East Meadow Interfaith Thanksgiving Homily: Make Every Day Thanksgiving

A version of this sermon was delivered at the 2017 East Meadow Interfaith Thanksgiving Service on November 19, 2017 at the East Meadow United Methodist Church.

Good evening friends.  The last time I was honored with this opportunity to preach to our community was in 2013 and I had just been installed as the Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El.  You may recall that was the year that Chanukah and Thanksgiving coincided.  Let me thank Pastor Johnson-Agu for allowing me the honor of speaking this evening, as well as Rabbi Cohen-Rosenberg for her work organizing this evening’s service and the work she does to coordinate our Interfaith Council all year.  And thank you all for being with us as well.  This is a service to which I know so many, including myself, look forward every year.

This year, I must admit, however, is more than a little bittersweet for me and my community.  As you may have read in the Herald or heard in the supermarket, this coming July, Temple Emanu-El is merging into Temple B’nai Torah in Wantagh.  We fully anticipate that we will continue to be a part of the East Meadow Interfaith Council, as so many of our members will still be residents of East Meadow, and we look forward to being with you for this service in years to come, but our congregation will no longer have an East Meadow address.  It is sad; but it is the right decision for our congregation.

And so, before I do anything else, I offer my sincerest thanks to the East Meadow Faith Community on behalf of our congregation and our congregants.  We have been a part of the fabric of this community for 68 years and it is truly sad that we must go.  For the last three generations, we have called East Meadow our home.  This coming July, we will move.  It is less than 5 miles away from our current address, but it is also a world away, even if it is just over the border into Wantagh.  The specific reasons for our decision are best left explained at another opportunity.  So in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I thank you and your communities for the many decades of support, community, and collegiality.

*      *      *

Each year "we gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing" and to give thanks.  And Thanksgiving is an occasion on which we publicly dedicate ourselves to gratitude, both personally and communally.  But it sometimes seems like we have decided that Thanksgiving is the only day of the year that we offer our thanks in such a public manner.  Thanksgiving is a once a year event, like New Year’s or a Birthday.  But unlike those events, Thanksgiving ought not be the only time that we practice gratitude and thankfulness in this manner.  Thanksgiving should be the day on which we model all other days of the year: not an exception, but the rule.  

Jewish tradition has a lot to teach us about thankfulness and what it means to have gratitude.  How can we can begin to work toward a commitment to thankfulness?  By committing to make every day a day of Thanksgiving!

To start, the term for gratitude in Hebrew is Hakarat HaTov, which literally translates to “recognition of the good.”  Embedded in our understanding of being thankful is a sense that there is a lot of good in the world, but we have to do the work to recognize it.  We have to take the time to think about that which is good in our lives, especially all that we might take for granted.  This act of recognizing the good grants us an opportunity to mimic the divine.  We learn in the first chapter of Genesis that as God creates the world, God makes a point on each day to recognize the good.

Our nature as humans, however, means that it’s often easier to complain about the difficulties we face.  Some of this is because we can all relate.  We all know what it means to be stuck in traffic or delayed in an endless security line.  We get what it means to be disappointed.  Negative feelings come on fast and seek commonality with others.

When we experience something good, we may understand that feeling to be quite personal, requiring a deeper connection or relationship with another in order to share it.  Recognizing the bad is easy; and our modern lives have been built on valuing the easier, faster, and more convenient.  We commiserate easily with others about the bad.  How many times have you been in a line and someone shares their frustration with how long the line is or how slowly it’s moving? 

Recognizing the good, on the other hand, asks that we focus on how wonderful it is that we’re in line about to see a show, or get on a plane to travel to see a loved one or see a place we’ve always wanted to visit. Recognizing the good means that we ought to focus on the gifts we are given.  It is a matter of faith to recognize the good.  It requires that we pause to let in the good and let out the gratitude.  

Recognizing the good takes time.  At least we think it does.  But, truthfully, it takes no more time than focusing on the negative.  It’s about our mindset.  Are we programmed to seek out the good and give thanks or are we programmed to seek out and highlight the negative?  Have we programmed ourselves to do one over the other?  We can retrain our minds to recognize the good simply by doing so over and over again.  Gratitude begets happiness, which begets more gratitude.

Let us retrain ourselves to see the good, recognize it and be grateful for it.  Let us not allow Thanksgiving to be the once a year holiday where we force ourselves to see the good!  Let the good that we see in our lives every day be called out and heralded.  This is perhaps what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom means when he describes thankfulness as "a transformative act of faith."[1]  We are transformed by seeking out the good!

And this is now where I’ll preach to the choir, because people of faith often have more ability to recognize the good and show gratitude because our faiths allow us a conduit through which we can channel our gratitude. Whatever concept of the divine we may hold in our hearts and souls, it is a shared trait that we show our thanks and offer prayers of thanksgiving to the Source of Creation.

Judaism, as all faiths, has many prayers of thanksgiving and though they are particular to our worship, they contain many universal truths about what it means to be thankful and show gratitude for the good we recognize in our lives.

One blessing of thanksgiving is found in all three of the Jewish daily prayer services, just before a blessing for peace.[2]  Traditionally, this blessing is first said independently as a part of a litany of many blessings. These blessings are then repeated by a prayer leader when one is present.  The prayer leader has the authority to recite all the blessings of this litany on behalf of the community, and all we have to do is agree with an Amen.  There is one exception.  When the repetition of the blessing of thanksgiving is offered by the leader, each member of the congregation recites it on their own as well.  Tradition explains that this is because no one may offer thanks on our behalf.[3] 

The universal truth of this tradition is that we have to do it ourselves.  We are not supposed to send anyone to be thankful on our behalf.  True thankfulness cannot be outsourced, not even to a prayer leader.  We have to recognize the good in our own lives and show our own gratitude and our own appreciation.  No one can do it for us.

