Reaching Higher in West Egg: The Great Gatsby Meets the Nazirite

When I was offered the job of Assistant Rabbi at Temple Israel six short years ago, I figured I should do a little research about Great Neck. So I re-read The Great Gatsby. As you may know, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Great Neck in the 1920s, and the place that he identifies as “West Egg” is our peninsula, somewhat less fashionable than “East Egg,” or Port Washington.

OK, so you might say that Fitzgerald’s tragic tale of love and loss among wealthy, young gentiles in the Jazz Age might not be a good indicator of what I might experience in the Great Neck of the 21st century. And you would be right. Except that what Jay Gatsby ultimately teaches us about that particular place and time is both placeless and timeless, and still applies to all of us.

You would have had to have been living in a cave to have missed the promotional messages for the new 3-D film version of The Great Gatsby, the fourth time it has been turned into a major motion picture. It cost over $100 million dollars to make, with a sizeable advertising budget to match. I have not yet seen it, but I have read a few reviews. In particular, I read Maureen Dowd’s piece in the Times Sunday Review two weekends ago, in which she reminded us that the book’s title is, in fact, ironic: Gatsby is not “Great.” Rich, yes. Mysterious, yes. Throws fabulous parties, indeed. But not great.  Dowd cites a conversation with Leon Wieseltier, long-time literary editor of The New Republic, in which he takes to task all of the Gatsby films for succumbing to excessive focus on the gloss of Gatsby:

 “... people have lost the irony of Fitzgerald’s title. So the movies become complicit in the excessively materialistic culture that the novel set out to criticize.”

I’m not going to spoil the story for those who have not read it, but the essential message conveyed by this great American novel is that money cannot buy you friends, love, or happiness. This new version of the film, according to Dowd, misses the point by emphasizing the big parties, with dramatic choreography and over-the-top, splashy scenes that convey more skin-deep theatrics than emotional depth. (One has to wonder why a tale of socialites in the Roaring Twenties needs to be in 3-D.)

And that seems to be exactly the problem that we face right now as a society: where is the emotional depth? Today, West Egg is decked out in flash: fancy cars, gorgeous homes, the most wonderful devices to emerge from Silicon Valley, superb schools and parks and synagogues. And many, many beautiful people and fantastic parties. But is it possible that something is missing in our lives?

Last weekend, I went with a group of Temple Israel families to Camp Ramah in the Berkshires for the Vav Class Family Retreat. This was a pilot program, the first try at what we are planning to make an annual feature of our Religious School program.

The accommodations are spartan. It rained most of the day on Saturday. The food was, as you might imagine coming from a camp kitchen, tasty but simple. And wherever we were outside, we were surrounded by swarms of gnats. (They did not bite, but they were REALLY annoying.)

But in less than two days’ time, we built relationships. Between tefillot / family-friendly services and meals and free time, between the discussions and games and the minhah service that included a nature walk, the bonding that we shared as we fulfilled the Shabbat potential for menuhah / rest and oneg / enjoyment, we fashioned community from the grass roots. This is what Judaism should do. This is what synagogues are for.

Youth House Director Danny Mishkin, Director of Education Rabbi Amy Roth and I led a series of discussions and activities. On Shabbat afternoon, I was sitting with the parents discussing ways to cultivate gratitude in our children. We read some material from Dr. Wendy Mogel’s book, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, and some sources from Pirqei Avot, including the following:

איזה הוא עשיר? השמח בחלקו.

Eizeh hu ashir? Hasameah behelqo.

Who is rich? The one who is happy with his portion. (Avot 4:1)

and

אל תסתכל בקנקן, אלא במה שיש בו.

Al tistaqel baqanqan, ela bemah sheyesh bo.

Do not look at the flask, but rather what is inside it. (Avot 4:26)

These passages are among several in Pirqei Avot that help to refocus our attention away from externalities to what is really important, and to separate needs from wants. The discussion was valuable, but not as powerful for the participants as I had hoped. As we were concluding, the skies opened up and it started to rain, so we continued to sit in the camp library and chat. The conversation innocently morphed into a discussion of how to get children to focus less on their smartphones, and to set limits on their use. We shared advice, swapped stories, and it was clear to me that this was a concern that was high on everyone’s mind, and all were invested in the conversation. It occurred to me that this was not the kind of discussion that  happens easily today; we were nearly 20 adults talking about parenting, uninterrupted by our own electronic devices because we had all opted to preserve the sanctity of Shabbat by leaving them off. It was beautiful, and powerful, and profoundly helpful.

