YK Morning 5775 - Our Legacy

This past December, a friend and I traveled to Austin, Texas.  Neither of us had ever been to Texas before, and so we decided to take a trip to see a part of the country we had never before had the chance to see.  And so, we went down to Texas, explored the area, tasted of the local delicacies, met up with a colleague, and had a chance to see the important sites, including a brief sojourn to San Antonio in order to see The Alamo.  Among our first stops upon our arrival in Austin was the LBJ library and museum on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.  The building is quite imposing and its place on the University campus unmistakable.  A behemoth of a white rectangular building, up on a slight hill, surrounded by paved courtyards with the giant football stadium in the background, the Presidential Library and Museum walks a visitor through the life and career of LBJ.  From his humble beginnings in rural Texas teaching immigrant children, to the Oval Office, I learned much about LBJ and his legacy.

And that is what a museum is all about isn’t it, legacy?  What is it that a person did which is worthy of keeping forever?  What is it that a person made or painted or sculpted that society has decided is worthy of preservation?  In the case of LBJ, his legacy is clear, at least according to the museum.  The museum makes the case that were it not for the historic legislation that LBJ caused to be passed, President Obama would never have been elected.  Now, the museum doesn’t go so far as to say that, but the video clips and the thrust of the permanent exhibit make it clear that the curators and preservers of LBJ’s legacy believe, and want us to believe, that a distinct line of this nation’s progress as relates to race can be drawn from LBJ to Barack Obama.

And what a legacy that is.  Our nation has seen itself torn in two, again and again, over the issue of race.  Today, the museum tells us, things are better.  Today, the museum tells us, thanks to LBJ, the race issues which plagued our nation are more a thing of the past than the present.  LBJ was, after all, responsible for the passing of the Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights Act and the Great Society Legislation, which gave aid to education, Medicare, Medicaid, and fought against poverty.  The LBJ Museum wants us to know that it’s thanks to LBJ that we have many of the laws and rights we take for granted.

And his legacy endures, in some ways.  This year was the 50^th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act.  The desk on which LBJ signed the legislation into law is on display at the Museum, as is the pen he used.  50 years ago, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.  It removed obstacles to voting and removed segregation in schools, places of business and public institutions.  50 years ago, the Civil Rights Act changed this nation and moved us toward a more perfect union, toward a better society.  And, in truth, LBJ’s legacy endures in these landmark pieces of legislation that continue to form the backbone of racial equality in this nation.

With 50 years working toward racial equality in this nation under our belts, one would think that this nation would be more evolved when it comes to race.  The Library and museum seem to tell us we should be.  And yet, in the last months, and most prominently this summer, our nation’s old wound was opened again.  Michael Brown, an African American young man, was shot fatally by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis.  If only this were a solitary incident.  Closer to home, on Staten Island, Eric Garner died in police custody after a choke-hold was used to subdue him during an arrest.  Last month, in South Carolina, at a seemingly routine traffic stop, Levar Jones, an unarmed black man was shot multiple times by a police officer after he went back into his car to retrieve his license, as instructed by the police officer. 

This is not an indictment on the police.  The overwhelming majority of police officers work hard and put their lives in danger and in harm’s way each and every day to keep their communities safe.  They are family men and women, who show kindness, compassion, bravery and care on a day to day basis, as they face more complicated threats and more and more lenient gun legislation.  There are some questions about the particular police officers involved in these incidents and the amount of force and firepower that is becoming commonplace among police departments, but more striking, and more important for our nation to grapple with, is the fact that in each of these incidents, and the many others over the last many years, the victim was unarmed and was black.

It has been 50 years since LBJ signed the civil rights act into law, and we, as a nation, still have some soul searching to do about what we value and what we believe civil rights and equality really mean.  It has been 50 years since the Civil Rights Act became law, and there is still a wide gap between what it means to be white in this nation and what it means to be something else.

As modern Jews in 21^st century America, we have been subsumed into white culture.  Or maybe, we pushed ourselves in and demanded a place.  Yes, Jews are still distinct, but the fact of the matter is, we are a minority primarily living and working as a part of the majority.  But it wasn’t so long ago that signs reminded us of who we weren’t.  No Dogs or Jews allowed, the signs told us.  As a minority, the rights of other minorities ought to be as important to us as our own.  And, we have a legacy of being a part of the solution to societal inequality that we ought not forget.

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism [in Washington DC], under the aegis of the [Southern Christian] Leadership Conference, which for decades was located in the RAC's building.  During the Civil Rights Movement, Jewish activists represented a disproportionate number of whites involved in the struggle. Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964.”[1] Among those Jews were Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, of blessed memory, who gave their lives, alongside James Charney, in the fight for freedom and equality in what has come to be known as the Mississippi Burning.

“Leaders of the Reform Movement were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodations. Most famously, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in his 1965 March on Selma.”^[2]  As Jews, and as Reform Jews in particular, we have a legacy of working toward equality in this country and doing whatever we can in order to further the causes of life, liberty and happiness for all.  Of late, however, our voices have been too quiet.  Of late, we have not spoken out enough about the issues of race that continue to plague our nation. 

These United States, from the outside, seemed to be doing better than ever in terms of race.  After all, the first family is African American.  Doesn’t that mean we are post-racial, even if the election of the president brought out the worst among some of our countrymen?  No.  It doesn’t.  It means we’ve made progress, but there is much more to do.  This summer’s protests in Ferguson in reaction to the shooting death of Michael Brown and the other young black men in this country show us exactly how far we are from being post-racial, how far we are from having race be a thing of the past.  They show us that the mask of tolerance and acceptance under which we go about our daily lives is only just that, a mask, hiding the reality of inequality based on race that continues to this day.  An inequality that is systematized into the penal code and played out in incarceration rates and policies like Stop and Frisk.  An inequality that tells the authorities that they can, and indeed should, be listening in on calls and communications just because someone happens to be Muslim.  An inequality that plays out in employment rates, graduation rates and access to loans and mortgages.  An inequality that continues to try to disenfranchise voters.  An inequality that persists even as the Supreme Court rules that voting rights and discrimination are no longer at issue, as they gut the preclearance elements of that same Voting Rights Act that LBJ signed into law.

Fifty years after the Civil Rights Act and 49 years after the Voting Rights Act, the inequality in our land cries out to us, and it demands that we work to create a new legacy for the next generation.  A legacy of equality and justice for all.  A legacy which puts into action the motto of this great nation: out of many, one.

But this summer, as the mask of a post-racial America was torn off another mask was torn off as well.  How can we focus on race in this country, while throughout this nation and in other nations, the ugly face of anti-Semitism was front and center again.  We focus on it because the Anti-Semitism whose resurgence we witnessed with shock and dismay, and which infiltrates quickly due to the New Media is related to the racism which we see continuing in this nation.  They are related because this summer we have had the opportunity to witness that we as a species are not as evolved as we had hoped to be by 2014.  We are not as open to others and differences as we would have thought in the aftermath of the disastrous conflicts of the 20^th century.  We haven’t learned our lesson yet, as humans on this earth, and we seem to forget too easily that we are more alike than we are different.  That we are all created in the same image.

