My Mother is at the Bridge Table  by Leslea Newman

My mother is at the bridge table with
Loretta, Gert
and Pearl, when my father
finds his way to Heaven.

“Sit down, dear,” she says,
patting the seat beside her
and barely looking up from the hand

she’s been dealt. “The game is
almost through.” But my father is
too overcome to sit. He stands

and stares at his beloved, free
of wheelchair and oxygen tank
happily puffing away

on a Chesterfield King
held between two perfectly
manicured fingers, sipping

a cup of Instant Maxwell
House, leaving a bright red
lip print on the white china cup

her hair the lovely chestnut brown
it was the day they met,
her face free of worry

lines, the diamond pendant
he bought her on their first trip
to Europe glittering

against her ivory throat.
She looks like the star
of an old black-and-white movie
who would never give him
the time of day but somehow
spent 63 years by his side.

“I missed you,” my father
tells my mother, leaning down
to kiss her offered cheek.

“Of course you did,”
says my mother, who always
knows everything.

She plays her cards
right, and after Loretta and Pearl
and Gert fold, she stands to let

my father take her in his arms
and in their heavenly bodies
they dance

 “My Father” by Yehuda Amichai

The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands
overflowed with good deeds.

“Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

“My Father Was God” by Yehudah Amichai

My father was God and did not know it. He gave me 

the ten
commandments neither in thunder nor in fury, neither in fire nor in cloud 

but
in gentleness and in love. He added caresses and added kind words

 adding, “I
beg you,” and “please.” He sang “keep and remember”

 in a single melody and he
pleaded and cried quietly between one commandment and the next:

 Don’t take your
God’s name in vain; don’t take it, not in vain.

 I beg you, don’t bear false
witness against your neighbor. He hugged me tightly and whispered

 in my ear 

Don’t steal. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t murder. And he put the palms of his
open hands

 on my head with the Yom Kippur blessing. Honor, love, in order that
your days might be long

 on the earth. And my father’s voice was white like the
hair on his head. 

Later, he turned his face to me one last time

like on the day
he died in my arms and said, “I want to add

 two to the ten commandments: The
eleventh commandment: Don’t change. 

The twelfth commandment: You must surely
change.

 So said my father and then he turned from me and went off 

disappearing
into his strange distances.

“My Father was God” Translated by Rabbi Steven Sager z’l  sichaconversation.org

Photo by Time Mossholder on Unsplash.com

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Comedian Seth Rogan

A couple of years ago, the actor and comedian Seth Rogan caused consternation across the Jewish world, when, in an interview, he asserted that as a student in Hebrew school he had been “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel….. They never tell you that ‘Oh, by the way, there were people there’. They make it seem like it was just like sitting there, like the door’s ….open.” Rogan acknowledged the pervasive and prevalent presence of antisemitism, but then questioned the wisdom of a Jewish state idea from the standpoint of Jewish Survival. “You don’t keep something you are trying to preserve all in one place,” he said. 

Let’s entertain Seth Rogan’s position for a moment.  Jews spread out around the world increase the likelihood that if one community is destroyed other communities survive. Interesting.  For others, however, Israel is the very symbol of safety and security. Life in the Diaspora, they claim, is unstable, precarious, and full of peril for Jews and Jewish communities. As Tevye holds forth in “Fiddler on the Roof”:

“But here in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof, trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy. You may ask, why do we stay up there if it’s so dangerous? We stay because Anatevka is our home…”

In this view, the State of Israel gives the would-be residents of Anetevka and other places like it the choice of having a new home, one perhaps not quite as dangerous and perilous, one in which one can do more than scratch out a life and a living, one in which Jews could live in dignity and prosperity. . But Seth Rogan is saying, and many may agree with him, that putting all of our Jewish eggs in one basket is way too risky. 

For others, statehood and political sovereignty are distractions from the higher calling of Judaism to be a vehicle for “the redemption of the human spirit and the salvation of the world”.

In this view, Judaism has flourished, grown, and changed through a rich exchange with our non-Jewish neighbors with whom we have  lived side by side for the past 2000 years. In exile we have lived by our texts and developed rich values and a Torah perspective on life.  Being mired in the day-to-day details of running a sovereign country and the compromises in values that running a nation state involves surely interferes with fulfilling the lofty values to which Judaism aspires. 

In this week’s Torah portion, we get yet another insight into the meaning of Israel for Jews. The Israelites are on the border with Canaan. Moses sends 12 scouts to reconnoiter the land. When the scouts return, ten of them report that it will be too difficult to conquer the Land. Upon hearing this, the Israelites rebel. They want to return to the safety of Egypt, the security of slavery. Upon hearing this, two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb, tear their clothing and urge the people onward. “We can conquer the Land,” they exhort, “Have faith in God.” But the people ignore their pleas. 