This blessing of Thanksgiving begins in scripture.  In the Torah, the Books of Moses, God commands a series of sacrifices, among them, the Thanksgiving offering.  For the last 2000 or so years, prayers have taken the place of sacrifices in Jewish worship, which is why we have that blessing of Thanksgiving.  The ancient rabbis[4] teach us that in the messianic age, all the sacrifices and prayers will be cancelled, with one exception: the Thanksgiving.  Jewish belief is that the messianic age will be a time when no one will have any needs and the universe will be complete and at peace.  We won’t need to ask for anything.  We won’t need to recognize God’s greatness.  The only thing that we will need to do is give thanks.  The messianic age will be an age of pure thankfulness. 

The universal lesson here is that thankfulness never goes out of style and will never not be necessary.  If we will have all our needs met in the messianic age, and yet we will still need to offer thanks, how much more important is our gratitude now for the good things we do have in our lives? 

Gratitude, thankfulness, recognizing the good.  These are eternal requirements.  Not even the messiah undoes their necessity in the world!  Our gratitude is always necessary.  And it is essential that it always be personally given.  If we remember these lessons, we can begin to work to make every day a day of Thanksgiving, rather than just the 4^th Thursday in November.

Rav Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel once taught[5], and I’m paraphrasing here, that without gratitude and recognizing the good, our spirits lose their sparkle and their shine.  By recognizing the good, we keep that sparkle in our soul, we keep the light of God in our beings, and we remain able to be bearers of that light.  Our souls shine brightly when we are grateful.  Our spirits dazzle as they emit the divine light.

May we all work to let our spirits shine in this next year and in the days ahead.  May we learn to recognize the good, and through that good offer our gratitude to God.  In doing so we allow God’s light to break forth like the dawn.  In doing so we taste the messianic age in our own day.  In doing so we can make every day a day of Thanksgiving.

May we all have a blessed and safe holiday.

Thank you.

---

[1] Note on Modeh Ani, Sacks Koren Siddur, p. 5

[2] Referring to Modim

[3] Rabbi Doug Zelden

[4] Vayikra Rabbah 9:7

[5] For the Perplexed of the Generation 4:9

Why I'm OK with Larry David’s Jokes

“Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.”  E. B. White

Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm creator and writer Larry David is getting a lot of flak for his monologue on last week’s Saturday Night Live.  The monologue was indeed edgy and boundary pushing, touching on topics from sexual harassment in Hollywood to the Holocaust.  Many people who saw and heard these jokes were instantly outraged.  The ADL, which I support, denounced it.  Rabbis are calling for apologies.  Many people who didn’t see or hear the monologue are angry as well.  How dare he make fun of either of these topics!  The issues are personal, sensitive, and not appropriate for the subject of jokes! 

Part of me believes this was David's intended purpose, because he is a master at the comedy of making people uncomfortable.  Another part remembers that, as the converted dentist Tim Whatley teaches us, “It’s our sense of humor that sustained us as a people for 3000 years!”

I’m not shocked by the jokes; I actually found them quite funny because they pushed the envelope.  Nor was I shocked by the outcry afterwards.  In fact, as I was watching, I knew that many people wouldn’t find the jokes funny, and some would probably make that sentiment public.  That’s OK.  Humor is a matter of taste, and taste is subjective.  

Here’s what’s not subjective, though: the jokes did not make fun of the victims of sexual assaults and abuse or the abuse itself; the jokes did not make fun of Jews other than David himself; the jokes did not make fun of Holocaust survivors or their memory; and they did not make fun of disabled people.  If David had done any of this, I agree, we should be critical.  But the response shows a lack of understanding what David was doing in his monologue and what the messages of his jokes actually were.

Was it the greatest set of stand up ever?  No. Was it powerful?  Absolutely.

Let’s take a look at what Larry David said so that we can try to understand what he was saying.

First, he awkwardly transitioned to the subject of there being a lot of sexual harassment in the news of late, and he commented on the fact that “many…not all…but many” of the accused happen to be Jews.  His hesitation and discomfort in saying these phrases is important and the crux of the joke. He doesn’t like that it’s the case that there’s a lot of prominent Jews on the list of the accused.  He doesn’t even want to bring it up.  But his humor has always been about talking openly about those things we’re not supposed to talk about openly.

He goes on to say that he would prefer to see headlines about Einstein and Salk’s achievements rather than Weinstein’s bad behavior (which he referenced using a call back to an episode of Seinfeld).  He then discussed how he tries to always be a good representative of the Jewish people, such that when people see him, they’d not only recognize it, but announce him as a "Fine Jew" as he walks by.

As Jews, many of us know what it means to be seen as a token, or representative of the whole group.  We know how it feels to see a Jewish name in the paper, like Madoff, and cringe that “it’s not good for the Jews.”  Naming this anxiety and this quirk of being a minority is not about minimizing Weinstein’s behavior or making fun of his victims, nor is it about diminishing Jews.  It’s about recognizing that for some people one Jew is connected to every other Jew, and Jews have to live with those consequences.  The joke is not about sexual assault at all.

David lampoons this ridiculous notion that one member of a minority and their behavior represents the collective will and behavior of the entire group.  It’s an important statement about actual anti-Semitism, and one which can only be made after a prominent Jew does something really, really bad.  The main question of the joke remains unspoken.  Do we all now have to be on our best behavior because one of us committed some truly terrible acts?  There is a certain neurosis that might make Jewish people think so, and naming it calls it out as ridiculous.  David's monologue, which he knows is boundary crossing, is also an answer to this question: a resounding no!

David then moved on to a bit about how ridiculous men’s expectations of women are, using the fictional character of Quasimodo, a French hunchback, who only wanted to date the prettiest woman.  David did an impression of Quasimodo which some felt crossed the line into making fun of the physically disabled.  But David’s critique of Quasimodo had nothing to do with him being disabled.  Rather, it was about his being a ridiculous man, whose standards were too high and whose expectation of women is unrealistic.  It was not a joke about the disabled; and in fact, is a joke at the expense of men and the culture of masculinity which says that men deserve a certain kind of woman. No man is free from this, no matter their background.  And, it's ingrained even in our best works of literature. 

Finally, David moved into his most controversial jokes.  Watching him, it appeared that he was reconsidering the jokes even as he began.  He knew he was playing with fire.  David set up a premise, wondering aloud what he would have done had he been alive in Poland during WWII, when Hitler comes to power.  He shifted to imagining himself as an inmate in a concentration camp.

