Words from a Weisman

A "Social Experiment"

2012-01-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

The founding premise of this blog was that, while it would primarily serve as a posting outlet for my sermons and other written materials, it would also, from time to time, be a source for other material that I found thought provoking or significant.

Today, I ask you, my friends and readers, to join me in a "social experiment." And, I admit, up front, this is not up to the laboratory standards for such an undertaking, and in many ways it is contrary to Jewish teachings that I hold dear. But, in the afterglow of yet another powerful MLK celebration yesterday (thank you County Executive Baker and my fabulous clergy colleagues), and in the middle of an even more rhetorically divisive presidential campaign, I think I need the reality check I am seeking with this effort.

The experiment seeks to do two things, simultaneously. First, I am seeking to get as bias-neutral a response as possible to the quote below. Secondarily, I am trying to judge how pervasive the bias of labels, names, and organizations can be in a world in which we are still far from the dream of judging "by the content of character" and merit. It is for these reasons that I am NOT sharing either the original source of the comment, or the source from which I received it -- yet.

Here are the rules:

1. Read the quote below. If you recognize either the speaker, or any organization that has been spreading the quote on-line, please disqualify yourself from public comment either here or on my facebook page, but feel free to send me your private reaction to AskRabbiSteve@verizon.net .
2. Without doing any research at all, simply decide whether you agree or disagree, and post a response either here or on my facebook page (since I have over 1000 contacts there, and probably under 50 here directly, I am running this through both places to increase traffic -- I will coordinate the response from both places), that simply says "agree" or "disagree."
3. Please do NOT (yet) broaden the responses on either discussion stream beyond a simple "agree" or "disagree."
4. If you cannot wait until next week for me to post both the results, and the sources, feel free, only after responding as above, to search out the speaker and the spreader of the quote. If you do, and are willing to share honestly how, if at all, that additional knowledge changes your opinion of the quote, I would be most curious to receive your thoughts -- again, for the sake of the experiment, privately, via e-mail.
5. After I post the results of the experiment, we can then have the fully contextualized debate on the merits.

Thanking you in advance, and hoping for a fascinating response :) Here is the quote:

“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values… it requires that their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason.

“Now, I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons., to take one example, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church, or invoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”

A Look at the World in the New Year Thru the Eyes of Torah

2012-01-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

This past Friday night's sermon was more of a magnum opus than a mere preaching. As some of the side notes suggest, rather than taking on the usual intro the Torah portion, read the text, preach model, this Torah service acted as a single item, with intro and sermon intertwined amongst multiple aliyot to the Torah, which were presented in different modalities. As the text indicates, this allowed a couple of seemingly unrelated "sermonettes" to be offered on different sections of the text, and then, in the end, to have all the material come together to reinforce powerfully a single message. What follows is the spoken text, including the breaks where the Torah text was read...

Vayechi – (Chazak)
Tying Up Loose Ends, Celebrating Life With Joy and Blessing
An Experimental Torah Reading and Explication
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD – January 6, 2012

Tonight, I want to shake things up a little. After all, it is the start of a new year, what better time to try some changes out. But more than that, I want us to embrace one of the many powerful teachings from the Mishnah that even we, as Reform Jews, should and do take to heart. Rabbi Eliezer taught, in B’rachot 4:4 – If a man makes his prayers a fixed task, it is not (genuine) prayer. If we let our worship become too familiar, too stale, we lose its energy, its vibrancy. It ceases to be joyful – so why should we do it?! We need to maintain comfort… but every now and then, we also need to shake things up, if for no other reason than to keep ourselves honest, and, as we shall see, to allow ourselves to be joyful.

So tonight, I want to try out a new model for Torah reading – ironically, with a Torah portion with which we have experimented before. And the model is based on the classic tale from Eastern Europe of Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague and the Golem. Rabbi Loew, a 17th century scholar and religious leader, originally created the Golem, a mud man, as a helper and a guard. According to legend, Rabbi Loew animated the Golem by inscribing the Hebrew word “emet” on its forehead. When secular authorities attempted to destroy the Jewish community, the Golem became their defender, and staved off the anti-Semitic attacks. Eventually, Rabbi Loew was convinced by the authorities that there was no further need for the Golem, in return for which, as a sign of goodwill, he de-animated the Golem, by erasing the silent aleph from its forehead, leaving the word “met” – which means death.

A powerful story, and one which lives on still – some see it as the basis for Shelley’s Frankenstein. Others, including some Nazi occultists, searched for the body of the Golem during World War II, in vain (think Indiana Jones!). But a story whose wisdom lives on as well. In a commentary to the classic story, the power of the word emet – usually translated as “truth,” a pretty good animating key itself – was explained by pointing out that the word is made up of the first letter of the aleph-bet, the middle letter, and the last letter.

It is THAT wisdom that animates tonight’s experiment for me. Rather than a long introduction of the portion, a reading from the sefer Torah, and a long sermon after that, I want to combine the reading and the explaining. And, since I want to read from the beginning, middle, AND end of the portion tonight, for different reasons, it seemed like a good night to try this. If nothing else, we are giving ourselves an excuse to call extra participants to the Torah, and an opportunity to hear different pieces of Torah presented in different ways – each of which is always, by itself, a good thing!

And so, to begin… our portion is Vayechi… the last portion of Genesis, the conclusion to the Joseph saga. When we are finished, as is the tradition, we will join together and say “Chazak, chazak v’nitchazeik,” the words by which we acknowledge the completion of another book of Torah for another year. But this is more than mere formula, more than mere mantra. These are words with an actual, albeit difficult to translate, meaning. They acknowledge that we are blessed to be the recipients of words of Torah, of Divine Instruction, which bring meaning and understanding into our lives. But they also acknowledge that we strengthen ourselves and each other when we come together, as congregation and extended family, to the Torah, and make a place for these Divine Instructions in our lives. And they further acknowledge that we need to leave a little behind, and return a bit to the Torah, so that next year, and 100 years from now, those who come to these words will equally find strength in them.

In that tripartite understanding of the meaning of these three repetitive sounding words, we also have a synopsis of what this portion, Vayechi, is about. Taken as a whole, it is about endings. We begin with Jacob making plans for his own end, and getting everything in order for the future. And we end with Joseph’s death in Egypt, leading to the transition to Moses and the Exodus story.

And in the process, we not only learn powerful lessons about what matters in the big picture, or at least what should, but we also get a framework for looking at ourselves and evaluating what matters.

And so we begin, at the beginning. Genesis 47:28 - 31. And we call…

Traditional Torah chanting. Fitting for the message of these verses, as we value the beauty of Jewish tradition. Jacob is looking death square in the eyes. He sees that he is not where he needs to be. He is in diaspora, not safely at home. So he calls upon Joseph, his beloved son, the one he entrusted years ago with checking on his brothers’ well-being, the one who had risen in position to ruling over all of Egypt, with Pharaoh, and the one who was responsible for Jacob being in Egypt in the first place.

He puts the responsibility on Joseph to make sure that when he dies, Joseph will take him and bury him in the familial burial cave at Machpelah, back home. Joseph, loving and responsible son, promises. But that is not enough, and Jacob makes him swear a vow, in the same traditional manner that Abraham made his servant swear not to take Isaac from the land when finding him a proper life partner.

Ironically, it was Jacob who, when his most beloved wife, Rachel, died in childbirth on the journey home, FAILED to do exactly this for her, and buried her instead along the road where she died. Maybe the guilt from this is the motivation that leads him to insist that Joseph take an oath.

For us, tonight, I compare this to a litmus test for whether we are what we think we are. This was Jacob’s way of making sure that what he thought he had taught and stressed in his life would be respected in his death, and remain as his legacy. For us, are we really that welcoming community that is safe and available and open to all… truly, in the words of Micah, a “people’s house.” Are we doing all that we can to welcome the stranger, the newcomer, and make them one of us? Is our welcoming embrace as strong for those who may be a little different from us in any one of a number of ways – skin color, approach to Judaism, marital status, religion, age, physical condition, personal gender or sexual identity, financial status, and so many more – as it is for those who we know immediately are “just like us”?

I watched two remarkable videos go viral on You Tube this week. The first was the story, spoken in notes on index cards, rather than with her voice, of a young Jewish teenage girl, who had just “come out” to 200 of her peers at a NFTY Winter Kallah that she was gay. She found unconditional love and support at a regional Reform Jewish youth event that, in her own words, she has yet to find with her own parents (although I have to suspect that if they did not already know, they may have seen her video by now!).

The second video, in exactly the same medium of index cards, and starting with exactly the same language as the first, was no less remarkable. It was a response to the first video, from the young woman who had been this girl’s “big sister” at this event, who honestly admitted that before the event, she usually felt uncomfortable around gay women. When her “little” came out, however, she felt nothing but pride, and the same unconditional love for her, and made the second video to ask others to help her create a world where all of those like her little would feel loved and valued.

Friends, on this night of checking ourselves through the prism of Torah, theses two videos filled me with a strength and a pride that I do not often get to feel. Our young people get it – we do not need to make them swear an oath to keep our values alive. In fact, they have much to teach us about how we put our values into actions. Chazak, indeed. May they continue to have and show that strength, and share it with us!

For our second aliyah, beginning at Genesis 48:13 (and continuing thru verse 20), we call…

Our more familiar “read and translate” model here. Again, befitting a portion in which the clear message of the text is making sure that proper understanding is transmitted. Jacob having taken care of the details of his own burial, now seeks to make sure his worldly possessions and values are preserved after his death. He begins by having Joseph bring his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, to be blessed, and adopted by Jacob, their grandfather, so he can pass the double portion of his inheritance to Joseph by giving a portion to each of them. Knowing his father is old and frail, Joseph brings the boys before his father, and positions them so Jacob can easily place his right hand on Manasseh, the first born.

But Jacob deliberately crosses his arms, to place his right hand on the younger, Ephraim, where it stays throughout the blessing. Only AFTER Jacob completes the blessing, does the text tell us that Joseph tries to correct his father. Jacob, in turn, makes clear that he knew what he was doing, and makes clear to Joseph that for eternity, all Jewish sons shall be blessed through Ephraim and Manasseh – the very same blessing we still use to this day to bless our sons on Shabbat and other Jewish holidays!

Powerful messages for us here as well. Many of us participated live in Shabbat worship at the Biennial. Many others participated on Shabbat evening by coming here, and praying along as the service was streamed live and projected on our walls in this sanctuary. Still others participated over the computer in their own homes. Many have commented to me already about how powerful and meaningful they found the worship. I am happy to hear it, but like Jacob, who had to be glad to hear Joseph vow to bury him back home, we know that there is still more we must do.

What was it that made the experience so powerful and meaningful? Each of us may have a different answer to that question. For me, it was the sound of so many voices, joining together in word and melody, reaching out for God and towards each other. It was the ru’ach, the spirit of the melodies, as much as the words (maybe even moreso). It was the willingness of people to respond to that ru’ach not only with their voices, but with their whole selves, as many, at several moments, got up to dance spontaneously around the room while praying.

And even as I say this, I know that there are likely to be some of us in this room tonight for whom each of those items felt strange or out of place. To be sure, a big part of any such feelings of discomfort was assuredly a lack of familiarity with such behavior, a sense that it was different from what we expected, or needed, or are accustomed to seeing. But a sense of propriety can also explain the reticence of some to dancing during worship, every bit as much as a new melody for the Hashkiveinu can be off-putting to those hearing it for the first time, every bit as much as the wall of sound created by 5000 worshippers might not resonate so positively for someone used to worshipping in a group of 35 – 50 souls, particularly after a long, loud, difficult week.

But here is my bottom line, and it is another of the lines coming out of Biennial and playing out in my e-mail, and in the postings on-line of my colleagues across the country. We need to make ourselves comfortable reclaiming joy, and insisting on finding joy in our worship experiences. Yes, we all come into the sanctuary, in the words of the prayer, with different needs. But the truth is, the vast majority do not come into the sanctuary at all! And they do not because they find it dreary, they find it unattainable, they find it unappealing. So why make the effort?

While there are many good answers to these concerns that we could give them on an academic and theoretical level, because their hearts are not engaged, our words will fall on deaf ears. If we learn anything from the lessons of the Hasidic masters, up to and including the amazing Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach z”l in our own day, let it be the value of prayer experience that is first and foremost joyous! Let us embrace the desire to participate, in the words of V’Ahavta, with all our hearts, our souls AND our might. Like Joseph responding to Jacob crossing his arms, let us find the value in something different – in finding joy for ourselves, and allowing those around us to find it as well – that might lead more of us to greater appreciation and involvement in the prayer life of our community. In that way, like Jacob’s blessing, we will truly be passing a blessing onto the generations that will follow us, and bring peace to our own souls! This, too, will be a source of chazak – now and in the future.

Third aliyah… Genesis 50:22 thru the end, after which we will join in “chazak.” We call…

The end, but not really. A point of transition, of changing books and direction. Presented in a new form, one that combines the best elements of the other two presentation models – and does so in a way that should be comfortable and familiar, because we have heard this English chanted here before!

Joseph grows old, and is blessed. His time nears to die, and like his father before him, he asks that his kin remember to treat his body with honor and respect. Unlike his own ability to leave and come back to bury his father, he has no guarantee that his family will be treated with the same respect, so he does not demand of them, as his father did of him, instant burial back home. Instead, he promises them that God will take note of them, and eventually allow them to return home, and asks them, at that time, to take care to bury him at home. A new model for a new time. The portion even ends with him being embalmed and placed in a sarcophagus in Egypt – about as non-traditional as we can get!

Not to beat a dead horse here, or repeat last week’s message, but I see here a POWERFUL affirmation of who we are and seek to be as Reform Jews. Those who find value in Torah, and Jewish law, and tradition, but not by following blindly the letter of the law, at the expense of losing its intent, not by ignoring the reality that we live in a larger world that changes often, and can also provide value and meaning for our lives.

Those who are not afraid to embrace new ideas, and different ways, to achieve the same desired ends, particularly when we can anchor those innovations in the tradition we have received from those who came before us. Joseph waited until his father completed the blessing to correct his crossed arms, out of respect. But he also saw that his reality was not the same as his father’s. He valued what Jacob valued, since he learned from his father. But his circumstances required a different response to reach the same end. He was willing to risk, trusting his family, his fellow Jews, and in God, that his end would be met appropriately, eventually. In the words of Pirkei Avot, “We are not required to complete the task; neither are we free to walk away from it.”

The foundation triangle of Judaism, from the time of Jacob and Joseph to today, has been defined by belief in God, embrace of Torah, and connection to the children of Israel. Even today, when some Jews question God, it is still the Jewish God we question. When we ignore Jewish law in our daily life, we know those laws still exist and are Jewish. But when we disconnect from our fellow Jews, we do not still have a safety net of connection in this way. The haredim who see us as treif, and we who see their actions harming Torah and not upholding it, are just one example of the difference at this corner of the triangle.

On this night when we have experimented with form, in the end, we have come around in the most traditional of ways, to a place where not only the words of Torah, but also their unorthodox presentation, have reinforced both the message of the text itself, anda w the message we take from it into our own lives. If the first two parts of Torah tonight can serve as chazak for us, then our goal should be to be able to say at the end of this experiment, “V’nitchazeik.” In the reflexive – where we provide for ourselves, or in partnership, for our partners.

May our Jewishness continue to reinforce all three corners of the triangle – bringing us closer to God, closer to the teachings of our Torah, and especially, closer to each other. May we find the solution to the Jewish familial lament “Why do we only get together for funerals – for better things next time.” May the choices we make as innovative modern Jews be based in the traditions we have received from our ancestors, strengthening rather than changing our Judaism. In that way, at the end of the day, we can honestly say, for ourselves and all Israel, “v’nitchazeik!” KYR

Responding to the Situation in Beit Shemesh

2012-01-08T08:47:00.000-08:00

Note: My apologies for the sparsity of posts in 2011 -- a very productive but busy year in other parts of my life. I WILL be working to add in the missing sermons over the course of the next few weeks (so check the internal dates on those posts, and NOT the posting dates!), as well as making a better effort in 2012 to be timely in adding new material...

I Tawt I Taw a Torah Text!
Sermon for Parshat Vayiggash – December 30, 2011
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

Tonight presents us with opportunities and challenges. It is rare that I would be absent from this pulpit for successive Shabbatot, except in summer. And in fact, events conspired to make sure that did not happen as planned, although not in a good way, and not in a way that allowed, or even obligated me to preach last Shabbat. So it has been 3 weeks since I had to prepare a sermon – actually 4, since that last service before Biennial was a family service, at which I tell a story rather than preach a sermon.

So, tonight was already going to be an evening with too many choices, too many opportunities for preaching. That during the hiatus, we celebrated both Chanukkah and Christmas, attended an amazing URJ Biennial, and more just adds to the possibilities. That tonight marks the last Shabbat of 2011 could easily spark a look back at the year in review.

But among the many remarkable and powerful lessons that I learned and affirmations I received at the Biennial, there was one that I wish to share with you tonight. It is the wisdom of a very wise young woman, shared with participants by her very proud father. This young woman, now becoming expert in the ways of various Rabbis as she attends the Bat Mitzvah services of many of her private school classmates (and, no doubt, a few Bar Mitzvah services as well!) across the area, gave her father, President Obama, the following advice before he addressed the Biennial: When in doubt, start with the Torah portion!

I have certainly tried to do that whenever possible over the last 23 years. Otherwise, I might have to question the Jewish validity of the message that I ultimately preach, no matter how central to my world view it feels or how obvious it seems. Rabbi Yoffie was correct when he taught us, early in his tenure, to keep Torah at the center.

And tonight we have a remarkable piece of Torah to focus our thoughts upon, perhaps one of the 5 most dramatic of the entire Torah. We read of the moment at which, overcome by his brother Judah’s plea to spare the life of Benjamin for his/their father’s sake, Joseph finally ends the charade and reveals his true identity to his brothers. His poignant words: It is me, Joseph; is my father really still alive?

Sometimes, as Jews, we focus so much on the obscure and the difficult passages, that we fail to learn the lessons of the obvious ones. I had the chance to study with Rabbi Marc Rosenstein at Biennial. Marc was my Confirmation teacher, the leader, along with Rabbi Yoffie’s younger brother, of my first trip to Israel. Now he directs HUC’s Israel Rabbinic program, teaching Israelis to be Reform Rabbis.

Over Shabbat lunch, he pointed out what happens AFTER the dramatic reveal. According to the text, Joseph sends his brothers home to tell Jacob/Israel that he, Joseph, is still alive; to let him know that the famine will continue for several years, but he, Joseph, can provide for the family, and they should come down to Egypt; and that all will be okay.

What Rabbi Rosenstein pointed out to us is what Joseph didn’t say and do. Namely “I need to see my father’s face with my own eyes, so I will come back with you, so he believes you.” 17 years later, when Jacob died, Joseph was allowed to do exactly this – leave to bury his father back home. If he could do it in death, why not in life? He could have gone back with his brothers, to make sure Jacob believed their report, to supervise the move to Egypt, and then returned to his responsibilities and position in Egypt with his family. He didn’t. He remained in diaspora, and brought the family to him.

L’havdil, tonight, I feel like I am doing a similar disservice to the text – dragging it to the level of my message, rather than paying full homage to its intrinsic messages for us by raising myself up to meet it. I am confident Joseph meant no disrespect to his father by not going up to see him personally to invite him to Egypt in order to survive the famine. Similarly, I mean no disrespect to a remarkable text in using it to lead into my real message tonight – even moreso, ironically, on the night when I have, for the first time, had the privilege of publicly asking birthday blessings for my father in his presence, having helped him to move here earlier in the year!

But what it appears we have here is a temporary myopia on Joseph’s part, an almost involuntary, if momentary paralysis. Yes, we know Jacob and his sons must come to Joseph in Egypt… both the dreams of Joseph’s youth and the future needs of the Biblical narrative – that we find ourselves in Egypt to be enslaved before we can be redeemed – require it. But he could have brought them down himself, rather than by sending a message with his brothers, and done no damage to the story.
I share that analysis because, I believe, it is essential to understanding a truly difficult and disturbing story that has jumped to the forefront of our awareness in recent days. I speak, tonight, about the abuse, at the hands of some haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews in Beit Shemesh, of a 7- or 8- year old Modern Orthodox school girl for dressing and behaving “immodestly,” and the response to this abomination in Israel and here in America. And assuredly, to get from Torah to the depths of this story requires us to drag the Torah down to this level.

However, if we are honest, our gut-level revulsion at this story stems from exactly that truth… we see the behavior of this small group of fundamentalist, extremist religious thugs as dragging Torah, and all of Jewish law and life, down into the gutter. We see it as an utter perversion of the values of love and respect and tolerance that we claim to learn from OUR reading of Torah.

However, there is a deeper truth that we have also already acknowledged tonight that we learn from our Torah portion. For us, as liberal American Jews, to understand the behavior and motivation of a group of Ultra-Orthodox Jews living in Beit Shemesh, twice requires us to acknowledge that we live in a different world and therefore have a different world view than they do – first in our religious approach, and second in the larger cultural influence of America vs. Israel. In order for us to fully understand, or understand as fully as our sensibilities will allow, their behavior, which ought to be a necessary prerequisite to any effort on our part to speak out against it, we need to do what Joseph did not… make the journey to their world, in order to help them find their way to ours.

And this is extremely difficult, both because of the enormity of the differences between us and them, between here and there, but also because most of us are so turned off by such a story, that we have no desire to make the effort to try to understand those who would behave in such a way. We, many of us who mark our Jewishness first and foremost with the yardstick of social action, prophetic Judaism, the desire to bring tiqqun olam, cannot imagine any way that our religious tradition could possibly justify such inhumanity, such exclusion, such abuse. OUR tradition welcomes and honors; it does not degrade or render others powerless of second rate.

Yet, no matter how difficult it is for us to accept, those who are guilty of the inexcusable behavior in Beit Shemesh honestly believe that they are acting to UPHOLD that same Torah and tradition that we see them throwing in the gutter and trampling upon, acting to save Judaism, rather than subject it, and themselves, and us, to ridicule. It is the exact equivalent feeling experienced by peace-loving Muslims like our friends Khalil and Imam Dawud when they are forced to explain the abuses perpetrated in the name of Islam by al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist, extremist, terrorist Muslims, who practice an Islam totally different from their own. I get this, but I do not like it. And that is okay… sometimes in life, this is the best we can hope to achieve!

It seems clear to me, to us, that we need to stand up and say and do something. We need to make clear that THEIR Judaism is NOT our Judaism, for it is not. But honestly, we need to do more… because if all we do is make the distinction between them and us, then we are merely protecting ourselves from the claim of guilt by association. What we fail to do is improve an intolerable situation.

And the truth is that what is happening in Beit Shemesh is NOT an isolated incident. Ultra-Orthodox Jews across Israel are insisting on segregated buses, even after the Israeli Supreme Court has said they have no right to them, to the point of verbally abusing and assaulting a young Israeli soldier when she refused to move to the back of a bus in Jerusalem. They are refusing to participate in public ceremonies in which women are singing. They have been implicated in attacks on Arabs and on Israeli military installations in the territories. All in the name of Torah.

And their political leaders continue to hold seats in the Knesset and in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Cabinet that protect them from investigation and punishment in many of these cases. This, despite many of their religious leaders’ refusal in part or in whole to recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel, for the failure of Messiah to bring it into being. Yet these same leaders are more than willing to play the political system, extorting millions of dollars and major concessions about their lifestyle through coalition agreements calculated to allow the main parties to have their way in the areas they find most important.
In other words, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has no real reason to resolve these issues with the Ultra-Orthodox, save the possibility that they might recognize the weakening effect they are having on Israeli society as a whole. In fact, they have strong motive not to act at all, letting these hooligans continue to subvert Israeli law, attack Israeli citizens, attempting to create a fundamentalist religious state, ruled by THEIR reading of Torah, and reinstituting a caste system in which we are all second class citizens compared to these haredim.

For several years, many of us have been preaching that there was already a cultural war being waged for Israel’s societal soul. And for those years, we have been subjected to responses that we sounded like Henny Penny, running around and proclaiming that the sky was falling. Tonight, I take absolutely no pride that events are proving that I, and we, have been correct all along. The revelation, not of Joseph’s true identity, but that of the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel, rather than creating unanticipated joy, brings continued and growing heartache.

It casts a larger shadow over other troubling issues as well. It now seems more likely that the recent effort at using the Internet to reach Israelis abroad and guilt them into coming home to Israel with a series of slick commercials may indeed have had a secondary goal – to delegitimize the Diaspora Jewish community’s voice in general. But where, not even a month ago, we would have been tempted to accuse Netanyahu himself of seeking that goal, as the American Jewish community in particular has become more questioning of government efforts (or lack thereof) toward a lasting peace, now it is clear that his haredi partners had as much or more to gain from delegitimizing the vast majority of Diaspora Jewry whose basis they reject completely.

This is why, during the Biennial, I had a rather remarkable conversation with our good friend, Doug Cotler. Remarkable, in that it had almost nothing to do with music, as most of our discussion naturally do. This one was about his growing frustration and concern that we cannot even talk about what is happening in Israel anymore, because the subject no longer unites us, but divides us. Without knowing he was doing so, he echoed language that I have used from this pulpit, comparing the situation in Israel today to what was happening here in the 1960s.

So, what can we do? It is complicated, but anything worth doing is worth doing right. First and foremost, we must continue to support the State of Israel, now more than ever. For those who say, again echoing the 60s, that the government must be supported unquestioningly, I remind us all that there was a legitimate counter-point to that approach, that believed that criticizing the government out of love and respect, with the hope of correcting the perceived mistakes, was equally valid, and in many quarters, seen as being more necessary.

With the outside world, we need to retain our vigilance, and continue to make positive statements in support of Israel. We need to object appropriately if and when the media use too broad a brush to paint the picture of what is happening in Israel, or compare the behavior of some Ultra-Orthodox Jews to attempts to impose Sharia law, even if we recognize the legitimacy of the comparisons. We need to continue to speak publicly of the values upon which the modern State of Israel was created, those enshrined in her Declaration of Independence, as well as those taught by our understanding of Torah, even as we work privately to insist that the government live up to those documents. We need to work to help her once again become “a light to the nations,” so that once again Torah may go forth from Zion, the word of God from Jerusalem.

But, we also need to learn from Joseph. We need to get up from the comfort of Diaspora, and go to see for ourselves what is happening in Israel. We need to deliver in person -- loudly, clearly, and positively – the message of American liberal Judaism, to an Israeli society that now more than ever, needs to hear that such a view of Judaism has equal or greater legitimacy and vibrancy than the only form with which they are familiar. We need to help them to see that the emperor is, in fact, morally naked, and in need of their help to become clothed.

That message cannot be preached effectively from overseas, or sent by messengers. It needs to be demonstrated by our example, delivered face-to-face in words that we will all understand, through relationships that will continue to feed the currently unresolved need in Israel for an alternative voice to the Ultra-Orthodox – one that is not purely secular. We are the ones who can best provide that message in this way. It is up to us to do so.

And with that, I wish you all a happy Sylvester. If you aren’t sure what that is, or why I do so, please ask me at the Oneg Shabbat! ☺ KYR

A New, Dangerous Behavior

2011-10-27T20:20:00.000-07:00

The following is the text of a column I was asked to write for this week's Bowie Blade-News... I am NOT including the link to the video, deliberately, as it becomes a "how-to" guide for the curious... A must read for parents and grandparents with Halloween approaching...

Halloween is Coming – Parents (and Kids) Beware

As I watched the television news story that had been sent to me by a professional youth worker within our Reform Movement, my mouth hung open in disbelief. How could something like this be going on without my having the slightest inkling? After all, I have a college freshman and a high school freshman of my own. I spend most of my time off during the summer at two different summer camps, work with our own youth groups, teach our B’nai Mitzvah and Confirmation students. If teenagers are doing it, watching it, talking about, I am usually aware of it.

But there, in front of me, was the latest method sweeping through our teenagers’ world – the latest way to get alcohol past unsuspecting adults. And if I was unaware, what were the odds that most of the rest of our area was as well?!

Turns out, the odds were pretty good, as a couple of quick phone calls confirmed. My phone call to Chief Nesky, at the Bowie Police, revealed that the police are not only aware of this new phenomenon, but planning their own efforts to alert the public to the danger. But calls to other community leaders, PTSO leaders, fellow clergy, other parents, even to a local newspaper editor demonstrated the need for us to bring this information into the public square.

So now, here I am, writing this column, at David Emanuel’s invitation and request, to catch us all up. With Halloween coming. Without creating an undue panic. And without allowing this warning to become a spur to our young people to experiment and learn how to make their own potentially toxic treats. Sure – no pressure there!

Especially since the newest receptacles are those cute, colorful, rubbery little snack animals and shapes. They started as Gummi Bears ™, and have morphed into 100s of shapes in dozens of colors – all designed to attract kids’ attention and interest. They are everywhere – and often sold loose in candy stores.

Turns out, they are pretty good at absorbing alcohol – they don’t melt or lose their shape. Unless you get suspicious and hold them up to your nose, you are unlikely to smell the alcohol. A couple of handfuls will get you pretty close to the legal limit for driving. And you, your child or grandchild might not even be aware that the candies they are scarfing down have been tampered with!

Fortunately, to spike them in bulk requires them to be repackaged afterwards or distributed individually and unwrapped, although I am sure we will hear eventually of truly malignant souls finding other ways to endanger us with these candies.

Best advice? Same as we give and get every Halloween. Only accept candy that is unopened, that comes from sources we know and trust. This year, be particularly careful of these gummis. If your child or a friend suddenly starts eating a lot more of them, ask them to share, and sniff before eating, to check for alcohol. And look for those telltale signs of substance abuse.

I could write more. But to do so would risk encouraging copy cats, or to make the danger seem greater than it probably is. But our community has lost too many of our young people already, some to deaths that could have been avoided. And therefore, keeping quiet was not an option either.

Sad to say – but necessary. Be safe and smart this Halloween season. And make sure that those you care about most are made aware of this latest behavioral trend.

--Rabbi Steve Weisman is the spiritual leader of Temple Solel, the Jewish congregation in Bowie. He serves on the faculty of the Union for Reform Judaism’s 6 Points Sports Academy and Camp Harlam, and has twice been awarded life membership for his work with the North American Federation of Temple Youth.

Rejoicing with the Torah, and Gilad Shalit

2011-10-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

The following were my remarks during Simchat Torah services last night. They are a refinement and expansion on my blog from yesterday, and I am indebted to the many who shared their thoughts on all sides of this complicated and painful issue who helped me to define my own.

Comments for Simchat Torah (for the start of Yizkor)
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD October 19, 2011

On Sukkot, we talked about Gilad Shalit. I promised that, if events played out the way they were supposed to, tonight would be a special night. And now, they have.

Maybe it was a good thing that I forgot to pick up the lulav and etrog, so that we could not wave them last week. Maybe we needed to wait to have our z’man simchateinu – our season of rejoicing – fully celebrated, until Gilad Shalit was free to celebrate with us. Certainly, as we begin to read Torah anew this year on this Simchat Torah, Gilad and his family begin to live their lives again anew. And so, as Sukkot ends with our celebration of Simchat Torah tonight, we wave the lulav and etrog now. [recite blessing, wave lulav and etrog]

After more than 5 years of being held hostage by terrorist kidnappers, Gilad Shalit is now free and at home. He was taken captive on the very first day of our last congregational Israel trip. Because of that, his kidnapping became personal. When our Israel committee offered the chance to purchase dog tags for us to wear, so that he would not be forgotten, I, like many of you, bought one. For almost 5 years, I have dutifully worn mine, anxiously awaiting the day that I could take it off, after his, hopefully, safe return.

And so, tonight, with great joy, I bring the celebration of Gilad Shalit’s freedom home to us, as I remove his dog tag from my neck. [remove tag]

But tonight is not only about rejoicing with the Torah, and at Gilad’s return home. For on that dog tag, there were the names of THREE Israelis, all hostages, the other 2 taken by Hisbullah from the north of the country. Sadly, both Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev have already returned home. Sadly, because they were not as fortunate as Gilad – they did not return alive. Even as we rejoice for Gilad and his family, we must remember that pain of these losses that is still felt by the Goldwasser and Regev families.

And, we must also remember the pain being felt by many other Israeli families on this otherwise joyous day. For Gilad’s release did not come easily, and it did not come cheap. Almost 500 Palestinians, each convicted in Israeli courts of crimes as serious as involvement in terrorist acts and murder, were released yesterday as well, to allow Gilad to come home. Another 500+ will be released in the coming days. The victims of their crimes, and those victims’ families, now are forced to relive their pain and loss, because those responsible for inflicting unimaginable pain upon them have now been set free.

Some say the price of Gilad’s freedom was too high. And there is some truth in that. 13,509 Palestinians have been released in 9 exchanges over the last 54 years in return for only 16 Israelis. That is roughly 800 to 1! On the other hand, what price is too high to pay in order to see a son return home alive to his country, his home, his parents?

I choose tonight to look at the responses to Gilad’s release. In Israel, these families of the victims were free to file appeals to the Supreme Court, free to ask to have the release of some of the detainees stopped, and in the process, free to risk Gilad’s safe return. Some appeals were filed, but many chose not to file, putting aside their personal pain to allow a neighbor, a brother, to come home alive. The country debated and agonized over a difficult decision. The courts ruled. The prisoners were pardoned and released. The democracy worked.

In Egypt, before he could be turned over to the Israelis, before he was allowed the joyous reunion with his family, Gilad was forced to endure an ugly television interview, with an armed Hamas guard noticeably standing right behind him; forced to say that he hoped ALL Palestinian prisoners held in Israelis jails would soon be freed. The man, held not by a sovereign state, but by terrorists, denied due process or even visitors throughout his captivity, humbly did what his captors demanded of him. His interviewer claimed she was doing a fair interview, and said she was unaware of any coercion. No Egyptian official apologized for this last indignity. Even in Gilad’s release, the differences were stark and clear.

In Israel, an excited nation rejoiced at the return of one innocent man, and then, after he hugged the Prime Minister and his father, and humbly made a few public comments, allowed him to walk away quietly, to try to return to a normal life. Because to Israelis, the value of life goes beyond simply continuing to breathe. In the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas, the allegedly “moderate” head of a wannabe nation, led crowds in a raucous celebration of the return of their “heroic freedom fighters.” This is the man with whom Israel is expected to negotiate for peace, who seeks independence for his country not through negotiated compromise and agreement, but rather by fiat at the UN. And in Gaza, a female suicide bomber, alive only by the grace of Allah that her bomb failed to detonate when she pushed the trigger, who, to the way of thinking of those who celebrated her release, failed in her mission, was not only welcomed home a hero, but she encouraged the children who gathered to praise her to follow her example! Again, the contrast spoke volumes. Israel mourned the cost of a single life – Palestinians celebrated the taking of lives, and sought to up the ante.

Golda Meir once famously stated that “Until they start to love their own children more than they want to kill mine, there will never be peace in the Middle East.” Rarely, if ever, has the enduring truth of that assessment been more obvious. A democratic state, seeking peace with her neighbors still, welcomed home a single kidnapped son, whose ransom they willingly overpaid, all while grieving anew their previous losses, and thereby demonstrated the importance they place on a life. A totalitarian regime built on violence and hate celebrated the wholesale return of her failed terrorists, lawbreakers and murders, and vowed to take more Israeli prisoners until all the Palestinians were freed, and in the process, celebrated death, and showed how much their own people are merely pawns to be sacrificed to achieve some narrowly defined “victory,” achievable only through the annihilation of another.

Let me make clear – despite these comparisons and criticisms, I want peace for the Palestinian people as much as anyone, and not merely because it is essential if Israel is ever to enjoy peace herself. The Palestinian people have the right to self-determination every bit as much as every other person on this planet. And therefore I mourn for ALL the victims of the terror – not just those who died or lost loved ones, but those who are kept from achieving their self-determination by their leaders’ callous use of violence and terror against innocent targets. Only a true and lasting peace that allows all people to live free from fear and with the dignity that comes with independence will achieve the end that I, and so many others, dream of. Only such a peace will allow the families of 1402 Israeli terror victims in the last 11 years [flip the poster over to be visible] to ever have any sense of order in the chaos and doubt that came, uninvited, with their losses. Only such a peace can allow Palestinians and Israelis to live freely.

Our liturgy on this night changes from the joy of summer, in praying for the dew of the dry season, to the gloom of the rainy season, while acknowledging that in that gloom come life-giving rains. Our celebration of Simchat Torah moves from our joy of dancing with the Torah to the painful memories evoked by Yizkor. So must our focus on this night change from the joy of celebrating the safe return of Gilad Shalit, back to the hard work of comforting the victims of those released and their families, redoubling our efforts to bring about that peace which will make the suffering end.

On this night we remember, and begin the work to allow both the shark and the fish that Gilad wrote about at age 11 to live in peace and safety together, not just in a child’s story, but in real life. Amen.

He's home! He's free! Now what!

2011-10-18T09:28:00.000-07:00

"Eema -- Ani ba!" "Mother -- I am coming home!" screamed the Hebrew language headlines this morning. The proof we had awaited as we posted our "Gilad still lives!" bumper stickers was now at hand. Five years after he was kidnapped, on Israeli soil, by Hamas terrorists intent on finding a hostage to trade for their convicted and imprisoned terrorists and murderers, Gilad Shalit, is, thank God, home with his family and safe on Israeli soil. A little malnourished, but after being held for more than 5 years and denied the basics that any other prisoner in the civilized world takes for granted, what did we expect?

We knew the price would be exorbitant -- and it is -- 477 of those convicted murderers and others tried by courts and found guilty of crimes against the state of Israel released today before Gilad was released, another 500 + to be released in the coming days and weeks. The human calculus is staggering. And it is telling. Israel places that much value on a single soul. Hamas, and based on the reaction of Abbas, hailing the released as heroes, Fatah as well, treat there own as chattel in a war of attrition to destroy the state of Israel, mere pawns to be sacrificed in a greater cause.

It is easy to be euphoric for the Shalit family, and proud of Israel for bringing him home alive. However, as with all things in the Middle East, easy is rarely the way things go.

I present below links to two very opposing articles -- both of which I believe to be true. Such is the nature of being an Oheiv Tzion -- a lover of the State of Israel, in these complicated times. I feel the pain of Koby Mandell's parents, every bit as much as I did a decade ago when he was killed -- and the murderer of their child wasn't even amongst those released today! I share his mother's anguish that her therapeutic efforts to make his death mean something positive are made harder today, even as I can barely imagine the emotions that she cannot even share with the rest of us, even a decade later.

But I also share the pride that an Israeli government that I spend far more time criticizing than lauding, was able to bring Gilad home, and willing to do so, even at this too-high price. This, truly is the embodiment of the call that "Torah shall go forth from Zion, the word of God from Jerusalem" -- that Jewish values still matter, even in the most inhumane of circumstances; that life matters.

I share the concerns that the release of this many of this kind of prisoner must, somehow, weaken Israel's defenses. But at the same time, I acknowledge the truth in the words of a colleague -- that it may very well come to pass that many, if not most, of those released in exchange for Gilad Shalit will come to realize that, no matter how badly off they were in Israeli jails, the reality that now faces them may very well be worse. And honestly, both of those realizations make me sad, and make me even more committed to working to find the miracle app that will bring peace to the region in our lifetime -- so that concerns like these and the devaluing of human life need NEVER be glorified again!

So please, read both articles carefully. Celebrate for Gilad and his family. Rejoice in Israel's sticking to their values. But do not kid yourself that somehow this is the end of anything but one young Israeli's horrifying ordeal.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/bravo-for-these-people-these-israelis-1.390654

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=242130

and a later addition -- a third article by my teacher, Rabbi David Ellenson, making the Rabbinic case for each side of the argument, and some history that may have swayed this decision:

http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/10/18/3089876/op-ed-shalit-israel-and-rabbinic-debate

and, as an added bonus, I share with you as well the remarkable story that I shared with my congregation on both Sukkot AND Shabbat, of the hope for peace, written by an 11 year old Israeli boy named Gilad Shalit (!) over a decade ago:

http://www.arza.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=2350

High Holy Days 2011 - 5772

2011-10-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know that I have fallen woefully behind... in keeping with the tone of the season, I humbly beg your forgiveness... I will be trying to catch up and keep up as we move forward.