What is the meaning of Joshua and Caleb tearing their clothing? It is a sign of mourning, of devastating loss. Later on, when the Israelites realize the gravity of their refusal to enter the Land of Canaan, they too go into mourning.  

When do we go into mourning? When we have lost someone dear to us. To this day clothing, or a symbolic substitute such as a ribbon worn on the clothing, are torn when our nearest and dearest on earth lay dead before us at the funeral. This is called “keriya”. The tear is made on the left side, above the heart, for our parents and on the right side for the five other relatives for whom mourning is obligatory. When Jacob believes that his dearest son Joseph has been killed by wild beasts, the Torah tells us he tears his clothing. Here, Joshua and Caleb tear their clothing and the entire People of Israel go into deep mourning over the loss of the Land of Canaan in their generation. 

This then gives us a hint about how important the Land of Israel is to the Jewish People. What, after all, are God’s first words to Abraham when he appears to him? “Lech Lecha – Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, from your fathers house to the land that I will show you.” There, in the Land of Israel, God promises to make Abraham into a great nation. If I were a deity wanting to begin a relationship with a 75 year old man, the very last thing I would ask of him is to move his family thousands of miles away to a land I will show him when he gets there!  But so important is the Land to the relationship between God and the future Jewish people that God starts there with Abraham. 

When the Jewish people are liberated from Egypt, it is not simply so that they can no longer be slaves. It is not simply so that they can receive the Torah. The entire point of the liberation is that Moses will lead them to the Land that God promised to their ancestors. The Jewish people, the Torah and the Land of Israel is a three legged stool upon which the covenant is based. One without the other two does not work. Many of the commandments cannot be performed outside of the Land of Israel. The sages even go so far as to say that those who live outside of the Land of Israel have no God! All this is to say that, in this view, the Land of Israel is inextricably connected to Torah and the Jewish People. This is why Caleb and Joshua tear their clothing. This is why the Israelites go into deep mourning. Losing the opportunity to settle the Land was spiritual death. They believed that Judaism could not survive, that the promise to Abraham could not be fulfilled without establishing sovereignty in the Land. 

Although we did not have sovereignty over the Land for our 2000 years in exile, the hope – Ha Tikvah –  of a return to the Land was kept alive generation after generation in the Diaspora. The return to the Land of Israel in our times is therefore seen, by those who hold this view, as nothing less than the first step in God’s redemptive plan for humanity as a whole. The return of the People of Israel to the Land of Israel thus has profound religious significance. Or as one Rabbi recently put it, “Without Zionism there is no Judaism”. 

Where do you stand – what do you believe? Do you believe that the “ingathering of the exiles” represents an existential threat to the Jewish people, as Seth Rogan opined? Or is the State of Israel the last best hope of the Jewish People for survival in a hostile world? Is having a State and exercising Jewish sovereignty a “distraction” from our mission, or is it the best way to fulfill it? Does the modern State of Israel have religious significance for Judaism, and the world, or is it merely a political means for exercising Jewish power and self-determination? Perhaps you believe a little bit of all of these. It is from understanding the questions that intelligent conversation can begin.

Shabbat Shalom

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Gerry Mendelssohn, our congregation librarian for 40 years, was honored at our Friday night services last week. When an Englishman wants to write a poem of praise, he writes an “Ode”. When a Rabbi wants to write a song of praise, he must write a “Psalm”. But how does one write a psalm? There are 150 Psalms in the Book of Psalms, which is a good place to start learning. So, I went to the Book of Psalms for inspiration. I found it in Psalms 21 and 139.

A Psalm of Gerry Mendelssohn

I lift mine eyes unto the bookstacks,

From where does my help come?

My help comes from Gerry Mendelssohn,

Librarian of Beth Shalom.

Gerry will not let you borrow a book

Without first checking it out.

Gerry is the Protector of Books.

Our Guardian of Books 

Neither slumbers nor sleeps.

Plastic covers adorn her right hand

At her left — the Dewy Decimal System.

You don’t return a book?

Gerry will track you down.

Where can I escape from you Gerry?

Where can I flee from your Presence?

If my book is overdue, you are there.

If I misplace it, you are there too.

Your right hand holding me responsible.

If I say to myself, “Surely being a Rabbi will provide me with cover,

“Surely, in my position Gerry will look away.”

But my being a Rabbi is nothing to you,

To you, being a Rabbi and being a congregant are the same.

Gerry, if you would only go after the wicked,

Those who write notes in the margins.

I count them as my enemies as well! 

I praise you Gerry

Your work is wonderful

I know it very well. 

