people. Our most beloved book-The Haggadah of Pesah-means telling. We are commanded to tell the ‘story’ of the Exodus to our children. By extension, we are commanded to tell our own exodus and birth stories to our loved ones and to our community.

In this Igeret (epistle) I would like to share with you a few stories I heard this week from a long time, beloved, and respected member of our congregation, Eugene Schlesinger. Eugene invited me to his home to spend some time together. He proceeded to share with me his stories of growing up in a small village and surviving the holocaust in Czechoslovakia. Eugene gave me permission to share them with you.

Eugene grew up in very traditional Jewish home in a small village which had a handful of Jewish families. There were similar villages in the area, all with their handful of Jewish families. None of the villages had a synagogue or the capacity to make a minyan. So Shabbat rotated from village to village, with the families from close by villages staying with families in one of the villages to be able to make a minyan and to hold services. They had no rabbi, but in Europe regular Yiddin were well educated religiously and could organize their services without a rabbi. I was very touched by this picture of a movable minyan and the readiness of these pious families to move out of their homes for an entire Shabbat to create community with their ‘landsmen’ in another village. This shows that you do not need a building to create community. What really builds community is the love and desire to share special time with others. Sabbath is what ideally binds the Jews. What a remarkable illustration of its power.

Eugene told me many amazing stories about the holocaust, but this one stands out. When the Nazis came to take him, he had to part with his mother. She told him to wrap his Tallit and Tefillin each morning in order to stay alive. Through four years in the camps Eugene kept her command, wrapping his tallit and tefillin often in the most extreme conditions. Toward the end of the war he escaped from one of the camps as the German war machine was collapsing. He recovered a German army uniform from a dead soldier and put it on to disguise his identity. One day he came upon a field and saw a large assemblage of German soldiers standing with their arms up. He realized that they were prisoners of an advance Russian unit. He started to walk toward the prisoners but was stopped by a Russian soldier who ordered him to hand over his knapsack. He rifled through it and pulled out Eugene’s talit and tefillin bag. He looked at Eugene and said, ‘Ivri (Hebrew)?’. Eugene nodded. The Russian soldier pointed to the forest and Eugene realized that he needed to leave right away. He ran toward the forest to safety and heard the machine gun fire behind him as the German prisoners were gunned down by the Russians. He realized that the Russian soldier was a Jew and realized that Eugene was wearing a German uniform to survive.

A couple of weeks ago at Shabbat morning services I asked people to share with me their most vivid Shabbat memory. Eugene told me that he did not speak up at the service because his most vivid memory was deeply painful. Eugene came to his home village after he was liberated and found himself to be completely alone. Apparently, no one had survived from his family or his neighbors. Friday evening arrived and Eugene lit the candles in his empty house and observed Shabbat by himself. At this point in our conversation, Eugene wept. I was so deeply moved that he shared this Shabbat memory. May Eugene be blessed with many more joyous and loving Shabbat memories. I hope that Beth Shalom will be a place for many of those joyous and loving Shabbatot.

As a young man I came to affirm my Jewishness as I learned of the holocaust and heard accounts of those who came through it. I eventually chose the rabbinate in part because of my passionate commitment to help strengthen the Jewish people after this great trauma. I have been a rabbi for over twenty years and as one would expect it is easy to forget the reasons for choosing the arduous life for the rabbinate. Eugene’s moving and emotional accounts of his experiences brought me right back to my convictions for being a rabbi and serving the Jewish people. I was honored to be in the presence of a person who survived these very dark days and emerged from the crucible a mensch. He has blessed this community, this country, and the Jewish people with his exceptional leadership, generosity, and courage.