For those who missed any or all of the three, here, in a single entry, are my three High Holy Day sermons for this year. While they should work (as apparently they did in real time) standing alone, together, I think the best results may actually be achieved by giving a quick reread to last High Holy Days' efforts (just scroll down)...

As always -- all feedback is welcome... more than usual, my words this year are meant to incite discussion and debate, and lead to meaningful action and growth. Shanah tovah!

High Holy Days 5772

Ayecka? Hineini! Aval Eifo Zeh? Toto…?!
Looking Backwards, Forward, and Around to Find Ourselves
In and At the New Year
A Sermon Series
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

Rosh Hashanah Evening
Ayecka? Where are We? And How Did We Get Here?

We begin tonight, as we have begun in past years, by looking at the calendar. For 12 High Holy Days seasons now, you and I have shared a simple perspective-shifting truth – that regardless of the vagaries of the secular calendar, Rosh Hashanah (and indeed, all Jewish holidays) actually arrive right on time every year! But even I have to admit, that arriving right on time on the first of Tishri on the Hebrew calendar FEELS awfully late this year, given that it is the 28th of September!

But more than that, on Rosh Hashanah, we focus on the item that IS changing – the year itself. As a puzzle person, and would-be post-modern mystic, I love to look at the letters we use to denote the new year, to play with them, trying to find hidden meaning. In MOST years, even to me, the results of those efforts can seem somewhat forced and contrived. However, when I sat down to play this year, I was genuinely EXCITED by what I saw!

(TAKE OUT GRAPHIC #1) Our New Year, 5772, is written in Hebrew characters as tav shin ayin vet. The 5000 is assumed (sort of like the thousands place was assumed in referring to years in data storage on our computers prior to the Y2K hysteria!). Tav = 400, Shin = 300, Ayin = 70, and Vet = 2 – giving us the remaining 772.

Take those letters, shift them around a little, and you get (GRAPHIC #2) Sin (same as Shin in writing and numerical value), Vet, Ayin, Tav. Savata – an actual Hebrew word, and one, if we are good detectives and Hebrew students, that should actually sound familiar. We say it every time we recite Birkat HaMazon – the “grace after the meal.”
In fact, savata is a Biblical word, and the line that we sing in Birkat HaMazon is the repeat of that Biblical verse in which the word is found, which turns out to be the very reason why we recite Birkat HaMazon in the first place! The Biblical verse is Deuteronomy 8:10. Add the word “kakatuv” in front of this, and start humming to yourselves, and you may very well recognize it:

“V’akhalta v’savata, uveirakhta et Adonai Eloheikha – al ha’aretz hatovah asher Natan lakh.”

Sound familiar? Good. But now, what does it mean? Usually, we translate it something like this: “When you have eaten, and been satisfied, bless Adonai, your God, for the good land that God has given you.” Given this translation, we can easily see both how and why the verse inspired the tradition of Birkat HaMazon, and came to be included as part of the text.

However, there are a couple of issues with the usual translation, and what I think the verse really means happens to take us EXACTLY where I want us to explore and find ourselves on these Holy Days. Wait a second, Rabbi – are you telling us that your annual tenuous word play on the new Hebrew year actually is CONNECTED to the message you were going to preach anyway? What a shock!

I AM saying that – the connection is actually at the CORE of our discussion! One of the problematic words is savata. That is the word translated in the passive voice – “and been satisfied” – even though the verb is grammatically in the active voice. AFTER we do what we need to do to survive by feeding our hunger successfully – taking care of our animal needs – the text wants us to recognize that we still have one more task. We still need, at that point, to remember both our role AND God’s role -- as our Creator, and the source of our sustenance -- in the meal just completed! In other words, even as we remember to thank the true Source of our food, we are embracing being ACTORS in this drama we call life and survival, and acting to fulfill our needs ourselves!

Therefore, the voice we use SHOULD BE ACTIVE! But our translation is passive – we are being satisfied! But, grammarians, how do you make this verb active? “When you satisfy yourself?” Hebrew uses a different form for reflexive cases like this, and it is NOT used here! “When you satisfy?” Usually refers to others. Aha! This may be part of the issue.

Eating is intensely personal. So is the act of praying and thanking God for the food we have eaten and been satisfied by and asking God to send us other blessings (the OTHER problem with the usual translation – we do not bless God, who is the “Source of blessings,” rather” God blesses us; our prayers, our b’rakhot instead express our praise of God, our thanks to God, and our requests from God). Therefore, it would be natural to understand savata, falling between the other 2 verbs, in a similarly personal way. And there would even be great value in the use of the passive voice here, if it reminds us that ultimately we did not act to feed and satisfy ourselves, but rather, that it came from God!

But that important realization blinds us to the equally important reality of the Hebrew text, that the passive voice translation of savata fails to pick up for us – namely that our personal satisfaction and fulfillment when we eat cannot be separated from that of others. Before we can be satisfied ourselves, in the passive voice usually used in this verse’s translation, we must first satisfy – others – to make the grammar and mood of the verb and verse work! And to fulfill what is expected of us!

In this dichotomy, we get to a struggle which is moving to the front burner of the discussion of American spiritual life in general in our own time, namely, the phenomenon of the individualization of religiosity. I realized just how widespread this issue truly is, when I read an essay last month, written by a female Church of Christ minister, bemoaning the developing cliché in her life that is the response when people she meets casually, often on airplanes or at social events, find out that she is a minister. She summarizes this reaction as follows: “I am not a terribly religious person myself… I find God in a sunset.”

And then she went off on the response. I felt she was correct in both of her points. First, do people who feel this way about organized religious groups and practices really believe that we DON’T find God in a sunset when we gather to pray? And second, where is the challenge in embracing a spirituality, much less a theology, that is internally based, that you never take out in public to have challenged or have to defend?

Last High Holy Days, we used our three sermons to develop a new model and metaphor for the necessary role of the synagogue in our post-modern world. Its foundation was built on two triangles. The first, the traditional, particularistic Jewish “trinity” of the embrace of God, Torah, and the people of Israel as central in our unique Jewish identity. The second triangle, a more universal statement of human needs, that any group needs to help its members embrace and address in providing order and meaning for our lives. That triangle comprises legacy – the sense of building or being part of something that will outlast us and let those who come after us know that we were here; love – the awareness that we are respected, and cared for and about, and valued for who we are and what we believe and do; and relevance – that what we do here, and throughout our lives, has meaning and order because of our involvement here, and the way this colors our experience.

Assumed in that discussion was this more recent discussion that there actually IS still a value to participation in “organized religion.” I believe personally that this model we created last year demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that such a value still exists and is recognized by some, hopefully many. But this newer discussion may help those of us who understand better the value of belonging, to begin to see why this position does not yet enjoy wider acceptance from others.

And it is central as well to any meaningful discussion or application of the practical implications of our new model. To be able to offer our model to others, we cannot use “insider” language that we understand, but which those on the outside may not. We need to be able to translate our thoughts and beliefs into THEIR experience and language, to help them recognize that there is value TO THEM in getting involved with us.

In discussing this model throughout the year, I have come to realize that those who embrace it understand and value four particular concept words far better than those who find little or no value in the model. Those four concept words, therefore, become critical to our success in creating a working model of meaningful religious community for our time. That is the good news – we have identified the words.

Now for the bad news – we have a great deal of work to do to bridge the gap in our understandings of these words, and their importance and place in our lives; to be able to positively use them in conversation with other Jews to make our congregational family stronger; to demonstrate them by our actions. The reasons for the enormity of the challenge are not hard to find. Two, perhaps three, of these concept words will likely first strike our ears and our guts as sounding “Christian.” Two of them, for different reasons, have simply become “dirty words” in our day.

The words are (GRAPHIC #3): mission, service, sacrifice, faith. Each of these deserves its own sermon (and if these sermons ever get published, they will each get a chapter!) – helping us to understand what the words really mean in a religious context, particularly in a (Reform) Jewish one, and how they apply in our lives.

In the time I have left this evening, I would like to give a condensed version of those points for each word, to help us begin to reclaim them as the critical vocabulary by which our own personal religiosity can grow, and through which we will enlarge and strengthen our communal identity as a congregational family.

Mission has become a “bad word,” I believe, in large part because of its usage in business jargon, and the appropriate scorn THAT usage has received at the hand of the cartoon strip “Dilbert.” In other words, the reason we shrink from using this word in its proper Jewish religious context is because of how it has been misused elsewhere!

But, have we ever stopped to consider why a “mission statement” is called a mission statement? It tells others what those involved in our group think we are doing, and why we are doing it! As we will see, this is not far from the understanding we need to get back to!

For that matter, why is a (usually Christian) trip to an exotic locale called a Mission? I know, many of us think of Mormons with this usage of the word. The word is used not just because they are being sent out from their home base, but really because once they arrive, they are doing work connected to the group’s mission. Or try the language of John Belushi in the Blues Brothers, and we get even closer to where we need to be – “We’re on a mission from God – we can’t be stopped!”

And then go to the Hebrew – to be sent on a mission is to become a shaliach – to go on shlichut. The root is the same as the one Moses spoke over and over to Pharaoh – shalach et ami – best understood as “send my people out, so we may serve our God.” There are two kinds of shlichim – the ones sent from Israel to the diaspora to teach us about and better connect us to our spiritual homeland – their actions match those of the Mormon college kids “on mission.” The others are the Chabad, whose actions often seem to us to be more insidious, but in fact, are equally centered on sending out emissaries to spread the teachings of and connections to their community.

We Reform Jews may be scared away from embracing a sense of mission, because we don’t want to seem like Chabadniks or Mormons, who are usually seen as proactive proselytizers. But Rabbi Alexander Schindler, of blessed memory, gave us the proper example of Reform shlichut early in the development of outreach, a huge part of his personal legacy to the Jewish community.

He taught that we should not be standing on street corners, trying to bring in converts to the cause. But, he also hoped that we would all be so comfortable with our own identity as Reform Jews, and our understanding of the world, that we would be willing and able to share these with anyone who expressed a desire to learn more or to join us, because they felt THEIR religious identity did not provide this strong foundation in their lives.

Our historic mission is the prophetic mission. The prophets of the era of the Biblical kings and later were seen as being God’s mouthpieces, speaking a message of morality directly to the people, rather than through the priesthood or the kings. We, as Reform Jews embrace those prophetic messages, and seek to speak to the moral souls of our fellow Jews and human beings. This must be a process of active engagement, rather than passive, and in order to succeed, we must have that deep level of comfort in our Judaism.

Sacrifice has become a dirty word throughout society, but is best seen on the baseball field. Now that “Chicks dig the long ball” and home runs make the highlight reels and 9 figure contracts go to the guys who score the runs and knock them in, the strategy and skill of sacrificing your at bat to advance a teammate already on base, so your next teammate has a better chance of scoring him, long ago became a lost art.

Worse, too often in our modern world, an accurate assessment of how the Biblical system of sacrifices was supposed to work leads to a cynical misunderstanding that actually encourages the personalization of religiosity, rather than combating it. We explain the physical offerings of cattle or produce to God as being done to appease God, or to thank God, but with the ultimate goal of convincing God to give us something different of equal or greater value. That just sounds too close to the modern “What’s in it for me?” mentality we are trying to overcome.

No, sacrifice here simply means being willing to give something of ourselves for the “greater good” of something larger than ourselves. To do something that, in keeping with the Hebrew root meaning, draws us closer – to each other, to God, to our ideal selves. Sacrificing time away from family, or personal pursuits, to help our community grow, or even to improve our skills so that we have more to offer our community – these are the modern forms of sacrifice.

In truth, those who are able to do this personal, but selfless, calculus so that it makes sense, recognize that, as in the Biblical system, we ARE getting something better in return – a sense of contributing to the success of a community which gives meaning and value to their lives and supports them in good times and bad. BUT, that “internal only” understanding doesn’t translate well to the outside, in the “real world.” But, right now, I AM talking to us, the insiders, and this truth is perhaps the best way to help us to see the true value involved in sacrifice.

Service is another one of those words that sounds Christian to us from our own lack of usage, and is subject to misinterpretation. We think of the “Service hours” our children and grandchildren are obligated to do for school or scouts, of churches that advertise being “in service to the community.” We may even think about our own worship services, and too many of us think those drag on too long!

To better understand the Jewish concept of service, we have to look at Jewish history and the Hebrew language. Before there were worship services, there were sacrifices to God. Led by the priesthood, who served God. It was their work. Before there was a dynastic priesthood, there was a priesthood of the first-born of each family. And even after, Isaiah and others reminded us that God expects us all to be “a nation of priests, a holy people.”

The common root in all of these concept words is the Hebrew root for work. It is also the word for servitude – Moses is referred to, with this same root, as a “servant of God.” And HERE is where our Jewish understanding of service should be based – in acknowledging our need to find an outlet through which we feel that we are doing “God’s work,” to improve ourselves and the world around us. Even in a post-slavery era, where we are very glad to no longer be in servitude, we need to act more like we still are willing to serve God freely.

And finally, Faith. This may be the most difficult and controversial of all. It is certainly the most personal, and for that reason, needs to become a conduit for moving us back from ourselves into the life of the community. We watch Christians, especially Evangelicals and Catholics, even Muslims, willing to stand up and publicly proclaim their faith, or act on it, and that makes us even less comfortable doing the same.

But I believe our more basic discomfort comes from a general uncertainty in what we, both individually and collectively, believe about God, and how we believe IN God. Instead of acknowledging that human uncertainty, in ourselves and in others, many of us run from it. In the process, we run from God, just as Jonah mistakenly did, with equally empty results. And worse, that abdication leaves a tremendous void, which many of us choose to fill in the “church of the self.”

..We need stronger faith – in ourselves, in each other, and in God.
..This, in turn, will lead us to be more comfortable in feeling that we are acting in God’s service, and not just for our own narrow self-interests.
..That will allow us to be more comfortable making true sacrifices for the good of others – in ways that really WILL bring value back to us.
..And all this will give us a better sense of mission in our lives, strengthening our collective identities.

We stand here tonight on the edge of the new year, looking back at how we got here, and what we have learned along the way. May we come to recognize in the coming year that our ability to enjoy all of God’s gifts, and truly be satisfied by them is based in strengthening our embrace of these four truly core Jewish values, and sharing them with others. Only then can we remember to make sure that we are working for the satisfaction of the needs of others as well. Only then will we remember to thank God for all God’s gifts to us. Only then will the fulfillment of our hopes to be inscribed for another year in the book of blessing truly have value. KYR

Kol Nidre – Where are We? Finding Our Way in the Moment

It happened again this year. It is not the first time, by far. In fact, for those of us who pay close attention, it seems to happen more often than not. In the weeks leading up to our High Holy Days, we were visited first by an earthquake of almost unprecedented size; then by the remnants of a hurricane, and finally by the flooding connected to one of the rainiest Septembers in our region’s history. This is not the first time that natural disasters have dominated the headlines as we prepared ourselves to enter the sanctuary during our period of atonement seeking. Perhaps they struck a little – okay, a LOT – closer to home than usual. But the phenomenon is not new to us.

Every time it happens, my mind goes to the same liturgical text, and, as always, this time, I was repulsed in larger parts of my being. But this time, the discussion ALSO happened on the internet, where an atheist friend challenged me, the day after the hurricane passed, when I said I was sitting in my family room, watching out the back sliding door, admiring both the power and beauty of God manifest in nature.

By the time that dialogue was finished, I had been pushed to justify how I could believe in the beauty of God’s presence in nature, without also seeing the raw power as having some punitive aspect, in much the same way as some politicians claimed to be joking about God sending messages through these disasters to other elected leaders. Because of my annual struggle with our Holy Day liturgy, and particularly the Un’taneh Tokef that is the centerpiece added onto our T’fillah in the morning and afternoon services, I felt like I had an unfair advantage.

You all know exactly which words I struggle with, because many of you struggle with them, too. They are a part of those several paragraphs of English, with a couple of cantorial pieces thrown in as counterpoint, that begin “Let us declare the greatness of this day – it is awesome and full of dread.” And specifically, in the third of those paragraphs, after we listen to the soaring melody once again:

“On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed –
how many shall live, how many shall die;
Who shall live, and who shall die –
Who shall see ripe age, and who shall not.”

This concept, for many of us, as for my atheist friend, is difficult enough. On the one hand, the idea of God acting in all the roles of the court, as the liturgical poem lists off – judge, jury, prosecutor, and witness – is so central to our understanding of why we come into the sanctuary on this day, seeking to earn the Heavenly Court’s blessing for another year of life, that we are reassured of the legitimacy of the prayer.

But on the other hand, we apparently are then forced to confront, in these last words and those that follow, the idea that there is a converse to our desired outcome – that if we are judged unworthy, the opposite of continued life and blessing must become our lot. Even for the minority of us who do not have difficulty with this as an empirical truth – just as we accept that an essential element in recognizing our mortality is that we must, someday, die – adding a temporal frame and a clear sense of causality can and often does become hugely problematic.

I can accept that I will die, someday. I can admit that, as a human being, I am imperfect. It gets a little harder when I am asked to accept that the first truth might be a consequence of the second. It gets harder still when I am asked to accept that by a certain date and time, if I do not show sufficient improvement, I am condemning myself to that death in the coming year.

And yet, I think we CAN be a little more comfortable seeing these words as a product of an earlier time, even if, in doing so, we acknowledge that we find little personal meaning in them for our day. We can even identify the historical period in which these words found their liturgical relevance – Germany of the period of the Crusades, roughly 1000 years ago. And recognizing the historical setting, we can even, perhaps, understand the hyperbole of the words that follow in the liturgy – words which I have chosen to skip over for the last several years.

The words I, and we, now leave out are the litany of HOW those who are destined to die will die. “Who by fire, and who by water, who by sword, and who by beast, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake, and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning…” Assuredly, for all but the most traditional of us, this is NOT our theology, not our world view.

The last thing we wanted to confront in the aftermath of an earthquake that literally shook the foundations of our creature comfort, was the possibility that the cause of the seismic event was God seeking to carry out one of the sentences of last Yom Kippur – if not on us, then on a neighbor. Likewise as we waited for the power to return, or struggled to bail out the water from our basements after Hurricane Irene, or the later week of torrential rains. Even less so, as we demonstrate our worthiness to be granted another year of blessings through such selfless behaviors as participating in the annual High Holy Day food drive, are we comfortable even considering the possibility that those most in need of the help we are providing are suffering because of Divine punishment for their misdeeds! Or worse, that others, like us, suffer for their acts!

In truth, if these words ever DID make sense of the senseless suffering of our ancestors nearly a thousand years ago, clearly they have lost most of their power over us today – even if the tag line that follows these most difficult verses still DOES work as a positive guide for us. For indeed, our presence here, our annual struggle with this prayer text, surely IS the proof that we do still believe that t’shuvah – the act of seeking atonement from each other and God, t’fillah – our ability to enter the sanctuary and offer sincere prayer from our heart and soul, not only today but throughout the year, and tz’dakah – our charitable behaviors based in our acceptance of God’s commanding role in our lives – can at least lessen the impact, if not spare us completely, from God’s negative verdict.

Simply put, while we find enough in this liturgical poem that still makes sense in our lives, the pieces that no longer do make sense miss so badly that they force us to question, and have forced me to edit, albeit uneasily. And the reason for this complex theological struggle is equally simple – the words that trouble us do not represent the world we live in or the lives that we seek to live TODAY.

More than anything else, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and other natural disasters occurring in close proximity to these days – in our present tense – remind us how these words are not reflective of our present reality. And more than anything else, our focus tonight is on the here and now.

On Rosh Hashanah, our hope for the year still unknown pushes us to look back to the year we now can evaluate. As we move further into this Day of Atonement, our hopes rise for another year, and we begin to look forward to what might be. On this night, we are between those two, locked into admitting who we are, warts and all, AT THIS MOMENT.

Un’taneh Tokef IS so challenging that my teacher, Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, has written and edited an entire volume of struggles with these 39 verses. I highly recommend it, as much for what it teaches us about not being alone in our struggling, as for the incredible diversity of voices expressing how they try to address the challenges of this text.

In his introduction, Hoffman raises a somewhat complex, but intriguing approach, developed by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur. According to Ricouer, for most of us, our religious sophistication and understanding are on a primary level. Perhaps we have come to recognize, as we have with this prayer, that it no longer works for us. Our natural reaction is to begin to question, in a more wholesale manner, whether ANYTHING in liturgy still works for us. But how many of us have worked through our natural wholesale skepticism, and brought our more sophisticated adult world view back to these texts we came to doubt, to develop a “more mature understanding of religion.” Ricouer calls this level a “second naivete,” to distinguish from the “first naivete” of that primary level at which we started to understand religion.

One of the examples Hoffman brings may make this even easier for us to understand and embrace. A child begins with a dependence upon and worship of their parents, which is eventually challenged by the awareness that our parents are NOT perfect. In adolescence we rebel, often ignoring or even trashing our parents, undervaluing their knowledge and experience, sometimes even their love and caring for us. Hopefully, eventually, in a healthy relationship, we reach that mature “second naivete” in our relationship with them, growing to understand them, and put our faith in them once again.

Remember this concept, as we move forward. For on this night, as we begin to make our individual cases before God for continued life and blessing – even if we are still in a rebellious phase of our religious formation, and have some questions about God’s role – we must, as a matter of consequence, also answer collectively for the state of the world in which we live.
Our Jewish tradition teaches us that God created us as part of the Creation, but gave us, as human beings, an exalted role as shepherd and superintendent over the rest of Creation. This is a great responsibility, but also a singular honor. And therefore, it seems to me, part of what we assuredly are judged on, in addition to our individual actions on a personal and interpersonal level, is our role, our personal actions and inactions, on a global scale as well. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of South Africa, one of the clearest moral voices of our lifetime, once said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Surely that statement was significantly influenced by his personal experience on the wrong end of the rod of apartheid. But equally clearly, his words confirm that we do all have a role in what we as Jews call tikkun olam b’sheim Adonai – the repair of our world in God’s name. Furthermore, his words indict us for our silence and inaction at those times when our hearts and souls cry out that something needs to be done.

A look at the daily headlines makes pretty clear to us that there is much in our world today that needs to be changed, many areas in which our relative inaction must be atoned for, and seen as continuing, if not contributing to, the problems. Just 2 Friday nights ago, I again brought to the attention of our community the case of Troy Davis, who was executed for supposedly murdering a police officer in Savannah, Georgia. In a case in which there were large questions raised from the very moment of his being named as the leading suspect, when no murder weapon was found, no DNA evidence gathered, exculpatory evidence was not shared with his lawyers, when it was ASSUMED that he did it, rather than questioned as to whether he did, and when 7 of the 9 alleged eyewitnesses whose words convicted him later recanted their testimony, each claiming they were threatened with arrest on perjury charges if they changed their stories – despite all these glaring questions, and 21 years since his conviction to allow a thorough review, which apparently never occurred, no justice of the Georgia Supreme Court or the Supreme Court of the United States found a reason to intervene and stop his execution. When I first brought his case to our attention, several years ago, there was time for people of conscience to act – and many of us did. Two weeks ago, I was mourning his execution, and the fact that even if what seemed obvious to me and a million others could now be proven true, it is too late to bring justice in the case.

Cases like this suggest to me that part of the reason that most of us do NOT do more to live up to Archbishop Tutu’s words, to the ideals of our tradition of tikkun olam, is that most of us are in that adolescent rebellious state of formation when it comes to issues like this on the national or global scale. We have recognized that the system no longer works as it should, and worse, had too many examples like this where even the best efforts of too many good people go for naught, that it causes us to doubt if the system can even be salvaged. We have not yet reached that “second naivete” in which our mature world view allows us to come back to what we have been forced to abandon from our rosy childhood view, and find value and chances for resolution.

We vote for candidates that run on platforms of “change,” because we recognize the desperate need for change in how our country is run and does business, and cares for our citizens. But we feel helpless to otherwise bring about change where it is needed – in the systems that lead to stalemate instead of solutions, that block new ideas that allow us to grow and evolve. We feel powerless and small in the face of international corporations and billionaires, whose money and power give them access to influence those who are supposed to be working for our best interests. We watch politicians play political games of chicken that risk plunging our nation and our world into the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression, while claiming to be acting for that greater good – as only they and their rich and powerful supporters see it – instead of seeking real and needed solutions.

And as a result, it is easy to point the finger of blame at others, to feel that there is nothing we can do, to curse the darkness, rather than looking for the light. Justified response, to be sure, but not terribly useful in actually improving the situation. And one which is an abdication of our responsibility as Jews.

How can a fellow Jew look the innocent victims of Hurricane Irene square in the eye and insist that before they can get the FEMA assistance they need in order to recover, that so many others have benefitted from in the past, equivalent savings must be found in the government budget? How can a fellow Jew insist that those funds be taken from other social safety net programs, because “when we have a problem in our families, we tighten our belts and deal with it”?

Yet, when Rep. Eric Cantor said those very words, where were we, as Jews, standing up to speak truth to power? Or calling his threatening of others’ recovery in this way the violation of the commandments we will reread tomorrow that it surely is, namely not to place a stumbling block before the blind, or stand idle while our neighbors bleed, especially after fighting harder than anyone else to get that same FEMA money when it was HIS constituents that needed it? Or making clear that, in OUR family, when someone is in need, we first ask what we can do, and only THEN figure out how to pay to make the help real? And more than that, where were we demanding ACTION, and not just decrying the iniquity?

And when, as so tragically happened just this week, in an Israel that tonight, more than perhaps EVER before, needs our support, understanding, and effort on the world stage, people who call themselves Jews, who frequently challenge the legitimacy of other forms of Jewish belief and practice, attack a Muslim mosque, and burn it to the ground, scrawling words like “revenge” on it first, or attack Israeli soldiers sent to keep the peace, where are the Jewish voices decrying these as the pogrom and sacrilege they most certainly are? I am proud of the leaders of our Reform movement for decrying the attack on the mosque, prouder that we have set up a fund to help rebuild the mosque as a symbol of our support for innocent victims who are not Jews. But somehow, even this does not seem to be enough of a response for me.

In his letters from the Birmingham Jail, at the height of the civil rights movement in this country, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." Sadly, it appears that his words, like those of Desmond Tutu, still ring true and unanswered in our day.

And yet, on this night, I stand before you, extremely concerned, but not without hope. Since last we appeared before God on Yom Kippur, our world has witnessed the so-called “Arab spring,” still ongoing in many places, in which, simple people like you and like me finally stood up and demanded an end to tyranny and repression, insisted on having a voice that leads to action in determining their own fate in their own countries. The efforts of that “Arab spring” transferred over within Israel to a summer of grass roots protests that started with college students and recent graduates, demanding more affordable housing options, and spread at its height to a half million Israelis, speaking Jewish truth in search of better treatment by their own government.

And now, with the arrival of fall, it seems as if that frustration that led and is leading to violence in the Arab world, and to peaceful, if mostly ineffectual, protest in Israel, may now have arrived on our shores. What started as a movement to “Occupy Wall Street,” by individuals upset that the needs of Main Street are being sacrificed to protect the entitlements of Wall Street, is spreading to Washington, DC and other areas of our country. It is still too early to know what, if any, meaningful change this effort may achieve, or even how the movement will evolve. But it is a start, and therefore I am hopeful.

However, if the banner I saw being carried by one young woman protestor is any indication, there is more than reason for hope. The banner read “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” I believe the quote is actually a lyric from Jimim Hendrix. So hopeful, so positive, so seemingly simple and obvious. Has this woman reached her level of “second naivete” before the rest of us when it comes to such matters? Or has she not yet fully left behind her “first naivete”? We cannot be sure. But we can take pride that, even as we sit here tonight, in the comfort of our sanctuary away from home, Kol Nidrei has been chanted, and Yom Kippur services have been held out on the street as part of the Occupy Wall Street protest demonstrations. Maybe we as Jews do have a leading role to play in reclaiming America for all Americans!

So as we struggle tomorrow with the words of Un’taneh Tokef, as we struggle to express our true contrition and atonement, and to grant forgiveness to those who seek it from us, in this moment of the here and now, let us remember to look beyond the walls of our own congregational life. Let us pledge not to be dismayed, not to lose faith, and if we do, to struggle to regain a more mature faith that leads us toward reaching a level of “second naivete.” One that is achieved by learning from the past, and rediscovering faith and hope for the future. One that allows us to work for meaningful and needed change not only within ourselves, our liturgy, and our community, but indeed, for our nation and our world. Nothing less can ensure that the life that we hope to be blessed to continue enjoying in the coming year will have the meaning we want and need it to have. KYR

Yom Kippur Morning – Where are We? Where are We Going? And How Do We Get There?

So, here we are, once again. It is Yom Kippur morning – continuation of, arguably, the holiest day of our year. Even more assuredly, for most of us, today is the most physically challenging day of our year, as we fast, in an effort to purify our bodies as well as our souls, as we stand before God to make our case for inclusion in the Book of Life and Blessing for another year. Both needing to make that case, as well as making the case itself, make this as spiritually challenging a day as it is a physical challenge.

So, naturally, I want to begin today by talking about weddings. Oh, and Chanukkah, too!

As a Rabbi, I have the privilege of sharing in the lives of an incredible group of individuals – the members of the Temple Solel “family,” their extended families and friends. This sharing comes on both the communal level, on occasions such as this Yom Kippur day, and also on the individual level.

Sharing on the individual level takes many forms. It can be benign – running into each other in the supermarket, or while listening to the Crayfish. It can run in one direction, when I call upon a member of the congregation for their expertise, or in the other, when one of us brings a question to their Rabbi. It can come on the most difficult days of our lives – as we sit with a sick friend or relative, or, God forbid, as we mourn their passing. But it can also come on the best days – the birth of a child or grandchild, or celebrating as they become bar or bat mitzvah.

Or – at a wedding. My role on those days is to perform the ceremony, and provide just enough gravitas, so that the state will recognize the couple’s union, and their family and friends will know that they truly are married, before going off to celebrate appropriately. And I often join in that mitzvah of rejoicing with bride and groom after the ceremony.

When I sit with a couple to plan their joyous day, I run through the basic service. I explain to them, as I explain during the service, that the ritual basically has three parts. The first part celebrates the path that has brought them to this moment. The exchange of rings and vows is the here and now. The last portion looks to their future as a family.

These High Holy Days work similarly. On Rosh Hashanah, indeed for all of the month of Elul that precedes it, as we prepare ourselves to seek atonement, we look back and evaluate where we have been - what we have done in reaching this season. Last night, as we listened to the lofty melody of Kol Nidrei – more than just an insurance policy against human failings in the year to come, in that it is also our admission of the human frailty and imperfections we live with daily -- we were very much thinking and acting in the present tense. On both of those occasions, the power of the moment, and our needs, can make our mood more pessimistic than we might otherwise be comfortable with, as we struggle to work through our needed atonement efforts, and our admission of our human flaws. Seeing clearly what we have done or not done that has harmed others, or admitting our imperfections, not as some abstract concept, but in real time, can have that effect.

But now, this morning, even as our ultimate fate in the New Year may still be in doubt, we already look into this New Year, at the future that awaits us. Our mood becomes more hopeful as the vision takes shape.

And so it is that, on this Yom Kippur morning, I want to turn us to our collective future. In early 2012, roughly mid-year of this 5772, Temple Solel will mark the 48th anniversary of our beginnings as a congregation. Which means that 5774 will mark our congregation’s Jubilee year, our 50th anniversary. A time worthy of great celebration, to be sure. And, to be sure, we will celebrate extensively throughout that year.

We read, in Leviticus 25, all about the rituals of the Jubilee year. In Biblical times as well, every 50th year was a huge communal celebration. It was a time in which even the land was given a break from working, when even those in servitude were released from their bonds. THIS is the context of the quotation from Leviticus 25 that is famously found on the Liberty Bell, at the insistence of America’s Founding Fathers: Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof.

The Jubilee year was proclaimed on Yom Kippur of that year, by the sounding of the Shofar. Since we have a significantly larger crowd at this moment than we will at the conclusion of the N’eilah service later today, forgive me please if I move forward the pronouncement of the beginning of our Jubilee celebration by a few hours in the day!

But wait, I can hear you saying – why should we care about a few hours when I am also moving that announcement forward by a full two years. I do so with solid grounding and motives. As we note every year on Rosh Hashanah, in the old days, even after our religious leaders had the experience along with mathematical and scientific awareness to accurately forecast the arrival of the NEXT New Year’s moment from the knowledge of this year’s, they STILL required that the new moon of each month be witnessed, reported to, and affirmed by the Sanhedrin.
That obligation, which limited the lead time on announcing and planning of holy days, is no longer observed, allowing us to start earlier.

Furthermore, as we start to think about what the celebrations of that 50th year will look like, the wedding model comes back to mind. We will, of course, celebrate the occasion in fine style. But, in getting there, wouldn’t it be nice to celebrate the moment by looking back in pride to how we got here; by looking with hope to a bright future? It seems to be the perfect time for us also to stop and figure out exactly who we have been, who we are, and who we wish to be as a congregational family, as part of that celebration. That effort will be extensive, and assuredly will require more than a single year to complete properly. And since that effort will embrace both our history and our dreams of the future, and not merely the celebration of the moment, why not start a couple of years early, and plan to extend a couple of years beyond our 50th as well.

And so, this morning, we begin an undertaking that our leadership has called “Mission 50.” It will be a 5 year effort, designed to evaluate who we are, what we do, how and why we do it, as a congregational family. We will look at our history, to understand what has been, even as we dream of what we hope our congregational family will become.

At the center of this effort, lighting the spiritual guiding light of each of the focal points that will make up Mission 50, is that 50th anniversary itself, the joyous celebrations of who we are and what we have already accomplished. In that respect, our Jubilee will serve the same function as the shammash – the candle that lights the others on our Chanukiyot each winter! The one which, by sharing its light in a meaningful way, allows the physical and spiritual light to increase throughout our celebration of Chanukkah. And wouldn’t you know that Mission 50 just happens to have 8 distinct points of emphasis!!

Just as the shammash lights the way, giving life to the other lights of the Chanukiyah, and in the process, has its reach broadened, its spiritual power increased, it is our hope that Mission 50, triggered by our Jubilee celebration, will ring as loudly and clearly as the Liberty Bell rang in the new era of Independence for the colonies; ushering in a time of spiritual growth for each member of our congregational family, and for the congregation as a whole. By choosing to include in our celebration the opportunity to redefine who we are and what we seek to achieve and be, we hope to make our 50th anniversary that much more of a legacy to the first half century of Solel’s life, a more loving and meaningful celebration of whom and of what we have already become.

The 8 focal points of Mission 50 have been identified over the course of many years of efforts and energy on the part of the leadership of this congregation. There is no correlation between past efforts or lack thereof, or their success or failure in any of these areas, and their inclusion as part of the plan. Indeed, in many cases, we have deliberately chosen to take areas that are working, and attempt to build from strength to even greater strength.

The 8 “candles” of Mission 50, as we visualize it at the start, will be:

1. Mission and Vision – Our leading efforts in this area will include: reviewing our current Mission statement (copies of which are available on the table outside with other important materials); updating it 11 years later to catch up with changes that have already occurred and those we deem to be needed; fleshing it out with greater detail and specifics that will make it easier for us to utilize the document as a practical guide to all that we do programmatically, spiritually, educationally, communally, and even administratively and fiscally.

2. Governance and Leadership – Beginning from two points of reflection, we will work to improve the quality of our congregational leadership. We will undertake a review of our board and committee structure, to make sure we are best utilizing our human leadership resources, and to ensure that the “system” doesn’t interfere with our leaders’ ability to lead. This will include exploring ways to strengthen ALL our auxiliary groups and tighten our working relationships, to remove redundancies and points of contradiction. And we will develop an organized system to identify and train future leaders BEFORE the nominating committee calls them and asks them to serve as leaders, so our leaders are better prepared to lead.

3. Finance – We will undertake a comprehensive review of our finances from top to bottom, including our fundraising efforts, to improve and streamline our practices and policies, and make sure that we are on solid financial footing for the future, while also making sure that we are placing appropriate expectations on ALL members of our community to support ourselves as best we can.

4. Education – This is one of those areas in which we are building from strength. It is also an area in which much has changed around us, and will be changing, beyond our ability to prevent it from doing so, in how we do what we do so well. We will continue to evaluate our curriculum, and our teacher recruitment and development, to make sure that we have the best teachers utilizing the best techniques and materials. We will examine the evolving role of a supplemental Reform religious school like we run here, to see what else is possible and necessary without watering down what we are doing well already. We will emphasize the development of a “youth culture” that extends beyond the classroom and coordinates formal and informal educational opportunities, like junior choir, camps and youth group programs. We will rededicate ourselves to the active pursuit of the goal of lifelong Jewish learning, creating opportunities for every member to participate at a comfortable and appropriate level. And, we will look at how we can continue to provide these essential programs and services, affordably, under the best leadership possible, while keeping a finger on the pulse of the ever-changing world of Jewish education.

5. Membership – We will continue to explore how we can best get our “brand” out there in the forms and locations that are most likely to be seen by those who will become our future members. We will develop strategies to help all our members become more comfortable in their membership, more willing to give back through greater involvement; and learn to “close the deal ” better with more prospective members. This effort will also work closely with the effort to evaluate our…

6. Communications – Here, we will look at how we can best get our activities out into the public eye, and how we communicate with our members and prospective members directly and most effectively, particularly in the ever-evolving realm of technology. As part of this effort, we will look at those areas of the larger community in which we are already involved, and recognized for our involvement, as a way to leverage that involvement to create more awareness of Temple Solel.

7. Facility – None of this can happen unless our brick and mortar home is strong, and appropriately maintained and equipped. The focus here will be on evaluating whether we are currently best meeting our need to do so, and what it will take in the short, medium and long term to get up to speed and stay up-to-date and up to code. Among the items that we expect to confront in this area is how we can better utilize the building, both as a source of revenue, and as the setting for our growing programs, given the limits of our physical space.

8. Program – This last area (not temporally nor in importance) will evaluate and co-ordinate the entire overall program of activities at Temple Solel for balance, and to identify areas which we have been overlooking or underserving. It will look at both the macro and micro issues of our program, as well as finding the balance between specifically Jewish programs that only we can provide, and broader external programs in which our involvement and support would further our mission. As the only Jewish institution in Bowie, the only Reform congregation in Prince George’s County, serving a larger membership circumference than ever before, we need to find ways to become the “virtual JCC” that we often talk about being without weakening our existing strengths and programs, and within the realities of our tangible resources.

In short, when fully realized, Mission 50 seeks to ensure that our Jubilee anniversary celebration is both spirited and spiritual, that the congregation that emerges from that celebration is even stronger than the one which will begin it. We seek to build on the literal foundations that are the legacy of our founders and the first two generations of our leadership and members, to build a spiritual communal home that, even more than it already does, will work to make sure that our children and grandchildren, along with every one of us, feels the love and appreciation from being involved, gains the sense of order and relevance from our participation, and has the opportunity to leave behind something of ourselves as a legacy for those who will follow after us. A community and congregational family that fosters Jewish wellness, that embodies Isaiah’s clarion call to us to be a “light unto the nations” through our involvement in programs that better the entire community of which we are a part, and that uniquely and without question is identifiable as not only being Jewish, but as acting on the teachings of Judaism for EVERYONE’S betterment.

This will not be easy. But it can be done. All it will take is every one of us buying into the vision, every one of us committing to the effort, every one of us finding the niche within which we want to make our involvement felt – both in the work of Mission 50 over the next 5 years, and in the congregation that emerges from our efforts.