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Rabbi Elliot Dorff tells the story of how he was once on a
plane from Boston to Los Angeles when he struck up a conversation with the man
sitting next to him. This man lived in Newton, a suburb of Boston in which many
Jews live. Neither he nor his family was Jewish, but his thirteen-year-old
daughter had many Jewish friends from her public school, and she was invited to
many Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations that year. His fellow passenger told
Rabbi Dorff that he would usually just drop his daughter off for the service
and then pick her up later that afternoon when she called him, but once he
decided to stay for the service. Rabbi Dorff asked him what he thought of the
service. The man exclaimed, “I loved it!” Rabbi Dorff asked him what
he loved about it. The man said, “Well, you have a book at every seat with
a red cover that has the Bible and a whole host of commentaries and so I sat
there for three hours reading those commentaries.” Rabbi Dorff asked him,
“Don’t you have such commentaries in the Bibles in your church?”
asked Rabbi Dorff. “What are you talking about?” he said to Rabbi
Dorff. “I am a Methodist. Sola scriptura – the Scripture alone is what we
are given and are supposed to read.” 

We Jews, of course, have a different way of reading scripture,
mediated through the understanding of our rabbis. At the conclusion of the Book
of Malachi, the final prophetic book of the Tanakh, God enjoins us, through
Malachi  to  זכרו תורת משה עבדי  “Remember the Torah of Moses my servant”. We
have to ask ourselves, “Why ‘Remember the Torah of Moses My servant’
and not ‘Remember My Torah’ or ‘Remember the Torah of God’?”

We recall at Sinai the people the people trembled and were
afraid that they would die if they heard the voice of G0d directly. “For who is
there of all flesh, who heard the voice of the living God speaking from the
midst of the fire, as we have, and lived?” In Shabbat 88b R. Joshua b. Levi
teaches that when Israel heard the voice of God directly, their souls
departed.  God brought them back to life
with the dew that God will use to resurrect the dead in Messianic times. Chastened
by that experience, the people begged Moses to act as an intermediary for them.

 “You approach, and
hear all that Adonai our God will say, and you speak to us all the Adonai our
God will speak to you, and we will hear it and do it.” The Kadosh Baruch Hu
agrees. הטיבו כל אשר דברו – “they did well to speak thus,” He tells Moshe.

Shavuot is called “Z’man Matan Toratenu”, the “Time of the
Giving of the Torah”. But who is doing the “giving”? It is clear that Am
Yisrael, the People of Israel, could only receive the Torah through Moshe
Rabenu and not directly from God.

This then is why Malachi calls it “The Torah of Moses” and
not “The Torah of God.” It was Moses who gives the Torah to the People of
Israel through his teaching and interpretation. It was through Moses that
Israel accepts the Torah. Our tradition thus warns of the peril of “sola
scriptura” – of interpreting and trying to understand the Torah as the
unfiltered Word of God, on one’s own, unmediated by tradition. That is why our
Chumashim have a “whole lot of commentaries” that so fascinated Rabbi Dorff’s
seatmate. Our Rabbis teach that the Torah was written “With black fire on white
fire”. It is as if they are warning us, “Be careful, you might get burned. There
is danger in trying to understand Torah on one’s own.” It is a reminder of the
crucial role Rabbis continue to have to teach and transmit the Torah to the
People of Israel.

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Shaar Shechem

Today is Yom Yerushalayim- Jerusalem Day. Fifty-six years ago
today, Israeli forces entered the Old City of Jerusalem. For the first time in
2000 years, the Holy City of Jerusalem fell under Jewish sovereignty. Here is how it happened:

When the 6-day war broke out in 1967, Israel was attacked
from all sides. Israelis truly did not know whether the country would survive.
Mass graves were dug in Tel Aviv for 14,000 people. It was nothing short of
miraculous that Israel’s military prevailed in each and every place. Then it
was time for the battle of Jerusalem.

In 1948 Jerusalem was declared an international city by the
United Nations. It was to be a free city, open to Jews, Muslims and Christians.
However, the country of Jordan conquered the city, expelled all of its Jewish
residents, destroyed all of the synagogues and places of Jewish study in the
old city, and forbid Jews to live there or enter. For 19 years Jordanian
snipers used the walls of the old city to target Jewish residents of West
Jerusalem. It was now time to address this grave injustice. Israeli soldiers
were poised to mount an assault on the Old City of Jerusalem.

The Old City of Jerusalem is surrounded by a wall. There are
seven gates through which one can enter. Nobody knew through which gate the
soldiers would come through. So, each gate came before God to plead that the
soldiers should enter through them.