In response to the war between Israel and Gaza many protests against Israel included, in commonplace incidents, placards, posters, and chants the likes of which we have not seen in many years.  Throughout Europe’s capitals, those bastions of tolerance and culture, riots and protests against Jews continued, putting Jewish communities in danger and on high alert.  But the posters and the slogans weren’t the extent of the violence.  Jews in Europe and even here in America, faced violent attacks.  Antiemetic incidents were so prevalent that a Twitter and a Tumblr feed were started called “Everyday Anti-Semitism” which tried to catalogue the numerous attacks in print, at protests, and which people reported. 

But the war in Gaza was simply pretense.  In Brussels, in May, well before the war began, four tourists were shot at the Jewish Museum in that city.  This is the kind of incident with which we have become all too familiar.  Whether it was the Chabad in India or the attack on the JCC in Argentina, we are used to a certain number of lone wolf attacks, and perhaps we will never rid our world of this danger. 

But this summer, we saw more than just an isolated incident.  Jewish-owned stores and a pharmacy in Paris were firebombed and destroyed.  Synagogues in Germany have been firebombed, Jews in Sweden attacked and bludgeoned, a Synagogue in Paris besieged and its members forced to defend their place of worship from violent anti-Semitic protests posing as anti-Israel protests.  In London, shouts of “Death to the Jews,” or “Hitler was right” among other chants, were heard as a part of the more than 100 reported anti-Semitic attacks in England in July.  Posters depicting Israel as equal to the Nazis were commonplace.  And even on New York’s Upper East Side, a Jewish couple was harassed and attacked.  More recently, a rabbi in Mississippi was asked to leave a restaurant because he was Jewish and took offense to the waiter’s description of a “Jewish salad,” though that incident is disputed by the restaurant's owner.

There are, of course, differences between what is happening now and what happened in the Europe of the 1930's.  The Anti-Semitism today is not state-sponsored as it had been for many centuries.  In fact, many leaders of Europe, notably France, Germany and Italy, have publicly and loudly condemned the attacks and have done their best to try and stop them.  In Germany, a country for which firebombing of a synagogue dredges up memories of a hate-filled past that nation has worked hard to overcome, a rally against hate and against anti-Semitism drew thousands of people and was headlined by the Chancellor and Prime Minister.

None of this is meant to be alarmist nor to scare us into staying at home or force us all to decide to move to Israel.  But it is important that we are aware of what is happening in the world.  According to an Anti-Defamation League poll[3] completed over the last year, fully 26% of adults worldwide harbor anti-Semitic attitudes.  That number jumps to 34% in Eastern Europe and 74% in the Middle East.  The numbers are much lower closer to home.  Only 9% of Americans and 19% of people in the Americas harbored negative views of Jews.  None of this is surprising.  Anti-Semitism has existed for as long as there have been Jews.  It existed before the conflict in Gaza, and sadly, it will exist even after a true and enduring peace is established, may it happen in our days.

I have been studying Sefer HaYashar with some colleagues over the last few months.  Sefer HaYashar is a midrashic collection, which means that it takes the stories of the Bible and elaborates on them to fill in the gaps and answer some of the questions that come up when reading the Bible.  For example, what was Abraham’s childhood like?  This question is raised because the Torah introduces Abraham as an adult with no description of his youth.  Sefer HaYashar answers some of these questions.  And, since this collection most likely dates from a post-crusader time frame, the stories take on a slightly different cultural resonance.

Sefer HaYashar talks at length about Abraham and why he left his land to go to Canaan.  The Torah tells us that it is because God told him to go with the famous words “Lech Lecha”.  But that’s only part of the story, according to this Midrash.  Sefer HaYashar posits the young Abram as a believer in the one God, as opposed to the rest of the population, especially Nimrod, the King of Ur.  The King makes multiple attempts to kill Abram including by throwing him in a furnace and by shunning him.  None of these work, and Abram hides from the king for many years, taking refuge in Noah’s home, and continuing to learn the ways of God. 

At a certain point in time, the king has a dream which is interpreted to mean that Abram will cause the king’s death and destruction to the kingdom.  Abram hears of this and says the following: “Let us arise and go to Canaan, out of the reach of injury from [the king], and serve the Eternal…and cast away all the vain things.” (Sefer HaYashar, ch. 12)

It is Abraham who makes the decision to flee Ur, making it as far as Haran.  And he flees because the powers that be don’t like the religion he practices.  By putting Abraham in the same position which the Jews of the Middle Ages found themselves, namely forced to flee on account of their belief, this Midrash makes a point to say that as Jews we have always had to deal with this.  Since Abraham, we have had to contend with people who dislike us merely because of who we are and what we believe.

From this story, we see that in the Middle Ages, Jews projected the animosity they felt back in time, believing it to be something we have no choice but to contend with.  The ADL survey makes the same point.  Anti-Semitism exists and we need to be aware of it, and work to combat it in every way we can.  Just because it exists, though, doesn’t mean that Jewry is necessarily in danger.  One of the many legacies that has been passed down to us is a resilience of the Jewish people: a legacy of endurance even in the face of difficulty, even in the face of hatred.

Anti-Semitism persists, just as racism persists.  And this summer we witnessed a shattering of our complacency and the breaking of a sense of security we may have felt, as we recognized that the Gaza protesters weren’t talking about Israel, or just about Israel, but they were talking about Jews, all Jews.  They were talking about us.  They were talking about you.  And they were talking about me.

And so what can we do?  How do we combat these pernicious elements of our world that seem to never be abated?  There are a number of actions we can take. 

First, let us recognize what we are already doing.  By being a part of a congregation, and bringing your family here with you, you help to foster a strong Jewish identity in yourself and your family.  Don’t underestimate this.  Recognize the gift that you are giving your family: the gift of Jewish community.  The gift of Jewish community is a gift of finding pride in who we are.  And regardless of what others think, we can counter that with our pride and our sense of self.  Studies show that once Jews are no longer an abstract to people, meaning that after someone meets and befriends a Jewish person, their opinion of Jews in general tends to be more positive.  How much more so will this be the case if we exhibit a tremendous and unabashed pride in who we are.

Next, we can support worldwide Jewry by making our voices heard as a part of the upcoming Zionist Congress, though our votes and our donations.  The Zionist Congress distributes billions of dollars annually to fund Jewish education and shape the Jewish nature of Israel and communities worldwide.  Every Jewish adult is eligible to vote.  By voting, we make known that we care about what happens to Jews all over the world, and that we will not abide living in a world where Jews are under attack and threat.  By voting we put into action the axiom “kol Yisrael arevim zeh l’zeh,” that all Jews are responsible to one another. 