I am happy to announce today, as well, that the first piece of this complex jigsaw puzzle, the “Mission Statement Review Committee” will be forming in the coming weeks, under the leadership of our Executive Vice-President, Gary Worthman. I also expect that we will all soon be hearing officially from the members of our Board of Trustees, who will be in contact with us to get our initial commitment to be involved in one of the 8 candles on Mission 50 menorah, as we seek to celebrate rededication to our synagogue as our communal home, much as Judah Maccabee and his followers did over 2000 years ago.

In this way, the marriage between our congregation and our individual members will grow from strength to strength. I can think of no better way to demonstrate to ourselves, to our children, to each other, and to God on this Atonement Day that we are serious in our commitment to growing from the actions of our past, atoning for any mistakes we have made, and working hard to correct ourselves in the future. KYR

A Time to Heal, A Time to Mourn ... Even if Not the Death of an Enemy

2011-05-03T05:53:00.000-07:00

A Time to Heal, A Time to Mourn… Even If Not the Death of an Enemy

My 17 year old daughter came bounding downstairs at about 10:45 PM, which was the first hint that anything was out of the ordinary. “Why aren’t you watching the news? Something big is going on…” Even she did not know exactly what yet, even though her cyber-world (I thought she was sleeping!) was already abuzz….

She grabbed the clicker, and flipped to Fox News – not for political reasons, but because it was the one station showing news at that hour in the regular listings. I chuckled to myself in amazement later when I remembered this moment – that with all she has lived through in her own life, with the political awareness about news media that she gained during the last presidential campaign, it STILL didn’t dawn on her that if whatever was going on really was that big that EVERYONE would have gone to news reports, and she did not need to turn to Fox (and did they REALLY misspeak at one point and refer to the death of OBAMA!?). But also, that NEITHER of us, at that critical moment, instinctively turned to the internet, or even CNN! Broadcast network news was the choice…

Within a minute, we heard the words that neither of us could have imagined. “Osama is dead.” Very few words passed between us, as we both struggled to process what we were seeing and hearing, awaiting the official word from the President. We remarked at the irony of the raid coming on the anniversary of the “Mission Accomplished” speech 8 years ago. We wondered how this would affect the troops on the ground in Afghanistan, and their mission. And before I get into the deeper issues, let me say this up front – major kudos to those who planned and implemented this raid so successfully. It is nice to be able to be as proud of a well-done American military action as I have many times been of their Israeli counterparts! And by extension, let this serve as a reminder for us to thank ALL those who serve to protect us!

I could be wrong, but I believe she was struggling as I was, looking for the proper emotion in that moment. Clearly, this will be one of those touchstone moments that she already has too many of in her life – 9/11, the snipers shooting Iran Brown in front of Tasker MS in Bowie in 2002, Obama’s election and inauguration, and now this. It will, no doubt, be seen as significant, even if history comes to recognize how little real impact it may have as we move forward. Symbolic value is important, and valuable at a moment like this in our nation’s history. The closure bin Laden’s death represents for many is a large part of their, and our national, healing. However, it was necessary for a REAL life to be taken by force in order for this sense of pride to be brought to the surface.

Clearly, it was correct to be happy and proud. After all, our country’s foreign policy for nearly the last decade has been predicated on finding and removing this man from influence, as we have been told that he was responsible for planning and ordering the events of 9/11/01, and the deaths of some 3000 innocent Americans.

In the 10 years since, hundreds of thousands of American’s lives have been directly impacted, as they, or their friends and family, have been sent overseas to participate in the search, and the corollary military activities connected to it. Many have died, more have been injured. Families have been separated, lives have been changed by the experience. This mission, and its success – especially with no apparent collateral damage to our own operatives or innocent bystanders -- were the ultimate vindication of their sacrifices and efforts.

And yet, there was no obvious way to express that pride, that relief that the long-awaited outcome had been achieved. And there was a tinge of pride in my own heart when I thought I recognized Emily’s struggle as well. After all, how do we rejoice at a death, even of one as despised as bin Laden? (Sadly, I was only partly accurate in judging WHY she struggled to find the right emotion, but if anything, hearing her share her own reasons only STRENGTHENED my own difficulty!)

Don’t misunderstand me. I am as proud for my country as anyone who spontaneously chanted “USA” during the critical moments of a baseball game last night, as the news spread like wildfire through the stands, passed from one smartphone to another (another sign of just how much our world has changed, foundationally!), shared by fans who otherwise had spent the entire game not talking to each other; as instinctively as glad as anyone who joined the flash mobs outside the White House and at Ground Zero (and apparently, on college campuses across the country) in the middle of the night -- that bin Laden will no longer be able to influence others to hate Americans for being Americans.
However, I hope I am not the only Jew who remembers Palestinians cheering the SCUD missiles as they flew towards Israel, or American who watched as Arabs in many countries cheered as the Twin Towers burned and collapsed. We bristled at their callous disregard for human life when the celebration was at our expense. How we can we ignore the truth that there is some similar element that, if not intended by our celebrations, certainly will be perceived by our enemies in our joy.

One of my colleagues (who I like too much as a person to identify by name here) has posted about our celebration of Chanukkah, “We have an entire holiday celebrating the destruction of the Greeks - it's called Hannukah! We may not celebrate our enemy's death, but we sure celebrate the end of their life! I am joyous about OBL's end of terror as I was about Arafat's, Hussein's, Pol Pot, etc.”

Those of you who know me well know that I disagree completely with his reading of Chanukkah’s message, and even with his assertion that it is about the “destruction” of the (Syrian-) Greeks. I DO, however, accept and agree his last statement – I am just not sure how he gets there from what comes before it. And, in the process, he shows what can happen when we fail to learn the lessons of our tradition…

Maybe it is the close calendric proximity to our annual Passover seders that made my mind jump so quickly to THAT festival instead, but the death of an enemy, even one so despised and seemingly deserving as bin Laden, is STILL the death of a human being. And THAT is made clear at the seder! We spill 10 drops of wine, more than symbolically, in the midst of that annual participatory drama, to remind ourselves that the death, even the suffering, of others MUST limit our own rejoicing, EVEN AT ACHIEVING FREEDOM from the oppressor!

As my friend Stephen Brickman reminded his many friends on Facebook at the height of the celebrating (and took a huge amount of heat for doing so!), our Jewish tradition tells a remarkable story about the celebration at our Redemption at the Sea. The men began to sing and dance a song of praise to God for their deliverance – we sing it still today as part of our liturgy as “Mi Khamokhah.” The Biblical text, usually silent on the behavior and words that came from the women, here tells us that even the women, following the lead of Moses’ sister, Miriam, sang and danced and played instruments in praise and joy as well.

Seeing this, the Rabbinic midrash picks up the story, God’s ministering angels began to sing and dance as well. God immediately chastised them, reminding them of two critical truths. First, that the angels were not, themselves, saved at the Sea like the people were, so that their own lack of personal investment did not justify their singing and dancing in joy. Even more so as, second, because of their position and detachment, the angels should have realized that the deaths of the Egyptians which were necessary to achieve this result SHOULD have prevented them from rejoicing.

The moral of this story is clear – those who have been delivered, whether from slavery or danger, DO have the right to celebrate their own personal salvation. However, even those closest to them – removed either by physical or temporal proximity – are expected to maintain perspective and respect the loss of life involved.

It was my colleague and friend, Rabbi Peter Rigler, who pulled and posted the quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that came even closer to what I was feeling…

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

As I read those words that I had learned before, I began to pull into focus the several items that were bothering me. None of which, by the way, was that bin Laden is dead, although, perhaps, it should have been.

I understand that we, as Americans, are better off for having killed him than we would have been if we had captured him alive, as we did with Saddam Hussein. The questions of where and how to bring bin Laden to trial, where to keep him incarcerated for his safety and that of innocent others, the likelihood that someone would eventually be motivated to try to either kill him themselves or rescue him need neither be asked nor answered this way.

However, there are a couple of issues that MUST be answered before I, and other good people, can be completely comfortable with what has happened. First and foremost, the same level of professionalism and commitment to task that was shown in killing bin Laden yesterday needs to continue to be shown by ALL those on the front line – including TSA and Homeland Security -- as we brace for the inevitable backlash. And that includes all of us as Americans. “See something, say something” must become more than a cute catch phrase, but rather, a natural response. If we believe what we have been told for several years, that al-Qaeda today is far more diversified and decentralized, then even bin Laden’s death does NOT put them out of business. However, it COULD easily set in motion plans that have been long-practiced for what to do in response to his death….

Second, we need to hear, in clear and unambiguous terms, why it was necessary to issue a kill order that was carried out within the borders of a foreign sovereign nation. We need to hear that it was carried out with the full knowledge, if not cooperation, of the host nation. Otherwise, we need to hear conclusively why gaining their involvement and support would have endangered our mission. And, while we are at it, when the dust settles, we probably need to re-evaluate our relationship with the host government, given where and at what level of luxury it turns out bin Laden was living this whole time, as we searched the rugged hill country for him. It now seems highly unlikely that his whereabouts were totally unknown to our alleged allies….

Third, in order to maintain good will with the Islamic world, which is already predisposed to lean away from America, and to avoid widespread conspiracist speculation about wagging the dog, we need to be provided with incontrovertible proof that the person we killed really was Osama bin Laden, and that Osama bin Laden really is dead. Here, especially, the kill order works against us, as it denies us the undeniable proof of watching his “perp walk” into custody.

Again, I understand why we felt it necessary and valuable to immediately bury bin Laden at sea. By doing so, we avoid the potential nightmare of an organized raid succeeding at capturing his body, and by dumping him at sea, we remove the potential of any land area becoming a shrine to his martyrdom (assuming that there will be no tangible remnant left at the site of his compound, and that it will be turned over to others to rebuild and repopulate). How ironic that the comparison here is to the death and burial of our own Moses!

And I appreciate our government’s claims that the sea burial was done according to Islamic law and sensibilities. However, like a sea burial within Judaism, such an action is NOT the norm, and leaves our government and military open to complaints that we failed to respect sensibilities, even as it seems clear that we DID try to act with respect in death to one who showed none to us in life.

It also raises the possibility of increased questioning of whether the body that was weighted down in a shroud and “eased into the sea,” was, in fact, that of bin Laden. And lest this sound like I am endorsing the conspiracy theorists of both extremes, with whom I rarely seek or find common ground or comfort, let me point out that the voices I am hearing raising these concerns already are NOT extreme voices. They are well respected mainstream voices.

But worst of all, I have an abiding concern that no one can now address because bin Laden is dead. Even greater than the REAL source of Emily’s discomfort – which she claimed is a cynicism as to whether his death will actually change anything (I AM so proud!).

Because she followed that answer with a resounding “He needs to be dead.” And in that sentiment, expressed equally unequivocally by so many in these first 24 hours, lies my worst fears. It is an embrace of the Wild West mentality that was at the heart of the “Bush Doctrine” that guided the search for bin Laden. We were told in the first hours of the “War on Terror” that bin Laden was wanted, in the words of the cliché, “dead or alive.”

Rather than following the teachings of Judaism and of Dr. King, we have played into emotion and pandered to our least common denominator reactions, lowering ourselves to the level of those who would attack us, rather than maintaining the high ground and behaving in a way which would make western democracy something to be respected and copied, rather than targeted.

Rather than trusting the court of law, we sent out a posse to enforce the verdict of the court of public opinion. We have been told from the beginning that Osama bin Laden, as the leader of al-Qaeda, was responsible for the events of 9/11 and many other atrocities. However, HOW DO WE KNOW that this is an accurate claim? After all, at the risk of stooping to what some might claim is a cheap shot, those making the claim of bin Laden’s culpability are the same folks who wanted the world to believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq!

And now, a kill order, successfully carried out, and a burial at sea of the body, have removed ALL chances of any normative investigation of the man or his actions. While I will NOT go so far as some of my colleagues have, and completely ignore what has happened since 1993 (the first attempt at taking down the Twin Towers), or bin Laden's public posturings of hate directed at America and the West that are a total abomination of the Islamic tradition he purported to respect and follow, by including his name in our prayers for the dead this week, I am, nevertheless, deeply concerned that our own response -- in our public behaviors AND our government's official responses and actions -- needs to be EXACTLY right. And so far, it has not been. This is NOT America’s finest hour, and I do not need Dr. King or the sacred texts of my tradition to know that, and to know it clearly enough to be willing to stand up and say it loudly and clearly even while the visceral celebrations are still dying down.

Therefore, we NEED our government, now that bin Laden IS dead, to publicly present the FULL case that they would have presented in a court of law to gain a conviction of bin Laden for crimes against our country and against humanity. NOTHING LESS will stand a chance of succeeding in winning the battle in the court of public opinion, which is the only possible venue remaining in which this case can be made.

In saying it, I do NOT disrespect the military folks who did their job and did it well. I do NOT belittle the sense of closure that bin Laden’s death (I pray) brings to every survivor of a victim of 9/11, every family member who lost a soldier in the War on Terror or who is nursing one back to health, and to our country as a whole. Those are two categories of my fellow Americans who continue to be in my prayers every day.

In saying it, I refuse to take sides in the inevitable battle over political legacy as to just whose victory this is. Because the truth is that this victory is NOT George Bush’s. NEITHER is it Barack Obama’s. The truth is, that we do not even know yet just how significant a victory this will turn out to be in reality, or even if it will be! But whatever victory it is needs to be a victory for the IDEALS that America was built on, the VALUES that make us strong, or else it is no victory. It needs to be a victory for America and ALL Americans!

And I say it to question where we, as a country, lost our moral compass. Where we went off the tracks and became no better than those who would attack us. I say it as the inheritor of the generation of protestors in the 60s who spoke out to criticize our government as a statement of our respect and love for what our nation and our government are suppose to represent and believe, with the hope of getting us back ON track! I say it as a proud, but troubled American, who believes “My country, even WHEN it is wrong!” rather than “My country – right or wrong!”

Of course, I recognize that simply by saying it, I can fully expect to draw the wrath of those whose chauvinism and jingoism has replaced their moral compass, those whose myopia and ego have lessened us in the eyes of the rest of the world as a country, a world power, and a force for good and justice, and, in the process, severely weakened us in reality; those who think character attacks and yelling can drown out reasoned and principled argument and debate.

And that is a price that I am more than willing to pay, in part because if I am not willing to do so, then no one else should or will be either. Because, in this case, the Bush Doctrine’s Wild West mentality is correct – if I am not part of the solution, then I am part of the problem.

And while only time will allow me to know for sure just how big a moment Sunday night really was, I know with an absolute certainty that as Yom HaSho’ah – Holocaust Memorial Day – drew to a close at sunset, that I wanted, no – I NEEDED – to be part of the solution, and not part of the problem. Nothing else is good enough!

And I am incredibly relieved that as Tuesday morning has dawned, the tone is already changing. Jingoistic shouts of joy at the death of an enemy are being replaced, slowly but surely, by expressions of recognition of the complexities of the moment, and laments of just how much America and Americans HAVE been changed – and still are – by 9/11, as reflected in our public responses to bin Laden’s death

So celebrate a proud moment of closure and a “victory” for our country if it feels right. But remember what it took to achieve that victory, and look at that not only through our eyes, but through those of others. And move past the visceral reaction that blocks our ability to follow our true selves in our hearts and souls as quickly as possible. Then, when the celebrations die down, join with me in the REAL battle for America’s future – the internal one that only we can wage for our nation’s soul. The victims of 9/11 and their families deserve no less. The brave men and women of our armed forces and first responders and their families deserve no less. Our children and grandchildren deserve no less. WE deserve no less!

Responding to the Irresponsible -- Beck PT I

2011-02-24T12:21:00.000-08:00

The following text appeared on my facebook page today -- Thank you to Joel Wanger for posting it for his friends to see:

Jewish Funds For Justice: Glenn Beck's Apology Is "Not Enough"
February 24, 2011 12:46 pm ET by Media Matters staff

Jewish Funds For Justice today released the following response to Glenn Beck's apology for his attacks on Reform Judaism (I apologize that, as usual, the links did not transfer -- I HIGHLY recommend that you DO follow Beck's advice this far, and "do your own homework" -- go to my facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/steve.weisman1, where this link is now my status; click on the link to the JFJ response, and then click on the links to find the original slur, the responses, and Beck's "apology"):

GLENN BECK'S APOLOGY - NOT ENOUGH

Glenn Beck's apology for comparing Reform Judaism to "Radicalized Islam" is welcome but incomplete. While we are heartened to hear him recognize his ignorance, he still has not acknowledged that the letter signed by 400 rabbis and organized by Jewish Funds for Justice represented a cross-section of denominations, including Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Renewal rabbis.

Glenn Beck's characterization of Reform Judaism is in keeping with his longstanding hostility toward people who see their faith linked to pursuing the common good. This was made clear in March of 2010, when Mr. Beck advised people to leave their churches if their clergy spoke about social justice.

Mr. Beck's demonization of his political opponents is a regular feature of his radio and television shows. This problem is systemic. His remarks about Reform Jews are only the most recent example of the attacks that occur daily on Beck's show.

We reiterate our call for Rupert Murdoch to end Mr. Beck's tenure at Fox News and for Salem Communications to commit not to add his syndicated radio show to their New York stations. Anything short of this reflects an unwillingness to take seriously the harm Mr. Beck causes to many in our community and beyond.

And they are right -- he KNEW he had to apologize, and as you listen to (or even read the transcript of) his words, it is CLEAR that he is not apologizing for what he said, or slandering people in their beliefs and actions, but making excuses for himself and WHY it happened. He NEVER uses the word Reform, never makes a positive or accurate comment to countermand the lies of the other day. Contrary to his contention, this is the radio equivalent of burying it on page 2 -- if you didn't here the original or know the context, you would have no idea wtf he is apologizing FOR! In the end, he apologized to Abe Foxman!! Who was not slandered in the first place, but provided yet another subtle Beckist jab at his "favorites" if you have followed the story.

To do, accurately, what he did, possibly by mistake the other day, this "apology" is the equivalent to the bad old days when Arafat would mutter the right buzzwords in English, and the Arabic, in context, was clearly inciting his followers to keep up the good fight!

In Their Own Words -- Again

2011-02-17T06:10:00.001-08:00

Since I didn't preach (at least, not officially) last Shabbat, and I am trying to give my readers what to read anyway, here are two VERY different essays worthy of our thoughts and consideration.

The first is an extremely thought provoking piece about the state of life and the economy in America today, and how we got to where we are today. Regardless of whether you find this amusing or a cheap shot, I challenge you to move beyond the biases of your own positions and contemplate the data presented carefully:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=178989022468&id=511915235

The second is not as universal in scope. But it will probably hit those of you who are part of a religious community, especially a synagogue (like mine), just as hard as the first. Again, it is easy to throw counter arguments to almost every point. I would love to see some empirical evidence that embracing this philosophy in practical terms DOES lead to the desired results. But again, move past the biases and listen to the words....

http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/including-those-with-financial-challenges/

And please -- the fun in blogs like today's comes from the thoughtful exchange of reactions -- it is called debate, and it leads us to fine tune our own thoughts and ideas :)

Gifts from the Heart

2011-02-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

Gifts of the Heart – A Sermon for T’rumah February 4, 2011
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

Of course, it happened again. It always happens! Just never like this!

Those of you who were here last Shabbat heard my admission of a near faux pas of major proportion, when I realized, at 6 PM on Friday at the conclusion of a long and challenging week, that the sermon I had written was actually based on the WRONG Torah portion (the one we read tonight, not the one for last Shabbat!). I promised that, since the other materials I included were not time bound, that I would give that sermon this Shabbat. A sermon entitled “On Being Prepared, Not Rushing In, Gifts of the Heart, and the Power of Words.”

Shoulda known better! EVERY time I have a sermon done in advance, something comes up and makes me chuck the original right out the window. The handshake on the White House lawn. September 11. The DC sniper. But NOTHING could have prepared me for this week’s version of the Rabbi’s corollary to Murphy’s Law. NOTHING!

When the phone rang at about 1 PM on Tuesday, and Elizabeth told me it was Emily, the odds were real good that something was wrong. She was in the middle of student teaching – she shouldn’t be calling. Even with that awareness, confirmed when I heard the shaking in her voice even before I heard her say a word, the words still struck me like a ton of bricks. “Koomar just called. Mitch died this morning.”

Koomar (NOT his real name, but a beloved nickname – no slur here) is a friend from camp. Mitch is as well. The son of two Rabbis of whom I am quite fond. The best friend of Emily’s boyfriend. A really good 17 year old kid. The kind who, if they found him dead with an empty bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand, and an empty pill bottle in the other, your first reaction would be to ask whose idea of a sick joke was it to put those there, rather than inferring cause and effect. NOT the subject of a sentence whose predicate is “died this morning.”

This was every parent’s nightmare; every Rabbi’s challenge. Inconceivable. Impossible. And, as I discovered after making a few phone calls as Emily drove to the Temple, absolutely true. Apparently, he was discovered unconscious that morning in his home. As the autopsy seems to have confirmed, without warning, his heart just stopped beating.

There was, plain and simply, absolutely no way to make any sense of this moment. No chance of finding words to comfort my somewhat hysterical daughter. Not as a Rabbi, anyway. I resorted to Dad mode, as I held her tight, and shared her pain, and helped her deal with the news herself, even as she tried to help Kumar and Sam deal as well. For that moment, it was all I had to offer. I hoped it was enough.

So, there I was yesterday morning, driving with Emily (and Evan and John, who also knew Mitch) to northern New Jersey to say goodbye and help bury Mitch. To help his parents and family deal with the inconceivable. To be the Rabbi Steve that the Harlam family needed me to be, and that I needed to be to get some sense of normalcy back. All while I silently struggled myself to make sense of it all, and continued to fail miserably.

The turnout was predictably overwhelming. Camp friends. Fellow Rabbis. His school friends. His parents’ work colleagues. Family friends and relatives. All, it seemed, going through the same struggle – HOW? WHY?

Major kudos to my colleague – Rabbi Steve Kushner – for handling the impossible challenge of this funeral. His eulogy was BRILLIANT – it clearly showed his close relationship and sincere affection and respect for Mitch; it started, in some small way, to put Mitch’s death, and life, into some perspective; it allowed us all to begin to heal a bit. As I said to a couple of friends afterwards, “I hope, when I grow up, to be able to deliver a eulogy that powerful – once.”

Part of his message was to tie his eulogy to our Torah portion, T’rumah. To note, very accurately, how much of Mitch’s life was a display of his willingness and ability to share freely the gifts of his heart, just as the start of our portion instructs Moses to have the Israelites bring the gifts of their hearts in order to build God’s house in our midst. In that single, insightful teaching, Rabbi Kushner also provided the ironic twist that made all the rest of his words work, that at least for me, began the process of understanding and healing, at least of providing context and an ability to believe that there could have been order in all this.

Why were there upwards of 900 people sitting and standing to hear these powerful words? Many, to be sure, were there because of the impact Mitch had had on them, even in his short life of 17 years. Many were there, offering the gifts of their hearts to his grieving family. But almost all of us were there, at least in part, seeking a sense of meaning in this tragic, inexplicable death, for ourselves.

If Judaism’s teaching is correct, and I still believe that it is, that death is simply the last act of our life on this earth – unavoidable, and not to be feared – then what more profound proof of God’s order and presence, even in the seemingly incomprehensible moments of confronting loss, than to have the circumstances of one’s death mirror how they lived their lives. If Mitch had to die at 17, after giving so much from his heart, how else should he go than by having his heart just stop? No matter how non-sensical it seems to the rest of us!

And Rabbi Kushner shared one other piece of wisdom as well. He acknowledged that many of us were mourning the premature passing of a young man with such potential for a future that now would not be. Without criticizing us, he reminded us how much Mitch had achieved, even in such a short time, and encouraged us to focus on the accomplishments that were real, rather than the fantasy of what might have been had he lived. He redirected us to Mitch’s life, not his death! And he did so as much or more with his example as with his words!

As I drove home, I pondered the power of that truth. I tried to find a way to distill that piece of wisdom out, as a valuable teaching for this Shabbat. I came up with the following:

[take out bottle] I place before us, for all to see, this bottle, with some liquid in it. Deliberately, the amount of liquid is well less than half the capacity of the bottle, lest we fall into the classic philosophical debate as to whether the bottle is half-full or half-empty. Because Kushner’s truth, demonstrated by Mitch’s life, is even more profound than that!

Most of us would either dismiss this bottle, especially if it were one of many in the refrigerator, for one of two reasons. With no label, it is unclear what the contents are. It might turn out to be a flavor we don’t like, or even, possibly, something not intended for consumption. But even more likely, most of us would dismiss this bottle, as lacking enough content to be able to serve the needs of quenching our thirst.

In the latter case, whether we realize or not, our perception of what IS in the bottle is shaped by what is not. In the former case, the inability to identify the contents is the key to our behavior. In the case of the death of a 17 year old, we naturally focus on what is not – the expected life that will not be lived – at the expense of the what is. We have difficulty fully identifying his ability to quench our thirsts and satisfy our needs for failure to comprehend exactly what he was and what he offered.

But, suppose I place this same bottle in front of a homeless person on the street, or a wanderer stranded in the desert or on a deserted island? Will either of those concerns that inhibited us from drinking the contents of this bottle apply in that case? Probably not!

We simply didn’t allow ourselves to fully recognize the gift that Mitch was in life. Not even those of us who admired and respected and knew him so well. Because none of us expected that Monday would be his last day among us! It took his death to shake our reality, and make us question so much, before we could be fully open to seeing what was in the bottle of his life as valuable. We needed Rabbi Kushner to focus us back on what was – his life, and not on what wasn’t – his death!

Wednesday night, as I taught our Confirmation class while still attempting to make sense of Mitch’s death, I was somewhat unfair to our kids. I held them up to Mitch’s example. I used his death in juxtaposition to their lives, as I asked them to try to express who they are as Jews today. Of course they came up short – because why should any of them sense the urgency of that moment? I am fairly sure Mitch didn’t spend Monday any differently than most other days. How many of us know when our last day will be? None of us! Isn’t that the point of Rabbi Hillel’s injunction to repent on the day before our death? That BECAUSE we don’t know when that will be, we should end each day with our karmic and cosmic accounts in order, in case it IS our last? And therefore, by extension, seek to accomplish all that we can each day!?

But was I really being unfair? As the Harlam family shared a meal after the service, to help each other adjust to the new reality of life after Mitch, I sat with the supervisor of our CIT program this summer – the program Mitch was in last summer. We know that we need to address Mitch’s death at some point, and how we could teach positive lessons from it. We began to form the outline of something that could keep Mitch’s memory alive and positive in the camp family.

By the time I got home, I had decided what I needed to say tonight. I needed to share with my Solel mishpachah the lesson I was blessed to learn with my Harlam family yesterday about the giving of gifts from the heart, and the beauty of being able to do so every day of our lives – for as long as we are fortunate enough to have our lives last.

But, I also remembered something else, which I offer as just ONE example of how some of us already DO both offer those gifts from our hearts, and get something back for our sharing as well. I remembered that I promised our Torah study group that I would take advantage of tonight being the night when we lap our Jewish selves for this year. When our continuing exploration of the Torah text, in serial fashion, picking up each week where we left off last week, and letting the discussion take us WHEREVER it will, is caught and passed by our annual cycle of weekly Torah readings in the sanctuary.

Because two weeks ago I challenged them to reach out, and bring even more people to the table. Not because we NEED greater numbers. But rather, because those who have become the core regulars get so much out of our participation, and we recognize the value of what we gain and its potential to empower others in our family, and seek to share.

For me, the beauty and power of our Torah study group is its mechanics. A group of us get together every Shabbat morning, and sit around a selection from our sacred text tradition. We do not listen to our Rabbi spout his wisdom (or demonstrate his lack thereof). Rather, we each bring to the discussion our own knowledge, experience, and world view. We do not always all agree. We do, however, all respect the opinions of the others, and their knowledge and experience – the gifts of their hearts and minds that they freely share with us. Our ultimate understandings, and our ability to apply what we learn to the lives we are trying to live, are shaped far more by these gifts brought by the group members, than they are by those specifically brought by me.

This example, this model, is powerful in its own right – hence our desire to share the experience with others. Please, do not let the fact that there is a core of regulars scare you off! Do not be afraid that you are jumping into this in the middle of something, that you start at a disadvantage. The more voices we have at the table, the greater the depth and diversity of experience, the more gifts being offered freely from more hearts, the more likely we all will be to benefit from what emerges.
And this model is also what we should be aiming for in all that we do together as a congregational family. It is already how we come together on Shabbat in prayer – sharing our unique experiences, needs, and desires with others, to help them, even as in so doing, we help ourselves. We do so in our social action work, in even more obvious and tangible ways. Let us also strive to do so in our membership recruitment and integration, making newcomers feel welcome at the table by sharing ourselves with them, and valuing what they bring to us.

As Rabbi Kushner taught us all yesterday, what we need to strive for is to be Mitch – not by seeking to take the place of one who has now been taken from us, but rather by following his example. By smiling – always. By being ourselves – our best selves – and seeing others as being their best. By sharing the gifts of our hearts, freely, willingly, in all that we do. Not by trying, but by being.

As a congregation, by finding more metaphorical tables to sit around together with others. More texts – both those written in sacred scrolls and those written instead by the blood, sweat, laughter and tears of our real life experiences – to gather around and grapple with together.

And to be aware in our lives, without being overwhelmed by the darkness of this awareness, that none of us knows when our last day will be on this earth. And therefore, to live our lives, especially our Jewish lives, with a little more urgency, a little more intentionality, a little more passion, a little more awareness of who we are as Jews, and what makes us Jewish.

If THESE are the gifts of our hearts that we share freely, then the structure we build in our midst to parallel the Tabernacle of our Torah reading for this Shabbat, the one that allows God to dwell both amongst us collectively, and within us, individually and collectively, will be one that strengthens all our lives, and the lives of those around us. In good times and in bad.

Thank you, Rabbi Kushner, for guiding me to this understanding, as you helped us all to deal with Mitch’s life and death appropriately. Thank you Mitch, and by extension to your entire family, for living your life in a way that is now a text for all of us to learn from. I am only sorry it took not being able to thank you in person for me to learn this lesson. KYR

What do I say to my daughter?

2011-02-02T11:44:00.001-08:00

What Do I Say to My Daughter?

The human mind is an amazing organ. It works at speeds we cannot even measure, yet leaves us feeling as if we are in total control. When the phone rang Tuesday at about 1 PM, and Elizabeth beeped through on the intercom to say that it was Emily, I had a second, maybe 2, to react between hearing the words, uttering “Thanks,” and clicking the button to talk to my 17 year old daughter.

In that second or two, like a classic scene from an old Marx Brothers’ film, I had done the full inventory. I had seen her leave the house to go student teach. If something had happened in that mile and half to her or the car, I would already have known before I had left the house to come into the office. So she was at school, where she should be working with her second graders, not calling me. Something must be wrong. Or maybe not – maybe they are in a special, and she has a minute or two, and she forgot to tell me something, or something just came up.

By the time I heard her voice, I was already regaining my sense of calm. As soon as I heard her, I no longer was. I could hear her pain and confusion. The words, clearly spoken, made no sense, as much as I understood exactly what she had said. “Where are you?” I asked. “Still at school,” she replied, “But about to head home.” “Would you rather come here?” I asked. “Yes, daddy,” she cried.

Even as I fretted about whether she was in any condition to drive, my training as a Rabbi kicked in. I knew I had roughly 12 minutes. Not much time. And much to do. I needed to confirm that the news that had started this whole scene in motion was, in fact, true, even though I knew that it must be, for not even a teenager could make something like this up as a joke. I needed to figure out who I could safely call to get that confirmation, and whatever other information was available to try to make sense of the unimaginable. And I needed to hold it together, at least for a few more minutes, because the worst was still to come.

The first three phone calls all went to voice mail. I rechecked my e-mails and Facebook, looking for that telltale first sign of the impending deluge. Still nothing there. In desperation, I called the Camp Harlam office, not at all sure that they would know, but knowing that if they hadn’t heard anything, I would be able to get the next number I needed to call from them.

I knew the person who answered the phone. I could have asked her. But I needed one of the stalwarts – someone to whom I could risk saying the unthinkable without fear of losing face. I had just connected to Howard when I heard the doorbell. I realized that Emily would not hear the confirmation she was dreading from me, but rather with me.

And so it was that as Emily walked into my office, we both heard Howard say, “Sorry to say, it is true.” With that, Emily collapsed on my couch and broke down. I attempted to confront the emotions I could no longer control while asking the needed follow-up questions, that sadly brought no useful information, before hanging up and returning to Daddy mode.

Yesterday was the day that every parent fears. It was the day my daughter came face-to-face with life, when one of her close friends died. Sure we had been through two grandmothers and two great-grandmothers, even in an unfortunately compressed time period that cast a shadow on Emily’s Bat Mitzvah celebration, still. Sure, we had been through my surgery in that same period. Serious, to be sure, but thankfully, I am still around for moments like this. And yes, I have buried teens and twenty-somethings, and somehow found the words to say and the ways to say them and keep my own emotions in check.

But none of that can possibly prepare you for having to console your own child while she is mourning the death of someone as close as Mitch was to her. Not when, as was the case here, I knew the kid. I liked the kid. I respected the kid. And I like and respect his parents, too. What must they be going through at this moment?

That thought cleared my self-indulgence for a second. How dare I whine at this moment – I can hug my daughter, and try to comfort her, and wipe her tears away, and tell her I love her. Rex and Rachel no longer can. The only thing that would prevent them from trading positions with me at this moment is the knowledge of what they would be subjecting me to – and even that probably wouldn’t stop them, through no weakness of their own!

I held her close to me, and encouraged her to let it all out. I think, I hope, I told her I loved her at that moment – I know I did several more times throughout the day (and I can only hope she heard it, and allowed it to sink into her through the pain and questioning).

And I admitted the truth to her – that I had no idea what to say to her in this moment of pain and grief. It wasn’t until much later in the day that I even stopped and wondered if she might have heard in those words not the permission for her to be without words that I had intended, but rather some weakness or shortcoming in her father that kept him from being all that she needed in her hour of need. After all, Daddy – you are a Rabbi. You are supposed to get this death stuff. And we all know you have words for EVERY occasion!

And the truth is, I had many words. Just none that would help. None that yet made sense. A 17 year old boy had died. Not in a car accident on slick roads. Not from anything suspicious looking – not this kid. Mitch was a kid who if, God forbid, he had been found dead next to an empty bottle of wine, and an empty pill container, your first reaction would have been “Who else has been here, and left these bottles!” Not that either of those circumstances would have lessened the pain any – now or later.

But, at least, they would have provided a sense of a familiar paradigm, something to grasp onto in this moment of asking WHY? in the face of the unimaginable. Whenever a parent has to bury and mourn a child, the sense of a break in what we consider to be the natural order of life adds profoundly to the sadness. At least one of the more familiar scenarios would have given back at least (at most?) a small corner of that order.

But, instead, Mitch’s parents, two Rabbis, found their good kid, who was loved by everyone who knew him, that morning, and the medical folks could not revive him. No obvious cause. No clear sense that something was out of the ordinary. One minute, he was chatting online with Emily and some other friends. The next, he was going to sleep, never fully to wake up again!

How could I, the father of a grieving teenage daughter, hope to help my child deal with what she would later call, “ for real, the worst thing I have ever had to deal with”? How could I answer her questions, that she could not even bring herself to frame yet, when I could not answer them for myself? How could I help her to help her boyfriend, Mitch’s best friend, as he was first hearing the news, and then trying to make sense of it himself? Where could I find the strength to reassure her that it will be okay, when I was not yet convinced myself? Dealing with our own mortality leads to this kind of challenge!

I need to find these answers for myself. I need to be able to help her find them for herself. Only THEN can I help her to help her friends. Only then can I be the Rabbi that these kids expect me to be, and will need me to be tomorrow at the funeral. Only then can I help my friends deal with the death of their son. No one ever said being a Rabbi would be easy. No one ever said life was easy. Today, at least, it still is not!

In their own words

2011-01-12T12:49:00.000-08:00

[Ed. note: Of course, after I posted these, our President spoke last night as well. Rather than give his words their own place -- as richly as I personally believe that they deserve such honor -- I choose to add them here, as part of the larger discussion.

http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2011/01/12/video-president-obamas-entire-memorial-speech-in-tucson-az/ ]

It has been a VERY busy weekend and start to the week, and sadly, little of the news was good. Having felt the need not only to post my sermon early, but to add 2 additional posts on the shootings in Arizona, and the death of Debbie Friedman, I am truly tapped out at this moment.

So allow me to do one of the other thinks this blog was created to do -- expose other opinions and words that I find particularly well written, insightful, or merely significant enough to share to those whose opinions matter to me.

Those who are friends with me on facebook have already gotten access to all four of these. I recommend each highly, in its own way:

1. USA Today's Mike LoPresti compares apples to oranges in Arizona, and scores a huge success that should make us ll stop and think -- a Pulitzer worthy column if I have ever read one...

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/lopresti/2011-01-10-bcs-early_N.htm

2. Jon Stewart's opening monologue from Monday evening, in full context, in his own voice. Regardless of your politics, this is a must listen. Remember when the movie Network first came out, and we all cringed at the idea of news becoming entertainment? Here is a guy who has turned entertainment into news, and does it darned well...

http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/jon-stewarts-moving-monologue-arizona-shooting-01-11-2011

3. Again, irrespective of your politics, both the video itself, allowing us all to hear her words in her own voice, and the analysis that accompanies it, are de rigeur:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011202145.html

and, btw, when you are finished, listen to it again, and start to deconstruct what you are seeing and hearing, because:

4. Palin's clearly deliberate use of the phrase "blood libel" in her response to the Arizona shootings and their aftermath is one that should make those of us who are Jewish, and all people, a little uncomfortable. Here is a VERY restrained but on the money, response to that usage and more:

http://www.njdc.org/blog/post/palinrelease011210/

If these 4 don't get people thinking and talking and acting for the better, I don't know what might.

"By Spirit Alone..."

2011-01-09T11:53:00.000-08:00

Debbie Friedman, zichronah livrachah
An appreciation and reminiscence
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD – January 9, 2011

I should be watching a football game right now. Or getting information out to my congregation, or finishing those recommendations that have to get into the mail tomorrow. But at this moment I can do none of those things. Instead, I am remembering one of the towering Jewish personalities of my own lifetime, Debbie Friedman.

If you are reading this, you know me well enough to know the powerful place that Jewish summer camping had in my youth, and continues to have in my life still today as a 50 year old Rabbi. I think it is very safe to say that Debbie was among the most, if not THE most, significant influences on me in that environment.

It was my very first summer at Camp Harlam. Late June and July of 1971. I was a little shy of my 11th birthday, having just completed 5th grade, still an only child, in a new place. My family had joined the white flight from Queens, NY to Long Island. My Jewish education from my very secularized parents at the time of our move consisted of a year of Workman’s Circle Sunday school at the local YM-YWHA learning Yiddish and Jewish culture, and whatever little bit I had picked up from my great-grandfather, mostly at Passover seders that were a mystery to me. Despite this, I was thrust into the religious school of the Conservative congregation in our new home town, because membership in the Reform congregation had been capped. I had learned a lot, even enjoyed that learning, but, honestly, it was all theoretical. There was little grounding in the reality of my parents’ home. We attended services only on the High Holy Days, and there was ambivalence about my participation with them on those days.

It was from that environment and experience that I drew as I tried to adjust to this amazing new world of Jewish summer camp. In the dining hall the very first evening, we were all introduced to the diminutive young woman with the guitar who would be our songleader. She may have been short in stature -- but we quickly learned that what she lacked in altitude, she more than made up for with ru'ach -- with spirit! She led us that first night in a few songs, mostly from the Zionist classics (I know now!), so a couple were actually familiar.