I have heard other amazing stories from the folks of Beth Shalom will try to share them or to get the tellers to share them with our community and with the younger generations. Please feel free to tell me your unique story and what brings you to our community.
Shalom, Rabbi Dov Gartenberg

Info on the Blog-Flapping at Home Depot

2007-08-09T23:57:00.000-07:00

‘Igrot Mei Hof Hayam’-Epistles from the Seashore
Emails from Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
Friday, Aug. 10, 2007 Email V.1;E3

To the folks at TBS and cyberspace,

Introducing Rabbiblog
Thank you for the positive feedback to the Epistles from the Seashore. I will try to keep these coming. I will now be posting them on my blog. It is dangerous for Rabbis to discover new media. We tend to be long winded in general and the blog is well suited for rabbinic windbags. I have for the most part learned the art of keeping my live sermons short (It took two decades of rabbinating to do that) but I am still mastering the blog form. In any case you can log onto my blog which is artfully named, Rabbiblog. I know you will want to bookmark this, so here it is: http://rabbidovblog.blogspot.com/ .

My Purple Period
You can read postings from the last three years. Like artists, rabbis go through periods. Picasso had his blue period and rose period. The last nineteen years was my teal period, a Northwest color, still worn occasionally by the Seattle Mariners during Spring training. The last three years were my hot teal period, a time of creativity and new ideas. I started a new non-profit and experimented with some new rabbinic approaches. You can read about them on the blog. Many of these ideas were generated because I was out of the pulpit and had the opportunity to create without the pressures of a pulpit life. So you will see a different side of my rabbinate.
I think I am entering the purple period, when rabbis have the chance to summon experience, wisdom, and insight from years of service. Purple is the color of the priesthood as well, so I hope I demonstrate the worldly wisdom of the Cohanim. In any case, I hope this recent turn in my career will bode well and will be reflected in the blog. Please feel free to comment, since the blog allows for that. While I cannot promise to respond promptly, I will try to do so to realize its potential for communication.

Sermon Postings
I will also post sermons I write out on the blog for your review. I know most people don’t make it to shul or don’t want to come. But people do tell me they would like to read or hear the sermon. Any sermon I write out I will post here on the blog. I will post them after Shabbat after I have delivered the sermon, but for a special fee I will send out previews so you can decide whether it is worth coming to shul for a live version. (If you think I was serious, don’t read on.)
I am currently doing a series of sermons named after an impressive book by my colleage, Rabbi Alan Lew, the Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth Shalom in San Francisco, (another shul in the Beth Shalom franchise, 100,000 polyester kippot sold!). The book, This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared gives a beautiful interpretation on how to understand the High Holiday period. Rabbi Lew argues that the High Holiday period runs from Tisha B’av, the fast day in mid summer to the end of Sukkot in the fall. In this framework he gives a deeply spiritual understanding of this annual journey we do as Jews. I have been teaching from this book and adding my own insights during this series of Friday evening sermons which will continue through Sukkot. I suggest that you get the book in preparation for your own holidays. I think it will greatly enhance your experience of services and beyond. Look at the emailed or hard copy, Hasofer Lashavua-The Weekly Scribe, for the sermon schedule.

Shabbat Morning Live
On Shabbat mornings I have introduced a new (for TBS) form of rabbinic presentation called a ‘Limud’. Limud means study. I take a few verses from the portion of the week, illuminate their meaning while also bringing one or two texts from the Talmud * or Midrash . I ask questions, encourage comments, and keep the content rich, stimulating, and funny. My main goal is to show the infinitely fascinating world of the rabbis and how they understood life through our great texts. I was very pleased to see the level of participation, especially from the young people.

Flapping Hands
I was in the Home Depot on one of my recent moving shopping ventures and I saw a teenager with his family in the aisle flapping his hands wildly. As I approached I saw the mother take his hands and put them at his side, pleading softly with him to calm down.
I have an autistic son who I love deeply. He does similar things. His name is Mori. I likes to walk tiptoe and to put his forefingers on his temples. He coos out loud and makes funny faces. I grew to be proud of his eccentricities and the strange encounters his expressions would engender. I melt every time I run into an autistic person in a public space. So when I passed by the family, I commented to the mother, “I have one too.” She turned to me and said with some relief, “So you know what it’s like.” I nodded and smiled and we went on our way.
There is a blessing upon seeing a unique individual: “Baruch ….Mshaneh Haberiot. Blessed are You, Adonai, who has made all your creatures different from one another. “ I said it to myself as I passed and meditated on our shared fate as parents of disabled children. Nothing like going to Home Depot to have meaningful human encounters.