Next, we must look inside ourselves.  We ought to take care with the words we use and work to combat any latent prejudices we might harbor.  It is not easy to look inward, but if this day, this Yom Kippur, can teach us anything, it is that we have the ability to look inside ourselves, find those parts of us we wish to make better and then resolve to make those parts better.  In our public confessional, we comment on the ways we have harmed others, whether by baseless hatred or xenophobia.  Let us work every day against these most base parts of who we are.  Let us also speak out against hate speech.  Hate speech is destructive and if left unchecked easily adopted as normative.  And it is not just hate speech against Jews we ought to concern ourselves with.  We can follow and continue the legacy of the previous generations of Jews who fought and died to make this nation better and more tolerant for everyone, regardless of race, religion, national origin, gender, or sexuality.

We can hold our officials to task.  If we believe in Voting Rights, we need to tell our representatives.  If we believe in non-discrimination policies, we need to make our voices heard.  We may not have the ability or time to put our lives on hold and get on a bus to go make change, but we can all pick up the phone or send an email to our congressperson or senator, both state and national.  By speaking up for what we believe, we work toward what we thought we had all along.  We work toward a nation and a planet neither of which will be putting on airs of tolerance and acceptance, but rather will be veering toward justice. 

Perhaps we thought everything was taken care of because laws have been passed and changed to make this nation more equal, and to provide equal rights for all.  But we forgot what is required alongside legislation like the Civil Rights Act.  When he signed the bill into law, LBJ said the following:

This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our States, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country…So tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every workingman, every housewife—I urge every American—to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people—and to bring peace to our land.”[4]

Let us continue to join in the efforts to bring justice and hope to all people.  Let us work to ensure a bright future free from hatred and division for the Jewish community worldwide, and for our nation. 

Let that be our legacy.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah

---

[1] http://rac.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=21347

[2] Ibid

[3] http://global100.adl.org/

[4] -Remarks upon Signing the Civil Rights Bill (July 2, 1964)http://www.lbjlibrary.org/exhibits/civil-rights#sthash.w7KFMazC.dpuf

Kol Nidre 5775 - Leadership in the Bible and at Temple Emanu-El

“When the word reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his robe, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes.  And he had the word cried through Nineveh: ‘By decree of the king and his nobles: every man and beast – of flock or herd – shall not taste anything!  They shall not graze and they shall not drink water!  Let them be covered with sackcloth – man and beast – and call mightily to God.  Let every person turn back from his evil ways and from the injustice which is in his hand.  Who knows, God may turn and repent, and turn back from His wrath, so that we do not perish.’”[1]  These words end chapter 3 of the book of Jonah, the afternoon Haftarah for Yom Kippur.  In this short section, we learn a lot about this king of Nineveh.  But how did we get here?

Jonah is sent by God to warn the people of Nineveh of their impending doom if they do not repent from their ways.  At first, Jonah doesn’t want to go, and he runs in the other direction.  Well, as we all know, you can’t hide from God and so God causes Jonah to be swallowed by a large fish, sometimes translated as whale, and spit out at Nineveh.  Jonah walks into the city and begins to tell the people of God’s judgment against them.  

And then our story picks up.  The people immediately begin to repent after hearing Jonah’s prophesy.  And then word reaches the King.  The King doesn’t ever meet Jonah.  Jonah never makes it to the palace.  But the king begins to repent anyway.  He has seen his people do it. He knows that he and his city have angered God and invoked God’s wrath.  And so, the King does what any good leader would do, and he leads by example.  Not only does he insist that he and the nobles repent and fast, but he insists that everyone in the city do it, too, including the beasts!

Typically, when we talk about The Book of Jonah, we focus our attention on the prophet Jonah and the themes of repentance and listening to God.  But let us, for a moment, focus on this king of Nineveh. What is it about this king that makes him a good leader?  We don’t know that much about him.  He allowed his city to get out of control.  Otherwise, what would Jonah be doing there?  But, we do know that he pays attention to and takes seriously the threats that are leveled against his city.  Then, he works to ensure that his city is safe and secure, by whatever means necessary.  He shows a true sense of leadership, if a little late in the game.  He protects his people, and takes part in the work that needs to be done.  He doesn’t wait for the proclamation from Jonah to come to him.  He hears of it, takes it seriously, and acts.

The King of Nineveh presents one kind of leader.  If you had to think of what it means to be, or what it takes to be, a leader, what would you include on your list of qualifications?  If you had to picture the ideal leader, what would he look like?  How would she act?  What is it about them that makes them a leader? 

***

God calls to Moses from the Burning Bush.  Moses’ first reaction, often interpreted as a sign of modesty, is to say: “ מִי אָנֹכִי, כִּי אֵלֵךְ אֶל-פַּרְעֹה  Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the people out of Egypt?”[2]  Who am I?  He questions his fitness to lead.  But it’s also more introspective.  “Who am I?  Mi Anochi?”  What do I bring with me that will allow me to lead?  What are the parts of me that allow me to help the people out of their difficult situation?

The first step to leadership is to know and understand who we are.  Each of us must come to know what it is that drives us.  Who are we to be leaders?  Who are we to take up these tasks? 

Just before Moses asks this question, God reminds him that he is an Israelite.  God ensures that Moses knows why this upcoming mission is important to him.  Who are you?  God answers: You are an Israelite, and you will be a leader of the Israelites.

Moses continues his inquiries.  “Behold, when I come to the children of Israel, and say to them: The God of your fathers has sent me to you; and they shall say to me: “What is His name?” what shall I say to them?”[3]  Moses immediately begins to process what it will take to free the people.  He knows that the most difficult part of the process won’t be dealing with the Pharaoh; it will be dealing with the people.  Moses recognizes the challenges ahead and works to overcome them.  When Moses asks God what to tell the people, he understands that they will need convincing, perhaps as much as the pharaoh.

Ultimately, God will ensure the people know the answer.  The plagues that God sends via Moses and Aaron are not just for the Egyptians to suffer, they are also to convince the Israelites about God and God’s power.  Moses gets this immediately. His first concern is how to ensure that his constituency will follow his lead.  He intrinsically understands the complications that can arise from being a leader.

Know who you are. Ask the right questions. Discover and address the potential pitfalls.

***

The people are at the Sea of Reeds.  They see the water before them.  The desert behind them, with Egypt not so far beyond that.  The chariots of the Pharaoh’s army approach and the people cry out: “Is it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why did you do this to us, bring us forth out of Egypt?”[4]  Their fear and frustration, just a handful of days into their journey is about to boil over.  They are ready to go back to Egypt.  They are ready to surrender.  Even as Moses stretches his hand out over the waters as instructed by God.  Even as God promises to redeem the people and allow them to cross on dry land.  Even as they have witnessed the plagues and the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud, the people are nervous.  They are scared.  They are entering the unknown, the wilderness.  Nothing is happening.  Moses waits, trusting in God.  The people’s restlessness is palpable. 