But it was at Shabbat evening services, themselves a new phenomenon for me, that I was to get my first taste of what the rest of my life would be. For it was there and then that Debbie Friedman was free to be her real self. We sang several of her melodies to the prayers, which themselves were only mildly familiar. But there was English! So I could understand what was being said, unlike at home. And guitar! And melodies that were upbeat, and welcoming. Little did I realize that I was far from the only one experiencing this phenomenon for the first time. But it mattered not – even though it was foreign, and new, I was hooked!

I, and we, soon came to learn that Debbie herself had written several of these melodies. She had even recorded an album. This knowledge made her a rock star – literally – in our young eyes. But, far from separating herself from us, Debbie was an integral part of our camp experience. When, during the second week of camp, she came into our bunk at bedtime to sing some songs with us and help put us to bed, we saw the person up close. She was real, and even though not much older than us, clearly someone to be admired and looked up to.

When I returned home, it was as much Debbie and the music that came with me, energizing my stories, as anything else I experienced. That was also the year that we switched over, finally, to the Reform congregation, and I began to be prepared for my Bar Mitzvah celebration. It was a perfect storm. And at the eye of that storm, the heart of our youth programs through the following years, the center of my own Jewish soul as it developed, was the music, nurtured literally by EVERY major name of that amazing first generation, between my involvements at Harlam and then Eisner, as well as NFTY in the New York of the 70’s. But it all began for me, as it did for so many others, with Debbie Friedman – her music, her spirit, her example.

As I look back, I marvel to remember that our Cantor, like so many others in the 70s, would not allow Debbie’s music into the sanctuary for far too many years. It seems inconceivable now, but it was true. We had to fight to be allowed to use our own guitars and choose on own music, even for youth group services! Thankfully, that turf-driven myopia passed long ago, if far after it should have!

I remember my daughter Emily’s first experience of Debbie – in a concert at Carnegie Hall. By then I was a guitar-playing Rabbi, Debbie’s music was already familiar to my young daughter. I remember seeing Peter Yarrow – Peter Yarrow! – sitting in the third row, center aisle, through most of the concert, until he got up and walked through a side door, only to reappear onstage with Debbie. And I remember how her music even influenced my parents, and was one of the avenues that they followed to comfortable involvement in congregational life themselves!

Despite the slights of the professional Cantorate early on, despite the incredible delay in welcoming her to the faculty of the Cantorial school at HUC-JIR only in relatively recent years, I will remember what a role model Debbie was to an entire generation of woman Cantors, and how she supported their efforts and encouraged them as both performers and spiritual leaders. Those who have enjoyed and been spiritually moved by a female Cantor in the last 20 years, probably owe a similar debt of gratitude directly to Debbie Friedman.

She gave Miriam the voice at the moment of our salvation at the Sea that the text tradition seems to have limited. She taught us at Chanukkah to respect the words of the prophet Zechariah, “Not by might, and not by power, but by (God’s) spirit – shall we all live in peace.” She even taught us to think of the batter of the latkes sitting in a blender, and learn from it to care more about those in need around us!

She taught us how to pray, and how to work, to bring healing to ourselves and to others. Sadly, now, we must come to grips with the fact that our singing her words and her melodies in her hour of need were not enough to bring her back to us in health. Apparently, God has need for a singer and songwriter and mentor and teacher and role model in the afterlife – and God has made the best choice possible.

I end, with thanks to my colleague and friend, Don Rossoff – she DID teach us all to “Sing a new song, sing a new song unto God.” And to Rabbi Rob Nosanchuk, whose use of these words got up on facebook before I could post, the words Debbie adapted from the tradition and set to music as The Travelers’ Prayer (adapted only slightly to fit this moment):

May you be blessed as you go on your way.
May you be guided in peace.
May (your) strength and compassion find their way to every soul.
This (is) your blessing (-- and your legacy). Amen.

A Nation in Shock

2011-01-08T19:33:00.000-08:00

A Call for Calm Words and Action in an Hour of Crisis
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD
January 8, 2011 6:30 PM EST

The shocking and senseless shooting attack on Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona earlier today leaves all people of conscience stunned and outraged. That this event occurred during a public event in which she was doing her job of meeting with her constituents, so that she might better represent them in Congress, in this era of widespread discontent with our elected leadership for being out-of-touch, adds a touch of painful irony to an already horrendous event. That at least 5 innocent bystanders, among them a federal judge and a 9 year old girl, died in this assault, and as many as a dozen others were wounded, adds further pain to this inconceivable occurrence.

At this relatively early hour, so close to the event, we already have a suspect in custody and publicly identified – a 22 year old, described in some reports as a military veteran. Such an identification would be even more troubling, but it is important to remember that his arrest does NOT mean he is guilty, or even involved. Only time and further investigation will be able to prove – or disprove – that assertion, or any of the many of the “details” currently being aired.

There are many – from all positions on the political spectrum, who have already rushed to judgment in making connections or proposing motivations, and causes. NONE of these have yet been proven either, and in this moment of our shocked response to tragedy, they do little to help bring calm or understanding. Indeed, initial reports had the Congresswoman dying in the attack, a report which has thankfully proven erroneous. And many of us remember the hours following the attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, in which most media outlets assumed, erroneously, a connection to foreign terror groups.

What is needed right now is national calm, prayer and caring concern for all of the victims and their families – those who have suffered losses that thankfully, few if any of us can imagine. That, and a unanimous condemnation of the actions of those responsible. Nothing else would be an appropriate reaction.

However, as the hours and days will pass, we will likely learn a great deal more about those involved – whether we wish to or not. What we have learned already has led to wild speculation in numerous areas of national policy debate and disagreement, and irresponsible calls from both sides that are neither supported by facts nor an adequate expression of responsibility on the part of our political system.

The best result we can demand as a nation for an outcome from such a tragedy is a full and transparent investigation which leads to a clear and unquestionably accurate conviction of those responsible, with appropriate sentencing to follow. Those whose sense of outrage has led them to make intemperate statements about those accused of such a crime being unworthy of Constitutional protections fail to grasp the true significance of those rights guaranteed to all citizens of our country.

But similarly, those who have called for a deliberate attempt NOT to politicize the shooting of a politician in broad daylight seem more motivated by fear of what a full investigation might disclose than a sincere desire to protect our nation from additional pain.

Whatever motives and connection may yet be proven, it is clear that this tragedy obligates our nation, in its aftermath, to seriously, and honestly, without politics or rhetoric, explore deeply a number of issues which may have entered into this shooting. These include, but are not limited to:

Gun control
Protection of our elected leaders
Immigration and border policies
Care of military veterans
The tone and tenor of political campaign materials
The tone and tenor of political discourse, and our continuing rush to the extremes as a nation
The level of violence in our society in general.

Only then can the victims of this attack, which tonight includes every American, hope to achieve closure, and gain some sense of normalcy in the aftermath of this tragedy. Let us all pray and work for our country, now even more than ever.

An Ethical Challenge of Biblical proportions

2011-01-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

Ed. Note: That this sermon was delivered in the shadow of a series of terror-inducing mail bombs in our immediate area, and on the eve of the cowardly shooting of an elected United States Congressperson, and murder and injury to multiple innocent bystanders, the questions raised seem only MORE significant as I post it, less that 24 hours later, and earlier than usual.

Be Careful What You Think You Know –
Sermon for Parshat Bo January 7, 2011
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

Friends, my words tonight will be an incredible challenge to many of us. They were an incredible challenge to write, and an even greater challenge to decide to share. But, in a week in which we learned that a jury found innocent the man whose car struck and killed our friend, Dick Greenstein, we are already troubled and challenged, as we seek to make sense of an unthinkable tragedy, to reach out to our friends whose grief and mourning for a beloved parent and grandparent has been denied the full closure they sought and needed, even as we need to adjust our assumptions about what happened and why, yet still maintain our faith! In a week in which I have shared with our congregation, online, an incredible article by Rabbi Schmuley Boteach on the proper role of the Rabbi, I, and we, SHOULD be moved to embrace our roles, even in the most challenging moments.

I warn us of the impending potential discomfort that I am going to create, not from a desire to remain well-liked in the face of diasagreement, nor from a desire to lessen the challenge of our text tonight, but rather from a sense of fairness and concern. Not all of us who came to services tonight came in a mood to be challenged. Those of you who did not, I extend my apologies to you in advance. But I cannot, and will not, refuse to share these thoughts on our portion this week merely out of fear that some might be made uncomfortable by them. For if I did, I would be guilty of what Rabbi Boteach accuses the Rabbinate of in his article. I would be guilty of perpetuating a silence that, to my mind, has gone on for far too long in our tradition. And, worst of all, I would deny us the opportunity to possibly resolve what appears to be a huge disconnect between our faith and our ethics, that stems from the content of our portion for this Shabbat!

You see, we come back to our Torah text for another Shabbat, and we find ourselves with a very familiar and expected story on the one hand, yet, if we are careful readers, a couple of daunting challenges to what we think we know and believe. And that is outside of the usual difficulty we have simply in dealing with a text that appears to have God limiting Pharaoh’s free-will as an excuse to kill many Egyptians!

In parshat Bo, our story picks up with the lead-up to the 8th plague – locusts. Before the plague is sent, however, there is some significant by-play. The portion actually begins with a conversation between God and Moses that leaves little doubt but that we are supposed to understand that God is pulling the strings on Pharaoh like a master puppeteer. God is doing this, according to the text “that you may recount in the hearing of your children and of your children’s children how I made a mockery of the Egyptians…” This idea should give us pause, as I hope it is contrary to the theologies that most of us are comfortable with in our own lives. I am sure there must be times that believing that your God will abuse your enemies might be a valuable psychological construct, but it sure is a poor basis for an ethical system by which to live our lives!

Fortunately, the same explanation concludes, “in order that YOU may know that I am the Eternal.” The REAL reason for this elaborate puppet show, we are told, is because WE need to be reminded what our God is capable of doing to others, for us. A powerful statement of why we should worship God – and one that works as both positive and negative reinforcement. For those who are motivated by the carrot, we are thankful for all that God has done, and for God’s protection. For those who need the stick, look at what God did to the Egyptians, and imagine what God is capable of doing to us if we ever deserve punishment!

This last bit turns the heat off of God’s behavior, and focuses it on ours. What does it say about US that we need our God to go to such extremes in order for us to recognize the power of our God?! So, from the opening paragraph, we are already being forced to confront ugly truths about our ancestors, if not ourselves, and to deal with theologically challenging events. And it is only going to get worse as we go!

Pharaoh’s courtiers question the wisdom in continuing to prevent the Israelites from going out to worship, as Moses has requested. Even those advisors closest to Pharaoh have already read the handwriting on the wall far more accurately than Pharaoh is being allowed to do. And this change of heart from his most trusted advisors leads Pharaoh, still BEFORE the onset of the locust hordes, to summon Moses and Aaron, and accede to their last request to go to worship their God. Once again, Moses, instead of accepting the change of heart, ups the ante on what Pharaoh needs to allow, leading to further stalemate, and leading to the onset of the plague.

With the arrival of the plague, it appears Pharaoh is ready to cave in completely. He immediately admits his guilt before Moses and Aaron, and begs for an end to the plague. Moses must have been impressed by Pharaoh’s sincerity, as he immediately asked God to relent. And God did, but then immediately pulled the strings again on Pharaoh’s heart, to justify the 9th plague – darkness. The impact is clear – Pharaoh again accedes to the last set of demands, only to have Moses AGAIN up the ante, and again we end up in stalemate and confrontation when it appears that resolution is at hand.

All of this, even before we get to the killing of the first born, HAS TO make us wonder what is really going on here. Scholars have, for years, viewed the plagues in mythological terms – as a confrontation between godheads. Our One God on one side, and the pantheon of Egypt on the other. Starting with the Nile River God, and working in crescendo up to these last three plagues – in which first holy scarabs are turned against Egypt, then the Sun God Aton-Ra is literally eclipsed. Only the Pharaoh himself – seen in ancient Egypt as divine – remains of the Gods of Egypt. And the 10th plague will surely take care of that last item as well!

For the ancient world, such a story was clear – it worked. AND, because it worked, because OUR God emerged supreme, whatever ethical issues might have been raised would have been dismissed as minor quibbles. But for us modern readers, too many of whom already have God issues, we find the ethics troubling, and are not as easily assuaged to dismiss those concerns in acknowledging the victory of our God. This, too, is not our theology. But the REAL problems are about to begin!

At the start of the SECOND chapter of Bo, God is about to prepare us for the 10th and last plague. But first, God gives Moses THIS astounding command: I will bring but one more plague upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; after that he shall let you go… Tell the people to BORROW, each man from his neighbor and each woman from hers, objects of silver and gold.” Borrow? After telling Moses that we are about to leave for good? How is this BORROWING? There can be no intent to return these items!

We moderns hear this story, and are troubled greatly – or should be -- even though the text tells us that the Eternal disposed the Egyptians favorably toward us and our request. So, we do what, surprisingly, our ancestors do not seem to have been willing or able to do. We ask the tough question, and make the challenging comparison.
We remember the midrash on Noah, that asked whether he was absolutely a blameless man, despite living in an age of violence and lawlessness, deserving to be wiped out. Or was he merely apparently a righteous man – nothing more than the best of a bad lot?

We remember the similar midrashic debate about Moses at the Burning Bush – did the Bush confirm Moses’ status as the one to lead us out of Egypt, because only Moses saw something worth turning aside and investigating that everyone before him had missed? Or did God place the bush there FOR Moses to see, to justify a decision already made?

But then WE compare Moses to Abraham – just as the Midrash tried to compare Noah to Abraham. The Abraham who seemed to blindly follow God’s commands, and attempted to sacrifice Isaac, seems VERY similar to the Moses we see here. BUT, the Abraham who argued and negotiated with God over the fate of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gemorrah, and didn’t rest until he would only have been negotiating for those who were his own family, clearly seems morally superior to the Moses we see here. Where, after all, is Moses, questioning the idea of BORROWING that is not borrowing, but is clearly meant to serve as a way to give reparations to God’s people for their years of servitude? Where is Moses, after the stunning reversals of Pharaoh; the words of God, almost bragging about being the puppet-master; and the suffering he has seen inflicted on the PEOPLE of Egypt through 9 plagues, showing even a shred of the caring and concern towards others which led him to slay the task-master in his youth?

Moses, our great LEADER, appears at this critical juncture to have been reduced, himself, to being just another pawn in God’s chess game with the gods of Egypt. While THAT, in itself, may NOT be so troubling to us – would that more leaders today, in all walks of life, had the hubris to acknowledge THAT truth – it raises other issues for us as modern readers. Are we ALL just God’s pawns? If so, where then is free will?

The Rabbis of old were troubled by this as well. They phrased their question far differently, however. They PRESUMED that we DO have free will, and therefore needed to find what it was that distinguished THIS generation as the one worthy of being redeemed! And they found answers that worked for them. However, taken together, those answers, at least to me, do not outweigh the negative of, effectively, wholesale THEFT from the Egyptians! Even as some kind of reparation.

And, I believe, even the Biblical author(s) and editor(s), were troubled here as well, because the last huge problem of the text tonight appears to be an attempt to ANSWER this question of worthiness – an answer, interestingly, that the Midrash itself does not choose to use!

Chapter 12, the third and final chapter of Bo, begins with God giving Moses further instructions for the people to follow. God tells Moses: “Speak to the whole community of Israel, and say that on the 10th of this month, each of them shall take a lamb to a family, a lamb to a household.” After some discussion of what to do when a family can’t consume a whole lamb themselves, and what qualities the lamb should have, God continues: “You shall keep watch over it until the 14th day of this month; and all the assembled congregation of the Israelites shall slaughter it at twilight.” The instructions continue by telling us to use the blood of this sacrificial lamb to mark our homes so the Angel of Death will know to Pass Over us, and telling us to eat the lamb afterwards, dressed and ready for flight, because the 10th plague is coming, and all the first born of Egypt shall die.

The last words of the text before the onset of this 10th plague tell us: “The people then bowed low in homage. And the Israelites went and did so; just as the Eternal had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.” It is clear that the people obeyed what they were told to do by God through Moses and Aaron! One might think that by protecting themselves from the Angel of Death, our ancestors proved worthy of being saved, by following God’s commanded word!

However, looked at another way, this actually becomes the greatest indictment of the people and Moses -- for allowing unnecessary pain and suffering and wholesale death! Assuming that these words were delivered by Moses no later than the 9th day of the month, to allow the people to prepare to take the lamb the following day, our people had at least FIVE DAYS WARNING of what was to come! Where was the effort to save their neighbors from the horrible fate that awaited them? Why (and how) was there not even a leak of information to the Egyptians? Were Moses and our ancestors SO consumed that, after so long, the freedom that they had waited for was finally at hand, that they allowed a sense of entitlement or a desire for revenge to silence them to the ethical challenge of knowing that a holocaust was about to occur? If so, HOW could this generation been deemed worthy of salvation?
How has a text that leaves open such damning questions become canonized, and gone unchallenged by our tradition? And what does it say about those who came before us, and about us, that there has been virtual silence in the face of such an accusation? Has generation after generation been so blind to this reading? Is that whither the silence? Or is something more conspiratorial or fear-induced at work here? Is the silence caused by the unease of generations of learned Jews at the thought that opening the question might force many to question the origins of the Biblical text, or worse, the text’s ethical imperative for us? Even if that IS the explanation, it has been a couple of centuries since scholars have let the genie of the text’s origins out of the lamp. And since the genie isn’t going back into the lamp anytime soon, why haven’t WE moderns done what those before us were unable or unwilling to do? Especially we post-moderns, who experienced the Holocaust of World War II, and its aftermath, ourselves? I do not know! But I am INCREDIBLY troubled to recognize that this still appears to be the case!

Sure, there are answers given in every era of our tradition to justify God’s behavior during the Egyptian plagues. But suddenly, they seem far emptier than before, far more rationalization than acceptable answer. But then again, isn’t that true of most efforts to make theological sense of what the Nazis did to us and to so many others? Why shouldn’t that same sense of emptiness apply here for us?

And honestly, compared to this indictment, the inconvenient truth that is usually raised about this early warning to the people of what is about to come in the 10th plague, and how to prepare themselves for it – that it completely puts the lie to the traditional reason why we eat unleavened bread at Passover (namely, that we didn’t have enough time to let the dough properly rise) seems trivial at best!

Friends, tonight we begin a textual celebration of our ancestors’ freedom from physical servitude in Egypt, one that concludes next Shabbat, when our Bat Mitzvah will read of our escape at the Sea. It so happens that she will do so this year on the weekend on which we celebrate the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life and death were themselves a text of speaking truth to power – exactly what appears to be missing in our text for this Shabbat! That celebration in our text is capped off on the following Shabbat when we and our ancestors directly experience God at Sinai. Heady stuff, indeed!

At this season of a new secular year, I pray that we might find the strength, and the integrity, to confront these brutally challenging issues for us as Jews, raised by our own text; to regain a sense of consistency and meaning in our sacred text that helps us to make sense of our lives and brings an order to our world. I pray this not merely for its own sake, and ours, but so that we might once again be elevated by our Jewish tradition, moved to work for what is right for all people, empowered to question what needs to be questioned, and willing and able to sit together with others to seek real and lasting solutions. Until we can come to that table relatively untroubled by our own experiences and understandings, we can hardly be expected to give our best efforts to finding the common ground that unites us all as God’s creation, nor to recognize and value the differences in others that make us all unique.

I warned you this wasn’t going to be easy! It still isn’t. I pray that we are willing and able to rise to the challenge, and in the process, help to make it easier in the future! KYR

A New Year's Resolution -- And a Link to Challenge us All

2011-01-05T14:21:00.001-08:00

I begin by wishing everyone a Happy 2011! As I pointed out in my remarks to my congregation on New Year's Eve -- a sermon given with no notes, hence its absence from these pages -- there is assuredly no more arbitrary celebration in the human history of time than making Midnight on January 1st into New Years! Nonetheless, it IS a new year, and with that observance goes a strong tradition of making resolutions -- even if this was likely transferred from the self-inventorying that our Jewish New Year -- Rosh Hashanah -- obligates us to undertake.

My own resolution, acted on here today, is to catch up and keep current in the Weis Man corner of the blog-o-sphere. Between my injury, our anniversary celebration, the Bar Mitzvah, and the follow-up to those events, it was not easy -- but I make excuses. I invite you to catch up, and to stay tuned. There is much more to come in 2011!

And I start, besides by filling in all that was missing, as I have now done, with this link to an incredibly challenging and powerful blog by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. One that challenged me when I read it, and one which I hope will challenge ALL of us. And, in this case, one which I believe deserves an honest and open discussion.

And so, even as I list the link below, I hope that my readers (do I still have any readers) will take the couple of minutes to read Rabbi Boteach's column, and then respond to it here. For me personally, this will be a far more valuable discussion, as it will allow me to see how those who have already allowed me to be an influence in their lives feel on the issue of the role of the Rabbi today.

So, here is the link -- enjoy:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuley-boteach/the-end-of-the-rabbi-as-m_b_801710.html

As always, I am never sure whether this is being read as a link or not. If you cannot click on the address above and get directly to the article, please cut it and paste it into your browser.

On Being Prepared

2011-01-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

Be Prepared! – A Sermon for Parshat Mikeitz –
December 3, 2010 – 3rd Candle of Chanukkah
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

Tonight, we celebrate the Shabbat that falls during Chanukkah. These 2 celebrations jammed together actually create a couple of conflicts for us, as we celebrate as the Solel mishpachah this evening. Shabbat, in our congregational practice, is a Friday night thing. We come together, recreate our extended communal family, and pray together, supporting each other in good times and bad. As part of that, we have included the traditional rituals of the Shabbat table in our communal celebration – the lighting of Shabbat candles, the qiddish over the wine, the offering of blessings, and the breaking of the challah bread together. According to the historians, Reform congregations started to add these home rituals when it became clear that the vast majority of homes no longer regularly practiced them.

But then, there is Chanukkah. One of the two most celebrated Jewish holidays in modern practice (the other is Passover). A much bigger deal in our era than it ever was before in Jewish history. The reasons for both of these phenomena seem clear. The celebration of Passover and Chanukkah are both centered in the home, not the sanctuary, and both revolve primarily around the children, making them both very attractive for celebration. The timing of Chanukkah, even this year, when it is about as far away from that other holiday as possible, is assuredly the reason for its growth in significance – it allows us to have our own celebration during the “Christmas season.” This, even though the truth is that there are only 3 elements that the two seasonal holidays share – the season, the giving of gifts, and the focus on celebration in the home with the kids and family. And, by the way, a good case can be made that there is a hugely artificial basis for all THREE commonalities!

But I do NOT want to preach about the December dilemma, or even about the Chanukkah story tonight. My message for this evening CAN be found in the Chanukkah story, if one looks closely enough. But it comes from the Torah portion, Mikeitz, which is ALMOST always the portion read during Chanukkah. However, to fully get the message, a quick synopsis of Chanukkah is necessary.

Many of you know that when it comes to Chanukkah, I take what can only be described as a “conspiracy theorist” point of view. Chanukkah was a holiday celebrating the Maccabees great victory – surviving against ridiculous odds against the Syrian-Greeks, who were hell-bent on wiping out Judaism, if not Jews. It was assuredly instituted by the Hasmoneans, the descendants and close followers of the Maccabees, who prevailed in the long drawn out civil war for the soul of the Jewish community that began BEFORE Antiochus, and did not end until almost 20 years AFTER the Temple was rededicated.

The Hasmoneans turned out, over the course of their almost 80 years in power, to be something other than the religious zealots we were mostly taught to view them as in our own youth. “Let all who are zealous for God follow me,” the rallying cry of Judah Maccabee during the fighting against Antiochus, was replaced with a clear willingness to assimilate both Greek and Roman trappings in subsequent generations. Indeed, so successful were the Hasmoneans, that MANY non-Jews were drawn to Judea and Judaism in their time. So much so, that the Chasidim, the most pious followers of the Hasmoneans, felt compelled to remove their support from their ruling party, for fear that the Jewishness of Judea was being compromised by this influx of outsiders.

That departure had two simultaneous effects. It weakened the Hasmonean rule enough to justify direct intervention by the Romans, a reality which eventually led to the destruction of the Temple. And when the Temple was destroyed, the Pharisees (the word means “Outsiders” in Hebrew) were there to take charge and keep things Jewish, albeit in a VERY different form. The Pharisees, no longer the outsiders, changed their name to the Rabbis, and re-formed Judaism for the next 2000 years. They were also, largely or wholely, quite likely the same group that used to be known as Chasidim when they supported the Hasmoneans!

Once in control, the Rabbis went about establishing their new vision of Judaism – where prayer from the heart offered in public, but locally, replaced physical sacrificial offerings at the central shrine in Jerusalem; where Torah was read publicly as part of the worship; and where the kitchen table became the miqdash m’at – the small sanctuary at which the ritual purity connected to the sacrifices was maintained through kashrut and the other traditions that evolved. They redid the festival calendar, adding some items, strengthening others, and removing still others. And, having been almost wiped out twice in 65 years by the Romans, they adopted a strong pacifist approach, in an effort to survive.

Chief among the changes to the calendar made by the Rabbis was the removal of almost all the Hasmonean created holidays and observances, since almost all were based on military victories or defeats. But, it wasn’t JUST their pacifist needs that motivated THESE changes – it was also their origins in, and eventual rejection of, the Hasmonean dynasty! And yet, for all their efforts, one holiday remained so popular that it could not be removed – Chanukkah. It struck a chord, AND, it fell at the darkest and slowest time of the year, one already being celebrated by the Romans around them. Try as they might, the Rabbis could not rid themselves of this last reminder – and trust me, they tried EVERYTHING. The Books of Maccabees kept out of the final canon of TaNaKH. No scroll assigned to be read on the holiday. No mention in the Mishnah, the 2nd century retooling of Jewish law for this new reality. Nothing!

Only when they realized they could not make this holiday go away, some 500 – 700 years AFTER the events it celebrated, did the Rabbis attach the story of the miracle of the oil to the celebration! If they couldn’t wipe Chanukkah out, they would at least tie it to their world view, however artificially. Don’t believe their embrace was late and artificial? According to the Rabbis themselves, the rule for saying the longest blessing formula limits its use to actions that are mitzvot – commanded in Torah. Yet, think about the first blessing we say for Chanukkah – the holiday surgically removed and excluded from ALL of TaNaKH! It still starts with those ten words of the long blessing formula, as if the basis for lighting the Chanukkiyah is Biblical!!

The LAST trick of the Rabbis was to jigger the annual cycle for reading Torah. They left us no smoking gun statement that THIS is WHY the cycle runs as it does, but I have always found it far more than a coincidence that Mikeitz is almost always read during Chanukkah. Could the story of Joseph’s survival and re-elevation from the depths of the jail to rise to second in command of Egypt, all while maintaining his Jewish identity be any MORE of an indictment, from the Rabbinic perspective, of why they split with the Hasmoneans in the first place?! The Haftarah they assigned to this portion is the story of Solomon, the two prostitutes, and the baby, as depicted on our windows – one which features cunning logic over brute force, and in which, like Joseph’s interpretative skills, Solomon’s wisdom is ascribed to God! And then, the kicker. The special haftarah for Chanukkah, from the prophet Zechariah, where he teaches “Not by might, and not by power, but by wisdom…”

Yes friends, this Shabbat’s message IS all about… PREPAREDNESS! And it begins in the Torah, which I believe was deliberately chosen for this Shabbat! Joseph was ready when called upon. His response to Pharaoh allowed Egypt to be prepared for a killer famine, and kept his own family alive when they sought food with him. The Rabbis were prepared to take control in the chaos that followed the destruction of the second Temple, and able to make their changes into the norm for years to come. Even when, as with the celebration of Chanukkah, the Rabbis couldn’t completely get their way, they had a Plan B prepared to fall back on!

Just imagine, for a second, where our country could be today if our elected leaders, over the last several decades, had been more interested in getting us prepared for the seismic changes in reality that we have experienced. Virtually EVERY major problem facing our country today could have been avoided, if we had been prepared, and able to be pro-active, rather than reactive. Now, on issues like our own economy in the global world, immigration, security, global warming, we are far behind the 8-ball, unable to find meaningful compromise between competing political ideologies to solve these real life problems! Tell the worker who has been unemployed since January why he still can’t find a job – because we were unprepared for the shift that globalization and technology would create! Tell them why they are in danger of getting a double whammy tacked on – an end to their long term unemployment benefits AND a loss of their tax cuts – because our elected leaders cannot compromise their antiquated ideologies, even to help those so obviously in need of assistance. No WONDER the Tea Party movement, and Obama before that, struck a chord with their calls for change!

But how can we change when no one has laid the proper ground work for it, when we weren’t prepared for the changes thrust upon us? This goes beyond the politicians – we have a system that has grown too large too fast, and now threatens our long term survival. Pollution is what we create best today, still; the natural resources with which we stoke the fires of progress are finite, yet we still have not accepted that truth. We have allowed technology to rule us, because we had no Joseph, prepared to tell us a bitter truth in advance, able to prepare us and guide us through a tough and challenging time.

Even in our own lives, how prepared are we for realities we could face? Coming up on 10 years after 9/11, not even a full year removed from the worst winter in a century, how many of us have taken the recommended precautions and routinely keep our home stocked with what we would need to remain indoors completely for 7 – 14 days? How many of us have the battery powered radio, the rotary powered phone, the back-up generator, to allow us to continue to live if and when the power goes out and stays out for a while, and we are unable to move? Sadly, I think we know the answer is that few of us are! And if we choose to remain unprepared on an individual level, it assuredly makes it that much harder for us to be a part of the solutions to the more global challenges we face.

So, on this third night of Chanukkah, as we come together as a congregational mishpachah, chanukkiyot in hand, to sing songs and light lights and exchange gifts, we owe it to ourselves and to our world to dig a little deeper into our Torah portion for this Shabbat and into the story we celebrate on this Chanukkah eve. We owe it to ourselves and our children to give the gift of being prepared – able and willing to respond to the challenges we face today, and preparing to face the challenges that assuredly await us tomorrow. Anything less would be to sit, cowering in the dark, when all we really needed to do was to light a light! KYR

Immigration Reform -- A Thanksgiving Weekend View

2011-01-05T13:58:00.000-08:00

Vayeishev – On Welcoming Home and the Challenge of Immigration Reform
Sermon for Shabbat Thanksgiving – November 26, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

With Rabbi Bob Alper joining us last Sunday evening for an incredibly successful and entertaining evening of comedy, it was inevitable. Many of us were trotting out our own favorite jokes, some of them even presentable in public. In the process, I was reminded of this gem:

The first generation Jewish son of immigrant parents had made good. He was heading off to college – the dream of every Jewish parent. He was going to make something of himself in this new country. He came home after his first semester – dean’s list. His parents were so proud. His mother worried, however, that he was lonely, on his own, so far away. The son reassured her that he had made many wonderful friends. The father looked at him and asked – “Are they Jewish?” “Some,” replied the son. The mom stopped worrying, but the dad began to.

Late in the spring, right before he came home for Passover, the son called all excited, to ask if he could bring a friend home for seder. His parents were delighted, and said that he could. And before they could ask any more, the son hung up.

And so it was a few days later, that he arrived home and introduced his parents to his friend – a beautiful Native American girl. His mother welcomed her in and started peppering her with questions about her background and her family’s history. His dad took him aside, to ask similar questions. “She’s not Jewish, is she?” “No dad.” “You are just friends?” “Actually, I am glad you asked. I think she may be the one.”

The older man’s eyes dimmed, and the son could see that there were issues for his father. He tried to put his dad’s mind at ease. “I know, Dad. You and mom came here so we could be free to live as Jews. And you are concerned that Lakota is not Jewish. But I swear to you dad. We have discussed this. And she is totally cool with raising our children as Jews.” Being from the old country, however, his father would settle for nothing less than full conversion.

And so it was, when the son called a few weeks after seder to announce that he and Lakota were getting married, that like many of his generation, the father hung up the phone, tore his clothes in pain and loss, and started to say kaddish for the son who was now dead to him. A few months later, the son called when they returned from their honeymoon in Israel, to share with his mother. But his father still wouldn’t speak to him. A few months later, he called again, to share the good news that Lakota was pregnant. Still nothing from his father. When he called to say that the baby, a boy, had been born, and was healthy, and had been circumcised, his mom was ecstatic. His father still said nothing. Not even his wife’s pleading with him could change things. “But Leo,” she chided him, “David tells me they even agreed on a Jewish name!” Still nothing.

It wasn’t until Lakota called a few months later, and told her mother-in-law that her conversion had just been completed, that the old man finally relented and agreed to travel to see his only grandson. When his parents arrived, the son could hardly wait, he was so proud and happy. “Mom, Dad,” he began, “I’d like you to meet your grandson – Whitefish!”

A silly story, to be sure, but one which speaks volumes to us on this night. We welcome back our young adults, on this Reunion Shabbat, as we do every year. As a community, like their parents, we are always glad to see our young people maintain a connection with us, and with the organized Jewish community. We may not live in the world of my opening joke anymore – parents do not say kaddish when their children intermarry – we don’t even refer to it as “marrying out” anymore. But the truth is, we are all still partners in this business of Jewish continuity and survival. Even as we have grown to recognize that intermarriage is NOT the opposite of Jewish survival, in fact, in many cases it can make the Jewish identity stronger by making it more of a constant issue, we continue to work with our own children, and with all of the young adults of our community, to do all that we can to maintain the strength of THEIR Jewish identity, so, regardless of who, or even IF, they marry, they will still raise up children who are as strong, or even stronger, in THEIR Jewish identity in the next generation.

Gone are the days when all of our children and grandchildren had easily recognized Jewish first names – like Sarah or David – or even last names for that matter! Gone are the days when a walk through our religious school, or a scan of our sanctuary at worship, revealed a monolithic, Caucasian skinned community. And I honestly believe that diversity and variety make us stronger – because they force us to dig deeper to recognize what unites us as Jews, rather than settling for mere surface similarities.

It is the history we share, the values we share, a world view that truly DOES still distinguish us in many ways from our neighbors. It is celebrating this coming week, and not a month from now; praying tonight and not on Sunday. It is caring about our brothers and sisters in lands near and far, and the fate of the modern state of Israel. But it is also the foods we eat, and how we eat them; the stories we tell, and how we tell them. In short, it is the way we look at the world, and how we see our place in it.

As we celebrated Thanksgiving last night, with families and friends, I hope THAT is one of the things that we all, at least in our hearts, gave thanks for. I know I did!

For those of us who started our Thanksgiving celebration on Wednesday evening as part of the larger Bowie community, at the annual interfaith Thanksgiving service, we were reminded again of what an amazing time and place we live in – with all its blessings and challenges. To be free and welcomed to participate at CCPC with the rest of the community. To have so many non-Jews comment on how they missed the sound of the shofar, because some dumb Rabbi never looked at the last page of the service and arranged to have Leon bring his! To be reminded that, for all that makes us different from the majority of those around us, there is still so much more that we share in common with them, for which we must also give thanks.

But most of all, we, especially, were challenged by the words of our speaker. Gustavo Torres, an immigrant from Guatemala, and the executive director of a group called CASA de Maryland, a leading Latino and immigrant advocacy group, spoke passionately about the challenges of working for immigrant rights in our ever fracturing society. His stories about violence directed at immigrants – both naturalized citizens AND those who are here without proper authorizing documents – were eerily reminiscent of the stories of those who worked for equal rights in the South in the 1960s.

His words reminded all of us gathered together that the issue of immigrant rights is a significant one for millions of people living in this country today. And, because of a failed, and at times non-existent, policy over the last 20 years or more in policing our borders effectively, and documenting new arrivals, we as Americans have failed our most recently arrived neighbors.

The issue of illegal immigration is a toxic time bomb that is lit in our country, waiting to explode. It is, in many significant ways, every bit as divisive in our time as the issue of slavery was in its day. We have already seen one state, Arizona, take action on its own because of its perception that our national effort is not working, and harming the citizen of that border state in particular. And they are not wrong in that assessment! We have seen local jurisdictions, even in our own area, move to allow action without cause to check a suspected illegal immigrant’s status. This is no different than the “states’ right” argument that Southerners claimed was the real reason for the Civil War.

And more and more, as we have seen our country divide politically into “red” and “blue” states, rhetoric has replaced ideology, sound byte pandering to the masses has replaced public policy debate based in realistic understanding of the enormity and complexity of the issues that need to be fixed. Those who feel that they “have” in this country are being joined by those who feel that they are being deprived of having by nebulously defined “others” in a partnership that threatens to make the economic class divide every bit the seismic disaster that race was in the mid-19th century, when it led us to war with each other.

All of which leaves those who are new to this country as the pawns in a horrendous game of human chess. Their real stories and struggles forgotten, they are turned into symbols. We, many of whom are still fortunate enough to remember hearing the stories of OUR immigrant ancestors, first-hand, in our youth, have a debt to pay forward by making sure that this country -- in which we may not always have been welcomed with open arms, but were tolerated, and allowed to thrive as rarely before in our people’s long history -- remembers that the ONLY ones among us who were not once immigrants in our collective national past were those like Lakota whom we now call “Native Americans.” And we have forced most of THEM onto reservations, paying them off by allowing them to run casinos!

The haves among us, and those who fear “others” for being different, and blame their not having on those different others, were once, themselves, just as we were, just as these new immigrants are today, the new and different Americans. They would not be where they are today, and neither would we, if others had done what is too often proposed in the current debate – returning the undocumented to their countries of origin, and forcing everyone who wants to come to do so “legally.”

Was it “legal” when ship companies crammed our ancestors beyond what was safe into the holds of ships, extorting what they could get for tickets of passage? Was it “legal” for our ancestors to be turned away because Uncle Hymie had promised them a job in the family shirt factory before they arrived? Was it “legal” to lock underaged workers, desperate to support their families in their new homes, where they sometimes lived 10 and 11 in a 2 room apartment, in sweatshops for 12 – 16 hour shifts without breaks for food, water, or bathroom usage? At times, those behaviors were both legal, and the norm. But were they ethical? I think we would all agree that clearly they are not. And eventually, all of those behaviors were forced to change because people spoke out in defense of those who were disenfranchised and adversely impacted by such laws and behaviors.

We often hear the argument “Yes, my ancestors were all immigrants. But, they all came legally. Why can’t these people just follow the law?” Historical note – for those of us whose ancestors came from Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1917, at the height of that wave of immigration, most of them had to break at least one law, in some country, to get here. Many left their countries of origin without permission, and carried no identity papers whatsoever! Because they were coming across the ocean, on ships run by companies that abided by US government regulations, to a limited number of viable entry ports, each of which had government employees waiting to process them, our ancestors were “legal” when they entered. They were properly recognized by our government.

The vast majority of those who have come to our country and are currently classified as “illegal immigrants” are so because, seeking to escape circumstances as bad or worse than those faced by our ancestors, they have taken equally or more desperate measures. Those coming from Mexico and Central America walk across the borders, or allow themselves to be brought in by those who promise them entry and protection. In large part because of OUR failures of policy today, those offering what our ancestors received on arrival to the New World to today’s immigrants are private agents, racketeers, smugglers, and traffickers. Those who come from Africa and Asia are more often than not trafficked as slaves every bit as much as 200 years ago.

In other words, the first step to solving the so-called “immigrant problem” in this country must be to find a way to stop victimizing further those who are already victims! To find ways to allow those who have done nothing to lose the right to be here worse than staying too long or trusting the wrong person to bring them here, those who have taken nothing away from our society but added to it by their presence, to stay here and become “legalized.” Then we need to develop a cogent and workable immigration policy, and an effective way of policing our borders, to stop the illegal importation of human beings! A policy that is a realistic, caring, and appropriate response to the needs of those who are already here legally, those who wish to be legal, but are not yet, and those who wish to come here legally and be welcomed.

Only then will the immigrant experience again become the stuff of the stories our families tell l’dor vador – from generation to generation. And, if you think this is a new phenomenon, let me share this story of my great-grandfather, Abraham Weisman. He came to this country, technically legally, by himself, as a teenager. He came alone, with another family shepherding him, and providing him a home when he arrived to New York. Sounds to me like today, many might see him as an illegal immigrant, for tagging along with a family not his own, and effectively claiming to be one of them!