On Sunday morning, as we were preparing to leave, we shared a final moment together on the waterfront. Standing on the edge of a lovely lake fenced in by rolling hills, we sang a song or two, and processed the weekend experience together. One of the participants observed that ultimately, the material features of the retreat - the rooms, the food, the bugs, the rain - did not matter at all. What mattered was the time spent together, bonding, schmoozing, drinking instant coffee and playing basketball. And so the simplicity of the experience added to its success in building connections between us all.

Unlike some varieties of Christianity or Buddhism, Judaism does not highlight asceticism. On the contrary, the Torah and the Talmud teach us that God gave us this world so that we might enjoy its fruits. We read, for example, in the Talmud Yerushalmi (Sotah 3:4):

Who is a pious fool? He who sees a ripe fig and says, “[Instead of enjoying it myself], I will give it to the first person I meet.”

The apex of Jewish spirituality is not to deny oneself, but to take pleasure in God’s Creation, albeit with a berakhah, an acknowledgment of God’s role in bringing us that ripe fig. The same is true for all other physical pleasures.

And most of us here in contemporary West Egg are fortunate to live well and appreciate God’s gifts to us. As long as our monetary gains are not ill-begotten, wealth is a blessing.

But we should not forget that comfort should be enjoyed with proper perspective. Material wealth has limits. Yes, having enough money makes certain things easier. It guarantees good access to education and health care, and of course allows for eating well and travel and leisure and so forth.

But what can creature comforts not do? They cannot fill the voids in our souls. They cannot bring joy in the context of loss and suffering. They cannot help us be better people. And they cannot bring people together in a way that connects them to each other meaningfully.

God has created a world in which everyone can be wealthy if he or she learns to appreciate the most essential gifts, those that can only be accessed through relationships with those whom we love, and with the Divine.

All of this brings me to the subject from Parashat Naso that our bar mitzvah boy raised earlier, that of the nazir. As the Torah describes, a man or a woman may become a nazir by taking a vow not to drink any alcoholic beverage, or to cut one’s hair, or to be exposed to tum’ah, impurity, by contact with a dead body.

The nazir lived a slightly more austere life than his/her fellow Israelites. It is worth pointing out that two of the most important heroes of the prophetic books, Samuel and Samson, are nazirim, and it seems that the source of their power - in the case of the former, his ability to communicate with God, and for the latter, his great physical strength - is their nazirite vow.

The suggestion is that living without certain indulgences (i.e. personal grooming and cocktails) might yield a higher form of existence.

In general, Judaism does not embrace austerity. But sometimes denying ourselves certain pleasures helps raise us up.

How do we achieve repentance on Yom Kippur? Why does our calendar identify six additional fast days throughout the year, with other optional personal fasts available to us at any time? Why do we take upon ourselves the hardship of avoiding the five species of hametz (and for some of us, many other things) during Pesah? Why does our tradition teach us to move out of our comfortable homes into the sukkah, where there are no marble countertops or fancy bathroom fixtures (or even bathrooms) during the festival of Sukkot?

The very act of self-denial, of setting limits for ourselves, is thought to stir God’s compassion. We can be cleansed through simplicity, and even occasionally through outright hardship. Going without helps to put us in a more open, spiritual state, that gives clarity and context to our lives. These traditions suggest that introspection may be achieved through humility. Simplicity helps to serve as a magnifying glass into our souls, and puts us back in touch with God’s Creation.

Jay Gatsby made the mistake of thinking that in order to win back Daisy Buchanan, all he needed was lots of money. But he was wrong. And the lesson that we should all take away from Gatsby, and from the nazir, is that over-the-top parties and lush material possessions are to be enjoyed, but the real substance of life is not to be found there.

The Torah’s description of the nazir is followed immediately by Birkat Kohanim, the blessing that the kohanim / priests would make over the rest of the Israelites in the Temple in Jerusalem:

יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה, וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ.