Just then, one man, Nachshon ben Aminadav, takes a first step into the waters.  They are cool on his feet, and the sand gives way beneath his weight.  He trusts in God, and in Moses.  He takes another step.  The people behind him point and deride his foolishness.  “He’ll drown!”  They call out.  The cries of the children and the shouts of the men and women don’t faze him, though.  He is determined.  He takes another step in.  The water up to his knees.  His tunic weighted down as he moves forward into the surf.  Another step.  Another step. 

The water is at his chest now, and the screams of the people behind him comingle with the waves and the water sloshing about his body.  He is cold.  He is wet.  He does not doubt.  Moses, above, arms outstretched, awaiting God’s action. The people, on the shore, crying out in distress.  And Nachshon, taking one more step, until the waters reach up to his nostrils.  “God will save us,” he thinks to himself.  He takes one more step.  A step that will submerge him completely into the salty waters.  His toe hits the sand beneath. He begins to lose his balance, the weight of the water pushing him around.  Just then, as he prepares to breathe his last, the waters part and his foot falls on dry sand beneath.

God has saved the people, but God needed someone to take the plunge.  Someone to trust completely in the project at hand, put aside the doubts and the difficulties, and take a step into the unknown. 

***

The people have entered the land.  Joshua has led them valiantly and they have conquered cities and countryside alike.  The tribes settle into their allotted lands.  But there are dangers about, surrounding the people on all sides, other tribes, other nations.  Wars of conquest continue throughout the time of the Judges.  One of the judges, overseeing the region of Ephraim, Deborah is known for her wisdom and candor.  She is a prophet as well as a judge. She sets up her court under a palm tree, flourishing in righteousness, resting in its shade.  The people come from far and wide to seek her counsel.  They bring their questions and their disputes to her.  She judges fairly and recognizes the threats on the horizon.

She calls her general, Barack ben Abinoam to battle on Mt. Tabor, against the Canaanite enemy, which seeks the Israelites’ destruction.  Go to the mountain, engage Sisera the Canaanite captain, and defeat him.  But Barack is nervous.  He knows what he’s up against.  He doesn’t want to go alone.  “Come with me.”  He says to Deborah. “If you go, I will go.  But if you do not, I will not go fight.”[5]

"Ok, “she says. But this is not her task.  This is not what she is commanded to do. She is to be a judge and a prophet, and relay God’s message.  She is no general.  She is no military woman.  “Ok,” she says.  “But know that if I come with you, you will receive no glory, for the enemy will not be delivered into your hand, but into the hand of a woman.”[6]

And so they went together, to battle.  Deborah, Barack and 10,000 men to defeat the Canaanites.  Deborah was not afraid to go.  Though it was not her assigned duty, to lead the army, to go off to battle… Though it took her out from under her palm tree, her known place… Though she was not a strategist of battle… Still, Deborah went.  She led her people to battle.  She stepped out of her comfort zone, out of what she thought she would be able to do, out of the role to which she had become accustomed.  She led her people by being willing to do something different, because it had to be done.

***

The Temple is built in Jerusalem.  The people come from all over Israel three times a year to offer sacrifices to God.  But this day is different.  This day, The Day, Ha-Yom, Yom haKippurim, the ceremony is unique for the year.  This day all the people of Israel, from the chieftains and the priests to the woodchoppers and waterdrawers look to one man, the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, to absolve them of their wrongdoing by casting their sins out on a goat which is sent off a cliff, into the wilderness, to carry away the wrongdoings of the people and render them clean.

To accomplish this ritual, the High Priest first must prepare.  The ritual begins at dawn.  He is clothed in white linen from head to toe.  Before he can go into the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctum of the Temple on Mt. Moriah to pronounce the unpronounceable name of God, the secret eternal word that only he utters and only on this day, the word that purifies and cleanses the people, the word that destroys should it be misused… Before he can utter that word, he prepares.  He atones and is purified.  But, as with all his actions, there is an order, a seder, to the work, the Avodah, he is about to perform.  There is a crescendo of purification, showing his place among the people and the People’s place before God.

He first atones for his sins.[7]  He presents a bull to the Eternal, its pleasant odor, its reach nichoach, reaching up to the heavens in pillars of smoke.  He cleanses his soul of its sins.  

He then proceeds to consider his family. He atones for his family.  He makes expiation for the entire house of Levi, the Kohanim and the Levi’im, for the wrongs they have committed, for the errors of judgment or errors of procedure over the last year.  They are purified and cleansed of sin.

He considers the people Israel.  All they have done that they should not.  All they have not done that they should.  He looks out at them and atones for their sins by sacrificing a goat to the Eternal.  By this goat, the people have atoned.  By this goat, the people are ready to be fully cleansed and renewed in their covenant with the Eternal for another year.  

He has atoned.  He has atoned for his family and his tribe.  He has atoned for the entire people.  He enters the Kodesh HaKodeshim, he places incense on the fire, so the room is filled with smoke and he pronounces the name of the Eternal, praying for himself, his family and the people, he trusts that God will not strike him down.  When he emerges, the people respond:  Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuto L’Olam Va’ed!  Praised be his glorious name, whose kingdom lasts forever!”  The people are cleansed.

The High Priest moves from personal concerns, to familial concerns to communal concerns.  His sins, his family’s sins, the people’s sins.  He addresses all of them, understanding his place in the community, how he and his family relate to the entire population and how much they have in common.  Truthfully, he knows that he is just like them.  He knows that he is mortal, that he has foibles and problems.  He understands who he is, but he also sees the bigger picture.  He can see himself in his entire family and in his entire population.

***

The Temple is destroyed.  The people are sent away.  They are in exile in Babylonia, weeping by the rivers, praying for return to their land, praying that they do not forget Jerusalem, their holy city.  They remember who they are, but they are crushed.  They recall the glory of their Temple, now a memory, distant, fading.  They are called to by a prophet of the Eternal, Isaiah.  Now, he reaches out to them with words of comfort.

They knew him from before the destruction, before the exile.  They didn’t listen to him, then, but they hear his messages now, in hindsight.  They didn’t pay heed to his words and his reminders.  God will punish you, he told them.  You are not acting properly, he admonished.  But the people didn’t listen.  His voice drowned out by the hustle and bustle of day to day business.  The wails and cries of the orphans and the widows drowned out by the too secular business of the Holy City.

Now, though, Isaiah doesn't continue to decry their wrongs and their misdeeds.  He offers words of comfort.  Words of consolation.  Comfort, Comfort, my people.[8]  Comfort, says the Eternal.  Isaiah knows there is a time and a place for warning and a time and a place for comfort.  There is a time to hold a mirror up to the people, to show them their wrongs.  Now is not that time. Now is a time to welcome the people with open arms and show them how to get back into God’s grace and God’s favor.  God wants the people to be comforted, even in their exile, but God also wants them to change. 

Isaiah knows when to be stern and when to be calm.  He understands what the people need and he doesn’t want to turn them away by reminding them that he foresaw this calamity and warned them.  No, now he sees the people in distress and he comforts them.