But it gets better! When he chafed at the oppressive rules in his new “family’s” home, he bolted. Ran to the border – on foot and by train, and headed into Canada. To my knowledge, he never bothered to seek Canadian citizenship until perhaps MUCH later. In other words, he went north, illegally, across the wide land border, with no intention of coming back! A century before it became a common usage, my great grandfather was an illegal alien!

Friends – I share this with you tonight because it is fresh in my mind, and in the minds of those who participated in the Thanksgiving service on Wednesday night. I share it with you, because it is an issue that we, as Americans, can no longer afford to ignore; and as Jews, cannot allow to continue to play out as it has. I share it with you, because, as we gave thanks with our immigrant families just yesterday, we have a responsibility to help these new immigrants gain the chance that we were given as newcomers tonight.

I share it with you tonight, as we read the beginnings of the story of Joseph – as he himself got trafficked into Egypt, and became an illegal immigrant himself. We know the outcome of HIS sojourn was the beginning of our people’s 400 years in exile, as immigrants, in Egypt. We know that their departure is the centerpiece of the story of Passover, whose ethical message to us down through the generations, is that we must always take care to acknowledge the needs of those who are not native to our people, but leaving with us, BECAUSE we are sojourners in Egypt.

I don’t have all the answers, nor do I have the political savvy to figure out what is possible in our current climate. I only pray that we are not too late in pushing the debate and discussion to the front burner it needs to occupy, and that the needs of political expediency do not sink the very necessary act of fixing a system that is desperately broken and failing us all. We may not be Reuben or Judah, who acted to enslave Joseph in Egypt – but we are certainly as guilty as the other 8 brothers who stood by and let their emotions and their own needs blind them to the wrong they were witnessing, and by their silence covering up. And I, for one, cannot live with that responsibility any longer! KYR

Isaac's Legacy

2011-01-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

Isaac’s Legacy – A Multi-Dimensional Puzzle
Sermon for Parshat Toldot – November 5, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie, MD

I love the Book of Genesis. It can be read and understood on so many different levels. It is the closest thing that the Jewish tradition has to mythology. But it also contains clear tidbits of actual historicity – details that allow the historians and archaeologists to connect these stories to actual places and eras.

It is a series of epic sagas – each one with a hero and a message, each one progressively written in more modern style. But they are also stories of our ancestors, who are all too real and all too archetypical – even for us post-modern folks – faults and all.

It is a moral text, teaching us powerful lessons. It is a quasi-historical text – creating the linkages that connect us still as a people. It is a religious text – teaching us how to relate to our God. It is all these things and more.

Tonight, as we read Toldot, we need to bear ALL these things in mind in order to get the full value and message out of a text that at time amuses us, at times troubles us greatly. We need to approach the text without bias – for our preconceived notions may very well overwhelm the evidence of the text, coloring events and characters in differing ways. Because, more than anything else, our text on this Shabbat presents us with a mystery to resolve.

Look at the VERY well known story with which our portion ends. An aged Isaac, his eyes dimmed by age, recognizes his mortality, and wishes to pass on the family blessing to his son. The text has told us that he favors Esau over Isaac, and now he sends out Esau to prepare a meal to give him strength so he can bestow his blessing upon his beloved son. From all indications, Isaac plans to pass THE family blessing to Esau.

But is this really true? Maybe – but maybe not! And to fully understand the depths of the difficulty of what seemed, just a moment ago, to be a clear-cut answer, we need to look at the BEGINNING of the story. Rebekah is pregnant, and the pregnancy is NOT easy. She, herself, goes to inquire of God as to what is going on inside of her. This act of going to God is not uncommon – but Rebekah is the first woman to seek out God herself! And, even more remarkable, God answers her directly!
And the answer is clear – Not only does Rebekah learn that she is having twins, but she learns from God that their fate is for the older to serve the younger. She, their mother, and we, the reader/listener, are now privy to the secret of how the story must end – Jacob, it seems, is the one who should end up receiving the unique blessing that marks this family’s relationship with God.

And all we need to do is connect the dots from the beginning of the story to the end. However, this is the part that is NOT so clear-cut. For example – WE know what God has foretold about the boys. We know that Rebekah knows. However, can we be 100% sure that Isaac knew? On the one hand, how could he NOT know? But, on the other hand, it is never made explicitly clear that he does!

Whether he knows what has to be IS significant, especially when it appears to contradict what his natural personal preference would be. The text CLEARLY tells us that Isaac favored Esau, while Rebekah favored Jacob. In the latter case, the rationale seems clear – Rebekah favors the one who she KNOWS is due to carry on the family legacy. Furthermore, the text clearly tells us that Jacob spent his days hanging around the tents, where he would have become the more familiar of the twins to his mother.

More subject to interpretation, and difficult to nail down, is the question of WHY Isaac favored Jacob. If Isaac KNEW the truth from Rebekah, such a decision would only make sense if Isaac was going deliberately out of his way to favor the son who would NOT get the legacy. While that seems possible, given his own history of almost being killed by his father, and how it could lead him to draw closer to the “forgotten” son, it means that he would be deliberately choosing to ignore God’s prophecy AND going against his beloved Rebekah, who appears at almost all points in the story to be the stronger partner.

Only if he DIDN’T know the truth from Rebekah does it appear that we could reach this set-up. In that case, being free to favor the son of his choice, we find Isaac, usually the weak one, the victim, asserting himself. He stands up to Rebekah, by favoring Esau while she favors Jacob. But furthermore, he favors the son who is EVERYTHING that he is not -- a he-man, a man of the field, someone who can take care of himself. Freud would have a field day!

So, if Isaac really DOESN’T know what God has foretold, if Rebekah really HASN’T shared this with him, then it is entirely possible that, left to his own devices at this critical moment near the end of our portion, Isaac really is about to pass the legacy of the family blessing on to Esau. And THIS, I believe, allows most of the rest of the story to fall neatly into place.

Rebekah overhears the conversation between her husband and older son, and feels the need not merely to spring into action, but to try to deceive Isaac. CLEARLY, she is afraid of what Isaac is about to do. CLEARLY, Rebekah has not prepared Jacob in advance for what might be necessary. So clearly, whatever follows has NOT been premeditated between the parents to bring about the necessary ending.

Unless, of course, the whole scene of the dinners is a charade to let Isaac off the hook with Esau! While that seems plausible – after all, Isaac does enjoy the taste of flesh between his teeth, provided by his hunter-son, and would be expected to seek to reward him in the long term – who more than Isaac would be aware of the danger of sacrificing his son or sons for the sake of what God wants? Who should be least comfortable setting Jacob up as the fall guy for Esau’s anger, to avoid facing it himself, if not Isaac?

Unless Isaac was too weak for any other alternative to be viable! In which case, what goes around has come around, and Isaac now finds himself as helpless as his father was on the night that God called upon him to sacrifice Isaac! Abraham KNEW that Isaac could not be sacrificed, for then God’s promise to him could not come true. But here was God asking for Isaac! Now, Isaac KNEW that he was potentially sacrificing Jacob to Esau’s anger and disappointment, even as he accepted that his favorite was NOT the one chosen to receive the legacy. He was risking losing the one destined to carry on the family Covenant with God.

In other words, this moment, in which we start out seeing Isaac as feeble and weakened, and ends with him apparently deceived and indecisive, turns out to actually be the moment when he gets to demonstrate his FAITH that God will make happen what must happen and make it good! In the face of a difficult situation! From apparent weakness comes unimagined strength!

From this far-more-complicated scenario than we first recognized, we learn a couple of powerful lessons. First, not to rush to accept the obvious as the truth. But second, and even more important, that it does NOT take strength or position to demonstrate faith. Isaac, the closest thing we have to an every-person in Genesis, rises out of the shadow of the characters around him, rises out of his apparently weakened state, and matches Abraham’s example of faith in God in time of turmoil! It doesn’t take an Abraham! Isaac did it too!

And so, what is Isaac’s legacy? Is it, as the text implies, that in 8 verses, he moves from being Abraham’s son and legacy, to Rebekah’s husband, to Jacob and Esau’s father? And that in the rest of the story, he is either repeating the actions of his father, or being deceived by his wife and son, or otherwise being a non-factor in his own family story?

Or is it that, in spite of all that, in the end, he manages to pass the tradition on to the proper son, not his favorite, and in the process finds a way to affirm that he himself is every bit as strong in his faith and partnership in the covenant that is the family legacy as his father was?

I believe the coda of our portion confirms the answer to this question. When the confusion and deception have cleared, and everyone is seeing clearly again, after Isaac has given 2 very similar, rather neutral, blessings to his 2 sons, not 100% sure as to which is who, he calls Jacob back to see him. Now, CERTAIN as to whom he is addressing, he gives Jacob a very different blessing, one that sounds much more like the one HE received in his own youth, one that sounds a lot like the blessing God will give directly to Jacob in next Shabbat’s portion (it pays sometimes to be the father of the next Bar Mitzvah – you know what happens next!).

There is no confusion at this moment, no possibility of mistaken identity. At the ONLY moment in the entire portion when Isaac is pro-active, he passes on the blessing to Jacob clearly. And then, he acknowledges the rest of the reality. He acknowledges Esau’s disappointment and anger at being passed over, and encourages Jacob to head out on his own. He sends him back to his mother’s family in Haran – the same journey Abraham had NOT trusted Isaac to make for himself, preferring to send the servant to find Rebekah for him.

Isaac acknowledges both the reality of the family dynamic that this whole unfortunate circumstance has created – perhaps even better than his father acknowledged the impact of his actions and near action in trying to sacrifice Isaac! Isaac acknowledges that Jacob is stronger than he was himself, and able to take care of himself. And, he sends away the only son who he could count on to take care of him in his old age – hardly the action of a needy victim!

And, it turns out, Isaac isn’t even really on his deathbed, either! He will live long enough for Jacob to return from his self-imposed exile, live to see his sons reconcile after years apart, so that they can come together and bury him when he finally DOES die.

In other words, not only does he pass on the family legacy to the right son, Jacob, but he also passes on a powerful lesson from his own experience and model to all of us. A pretty good legacy, indeed!

A VERY Proud Father's Words to his Son, the Bar Mitzvah

2011-01-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

Ed. Note : I thought for a while before deciding to include these words in my blog. I hope you will ratify my decision.

D-

Hey buddy! You made it! I bet there were times, although you never expressed it, that you might not have been sure you were going to make it. If there were, that would have been perfectly normal – most of the kids I have prepared for Bar or Bat Mitzvah over the years have had that moment.

But, as you so eloquently put it in your own unique way in your speech -- you are NOT most kids that I have worked with! You ARE the Rabbi’s kid! You ARE MY kid!! A blessing – and a curse ☺ For each of us!

But, even more than that – you are DAVID. From your arrival, you have been unique, and you have been influential. I think it is safe to say that YOU are a significant reason we are here in Bowie (okay, we are NOT IN Bowie at this very moment, but you know what I mean!)

If your mother hadn’t been pregnant with you when we were looking to leave Fredericksburg, I am pretty sure we would have ended up in Massachusetts and not in Connecticut. Things would have been different, and we probably wouldn’t have been looking to move when the chance came to come to Bowie.

And, even when we got here, there were many who advised us to follow the prevailing trend and buy a house in Crofton, not in Bowie. But, in large part because of the services that Bowie offered more easily that have been so helpful to you, we landed in the city itself.

I often say that every kid who reaches this moment is unique – I think it is safe to say that you are a little MORE unique than most! And that has nothing to do with me, or mommy or Emily – but EVERYTHING to do with you! We don’t often talk publicly about the challenges you have to overcome every day, both physical and behavioral, challenges that impact how you walk, how you write, how you think, and how you behave.

We don’t talk about them publicly for a couple of reasons. First, in general, they are not really anyone’s business except the people who have to work with you to help you learn and grow like “normal kids” do. Second, we want you to be as “normal” as you can be, whatever that means, and really do not want to inspire sympathy from others. Third, we realize that despite these challenges, you, and we, are actually pretty darn lucky – for what you deal with, it could be a whole lot worse!

But most of all, we don’t talk about them because, to most people, you really ARE remarkably normal. You can be totally out of control at times – what almost 13 year old boy can’t be! You have your likes and dislikes, the things you love to spend time with, and the things you have to be forced to do. When we tell you to do one of those things you don’t want to, you ignore us, or negotiate, or argue, or stall – anything to avoid doing it. I ask your friends and relatives gathered here – doesn’t THAT sound normal?

But, you are so much more than that! In part because of the physical issues, you were slow to walk and move around on your own. Many people never knew – because in public, you were never allowed to be in a position to have to move around on your own. EVERYONE wanted to hold you and carry you. So much so, that we threatened to have a shirt made for you that said “Please, let me walk” – AFTER we were already here!

You have learned to adjust, with help from lots of people, and many of them are here today celebrating with you. The reason they wanted to spend this day celebrating what you have achieved is because THEY know that you have busted your butt to EARN it, because they have given so much of themselves in woring with you. There are friends here from MTR, who have taught you to ride horses, and helped us to realize how fortunate we are compared to others, who have improved your physical skills and given you pride in your achievements. But, they are here because they like YOU – the sweet, lovable, fun-loving kid who works to improve himself every day.

There are educators, counselors and specialists from your school, who have worked tirelessly with you and with us to try to create the best environment for your educational growth, often overcoming absurd obstacles that are placed in your way and our way by others. They, too, are here because of their genuine affection for you – the person you already are, and the young man you are becoming every day.

When I was in 8th grade, I had an amazing English teacher named Elaine Re. Much of what I still use almost 40 years later about communicating well with people I learned from her. But more than what she taught me in the classroom, she was one of those remarkable people who are influential far beyond their words. I still remember what she wrote in my Junior High School yearbook (and I went and looked up the exact quote for today!):

“I know you will be successful in whatever you do. There are many opportunities [ahead]. Take advantage of all of them, and don’t forget the values your parents have given you. Stay as sensitive and sincere as you are now.”

As your Rabbi, AND as your dad, I cannot think of a better hope and prayer from me to you on this amazing day. Today, there will be those who will say “Of course he was amazing – he is the Rabbi’s kid!” And, don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly proud of you today – even more than every day. But I know that the source of my pride is as much in seeing, I flatter myself to believe, so much of me in you. I finally understand what Miss Re was saying that day. If I am responsible in any way for who you are, and as your dad, I would like to think that I had better be!, what you have achieved in reaching this day and what you have shown today makes me proud. Of YOU! Not because I am the Rabbi, but because you are David! And it is DAVID who is amazing today -- NOT the Rabbi's kid!

And, because I have learned from past experience, and want to end on a lighter note. Today, we share, you and I, along with both your grandfathers who are here celebrating, and generations who came before them, the experience of becoming a young Jewish man. People look at pictures of me at your age, and at you, and know that we are father and son, without a doubt, which is also a source of pride.

But, as we celebrate on this day, without even realizing it, we share one more bond. In first grade, the doctors took a fairly extreme step of severing your gastrokinemeous muscle (what we used to more simply call your calf muscle) to release pressure on your ankle and allow more freedom of growth. It is a procedure that you may yet again face when you begin that late Weisman family growth spurt in upcoming months.

Little did we know, when I injured myself last month, because first we focused on the huge raspberry, and then the swelling and the knee pain, that the lasting injury would be to my – wait for it – gastrokinemeous muscle! So today, I join you in the gastrok club, even as you join grampy and grandpa, and my two grandfathers for whom you are named, and me as an adult Jewish man. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love ya, Doo!

Divrei Harav -- January 2011

2011-01-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

Divrei HaRav – Words from Weisman

Some columns write themselves. Others develop over time. This month’s appears to be both. And I apologize up front for its length – please stick with it, because it deals with topics that are central to our congregational life.

As promised last month, I begin with my profound appreciation of and thanks for the participation in and overwhelming good wishes and generosity before, during, and after David’s Bar Mitzvah. When I looked out from the bimah at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue that morning, at the gathering of nearly 300 family members and friends, what could have been a very unfamiliar moment because the different surroundings, became a truly awesome and overwhelming moment of love and support. From start to finish -- the service, the qiddish, the lunch for our out-of-town family and friends, and the havdalah and party that evening – it was an amazing day that truly moved me, and my entire family. And there are not words to fully express our thanks to EVERYONE who made it so by your involvement!

In addition, since last month, we have celebrated a Chanukkah that, at least on the surface, beforehand, seemed likely to be somewhat disjointed, for its secular calendar earliness and disconnection from both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Instead, it became a celebration of EXACTLY what Chanukkah has become at its best – an acknowledgement of both our Jewish uniqueness and our connection to the world around us, based in Jewish history and values, stressing understanding and peace. We lit the first candle as a religious school, on the same day that the world around us remembered the bravery and sacrifice of Rosa Parks and the suffering and courage embodied in World AIDS Day. We lit the 3rd candle on Shabbat with our congregational family – both at our main service, and at a better attended, more lively Tot Shabbat than we celebrate most months. JOSTY was reborn with the 4th candle, as our middle schoolers ate homemade latkes, competed with dreidels, and exchanged gifts, and also wrapped gifts for the children we will work with as a congregation on Christmas Day in the Warm Nights program. The next day, our religious school family celebrated with music, dancing, magic, and joy – not to mention latkes, sufganiyot and dreidels, thanks to our Education Committee and their corps of volunteers. The 7th candle was lit in memory, as the anniversary of Pearl Harbor was observed. And on the 8th night, our oldest students and their parents lit the last candle while learning from our own Jonathan Tucker and his colleagues from Operation Understanding DC, a remarkable program that fosters understanding through shared experience between Jewish and African-American teens, who helped us break down our own biases and stereotypes, and see the world around us more clearly! By the time it was over, there was a strong sentiment to change the Jewish calendar so that Chanukkah will start on December 1st EVERY year – tempting, but easy to reject – because of all the added value these other commemorations and experiences brought to our holiday celebration!

I had been planning for several months to use this column to start a formal discussion, long overdue, of our worship services and specifically, our now not-so-new prayerbook, Mishkan T’filah. The added spirituality of our Chanukkah celebrations, and the incredible experience of David’s Bar Mitzvah celebration, only serve as a more powerful introduction to that discussion.

More than a few people went out of their way to comment to me on several items of our family’s celebration and our congregational family’s worship, that I found fascinating. There was universal appreciation for the awesomeness of our physical surroundings in the Sixth and I sanctuary – a remarkable worship space – that played a large role in the spirituality of that service. The amazing acoustics, and DAVID’s musical choices for the service, created a spirit for the worship that was both appropriate and energetic, which carried over to our spoken prayers as well. Many commented on the beauty and profundity of the service liturgy itself – over 90% of which was directly out of Mishkan T’filah, albeit reprinted in a separate prayer booklet, one which lacked what has become our Congregation's normal glossy splash of photographs.

But, ironically, the single most frequent comment I got, after respect and appreciation for David’s role in leading our worship, was how many people were so engaged in their participation in the service, that they never looked at their watches to realize that the service ran a couple of minutes beyond 2 and a half hours. Compare that to our normal Shabbat evening worship, when the 1½ hour mark is a Rubicon not to be crossed, for its diminishing returns! Or family services that begin to lose focus shortly after an hour.

I have always claimed that elapsed time is more perceptual than measurable, and more often a factor of engagement than the actual passage of minutes. The shortest sermon I ever heard in person was given by Rabbi Alex Schindler at the 1995 Biennial. When I checked my watch to see if he had been talking for 5 minutes or ten, I was amazed to see that he had been going for a full hour! And still had 32 minutes left before he finished. That is how engaging his message and delivery were! The longest I ever heard was a 7 minute wedding homily that engaged no one.

I share these insights to start our discussion. As a congregation, we are blessed with a number of strengths in this area – musical resources beyond our size, a primary prayerbook and other resources that should allow us to create meaningfully spiritual liturgies, a sanctuary that is both warm and physically flexible, and a schedule that already features multiple prayer modalities and styles. Despite that, the appearance is that participation in worship has decreased, and we need to both be honest in understanding why, and work to reverse that trend.

Included in those assets we have is also a Rabbi who received a prize in classical liturgy while at HUC-JIR, but who is also fluent in the modalities of worship in the less formal settings of our camps and youth programs. I have taken the liberty of making decisions about HOW we use Mishkan T'filah -- some in keeping with the guidance of the editorial committee that created the text, some in keeping with our own established congregational worship patterns. Just because I supposedly know what I am doing does NOT guarantee that I have made the BEST decisions for us, and as a result, we have started to experiment in recent days with other ways of using the book. I want these issues to be part of our discussion as well.

So I ask the following specific questions:

1. For those who attend services regularly (once a month or more) – please share with me what is working for you in our services and what is not, your reaction both to Mishkan T’filah AND the way we use it in worship, and what you would do differently (and what you would not change under any circumstances);

2. For those who find themselves attending less frequently today than in the past – please evaluate and share honestly why you believe that is the case, and what you find missing in our worship that keeps you from participating more often;

3. For those who do not attend except on special occasions, because participation in services has NEVER been a high priority – please share what it would take to get you to make the effort to TRY coming more often;

4. And for those of you who were part of the Prayerbook Evaluation Committee that recommended our embrace of Mishkan T’filah – I would love to hear from you what your experience has been since we switched over; are you attending more or less frequently and favorably; is it meeting your expectations; are there elements of how we use the book that you would look to change?

And for all of us – let this be the BEGINNING of an honest and meaningful discussion and sharing that leads us all to a better understanding of ourselves and Jewish worship and to developing worship that attracts our increased participation.

To that end, be looking next month for more discussion of Jewish worship and our services and liturgy in this space, and information on a new Continuing Jewish Education class on Mishkan T’filah and Jewish prayer.

Chanukkah -- Another Viewpoint

2011-01-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

This piece also appeared in the December edition of Temple Topics, continuing my message of past present and future being interconnected, in this case through the history of the development of the holiday itself...

Chanukkah – 1 Spelling, On Time, Same as Ever (?)
First Candle – Wednesday evening, December 1

As I noted in my column, Chanukkah is a rather unique holiday on our calendar for many reasons. It is likely true that no other holiday has been as intentionally manipulated throughout Jewish history, to reflect the times in which it has been celebrated. No Hebrew word that has passed into English is more routinely spelled with variant spellings, despite a clearly correct choice which apparently no style book prefers. No holiday has grown so much in significance in our modern times, nor is more connected to the celebrations of other religions and cultures, usually to the detriment of understanding its own intrinsic messages.

In other words, there may not be a Jewish holiday in which past, present, and future are all “in play” at the same time as is usually true in our Chanukkah celebration.

In its origins, Chanukkah seems clearly to have been one of many military/political holidays declared by the Maccabees during their battles with the Syrian/Greek hellenizers of Antiochus IV, and afterwards, during and after the continuing skirmishes for political and spiritual control of the Jewish community, that ended in the establishment of the Hasmonean Dynasty by the last of Judah’s brothers. For whatever reasons, all of the other of these Maccabean/ Hasmonean holidays eventually disappeared from the calendar; Chanukkah alone survived.

In that survival are the seeds of the holiday’s chameleon –like ability to change to blend into the times. The Rabbis of early times, finding it impossible to completely wipe out any trace of a popular holiday that fell at a time of year when there was nothing else to celebrate, and when a celebratory distraction was a welcome break from the psychological disorder we now call SADD (seasonal affective dysfunctional disorder) in the darkness of the depths of winter, found a way to co-opt the celebration and turn it into a religious celebration of God’s miraculous and salvational powers.

And now, in our modern world, Chanukkah, once deliberately underplayed to avoid angering the Romans because of its overtones of military victory, has become deliberately OVERPLAYED as our alternative and response to being otherwise left out of the orgy of commercialization that the Christmas season has been allowed to become. I am still not sure why we, as Jews, couldn’t “just say no” to that over-commercialization, which I believe has needlessly watered down our neighbors’ holiday. But I do not mind this added attention to and value in Chanukkah otherwise. It is long overdue.

And, at its heart, the holiday really has not changed. It is still about miraculous salvation – whether of our people through the leadership of the Maccabees against all odds in fighting the Greek armies, or through the oil that lasted for 8 days instead of one which kept our faith alive in a dark moment. It is about how we identify ourselves as Jews in the face of the larger world, and how we walk the tightrope between separation to maintain our distinctiveness and blending into the surrounding world.

It is about FAMILY celebration – with foods fried to remind of the Rabbi’s miracle of the oil, with songs and games (like dreidel – itself a late addition to the long history) designed to keep the entire story well rehearsed in the hearts and minds of the next generation, with generous sharing of gifts, and thoughts turned to helping others.

It is a mirror – of who we are today, in light of who we have been, who we might yet become, who we are to ourselves and to others.

Divrei Harav -- December 2010

2011-01-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

Divrei HaRav – Words from Weisman

The writing of my column this month demonstrates how we Jews live in time, perhaps better than we even realize. Even as we live in the present, we are constantly looking back to our past for guidance and inspiration, and ahead to the future with hope and faith. The three items I MUST mention this month all show that clearly.

I begin with a look back, that ends as a look forward. As I noted in November’s column, I was writing BEFORE the dinner celebrating our 10 years together as Rabbi and congregation – even though you read those words after the dinner occurred. So I deliberately left my response and thanks until now.

I cannot remember too many other times in my life when I have found myself as moved by words directed at and about me – truly humbled, and for a few moments, genuinely speechless. I was moved by the volume of us who celebrated together – and the many others who could not make it who took the time to send well wishes and regrets – your mere presence and effort is, in fact, what we were truly celebrating.

I want to thank those who spoke – Rev. James Brassard of CCPC, Rev. Dick Stetler (ret.) of St. Matthew’s UMC, and my dear friend – and ours – Khalil Shadeed of the Islamic Society of Southern Prince George’s County, who all started us off with a combination of well-deserved roasting and serious commentary. I hope those of us who gathered recognize how fortunate we are to have these three leaders in our community, and how fortunate I am to have them as colleagues, friends, and co-conspirators. Lisa Gottman, our newest member, our URJ congregational representative, and a family member since her sister and I memorably traded our siblings for each other one evening during an alleged study session while in Rabbinical school, brought congratulations and comments from some of my Rabbinic and other colleagues who could not be in attendance – each of whom has personally enhanced our life here at Solel during these past 10 years, for which I thank her as well. In Mary Nusser’s remarks, we all got a sense of the caliber of partners that I and we have in the community when it comes to doing what is good and right, and I thank her as well. And how do I thank my father – not just for his incredible comments, but for 50 years of teaching and love and support -- and modeling what I hope I have become!

And, of course, a HUGE thank you to the committee, led by Bob Michelson, who, along with Sharon, created that wonderful montage of the last 10 years. They were greatly enabled by my family, working hard behind the scenes, who I so rarely get to thank in public!

The truth that I learned during the dinner, and immediately shared in my remarks, is simple and two-fold. First, no one celebrates the anniversary of an individual. Anniversaries are the celebration of a partnership, a marriage, that works well. We, as Rabbi and congregation, are that. And second, no matter how much time and energy is spent looking backward at such events, the true celebration at such times is in the incredible hope and potential that is so easily seen and recognized at such moments as we look ahead and dream of what we might accomplish together in the NEXT ten years.

Second, as you read this, Chanukkah comes early to our secular calendars this year. Under separate title in this month’s Topics, you will find a Chanukkah article. Suffice it to say here that, perhaps more than any other Jewish holiday, Chanukkah is a reminder of our past that has become a measuring stick of our present, and harbinger of our future.

And third, as I write this, I am up to my eyeballs in the final planning for David’s Bar Mitzvah celebration. As a result, as I did last month, I will, of necessity, hold off for next month my full remarks and thank yous.

In all three of these elements, there are links to past and future as we celebrate in the present. In my writing about them at this moment, we look back to last month, at what is happening at the moment of writing in the very present, and ahead to the near future that will be our present by the time you read it. As Jews, our past and our future, however near or far term, are never easily separated from the reality of our present – if only we allow ourselves to make the connections. May our holiday season this month be a constant reminder of that truth, guiding us in our actions.

Divrei Harav -- November, 2010

2011-01-05T12:42:00.000-08:00

[Blog Ed. note: This column deals with relatively esoteric material that really is most significant ONLY to members of my congregation. However, it does demonstrate some philosophical approaches to the general challenges of how we live our lives as Jews in an "open" community that may make it worth reading for non-members as well....]

Divrei HaRav – Words from Weisman

With the Holy Days over, and a little time as I write before the crush leading up to David’s special day (and I am also writing BEFORE the dinner in my honor, for which I will properly thank you all NEXT month!), I want to talk this month about the new Memorial Boards, and use their arrival as an opportunity to remind everyone of some of our standing procedures in regards to observances at worship.

My part in working to make these boards a reality was to clarify our yahrzeit observance policy, so that the folks at Baum could properly program our boards. And let me thank them up front – they appear to have gotten it EXACTLY right, and done so in a manner that actually ADDS to our opportunity for appropriate remembrance as individuals and as a community.

You see, our pattern is based on two overarching principles – utility and inclusion. Utility, in that we made a decision a number of years back, to read all yahrzeit names (whether or not there is a plaque for the person) on the day of (for Friday yahrzeits) or the Shabbat before the yahrzeit is observed. In this way, the reading of the name in public serves as a reminder (along with the reminder letter everyone should be receiving in advance, and the list printed each month in Temple Topics) of the upcoming yahrzeit, allowing those who wish to light candles in their homes or make contributions in memory of loved ones to do so in timely and appropriate fashion.

Inclusion takes on two specific forms. First, our policy is to read and remind for all yahrzeits of current members, as well as all those for whom a plaque has been purchased in our congregation. We view your plaque purchases as creating a perpetual memorial, and we will uphold that request and honor that responsibility.

We also seek to be maximally inclusive by allowing our members to observe yahrzeits according to either the English or Hebrew calendar. This DOES make our efforts a little more complicated, and made programming the boards significantly so. We assume English calendar as the default – as long as that is your date of preference, you need do nothing except make sure we have accurate records of your loved ones. If you ask us to notify you and observe your yahrzeits according to the Hebrew calendar, we will gladly do that as well.

This creates one small wrinkle in our observance pattern – since Hebrew calendar dates start at sundown the evening before and end at sundown, if a Hebrew yahrzeit falls on “Friday,” it will be concluded before Friday night services begin, and therefore will be read on the preceding Friday evening.

To accommodate this choice and wrinkle in the lighting of our new yahrzeit boards, the folks at Baum have programmed the yahrzeit “week” that the light is lit to begin at 4PM on the Friday prior to (or of) the yahrzeit, and run until MIDNIGHT of the following Friday. This allows all of our cases to be properly lit.

It also provides an additional opportunity for those of us who may not be able to make it to services on the Friday before a loved one’s yahrzeit – because the light will still be lit on the FOLLOWING Friday night as well (but not Shabbat morning!). And therefore, we get an “extra chance” to make our yahrzeit observances appropriate and active. I will even read the name that following Friday night if I get the request before services begin, so that I can add the name to the pulpit list for that night!

As long as we are clarifying and reminding, a few quick notes about names of those who are ill for the Mi Shebeirach list. Anyone can add a name any time before services begin. If the person being added is either a Temple member, or an immediate family member of a congregant (parent, spouse, sibling, or child), or a former Rabbi or someone similarly connected to our congregational family, as long as the name is received in time for inclusion, it will be listed in the announcement sheet, and will remain on the list until you ask the Rabbi or Elizabeth to remove it.

With a very few exceptions for those members who have made their general or specific preference NOT to be listed clearly known in advance, we will not check before adding, preferring to err on the side of inclusion. If you hear your own or a loved one's name read and would prefer it not be, please talk with the Rabbi.

All other relatives, friends and neighbors of our Temple family are listed on the bimah. These names are not included in the announcement sheet, and are read out loud only when the person who placed them on the list is present at services. This decision was taken to keep the list reading to a manageable length. I always include a line before we recite the prayer that includes those whose names have not been read in our prayers as well.

In the case of both yahrzeit and Mi Shebeirach lists, when there is a Shabbat morning service, the same names read on Friday night are read on Saturday morning, except for Friday English calendar yahrzeit observances, and “secondary” Mi Shebeirach names.

I hope this column helps us all to understand the ritual workings of our observances in and out of the sanctuary for the sick and the deceased. As always, if there are any questions about Jewish practices or our unique Solel practices, I hope you will ask me.

How DO You Measure a Life?

2010-11-02T10:28:00.001-07:00

[Editor's Note: There WAS a two-week hiatus on printed sermons -- for a full explanation of why, please catch up with my guest blog in Jim Schwartz' corner of the Weis Man blogosphere, and with my next entry here -- let me simply say that it is good to be back to (almost) full strength...]

How Do You Measure A Life?
Sermon for Chayei Sarah – October 29, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie, MD

In our portion on this Shabbat, Abraham returns home after the attempt to sacrifice Isaac, and we learn immediately of the death of Sarah. The tradition links those 2 statements into one, usually claiming that the reason for Sarah’s death was shock and heartbreak at how close Abraham came to actually sacrificing Isaac. Indeed, the traditional view that Isaac was 37 years old, and not a young lad himself, when this life-changing event occurred on the mountain, stems from this nexus of events.

Abraham, our role model and first Jewish ancestor, confronts the reality of his beloved life-partner’s death as any of us would – by making arrangements for her to have a proper burial in a proper burial site. These efforts lead to an almost comical negotiation for the purchase of the Cave of Machpelah, which becomes the family tomb in which all of the patriarchs and matriarchs except Rachel (but including Joseph) find their eventual resting place.

With those details taken care of, Abraham, again acting to maintain the strength of his family members, recognizes that the loss of Sarah will be a huge loss for Isaac, even moreso for whatever damage has been irreparably done to HIS relationship with his son. And so, he arranges for his servant to travel back to Haran to find a bride there for Isaac, so he will be looked after as well. That journey brings Rebekah into the family.

Lost in that traditional swimming against the stream when it comes to Isaac’s age at the time of the sacrifice, lost in the other aspects of the portion that are usually stressed, are two powerful truths. The first of those truths is that this portion, uniquely, is driven almost from beginning to end by WOMEN. Sarah’s death is the catalyst for all of Abraham’s actions in this chapter. Rebekah’s arrival on the scene establishes her rather remarkable place in the family structure and dynamic as the lead character of her generation.

But even more than that, from start to finish, this portion is about a concept that we have been looking closely at this year already – legacy. Although the word that I translate as legacy – toldot – does not appear here (it IS the name of next week’s portion, however!), it is clear that what we should be focused on throughout out recap of Sarah’s life, is its impact on others.

Sarah’s death leads Abraham, who, up until now, has been a wanderer rather than a landowner, to purchase a plot of land for her burial. In so doing, he becomes a landowner in what becomes Israel, and establishes a legacy for his family that reaches down to us still today. Our claim on Israel as the Jewish homeland stems, originally, from Abraham’s purchase of Machpelah – a powerful legacy indeed.

Sarah’s death leads Abraham to make sure Isaac is cared for, and brings Rebekah into the family. Rebekah – mother of twins. Rebekah -- who CLEARLY ran the household, and was the lead character, not Isaac, in that generation. Rebekah – with whom God spoke directly, and without whom, left to his own devices, Isaac might very well have passed the family legacy on to Esau and NOT Jacob!

But go back and look at Sarah’s role IN LIFE. She is there from the original lech l’cha – the original call to go forth. She is equally credited, along with Abraham, for bringing many followers of their theological revolution into the fold. It was Sarah who decided that Abraham needed a son – an heir, a legacy – that she apparently could not give him, and so offered her handmaid, Hagar, to him for that purpose.

It was Sarah who laughed when she overheard that she would, indeed, provide that legacy for her husband in their old age. It was Sarah who, after Isaac was born, worried about Ishmael’s presence and its impact on Abraham’s legacy, her son, and insisted that Ishmael and Hagar be sent packing.

And finally, it is Sarah’s presence as Isaac’s mother which Abraham avoids on the way out to follow God’s call. We usually look at Abraham’s early awakening in the morning, his punctilious personal attention to every detail of this sacrifice, as indicative of his worthiness before God. Last Shabbat, we recast it as an attempt to shift focus from the big picture to the small details – a desperate stalling tactic.

But tonight, what if the real truth, whether deliberate, or unintended consequence, is that Abraham’s early departure cut Sarah out of the loop, and prevented her from having any impact on his efforts to follow his perception of God’s command?! Could this TOO be part of Sarah’s legacy?! Might Abraham’s early departure have been deliberate, out of fear that if Sarah knew what was going on, she would try to stop it? ! That if he had to answer her questions as vaguely as he did with Isaac, she would not be nearly as accepting of his avoidances?!

If this is even remotely possible, then it seems to me that the ultimate result, as expressed in this week’s portion and amplified in the Midrash, that Sarah died AS A DIRECT result of hearing what had almost happened upon Abraham’s return, is even MORE likely to be at least somewhat accurate. If this is even remotely true then, in a real sense, Sarah’s death becomes part of the legacy of her life, triggered, in part, by her surprise at hearing the news that Abraham had deliberately withheld from her in advance, out of fear that she might succeed in blocking his efforts to follow God’s wishes! A first example of karma in the Torah!

But also, fittingly, a re-affirmation of Sarah’s strength and standing as an actor ON HER OWN. If Abraham had no reason to fear her intervention, no expectation that her desires might trump his own, then he would have had no reason, stemming from Sarah, to leave so early and avoid telling her until afterwards! No reason save the reason many of us in the same circumstance would still have done as he did – to spare the woman he loved from any unnecessary worry and fear for her son’s welfare, unless or until it became necessary to tell her that God really DID want Isaac as a sacrifice!

In other words, either Sarah’s character was clearly formidable in her own right, or else she was the reflection of Abraham’s true faith that God would, as occurred, relent at the last minute to spare Isaac. Either way, her legacy, and theirs as a couple, is profound indeed!

But let us change our focus for a second – and look to ourselves. What is our legacy to be? What are we leaving behind – individually and collectively – as more than mere evidence that we once existed here? What imprint are we making that will outlive us, and keep our memories and values alive? And what are the values that we want to leave behind for others?
We talked of this at the High Holy Days, as we identified the desire to establish a meaningful legacy as one of the ways of answering our need for survival. We talked of this when we dedicated our new Memorial Boards. We talked of it at the recent tragic death of Ben Toulotte.

For myself, between planning for David’s Bar Mitzvah, and the influx of responses to our invitations; and dealing with my own aging and mortality as I rehab my knee; and in the aftermath of last weekend’s remarkable celebration of OUR first 10 years together, this has also been a focus of late. In celebrating our 10 years together, in looking back and being able to see what we have accomplished, it is easy to see such an imprint that we are leaving for those who will follow us.

None of that happened as easily as the benefit of hindsight makes it appear. But, at the same time, none of it happened from waking up one morning and declaring “Let’s create some legacy!” and then bulldozing forward to make it happen! Most of the speakers last Saturday night were way too kind in crediting my role in much of what was discussed. For, in truth, much of what we have accomplished over these last 10 years has been a byproduct of being in the right place at the right time to make a suggestion, to know who to call for answers, advice, and help. The real effort here was in establishing and maintaining the contacts, of getting and staying involved in the life of the community, and being open to the possibilities and willing to risk failure when they presented themselves! I see THAT as my living legacy, even more than the outcomes it helped and still helps to create!

In preparing for my son’s celebration with our community and our family, it is easy to be proud of all that he has accomplished and to see him – and his sister – as a legacy of which I can be proud. For all of us blessed to have children, clearly, they are a large part of our legacy. This truth, is, in part, why Ben Toulotte’s passing felt even more tragic – how do you comfort a grieving grandparent? A piece of what we all felt would be his legacy was now gone…

But, as any parent will tell you, our children do NOT always reflect what we would necessarily like our legacy to be! How we raise them to be the good people we hope they will be, to live by the values that we would emphasize as our legacy, these are critical components in our success in creating children who ARE more than just our physical legacy.