Here’s where an important distinction needs to be made.  He made a joke which takes place during the Holocaust, but is not a joke about the Holocaust.  Some may disagree with this distinction, saying that the Holocaust is never to be joked about.  That’s a valid opinion; but it’s an opinion, not a fact.  If that’s not your kind of humor, turn off the TV.  Perhaps The Producers is on another channel.

David wonders: if he were an inmate, how would he pick up a woman.  He bemoans the fact that there are no good pick-up lines in a concentration camp.  He plays a scene out for us.  Again, the joke here is not at the expense of a survivor, or the Jews who perished.  It's not even at the expense of the Nazis.  It’s at his own expense, at his ridiculous male instinct to think only about women and sex, even at the least appropriate times.  Just as in the Quasimodo joke, David makes fun of men in general.  His joke says that even in the camps, men would be figuring out how to pick up women, because that’s what men do, because that's what he would do.  If anything, the joke humanizes the victims, reminding us that they were people who had impulses, feelings, and emotions.

David knows that simply by setting the joke at a concentration camp, rather than, for example, at a modern day prison, it raises the stakes.  He could have made the exact same joke and set it during the Roman destruction, the Crusades, or the Inquisition (what a show!).  In these other settings of Jewish calamity, would we be so sensitive about a joke that at its elemental level treads the old premise made famous by Roseanne, that “men are pigs” and only have one thing on their mind?  Maybe those Jewish tragedies are far enough in the past.

Those raised stakes are, for me, one of the reasons that David’s jokes are even funnier. 

I understand and don't deny that the Holocaust and sexual assault are touchy subjects which should not be the butt of jokes.  In this case, they were not.  But there is a school of comedy which believes that nothing is off limits.  Just because he said the words concentration camp doesn't mean he was being anti-Semitic (though, self-hating would be more apt a description, maybe).  His jokes about Weinstein don't mean he condones the behavior.  Larry David is not the bad guy.

There’s a lot of real and painful anti-Semitism and misogyny in the world right now.  Larry David’s monologue is responding to that.  If we listen carefully to his words, we see that he actually tries calling a lot of it out.  I think he was successful in this endeavor.  You may not.

We are better served by listening to the actual words and messages of these jokes.  They're not about nothing.  If we lead with our outrage and neglect the message, we miss the entire point of a lot of stand up comedy today, which strives to do more than set up a joke and deliver a punchline.  It strives to make sense of the difficulties of the world around us through humor and personal anecdote, pointing out just how ridiculous human behavior and the world often are.

We can't fix our ridiculousness and foibles if we don't name them first.

Yom Kippur Morning: Teach Them How to Say Goodbye

A version of this sermon was delivered Yom Kippur Morning 5778 at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow

           On Monday, September 19, 1796, George Washington published what would come to be known as his farewell address in a newspaper in Philadelphia, Claypoole’s American Daily Advertiser, one of the few non-partisan newspapers in the city, and among the first successful dailies in America.[1]  He chose this paper to ensure that his words would not be tainted with partisanship and that they would be accessible to all.  By the time the paper of that afternoon was delivered around the city, Washington was already on his way to Mt. Vernon, having said his goodbye to the nation. 

It would take up to six weeks for the outposts on the western frontier to hear the news, as city by city, town by town, paper after paper, published his words of goodbye.  Washington’s farewell address was for a long time considered the shining example of patriotism and public service, above personal political gain and ambition.  In publishing his address in the newspaper, it was disseminated in the most democratic of ways, through the free press.  By doing this, Washington, to paraphrase the words of the hit Broadway show Hamilton, taught the nation how to say goodbye.  He taught citizens of a new country, under a new political system, what it means to let go of the only President they’ve ever known.

Washington’s farewell address is filled with reminiscences, warnings, and advice to the new nation, based on his 45-year-long tenure in leadership, which had begun long before the Revolutionary War.  His words resonate in our ears, even today.  He begins by thanking the people for their trust in his leadership.  He advises against partisan bickering and the formation of political parties, preaching moderation.  He warns against undue foreign influence.  He warns against relying too much on alliances with other nations.  He preaches morals and virtue.  He advises that there be good education available to prepare the next generation.  He advises that the nation can achieve peace, but must be strong enough to do so.  For 1796, and the first modern democracy on earth, this was ground-breaking political theory.  Much of his advice fell on deaf ears, even immediately, as the election for his successor split the nation into a two party system we are familiar with today.

Aside from all the political advice, Washington ends his farewell with two important ideas.  First, he says: “I am unconscious of intentional error, [but am] nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors…I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend.”[2]  He ends by apologizing to the citizens, while recognizing he tried to do the best at all times.  He asks the citizens for indulgence for his faults.  He wants the people to know that even if they may have disagreed with him and his decisions, he was always doing so with the best interests of the country at heart.

He closes his farewell with what amounts to a benediction.  “I anticipate, with pleasing expectation…the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers.”[3]  Washington wants the future to be bright.  He wants to revel in what he has helped to build.  He knows that this goodbye, like all goodbyes, is the start of a new chapter, and he wants to leave the nation in the best place that he can.  He wants to leave the people and the government ready to move on to whatever comes next, but ready to handle it thanks to the work he has done.  Washington becomes the model for how it is a President says goodbye, and makes space for the next generation.

In crafting a goodbye to the nation, Washington emulates Moses in the final chapters of Deuteronomy, the end of the Torah.  Moses, who has led the people through the wilderness, out of their bondage in Egypt, through battles and plagues, and new government and religious institutions, and who has had the closest possible relationship with God, has come to the end of his life and his journey, and he takes his opportunity to make his farewell address.  Both Moses and Washington understood that for any transition to happen, for any change to take place, there must be a moment of goodbye.

Moses’s goodbye to the Israelites comes in two forms: first a farewell poem, then a blessing.  Each serves a different purpose, and in each Moses teaches important elements of what it means to say goodbye. 