יָאֵר יְהוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וִיחֻנֶּךָּ.

יִשָּׂא יְהוָה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם.

Yevarekhekha Adonai veyishmerekha
Ya’er Adonai panav eilekha viyhuneka
Yisa Adonai panav eilekha veyasem lekha shalom

May God bless you and keep you;
May God cause God’s face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
May God lift up God’s face to you and grant you peace.

The midrashic collection Sifre tells us that the light of God’s face, identified in the second line, represents wisdom and Torah, which, unlike material goods, can never be taken from you. I would add love and companionship to the contents of this light.  Taking a cue both from Fitzgerald and from the nazir, the things that we really need can be realized only in the context of family and community; they are the truly valuable fruits of Creation. 

Shabbat shalom.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, May 18, 2013.) 

The Shavuot Takeaway

One might make the case that Shavuot is really the end of Pesah, just like Simhat Torah is really the end of the High Holidays, on the opposite side of the Jewish calendar. And, curiously enough, they are both about the Torah: Shavuot is when we commemorate the Israelites' receiving of the Torah at Sinai, and Simhat Torah is when we celebrate the completion of a full cycle of Torah reading, and go back to the beginning again.

It's not a coincidence. In reinterpreting the Jewish Festivals, which are essentially agricultural in their unadorned Torah-based origin, the rabbis sought to overlay their new Jewish model: that of learning as the fundamental basis for Judaism. Without a Temple, without a centralized sacrificial cult, they reasoned that prayer and ritual would go only so far to keep Jews connected, and particularly when they were no longer living agrarian lives. Studying and interpreting ancient texts, however, made them instantly relevant.

As such, each of these two major holiday clusters concludes with a celebration of Torah. The message is clear: What will sustain us from spring to fall and from fall to spring, without a major holiday in between? Taking the words of Torah to heart, and dwelling on them constantly. Citing the words of Joshua (1:8):

לֹא-יָמוּשׁ סֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה הַזֶּה מִפִּיךָ, וְהָגִיתָ בּוֹ יוֹמָם וָלַיְלָה

Lo yamush sefer haTorah hazeh mipikha, vehagita bo yomam valaila
Let not this Book of the Teaching cease from your lips, but recite it day and night...

This verse became a battle-cry for the rabbis, embracing the study of Torah as the life-force of the Jewish people. The Torah and its millennia of interpretive work are not an afterthought, but rather the focal point for day-to-day Jewish existence.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Giving Bigotry No Sanction - Qedoshim 5773

When I was a student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, that institution hosted a very interesting speaker. Her name is Irshad Manji, and she is a Canadian Muslim woman of Pakistani descent who may be one of the most controversial figures in the Muslim world today. She is a journalist who has written a couple of books on the idea of reforming Islam, and has been involved with projects designed to bring change to the Muslim world.

Ms. Manji had recently published her first book, The Trouble With Islam Today, in which she identifies many of the things that we in the West see as problematic within the Muslim world: its treatment of women, honor killings*, female genital cutting, slavery, and, of course, international terrorism and anti-Semitism. There is no question that much of today’s anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli hatred is coming from Muslims. (Last I heard, the suspects in the tragic bombing in Boston were Chechen; it is likely that they are Muslims.)

Knowing that she was standing before a group of Conservative Jews, rabbis and cantors and future clergy, Ms. Manji expressed hope that, while the Islam of the East is saddled with a range of social ills, the future of moderate Islam, something similar to non-Orthodox Judaism, lies in the West. She also pointed to a concept in historical Islamic jurisprudence called “ijtihad,” which fell out of common practice around the 10th century CE. Ijtihad is effectively the elevation of the self, the ability to think critically and make one’s own decisions within the sphere of shari’a, Islamic law. Ms. Manji advocates a return of ijtihad to Islam to bring the Muslim world into modernity, that introspection and self-criticism coming from Muslims in the West would yield a positive effect on the rest of Islam.

A brief grammar note: Arabic, like its sister language, Hebrew, has binyanim, verb constructs that modify a shoresh, three or four root letters, into related verb forms. One of these binyanim in Hebrew is reflexive, and is referred to as hitpa’el, the “hit” at the beginning being the major sign of reflexive-ness. When found in this binyan, a verb reflects back on the speaker.**

I am by no means an expert in Arabic grammar. However, I do know that ijtihad is a reflexive form of the root from which the well-known word jihad, meaning “struggle”, is derived. So “ijtihad” literally means, “struggle with oneself.”