The Jaffa Gate came before God: “I have two roads that begin
at my gate. One of them leads to Hevron, the burial place of Abraham and Sarah,
Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. The other leads to Jaffa, from where Jonah fled
from God and was swallowed by the whale. I am the worthiest gate through which
the soldiers should enter!”

The Gate of Shechem came before God:  “When the people of Israel were about to cross
the border into Canaan, Moses commanded that some tribes stand on Mount Gerizim
as the people were being blessed, and some tribes stand on Mount Eval while the
people were being cursed. The road to Mount Gerizim and Mount Eval begins at my
gate. All of the curses have been fulfilled; now it is time for the blessings.
Choose me!”

The Zion Gate said: “I am the gate after whom the holy city
is named – Zion. Let the Israeli soldiers enter the Old City through me!”

The Dung Gate said: “Through me generation after generation
threw their refuse and I said, “The trash of Jerusalem is more precious than
all the jewels of the rest of the world!” When, if not now, will you fulfill
the Biblical verse of the Psalms: Me-ashpot Yarim Evyon – God lifts the
poor out of the dust/the needy from the rubbish heap/ and sits them with the
powerful/the powerful of His people.”

The Gate of Flowers said, “When the soldiers pass through me
I will pluck my flowers and crown their heads with garlands.”

The Gate of Mercy cried, “It was through me that, according
to Jewish lore, the Shechinah, God’s presence, would return to Jerusalem. The
enemies of the Jews sealed me up in order to prevent this. Isn’t it fitting that
the Jewish people should return through me?”

Only the Lion Gate was silent, until they urged her to step
forward.

“I see how the youth of Israel are falling by the fire of our
enemies. Come through whichever gate you will come but let not one more soldier
be wounded!”

The Kadosh Barukh Hu said, “Since the Lions Gate did not boast
of its value but was more concerned about the lives of the soldiers, I have
decided that the army of Israel will enter the Old City through this gate. Those
who are as courageous as lions will enter through the Lions Gate!

No sooner had those words been uttered that the soldiers of
Israel broke through the Lions Gate and headed to the Western Wall.

(This midrash was written by Yitzchak Navon, the fifth President
of the State of Israel)

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

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As many of you know last Wednesday was Yom Ha-Atzmaut,
Israel Independence Day, the 75th anniversary of the State of Israel’s birth as
a nation.  On that day, my class from the One Year Program from Hebrew
University in Jerusalem had a reunion online. In 1972 we were  mostly
nineteen, twenty years old, college Juniors, studying a year abroad in
Jerusalem. We were six hundred strong, from all over the United States and
Canada. This was our first class reunion, ever. Most of us had not seen, or
heard, from one another in 50 years. The One Year Program never tried to stay
in touch with the members of our class, so it was hit or miss on who we could
find. Of the 60 people online, I could remember only a handful. Yet, for all of
us, I believe, the reunion brought back powerful memories of one of the most
significant years in our lives. 

Fifty years ago, at Israel’s 25th birthday, her population
was 3 million. Today, it is 10 million. Fifty years ago, it cost $30 a minute
to make a phone call home. That would be $215 a minute in today’s economy. No
wonder nobody ever called home! What I do have are over a hundred letters home
from that year that my mother kept. On May 9, 1972, Palestinian-inspired
Japanese terrorists murder 27 people at Lod Airport, now Ben-Gurion airport. I
recall being hyper-vigilant when I arrived at Lod airport 2 months later to
begin my year in Israel. In August of 1972 Bobby Fischer won the World Chess
Championship. On September 5 eleven Israeli athletes were murdered by a
Palestinian Terrorist group called Black September at the Munich Summer
Olympics. In November, Richard Nixon was re-elected President of the United
States in a landslide over George McGovern. On Israel Independence Day, 1973 my
friends and I attended the Independence Day parade in Jerusalem. Thousands of
soldiers marched by, from every branch of the military. Tanks rumbled down the streets,
belching smoke and chewing up the asphalt as they passed. Fighter jets deafened
us as they soared wing to wing overhead. This represented the height of
Israel’s confidence, pride, and power. The Six Day War five years earlier had
left Israel with an expanded territory and as the supreme military power in the
Middle East. It was a time of unsurpassed optimism about the future in
Israel. 

A few months later, in October 1973, when we were back in
the United States, Egypt launched a surprise attack against Israel that
shattered that confidence and severely challenged the idea, held in the
previous five years, that Israel was invincible. Israelis paid a terrible price
in that war – 2,700 dead, more than 7000 wounded, thousands of them permanently
maimed. The war brought down the leadership of the country. And never again
would Israel celebrate its independence with a military parade.  