I am attaching the talk I gave about Mori the week before his Bar Mitzvah ceremony. This is one of my favorite sermons. I hope you like it too.
May you have a restful and joyful Shabbat,

A Proper Blessing at a Bar Mitzvah
Rabbi Dov Gartenberg
Jan. 25, 2003 Shabbat Yitro

Next week our children, Moriel and Fay will be marking their Bnei Mitzvah at Shabbat morning services. During rehearsal this Sunday we practiced the parental blessings. After chanting the Birkat Hacohanim, we started to chant the Baruch shepatarani blessing over our son, Mori. I realized at that moment that I could not really say this blessing over him. I paused for one moment before turning to Fay and practicing saying it over her.

This blessing, which parents recite over children when they reach the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah, is Baruch ata adoshem eloheinu melech haolam shepatarani meonsho shelazeh. It is translated in the new RA manual as Praised are You, Adonai our God who rules the universe, who has freed us of some responsibilities and conferred new ones upon this child. Perfectly appropriate for Fay, but not for Mori, who will never have the ability to choose responsibility for the observance of Mitzvot. I wondered, what blessing should we say for Mori?

In Parshat Yitro, we celebrate the giving of the Decalogue and remember that great turning point at Sinai. Jews over the generations regard the giving of the law as God’s greatest gift. Every Bar Mitzvah is a reenactment of that great moment when God brings us into a holy way of life. Our sages understood the gift as a precious burden as well. That is why the Bar Mitzvah blessing is formulated in the negative --shepatarani meonsho shelazeh.-God has exempted us (the parents) from the punishment for his transgressions of the Torah.

It is strange when a parent covets the possibility of punishment as part of the vain hope that a child may gain the capacity for conscience.

It is the transgression of the 10th utterance, thou shalt not covet, that a parent of a severely disabled child commits over and over again. I cannot deny that when I see another child Mori’s age, for a fleeting moment I covet his health, his capacity for making friends, his plans for his future. I covet a family’s relaxed air at a restaurant while I sit nervously afraid that Mori might make a scene over food. Paul, the first Christian, so alienated from his Judaism and so misunderstanding of it, at least had it right about thou shalt not covet. This Mitzvah makes you aware of how deep seated jealous longing is and how painfully difficult it is to consistently fulfill this divine command.

On NPR’s Talk of the Nation this week there was an hour devoted to describing the life of families with autistic children and siblings. I was particularly struck by the observations of callers about how afraid they were to go out in public with their autistic children for fear of embarrassment. The expert on the show observed that families with autistic children often shut themselves in their homes because they feel that no one can understand their autistic child or be sensitive enough to respond to his strange behaviors. I listened as the callers described their own peculiar struggles to make what was familiar to them acceptable to the outside world.

As painful as it is, it is totally understandable when people react negatively to a disabled person’s disruptive behavior or strange appearance. We actually find this attitude in the sources. When determining whether or not a Shoteh, a mentally incapacitated individual, is entitled to monetary compensation for insult, one finds this comment in Baba Kama: “It may be said that the Shoteh by himself constitutes a disgrace which is second to none,” meaning that one who is already disgraced to such a degree is not vulnerable to further degradation, and thus is not entitled to compensation.

But here is what Mori’s presence in my life has brought home to me: I believe that one of our main purposes in this life is to progress from gnut to shevah- the Rabbis’ phrase for describing the narrative progression of the Passover Seder. Translate it as the move from degradation to praise--the journey from disgrace to dignity. One such way for us to provide a semblance of that journey to our son is to allow him to participate in a Bar Mitzvah ceremony.

When my daughter Fay began thinking about her Bat Mitzvah she offered to share her Simcha with her brother, Mori. Mori was already 14 at the time and we had not given serious consideration to having a ceremony for him. How could a person who would never be obligated for Mitzvot have a Bar Mitzvah ceremony? But as we thought about combining their simcha, we imagined that this occasion would not only mark Fay’s becoming a commanded Jew, but give Mori a chance to receive loving attention and praise from his community – to be seen.