The goodbye poem, takes the role of warning, and the Torah makes a point to tell us Moses recited every last word, in front of the entire congregation.  He begins:

Give ear, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter!  May my discourse come down as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, Like showers on young growth, Like droplets on the grass.  For the name of the Eternal I proclaim; Give glory to our God!  The Rock!—God’s deeds are perfect, Yea, all God’s ways are just; A faithful God, never false, True and upright is God.[4]

         

          Moses calls out to the heavens, invoking God’s presence and beginning a distinction between God and the people. God is perfect and just, but we humans are not always.  God, allow my final words to be heard by all, and allow them to nourish the people.

Even though Moses is about to go through a list of the people’s faults, he knows that these words of gentle rebuke are meant to nourish like the rains, not punish like a flood.  He challenges the new generation to grow in ways they might not have thought possible.  In this moment of goodbye, Moses forces the Israelites to confront their past, telling them: “Remember the days of old, consider the years of ages past; Ask your father, he will inform you, Your elders, they will tell you!”[5]  

Look back.  Ask about the past.  Look back. Bring with you what you have been, what you have done, and where you have traveled.  Do not forget the past just because another chapter is about to begin.  Do not forget those who came before you, and let them share with you all that they learned, so that you may grow from it as well.  In looking to the past, we prepare ourselves to face the future, uncertain though it may feel.  There will be new leadership once we cross the Jordan.  There will be new rules, new people to meet, new disputes, new friends, new difficulties, and new triumphs.  Don’t allow the past to be forgotten, Moses urges, let it guide us toward the new horizon.

After Moses’s poem, he shifts to words of blessing.  But first, Moses gives the people this instruction:  "Take to heart all the words with which I have warned you this day.  Enjoin them upon your children, that they may observe faithfully all  the terms of this Torah.  For this is not a trifling thing for you: it is  your very life; through it you shall long endure on the land that you are to possess upon crossing the Jordan."[6]

            By remembering the words he shared, the people will be able to thrive.  By recalling the past, and teaching it to their children, the people will be made secure.  By looking to the past, and not cutting ourselves off from it, we will be strong, no matter where we may end up.  To say goodbye properly, we make a commitment to bring the past with us as we move forward.

Moses then moves on to blessing the people for his final words.  Rabbi Samson Hirsch notes that unlike the poem and the rest of the Torah which were dictated to Moses by God, the blessing comprises Moses’s own words.  He doesn’t need God’s help on this last one.  When Moses finally finds his own words for the people, at the very last moments of his life, as his goodbye, he teaches that each person has to find his or her own words to say goodbye.  Each person has to find a way to transform the difficult task of bidding farewell into a blessing.

 The message of the blessing follows this theme, but Moses does it in a special way that helps to make his point about remembering the past.  Moses goes through each of the tribes by name, in the same way Jacob does on his death bed, calling each of his sons, and blessing each of them.  When Moses does this, he calls to mind Jacob, and the end of the generation of the patriarchs as a way to practice what he preaches about looking to the past and looking to a new chapter.  He is able to make it so that each tribe gets its due, their special mention.  Each tribe, while being a part of the Israelites, has had its own journey.  Each tribe has had its own struggles and celebrations.  And each tribe’s story is as important as the story of the whole.

When we say goodbye to our synagogue, of course it’s important to look at the big picture, but it’s also important to look at the individual stories, the small moments each of us has had here at Temple Emanu-El.

Todd W shared with me the story of his first time coming to Temple Emanu-El.  He didn’t want to at first.  He thought he’d be more comfortable at another congregation.  But he gave us a shot.  “While we were getting the tour, Michael and Shari Salomon had their girls look after Alex and Evan doing arts & crafts while we were given the tour by the most welcoming person, Nadine Salzman. When we left after an enjoyable afternoon I said to Robyn, "You win. They sold you." We joined.”  Todd’s story of a place where his family felt comfortable is his story and our story, and we bring it with us as a blessing, though we have to say goodbye at the same time.

            Rona K shared with me many stories, many moments in her family’s life here at Temple Emanu-El.  Among them, she recalls:

Jeff Kraut's "off-shore excursion" to the Judaica case during Temple's Cruise Night event was probably the funniest experience ever.  Jody [Ratner] playing viola at Kol Nidre, Henry [Damashek] blowing shofar, our shofar "chorus" surrounding us during the Holidays.  Not sure what the best words are to describe this but they are [or] were moments of beauty and great importance to me. 

Rona’s recollections of the powerful ritual moments we’ve shared here are important touchstones in her story, her family’s story, and our story.  These moments won’t happen again, at least not in exactly the same way.  Through our dedication to remembering our stories, we bring these moments with us as blessings, even when we say goodbye.

            Jason N, in addition to rightfully kvelling over the memory of his son Brady’s Bar Mitzvah, shared memories of last year’s Men’s Club dinner in the Sukkah.  “What stands out most to me, despite the excellent food and tasty drink selection, is the camaraderie that always exists with the guys. They are a wonderful and inviting group, especially to me, a younger member without many peers my age.”  Jason’s story of finding a place here at Temple Emanu-El is his story, his family’s story, and our story, and we bring it with us to bless us though we say goodbye.

            Janet G shared a memory of Simchat Torah, and the Torah unrolled in our Sanctuary with the students in the middle.  “

The black and white sacred Torah being held by our trusted adults against the backdrop of our beautiful colored hexagon windows. The look of awe on my daughters’ faces moved me as I realized the magnitude of the moment. They were surrounded by our rich history, they were surrounded by their present, they were surrounded by their future, they were surrounded by our lessons of life...When I looked up at my fellow congregants, many of them young parents also, I realized I wasn’t alone in this dream turned reality for my family and my children. 

Janet’s beautiful memory of feeling the pull of our tradition and the connection to something bigger is her story, her family’s story, and our story.  It blesses us, as we say goodbye.

            Roz W shared beautiful memories of our sanctuary and the life her family lived in this congregation.

The sanctuary of our beloved congregation holds a special place in my heart.  The first time I entered that holy place, the sunshine was streaming in through the beautiful panels of stained glass windows, a myriad of bright colors bouncing off the wooden pews.  That was 40 years ago…The sanctuary was the place that I was called to the Torah as an adult bat mitzvah in 1978…My three children as well as four nieces and nephews became bar and bat mitzvah in our beautiful sanctuary.  This was also the site of our son’s aufruf, my granddaughter’s baby naming, and grandson’s bris.  It is also where memorial plaques were dedicated in my parents’ names after their passings. 