A great deal has changed since those heady years of the
early 1970s. At the time, Israel was admired by much of the world as a David
slaying Goliath. Israelis were respected for their pluck and their courage, as
they prevailed over and over against more powerful forces who sought to destroy
them. The terrorism directed against Israeli civilians, adults and children alike,
evoked sympathy from most of the world. Today, Israel is seen by much of the
world as an oppressor of the Palestinian people, a Goliath subjugating the
national aspirations of the weaker party. Terrorists have become “freedom fighters”
or “guerillas”. Headlines proclaim that Israel is on the verge of becoming an
autocracy, that its judiciary will be so weakened by recent reforms proposed in
the Knesset that minority rights will not be protected.

I know that many of us feel disillusioned, bewildered, and confused
by Israel. Israel has not fulfilled the prophetic dream of being “a light unto
the nations” – at least not yet.  Indeed, these are challenging times,
worrisome times. But we must not lose our perspective and give up on Israel. We
cannot abandon Israel, just because we disagree with the policies of the
Israeli government. Our connection to the Land of Israel, our reborn
sovereignty on this land promised to us by God, is an essential part of the
Jewish story. Our bond to the Land of Israel is integral to our Jewish identity,
whether we identify as “religious” or “secular” Jews. From the time of
Abraham, the Jewish narrative has been linked to the Land of Israel. When God
takes us out of Egypt, now no longer a family, but a people, God leads us to
the land of Israel, the Land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Our fate is
inseparable from the Land. Indeed, in the Haftorah that Katie will chant
tomorrow morning, the Prophet Amos reaffirms the unique relationship between
the Jewish people and the land. God, speaking through Amos, says:

I will restore my people Israel,

They shall rebuild ruined cities and inhabit them.

They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,

They shall till gardens and eat their fruits.

And I will plant them upon their soil,

Nevermore to be uprooted

From the soil I have given them. 

In 1991, Avrum Harman, former Israeli ambassador to the
United Nations and President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, delivered a
speech. He said, “If I have one regret in all that I have done for this
country, it is the many times over the years that I addressed Jews and said to
them: this is the most challenging time in Israel’s history.  This is the
most dangerous time in Israel’s history.  This is the most exciting time
in Israel’s history.  I’ve said that so many times over the years, in ’48
and in ’67, with the PLO and Lebanon and the Intifada, I regret having ever
said it.  Because the truth is, right now is the most difficult, exciting
and challenging time in the history of the State of Israel.”

So much has happened in Israel since I was first there in
1972. Still more since Avrum Harman penned those words in 1991. God willing,
much more is yet to happen, until the end of time. But when we despair over the
difficulties and challenges that confront the Jewish state in our own time, let
us keep in mind the words of Psalm 122:

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem/May those who love you
prosper.

May there be peace within your walls/serenity within your
homes.

For the sake of my friends and companions/ I pray that
peace be yours.

For the sake of the House of Adonai our G-d/ I seek your
welfare.

Shabbat Shalom

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Many of our congregants, both in person, and via Zoom
attended our moving Holocaust Remembrance Service last Sunday.  Before I
share some of my thoughts about it, I would like to say a few words about the
origins for the idea of creating a Commemorative Holocaust Day. 

 In 1951 the government of Israel passed a law
designating the 27th of Nisan as “Holocaust and Ghetto Uprising Remembrance
Day.” In 1953, the day was officially named “Yom HaShoah ve-Ha-gevurah” –
Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day. Why “’Holocaust and Heroism’ Remembrance Day”, instead of simply “Holocaust Remembrance Day”? The answer can probably be
found in surveys taken in Israel in the 1950s that showed that
Israelis had little sympathy for Holocaust victims.  Most of the
participants in surveys believed that the victims of the Holocaust passively went to their deaths like sheep to slaughter. The Israelis admiration and sympathy, instead, was directed toward those who were able to
take up armed resistance against the Nazis – the fighters of the Warsaw
Ghetto  and other Ghettos, The Israelis admiration and sympathy also
focused on the Jewish partisans who fought the Nazis in the
hills and forests of Europe. In other words, we were to remember
victims and heroes, two different groups, but it was those who took up
armed resistance that were admired and held out as models to be emulated.

Of course, today we understand that the “victims” – those
who ended up in concentration camps – and “heroes” – those who took up armed resistance,
are not two different groups at all.  Today we recognize the concept of
“spiritual resistance”, the refusal of victims to acquiesce to the
dehumanization of their Nazi tormentors. This heroic resistance took the form
of holding on to one’s human dignity in the most unbearable and
unspeakable of situations. Our speaker on Sunday, Joyce Wagner, , never held a
gun in her hand. She never killed a Nazi. Yet this petite, frail, determined
woman, now age 100, is a true heroine, as true a heroine as those
heroes who fought and died in the Warsaw Ghetto. We were privileged and honored
to listen, in her own words, about the experience of this remarkable Holocaust
survivor.  