And in dealing appropriately with our own aging, human frailties, and weaknesses – here too we have a chance to create a lasting legacy. By showing those who will follow how we deal with our frustrations, our shortcomings, our slowing down – hopefully with wisdom and grace – we give ourselves one more opportunity to be role models, one more chance to leave behind something of value and worth to others.

This is the message with which Mitch Albom first touched our hearts in “Tuesday’s with Morrie.” This can and should be a guiding principle for each of us as we age gracefully, and seek to continue to develop programs dealing with the changed demographics of the Jewish community in general, and the uniqueness that is our own Solel family as we move towards our 50th birthday together, and more of our members reach life milestones that our grandparents could only marvel at achieving.

Who better to create our communal legacy than those who are living their lives at these various moments within them? Who better to teach us about the joys and challenges of older age than those who are enjoying it, and those who are troubled by its downside? Who better to create programming and resources for active Jewish grandparenting and great-grandparenting, empty-nesting, or the true meaning of retirement than those who are living that reality that others of us will, God-willing, soon get to enjoy and be challenged by!

THIS is how, individually and collectively, we can learn the lessons of Chayei Sarah, how we can keep alive the legacy of her powerful life, every bit as much as her more recognized husband’s legacy, in our own lives as Jews. And if there is no place in our legacy for embrace of Abraham AND Sarah, then I have to wonder how we recognize ourselves as Jews! Just sayin’! KYR

The Value of Belonging

2010-10-12T13:58:00.001-07:00

The Value of Belonging – Sermon for Parshat No’ach – Oct. 9, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

Noah. We all know the story. Big boat. Big flood. Two by two. 40 days and 40 nights. The dove and the olive branch. The rainbow. Bill Cosby. Rise and Shine. The Clancy Brothers and the Last Unicorn.

It is probably safe to say that this is among the best known stories in the Torah. And yet, there is always more to find in it, more to learn. In the immortal words of the beloved Rabbi ben Bag Bag – Turn it, and turn it again, for everything is in it. The more we look at the text, the more we experience in our lives, the more wisdom we can gain from the story.

Over the years, I have talked about and heard about wonderful sermons about Mrs. Noah. I have spoken and heard of the innocence of the sea creatures, based on the method of destruction of the rest of the world. I have heard scientific treatises on how much rain and water it would have taken to completely flood the entire earth. I have heard speculation about how much food would have been needed for their survival on the waters, even about what they did with all the animal poop created, and how the predatory animals were kept away from the smaller animals that could have served as dinner for them.

In fact, in our 7th grade class this last Sunday, we did the math about how long Noah and his family and the animals were on the Ark. It rained for 40 days. The waters rose for another 150. Then it took 40 more days for things to begin to calm down and for the waters to begin to recede. Then there were 4 more 7 day intervals – first between flights of the birds from the Ark, then from the last such trip until landfall.

That is a total of 258 days. One day short of 37 weeks. Roughly 8 ½ months. In the modern world, with all of our science and technology, even though we know that human gestation is a 40 week process, it usually takes about 3 weeks for anyone to even become aware that they might be pregnant. The time lapse from that awareness to delivery matches the amount of time the Ark was on the water! Hmmmm!

And this is quite likely no accident, no coincidence. After all, given that Noah, his wife, their three sons and their wives were the only human survivors of the Flood, that the animals on board were the sole survivors of their species, with the exception of that which lives in the water, and possibly some of the birds, that could land on the Ark for rest before taking off again, even it they weren’t passengers, the entire human race and most of the animal kingdom trace their ancestry back to those who were on the Ark. Therefore, if the story of the Flood is not, as some suggest, merely another Creation story, then it certainly IS a story of rebirth.

And a rebirth that, like the original Creation story, began from and in the water that covered the earth. A motif consistent across virtually EVERY Ancient Near Eastern people, of life emerging from the water. A rebirth following a gestation period eerily similar to the length of the human cycle. A rebirth still symbolically recreated in the rituals connected to the miqvah – the ritual bath from which Jewish converts emerge reborn as Jews.

I had never tied all of those pieces together in this way until this past week, but when I did, it was a powerful awareness that emerged. But then, as often is the case, events conspired to create an even greater awareness. So let me ask this additional question about our story – how many of us have ever thought about the Flood from the perspective of the animals on the Ark? With the exception of speculation about unicorns, how many of us have ever considered the Flood from the perspective of the animals that did NOT get on the boat?

Let us refer to those who got the memo, who recognized the value of being at the right place at the right time, who stayed involved in the human story through and after the Flood as “members.” And then, let us look at those, who, by definition, would NOT be “members.” The ones who were left behind and drowned. Could there be a more dramatic and obvious example of the values of membership?!

Yet, in truth, it often takes examples almost this stark to help us remember that value of membership. This week, the Bowie and local Jewish communities suffered a tragic loss. The 22 year old son of a three-generation Bowie family died in Florida. He happens to be the first Bar Mitzvah I had the privilege to celebrate with here 10 years ago. His family are no longer members here.
That last piece of information is significant – to me, if to no one else. It creates for me a severe cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, as a Rabbi, as a Jew, I feel acutely My responsibility to this family and this young man – to help them deal with this incredible tragedy, to try to find a way to make his life, and perhaps his death, mean something significant and valuable to his family and others, that he might live on through that legacy.

However, on the other hand, my hands are tied in some significant ways, because the connection and relationship with his family is not as strong and as whole as it could and would have been if they were still participating members of our congregation. In addition, I do, even in moments like this, still have obligations to those who ARE members of this congregational family, who do support our institution and my presence here, by your generosity and continuing involvement. Those obligations require me to limit my availability to those who do not choose to support Temple Solel as continuing members, even in cases like this.

I have reached out to the family. I will officiate at the funeral, on Sunday afternoon, even though doing so requires me to clip a couple of minor corners in commitments to our congregation. And if there are those who have a problem with any of those decisions, I will respect their right to disagree with what I choose to do for myself as a Jew.

However, when the family asked, for reasons of logistics, if they could hold the service in our sanctuary, I felt the need to tell them that this would not happen, no matter how much I understood the logic and value of their request. And, to their credit, they understood and graciously accepted my response. In addition, I did not feel comfortable sending out an e-mail to the congregation to acknowledge this death. I did, however, reach out to several individual members of our congregation who I knew had connections to the family, to make sure they knew and to see how they are fairing.

And I did not make my Rabbinical services available to them to organize and lead shiva services. I DID make sure that the funeral home with whom they are working was aware of this fact, so THEY could provide prayerbooks for the family to use. If I attend the shiva house, it will be as an individual Jew. But we also will read Ben’s name tonight and for the next several weeks, in memory.
These were not, are not, easy decisions for me to make. I do not like having to triage myself, do not like to make the calculations needed in a case like this. I would much prefer to simply help the family and our community in every way I can.

The problem is that, in this case, as happens far too often in modern Jewish life, I am forced to balance between the competing pulls of obligation to individual Jews and obligations to My congregation, usually caused when the individual Jews have made the free choice NOT to maintain membership in the congregation. In the complex world in which we live today, some of the reasons for discontinuing a membership actually are understandable. Many have a logic, but not necessarily one that works for those of us who do not make it.

I share this with you tonight in part because I can connect this message to our Torah text for this Shabbat. I share it to increase understanding of the challenges we face every day in the modern Jewish world.

But most of all, I share it in the hope that a piece of Ben’s legacy might be that through this better awareness, through the stark example of how his family’s current non-membership status has and will impact my ability to respond and help them mourn his tragic passing, he, and they, might serve as a lesson to someone in our congregation, perhaps even someone in this room tonight. Perhaps, through knowing in greater detail than usually shared exactly what decisions I, and we, have made, and why, we might cause someone who might now or in the future be on the fence about continuing their membership to think twice, and maintain their connection to our congregational family.

Because the truth is that the greatest value of being part of the congregational family is NOT in attending High Holy Day services; not in being able to send our children to religious school; not even in other opportunities which, honestly, are usually open to anyone. No, the real value of membership is MEMBERSHIP – of being part of a larger communal family that adds meaning to our lives and our experience, that allows us to better have our needs met, that allows others not to have to calculate how much of their authentic response to us in good times and bad they can afford to give to us when we need it most.

Imagine what it would have been like to be the THIRD shafan, the offspring of the 2 chosen to ride the Ark, waking up in the morning as the water rose above your nose as you slept on the forest floor, looking up to see the doors of the Ark closed, the ramp gone, your parents looking down at you with concern in their eyes, helpless to do anything to save you from what was about to occur. Imagine, and then make a promise to yourself never to act in a way that puts you in that same position. Because, in talking with Ben’s family, one of the things his death is already teaching them is the importance of staying connected with those who matter. And I would love to save all of us from needing the death of a 22 year old relative to teach us that important truth. KYR

Beginning Again -- But What Exactly are We Beginning?

2010-10-12T13:57:00.001-07:00

Beginning Again – But What Exactly are We Beginning
Sermon for Parshat B’reishit – Friday October 1, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman, Temple Solel, Bowie, MD

I am going to tread VERY lightly this evening into a very deep subject. And I am at the same time going to be as unsubtle as I know how to be. A contradiction? Better – a mystery! I begin by acknowledging our Bat Mitzvah and her family – Morgan. This, in itself, is NOT unusual – it WOULD be unusual if I did NOT find a way to acknowledge her. She deserves our acknowledgment – as does her family – this is a significant milestone she and they are celebrating AS PART OF OUR COMMUNITY AND WITH US, as she becomes our newest Jewish adult member.

Someone many years ago made a comment to me on such an occasion. They said something to the effect of “I love that you make the bat mitzvah and her family feel so important and special on their special day. And how next week, you will make THAT bar mitzvah and HIS family feel so special and important.”!! Although I am honestly still not sure whether this person’s ultimate motive in making the comment (and let me add, for the record, that this conversation did not first occur here!) was benign or malignant, what I chose to hear in their words was an appreciation of the tap dance that I, and all others who celebrate personal milestones in public functions as part of a community’s expected ritual, face. On the one hand, each celebrant is entitled to feel special and appreciated in their turn; on the other, having to publicly express that appreciation over and over risks becoming clichéd and losing its impact!

There is another more hidden trap – one made explicit by Jewish teachings on loshen hara – literally, “evil speech.” Most of the aspects of loshen hara are obvious and beyond debate. Such is the power of words to do damage, often unintentionally. Our sages went so far, however, as to teach us to be careful in giving compliments, even when deserved. They understood, as I do after 20 years of doing this, that someone might take an unintended inference in your words of praise of someone else that their own efforts were not worthy of such praise, and therefore, less appreciated.

A long introductory JTM – Jewish teachable moment – to get to this statement – every time there is a Bar or Bat Mitzvah to celebrate with, I make a joking point to invite those who are disappointed in not hearing us read Torah tonight to join us tomorrow when the kids read. And I did so again tonight, in exactly the same way I always do!
And tonight, also as I always do, I am going out of my way NOT to step on Morgan’s message that she will deliver tomorrow in any way. But then, I am going to add the following statement of why I am being particularly careful tonight: I have heard and read Morgan’s D’var Torah for tomorrow. And while I take pride in being the Rabbi of Lake Wobegon, where all our children are above average, if you can get here for tomorrow morning to hear THIS message, you owe it to yourself to do so – her message is that good! Anyone who feels slighted by this extra appreciation of THIS message very well derived and presented – please just let it pass, and give yourself the chance to understand where my admiration comes from by being here to hear it for yourself, tomorrow!

Fortunately, our portion for this Shabbat is B’reishit – truly an embarrassment of riches. Even with Morgan addressing several hot button points in the portion, I still have a huge number of choices for my remarks this evening! We could talk about Cain and Abel, and the incredible intensity of sibling emotions and rivalry – for good, or for evil, and how it impacts us as an extended congregational family! We could talk about Adam and Eve and the serpent, in any one of a half dozen different ways – including a rather brilliant hypothesis expressed by our own Steve Cohen, who postulates that God KNEW that Adam and Eve would fail the test and eat from the tree of knowledge, and that, in fact, this was not only a desired outcome, but a necessary one! We can learn from the 2 versions of the creation of man and woman about gender roles and equality. Or more.

But tonight I want to talk tonight about a single word – the first word – B’reishit. A word we think we understand, but probably don’t. We think we get it, because, for years, we were taught that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” B’reishit – we know the bet at the beginning means “in,” the members of the advanced class recognize the root reish, aleph, shin, as in Rosh, as in Rosh Hashanah. So, presto, we accept “in the beginning.” Except….

There turns out to be only two problems with that translation for b’reishit – one is grammatical and linguistic; the other is philosophical and contextual. Or, restated more accurately, “in the beginning” is a nice translation. Nice, but relatively useless if our goal is true understanding of how we began!

Let me try to explain. Philosophically, )and Morgan will actually deal with this aspect tomorrow morning,) “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth,” means to most of us that first, when God began to make the universe, God began by creating the heaven and the earth. Even God had to start somewhere!
Which leads to the obvious question, which was first so eloquently put to me by a 5 year-old about 20 years ago “If God created everything, Who (or What) created God?” The philosophers have dodged this question for years by defining God as being beyond the realm of time – nice, but again, not terribly helpful, especially in answering that 5 year old! The scientists, and pseudo-scientists, have long posited that this indicates the arrival to our portion of the cosmos (from somewhere else) a super-being, capable of manipulating matter in ways we still cannot explain, to “create” new objects and life forms.

In other words, this statement, rendered as we have it, forces us either immediately into the “leap of faith” – that is accepting as true that for which we have no clear proof, or else searching for equally improbable and unprovable “scientific” explanations – all because of putting a temporal causality on Creation by understanding that “In the beginning,” God already existed, and fashioned objects called “heaven” and “earth” first. Again, nice, but not helpful, and therefore, to be avoided if possible.

Add to the philosophical issue the contextual one – understood in this way, the first verse is not true, unless we understand the concepts of “heaven” and “earth” only in the most rudimentary and generic of ways. Because, in truth, it is on the SECOND “day” (and don’t get me started about what the word “day” really means here!) that God, by creating the expanse that separated the waters above from the waters below, created “heaven” – in fact the name “shamayim” – heaven -- is given on the second day to the waters above the divider! Likewise, it is only on the third day, when the waters below are gathered together to form seas and oceans, that the dry land masses appear as a result – and these are called “eretz” – earth. In other words, that which is “created” at the outset according to verse one is not defined by further creative action or by the definition of the terms used in verse one until days 2 and 3!

Still with me? Good! Because now we can turn to the word itself. The form of the noun reishit (having removed the bet prefix) is difficult. The noun in this form doesn’t exist alone – it is ONLY found in combinational forms with other nouns to give more specific understanding (the concept sounds confusing, but think of “school bus” – a specific kind of bus -- or the anachronistic “phone booth” – a specific kind of booth). It most accurately should be understood as “the beginning of” something, with the necessity of that specific something being clearly stated in the text. In this verse, that expected second noun that would provide clarity is absent!
So wait, Rabbi, are you telling us that Torah begins with a typo!!?? Well, not exactly. I AM saying that the Torah begins with an unexpectedly deficient grammatical form, that greatly complicates our complete and confident understanding of how the word should be translated into our native English. Or, put in a different way, the beginning of the Torah text, like the origins of Creation itself, or even God’s origins, is shrouded in mystery that we mortals are not fully able to unravel! And, when restated that way, suddenly, all of my problems with the word b’reishit disappear!

Except for two practical ones – first, how do we express all of this in a simple and clear translation? In truth, we don’t – if our goal is to express all the depth and nuance the Hebrew contains with how we say it in English, we actually face the harder challenge of translating it into English in a way that equally expresses in the mystery! In short, our best translation should be philosophically artistic rather than linguistically accurate, since the likelihood of doing both at the same time is small!

Part of the challenge is whether we are hearing or reading the translation? When I speak the words to be heard, I am likely to lean on linguistic accuracy, because the artistry of the mystery will not fully be captured in the delivery of the words. But, in writing a translation for others to read, I can utilize ellipsis in unexpected ways to capture the sense that something deeper is missing, but intended to be sensed!

And so, I give you this effort:

“At the outset … of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth (and all that is in them),”! In written form, both the (seemingly unnecessary) ellipsis and the use of parentheses hint at the larger mystery contained in the Hebrew and the philosophical challenges that mystery creates. In oral form, we still hear that there is more to this verse than a complete understanding, even if only in its connection, by comma, to the next verse, rather than being ended definitively by a period. We acknowledge the introductory nature of the verse, by adding to the words, parenthetically, details that come later. In short, we start, but do not finish; we do not separate the verse to stand alone, but force it to lead us into all that follows – by making it one flow of dependent clauses – the heaven and the earth are dependent on God’s creation, which is, in turn, dependent on whatever that mysterious beginning really was!

And then, there is the second practical question -- what exactly are we starting with this word? In some very profound and obvious ways, the answer is everything. And yet, at the same time, particularly in our tradition of reading the entire Torah text annually from beginning to end, each year, as we emerge from the High Holy Days completely after Simchat Torah, as we do this Shabbat, we start AGAIN by starting FROM THE BEGINNING. By our usage, God’s initial creation, ex nihilo – from nothing (which distinguishes God from us!) – is, in practice, a RECREATION, observed to start each new year, and each new cycle of gaining wisdom from the Torah!

This may be the most power lesson of all for us! As we truly start our new Jewish year, as we celebrate the apparent victory of having been inscribed for another year of life, we seek to act on those “New Year’s resolutions” that our atonement seeking made us aware were needed in our lives. We do NOT seek to recreate ourselves from scratch – that would be virtually impossible. We DO, however, seek to recreate ourselves in a new and improved version 5771.0, gaining from the mysteries that came before of why we were not the best we could be, in order to build a stronger and better self, family, congregation, community, nation, and world. We begin with a clean slate, on the one hand, the past wiped out as if we WERE starting from scratch. But we begin still as who we are, still very much the same flawed humans whose survival was an open question just 2 weeks ago, and not yet as who we hope to be – as we recreate ourselves more in God’s “image” of perfection as the year goes on and we grow! Even in our beginnings of our new Jewish year, we find that aura of the unknown and unknowable at this moment – that which we hope for, but which has not yet come to be!

All from one single challenging word! Imagine what Morgan will do tomorrow with the entire rest of the text!! Or better still – don’t imagine! Find out! KYR!

Divrei HaRav -- Words from Weisman -- October 2010

2010-10-12T13:55:00.000-07:00

Divrei HaRav -- Words From Weisman

With the arrival of October, we can put the High Holy Days in our rear view mirror, and get onto the business of the rest of our Jewish year! There are an incredible number of people and groups of people to whom we owe thanks for our ability as a congregational family to have started our Religious school and New Year 5771 so strongly, and we will do so, under separate title, at the end of my column!

It turns out that we were not the only congregation that spent a good amount of time during these High Holy Days talking about the core Jewish values that organize and make sense of our lives as individuals and as a community. As I shared in my remarks on Yom Kippur, many other colleagues and congregations went down similar paths at this season of introspection, atonement seeking and forgiveness, and pledging to improve ourselves in the coming year. Clearly, a greater awareness of, and recommitment to, our core Jewish values has a tremendous value in such efforts!

I asked on Rosh Hashanah that we all take a copy of our congregational Mission and Vision statement, and refamiliarize ourselves with it – both to better try to live up to its expectations, and to be able to use it as a starting point for our congregational discussions on what it is that we stand on and for. My remarks on Yom Kippur took us through some earlier efforts to do the same for the Jewish community, and to focus us on an expanded model of what I believe we already stand for as a congregational family.

The texts, diagrams and details of those remarks are available on our congregational website (www.templesolelmd.org – along with that Mission and Vision Statement that many of you did not pick up off the table at services!) – a great resource not just for the calendar of upcoming events, and the online copy of Temple Topics, but for Jewish related current events, links to Jewish programs in our area, and so much more. They are, or soon will be, available as well on the Temple Solel Facebook Page, and on my personal blog (www.wordsfromaweisman.blogsite.com), which also links to news on Israel and a variety of Jewish subjects, along with a couple of other lighter blogs, dealing with local traffic matters, music, and sports, written by some very colorful “friends” of mine!). These on-line sites, along with our weekly congregational e-mail, give us unprecedented ability not only to send out information, but to share thoughts and ideas with each other in nearly instant time.

This communication and sharing of ideas in multiple directions is an essential element of turning the more finely tuned values statement about our congregation into reality in our lives. As a member commented to me in response to one of my sermons on the holidays, “Vision without action is wishing.” Merely sharpening the focus of the Jewish values in our mission statement cannot be the end of the exercise – it is merely the roadmap by which our actions in the coming year will bear the most success. And it is by those actions, and their success, that we will judge ourselves and be judged by others.

The same is true for these High Holy Days now ended. It is all too easy to get so overwhelmed by their fast pace and rapid succession, that it burns us out for days or weeks following, or even for longer. However, for this season of Atonement, and start of 5771 to truly bear fruit, we must work to make it the beginning of our efforts for the entire year, not its climactic moment before the year even gets going!

And so, I repeat my invitation to all of us – let us make 5771 the year we rededicate our congregational life and our own lives, to living by the core Jewish values with which we, and the generations before us were raised. Let us make 5771 the year we ACT on those values to improve life for ourselves, our families, our friends and neighbors, indeed, for our entire congregational family, our larger community, and our world!

Yom Kippur Sermon 5771 -- Tying it All Together

2010-10-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: In my original master plan, this sermon was to be accompanied by a Power Point presentation that has, alas, still not been created. When it is, it will be made available through the Temple Solel website (www.TempleSolelMD.org).

One Brief Shining Star – Putting our Values Where Our Mission Is
Sermon for Yom Kippur Morning – September 18, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman, --Temple Solel, Bowie MD

There is a very moving reading – one of many – in Mishkan T’filah, our new Shabbat and holiday prayer book. We read it to prepare ourselves to recite the Mourners’ Kaddish toward the end of the service. It was originally written in Hebrew by the remarkable Jewish poet and heroine, Hannah Senesh, and translated into English sometime later:

There are stars up above, so far away we only see their light
Long, long after the star itself is gone.
And so it is with people that we have loved –
Their memories keep shining ever brightly
Though their time with us is done.
But the stars that light up the darkest night,
These are the lights that guide us.
As we live our days, these are the ways we remember.

When I read those words, whether to myself, or in facilitating our Shabbat worship, there are two visual images that come to mind. The first, befitting the artistry of her words, is Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” a universally recognized masterpiece. The second isn’t nearly as well known, in fact, it may not even still exist, although I hope it is enshrined in a scrapbook somewhere.

It was the drawing of one of the young students of our religious school at my first congregation, in Fredericksburg. The exercise was to draw a picture of one of the days of Creation from Genesis. This youngster chose to draw the first day, and drew a line down the middle of his page. I do not remember what he drew for the “day” side of the page, but I will never forget the “night” side. Not because it was anything spectacular – just a typical childhood drawing.

With one noticeable wrinkle – when this child drew the stars in the night sky, all his stars had SIX points, instead of the formulaic 5! I was so moved by that artistic decision, I asked why he had made this choice. I was prepared for the perfectly plausible “I only know how to make 6 pointed stars” response – after all, we had given him far more practice in that in his Jewish education to date!

What I got instead was the following, “Of course the stars have 6 points. Our God made the stars and placed them in the sky. We are Jewish, and so are the stars!” How could I argue with such profound Jewish teaching? And, even more, having originally seen his artistic choice as being outside the box, his response struck me as being even more INSIDE the box of Jewish thought than my own thinking!

As we have noted throughout these High Holy Days, this young boy was far from the first Jew to note deep philosophical significance in our “star of David.” Long before it became a Jewish symbol, the 6-pointed star was a good luck talisman in the ancient world. In fact, according to Jewish legend, it was because of its good-luck omen status that the warrior boy King David chose this symbol and placed it on his shield, hoping it would give him luck as he went into battle!

Perhaps that sense of being a good luck charm comes from the unique formation of this star, which is made up of two overlapping triangles. We know that throughout history, 3 has also been considered a “good number,” and numerous are the examples of significant items coming in threes as a result. Here again, however, the perception is grounded in solid math – in this case literally. A triangle, with its three sides, is the simplest shape that provides sufficient stability to serve as a foundation upon which a building can be built safely! There can be no better sign of good fortune than seeing one’s construction remain standing and stable over time, even as others less solidly built collapse all around it!

It was this awareness that the Jewish star is made up of two of these stable foundational triangles that moved Franz Rosenzweig, the noted German – Jewish philosopher, to expound a philosophical foundation for his Judaism based in these two overlapping triangles. That he developed his “Star of Redemption” while serving in the German Army in a trench in Macedonia during World War I, writing snippets on pieces of envelopes from incoming mail whenever he could find them and the opportunity, makes his vision and clarity even more remarkable.

Separating the two triangles, Rosenzweig identified one triangle as foundational for the basic identifying principles of Judaism, which he identified as God, Torah, and the people of Israel. He labeled the other triangle with the three primary relationships we have with God – as Creator of the universe, Revealer of the Law at Sinai, and Redeemer of our ancestors, most notably at the Sea. Then he realigned the two triangles into a Jewish star, taking care to align the two triangles in a manner that added understanding and significance to his model.

It was Rosenzweig’s Star that kept coming to mind as I tried to figure out how to bring home the value-based learning model from my time at 6 Points Sports Academy this summer. Far be it for me to even think I could come close to filling his shoes, but his model intrigued me. I realized what I was trying to do was to take Jewish values and make them more obvious and visible in what we do as a congregational family, so we might transfer that increased awareness into the decisions we make outside the Temple, as individuals and families.

I realized that what I was trying to do, like the 6 Points program itself, like Rosenzweig, was to work in 2 foundational triangles at the same time. Like Rosenzweig’s model, one triangle must clearly be Jewish, and so what better way than to maintain the God/Torah/Israel basis of that triangle? But how to define the other triangle, to bring the values that we are already built upon as a Reform Jewish congregational family, that we wish to emphasize in all we do, to the forefront of our vision and understanding.

That was when I remembered the article I spoke of last night, which tried to neaten up the linguistic sloppiness that has many of us today confusing needs with wants. As we discussed last night, the true needs of human experience can be conveniently summarized in three elements. We NEED to survive – to make sure that we are here tomorrow, and if not here physically, that some legacy of our time lives on beyond us. We NEED to find acceptance – some response from others that we are valued for who we are and what we do. We NEED to feel affection – a genuine connection with others like ourselves, based on mutual respect, even love.

My first thought was that this set of three needs would serve neatly as the corners of the second triangle, and, when recombined with the first, bringing uniquely Jewish elements together with universal human needs in the Jewish star, it might provide a model that would be useful. But what was still missing was the value basis that I was seeking to establish and identify in our foundation.

So I went back and looked at those 6 corners, and adjusted slightly. Instead of God, let’s talk about yirat shamayim – the awe and fear of God in heaven. A value. Talmud Torah – the teaching and learning of Torah. A value. Ahavat Yisrael – the love of Israel. A value. At last, I thought, we may be onto something here!

But then I looked at that last one – the love of Israel. I anticipated the next question – are we talking about the people of Israel? The state of Israel? Or the land of Israel? And even though Rosenzweig had focused mostly on peoplehood (since the modern state had not yet become reality!), it struck me that we had the ability to stress all three at once at this corner! Of course we should be based upon a love of the land of Israel – the idea at the end of the Passover seder of “Next year in Jerusalem” had been an idealized dream for almost 1900 years of our ancestors living exclusively in diaspora, one that kept them together as Jews. We already do, and must, support the current Jewish state of Israel. And if we do not stress the value that all Jews are dependent upon one another (another value that we DO already embrace clearly), then we end up alone on an island, disconnected from our brothers and sisters. Indeed, Ahavat Yisrael automatically leads us to all three of these significant Jewish values!

This led me to look at the other two corners of this foundation triangle. Talmud Torah – our teaching and learning of Jewish texts – what is its ultimate value? It is how we connect dor l’dor – from generation to generation – an expression of the importance we place on history and tradition. It is our respect for din tzedeq – law based upon a just foundation – that leads us to live justly in our own lives. It is the importance of Torah lishmah – the value we place on learning for its own sake.

And what about the respect and fear of God (at least metaphorically) in heaven? Even if God is more of a concept or theoretical construct for us, even if God is something we have questions about or difficulty believing, we are still here on this Yom Kippur morning – appearing before God, asking for inscription in the book of life for another year. And therefore, God is, at the very least, an ideal to which we aspire in our efforts to improve ourselves. The theologians call that concept transcendence – our desire and effort to transcend the limits of our own world and grow towards God, towards higher goals in our life than we would set on our own. It is a value symbolized in the story and image of Jacob’s ladder.

For those of us who are less challenged by embracing the concept and value that God plays a role in our lives, that too is a value under the banner of yirat shamayim. Being open to God’s presence in our lives as individuals and collectively – both in the potential for God’s presence with us as a motivator of our own best action and growth, and in our willingness to see God in our lives when the evidence becomes obvious (and even when it is not!) – these allow us to add meaning and order to our lives in both good and challenging times, a most useful value.

And, for those who are REALLY comfortable finding God in our lives, respect for God also manifests itself in our ability to see that same spark of God’s divinity that we look within ourselves and find, that we believe has been passed down to us from the breath of life God blew into the original man and the original woman during creation, burning also inside our neighbors, friends and family, even strangers all around us. The value in this recognition is that it brings order to the world as it does to us as individuals. It allows us to see others as we see ourselves and wish to be seen by others – in the best possible light. It allows us to view those others not as others, but as fellow travelers, as partners in doing God’s work.

We have succeeded in translating the “Jewish” triangle of our new foundational Jewish star into powerful Jewish values. Indeed, in the process, we have strengthened the foundation by anchoring each corner on not one, but three related values. Each corner of our Jewish foundational triangle is itself rooted at least in an equally strong triangle of powerful Jewish values!

As I turned to the more universal triangle of human needs, I suddenly realized why survival, acceptance, and affection really wouldn’t work as the corners of this triangle. As needs, they are things we seek, not foundation pieces to build on, but holes we wish to fill in our lives by seeking other building blocks to create structures to fulfill those needs. So the question then became “What generalized universal values help us to find acceptance, affection and survival in our world?” And can we ground them in Jewish tradition.

Is it any surprise to find an answer to that question which embraces three cornerstone values in response? The most obvious of these is the value of shalom – of peace in all its forms -- for all. Shalom ishi – the internal personal contentment and peace that comes, in part, from finding God in our own lives, and working towards self-fulfillment. Shlom bayit – our ability to transcend our own personal needs, and work with others to bring peace in all its forms into our homes and all the physical spaces we share with others in our lives, allowing us to feel a wholeness that comes from connection to those others. And, eventually, through these, shalom gadol – the great peace that we all pray for and seek to bring about in the universe – the absence of war and strife, but also of suffering and privation.

The second cornerstone value of this triangle would be humility, a value taught throughout Jewish texts and tradition. Psalm 8 teaches, as accurately translated into a folk song from my youth: “Lower than angels am I.” Jewish teaching reminds us that we are little more than dust and ashes, and regardless of what we achieve in our lives, we return at the end of our lives to dust and ashes. This humility is essential for us if we are to seek honor for others, and not just ourselves – a sign of our ability to give as well as receive both affection and acceptance, to allow ourselves and others to leave behind a legacy that survives after our time on earth is done.

What are the values that support this foundational corner of humility? To answer that question, I was drawn to a remarkable teaching from Pirkei Avot, the philosophical and ethical teachings of the Talmudic masters. Chapter 4:1, ironically NOT structured on 3 teachings, but 4, asks and answers a series of questions: Eizeh hu chacham? Who is wise? The one who learns from all his fellow beings. Who is powerful? The one who controls their animal urges (the same ones the Rabbis chalked up to the yeitzer hara – the so-called “evil inclination” that we talked about last night). Who is happy? The one who is content with what he or she has? And who is honored? The one who honors everyone.

It seems clear that the core values that lead to our humility, and are rooted in this Jewish text, are first, the self-control we need in order to limit ourselves, and allow others to have their own space and share of God’s bounty (in other words -- it is NOT the one with the most toys when they die who wins!); second, the modesty to recognize that we are not “all that,” and that there is much to admire in and learn from others; and third, the ability to be satisfied without being satiated, to allow enough to truly be enough for us, so that others may have enough as well.

And the third foundational corner, I believe, is empathy – the ability to view others as having value and equal (or more) integrity. It is empathy that allows us to build communities through our relationships, to work with others, finding commonality with them while also respecting what makes them different.

The supporting values here start with the words we will read from Torah this afternoon – v’ahavta l’rei’acha k’mokhah – to love and respect your neighbor as yourself. Without that respect for others, we can hardly find acceptance for them, we have little chance of finding affection for them, and therefore we have equally little chance of receiving either from them.

They continue with the realization that the refrain of our tradition is correct, and can be expanded beyond the specific into the universal as well, as we shall see. Indeed kol Yisraeil aravim zeh bazeh – all Israel is dependent one upon the other. Given the imperative in Leviticus for us to be “a nation of priests and a holy nation,” and of Isaiah, who implored us to be “a light unto the nations,” it seems clear that our holiness as a people stems from our ability to depend upon and be depended on by others, and that this specific teaching transcends our peoplehood. Our interconnection with others, our willingness to accept that indeed “no man is an island,” is the value underlying all of this that makes it all possible.

And finally, we come to the value of compassion. This is a remarkable word. Com – “with.” It is impossible to have compassion without interconnection, without that respect for others that allows us to care about them. Without this connectedness, compassion becomes merely passion, a fire that burns within us all. And with no one with whom to share, it, our passion will eventually simply burn out, or consume us in its flames.

It is compassion that allows us to feel for and with others, to understand their feelings, that allows us to turn the natural sympathy we might feel for others in good times and bad, which is an inequality, into that empathy, which is our foundational cornerstone, that is a far more balanced relationship, one which allows us to come together to work together for common goals and betterment. It is compassion that fuels our working together toward common goals.

Since my original goal was to bring Jewish values more obviously and deeply into our congregational life and individual thoughts and actions, I will save for another day the exact realignment of these two triangles that make up the Jewish star of our values foundation, the one that allows us to draw even more awareness and learning from the model as Rosenzweig’s star provided.

This morning, we have raised and discussed 18 basic Jewish values that add to our Jewish lives – that number seems appropriate. We have organized them around 6 foundational corners of two triangles that make up a Jewish star – one triangle reaffirming who we are uniquely as Jews, the other made up of more universal values drawn from Jewish teachings, designed to allow us to find ways to fulfill our own human needs while helping others to fulfill theirs as well.

As we gather together as a congregational family, seeking to plead with God for our lives for another year, providing support for our friends and neighbors as they do the same, this model is a powerful foundation upon which to build our lives as we hope to move through the upcoming year. Used well, it can guide these last steps of our atonement seeking from last year as well, and help us to live in the coming year so that our next Yom Kippur might be the year in which we can hope not to need to invoke the insurance we took out last night in reciting Kol Nidrei.

And therefore, with full humility, I offer this model as a second starting point for the discussion of who we already are in many cases, and seek to become as individuals and a congregation, as we evaluate all we do in our lives in this upcoming year. As we take our congregational Mission and Vision statement to heart in our actions individually and collectively in the new year, may this values-based model also help us to understand ourselves and each other better; help us to grow towards each other and work together to better our lives and our world; help us to better identify and fulfill our own needs and those of others; help us to truly become God’s partners and shepherds here on earth.

If our path takes us only one step forward down this path in the coming year, one step closer to each other, one step closer to living up to the ideal selves we envision we could be, what a powerfully successful year it will be for all of us. KYR

Kol Nidrei Sermon 5771

2010-10-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

The Times They are a-Changin’ -- A Question of Wanting and Needing
Reflections for Kol Nidrei Night 5771
Rabbi Stephen J. Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

Tonight, we recited, we sang, we read, and we heard the words of perhaps the most powerful and significant prayer in all of Jewish liturgy – and also the most underappreciated and misunderstood. Kol Nidrei. A prayer so powerful that we often simply refer to Erev Yom Kippur, the start of our holiest day of the year, as Kol Nidrei. A prayer so important that, in most congregations, NO ONE is allowed to enter or exit the sanctuary from the start of services until its completion. A prayer so significant that even we Reform Jews, who have taken the editor’s knife to most portions of the liturgy that are seen to be in any way redundant or repetitive, repeat it more than once, usually, in some form, the traditional three times.

Kol Nidre is NOT our petition that God forgive us for the sins of omission and the transgressions of the last year! Rather, it is an insurance policy that we hope to take out for the coming year, so that if, after our best efforts to do what is right in the year we are still beginning, we find that we have come up short (and as humans, we always WILL come up short, at least until the arrival of the Messianic Time!), we might come before God NEXT year on Yom Kippur and hope for atonement.

However, at its philosophical core, Kol Nidrei is a prayer about change. It acknowledges our need to change, to improve ourselves. It acknowledges that change is difficult, sometimes darned near impossible, so that we enter the process of trying to change ourselves almost with an expectation that we will at least not succeed completely in our efforts. And it does all this even as we are just beginning our efforts towards that change. Remarkable.

Two years ago, the voters of this country turned out in numbers that had not been seen in years, to vote for a new President. Change was inevitable – the incumbent had fulfilled his maximum term, and a new President had to be chosen. With a new person in office, there would be no avoiding change. Change was the theme of that entire election season – in the primaries, candidates vied within their parties to establish themselves as the one best able to bring change. In the general election, the candidates carried their political parties’ views on how to bring about appropriate change on top of their own. In the end, the American people voted, not in selecting the winner, but by the numbers who showed up to vote, overwhelmingly in favor of change. It is also likely true that the successes in this election cycle of the “Tea Party” movement are owed to the same sense that change is STILL needed in our national political life.

There is a marvelous reading in the liturgical tradition for S’lichot, the preparatory service of this season that marks our movement from our own personal introspection and self-inventory back into the life of the community; from the process of moving ourselves from thoughts of how we have come up short into actions of forgiveness and change. Although the prayer speaks of turning, I encourage you to hear the word “change” where I say the word turning, because, for me at least, I find them virtually synonymous in this usage:

“Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange. The birds are beginning to turn, and are heading once more toward the south. The animals are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter.

“For leaves, birds, and animals, turning comes instinctively. But for us, turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will to make us turn. It means breaking with old habits. It means admitting that we were wrong, and that is never easy. It means losing face; it means starting all over again. It means saying ‘I am sorry!’ It means recognizing that we have the ability to change…!”

We DO have the ABILITY to change. That is reassuring, as we work through this season during which we are forced to face the truth that change is necessary. Yet, that reassuring realization forces us to confront an additional burdensome question: If it is possible, if it is necessary, why doesn’t it happen more often and more easily?

At this season of self-reflection, we have often semi-joked as a congregational family that our congregation does not do change all that well. Even as we acknowledge that change is an essential element of our Yom Kippur tradition, I stand here tonight and say those words about our congregation again, but I do so within a very different context. Tonight, I stand here to say that, most of the time, I am GLAD that Temple Solel is a congregational family that does NOT change easily!

I say that because, even as I acknowledge that change is important and needed, HOW we change is almost always far more important than WHAT we change. There are two kinds of changes that occur. There are changes that are EVOLUTIONARY – those that come about as the natural result of doing what we do and being who we are, and adjusting to the new realities we face every day. Such changes tend to occur in small steps, at times almost imperceptibly at the actual time of change. We often catch up with these changes only after they have already occurred, noticing them often only when significant small steps have established a clear change in our path. At those moments of recognition, we vote, usually informally by our continuing words and actions, either to ratify what has already occurred by continuing along this new path, or to stop and question whether we have drifted too far from where we thought we were going and should be going. In the latter case, we evaluate how we have reached this point, determine whether we may have stumbled onto a better path, or else we begin to plot a course back to where we thought we already were, and now have agreed, we still wish to be. Such changes, such a process of feedback and evaluation, seem to be a very natural and healthy approach to dealing with the challenges we confront every day.