Now, I have just mentioned shari’a and jihad, words which have probably raised the hackles of more than a few of us in this room. Why is that? I’ll return to that question in a moment. First, a few words about the Torah.

We read today in Parashat Qedoshim an extensive list of laws known to scholars as “the Holiness Code.” They include such diverse topics as honoring one’s parents, leaving some of your produce for the poor, treating animals respectfully, dealing fairly with your business customers, and so forth. It is a fascinating look into the world of our ancestors and their expectations for how to interact with others. (It was also, as luck would have it, my Bar Mitzvah parashah, and I appreciate it all the more so today.)

Qedoshim (and the rest of Jewish tradition) should be studied not just as a law code, not merely a framework for righteous behavior, but also as a means to improving ourselves. Why does the Torah need to tell us to leave the corners of our fields unharvested, so that poor people in our midst can come and take food? Because our inclination is to be greedy, to take more for ourselves. The Torah is therefore challenging us to rise above our base natures, to struggle internally over what we want to do vs. what we should do. And this is a struggle with which we are all intimately familiar.

I would like to highlight one verse (Lev. 19:16):

לֹא-תֵלֵךְ רָכִיל בְּעַמֶּיךָ, לֹא תַעֲמֹד עַל-דַּם רֵעֶךָ:  אֲנִי ה'.

Lo telekh rakhil be’amekha; lo ta’amod al dam reiekha, ani Adonai.

Do not go as a gossip among your people; do not profit by the blood of your fellow, I am Adonai.

While at first, the two halves of this verse do not seem to relate to each other, the 12th century Spanish commentator Avraham Ibn Ezra tells us the following:

Rather, “do not take a stand against the blood of your fellow” - do not conspire with violent men against him. It is obvious that many people have been murdered and otherwise killed on account of talebearing.

Ibn Ezra’s point is that talking ill of others causes bloodshed, because by contributing to the fear and hatred of others in your midst, you might actually inspire dangerous people to take action, even if that is not your intent.

I raise this because of the complicated issues surrounding the visit of the infamous Pamela Geller to our community last Sunday. Geller is an activist who decries the “Islamization” of America, and along with fellow activist Robert Spencer, the founder of “Stop Islamization of America,” or SIOA. This organization has been identified by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as “deeply problematic,” and characterized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “anti-Muslim,” an analog to “anti-Semitic.” Geller is probably best known for leading the charge against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.” You might also know her for these signs, which were placed in the New York subways by her other organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, only after a court battle to win the right to place them:

In addition to these endeavors, she regularly makes inflammatory and “preposterous” (according to the SPLC) statements. She promotes the idea of an extremist Muslim conspiracy in our midst, involving our government, our media, and even “left-wing rabbis” to impose shari’a on all of us non-Muslims. She claims that there is no such thing as “moderate” Islam, and is fond of calling her critics “Nazis” or “leftists” or “Islamic supremacists.”

She spoke last Sunday here in Great Neck at the local Chabad synagogue. There were perhaps as many as 500 people in attendance.

Ladies and gentlemen, I feel that Ms. Geller should not be given a forum at any synagogue. She puts herself forward as a defender of Israel, but what she and her organization are doing is characterized in no uncertain terms by the director of the ADL’s New York office, Etzion Neuer, as “bigotry.”

There is no question that the Islamic world has much to answer for. Many of the statements and actions by individual Muslims around the world that Ms. Geller points to on her website and at speaking engagements are, unfortunately, true. And those in their midst that tolerate hatred and despicable acts are guilty accomplices, and should rightly be taken to task.

However, that does not give us a green light to engage in the same types of hatred. And that does not mean that there is credible conspiracy to turn us all into Muslims.