When do we call someone a hero? A hero is a person who
displays extraordinary courage, selflessness and nobility of character in the
face of danger. A hero is someone who maintains their moral integrity when they
are faced with corruption, deceit and depravity. A hero is someone who
perseveres in the face of immorality and degradation, wickedness and
evil. 

I doubt if Joyce Wagner considers herself a hero. If we
asked her about that, she would probably tell us that she was just doing what
she had to do as a daughter and as an older sister. She came to speak to us as
a personal witness to the atrocity that was the Holocaust. She came to remind
us, and to warn us, that the unthinkable is possible. That we need to be
vigilant. That we must do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening
again, not to Jews, not to anyone.  That love is more powerful than hate.
She taught us all that. And she showed us what a true hero looks like. She
taught us what heroism is. 

There were many moving parts of her story. One of 11
children, she was the only survivor. She vividly described How she hid her
sisters  and brother from the Nazis in her neighbor’s attic. How she
risked her life to bring a little food and money to her parents and two
sisters, Hava and Haya, ages 10 and 11, who were living on the Polish-Czech
border, hoping to be more protected from the Nazis.  In her book. A
Promise Kept to Bear Witness,  she tells about a time she resisted the
amorous advances of a Nazi guard who promised her a few days of freedom outside
of her slave labor camp in exchange for a favor.

The part that I feel will stay with me forever is how,
after losing everything, her home, her  parents, her beloved siblings, her
friends and extended family; after having been imprisoned and beaten and
starved and humiliated and almost worked to death, she had the opportunity to
reach out and touch the electrified wire of the concentration camp and to end
it all. Joyce  tells us that the face of her father appeared to her, her
father, a religious man, and her father said to her, “God gives life and God is
the only one who can take it away.”  And she pulled her hand away from the
electrified wire and chose to live. To choose life over death, to love deeply
while surrounded by dehumanizing  barbarity, to continue to believe in God
when the evidence of God’s existence is nowhere to be found, to rebuild a life
after years of  despair  – that is the ultimate  act of
heroism, I believe. 

I want to close by sharing the remarkable words of Aharon
Appelfeld. He was a famous Israeli writer who was born in Romania in 1932. When
he was eight years old, his mother was killed, and he and his father were sent
to a concentration camp. He escaped and spent three years in hiding, a child
alone moving from village to village. He reached Israel in 1946. 

He writes: 

“My reminiscences of the war, of the second world war—I
hope it will not surprise you—are of love, endless love. Anyone who was in the
Ghetto and saw mothers protecting their children, mothers not eating but
feeding their children, young boys staying with their parents, defending them
until the last minute, will understand. Asking myself from where do I derive my
writing force, I know that it is not from horror scenes but love scenes that
existed there, everywhere. My world was not formed by the executioner, it is
not dominated by an irreparable, endless evil; I remained with people, and I
loved them.”

Shabbat Shalom

The post What Is Heroism: Some Final Thoughts on Holocaust Memorial Day 2023 appeared first on Congregation Beth Shalom.

One of the central rituals of our seders comes right before
the meal. We are told that Rabban Gamliel, the first century sage, held that as
part of the seder we have to explain three symbols on our seder plate – the
Pesach, the Matzah and the Maror. The Pesach, or shank bone, represents the
Passover sacrifice that our ancestors ate before the Exodus. The Matzah
represents the flight from Egypt. The Maror represents the bitterness of the
experience of being slaves. But while Rabban Gamliel focuses on the national
and historic meaning of these symbols, I wonder if there are some other, more
personal meanings hidden within them.

The word Matzah is related to the root mem-tsadi-heh which
means “to squeeze”, or “to drain”. Matzah, therefore, can symbolize our basic
selves, squeezed, or drained of any pretention or pride. Matzah is a simple,
honest food. It symbolizes, therefore, the values of modesty and humility in
our own lives. It represents our “pure” internal state, where we can be our
“true selves”, free from any external, material influences, free from comparisons
with others. Matzah symbolizes the absence of the superficial in our lives, and
the ability to be “faithful to ourselves.”

The Maror represents the bitterness of slavery, but it also can
represent the difficulties in our own lives. We cannot avoid bitter moments in
our lives – times of loss, times of disappointments, sadness, and pain. They
are part of being human. Here, we not only partake of the bitterness, but we
also recite a blessing over it!  Perhaps
this is because, as Maimonides teaches, we can never know when those bitter
times will in fact turn out, in the longer run, to be a blessing. The eating of
the maror teaches us to look directly at the hard moments of life, without
fear, without evasion. Out of every difficulty we grow, we become strong in the
broken places.