***

Over the next number of months, this congregation will be embarking on an initiative to refocus our leadership.  What is it that our leaders should be doing?  What is it that we expect of our leaders?  Who are our future leaders?  All of these questions will be answered, but more organically, by listening, by fostering relationships.  A group of congregants have already agreed to facilitate these conversations.  They are all being trained to help us reach the next part of who we are.  They will soon be reaching out to you and to our entire congregation to join in on these conversations. 

As a congregation, we need all kinds of leaders.  We need leaders like Moses who know what it takes to start the process.  We need leaders like Nachshon who are willing to take the first steps.  We need leaders like Deborah, not afraid to step out of what they are used to doing.  We need leaders like the High Priest who can see the personal as well as the communal.  And we need leaders like Isaiah who know when to comfort and when to challenge.  We also need leaders like the King of Nineveh, who knew when to heed the call, and make a change.  We need everyone to participate, because we all have the capability to be leaders, and the only way we will ensure that our congregation continues to support each of us and all of us is by all of us and each of us working to further our goals together.

Where is this congregation going?  Who will lead it on?  All of us and each of us.  Our sacred history shows us there is more than one way to lead.  Let us write the next chapters of this congregation’s sacred history together. 

G’mar Chatimah Tovah – May you be inscribed well in the book of life.

---

[1] Jonah 3:6-9

[2] Ex. 3:11

[3] Ex. 3:13

[4] Ex. 14:11

[5] Judges 4:8

[6] Judges 4:9

[7] After Lev. 16

[8] Isaiah 40:1

Rosh HaShanah Morning 5775: Israel: The Real vs. The Ideal.

אוֹמְרִים: יֶשְׁנָהּ אֶרֶץ,
אֶרֶץ שכורת שֶׁמֶשׁ...
אַיֵּה אוֹתָהּ אֶרֶץ?
אֵיפֹה אוֹתוֹ שֶׁמֶשׁ?

אוֹמְרִים: יֶשְׁנָהּ אֶרֶץ
עַמּוּדֶיהָ שִׁבְעָה,
שִׁבְעָה כּוֹכְבֵי-לֶכֶת
צָצִים עַל כָּל גִּבְעָה.
 

They say there is a land

A land drenched in sun

Wherefore is that land?

Where is that sun?

They say, there is a land.

Its pillars are seven,

Seven planets

Springing up on every hill

Where is that land,

The stars of that hill?

Who shall guide our way,

tell me my path?

With these words, Shaul Tchernichovsky, the noted early 20^th-century poet and translator, begins his love poem to Israel: “They say there is a land.”  Tchernichovsky wrote this poem in Berlin in 1923 about a beloved land that he has never seen.  The land of his dreams, the land of the Jews.  An idyllic and idealized picture to be sure, of a sun-drenched landscape with hills covered in pillars and planets or stars wandering around every hill. 

The poem continues: Already have we passed several deserts and oceans/Already have we traversed several, our strengths are ending./  How is it we have gone astray?/ That not yet have we been left along?  That land of sun, that one we have not found.”  Here Tchernichovsky moves away, for a moment, from the ideal image of that land of his dreams, the land of the dreams of all the Jews, to say: How is it that we are not there yet?  How is it that we are still searching for this thing that we all want?

But then, by the end, the poem returns to its idealism as if to say that there is no reason to fret or be concerned.  Idealism remains.  The last stanzas of the poem present an image of Israel being the land where every person had met Rabbi Akiva, the famous 1^st-and 2^nd-century rabbi of the Talmud.  And not only will all have the opportunity to meet with Akiva, but converse with him.  The poem ends by asking Akiva: Where are the holy ones?  Where are the Maccabees?  Akiva responds: All of Israel is holy and you are the Maccabee!

All of Israel is holy and you are the Maccabee.  A reader of this poem, therefore, walks away believing she can make the change happen.  She is sainted.  In fact, the entirety of the people are holy and worthy of that title, merely by being Jews.  And you are the Maccabee: you can save the land of Israel from its occupiers and free it, as the Maccabees did almost 2,000 years ago.  You can save the land.  This poem longs for a Jewish state, established by Jews.

From an opening asking for direction to a closing getting direction and encouragement from Rabbi Akiva, this poem presents an ideal image of Israel.  An image of an Israel which does not yet exist, except in the hearts and minds and souls of the Jewish people.  A people who have longed for those 2,000 years to return to their homeland.  A longing that inspired poets and artists and liturgists.  A longing for an ideal.

When Tchernikovsky wrote this poem, he could not have known what would come to be of European Jewry a mere two decades later.  He could not have known that the middle-class life of a doctor and translator that was his in central Europe of the 1920s would come crashing down before the longing for a state could be fulfilled.

Many of us understand this longing, the connection to an idealized Israel.  And many of us have experienced that idealized version of Israel.  When we learn and teach about Israel, we tend to speak of her in idealized terms.  We tend to rely on the dreams of an Israel that has perhaps never existed to inform our understanding of Israel.  And this has a potential to be dangerous.

What is the Ideal Israel?  The Ideal Israel is the Israel of a recent ad campaign by the Ministry of Absorption which touts the exciting aspects of Israel to American Jews looking for more than their humdrum suburban life affords them.  The ad presents Israel as a sunny, all-beach environment filled with scantily clad and muscular Jews, both men and women.  Israel puts hair on the young American man’s chest, gives him the opportunity to ride a camel and spend his time playing beach paddleball with unseen hordes of equally attractive and fit young people.  In many ways, this ad is a logical extension of the early Zionist paradigm of the “New Jew.”  As compared to the weak, studious, sheltered, and passive Old Jew of the old Country, the New Jew is strong, muscular; he works the land and takes history into his own hands.

This ad presents the best of what American Jews have come to think of Israel.  Israel is almost always presented in its best light by Jews.  Israel, the land that made a desert bloom.  Israel, the land where the Kibbutz movement transformed Judaism.  Israel, the strongest army in the world.  Israel, startup nation.  Israel, more PhDs per capita than almost anywhere else.  Israel, homeland for all Jews.  Israel, safe haven should things ever go bad.  Israel, land of dreams.  Israel, that land we dream of, drenched in sunlight, where Judaism, long suffering in the cold woods of Eastern Europe, was modernized into a nation, basked in warmth on a pristine stretch of Mediterranean coastline.

This image of the ideal Israel is an important one—necessary, even—and one we ought to continue to believe in and teach.  Because, while we may not believe in miraculous healing or visions of God from the heavens, the coming of the state of Israel is a modern miracle.  Wrought with human hands and much sweat, toil and sacrifice, yes.  But miraculous nonetheless.