Ms. Geller and her partners, Mr. Spencer and David Yerushalmi, the guy who is working hard to get state legislatures to pass ordinances that will prevent judges from consulting shari’ah law, and who also introduced her at Chabad on Sunday, promote themselves as fighting jihad. But what they are actually doing is something truly nefarious: they are creating a fear of something that does not really exist. There are no American courts that are giving American Muslims a pass on honor killings; the few American cases that I could find through Internet searches have resulted in jail time for the guilty parties. There is no attempt by anybody to bring Islamic law to public schools, or to force anybody to wear a veil, or to invade our public space in a way that violates our rights to live and practice our religion freely as Americans.

To imply that these things are in fact happening, when they are not, is talebearing. This is gossip. This is painting all Muslims with one brush.

Furthermore, these figures are exploiting the Jewish community’s fears regarding Israel. Israel has a much higher Muslim population, percentage-wise, than the United States, has Muslim judges (I have, in fact, been in an Israeli courtroom presided over by such a judge), and has a division within the Ministry of the Interior devoted to providing religious services to Israeli Muslims, and there is no fear in the Jewish state of creeping shari’a law.

Geller and her friends are really doing something shameful: they are deceiving ordinary American Jews into fearing something that just is not there. And they are further sowing division, not just between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, but also causing a wedge between Jews right here in Great Neck and elsewhere.

This is standing by the metaphorical blood of your neighbor. And we Jews, with the lessons that we have learned from centuries of oppression, of blood libels and pogroms and genocide, we know that fear and hatred leads to the shedding of actual blood.

In 1790, following his visit to the Sephardic synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, he President George Washington wrote the following in a letter to the congregation:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation... For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is our duty as American Jews to continue to maintain the ideals that President Washington invoked. To be pro-Israel, one need not be anti-Muslim. And bigotry and persecution have no place in our synagogues, in our holy places. We cannot lower ourselves to the level of the anti-Semites, because that just gives them more credibility, and more ammunition for their hateful ways.

Rather, it is our duty to reach out to and support the moderate Muslims in this world, and there are many, particularly here in North America. As Irshad Manji has suggested, by elevating the moderates, the ones who are willing to engage in introspection through the ancient Muslim tenet of ijtihad, we have the potential to change this equation for the better. Change will not come unless we raise the bar of dialogue, rather than lowering it; Pamela Geller’s hateful recriminations leave no room for respectful disagreement.

As a footnote, I would like to add that if Ms. Geller ever reads this sermon on my blog, she will surely call me all sorts of names, as that is how she works. She will suggest that I am part of the vast conspiracy to suppress what she calls “the truth.” None of these accusations will be true; but her doing so will prove my point.

The truth, ladies and gentlemen, is that we cannot be naive about the dangers posed by fundamentalists and zealots of all stripes, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and so forth. But there are more productive ways for us to save lives and support Israel than to succumb to fear-mongering in our community.

It is for sins of talebearing that Ms. Geller and her colleagues should be ignored. They have a right to say what they want, just as anti-Israel activists do, just as, I suppose, outright hate groups do, as long as it does not incite violence. But let us not give them a forum; let us give bigotry no sanction.

Shabbat shalom.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 4/20/2013.)

* The origin of honor killings is cultural, not endorsed by Muslim leaders; while it is abhorrent, it far predates the birth of Islam, and is related to the very principles we read in two separate passages in our parashah today, that mandate death for forbidden sexual liaisons. While Jewish society never enforced these killings, some traditional societies, including many which became Muslim in the 6th century and thereafter, maintained them. It is of course a shame and embarrassment that this practice still exists; perhaps as many as 5000 people are killed by their own family members each year world-wide. Muslim Men Against Domestic Abuse is one organization that is working to prevent these killings.

** Some Hebrew examples are:

• lehit’orer, to wake up
• lehitlabbesh, to dress oneself
• lehitpallel, to pray (literally, to judge oneself)
• lehitlonnen, to complain (interesting that this reflects back on oneself - not so good for the Jews, right?)

On Being Holy

קְדֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ, כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם

Qedoshim tihyu, ki qadosh ani Adonai Eloheikhem

You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. (Leviticus 19:2)

The first 18 chapters of the book of Vayiqra / Leviticus, which we have been reading since before Pesah, can be challenging for modern Jews. The Torah spends a luxuriously extensive amount of time on the (frequently gory) details of the ancient sacrificial cult, the form of worship that our ancestors practiced prior to the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in 70 CE. But of course none of this applies to us today - we are fortunate that we communicate with God directly through the words of prayer, without a priestly intermediary.