The other kind of change is REVOLUTIONARY. It is all the things that evolutionary change is not. It is usually vast in scope, earth shaking in impact. It is frequently pre-meditated, and is often a response to a failure to acknowledge the small evolutionary changes until they have taken us so far off our original course that there appears to be little or no alternative way to get back to where we feel we need to be. Even those revolutionary changes which are beneficial to humanity – and these almost always revolve around technological discoveries and breakthroughs – are still vastly different from the first kind of changes.

On a personal level, I greatly prefer the first kind, both for their natural process, and their usually limited impact at any given moment in time. Even the technological revolutions, I believe, need to be approached more slowly, more carefully, with an attempt to fully appreciate the changes these new technologies will have on society BEFORE we rush into mass production and over-hype. For example, for all the amazing advances in medicine over the last century, we are, as a civilization, lagging way behind in dealing with the ethical questions raised by these revolutionary advancements.

As a result, issues like abortion, and right-to-die laws become much more heatedly debated and publicly significant than they otherwise would or should be. Do we yet know what the physiological hazards of widespread usage of cellphones might be 10 or 20 years down the road? Or what the sociological implications of laptops and personal music players will be when our current crop of school children are grandparents? Or of the Internet and social networking's ability to spread falsehoods globally in seconds as easily as truths? Of course not – we can’t! Yet, we continue to embrace these revolutionary changes despite the very real questions of their impact on our present and our future!

Let me use a few very real examples of change both revolutionary AND evolutionary in Jewish history to make my point here. The textual origins of our ancestors’ COLLECTIVE unique covenantal relationship with God are found at Mt. Sinai, with the giving of and acceptance of the Law. However, this REVOLUTIONARY event doesn’t happen without the equally revolutionary salvation of our ancestors by God at the Sea. But it also does not successfully occur if not for the evolutionary foundations that were built upon and led to it – the pre-existing personal covenantal relationship between Abraham and God, passed down through the generations, and recognized by virtually all who heard God’s voice that morning; the first encounter of God and Moses on the mountain through the burning bush, that allowed Moses to be comfortable seeking out that same location to bring the people to God, the same event that allowed Moses to become the leader for these people who would be believed and accepted at such a critical moment.

When Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 BCE, and the leaders of the Jewish community were carted off into exile, this was a catastrophic revolutionary turn of events for our ancestors. The masses who were left behind muddled through as best they could, and as a result, were still available and connected when the leaders came back from the exile about a century later, carrying with them a document called Torat Moshe to guide their efforts to re-establish Judea as a Jewish outpost. Most Biblical scholars see that document as having been compiled DURING the exile, as a way of overcoming the impact of the revolutionary overthrow of the old country. Not necessarily written, but collected and organized. Evolved, not created, in response to a cataclysm. And the embrace of this document – familiar in content if not in structure – by the masses, was a direct result of evolutionary changes in response to revolutionary events – the fact that the material was not completely new to them, but somewhat familiar from olden days, made it that much easier for them to accept it as God's word -- authentic and binding.

Finally, in the destruction of the Second Temple, and the defeat by the Romans in 135 CE following it, when our ancestors were forced by external events to re-form their Judaism, the Rabbis showed great creativity in developing the Mishnah and resetting the calendar, adding haftarah to our canonical readings, establishing prayer as our worship form and the synagogue as our central communal “home,” and made so many more revolutionary changes in response to revolutionary events. All of their success, however, is probably traceable to the fact that prior to 70 CE and the Temple’s destruction, there had already been a couple of hundred years of evolutionary changes happening within the Jewish community, that would, eventually, have led to the Rabbinic system winning out anyway. And therefore, their legitimacy was already established in the eyes of the people, and the revolutionary aspect of the Romans actions just sped up what would have happened more slowly through a series of evolutionary changes!

Given the significance and power of those examples, is there any wonder , looking at today’s headlines, that there are many people within the Jewish community calling for and preparing for a third revolutionary shift in Judaism for our time, to confront the unique challenges of a post-Holocaust, State of Israel, technological world? And they may even turn out to be proven right by history!

In which case, I am drawn even more to go back to the core question I asked a few pages ago: If change is possible for us, if it is necessary, why doesn’t it happen more often and more easily? That question raises a secondary question, which I believe is also found in the dichotomy between evolutionary and revolutionary change – it is the question of what we WANT vs. what we NEED.

Those same Rabbis of 2000 years ago posited two competing drives within us as humans – a yeitzer Tov, which they saw as the inclination to do what is good and right; and a yeitzer hara, its opposite, usually mistranslated as “the evil impulse” or inclination. The Rabbis own definition of the yeitzer hara makes clear that “evil” is way too strong a judgment. The Rabbis gave credit to the yeitzer hara for all of the animal drives that lead us to be successful – the desire for shelter, clothing, food, a job, a spouse, and children, among others. In other words, the yeitzer hara is VERY necessary to our being – without it we would not survive! The Rabbis then went on to credit the yeitzer tov for everything that distinguishes us from the rest of creation, and wrapped it all up implicitly by teaching that it is through the yeitzer tov that we truly are both created in God’s image and worthy of being the superintendents of the building of God’s Creation, in which God is the landlord.

I start there, both because it is in this Rabbinic construct that the origins of Yom Kippur are found, AND because it brings us back to that liturgical piece about change that we read earlier. What makes us unique, in part, is that what the rest of creation does instinctually, we humans have to choose to do. The animals NEED to head south, or gather food for the winter, the leaves NEED to change (or else the system doesn’t work properly) – but we humans have to WANT to change.

But I also start with yeitzer tov and yeitzer hara in part because, I believe, we have all been taught a half truth in our public education. Remember back to junior high school social studies, and Freddy the Farmer and Harry the Hunter. It was there that we were taught the list of basic human necessities that the Rabbis gave to the yeitzer hara.

I recently read an article recommended by a friend, on the difference between human wants and human needs. It posited a similar, but shorter list of absolute human needs, and categorized everything else as a want. It was in discussing this article with this friend that I came to realize that these are one category of human needs, which I came to label collectively as “survival.” Struggling together to clarify our thinking, we identified two other basic human needs besides survival – affection, and acceptance.

So let me now apply that thought to our discussion of change – when external circumstances clearly throw one of these three basic needs – survival, affection, and acceptance -- into doubt, we usually find ourselves highly motivated to change, often willing to make revolutionary changes to respond and return to equilibrium. Otherwise, in the daily challenges of life, we make small internal adjustments as we go, often without even recognizing that we are doing so. Again, it takes a larger challenge to our needs for us to recognize the changes we have already made in this evolutionary manner.

Yet, look back to Kol Nidrei, to the liturgy, to yeitzer tov and yeitzer hara. They seem to imply that the changes we are talking about at this season are WANTED, not NEEDED – at least until we come before God on Yom Kippur to plead for another year of life! That act, on this day, turns want into need – our lives are in the balance, our very survival hangs in doubt! It takes coming into services on these High Holy Days – all of them, not some of them – to give us the motivation and momentum to view these changes that we seek to make in our lives outside of the sanctuary as necessary and not volitional, obligatory and not voluntary.

And with that awareness, we can turn back to our discussion from Rosh Hashanah evening, in which I raised the call to re-evaluate all that we do as a congregation according to a clearly stated set of Jewish values that will become part of our congregational Mission and Vision Statement. In that discussion, I embraced the tug-of-war between uniquely Jewish and more secular influences in our lives as necessary in our efforts to return our Judaism to being our “way of life,” and not just yet another competing special interest identity in our lives.

It often takes external influences that shake up our comfort, make us question our survival, our acceptance, our affections, to make us focus on the need for change, rather than the desire for change. But, Jewish history teaches, even when that change becomes necessary rather than merely desired, a foundation of evolutionary changes must exist to support the bigger changes now identified. And therefore, my EMBRACE of our communal tendency to enshrine the status quo, to protect us against unneeded AND unwanted changes! Knowing that we don’t do change often or well, allows me, as the spiritual leader of our community, to better evaluate the motives behind a call for change when it comes. It allows us, together, to avoid cosmetic changes, those done simply for the sake of change, and embrace only those changes that truly ARE essential – that are the product of real NEED, and not merely WANTING.

Wanting to change is important, even necessary, in our personal lives. Ideally, we should be able to move ourselves internally from wanting to change to needing to change far more often than actually occurs, instead of waiting for the world to force change upon us. Being actors in our own lives is ALWAYS preferable to being reactors! However, as a community, seeking to help ALL members and potential members find here what we have identified as our human NEEDS – to be welcomed and accepted, embraced warmly with affection, and allowed to more than survive, but to thrive – we need to focus far more on needed changes than desired ones.

And so, I raised the call for us to re-examine our Mission and Vision Statement, with the specific goal of basing it in identifiable Jewish values that can translate from our communal lives into our personal ones more smoothly, and thereby inform all we do in life, not just what we do together as a congregational family. Tomorrow morning, I will give a more detailed example of what such a statement might look like as a foundation for the lives we hope to continue to live as we grow and change in the New Year 5771. KYR

Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5771

2010-10-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

Values We Can All Live By in the New Year – PART 1
Sermon for Rosh Hashanah 5771
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

So, here we are for the 11th time together for Rosh Hashanah you and I, our 10th consecutive High Holy Days here at St. Matthew’s – it hardly seems possible! We have been in this room together for some interesting moments – both challenging and celebratory. Our very first Rosh Hashanah here in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy of 9/11. Five years ago, when our Rabbi returned from major surgery. Years when we wondered if we might outgrow this space as well, and years in which we questioned whether we still needed to leave our own building for our most significant communal days.

This year, I look forward to introducing you, hopefully tomorrow morning, to our new host. As most of you know, Rev. Stetler, who was personally responsible for bringing us to St. Matthew’s, has retired. We wish him well, and we are excited that, with retirement, he has not (yet) relocated from our community, giving us the opportunity to continue to share with him, and learn from him. The new spiritual leader of St. Matthew’s, is young, dynamic, and already bringing a new energy and focus to St. Matthew’s and our entire community. We look forward to meeting her and learning from her as well!

So right out of the gate, the New Year 5771 is everything we would expect in a New Year – that unique combination of the familiar and the new; of continuing patterns and activities that help to define us as a congregational family, and new realities requiring our creativity and effort to address. Fortunately, our congregational year got off to an early start, only in part because of the early fall, at least on the secular calendar, of our High Holy Days. With a new president in office, our leadership has begun to develop that same balance between continuing efforts and new ideas. Our universally well-respected Religious School has already begun its year, helping our young people, and hopefully their parents as well, deal with these very same issues.

Even my personal summer experiences provided that similar dichotomy, and have influenced my sharing with you on these High Holy Days. As many of you know, in addition to spending my two weeks at Camp Harlam, where I have now spent parts of 23 summers of my life, which provided the (mostly) familiar, I also had the unique privilege of spending two weeks at our newest URJ Camp – 6 Points Sports Academy, helping to create, from scratch, a unique Reform Jewish environment of learning, sharing, and experiencing, as that program celebrated its inaugural summer. As a congregation, we sent 14 of our young people to Harlam this summer – and 5 more to 6 Points – an absurdly high 20% of our religious school enrollment!

But even more than being a teacher and role model at 6 Points, my two weeks there were spent GAINING knowledge, experience, and new perspectives on all that I do as a rabbi, and we attempt to do as a congregation. And it starts with these silly wristbands!

You see, the challenge in creating this new program was to make it authentically Reform Jewish, while at the same time, recognizing the realities of the core participants lives outside of camp, which in many cases are the most marginally involved in the community, because of their heavy involvement in sports, all while striving above all else to gain legitimacy within the world of REAL sports camps. And so the decision was made to embrace one of the emerging fields of Jewish education and run with it, albeit in some unique ways. That approach is values-based education.

Following the examples of many great Jewish thinkers through our people’s experience, the brain trust at 6 Points looked at the Jewish star that is not merely in our logo and at the core of our name, and selected 6 core Jewish values upon which the program would stand this summer. Each of these core values was introduced to the camp community, and reinforced during the morning “stretch” before breakfast. Members of the camp community who were observed demonstrating one of these core values in the course of going about their day would be awarded the corresponding wrist band for that value.

In other forums, I have noted the brilliance of this program in playing to the basic nature of the participants, creating a self-reinforcing learning experience that could, and has, transcended their 2 weeks at camp. I have also noted the genius, from a continuing PR standpoint, of having these participants go home, showing off these bands with pride to their friends and family, and including on the bands the camp name and web site! But this morning, I want to focus on WHY this program worked.

It worked for three basic reasons. It worked because the 6 clearly Jewish values selected for emphasis were all things that the participants could, and should, be displaying on the playing field. It worked, because the faculty weren’t just Rabbis and educators – we were people who were role models to the kids – both off the field and ON; and because the REAL role models of cool athletes who were Jewish was provided by an amazing staff. And it worked because we avoided the temptation to do too much with it.

All of which got me to thinking – how can I bring this home and have a similar impact within our Solel family? The first caveat that was drummed into my head after my Harlam experience this summer, where our efforts to create a more holistic Jewish program like that at 6 Points made little more than baby steps of progress, was that there was a 4th, unique element in 6 Points’ success this summer. Because we were starting from scratch, there was no existing culture that needed to be changed or re-evaluated, no pre-existing core group with a sense of “ownership” of the program as it had previously been who might be made uncomfortable by a change in direction! That absence removed a significant obstacle to success. But then, how to apply those lessons here at home – where we have 46 years of congregational history, and a culture that embraces the status quo?!

I recalled that one of our successes in my first year at Solel was the development of a formal “Mission and Vision Statement.” I also recalled that it took several years after its creation for this document to begin to become the litmus test of decisions we were taking and programs we were running as a congregational family. Perhaps, I thought, with the start of our second decade together, as we approach, in only a few years, our 50th anniversary as a congregation, this would be a good time to review that document, to make sure that it really does still represent the core values that we believe we stand for as the Solel family.

And so tonight, as our President and Board already have been made aware, along with the Religious School faculty who are, as always, at the front line of so much that we are attempting to do and be as a congregation through their interaction with our students and their families, I am issuing a call for us to make 5771 the year when Temple Solel becomes even more of a Jewish values-based community. I am calling for the leadership and membership of our congregation to embrace our existing “Mission and Vision Statement” even more deeply in the coming year, both for the value that effort brings to us as individuals and as a community, as we struggle to deal with the issues of the remarkable day and time in which we live, and also as a way of determining whether this document still truly represents all that we are and wish to be as individuals and as a congregational family.

To that end, on the tables in the lobby of both of our communal homes throughout these Holy Days, you will find copies of that one-page document that is our current statement. Please take them and make yourself familiar with them. In the words of V’ahavta, that we read in Deuteronomy, and recite whenever we gather as Jews for worship, speak about them when you are sitting in your house, when you are going about your daily routine, teach them to your children – by words and actions together. Take notes of what works and what doesn’t, what is critical to keep as part of the document and what is missing from it.

For example, the word “family” appears in the main paragraph describing who we seek to be as a congregation. Is that single reference enough? Or, are the bullet points we choose to make in the body of the document, spelling out the reasonable expectations of what we will do together and for each other still indicative of the places where our program puts the emphasis? If not, does the document need to change? Or does how we expend our time and energy?

Much like the now concluding self-inventory period of Elul calls upon us first to turn inward to ourselves before we can turn back to our friends and neighbors to seek atonement and grant forgiveness, I ask everyone to share our ideas and our thoughts. Share your responses to this document – via traditional forms and electronically. With the summer, we have gotten away from using our congregational facebook page – still a remarkable place for the exchange of information and ideas.
THIS would be a great way to bring us back to making that page, along with our congregational web-site and the weekly e-mails, central parts of our daily and weekly check-in routine. How many of us, when we get to work, or go on our home computer, have a set line-up of websites we instinctively check in with? Favorite blogs, or information and news sources, or even junkfood for the mind distractions? Shouldn’t www.TempleSolelMD.org and Temple Solel on Facebook be among yours, if they are not already? (And, in a blatant and personal plug, consider adding the Rabbi’s own primary website – WordsFromAWeisman.blogspot.com – to your regular collection -- where in addition to texts of my sermons and Temple Topics articles, you can also find my responses to topics of the day, as well as links to information on Israel and other topics of Jewish interest and import, along with a few (hopefully) entertaining blogs on some (mostly) lighter subjects, like music, sports, and the constant challenges of local traffic, written by some of my more eclectic “friends.”)

You should know, by the way, that as we undertake this effort to clarify and codify the Jewish values upon which we stand as a congregation, we are far from alone. The recent restructuring of the URJ, although driven by harsh economic realities, began, in large part, from a similar effort. The work of the seminal German-Jewish philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig, who developed his “Star of Redemption” while fighting in the trenches of Macedonia during World War I (about which we will talk more on Yom Kippur) was a basis for the development of the 6 Points program along SIX points.

Indeed, looking at the development of the early synagogue almost 2000 years ago, as a house of worship, a house of study, and a house of gathering – which became one of the motifs for our own congregational mission and vision statement -- it is easy to hear the voice of Pirkei Avot – the “Sayings of the Fathers," and recognize the value-based foundation of that development. This collection of pithy philosophical summaries of the positions of many of the great Rabbis of Talmudic times gives us tremendous insight into their thinking and motivation.

Indeed, the collection begins, after linking back historically to Moses receiving Torah at Sinai, with perhaps the most well-known Jewish values statement still today: On three things the world stands – Torah, worship, and acts of lovingkindness. Compare those values to the development of the synagogue and its tricameral nature!

But less well known is the teaching that ends that same first chapter (although we used to, occasionally, sing this version in returning the Torah to the Ark): On three things, the world is established: truth, justice, and peace. Taking these two bookend teachings together, it is not hard to see al-haTorah, v’al ha’avodah, v’al g’milut chasadim as the uniquely Jewish embodiment of the more universal concepts of truth, justice (really judgment, as in by a Divine judge), and peace.

And when we do see this text this way, we come to a very significant realization: that same Zen, yin/yang tug-of-war that goes on within most of us still today, as we seek the balance between Jewish and secular influences in our lives, was just as true in Talmudic times, and has a valid place in our discussion of the Jewish ethics that serve as a foundation stone in our lives today. And this is perfectly acceptable! In fact, it is necessary, if we hope to make our Judaism once again a way-of-life, something more than merely one of the many special interest identities we each have that compete for time, funding, and energy in our over-programmed lives.

Because the truth is that the same core Jewish values that fuel the sense of outrage that many of us felt upon reading yet another attack on Israel in the guise of an in-depth journalistic report on the cover and pages of this week’s Time Magazine, the same sense of pain at the seemingly deliberate timing of that attack, er, report, in relationship to both the restart of the peace process AND these Jewish Holy Days, is also at the core of our very Jewish response to and disgust at the attempt of a Florida minister to turn September 11th this year into “Burn a Quran Day,” and our sadness at the unfortunate timing of that event coinciding with a Muslim celebration of one of the Eids, or festival meals, that are also a part of their Ramadan observance. Just because our latter response is outwardly directed to the defense and sensibilities of others, and not inner directed to our own survival needs, does not make it any less an example of our authentic Jewish core values at work.

As we go through the rest of these High Holy Days as individuals, seeking to make atonement for our own shortcomings, seeking to forgive those who seek our forgiveness, we can do far worse than focusing more on these core Jewish values. As we go thru this period as a congregational family, we will look more deeply at the history of some of these efforts, with the ultimate goal of creating, by the end of these High Holy Days, at least the working framework of a model of our congregational family’s core Jewish values from which to take our emerging discussions, and which individuals can use as a starting point in working through this material for themselves.

If we achieve ONLY this discussion in the course of the year – and we KNOW we will do much more than that – we can enter our New Year 5771 fairly secure that our foundation will only grow stronger in the coming year, fairly confident that whatever we each choose to build on that more solid Jewish ethical foundation will add beauty to our lives and our world. And THAT is a pretty good way to start a New Year! KYR

Divre HaRav -- Words from Weisman -- September 2010

2010-10-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Divrei HaRav – Words from Weisman

As I sit down to write this column, I am freshly returned from remarkable experiences at both our URJ 6 Points Sports Academy and at Camp Harlam, and could easily spend this entire column gushing on that. For now, let me express my pride in being the Rabbi of a congregation that had 20 people at URJ summer camps this summer, my thanks to the parents (and grandparents) who bought into the vision of what giving their children this experience could mean, and to the leaders of our congregation who allowed me to participate in both of these amazing programs.

I am also preparing for my first Shabbat back in the pulpit after my summer break. This one, however, is fraught with other significance, as it marks my 10th anniversary as part of our congregation, and a rather significant personal milestone as well. Again, each of those is worthy of comment, and by the time you read these words, will have been noted as it passed. My thanks to all of you for your good wishes, and involvement in whatever those festivities turned out to be (what I like to call the “writing now for the future” tense!), and for making these last 10 years so powerful and special for me and my entire family.

Which leads us to the fact that it is already Elul – our month of preparation for the High Holy Days, which come right on time, as they do every year, according to the Jewish calendar, but which begin extremely early in our secular reckoning. As I have aged, and matured (hopefully!) as a person, a Jew, and a Rabbi, I have come to appreciate the month of Elul even more. In many profound ways, its Jewish significance is actually greater than the Holy Days it prepares us for, when we allow it to be.

As Jews, we are called upon to do a self inventory, to become introspective and evaluate how we have lived our lives over the last year. As the Talmud teaches, none of us is required to justify why we were not more like Moses, or any of the other greats from our tradition. Each one of us does, however, need to be personally aware of where and why I have failed to be the best me that I can be, as individuals. To acknowledge sins of commission as well as omission, both so that we can learn and improve from our efforts, and to direct us to those others who have been hurt by our all-too-human shortcomings.

As a Rabbi, my life is lived in relationships – with my family and friends on a personal level; with you, my congregational family, on multiple levels; and with the larger world, often as the representative of our congregation. Each of those experiences has the potential to be profoundly spiritual and growth-inducing; each also has the potential to be a time and place where, because of my human frailties and limitations, I come up short or do harm. If I were to live in fear of the latter, I would never have the opportunity to experience the awesome benefits of the former.

Likewise, in doing that self inventory at this season of the year, if we focus on the personal nature of the exercise, or let ourselves be overwhelmed by the number of people to whom we owe thanks or apologies (and often both!), it would be remarkably easy to crawl inside ourselves and stop there. However, the beauty of Elul, and our Jewish preparation, is that it doesn’t merely call upon us to emerge from that cocoon of the self and rejoin the larger communities of our lives. It provides us, through the structure of the Holy Days, starting with S’lichot prior to Rosh Hashanah, with the opportunities to make that reunion with the Jewish and larger worlds around us. If necessary, it can even sometimes force us back out into the world when the enormity of our humanness makes us tremble.

I can guarantee you that my experiences at 6 Points and Harlam this summer, the insights of introspection as I turn 50 and start my second decade as our spiritual leader, have all been a remarkable preparation for my Elul this year. They leave me excited and energized for what the New Year 5771 might bring for all of us. They lead me to offer this blanket apology to all those who feel that I may not have done all that I could have for them in this past year – not in place of the individual acknowledgments that are deserved and still necessary, but as an insurance policy in case I missed anyone. I am truly sorry, and hope to learn from my mistakes and do better in the New Year, and ask for your forgiveness and your guidance in helping me to grow. And they lead me to invite all of us to embrace the tradition of Elul – for ourselves and each other – and gain as much as we can from what this uniquely Jewish tradition has to offer.

From my house and family to every member of the Solel house and family, Loren, Emily, and David join me in wishing for you that 5771 will be a year of health, peace, prosperity, joy, and growth for us all. L’Shanah Tovah Tiqateivu v’Tichateimu! May each of us be written and sealed in the Book of Life for a good and sweet New Year!

Divrei HaRav -- Words From Weisman -- June 2010

2010-10-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

One of the items I had promised to post here were my Temple Topics columns, and somehow, that appears not to have happened to date. And so, going back to June of this year, we attempt to make up for that shortcoming.

Divrei HaRav – Words from Weisman

One of the advantages of being the Rabbi is that, most months, I have the chance to look over the rest of the material in Temple Topics before composing my own words. Besides giving me the chance to make sure that nothing of importance is missed, it also allows me to help set the tone for the issue with my column. This month is one of those months. However, by the time I sit down to write this, I know that Rod already has TOO MUCH material for this edition, and so, I am truly being held to a word count!

So I begin by necessarily understating (but at least now I have an excuse, for cover!) my thanks to EVERYONE who helped make this a remarkably successful year for Temple Solel, especially under some trying external circumstances, like the poor economy and the re-organization at the URJ. Louise has done a remarkable job thanking those most responsible, as well as outlining the significant achievements of the last 2 years. Although neither presidents nor Rabbis ever have the chance to absolutely mention EVERYONE deserving of acknowledgment, Louise has done her typically thorough job – and I add my thanks to hers, both personally, and on behalf of our congregation.

There is, however, one person who, for obvious reasons, Louise did NOT thank. That person IS Louise. As her tenure as President comes to a close, I will let her own list of what we have accomplished over the last 2 years stand loudly as the legacy of her term. We are clearly better off as a congregation at the conclusion of her term than we were at its start, and for that she deserves thanks from ALL of us for a difficult job in a difficult moment done very well!

I want to congratulate our newly elected board, and our new President, Bob Levin. Obviously he, and they, will have large shoes to fill, and still have some significant challenges to face. I look forward to working with him, and them, along with our newly elected Sisterhood leadership, our re-emerging Men’s Club, SOSTY, and more, to make Temple Solel as strong as we can be collectively, and making membership and involvement as positive an experience for each of us as individuals as well.

And, I want to thank the congregation for your continued support for, toleration of, and faith in me as our spiritual leader, as demonstrated in (what has not yet occurred as I write this, but hopefully will by the time you read this, or we will all have egg on our faces!) your approval of my new contract extension. As I conclude my tenth year at Solel, this truly has become home, not only for me, but for my family. I look forward to continuing to grow together with you over these next five years, as much or more than we have over the last 10!

There is much more that you need to know, that I want to share, and I will try to do so briefly in short articles that may follow this column or be spread all over this edition as space warrants. I will be here, as usual, through July 4th, before taking my customary time off, this time to serve on the faculties of BOTH Camp Harlam and our new URJ 6 Points Sports Academy. I will be back, as always, after the first week in August, and look forward to celebrating my 50th birthday, as I did my 40th, back here at home. I wish everyone a good, healthy, and Jewish summer that leaves us all reinvigorated, and ready to face 5771 together in strength and joy.

Temple Solel – A URJ Leader in Supporting Jewish Camping

Despite the economy, and the Rabbi’s promise to back off pushing for participation in Jewish summer camping programs, Temple Solel will be sending a record number of our young people to Jewish summer camps this summer! Our 19 campers, 1 staff member (and 1 Rabbinic faculty member!) represent just under 20% of our religious school enrollment (even though our religious school encompasses a greater age range!) The few congregations that send more kids to Jewish summer camps than we do have much larger school populations. In addition to 13 campers and a staff member at Harlam, and 5 at 6 Points, we will also be represented among the participants at Camp Louise this summer. We look forward to acknowledging ALL of the campers and families when the summer is over, and learning from the experiences and excitement you will surely bring home to the rest of us.

Going Out So We Can Come Back In

2010-10-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

Going Out So We Can Come Back In
Musings on Ki Teitzei and the Season of Elul
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD August 20, 2010

I wrote my Temple Topics column for September last week because I had to. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to fulfill my responsibility at the start of my second decade of service to this congregational family. Rather, I was afraid that I would be found guilty of the worst sin possible, as I had been taught by my rabbinic advisor and homiletics teacher – of having MANY good ideas. And worse, knowing where I HAD to get to meant limiting the ideas that were most filling and energizing my brain at that moment.

But it got done, and as you will see, hopefully this week when it arrives in your mail box, it got done because I was able to tie in what I wanted to say with what I needed to say. It is nice on the occasions when that works – when the experiences you want to share teach the lessons you feel need to be taught.

I am hoping that tonight is, if not a continuation of that effort, then at least a parallel experience, where the items I want to share truly ARE germane to the message I hope we learn together from our Torah text.

We are in that period of preparation for the upcoming High Holy Days – a most unique time in our Jewish year, one which I think is grossly undervalued and underappreciated. Equally undervalued, in my humble opinion, are the Torah texts that lead up to the Holy Days, even N’tzavim, which is repeated on Yom Kippur.

Take tonight’s portion - Ki Teitzei - “when you go out.” Since the portion begins with a statement about how our ancestors were expected to behave when they went out to battle their enemies, I think many modern readers, products of the anti-war movement of the 60’s and their children and students, tend to under value the content because of the martial overtones. Which is really too bad, because it seems to me that a legal and ethical treatise that expects proper behavior from us EVEN in times of conflict, would be a powerful teacher of the importance of those same values and ethics in more peaceful and normal times.

It doesn’t help us to fully value this week’s portion that the BEST example of one of these statements about ethics during conflict actually comes from the end of last week’s portion, rather than starting this portion as it could have, and probably should have. Because the first Ki Teitzei statement, made last week, is the one in which we are told we cannot cut down the trees surrounding a town we are attempting to besiege – even if it helps the war effort. The rationale given is simple but powerful – are trees people, with the ability to defend themselves? And the implicit message is even more profound – if we can go out of our way to protect trees even in time of war, how much more should we be willing and able to go out of our way to treat our fellow human beings properly at all times?

The ethics taught in the opening of our portion on this Shabbat are no less powerful. If, in the conduct of battle, you are victorious, and see a beautiful woman among the captives, whom you wish to take as wife, you are obligated NOT to treat her as a captive or a slave, but to give her the full rights and considerations of a free woman being taken as wife. Powerful on its own, but it leads to a discussion about a man’s responsibility to both of his wives, when he loves one more than another, and to his sons by those wives, who shall not be disadvantaged because of their father's relative feelings towards their mothers.

It includes the rules for the defiant son, which are so harsh, that the Rabbis of the Talmud had no choice but to close read the text as saying that the child had to be SOOO irredeemable, that both his father AND his mother felt they had no choice but to turn him over to the community for punishment. It includes the rules prohibiting gender based cross-dressing, not on grounds of sexual immorality, but on grounds of role confusion within the larger community.

This first section concludes with a couple of remarkable ethical propositions. We are taught that if we chance upon a bird’s nest by the side of the road, we must not take the young and the mother together. We must let the mother go first before taking the babies or the eggs. When we build a house, we are expected to build a parapet on our roof. Why? Because even someone attempting to rob us via access to and from our roof, is entitled to protection from accidental harm! Then we are taught not to sow our field with 2 diverse seeds, not to yoke an ox and an ass together for plowing, and not to mix linen and wool in our garments.

These mitzvot are challenging enough individually, together they will probably take our Torah study group multiple weeks to plow through! They seem to carry a common element that everything has its proper place and proper role in the cosmos as created by God; that we are responsible for each other, even in extreme cases, and responsible for nature as well, even down to details that seem otherwise insignificant, like the prohibition against sha’atnez – the mixing of wool and linen in our garments.

But most intriguing, the final words here, in 22:12 “You shall make tassels on the four corners of the garment with which you cover yourself.” The allusion, although the Hebrew word is not used here, is to the tzitzit, the fringes on the corner of a tallit today, and of most male upper body garments in the Biblical world. The purpose of the tzitzit was symbolic – they served as a reminder of the commandments God expected us to follow as Jews.

My reading here is that all of these extreme circumstances individually teach us powerful ethical lessons, lessons that we would do well to acknowledge and re-embrace during this month of Elul, season of self-inventory and atonement seeking. Collectively, we are expected to recognize that God, thru the received Torah, is the source of these ethics, which we value because they order our life by influencing all that we do, not just in these extreme situations. And therefore, our atonement seeking at this season likewise must be organized in a manner that starts deep within the self, but eventually must allow us to come back into communion with each other, and with God.

Likewise, there is a powerful lesson in the order of the portions of this season, that influences how we can best work through the month of Elul. This week we read Ki Teitzei – when you go out. Next week we read Ki Tavo – when you come in. For many years I have recognized and taught that before we can come in – to our neighbor’s and loved ones seeking forgiveness, even to God on the Holy Days, we first need to go out – from the familiar and comfortable; to strip away that with which we have surrounded ourselves in life, to lay ourselves bare.

But this summer, I actually got to do exactly that. I left my normal comfortable pattern to spend 2 weeks at the URJ’s 6 Points Sports Academy early in the summer. In this brand new camp setting, where there were no long established traditions of how things had to be done which would otherwise have needed to be left behind to achieve change, we were free to come into the new experience and make things happen freely as we felt they could and should be from the start.

These successes, but more important, this realization, helped me come back into Camp Harlam after going out to 6 Points, and be a much more effect instrument of change for the many aspects of Harlam’s program that we sought to improve upon. I knew why we had to change, knew how to explain it to those who might be slow to embrace the new. But, I also knew the change would not happen quickly or automatically, so I was better able to see the small steps and not get lost in the larger picture.
For each of us as we work through Elul, starting with the introspection and self-inventory, then going out to seek the forgiveness of those we are now better aware that we have hurt, before we can come back in to plead for our lives before God on Yom Kippur, I hope we have the clarity of experiences new and old to bring to our efforts. The ability to find comfort in the familiar, and still put it aside temporarily to dig deeper into our lives. The courage to see and admit the unpopular or inconvenient truths when they pop up in our lives, and to work to change them. The convenience of significant mileposts along our journeys’ paths that allow and obligate us to look backwards to where we have been, and forward to where we hope to go, at the same time!

Having had those opportunities this summer as I went out from here, I feel blessed to come back into my home during Elul, able to see these Torah portions and their incredible power and spiritual value even more clearly than in other years; to apply these lessons better myself; and hopefully to teach them and their significance to others better. I look at the large values taught in the text through small and extreme situations, and realize that we have the same opportunity to do so in and with our own lives, by behaving in both the extreme and the mundane every day circumstances we face in the way we know we should, even when circumstances would appear to allow us to stray or take some short-cut. If I am blessed by my experiences with a deeper clarity of vision that allows me to learn a lesson from trees, or plow animals, or even the materials that make up my clothing, shouldn’t I be rushing to get out of myself and share my discovery with others?

These are the messages of Elul and our atonement seeking season. These are the messages of our Torah portions during these weeks. These are the lessons I have learned this summer – in both my going out to new experiences, and my coming back into the familiar. These are the values that as Jews we seek to model in our lives, even as we seek to live up to them. May we all succeed in this preparatory season in doing so. May we grow from that success to seek and to find true atonement and forgiveness with each other and with God at the upcoming Holy Days. And may we carry this new-found deeper awareness of the self and the possibilities and realities around us into our new year, gaining value from it every day, using it to help make our world make more sense for ourselves and others. KYR

Reflections on Nothing -- and Everything

2010-10-12T13:10:00.000-07:00

Reflections on Nothing – And Everything -- A Riff on a Significant Shabbat for a Rabbi and His Congregation -- Parshat Shoftim – Friday, August 13th, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

To quote from the introduction to this week’s Torah portion in the Plaut commentary, “The weekly portion Shoftim (lit. “magistrates”) begins (at DT 16:18) an extensive segment dealing with the ethical and administrative norms for providing the community with a suitable structure.” Ethical and administrative norms for providing the community with a suitable structure? Can you get a better basis for a sermon than that?

Okay, who are we kidding….? Yes, that is a terribly important subject – so much so that I am going to save it for the High Holy Days this year! But let’s talk honestly here for a second – is THAT why ANY of us are here tonight? Heck no! In fact, with one or two possible exceptions, you probably aren’t here to talk about the actions of America’s latest ignominious folk hero, Steven Slater, the Jet Blue flight attendant who was arrested and fired after cursing out an obnoxious passenger over the PA system after their flight had landed, and then jumped out the exit door down the emergency chute!

Tonight marks a remarkable coalescence of events. As it is each summer, tonight marks my return to the pulpit after my summer adventures. I want to thank those intrepid volunteers who took responsibility for leading lay services in my absence, who, by all accounts, did, as they always do, and outstanding job facilitating the spiritual needs of our congregation and community in my absence. It is only too bad that the flip side of people coming out to services BECAUSE the Rabbi is back requires us to acknowledge that too many of us underappreciate the efforts of these volunteers, at least in the most obvious and significant accounting – our attendance or general lack thereof at these lay led services!

But honestly, a significant part of tonight’s attendance is attributable to more than this annual return. I understand that some of you (many of you?) received something close to an invitation to be here tonight, in part because there are 2 other milestones being acknowledged tonight, one strictly personal, and one shared by a Rabbi and his congregation! It is almost impossible for me to believe that tonight marks the beginning of my second decade of service to and leadership of this congregation, which frankly could and should be our focus tonight, and our lead back to the words from the Plaut commentary placing our Torah portion in context.

Could be. Should be. But again, probably aren’t as central as they would otherwise be, because of a pre-destined confluence of calendric phenomena.

How often do any of us get to celebrate a significant birthday, especially one usually approached with trepidation as an excuse for some serious ribbing and decidedly unserious celebration? Even less often does such an auspicious date fall on Friday the 13th! Even less often does it have all this other significance connected to it as well!

Directional change coming here, to reinforce this last point…. One of my last responsibilities at Camp Harlam came last Shabbat morning, as the unit with which I was working was asked to lead Shabbat morning services for the camp and about 200 alumni guests. Alumni Day services are generally a nightmare – the staff and alumni are far more interested in seeing old friends than in praying, which interferes with the whole tone, mood, and setting of the worship. Rare is the Alumni Day Shabbat service that “works.” I happen to have been partially responsible for one three years ago that DID work, and after the next summer proved that this was NOT the start of a new trend, but a one shot deal, it appears a decision was made to honor me by making this service my responsibility from now on. Reality says that in the same way I am really NOT responsible for the remarkable performances of our b’nai mitzvah -- the kids themselves deserve that credit – the real credit for the success of that service 3 years ago lay with the kids, and not the Rabbi who worked with them. However, perception will usually trump reality, and such appears to have been the case in this instance.

So, as we prepped the kids to lead this service last Shabbat, I laid it on the line, in my best Bill Murray rip-off from the classic monologue from the movie Meatballs. I fired them up to write the best readings, prepare to read the Torah flawlessly, to sing and play their instruments with skill and heart. We even challenged the ones who ducked participating in the service proper by choosing to become the greeters and ushers to step up, and help us keep the alumni in line, because otherwise it just wouldn’t matter how good the service was. And the kids responded! And led a great service.

And when the Rabbi of the unit got up to introduce the Torah reading (his only part in the entire service), following a typically loud and unfocussed processional with the Torahs around the Chapel in the Woods – a truly mystical and spiritual setting in which more than once, otherwise inexplicable things have happened in my life – one in which there was more talking among friends than focusing on the sifrei Torah as they paraded around, something magical happened.

The main body of the congregation immediately retook their seats, and got quiet. THAT would have been miracle enough! But the area of those still standing and talking was not, as usual, all over the chapel, but rather, was limited to maybe the back 20% of the worship space. And the Rabbi stepped forward and thanked the camp congregation for demonstrating the power of a spiritual wave sweeping from the Ark to the far reaches of the space, and joked that the wave was about to reach the back section. I didn’t shout, I was smiling, deliberately NOT being upset or loud. And in less than 30 seconds from the time I stepped to the microphone, the place was silent, and we were moving on with the worship.

In truth, a larger part of the credit goes to the administration for devising a new seating plan for the service that helped keep the alumni engaged in the worship service. In truth, the kids earned the attention and respect by their efforts. But, as is always the case, who was credited with once again controlling the alumni??

And my reward was two-fold. I have now been informed that even after I retire from active duty on the faculty (yeah – as if THAT might ever happen!), I will be expected to come up for Alumni Day to help lead the service!