But it is not the whole picture.  And not only is it not the entire picture, but it may be detrimental to view Israel as only these great achievements and miraculous outcomes.  By doing so, perhaps we do not move past our 2,000-year-old longing.  Perhaps we are still in shock that Israel exists at all.  After all, there are people in this room today who remember a time before Israel existed.  All of us in this room have witnessed some, if not all, of the countless attempts at her annihilation.  That Israel exists is indeed miraculous, and perhaps if we were to let go of that idealized image, some of the luster of the miracle would wear off, some of the sheen of the great 20^th-century Jewish project would be tarnished.  If we let go of the Ideal Israel, will we still be able to love and support whatever is left?  If we let go of the Ideal Israel, might we be turning our backs on an important part of our identities as Jews?

My earliest memory of Israel is a short image, a glimpse really, from 1987, when my mother and I went to my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah in Israel.  I was in kindergarten, and it was a treat to be able to go away for two whole weeks and miss school.  I remember playing in a field on a kibbutz.  I remember going to see Little Shop of Horrors in the movie theatre, laughing at the jokes in English a moment before the Israelis had a chance to read them in Hebrew subtitles and laugh.  I remember sleeping in my grandparents’ apartment, on a bed in their spare room, a bed which I would come to visit many more times, in a room overlooking the beach.  An apartment from which we would watch the sun set every evening in orange hues over blue waters.  To me, Israel has always represented family, though distantly, and a place where I had come from.  For me, the Israel I came to know involved Grandparents and cousins I only occasionally got to see, who were, year after year, the beneficiaries of the Halloween candy we would ship over in a shoebox in early November.

Some years later, another memory sparks my mind, a memory of a picture taken in1991, of my aunt, uncle and cousins in their safe room in their apartment, all wearing gas masks, awaiting an Iraqi SCUD missile, but all holding up two fingers, hoping for peace.  That was, for me, the first time that I began to understand the reality of what it means to be connected to Israel.  Sometimes it means danger and sometimes it means war.

A few trips to Israel later, in the summer of 2005, I was studying in Jerusalem.  That was the summer of the disengagement from Gaza.  The country was all orange and blue.  But this orange and blue did not connote the beauty of the sun setting over the Mediterranean.  Rather, orange and blue were the colors of ribbons denoting which side you were on. Tied to cars, tied to fences, fluttering behind people, tied to their backpacks.  Groups would stand at intersections and hand out ribbons of the color they supported.  Other groups would roam at night and tie their color onto car antennae, not considering the sentiments of the car’s owner.  Orange if you’re against disengagement and blue if you’re for it.  In a truly Israeli moment, a news reporter interviewed the man who owned the ribbon factory that made both colors.  Business was good, he said. 

Disengagement was all the news could talk about, and it was televised.  Interviews aired with opinionated Israelis, telling the government what to do, all arguing about the best way forward for a country that, in the aftermath of a seemingly impossible victory almost 40 years earlier, had found itself in a quagmire, governing and policing a population that wanted nothing to do with Israel, and in fact eagerly sought its destruction.

Israel was seemingly torn in two.  What was the right answer?  What would the ramifications be?  What would happen in Gaza?  What would happen to the border towns?  Would Israel ever be able to stand together as one again?  Ultimately, Israel disengaged entirely from Gaza, pulling citizens and military out of Gaza and giving Gaza ownership and authority over their own future.  That Gaza ultimately elected Hamas is not surprising, but still unsettling.  That Hamas wages a continual terror campaign against Israel’s citizens is also not surprising.  This summer’s latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas is a result not only of the disengagement, but of the many real issues and many real problems Israel, like any other nation on Earth, must deal with.

The Real Israel is an Israel of families, people working hard, trying to make a better life for their children; most sacrificing their children to the IDF willingly in order to ensure a peaceful future but cognizant of the present threats.  The Real Israel is an Israel of disagreements: political, religious, nationalist, even what newspaper to read and who has the best hummus.  The Real Israel is an Israel of politicians working hard to be reelected, using what little time they have left to try and govern.  The Real Israel is imperfect, flawed, sometimes wrong, never able to tell the future, but always trying to prepare for it.  The Real Israel is messy.  And the Real Israel is the Israel we should love.  And, we should love it as much as we believe in the Ideal Israel.

Ehud Manor, a songwriter famous for having written the 1978 Eurovision-winning song, “A-ba Ni-bi,” and the perennial favorite, “Bashanah Ha’ba’ah,” pens the following words in 1982: 

אֵין לִי אֶרֶץ אַחֶרֶת

גַּם אִם אַדְמָתִי בּוֹעֶרֶת

רַק מִלָּה בְּעִבְרִית חוֹדֶרֶת

אֶל עוֹרְקַי אֶל נִשְׁמָתִי

בְּגוּף כּוֹאֵב

בְּלֵב רָעֵב

 כָּאן הוּא בֵּיתִי.

לֹא אֶשְׁתֹּק כִּי אַרְצִי שִׁנְּתָה אֶת פָּנֶיהָ

I have no other land,

even if my land is aflame.

Just a single word in Hebrew pierces

my veins and my soul.

With a painful body

with a hungry heart,

here is my home.

I will not stay silent because my country changed her face.

This song, Ein Li Eretz Acheret, I have no Other Land written in the aftermath of the first war in Lebanon, presents less of an idealized image of Israel and more of a sense of the reality on the ground for Israelis grappling with the actions of their country.  The opening line, “Ein Li Eretz Acheret I have no other country or no other land,” can be understood in two related yet distinct ways.  First, the line seems to announce to the listener that the author has a sense of being stuck, with nowhere else to go:  There is no other place for me.  Maybe it’s because no one else wants me.  Maybe it’s because I chose this land.  Maybe it’s because I can’t think of anywhere else to be.

But by the time we hear the next lines of the song, the meaning of not having another country becomes clearer.  It reveals that the author is completely loyal to his land, even with all the faults and scars and difficulties. I have no other land, because this land is mine.  This land is the land of my ancestors and this land is the land that I want to be in.  I have no other land because I want no other land.

The two visions of Israel, “Omrim Yeshnah Eretz, They Say There is a Land” and “Ein Li Eretz Acheret, I Have No Other Land,” are both famous songs in Israel.  They present two vastly different ways of looking at and understanding Israel:  the Ideal Israel and the Real Israel. 

When we think of Israel, how do we think of her?  Do we bathe her in Tchernikovsky’s sunlight or do we see her engulfed in Manor’s flames?  The reality may be closer to both than one or the other; and, as Jews of the Diaspora, we ought to understand both the Ideal Israel and the Real Israel if we are ever going to come to grips with her.  We ought to understand the ideal and the real and find a way to have space for both in our lives.  We believe in the Ideal Israel, just as we might believe in the best version of the United States.  But we recognize the Real Israel, with all her flaws, and we love her nonetheless.

We love the Real Israel, because we truly have no other land.  If we stop loving the Real Israel, if we allow the foibles of the modern state of Israel—and there are many—to overtake our connection to it…if we focus only on what Israel does wrong, and we only look to criticize…if we only bemoan the difficulties of the Jewish State and allow ourselves to be swayed into an understanding that Israel can do no right, that Israel is always the aggressor, then we have no more reason to believe in the ideal.