The Pesach sacrifice was eaten in a communal setting, among
family, friends, and neighbors. Moses commands the Israelite slaves that each
family should set aside a kid or a lamb to sacrifice on the night of the 14^th
of Nisan. If the kid or lamb was too much for the family to consume in one
evening, they were to invite their friends and neighbors to the roasted meal. Thus,
the Passover sacrifice was not to be eaten by only one person alone. This reminds
us that it is with the help of family and friends, neighbors, and community
that we endure the bitter times in our lives.  The shank bone also symbolizes the mysterious
bonds that connect one Jew to the other, not only at this Passover, but to
Passovers throughout the ages, beginning with the very first observance of our
Festival of Freedom on that Egyptian night so many years ago.

Chag Sameach

The post Some Final Thoughts For Passover 5783 appeared first on Congregation Beth Shalom.

What is the main point of having a Seder? Tonight, I want to
challenge the idea that the seder held primarily so that we can remember the
Exodus from Egypt. Despite the fact that our Haggadah says that we are
obligated to tell about the Exodus from Egypt, and that “the more one tells the
story of the Exodus from Egypt the more one is to be praised” I’m not so sure
that the main purpose of having a seder is to tell the story and remember our
liberation.

First, we never actually tell the story of the Exodus from
Egypt in our Haggadah. There is no mention of the main protagonist of the
Exodus story, Moses, in all of the Haggadah. How can one tell the story of the
Exodus from Egypt while leaving out the central character of that very story!
Chronologically, we read tell the story of our oppression, how we were slaves
in Egypt, how God sent plagues against the Egyptians and so forth, but we never
read about the Jewish people leaving Egypt! We never read about them crossing
the Red Sea. We are told that God brought us out of Egypt, but we never read
about the drama associated with it. True, the Exodus from Egypt is referred to,
but it is not actually told.

Second, why do we need a Seder to remind us of the Exodus
from Egypt? Every morning, and every evening, we are reminded of the Exodus
from Egypt in our prayers. Every Friday night when we recite kiddush we say
that the Shabbat is “Zecher litsiat mitsrayim”, it is a remembrance of the
Exodus from Egypt. In fact, remembering the Exodus from Egypt is an obligation
that is met through the daily ritual of prayer, specifically in the mention of
the Exodus from Egypt in the third paragraph of the Shema that we recite daily,
morning and evening.

Rather than remembering the Exodus from Egypt, I think the
main purpose of the Seder is to teach our children to remember that they are
Jewish. The Seder is a vehicle toward creating and implanting indelible Jewish
memories into the minds of our children. The Seder is all about connecting children
to their parents and grandparents and from there to an awareness that our
lineage stretches all the way back to Abraham and Sarah.

What our children do with those memories, no parent can
control. Whether those memories determine how adult children live their lives
is beyond the reach of parents. Our children need to live their own lives. Whether,
and how, their lives unfold Jewishly we cannot determine. Yet, if we do our job
properly, our children will need to struggle with their Jewish identity as adults
even as they may submerge it. Here is a remarkable story that illustrates just
how that played out in one man’s life:

A Black African woman and a White European rabbi stand before
the grave of Walter Galler, born in London in 1885. The grave is in a Christian
cemetery in Namibia, Africa. The African woman is his widow. “He would be so happy
to know that a rabbi was visiting his grave,” the woman said, tears in her
eyes. The rabbi examines the tombstone. He notices some strange markings carved
above the name. On closer examination, he sees that these are Hebrew letters, written
upside down, and reading from left to right instead of right to left. He looks closer,
and sees that the letters spell out the words, “Kasher le Pesach” – Kosher for
Passover.

The woman explained that her husband had come from London
many years ago. They married but he never said anything about his being Jewish.
It was only on his deathbed that he told her that he was Jewish and that he
wanted that acknowledged at his grave.

He took out a box of Matzah that he had kept for years but
had never opened. It was the only Jewish item in his possession. He pointed to
the Hebrew words on the box – Kasher for Pesakh – and said, “Please engrave
this on my tombstone.” Those were his last words.

No matter how far this man travelled, physically and
psychologically, he could not forget that he was Jewish. Memory is a huge thing.
Here we have an entire holiday designed to instill Jewish memories. Memories
that we will carry with us the rest of our lives. Through these memories can
recall warm connections with parents, family and friends, no matter how far we
have travelled from them; memories that can guide us, inspire us, and even
haunt us. The memories that we take from our Seder can play a crucial role in
shaping who we become and how we relate to the world.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach

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We all know the familiar proverb, “Time is money.”  But in many ways, time is not like money at all. One cannot accumulate time; one cannot borrow time; and one can never tell how much more time one has left in the Bank of Life. Time can certainly be wasted, as money can.   We know that time well spent can yield returns far greater and more lasting than anything that money can buy. One might say that time is the most precious thing we have in life.