Roz’s words remind us that entire lives have been lived here, celebrated here, sanctified here.  Roz’s story is the story of family and faith, ritual and divine awe.  It is our story, and we will bring it with us, to bless the next generation to experience these moments in their lives.

            Each of these stories, while unique and special, could have been written by any of us with only minor changes to names and dates.  We have all found our place or a place for our family here.  We have all felt the presence of the divine here.  We have all had occasion to kvell here.  We have all been moved to grow in our relationships with each other and with God.  Each of us and each of our families are important to the story of Temple Emanu-El and now, though we say goodbye, we make these stories into blessings through the act of memory, and through a dedication to bringing them with us.

            If only it were that simple and joyful to say goodbye.  We know that for all the joy we remember, and all the blessings we feel, we are also sad, disappointed, and probably, for at least some of us, wishing things could have come to a different conclusion.  You’re not wrong to feel this way.  You’re not alone. 

            At the end of his life, according to the Midrash, Moses pleads with God, as he grieves his impending death.[7]  “After all my labor!”  Moses shouts at God, you tell me I’m going to die!?  No.  He says, quoting the Psalms: “I will not die, but live.”  God gently responds with the words of Ecclesiastes: “You cannot prevail in this matter, for this is the destiny of all men.”  Moses, you are special, but only a man.  This is what happens.  Stories end.  New chapters begin.

            Moses goes on to angrily joke about his death, and stubbornly refuse to listen to God.  God enlists the ministering angels to reason with Moses.  And Moses bargains with God: “Master of the Universe, if You will not bring me into Eretz Yisrael, leave me in this world, so that I may live and not die!”  God responds, telling Moses that if he does not die, he cannot come to have a place in the world to come, where he belongs.  Everything must come to an end.  Even Moses.  Even a synagogue.

After more protestations, Moses is finally told by God that he is out of arguments, and Moses seems to relent.  Then God sends the angels to bring Moses’s soul.  But none of them feel they are strong enough to do so.  Even Sammael, the angel of evil is stopped in his tracks when he sees Moses writing the final words of the Torah.  It is ultimately only God who can will Moses’s soul to leave his body.  The Midrash teaches us:

Moses’s soul replied: Master of the Universe, I know that You are the God of all spirits and all souls, the souls of the dead and the living are in Your keeping and You have created and formed me and placed me within the body of Moses for a hundred and twenty years.  And now, is there a body in the world purer than the body of Moses?  I love him and I do not desire to leave him. 

Moses’s soul does not want to leave his body, even imploring God a second time, “Let me remain!”  God will not and cannot allow it.  The time has come.  It is time to say goodbye.

            We may not want to leave.  We may feel so connected to this place that we cannot even fathom leaving.  Even though we know that it’s not the bricks or the address that matter.  Even though we understand that a community and a synagogue are more than the physical space.  This place is special in our hearts and our souls.  This place is special in our memories and in our family circle.  This place is important and has been filled with our souls for 68 years.  And it always will be so, even when we are no longer here, because we will bring it with us.

            When God finally takes Moses’s soul with a kiss, the Midrash teaches that God wept.  God is saddened by the death of his servant Moses.  God weeps for what has been, and what is no longer.  God weeps, the heavens weep, the earth weeps, Joshua weeps.  It is a sad time.  An era has come to an end.  A journey has reached its conclusion.  “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses.” [8]

            Tradition says that it was Moses’s tears which filled in the last letters of the Torah, in the moments before his death.  The tears make up the final words of the story.  The tears make the ending.  The tears mean it’s time to say goodbye.

Until the last moment, Moses was strong and in complete command.  Let us learn from Moses’s final moments, that even through his sadness, anger, denial, and bargaining, he never let up and never faltered.  He never weakened.  In describing Moses’s final moments, the Torah says: “his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated.  As we make our way through this final year, let us commit to do our work with purpose until the very last moment.  With clear eyes and unabated vigor, in the model of Moses. 

Let us close this chapter with strength, purpose, and blessing, even while mourning our loss, and accepting our grief.  Let us also remember that we never read the final words of the Torah in isolation.  We never close one chapter without opening another.  At Simchat Torah, when we complete the words, we immediately continue with the beginning, to remind us that even though a story has ended, it’s time to start anew.  It’s time to create from the beginning.  It’s time to make the trek once more.

            Never again will there arise in East Meadow a congregation like Temple Emanu-El, where people came together, broke bread, blessed each other, and were blessed by the divine.  A place where families found a home, mourners found comfort, and brides, grooms, children, parents and grandparents celebrated their joys.  A place where each of us and our families found a home, a community.  A place where we spoke with God, and God dwelled among us.  Never again will there arise in East Meadow a Temple like Emanu-El.

We have reached an ending. 

It’s now time to start a new chapter.

Shanah Tovah.

---

[1] For a full history of Washington’s Farewell Address, see: Avlon, John, Washington’s Farewell.

[2] See Avlon, John. P 305

[3] Ibid.

[4] Deut. 32:1-4

[5] Ibid. v. 7

[6] Deut. 33:46-47

[7] See Midrash Petirat Moshe

[8] Deut. 34:10

Yom Kippur Yizkor 5778: The Gravity of Memory

A version of this sermon was delivered at the Yizkor service at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow on Yom Kippur 5778

A little over a month ago, the United States witnessed one of the great marvels of the heavens, a Total Solar Eclipse.  For a few moments, everyone’s eyes pointed upward, trying to catch a safe glimpse of the occluded sunlight, as the moon made its pass between the light of the sun and us here on the earth.  On Long Island, we had a little over 70% occlusion, and were able to see the crescent shaped shadows from the muted rays of sunlight.  But we could not look upon it with our eyes.  We needed either special glasses or to look through a pinhole.  We can only safely see an eclipse by not looking directly at it.