And, if we let go of that belief in the ideal, what else are we giving up? What part of ourselves is lost?  What part of our Jewishness do we give up by saying that the Ideal Israel is something we are no longer concerned with, something we no longer hope for, something we no longer dream about?  What connection to our ancestors and our traditions is lost by giving up on the Ideal Israel?  

When Abraham is called to that land, to the place he does not know, he begins a connection to an Ideal Israel that lasts until this day.  Abraham’s belief is not lost by the famine that forces him to physically leave.  Rather, it strengthens his resolve to return.  Likewise, we cannot be turned away by the difficulties in Israel today.  Those difficulties ought to make us care about Israel more.  By giving up on Israel, we lose a critical part of what unites us as Jews and what brings us together.  By giving up on the ideal vision of our homeland, we give up on that 2,000-year-old dream.  By believing in the ideal, we recognize the miraculous, we see God in our history, put into action by the mighty hands and outstretched arms of countless men and women who fought and died for an ideal.

How can we believe in the Real Israel and love the Real Israel?  We learn, we support, we teach.  

First, we learn.  We read and watch in order to understand what is going on, from a variety of sources and a variety of viewpoints.  There is no one best source for Israel news, and a spectrum of sources will help us to understand the complexities of the situation there. We also ought to reacquaint ourselves with the history of Israel.  Do we understand the way that Israel came to be?  Do we know how much work was done before World War II to establish the framework for a state?  Do we know who the important personalities are?  If we know the history, we can better understand the present and all its complexities. 

Second, we support.  We support by donating, by purchasing bonds or trees, or by visiting and spending money there.  That’s the easy part.  More difficult is active engagement with Israel whenever possible.  And this support and engagement doesn’t mean blindly agreeing with everything Israel does.  Israel’s policies about marriage, conversion, citizenship, and religious pluralism have a direct effect on Jews in America, and we should know what is happening and have an opinion about it.  And then we make our opinions known.  If we have an opinion about what we believe Israel ought to be, then we put into practice our love of the real and our belief in the ideal.

Finally, we teach.  We teach our children the miracle of Israel and the reality of Israel.  We teach our children about the importance of Israel to the Jewish people historically and to the Jewish people now.  We teach our children that our forebears lived for generations without a nation to call their own, but that today, Israel exists.  We teach them the truth about Israel, and we teach them that Israel is not just a place over there, but a home we hold in our hearts and in our souls.  We teach them that Israel is a part of each of us.  

We teach this by making it true for us.  We teach by making this true for our community.  We are going to Israel this December, and there is still time to sign up to go with us.  This fall, my adult education course will be on the history and founding of the State of Israel.  Join us.  Learn about our land.  The course is free and there’s room for everyone.

A land drenched in sunlight.  A land engulfed in flames.  Contrasting but not contradictory descriptions of our land, our home, our connection to the past, and our legacy for the future.  Omrim Yeshnah Eretz: They say there is a land.  Yes, they do say there is a land like that.  A land called Israel.  A part of our souls, a part of our dreams, a part of our reality.

Shanah Tovah.

Erev Rosh HaShanah 5775: Toward a New Food Policy at Temple Emanu-El

       It should come as no surprise to anyone here that I have had, over the course of my life, a complicated relationship with food. Looking back on it now, I know what food has meant for me emotionally and physically. I know what food represented for me and for my family. My mother is a trained chef, and my father’s parents managed restaurants, including the famous Ratner’s, while he was growing up, before they moved to Israel. When the Food Network premiered, it became the most watched channel in our home. I learned from my mother, and from these famous chefs on TV, how beautiful food can be and how happy it can make people.

       As Jews, this is not a concept foreign to us. Just think of the term Oneg Shabbat. When we say that word, we understand it to mean the cakes and cookies we share after services. Technically, it means: “Joy of Shabbat.” As Jews, we celebrate with food, we make a point to say that God’s abundance, which nourishes and sustains us, should also bring us joy and a sense of connection to God and to a spiritual life.

       Over the last year, as many of you are aware, I have reformed my relationship with food. By being on a very strict diet, I pay much closer attention to what is on my plate than ever before. It used to be that as long as it tasted good, it was good to go. Nowadays, I take care with, and pay attention to, carbohydrates, proteins, sugars and fats. I read labels in a way I never used to. These practices are practical, of course, but they also give me a real sense of mindfulness about my eating. At the same time, I had to break up with the Food Network. It wasn’t them, it was me.

       I also began to change the channel every time a commercial for food or a restaurant came on the TV. It was actually shocking how often I had to change the channel in those early days. Now, the commercials don’t bother or entice me. But there was a moment when I recognized the ubiquity of food in our culture and the ease with which we are able to obtain it. On the one hand, how wonderful that food is so easy to come by. On the other hand, what has this done to our relationship with food and our bodies? How different this modern age is than the age of our ancestors, whose lives and stories are shaped by the availability of sustenance, or lack thereof.

       Let’s take a moment to consider just a few examples from our Torah of when food plays a prominent role. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve are given free rein to eat any of the fruits in the garden, except for one.[1] Already, in the first story, there is a sense that God puts limits on what we are and are not allowed to eat. Abraham and Sara have to flee Canaan because of a famine, or lack of food.[2] When the visitors come to see Abraham and Sara to announce the birth of Isaac, Abraham hurries to prepare them a meal consisting of butter and cheese, followed by a choice calf from his flock.[3] Later, Jacob buys Esau’s birthright for a bowl of lentil stew.[4] Joseph interprets a dream about years of plenty and years of lean and saves Egypt from terrible famine.[5] And this is just in Genesis, and this is not an exhaustive list.

       Food in the ancient world was equivalent to survival. It was hard to come by and hard to hold onto. Food was so important that the abundance given proved to be the backbone of many religious sensibilities, including our own.

       Each of the Shalosh Regalim, the Three Festivals, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot were tied initially to the harvests, and were celebrated by making sacrifices to God to say thank you for the yield, and please can we have it again next year. Regulations about what God allowed us to eat and what God forbade us from eating were an integral part of ancient Israelite culture and continue to this day. And finally, how we share our food and our yield with the less fortunate becomes a backbone of the morality God asks of us. Food in Judaism is therefore, worthy of praising God, worthy of regulation by God and worthy being used to define our relationships with others.

       Today, the ease with which we acquire food and consume it has stripped food of any of the mystery and sense of what it takes for food to arrive on our plates. Food is so easy to come by. If we wanted to, we could all take out our phones and have pizza delivered here in less than 30 minutes… It’s so easy to come by that we often forget how thankful we ought to be for it. It is so easy to come by that we often forget how much effort and energy goes into the farming and transporting, the stocking and shelving of the items that fill our carts as we wander up and down the aisles perusing the seemingly endless choices for every item we could hope for.

       Our connection to food has undergone a substantial change in the last century as farming technologies and genetic engineering have made food plentiful and consistent. We no longer take enough time to appreciate the true miracle that is having food on our plates every day at every meal. And it is precisely this appreciation of the miracle of food that has, for centuries, been the backbone of Jewish food culture.