In his book The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel compared the ancient pagans’ glorification and sanctification of space, with Judaism’s elevation and sanctification of time. The Sabbath, he writes, that most distinctive creation of the Jewish spirit, creates a “palace in time.” Through observing the Sabbath the Jew feels transported and uniquely connected to the divine.

How, exactly, is the Jew “transported” and connected to the divine on Shabbat? I want to bring  this abstract idea to life with a story told by Rabbi David Hartman of blessed memory. Rabbi Hartman was a leading thinker among philosophers of contemporary Judaism and an internationally renowned Jewish author. I was fortunate to have had Rabbi Hartman as a professor in 1972 when I studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In honor of his tenth yahrzeit this year, “The Shalom Hartman Institute ” in Jerusalem, founded by Rabbi Hartman and named in memory of his father, put out a recording of an address he gave in 1995 at a Jewish Federation event in Washington DC. In it, he speaks of the transformative effect that the Sabbath had on his father:

Rabbi Hartman tells us that his parents were born in the yishuv, pre-state Palestine. His mother was from Tzfat, his father from Jerusalem. When they arrived in our  county in 1929, relatives told them to forget about their ideas of the Sabbath. This was America. If you don’t work, you don’t eat, they told them. Here one works seven days a week, they told them. But his mother wisely  insisted they keep the Sabbath day sacred. “Shalom”, said Rabbi Hartman’s mother to his father,, “The soul that we had when we lived in Jerusalem is gonna be the soul that we’re gonna have here, and this is how we’re gonna bring up the family.”

Rabbi Hartman’s father was a simple peddler in Brownsville, a Brooklyn neighborhood. Often when Rabbi Hartman, as a boy,  would ask him for some money for ice cream or a small toy, his father had to say no because he didn’t have the money. Sometimes he did not even have enough money for challah for the Sabbath table. Rabbi Hartman says that his father felt himself inadequate as a provider, a failure economically. However   I wonder  if it was perhaps Rabbi Hartman himself who saw his father as inadequate. After all, how could he, as a boy, know how his father felt about his life? 

And yet, when Shabbat came Rabbi Hartman saw his father transform and become a different person. His poverty, his humble work during the week, no longer appeared to define his sense of identity.  On Shabbat, Rabbi Hartman saw his father in a different light, as a man of stature, of dignity.  After sunset on Friday night, Rabbi Hartman’s father changed into his best clothes and he sat at the head of the table with a white tablecloth and the family’s finest dishes. He recited kiddush, washed his hands and said motzi. Rabbi Hartman’s mother would always serve him the head of the fish to symbolize that he was the head of the family. And after dinner he sang zemirot, Sabbath songs that he had heard from his father who had heard it from his father. 

As a child, Rabbi Hartman says that he had very little patience for all that singing. Yet, looking back as an adult, he marveled at the profound sense of  pride and sense of self-worth  the  observance of the Sabbath imbued in his father. He wondered, what gave this impoverished, down on his luck, barely surviving  peddler the ability to see himself in a totally different spirit, to be inspired  and uplifted by the Sabbath, “a space in time”.  
 What gave  my father  the ability to sing? he asked himself.  The ability to pray? The ability to study? The ability not to be defined purely by the check he would bring home at the end of the week? How did he refashion himself from a man struggling to support a family to the spiritual being he became on Shabbat? 

Perhaps our answer lies in another description of the power of the Sabbath by Heschel. He writes that the Sabbath is “the realm of time where the goal is not to have but to be ”. In other words, the Sabbath reminds us that what we own, what we can earn, is much less important than who we are. Our economic and social standing in the world take a back seat to  the spiritual dimensions of our existence. The daily acts of justice and compassion, our performance of mitzvot and sacred deeds become the criteria by which we are measured and through which we measure ourselves. The Sabbath gives us the permission to cease our efforts, for one day a week, to shape our lives and to transform the world. On the Sabbath we can stop our work and we can sing, we can study, we can pray, we can share, we can reflect and we can love. One day a week we are commanded to cease from our labors and simply be. I think that is what transformed Rabbi Hartman’s father, in his eyes, from a poor, ordinary immigrant scratching out a living to the awe-inspiring spiritual giant, in Heschel’s worlds “transported by the Sabbath and connected to the divine”. 
Shabbat Shalom

For a complete transcript of the speech, or to listen to the speech visit  https://www.hartman.org.il/david-hartman-zl-on-living-a-spiritual-life-transcript/

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