Almost 100 years ago, a total eclipse was used to prove Albert Einstein’s theory about light and the nature of space-time.  Light travels through space.  It comes from the sun to earth, a relatively short distance, taking but minutes to bask us in its glorious golden rays.  It comes from distant stars, taking years, centuries or millennia to arrive as a gentle twinkle, only visible in the night sky.  Einstein suggested that the path of light’s travel through space is changed by the mass of large objects like the sun.  The gravity of the star pulls the light of another toward it, as it creates a curve in space.  This is also impossible to see without special instruments and without special circumstances.  It is only when the sun is completely blocked that scientists and astronomers can measure the effect that the sun’s gravity has on the path of the light of distant stars before we see them.  Einstein used the eclipse 98 years ago to record this phenomenon, for the first time.

Einstein’s theory was proven thanks to the solar eclipse, and it upended centuries of Newtonian thought and understanding of the universe.  An eclipse literally changed the way we understand the foundations of the universe.  This predictable dance between the two great lights allowed humanity to come to a greater and fuller understanding of how the universe works, and how light travels through it.

This past summer, the National Geographic channel aired a truly magnificent docudrama biopic about the life of Albert Einstein, called Genius.  The series was based on the biography of the same name by Walter Isaacson.  Both trace Einstein’s life, his discoveries and calculations, through the early years while he was still trying to have his ideas accepted, until his later years, when he worked hard to fight against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which his calculations helped bring to fruition.  We also learn a lot about his relationships, his triumphs and his regrets.  His life was marked, like all of ours, with love and loss, joy and tragedy, war and peace, belief and doubt.

Toward the end of the series, in a scene near the end of his life, Einstein comments to his friend Niels Bohr that he has regrets in his life, and he wishes he could turn back the clock.  Bohr jokes that perhaps time travel could be his final achievement.  Einstein retorts: “There are many moments I would like to relive and many ills I'd like to fix.”  Bohr ends the conversation with the truism: “Time is a tricky thing,” while complimenting that it was Einstein who taught him as much.

Time is a tricky thing.  Often a day feels like but a moment; we blink and it has passed us by.  Then we experience a moment that lasts for what seems like an eternity.  Sometimes we move past occasions of great joy in an instant.  And sometimes we dwell in our sadness and mourning, seemingly endlessly.  Our loved ones were at our side yesterday, it seems.  We can still hear their laugh, smell their perfume, feel their love.  Our loved ones have been gone forever, also.  It’s hard to remember what color that chair was in their house, the smell of my brisket is never quite the same as hers.  I can never tell that joke in the same way.  An eternity has passed no matter how long it has been since they were at our sides.   

Well, Einstein and Bohr never achieved the ability to time travel with the help of a machine.  Today, however, each of us becomes a time machine.  We hurtle through space-time toward the past.  It is through our memories that we are able to do the scientifically impossible.  We travel through time through the act of memory, through Yizkor.  Take a moment and allow yourself the journey.  

We travel back to our youth and experience anew the first look we ever had of our beloved, and we feel the love as we did then.  We travel to the moment we heard those words of wisdom our parents gave to us, and then to the moment we passed them on to our children, and we connect them in our hearts.  We arrive at the fight we had with our sister, or spend time reliving the trip we took with our brother, when we became closer and began to appreciate each other as adults.  We remember and experience again the joy at a simchah, and the sadness of a loss or an illness.  We travel back and forth between now and the past in our most sacred of obligations, the obligation to remember, the obligation to keep alive our loved ones through the blessing of their memory.

We journey through our memories, like a beam of light through space-time, pushed and pulled by the gravity of our memories.   But, like in an eclipse, it is only when the light of the sun is blocked that we can truly see the effect the sun has.  So it is with our loved ones of blessed memory.  As we travel through time in our memories, we come to realize that too often, the effect they had on us can only truly be understood and calculated after they are gone.  After their light has been diminished.  It is only then that we may truly come to appreciate what they meant to us, how they affected us, how the course of our life was altered by their presence.  Like the eclipse, we cannot look upon our memories with our own eyes, we need special tools, the tools of memory.

When Einstein and Bohr bantered about time travel, they knew it was only barely theoretically possible.  When we speak of memory, we know it is all very real.  We know it is real because we time travel.  We travel through time on this Yom Hakippurim and recall the relationships in our lives that were important to us.  We travel as a beam of light, through space-time, feeling the pull of blessed memory on us and our actions, feeling the force of those blessed memories on our souls and our lives.

Energy.  Mass.  The speed of light.  These explain the expanse of the universe.  But memory, memory explains the expanse of the heart.

Let us begin that journey to the past.  Let us begin our travel through time.  Let us experience the past anew, though our sacred work of memory.

Kol Nidre 5778: Be the Nechemta

A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple Emanu-El of East Meadow at Kol Nidre 5778.

Kol Nidre.  All our vows.  On Yom Kippur we spend much of our time looking backward.  Who were we in the last year?  What did we do in the last year that was worthy of praise?  Where did we err?  Where did we miss the mark?  Where were we kind?  Where did our baser instincts get the best of us?  All day, we look back; we repent for what we have done.  And yet, at the beginning of our fast, as we take the first step on this 25-hour journey of purification, supplication, and abstinence, we look ahead.  The abridged version of the Kol Nidre sounds like this, all the promises we make between tonight and next Yom Kippur, don’t really think of them as promises, because we know we won’t keep them.

We look forward, but not with hope.  Rather, as Catherine Madsen writes, “Kol Nidre is not an absolution, but a vote of no confidence.  It presupposes that we cannot be trusted: we make vows and fail to fulfill them.  We make the wrong vows, we are inconstant, faithless and hapless.”[1]  The Kol Nidre prayer, so beautifully and movingly sung by our Cantor and choir this evening, preemptively recognizes that we are not going to be as we want to be, hope to be, or wish to be.  Life is not going to be as we want it to be, hope it to be, or wish it to be.  No, in fact, life is often going to be hard.  No matter how hard we try to make it so, life will not live up to the expectations we set for ourselves during this Yom Kippur.

Man, but if this last year hasn’t proven the ancient Rabbi’s point!  5777 was a difficult year in a lot of ways, and it didn’t live up to many of our expectations.  There is much in the world that needs healing, and much difficulty has come to pass in the last year. 