       Now, when we talk about Jewish food culture, we’re not only talking about pastrami sandwiches on rye, or matzo ball soup, but about the ways we sanctify and make special those moments of nourishment. Jewish food culture involves separating and categorizing, knowing not only when we are supposed to eat, but when we are not. Jewish food culture has for millennia included what we are supposed to eat, and how and when we eat those things. It involves knowing and understanding where our food comes from and where our food goes.

       Beginning with the commandments of Kashrut in the Torah, Judaism has separated and categorized food. We are told what animals we are allowed to eat and what animals we are not allowed to eat. We are given both categories and specific species. This mammal ok, that one not. This category of birds ok, this other not. Insects no, except two kinds of grasshoppers. The commandment not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk, from which the separation of milk and meat is derived, appears just after instructions about sacrificing first fruits as part of festival offerings in the book of Exodus, a few chapters after the revelation at Sinai. This prohibition appears twice more in the Torah, once more in Exodus and once in Deuteronomy. We also categorize food by way of our blessings, separating and reciting specific blessings for, among other things, fruits from trees, fruits from the ground, fruits of the vine and grasses of the fields. In this way, Judaism reminds us where our food comes from and how it came to be on our table and on our forks, and ultimately the sustenance of our lives.

       As Jews, we make moments of nourishment sacred by recognizing God for the abundance we have by blessing the food at our meals before we eat, and by thanking God for the meals after we are done eating. As Jews we recognize where our food should be going. The harvest we gather is for us, with a portion given to God. But the corners of our fields and the gleanings on the ground are left for the less fortunate. 

       Remember the story of Ruth, which we read on the Festival of Shavuot, a time of the grain harvest. Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi are destitute and must rely on the gleanings on the threshing floor to gather enough grain to survive. These commandments inspire us to give of our abundance, as we do with our Island Harvest donations each year.

       Food culture was so ingrained in our forebears’ lives, because it was the work of survival. Recognizing its importance rendered food and eating worthy of praising God. The laws of Kashrut, the rules of food preparation and the mandated blessing were all ways to turn the very instinctive and important act of eating into a holy moment. To recognize that it is thanks to God that we have food to eat. Food, and the way we eat that food, is central to the lives of Jews.

       If food is so important to Judaism, why did the earliest Reformers make doing away with kashrut one of the hallmarks of their re-envisioned modern Judaism toward the end of the 19th century?

       Reformers did it for a couple of different reasons. First, the dietary laws set us apart. The cooking of goats in their milk was a common practice of the idol-worshippers, we learn from Maimonides. This prohibition, therefore, was meant to set us apart. And yet, this becomes a problem for modern Jews in modern contexts. The Reformers believed that Jews would surely not be able to eat in the modern world if they held firm to their kashrut standards. By maintaining sets of dietary laws, Jews maintained a status as other. Early Reform Judaism came about at a time when the goal was to blend in, not stand out.

       An additional reason why the early Reformers decided to do away with kashrut had to do with a new vision of what religion meant. For them, ethics was the name of the game and ethical practice governed their actions. If a ritual or an observance was merely that—ritual—if it didn’t serve an ethical purpose, if it bordered on the superstitious, if it was too much about the body and not enough about the mind, well, then, it was not acceptable to the early reformers. To them, kashrut was a remnant of the old Judaism, focused on what the body did, not how the mind thought.

       As a congregation which prides itself on having a more traditional outlook, we maintain a certain level of Kashrut, though it isn’t clear exactly what that means and whether our current standards are in keeping with how we hope to understand the food that we eat. We consider the labels on the foods we bring in, but is that enough? We separate meat and dairy, but often, as has been pointed out, there is only one sponge in the kitchen. Do we care about more than just the label Kosher?

       Recently, the Ritual Committee of this congregation took up the task of revisiting our Kashrut policy. The discussions were vibrant and many opinions were shared about what we can and cannot bring into our Temple. I believe this element of the discussion is important, but I also believe, and I believe Judaism asks us to consider, that there is more to having a spiritual and God-centered food practice than worrying about whether or not someone else deems the food fit for Jewish consumption. 

       

       What do we think about the food we bring in? What are we concerned about when we eat as a Temple community? Are we equally concerned with the ethics of the food we eat – how it was raised, farmed and cultivated, the wages the workers earned while harvesting, the effect on the environment? Are we equally concerned with the health standards of the foods we bring in – do we serve enough whole grains and vegetables? Do we adequately consider the safety of our congregants as relates to allergies? Do we adequately provide alternatives for those whose diets are limited due to health restrictions or disease?

       All of these questions ought to be asked of our community and we ought to take the time to learn more specifically and in depth what Jewish tradition teaches about food, how we can understand food and how we can relate to food. Over the next year, I am tasking the Ritual Committee to take up Food – not just Kashrut, but Food, to work toward a comprehensive food policy for this congregation moving forward.

       The current policy is a great place to start, but we deserve a policy that takes all factors-kashrut, ethics, health, safety, inclusion-into account. We deserve this because as people of faith, whose are created in the divine image, we ought to treat the food we put into our bodies with respect, care and diligence. 

       And I invite you to join us. If you care about how we eat and how we relate to food, join us. If you care about the ethics of food, join us. If you care about the standards we set as a community as they relate to food, join us. If you like to cook, join us. If you’ve ever helped out in the kitchen here, join us, and give us your input and your opinion about food. It’s good to know what the sages teach us, but it is equally important to know what we care about and how we relate to food.

       This year, 5775, is what’s known as a shmittah year, literally a year of release. This is a sabbatical year for the land of Israel. This means that all farming in the land of Israel, with some exceptions, must cease. No plowing, planting, reaping or harvesting from this Rosh HaShanah until the next. Seven years ago, the last Shmittah year, was the year I spent in Israel. Because of the religious obligation to the land, to allow it to rest in the same way we do on Shabbat, prices of produce went up, as more had to be imported and many fruits and vegetables were quite scarce. Everyone in Israel talked about it, because the connection between food and Judaism was so apparent. Even those who didn’t know or care about Kashrut, had no choice but to know about how Judaism was affecting the way they ate.

       Let us take this year, 5775, to pay tribute to food. Let us recognize the importance of food in our lives and cease to take it as a given. Let us rededicate ourselves to making eating a holy act, an act worthy of praising God again, an act worthy of the struggles of our ancestors. 

       The Talmud (Berachot 55a) teaches that while the Temple was standing, the altar and the sacrifices atoned for Israel’s sins, but now that the temple is gone, a person’s table atones for their sins. Do our tables atone for our sins? Are our tables worthy of that responsibility based on the food we put on them and the way that we consume that food? Are we maintaining a standard that allows our tables to be conduits for the holy and the divine?

Bon Appétit.

Shanah Tovah.

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[1] Genesis 2:16

[2] Genesis 12

[3] Genesis 18

[4] Genesis 25

[5] Genesis 41