Each child with autism is an individual and will be different from other children with the same diagnosis. Like every other autistic child, Mori has a unique personality. He is a very affectionate child. He loves to smile, hug, and kiss those around him. He is most of the time very responsive to requests and instructions. He lets you know what he likes and dislikes. He appears to be happy most of the time. He is also a great mystery to us. We do not know the extent of his self-awareness or even his intelligence. While he appears to be low functioning he constantly surprises us with his capacity to respond to complex commands and to show a wide range of emotional expression.

The decision to include Mori in Fay’s Bat Mitzvah ceremony was not an easy one. But it was guided first by Fay’s willingness to share this with her brother. Siblings of severely disabled kids have a special lot in life. They grow up knowing that their lives are often very different from others. They have to develop special sensitivities and responses that most other young people never have to deal with. I greatly admire Fay’s decision to share her special moment.

We did mull over the issue of a joint ceremony, however. We decided to go ahead with it because we were convinced that Mori had the capacity to participate in the rituals with some degree of intention and cooperation. We have rehearsed every week for over four months and he very early on showed his ability and willingness to perform several parts of the service. Recent problems with his medication have made his cooperation less predictable, but I know one thing for sure: he loves to be on the Bimah.

Another reason guided our decision to carry this out. Because of Mori’s disability he remains hidden to the community and unknown by his peers. His strange behaviors are sometimes misunderstood and among some adolescents held up to ridicule. But Mori, like any other young person, deserves a place of dignity in his community. Like any other child he should be given an opportunity to develop and fulfill his potential as a human being.

Finally we decided to do this as a way to celebrate our unique expanded family. Mori and Fay is only one combination. Mori and Zach is another. Mori and Nancy and Ed, his incredible loving guardians are another. Mori and Joanne and the many loving caregivers and teachers are other special relationships. A Bnai Mitzvah ceremony is a family celebration that takes place within community. . In our case we have a very large, unusual family--natural and adopted, Jewish and non-Jewish--who will mark this holy moment.

On one level I hope next week is not different from any other Bar or Bat Mitzvah. I would just like to shep nachas like every other parent for that ceremony that we wait 13 years for as parents. As Rabbi of a congregation I know that I am at the very center of congregational life. But as a parent of a severely disabled child, I also know what it feels like to be on the margins of community. I also know how difficult it is for any family in our situation to share with others our reality that we more often seek to keep out of view. I hope that my speaking about Mori today will encourage other parents who struggle with the demands of special children to know that our community welcomes their children and gives them a special place in our collective life. I hope that this will inspire our Beth Shalom community to actively reach out to families with disabled children and to educate our young to be caring and loving to children with special needs.

There is a beautiful passage in tractate Megillah quoted in the name of Rabbi Yosi: “For a long time I was perplexed by the verse, “And you shall grope at noonday as the blind gropes in the darkness.” (Deut 28:29) Now what difference does it make to a blind man whether it is dark of light? (I didn’t find out) until the following incident occurred. I was once walking on a pitch black night when I saw a blind man walking in the road with a torch in his hand. I said to him, ‘My son, why are you carrying this torch?’ He replied, ‘As long as I have this torch in my hand people see me and save me from the holes and the thorns and the briars.

Some who are disabled know how to let people know that they need help; they can let themselves be seen. Other disabled people need help from loving people to put the torch in their hands so they can be seen. With that assistance we enable our community to respond with love and compassion to help a disabled person avoid the holes and thorns and the briars in life.

So what should we recite for Mori this coming Shabbat when the time comes to give the parental blessing? I have chosen a different blessing: the one we say when seeing something good in the world: Baruch….. Hatov vhametiv. It will be so good to see Mori outside of the shadow--so good to see him next to his sister and brother, so good to see him amongst his community, so good to let him sit, twitching and shouting, bathed in the love and acceptance of both family and friends.

I appreciate the opportunity to share this part of my life with you. Shabbat Shalom.