Anti-Semitism has come roaring back.  We have seen this ancient hatred bolstered on the right by the Alt-right movement, white-supremacists under another name, dreaming of an ethnically cleansed America, emboldened by social media anonymity, Russian interference, and an administration that traffics in blatantly anti-Semitic imagery, messaging, and acquaintance, shouting "Blood and Soil" and "Jews will not replace us."  Horrifying images, and shocking in America in 2017.

We see it coming from the left, as well, in the anti-Zionist movement and the BDS supporters.  According to the most extreme on the left, Jews are the only group that doesn’t get the right to self-determination.  We are the only people who don’t deserve a homeland, anywhere.  According to these folks, prominent on college campuses and hiding behind innocuous names like Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews are akin to Nazis, guilty of the worst crimes against humanity, and Israel ought to be a pariah state on its way to not existing.  Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism because it singles out Jews as a group and rewrites the history of the modern Jewish State into a colonialist narrative that is historically inaccurate and intellectually dishonest. 

We Jews are caught betwixt and between.  But it’s not just on the news.  It’s in our high school, and middle school, affecting our families, and causing us to rethink how we train our kids for this new reality.

The climate is changing and seas are rising, making winds blow stronger, storms more powerful, and weather less predictable.  Those in authority react too late to the natural disasters and deny human involvement in the changes in our atmosphere, exacerbating the problems for the next generation.

Guns continue to ravage this nation.  Since the start of the year, there have been 333 mass shootings in this nation.  333.

Isis continues their fight in Iraq, and the bloody quagmire of the civil war in Syria rages on, bolstered by Russian weapons and a West unwilling to do more, because there is no good guy to get behind.  In Afghanistan the Taliban is resurgent.  There is ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.  North Korea has a nuclear weapon pointed at us and our allies, and a leader seemingly unafraid to use it.

In Israel, the government continues to restrict the rights of liberal Jews and cede authority over religion to the corrupt Rabbinical Authority, whose only interest is staying in power, not furthering the cause of Judaism for the many.  The government there turns a blind eye to the detrimental effects of settlement construction on the prospect for peace, and seems to have abandoned the two-state solution.

In our own nation, racial and societal tensions are seemingly at an all-time high.  Women’s agency over their own bodies and health choices are under attack.  The healthcare fight and tax code fight pit the few with power and money against the many without either.  Refugees fleeing deadly conflict with only the clothes on their back find this nation’s borders closed to them.  There is an opioid epidemic, coast to coast, taking lives, ruining families, and destroying communities.  Kids continue to go hungry, even though we have more than enough food.  States and even the federal government continue to discriminate against the LGBTQ community.

I could go on and on.  Each day of this last year seemed to bring new and difficult news.  Each time my phone buzzes with a NY Times alert, my heart beats a little faster, and I have to steel myself for whatever may be coming.  Even if there is good news, like a first World Series victory in 108 years, or the powerful images of neighbors helping each other after the storms, they are quickly overshadowed by the difficulties.

Each of these topics warrants a sermon of its own on a day like today.  Each warrants our attention.  Each deserves a platform.  And, truth be told, I started a lot of those sermons in preparation for tonight.  But each time I sat to write, the message eluded me.  Each topic seemed to be the right one for this auspicious evening, the evening when we recognize our mortality, and perch on the precipice of life and death.  And yet, no single topic fit just right.  The words did not come.  The spirit did not guide me.  The message did not form.

It is a tradition in Judaism that we not end on a negative note or idea.  Sometimes, in a Haftarah for example, an extra verse is added or repeated after the last verse, so that the portion ends on a positive note, word, or idea, rather than a negative one.  When we read from the Torah, we don’t end on a negative thought; we try to finish the Aliyah with a positive idea.  Likewise in preaching.  Sermons typically end with what’s called the nechemta, the moment of comfort for the congregation, to recognize that hope, which we Jews hold on to more dearly than anything except the Torah, is not lost.  Where is the nechemta this year?  Where is the hope?  Where is the comfort?  Where will it come from when the year ahead deals us its inevitable hardships?

I was looking in the wrong place.  I was looking outward for a message of hope and comfort, when all along, as this day reminds us to do over and over again, I was supposed to be looking inward.  I was searching for some external thing that would come and tell us all that things will be ok, and that we have reason to hope.  It was not to be found outside, but inside.

In the year ahead, it is up to each of us, and all of us, to work to be the nechemta, the comfort, the hope, when the promises we make, and the promises God makes, are not kept.  It is up to us to take that role and responsibility, and work to make the nechemta come to be, to bring the hope and the comfort this world sorely needs.  Let us vow this night, on the night when we recognize that the year ahead will be filled with difficulties, let us vow to be the nechemta!

How do we do it?  Well, first, let us recognize that we don’t have to solve all these problems.  That’s not the point.  We know we cannot do that.  But, just because we are not required to finish the task, doesn’t mean we are free to desist from it.

Tomorrow afternoon, we will read from chapter 19 of the book of Leviticus, known as the Holiness Code.  It is called this because it begins with a call from God: “And Adonai spoke to Moses, saying: ‘Speak to all the community of Israel, and say to them: You shall be holy, for I, Adonai your God, am holy.”^[2]  We are supposed to be holy, to be like God.  What does that mean?  It means that we ought to channel our divinely inspired instincts and qualities: the qualities of compassion, generosity, and love. And, importantly for this day, the quality of forgiveness.  To bring comfort, we have to be willing to forgive those who have wronged us, and that includes forgiving ourselves.

God tells us what it means to be holy in this chapter.  Among the many commands: Honor your parents.  Keep Shabbat.  Do not steal.  Do not deceive. Do not exploit your neighbor.  Do not take advantage of those who are differently-abled.  Don’t bear a grudge.  And then, right in the middle of the reading, the greatest of the commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself. V’ahavta l’reacha kamocha. 

These commands, and the others I didn’t mention, teach us what it means to live a life of holiness, one that leads to being the nechemta.  If we look out for others as we look out for ourselves.  If we honor and respect our traditions.  If we listen to those with experience and work to put aside differences, and not carry a grudge, we can become the nechemta the world sorely needs.