But even better, at the conclusion of the service, as we gathered the kids and staff for our unit bonding time over the D’var Torah, I was freed to be able to teach the following lesson – and no joke – this was the ENTIRE lesson I taught:

“There are no capital letters in Hebrew, and therefore none in the Torah. So, sometimes the word Torah is spelled with a capital T, and when it is, it refers to the first 5 books of the Bible, or the scroll they are written on. BUT, sometimes, torah is spelled with a small t, and then it refers to the entirety of Jewish teachings over the ages. Many are contained in texts, some are not.

“Today, you, as a unit, WERE torah. You led by your example, you taught by your example, you earned the respect the rest of camp and the alumni gave you. Anything else I could say or try to teach would be commentary on that lesson, and take away from what you have already learned.”

And then, knowing they needed to move pretty quickly down to the dining hall to set up and prepare to wait tables at lunch, I honestly ended the D’var Torah with the following words that I have been dying to use in such a setting for most of my life (with apologies to Mel Brooks and Harvey Korman): “Now go do that voodoo that you do so well.” And I waved them off with an energetic flourish to go sack the town of Rock Ridge, er, head to the dining hall! Total time: 47 seconds!!

And it was the best lesson I taught them all summer – they got it, they responded with exactly the energy and pride I hoped for, and they sent me off at the end of two weeks on a high.

Tonight can, and should be the same – not just for me, but for us. A time for serious worship and honest searching to be sure. But even more, a time during which we admit that it is okay to ENJOY being Jewish with each other, even if merely to celebrate a couple of significant events. One in which we let the reality of the moment interfere, in appropriate measure, with our normal expectations, without really getting in the way of why we came – either in theory or reality!

So my teaching of small t torah tonight is really this simple – I wish us a happy 10th anniversary together as Rabbi and congregation. I thank you for 10 amazing years – a period that started, when we found each other, with serious concerns and questions on each of our parts about our continuing viability separately, but quickly demonstrated that we made a pretty good match! A period that has contained the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, some real moments of celebration, and times when we all were forced to pull together and overcome. 10 years of incredible growth and learning for me, for which I thank you all, and hope that I might have returned what I have received even a little bit too you – individually and collectively.

And my prayer – may we all be blessed to share another equally powerful decade together (at least) – learning from each other, teaching each other, growing as individuals and as a communal family, and making our world a better place not only for ourselves but for all with whom we come in contact.

That’s my story, I am sticking to it. And if there is anyone who wants to celebrate that with me, great. For those of you looking to celebrate something else with me – take your best shot – I am ready! And thank you in advance for the love and respect that will be obvious in those words as well!

May we always find, when we come together, equally joyous reasons to celebrate together, and the comfort with each other to do so in the most appropriate – and inappropriate – ways possible! KYR

On the Importance of Getting the WHOLE Story

2010-10-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

On the Importance of Getting the WHOLE Story
Sermon for Parshat Pinchas—July 2, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman Temple Solel, Bowie MD

We start tonight with a bizarre factoid, and an admission of an all too human tendency. First – the factoid – in all of Torah, there are 6 weekly parshiyot which carry the name of an individual character as the name of the portion. In Genesis, we have Noach and Chayei Sarah, in Exodus, Yitro, and here, within the last 4 weeks in the book of Numbers have come the other 3 – Korach, Balak, and Pinchas, which we read tonight. I am not sure what to make of this, but it might win you a bar bet or two – depending on which bars you might hang out at!

Now, for the admission of human frailty. Since tonight is my last sermon before I leave for my stints at camp, and therefore the last sermon of my first decade with the congregation (and the last to be delivered in my 40s!), there is a very real desire to swing for the fences – to try to overpreach, and leave everyone with a powerful message that will last all summer. It is the same tendency that a 40 year old, trying to make a good first impression, failed to avoid when he preached his first sermon here – although THEN, at least, when I used tried and known material, it was still new to this congregation, and therefore worked better! It is the same tendency that overcomes most of my colleagues every year as we prepare for the High Holy Days. I would like to think that, if nothing else, in this past decade I learned to recognize that tendency and begin to fight it!

That is part of the reason I am so excited about these next 2 weeks at 6 Points Sports Academy. It isn’t just seeing 30 years of effort in this area coming to fruition. It isn’t just being part of something new and exciting from the ground floor. The excitement is sparked by the knowledge that the educational role I am being asked to play does NOT fall prey to this frailty. We have recognized that for many of the 6 Points participants (but thankfully not our own 5 campers there), this summer represents most if not all of the Judaic content they will get all year.

But, having recognized that truth, we have NOT overburdened the program, trying to shoehorn every teachable moment and Jewish concept into the day, and thereby lessening what the program is supposed to be. We have, instead, created a powerful educational program with modest goals and intentions, and built it into the fabric of the naturally occurring program of a sports camp, in ways likely to appeal to campers participating in this kind of program, with methods likely to carry over beyond camp. THAT is exciting – especially if it works!

I share that with you tonight, because I suspect that this awareness is at the heart of the message I want to share from our portion tonight. Pinchas is a rather remarkable portion on several levels, and one which most of us here are less familiar with, as it usually comes up during the Rabbi’s summer hiatus, when we don’t focus as closely on Torah at services, and don’t do Torah study. The fact that it is in the book of Numbers means that now that our Torah study group is moving through the text in a serial manner, so that we can cover ALL of the content, since we have spent the last 10 weeks or so on the Ten Commandments in Exodus, we are still several YEARS away from covering it there!

With all due respect to one of our newest members, our URJ Congregational Representative, Lisa Gottman, who celebrated becoming a Bat Mitzvah with this portion, and therefore I was going to surprise her and invite her forward to preach the text – cold! -- the text offers us several different elements, and several challenges. It begins in the middle of an EXTREMELY ethically challenging story, and moves on to several other elements, EVERY ONE of which is NOT unique in the text.

Taken as a whole, it seems clear that the material in this portion, after the initial cliffhanger story is resolved, was intended to begin a process of wrapping up a saga, going back to earlier material, and tying up loose ends. Indeed, the rest of Numbers seems to do exactly this! But then that would mean that at some point, some version of an ancient tradition was being concluded with Numbers, and not with the Fifth book of the Pentateuch, the Chumash, both of which linguistically come from roots meaning 5, namely Deuteronomy!

Working backwards to the largest challenge, with which our portion starts:

The end of the portion is yet another explication of the ancient calendar of festival days. We have seen other variants on this theme in both Exodus AND Leviticus. Perhaps surprisingly (at least at first blush), even more than the Leviticus text, which we would expect to be rich in priestly details of the various sacrifices that marked these days, this calendar recitation seems to be the one that marks the religious obligations for sacrifices. It starts with the expected daily sacrifices, then moves to those for the Sabbath and the new month, before moving, in great detail, into the festival calendar that starts with Passover, moves to Shavuot, then moves to the High Holy Days (are we surprised that there is actually an offering to be made ON Yom Kippur!?) before moving into the daily offerings for Sukkot.

In the preceding chapter, the portion tells the story of a member of the tribe of Manasseh, named Zeloph’chad, who died without a son, but who did have five unmarried daughters. While this was no doubt a source of great pride to this man in his life, at his death, it created a problem. His daughters correctly realized that unless they, even though they were women, were allowed to inherit his property, his line and legacy would end there and be lost forever. So they brought their case to Moses, who took it before God (as was done with all the difficult matters), Who instructed Moses to teach that Zeloph’chad’s daughters were right in their claim, and the law must allow for inheritance by daughters in such cases.

Now, before we get carried away in the feminist victory that this DOES represent – and acknowledge that the text actually gives names for all five daughters! – we need to make sure, in the interest of full disclosure, that we are aware that the story does NOT end here! In the very last chapter of Numbers, 10 chapters later, the clan heads of Zeloph’chad’s portion of the tribe appeal this decision, on the grounds that if the daughters were allowed to inherit, when they married, their possession, part of Manassan territory, would be transferred to their husbands, who might not be of the tribe of Manasseh, creating great confusion. Moses took the appeal to God, who recognized the rectitude of this claim as well, and ordered the original ruling to be modified, to make clear that any unmarried woman who inherits in this way shall be limited to marrying only within her own tribe!

Making the partial story we have here this week even more intriguing, is that it ends here with God calling Moses up on a mountain, so he can view the Promised Land that he will not be entering, as he is reminded, because of the sin of not upholding God’s power when he struck the rock to get water instead of speaking to it. Moses, in response, asked God to make known who would succeed Moses, and Moses is told to present Joshua to the people, and have Eliezer the High Priest place his hands upon Joshua publicly to empower him. This, even though we have a very similar story towards the end of Deuteronomy, after which it appears Joshua actually DOES start taking over leadership, unlike here!

Prior to that, now that we are in the 40th year of wandering, and, as we will see in a moment, the last plague against the generation of the wilderness has been ended, God calls for a second census, presumably to show the numbers that will enter the land. Although there are significant shifts in relative tribal sizes, the overall total remains virtually unchanged, even after the generation of the Exodus has been wiped out, save for Moses, and as the text reminds, Joshua and Caleb, and it is the children and grandchildren that are now being counted.

Which finally brings us back to the conclusion of the Pinchas story, with which the portion opens. The last 9 verses of last Shabbat told how the Moabite women, probably the cultic prostitutes worshipping the same Ba’al as was represented by Balaam, the priest and apparent hero of last Shabbat’s portion, were seducing the Israelite men, and luring them to worship their Ba’al. Our God was, for obvious reasons, pretty angry, and ordered Moses to act to stop this unfaithfulness. When an Israelite man started sporting with a Midianite woman in the sight of the assembled masses before the Tent of Meeting, Pinchas, the son of Aaron’s son Eleazar, stabbed both of them with a single spear thrust, an act which also was credited with ending a plague which had killed 24,000 Israelites.

The penalty for this double murder of passion is given in THIS week’s portion. God grants Pinchas a pact of Divine friendship, which includes an eternal priesthood for his descendants. Hardly sounds like a punishment at all! Until we look at the big picture.

Aaron has died, as have his 2 oldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, so Eleazar, his third son, has replaced him as High Priest (it is Eleazar, the portion tells us, who installed Joshua as Moses’ successor). Thus, before this incident, Pinchas was next in line to the High Priesthood, as would be his descendants after him. That God is “rewarding” him with what is, very clearly, a demotion to merely an “eternal priesthood” (as opposed to the High Priesthood) is, in fact, a punishment.

And so, a difficult ethical dilemma is skirted. What appears to be a reward for a passionate murder committed out of respect for God, turns out, in full context, to be a demotion. This allows God to express gratefulness that the people were turned away from other gods, while still confirming that there are ethical limits to acting in God’s name, a message that resonates well with modern readers.

However, as with everything else in this portion, to fully get the complete message from this story, we are obligated to go outside the portion, and make sure we have ALL the details relating to the stories in the portion. For the census, we have to compare to the first census, taken right after the Exodus. In addition, we are referred back to the story of the spies to remind us that the people being counted here represent a totally different cast than the first counting. To fully appreciate the nuances of the story of Zeloph’chad’s daughters requires us to read both pieces and put them together. The story of Moses coming to the end of his leadership requires us to look back to striking the rock, and ahead to the actual succession of Joshua.

And the otherwise surprising plethora of sacrificial details in the restating of the festival calendar, seemingly better suited for Leviticus than here, turns out to be completely consistent with the rest of the portion as well. By including those details here, and NOT in Leviticus, not only does this text force us to refer to both the Leviticus and Exodus calendars for comparison and clarification, but it further cements the role of these chapters as the start of the wrap up of at least the Book of Numbers.

For the Biblical scholars among us, this portion becomes a lynch pin for a number of major theories about the development and evolution of the text. For those of us who like Biblical stories, the portion gives us a number of them. For those of us who prefer to focus on ethics derived from our text, the portion offers challenges, but also allows us to find solutions.

But for the rest of us, the message of our portion, taken as a whole, becomes a major antidote to so many of our modern problems. Because this portion obligates us, in every story it tells, not to merely accept the stories we receive on this Shabbat, but rather to do our homework, gather up the rest of the pieces of the stories, and rebuild the context and big picture, to get the full and correct messages that I believe our tradition intends for us to learn.

This portion is not about rushing to judgment, or expediency in seeking solutions. But rather, it reinforces both the need and the value in the longer, harder road of slogging through everything we can gather, looking for and finding the subtleties rather than the sweeping generalizations, and challenging ourselves not to jump to the first visible conclusion and accept it to the exclusion of all others.

Imagine how different our world would be today if just these last few lessons were the norm of human behavior, and NOT the exception, worthy of being preached on an occasion such as this! If only it were so easy! But hey – we have all summer to work on it!! I look forward to hearing your reports of success upon my return! KYR!

On Perfection and Cleanliness -- Which IS Next to Godliness

2010-10-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

On Perfection and Cleanliness – Which IS Next to Godliness
Sermon for Parshat Chuqqat – June 18, 2010
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD

Forgive me if my words tonight are a little jumbled and confused. It isn’t just that Loren has been visiting her Dad in Florida for a couple of days, leaving me to play Rabbi mom on top of my normal duties (don’t worry – it is a scheduled visit, he is fine, and she will be back tomorrow!). Or even that I have spent today catching up from my first night of Dadhood waiting for my now 17-year-old daughter (as of this week!) to come in from a date to a midnight movie, and an 8 AM orthodontist’s appointment in which they installed a device that requires ME to play the Marquis de Sade to David, all while having to prep from home in my dual role.

It is not even overdosing on what arguably is the greatest sports week of the year – Stephen Strasburg on the cover of Sports Illustrated (oh no!), Game 7 of the NBA finals between Boston and LA (the classic rivalry) the US Open, and the start of the World Cup. But add in the historical first that occurred Tuesday night – when Solel’s mighty softball teams combined to go 4-0 in advance of our upcoming head to head face-off – tripling the 2 teams' win total for the season. Or doing so with Karl in Alaska (he will not even believe it when he gets back!)

Or even that incomprehensible feat coming on the fifth anniversary of the night I suffered my heart attack playing softball – although that could certainly have been enough all by itself. However, to be able to exactly recreate the events of 5 years ago in reverse to mark that moment – by putting myself into Tuesday night’s game in the 4th inning to replace the same shortstop I had been filling in for 5 years ago – was a gift from God, the power of which I am at a loss of words to explain! That God continued to smile by allowing me to make not one but 2 ridiculous defensive plays in that inning – and to do so without hurting myself – only reinforces how much I was NOT in control of that moment, but merely a player!

No, all of those would have been great excuses for being discombobulated tonight, but the real reason is because for once I get to preach on what for me is one of the four absolutely remarkable Torah portions (another comes next week!). Tonight, we read Chuqqat from the book of Numbers, chapters 19 thru 21. Like the equally powerful Yitro – which leads up to our receiving the 10 Commandments at Sinai, this portion is three distinct stories, each in its own chapter, each one building on the power of the one before it to bring us to a remarkable understanding.

And it starts with an inconsistency: One might recognize the name of the portion as coming from the word that means law. Yet, in truth, this portion contains no laws! Okay, technically, the first chapter, Chapter 19, which deals with the infamous and challenging Red Heifer, is dealing with a law – but it is REALLY dealing with a ritual, and the law relating to that ritual.

The Red Heifer – the perfectly pure, terribly rare cow which is specially prepared and turned into the ultimate purification agent without which the entire sacrificial system of the altar in Jerusalem could not function. The Red Heifer -- for which ultra-Orthodox scouts have been desperately scouring the world for several decades, because without it, they have no hope of bringing Messiah, who, for most of them, is their late beloved Rebbe, because the rebuilt Temple will not be able to reinstate that very same sacrificial system.

The Red Heifer, one of the most bizarre items in all of the Biblical text – for my money, even less comprehensible than Balaam’s talking donkey in next week’s portion! Let me try to summarize this simply – this cow, sacrificed and burned to create the ultimate purifying agent, must, obviously be without blemish. It must also have never pulled a yoke – never done labor. BUT, after that, all bets are off. It is taken OUTSIDE the camp for slaughter and cremation – the same treatment that is given to lepers and others whose presence in the camp risks the public hygiene of others. The priest who oversees its cremation must, afterwards, wash himself and his clothes, and change into new garments before re-entering the camp, and is still considered unclean until sunset – all the same behaviors he would undertake if he had been rendered ritually UNCLEAN. So too for the person who actually burned the heifer, and the one who gathered up the ashes afterwards so they could be utilized for their purifying purpose – anyone who touches the purifying agent in its preparation is rendered IMPURE by the contact!

Take a second to let that sink in, and recognize just HOW incongruous this whole process is! Now true, at other times we have noted that virtually every detail of the priesthood at some time in the text appears as if it were part of Superman’s Bizarro-World – looking as we expect but acting totally opposite to our expectations -- so why should this be any different? But, here is my question – when the original Red Heifer was killed to make the original purifying potion, how did the priest, the burner, and the ash gatherer purify themselves afterwards? There was no pre-existing purifying potion, so they either had to wait and purify themselves with the same entity which rendered them impure in the first place, or there had to be some other, unshared alternative available! ARRRRghhhh – and I thought I was discombobulated this Shabbat!

Okay, so let’s turn to chapter 20. Oh this is much clearer – the story of Moses striking the rock in disobedience of God’s word! GEVALT! We’ve been here before, but this one has some interesting twists and turns.

First, upon arrival in the wilderness of Zin, Miriam dies and is buried there. Our ancestors have been schlepping Joseph’s sarcophagus with them through the Wilderness, but Miriam gets buried at the spot she dies. Hmmmmm. But wait, Miriam was mentioned by name. Only happens a handful of times in the text – for all the importance placed on her character – and every time she is named, something happens to the water supply. EVERY TIME! Coincidence!? I think not, especially when you realize her name – Miryam – is a play on the words mar and yam – bitter water!

Just like in Exodus 17, on the eve of receiving the Commandments at Sinai, the people are complaining bitterly about the impotable water. Moses takes Aaron to talk with God, who commands them to take Moses’s rod – just as in Exodus 17. But here the story changes – and the results are catastrophic.

In Exodus 17, the relatively young (80 years old) Moses, to impress the generation that had literally just been saved from servitude in Egypt, is told to STRIKE the rock to bring forth drinking water for the people. And he does so. Here, 40 years later, a much older Moses is talking to the next generation – the one that is emerging now that their parents who knew servitude are dying off, the one that will merit to enter the Promised Land. This time, to impress THIS generation, God tells Moses and Aaron not to strike the rock, but to SPEAK to it publicly, and ask it to give off water.

Moses, himself having a bad day, strikes the rock instead. Water still comes out, just like before. But because they did not do exactly as God ordered, even though they DID follow instructions God had given in the same circumstance previously, and the place was given exactly the same name as was given in Exodus 17(!), both Moses and Aaron are condemned to die without entering the Promised Land. Aaron is dead by the end of the chapter; Moses doesn’t die until the end of the next book! Besides the obvious textual challenges here, most of us modern readers walk away shaking our heads at the imbalance in the punishments for what does not strike most of us to be a capital offense!

The remainder of the portion deals with 3 separate instances in which the Israelites attempted to pass through neighboring kingdoms peacefully, only to be rebuffed in all 3 cases. All of which led to unnecessary battles, all won by our ancestors who fought with God on their side on these occasions. On the surface, at last we have something simple and obvious.

However, 35 years ago, at one of our URJ camps, one of my students got up to do the D’var Torah on this portion for the kids and the camp. He could’ve picked the red heifer, or striking the rock, and done amazing things with either. Not this kid – he was too funny, too clever, too creative. And what he did completely changed how I viewed the end of this portion forever. Here is how he began:

Imagine it is a quiet Sunday morning, you are sitting on your back porch, drinking a leisurely cup of coffee, reading the morning paper. Suddenly, there is a knock at your front door. An old, scraggly guy, walking with a walking stick, and covered with what seems like 40 years of dirt and dust, smiles at you and says, “Hi. My name is Moses. God is taking us to the Promised Land. Do you mind if I, and my 600,000 close friends, pass through your back yard to get there? Thanks. Oh, and can we use the restrooms as we pass through?”

When we all stopped rolling on the floor in laughter, we realized – the only logical answer was NO. What had, a minute earlier, seemed like an easy story to explain why God wanted these peoples punished, now, suddenly, was as difficult to accept as the other two with which it was paired in this portion!

So what are we modern readers to do? 3 stories – each of them terribly difficult to accept in the form in which we receive it – lumped together in a single portion. How do we retain our faith in a text tradition that includes this material? What possible valuable lessons can we learn that will make our lives today better?

And then it hit me – in the midst of this cornucopia of sports goodies, at the same moment our elected leaders are still failing to solve any of the significant issues which cried out for change during the last election cycle. The President FINALLY takes control of the Gulf fiasco publicly, and his enemies accuse him of using the tragedy to push his environmental and alternative energy agenda. This guy – the leader of our country -- can do nothing right in the eyes of too many, and nothing he does can be right in the eyes of his enemies, who seem to have forgotten that the office is entitled to respect no matter what.

Maybe we have had our attention deflected by the spectacle of wondering about Tiger Wood’s return to greatness to enjoy the natural beauty of the Monterrey Peninsula, and marvel at the ability to make a golf course SO difficult that NONE of the world’s best can tame it. Maybe we are so stunned and aggravated by the ineptitude of a referee from Mali which might be the difference between the US moving on in the World Cup or not, that we have lost sight of both the incredibly sublime physical gifts being displayed by all of the players (even a British goalkeeper!) in this showcase, or how even the United States has now caught on and joined solidly into the closest thing we Earthlings have to a unifying ritual (certainly this does it better than the Olympics!). Maybe we were too busy lamenting the spectacle without substance that was the NBA Finals – where even a marquee Game 7 between the iconic foes became an exhibition of poor offense and thug defense, the victory overtaken all too quickly by the personal celebration of a single bit player who just a couple of years ago was suspended for a season for going into the stands and punching a fan during a game, to think about how teamwork overcame individual effort to create victory in the one team sport MOST glorified for its individual accomplishments.

Or, on the flip side, maybe we are still so bedazzled by the wonder of what Stephen Strasburg already is, and the fantasy of what he could become at any time, that we have not yet realized that the rest of this team is pretty descent, and that the culture around the Washington Nationals has changed, and elevated the status of the entire city.

In other words, if we are normal, we have let ourselves miss the real stories, the one with a moral and a value, in each of these recent events. Our elected leaders continue to deserve scorn, for doing exactly the same thing, over and over again.

But, isn’t that EXACTLY what we are doing with these Biblical stories – getting lost in the outrageous details, and missing the bigger more important picture?! What matters is that there IS a purifying agent, so being rendered impure is not a permanent state, and one can come back into the full life of the community – IF ONE FOLLOWS THE RULES FOR DOING SO! What matters is not that Moses' punishment seemed unjustified, or even that beating the rock worked, and was the method that worked before, but rather that two great leaders, by their own actions, demonstrated that they were no longer fully fit to lead the people to God – a role which leaves far less room for error than most. What matters is not that God is fighting on our side, but that even when God is, others have certain inalienable rights that even we cannot take away from them, chief among them is the right to be comfortable and safe in our own -- their own -- homes.

And so, although sometimes we MIGHT do a better job teaching these lessons with negative examples than positive ones, it doesn’t change the lessons. We must all strive for perfection in all we do – not with the intent of succeeding, because no one is perfect except God, but rather with the intent of doing the best we can, rather than giving up because our quest is unattainable. We must all strive for purity of deeds – not for our own public aggrandizement, but for the sake of those with whom we come in contact, and their protection and elevation. Because the minute we can no longer depend on someone else to do all that they can, the minute we give anyone reason to doubt us, then our entire system breaks down into chaos – every bit as much as the chaos flowing out of that struck stone.

Moses may have committed an understandable and small mistake in not following directions when they changed for a new circumstance. But, as our text makes clear, the BIG problem was that in doing so, he failed to take the opportunity to remind the people of God’ glory and might in a more peaceful and appropriate way for their experience, consistent with the role they were being groomed for. Instead of helping to reinforce their faith in God and Moses and each other, he lowered everyone’s expectations. And that was the unforgiveable. I think! KYR

We're baaaaaaaack!!!!!!

2010-10-04T19:27:00.001-07:00

I know, I know -- the worst thing for a corner of the blogosphere to do is to go silent and not update for four months :( The summer, and then the Jewish holy days were both NOT conducive to serious blogging -- but they have produced a wealth of material to share.

Now that the Holy Days ARE over, we are all back. In the coming days, this space will be catching up on my sermon posts, especially those from the Holy Days. Once that is done, we can start to add the type of additional materials you have come to expect -- questions of Jewish significance, updates on Israel, and the like.

So, get back into the habit of checking often... and thanks for sticking with us!

Another New Weis Man Blog

2010-06-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

It has been a very productive week here in the Weis Man portion of the blogosphere. I am excited to welcome into the fold my old college buddy, James Schwartz, whose blog, "A Sporting Chance," is now appearing here under my banner.

Jim was the sports editor of our college paper, and brings the same passion today that he did all those years ago. Some of his postings will take on the sacred cows of sports -- the fat cats, the disproven mythologies, the unacknowledged weaknesses needing address. Others, as I belief his first effort here demonstrates, will help us regain prespective after significant sports events, and even draw from them valuable life lessons. Still others will be designed to provoke discussion and debate, even argument, among fans. All as a good sports blog should.

Please join me in welcoming and supporting my old and dear friend, Jim Schwartz, and his new blog! As with the other parts of the empire -- all are linked on the lower right hand of this page, and will eventually all be cross-linked to one another :)

Responding to the "Gaza Flotilla" Situation

2010-06-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

I thought long and hard about the word to follow the quotes in the title. I also wanted to wait and see what we would learn over time, before rushing in to respond in a difficult moment.

But then, a college student who received a significant amount of his Jewish education in our religious school posted the following status on his facebook page (in keeping with editorial policy of this blog, the names are removed to protect user privacy):

Dear Israel, I usually stand by your decisions but I have to say I think you may have jumped the gun on this one here. Just don't give hezzballah a reason to shoot up Haifa again. L'shalom me

To which I felt compelled to respond as follows:

...check your facts before jumping to conclusions -- take a look at the Ha'aretz article on my page in particular... it appears that, as usual, there are a lot of layers to peel away on this one to get to the truth. It is starting to look very much like many other recent decisions -- more blame is due to the inciters than to Israel (as usual), world ignores the depths of the incitement (as usual), Israel offers peaceful alternatives, which are refused/ignored (as usual), so Israel attacks and draws bad press (as usual). It remains to be seen a)whether the accusations of unnecessary force stand up to scrutiny (they usually don't), or b) whether Hizbullah or some other group uses this as the excuse they have been waiting for to attempt to open up a new can of w[orms] on innocent Israeli settlers near the borders. But remember, if not this, it will be the next "incident" precipitated by the other side that will be used against Israel...

And then I braced myself for the onslaught -- which thankfully has not yet come. But with the benefit of hindsight a day later, I do regret my use of the word "attack" -- the evidence is already fairly quickly coalescing, with plenty of visual evidence, that the Israelis boraded all 7 ships peacefully, for the purpose of inspecting the cargo. Only on the 7th ship, after significant physical provcation, did the Israelis use their arms.

So I was gratified today to see the following -- which I HIGHLY recommend -- from Daniel Gordis (with whom I do NOT always agree):

http://danielgordis.org/2010/05/31/facebook-meets-the-flotilla/

in which, still admitting that he is jumping into a response before all the facts are in, he comes to roughly the same place that I did, more eloquently, and in more detail. But, along the way, he also offers what appears to be a stinging indictment of many of us in America, that may deserve much more of our attention at another time...

I also provide for you these links to more details -- admittedly from the Israeli side, and not necessarily in an unbiased form:

http://virtualjerusalem.com/news.php?Itemid=2953

which reports that most, if not all of the aid that had been downloaded from the flotilla and brought to the Gaza border is now languishing there, as no one is coming to pick it up!

and

http://virtualjerusalem.com/news.php?Itemid=2954

for video and other factoids relating to this unfortuante circumstance;

and finally, in the interests of full disclosure, this is the Ha'aretz link I referred to in my initial response above (there are better pieces on the subject from Ha'aretz than this article -- it was the one I had just read when responding:

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-transfers-hundreds-of-gaza-flotilla-activists-to-airport-for-deportation-1.293634

For the record (not that most would care), here is my "official" response (as of today!):

As a Rabbi, and as a Jew, I mourn the deaths and injuries which occurred to both sides when the Israeli military attempted to board, for inspection, the ships of the so-called "Gaza Flotilla." It is sad, but hardly surprising, that so-called "humanitarian aid workers" on one of the ships attacked Israeli soldiers, whose arms were shouldered, immediately upon boarding, in some cases even taking the Israelis' weapons and using them against them. While others may choose to be unsurprised in support of those on the ship who are being cast as "defending themselves" from an "illegal" boarding in International waters, my lack of surprise stems from the common tactic of Hamas, Hizbullah and other anti-Israel terrorist organizations, who routinely hide behind innocent civilians and humanitarian efforts to gain access and cover to Israeli targets, knowing that Israel trains and practices far beyond ANY other military on the planet, to avoid injuries and damage to civilians, even to the point of endangering her own soldiers in the process. I note as well the failure, to date, of the Hamas regime in Gaza to pick up those humanitarian supplies that Israel has brought from the ships to the border.

As an American, I cannot fully understand the pressures, both internal or external, on the Israeli government and her people, which led the Netanyahu government to sanction this risky operation, that subjects Israel to tremendous external condemnation and pressure. However, I CAN understand that those who are rushing to condemn Israel for her actions have not had the chance to learn all the facts, and hardly rush to judgment with clean hands themselves, or in an unbiased manner.

I am saddened that the effort towards legitimate mutual recognition between Israel and her Palestinian neighbors, and towards true and lasting peace in that region of the Middle East, have taken a precipitous step backwards, and call upon all parties to reverse this course away from a negotiated peace that can be the only legitimate solution for all parties concerned. I condemn the calculated efforts of those who would use this conflict for their own perverse political ends, and those who rush to judgment without all the facts -- all of whom do more damage to the already wounded peace process than this incident itself.

I myself will look forward to learning the truth about this incident, as the facts become known, and will withhold all further judgments until the facts ARE known.

The Power of Memory

2010-06-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

Zikaron – The Power of Memory --
D’var Torah for Parshat B’ha’alotekha and Memorial Day Weekend
Rabbi Steve Weisman – Temple Solel, Bowie MD May 28, 2010

As we pick up our Torah portion for this Shabbat, the final details of serving the central, albeit movable, shrine in the Wilderness are put into place, and for the first time since God appeared to us all on Mt. Sinai to give us the Law, our ancestors are going on the move. It is the first day of a new year (counting from the spring), either the first celebrated in freedom, or the second. it is a fascinating thing about the dates during the Exodus – the dates, all counting from our escape, are not entirely clearly expressed, so both possibilities are reasonable.

By the end of the portion that starts so hopefully, the entire community has lapsed back into its all too familiar pattern – the people kvetched about EVERYTHING! There is a general outcry, and one that leads to the giving (again!?) of manna. This latter leads God to have Moses call together 70 elders, so God might call them on the carpet. But while this was happening, 2 others, left behind in the camp, start to prophesy. When Joshua, serving as Moses’ Rahm Emanuel, heard this, he became incensed. But Moses calmed him, and pointed out how great it would be if EVERY Israelite had the power of prophecy.

Then God provided quail, to further assuage the grumbling hunger of the people, who became so gluttonous, that a plague broke out against them. And finally, even Aaron and Miriam were moved to call out Moses publicly, allegedly over his marriage to a Cushite woman, but more likely as a challenge to his sole leadership. Interestingly, in this last incident, although clearly BOTH Aaron and Miriam were involved, only Miriam was punished by God.

It is already clear, well in advance of next Shabbat’s fiasco with the 10 spies, that our ancestors’ behavior was already questionable enough to make God consider killing them off as unworthy to enter the Promised Land. It is already clear that, beloved and respected though he was by his people, Moses’ leadership still left something to be desired. In other words, the Torah is painting us a picture of our ancestors that is anything BUT idealized or airbrushed to hide the human blemishes. They are depicted in startlingly real and honest terms!

And so it is on this Shabbat evening in our own place and time. As we gather on this night of significance in American tradition, things are very similar for us as they were for our ancestors. The need for change in our national life, and the concerns for our national leadership that allowed a charismatic candidate who spoke so eloquently of change to become our President are still very real tonight, and fueling other calls for change that may not be so positively inspired or intended. We literally tonight sit here as the worst oil spill in history continues to contaminate the Gulf of Mexico, as the smoldering question of immigration reform is being thrust to the forefront of our national consciousness, and as few, if any actual changes for the better have yet to occur.

It is easy and tempting to draw the same conclusions about our leaders as many draw from our Torah text. Easy, but not necessarily accurate, or even useful. Because the truth is, in difficult times, until we can look inside ourselves and be sure that we are not part of the problem ourselves, we really don’t have a right to point the finger of blame at others. Yet the truth is that all too often, we do!

It is easy to blame the oil industry in general, and their most ardent supporters, especially those who set policy during the presidency of JR Ewing, er, the second George Bush, in particular, for the disaster in the Gulf. But the truth is, while BP deserves much blame, as do the sub-contractors, including the same Halliburton Corporation that has such strong connections to Dick Cheney, who authored that energy policy after meeting with his oil industry cronies, and then refused to allow anyone to know what transpired in their meetings, that a significant cause for this all-too-extended environmental nightmare is the lack of oversight from the regulatory apparatus of our government. The process of neutering those agencies’ abilities to protect we the people began with Reagan, but was not reversed, and was, in fact, accelerated, by Bill Clinton. It is, therefore, truly NOT a partisan political issue, but indicative of the larger nature of the problem.

But a significant part of the blame also must sit squarely on the shoulders of we, the people! We have NOT done anything significant to cure our own chemical dependency on petroleum products, especially gasoline for our cars and trucks, and therefore encouraged our co-dependent partners in the oil industry. Even now, in the midst of the outrage directed rightly against BP, there are still a large number of people who, when asked, not only won’t boycott BP until they start cleaning things up effectively, but who have said that if BP’s prices are the lowest, they will reward the company by buying their product!

Compare that to the fallout from the Exxon Valdez spill not that many years ago, which did so much damage to Exxon’s sales that they eventually were forced into a buy-out by Mobil, which many believe never should have been approved on anti-competitive grounds – yet another example of oversight failings!

Friends, it seems to me there is a larger issue here, one that underlies all the challenges we face today in our country. One which is the central message of this weekend, if not this Shabbat (although I find hints of it in the Torah portion as well). We are, as a country, suffering a failure of memory, that is allowing mistakes of the past to be repeated, with far greater damage in our more complex world.

And it begins with Memorial Day itself. NO ONE needs to be reminded that the pools all open this weekend. NO ONE needs to be reminded that this weekend has come to mark the official beginning of summer. Yet, more and more each year, or so it seems, we feel the need to consciously remind ourselves that the Memorial in Memorial Day refers to those who gave their lives to defend our country, to find ways of acknowledging those for whom the very holiday was created!

Zikaron – the importance of memory. Our Jewish tradition is centered in this core concept. The response of the generation that survived the greatest atrocity in human terms in history – the Sho’ah, the Holocaust – has been to make even more sacred the idea of remembering. Remembering, not just for the sake of having a record of what happened in the past. But real, active remembering that leads to pro-activity in the present to avoid repetition in the future. The exact embodiment of the antidote to Santayana’s lament about those who fail to learn the lessons of history being condemned to repeat them.

And it starts in no less significant a moment for us as Jews than the theophany at Sinai – when God gave us the Law. According to the text of Exodus 20, the commandment given by God at Sinai regarding Shabbat was to REMEMBER it, not, as we might have expected, to KEEP Shabbat (although THAT IS the verb in the repetition that appears in Deuteronomy!). Shabbat, as important as it is in its own right – so much so that Ahad Ha’am, the Russian Jewish writer and Zionist philosopher of the late 19th century, so famously wrote “More than Israel has kept the Sabbath has the Sabbath kept Israel!” – is framed, from the start, as being a remembrance of something even more fundamental in our history.

Or, more exactly, a remembrance of two of the three core incidents that define Judaism – the Creation of the world, and the Exodus from Egypt (the third, of course, being the actual receipt of the Law at Sinai of which this verse is a part!). I deliberately held the recitation of Qiddush tonight for its former place in the service – following the sermon – to allow us all to focus on the words we recite each Shabbat.

Look carefully at the text we chant together – the Qiddush basically has 2 parts, the second of which is almost an exact repetition of the first! There are exactly 2 differences. The first is the person by which we refer to God – the third person in the earlier part, the more intimate second person – You – in the latter. The second is the rationale given for why we celebrate Shabbat – ziqaron l’ma’asei V’reishit , a remembrance of the Creation – in the first part, and zeicher litziyat Mitzrayim – to remember the Exodus from Egypt – at the close.

Clearly, memory matters in Judaism. The transmission to future generations of the events of previous ones, and an understanding of those events, is essential for Jewish survival. Even in the greatest attempt to end Judaism since the Exodus, the natural Jewish response has been – to REMEMBER. Not simply to retell the events, however tragic and ghoulish. But to remember for the purpose of doing our darnedest to make sure that no one else ever suffers as we were forced to!

It is this concept of proactive remembering that I find lacking in our day. Only in this generation could a phrase like “That is SO last year!” gain traction as a legitimate negative criticism of an idea or behavior. For all our pining for nostalgia, we strive in our lives for “new and improved.” How else do we explain the compulsive need of so many to be the first to have a new technology – even before it has been fully debugged, or to be the first to see the hot new movie, or read the hot new book, or download the hot new song.

And so, I propose tonight, a terribly Jewish response to the challenges of our day. I propose that we take this Memorial Day weekend, and declare an embargo against moving forward – whether precipitously or otherwise! That we agree that we will do NOTHING new, but revel in the present and the past. That REMEMBERING will be the challenge of the weekend – refocusing ourselves on our core ideals, and recommitting that when we do move forward after the weekend, our actions will be in consonance with those ideals. No more progress for the sake of moving forward. No more rushing to get something done ahead of others, without doing our fullest due diligence to avoid later problems.
Remember those Ozzie and Harriet, Andy Griffin days when quality mattered more than how quickly we got things done. Remember the days when workers didn’t have to be told to make sure they were doing things right – they did so automatically, because otherwise they’d be looking for a new job. Where did they go? We need them back!

If our ancestors had learned these lessons, they wouldn’t have kvetched about being hungry, and earned God’s wrath. If they had remembered being hungry, the manna would have been enough, and they wouldn’t have demanded more, wouldn’t have been guilty of the gluttony that led to plague.

If America had remembered the failures of Jimmy Carter as president, we might have been more careful about the kind of change and change manager we voted for as President. If we don’t learn the lessons we are facing now, I fear that the next time around, the groundswell for change will be far greater. And, as important as it is for us to change and fix what is wrong in our national life, too great an effort at change too quickly – the “revolutionary” approach being pushed by the “Tea-Party” movement, risks making a bad situation far worse. Memory teaches me that. Memory makes me concerned when I see the signs of past mistakes being repeated.

On this Shabbat of remembering that which SHOULD be important, we need to make sure the message of the importance and power of memory is what we stress.

2 exciting new Spin-Off Blogs

2010-06-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

We here at the Weis Man Empire in the blogosphere are always looking for ways to expand our reach and our readership.

Today we are excited to announce the launch of 2 new blogs -- both linked here already thru my profile.

The first is called "The Driving Force" and is a very serious undertaking. Orange Vest Guy has come out of retirement, persuaded that he has, perhaps, found a meaningful way to help influence driving safety in and around Bowie for the better. Check him out, and help the cause, at http://drivingforcebowie.blogspot.com

The second is a much lighter effort, the undertaking of my old friend L.P. Trax, called "Old Guys Playin Rock and Roll." It will be a site for discussion and debate about music of the last 5 decades (ouch that hurt to write!), as well as a place for concert news and reviews. http://oldguysplayinrocknroll.blogspot.com

As always, enjoy all the offerings found here -- and spread the word -- these two new sites will work best with much larger readership!