But this chapter also has one more lesson to teach us.  Unlike the 10 Commandments which are in the singular in the Hebrew, most of these commandments of holiness are given in the plural.  Kedoshim Tihiyu, which I will roughly translate as: Be holy, y’all!  To be the nechemta requires recognizing that we cannot do it on our own.  It requires being a part of a community, agreeing on what is right and what is acceptable, and working together to bring about the comfort and the hope the world cries out for. 

Tomorrow morning, we will hear in the Haftarah the famous words of the prophet Isaiah.  “Is not this the fast I desire – to break the bonds of injustice and remove the heavy yoke; to let the oppressed go free and release all those enslaved?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the homeless poor into your home, and never to neglect your own flesh and blood?”^[3]  It sounds like Isaiah would understand the world we live in today.  His time was filled with callousness and cruelty, a focus only on the powerful and wealthy, and not on the least fortunate, in direct opposition to the commands of the Torah.

To be the nechemta, we have to help those who are in need.  If we can become the hope or the comfort for even one person, we provide it for an entire world, for the Talmud teaches that the soul of one is as the soul of an entire world.  We are called to action by Isaiah, not prayer or fasting, but action.

And Isaiah recognizes the powerful effect of our actions and our desire and determination to become the nechemta.  “Then shall your light burst forth like the dawn, and your wounds shall quickly heal, your righteous one leading the way before you, the presence of Adonai guarding you form behind.”^[4]  When we reach out to those in need, when we work to make the world better, we fill the world with God’s light and we become the nechemta the world needs, and bring comfort and hope to those who need it.

Tomorrow afternoon, a number of congregants will participate in a recitation of the Haftarah from the book of Jonah.  When Jonah arrives in Nineveh, the large city, which takes three days to walk across, he is set to deliver God’s message of doom to the city.  He makes it one day in and proclaims: “Forty days more, Nineveh no more!”[5]  Jonah expects that, like him, the people of Nineveh will not listen to God’s message.  He expects that, like him, they will try to flee from God and from their obligation.  But he is mistaken.  In the very next verse, before Jonah even says why God plans to destroy them, without even a moment in between for the people to think about it, we read: “The people of Nineveh believed God.”[6]

The people proclaim a fast, the king sits in sackcloth and ashes, and they are forgiven by God.  Jonah doesn’t love the outcome.  What he expected did not come to pass, and he feels he was sent on a fool’s errand.  But we learn from the people of Nineveh the power of listening, and the power of repentance, and atonement.  If we are to be the nechemta in the year ahead, we need to channel our inner Ninevite, we need to listen, and be open to hearing even those messages we don’t want to hear, and we need to be willing to change our ways when someone, or God, tells us we’ve erred or missed the mark.  We need to be willing to apologize and engage in the process of self-reflection, every day of the year, not just on the 10^th of Tishre.  To be the nechemta, we need to be willing to be challenged to be better and do better.

Tomorrow morning, in the Torah, we will read from the book of Deuteronomy the portion known as Nitzavim.  It begins,

You stand this day, all of you, in the presence of Adonai your God, your tribal heads, elders, and officials, every man, woman, and child of Israel, and the stranger in the midst of your camp, the from one who cuts your wood to the one who draws your water, to enter into the covenant of Adonai your God, to establish you as God’s people and to be your God.[7]

These verses renew the covenant with between the people and God as they prepare to enter the Promised Land.

           

The list of who was standing there is important.  The Torah tells us that to be the nechemta we have to make room for everyone, from tribal head to water-drawer.  Everyone has a place and is it up to all of us to ensure that everyone has a place.  When we make space for others, and work to see in them the divine, the image of God implanted within, particularly when they are ostracized or marginalized, we become the nechemta this world needs.

In addition, we stand before God.  To be the nechemta sometimes requires taking a stand.  “The Talmud teaches, ‘If you see wrongdoing by a member of your household and you do not protest – you are held accountable.  And so it is in relation to the members of your city. And so

it is in relation to the world.’  As Jews we are held accountable in ever-widening circles of responsibility to rebuke transgressors within our homes, in our country, in our world.  One medieval commentator teaches we must voice hard truths even to those with great power, for ‘the whole people are punished for the sins of the king if they do not protest the king’s actions to him.’”[8]

The words I just shared are, in fact, words of protest.  They have been shared by hundreds of my Reform rabbinic colleagues across the nation in fulfillment of our sacred obligation over these High Holy Days.   Let us not be silent. Let us, without hesitation, decry moral abdication wherever we see it, and always take a stand so that we can be the nechemta the world needs.

The Kabbalists believe the world is in a shattered state, and it is up to us to pick up the shards and repair them, through the process of tikkun.  Every act of tikkun is an act of nechemta.  Every moment we spend working to fix what is wrong, is a moment we spread hope and comfort to a world sorely in need.

No one knows what this next year will bring.  We only know that what we expect will often not come to pass.  But we are not to be defeated by this knowledge.  No, we are to be emboldened to partner with God, to do the work of providing comfort and hope, to be the nechemta.

I close this evening with Julie Silver’s Prayer for Fasting:

Do not wish me an easy fast.

Let my fast be difficult

Let me remember the hungry people of the world who have no choice, no voice.

Let me understand that starvation and emptiness exist even when there is plenty of food on the table.

And if my fast causes me pain, let me sit with the pain.

If my head throbs, let me handle it.

If my stomach grumbles, let me welcome the sound as I welcome the shofar blast. 

Let my fast be the call.

Let my life on earth be the response.

Amen.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah.  

May we all be inscribed for life, blessing, comfort, and hope, in the New Year.

---

[1] Madsen, Catherine: “A Vote of No Confidence.” In, All These Vows: Kol Nidre, Lawrence Hoffman, ed. p.187

[2] Leviticus 19:1

[3] Isaiah 58: 6-7

[4] Ibid v. 8

[5] Jonah 3:4

[6] Ibid 3:5

[7] Deut 29:9-13

[8] From the One Voice Campaign