And suddenly, Vayiqra opens up into another, seemingly more relevant way of interacting with God, a kind of counterpoint to the beginning of the book: rules of how to conduct ourselves with respect to others. Holiness may not only be achieved through sacrifice; it may also be attained by honoring one’s parents, paying a laborer his fair wages at the end of the day (rather than the following day), and not placing a stumbling block before the blind. The principles enumerated in this passage, to which scholars typically refer as “the Holiness Code,” are mitzvot / commandments of the sort that not only make for a healthy society, but also give us a basis for understanding that God’s demands of us are not merely personal or ritual in nature; they also require derekh eretz, respect in all our dealings with others. Holiness is not only achieved through coming to synagogue or singing Shema Yisrael with your children at bedtime -- it is also found in commitment to placing the needs of others high on your list of priorities, and sometimes above your own needs.

The Talmud tells us that several of the agricultural laws identified in Leviticus 19 must be taught to converts to Judaism, including leaving the corners of your fields un-harvested and not picking up fallen fruit, both for the benefit of the needy in your town. The message of these laws, the very essence and literal meaning of derekh eretz (“the way of the land”), is that we are obligated to take care of one another -- to feed the hungry, to house the homeless, to clothe the naked. As we are far removed from the land itself and often cushioned from the sight of hungry and homeless people, the Torah’s challenge to us today is to pro-actively find ways to fulfill these mitzvot.

It is through providing for those in need that we may rise to the holiness that God expects of us. Qedoshim tihyu - you shall be holy.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Tending the Vineyard of Jewish Peoplehood - Yizkor, Eighth-Day Pesah 5773

Just before Pesah, a few news organizations came out with lists of rabbis - ranking them as “America’s Best Rabbis” or “Top Rabbis”. I am not particularly fond of these lists; they are an unfortunate side-effect of our love of rankings and of celebrity. The power of clergy, I think, is in their ability to make personal connections with and inspire individual members of their congregations, and most of the people that top these lists are those colleagues who have mastered the media-attention game.

Or maybe I’m just bitter because they’ve never picked me. ;) 

Regardless, in the Forward’s list of “America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis,” there was a gem of a story. Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld, a 34-year-old Orthodox rabbi serving a congregation in Portland, Maine, ordained at the liberal Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in Riverdale, was on this list. In nominating him, a Reform rabbi, Rabbi Alice Goldfinger, wrote the following: 

“I cannot drive to the synagogue I served as rabbi for 10 years. It is about 15 miles from my home in Falmouth, Maine. I slipped on the ice outside that synagogue on December 13, 2009, and sustained a traumatic brain injury. I will most likely never be able to work as a rabbi again. My former congregation didn’t know what to do with me and my two kids (I am a single mom), so they didn’t do anything. But I still need to say Kaddish for my mother, who died when I was 15. There is only one Reform synagogue in town, the one I served. Rabbi Herzfeld is Orthodox, but he opened his shul’s door, heart and mind. He suggested I lead the Kabbalat Shabbat at his shul and say Kaddish for my mother. My children, who aren’t comfortable with Orthodoxy after attending Orthodox public schools during a sabbatical in Jerusalem, stood with me. After the service Rabbi Herzfeld said, “I want you to know that I do not believe women should lead worship with men present. But one of us had to be uncomfortable. Why should it be you and not me?” He can’t repair my broken brain, but Rabbi Herzfeld brought healing to my broken heart.”

In today’s climate of finger-pointing across the divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews, such stories are rare. News outlets love to grab Jewish attention with stories about women arrested at the Kotel for wearing tallitot, and the Israeli rabbinate invalidating conversions and so forth, but how often do we hear heartwarming tales of Jews taking care of other Jews despite their differences? How often do we hear of Jews putting aside their discomfort with the practices of other Jews for the sake of making another feel welcome? 

We were regular shul-goers when I was a kid. I remember occasionally thinking, as we took out the Torah to read on Shabbat morning at my synagogue in Pittsfield, MA, that the same thing was happening at the same time at synagogues all over the Eastern time zone. I remember leaving the sanctuary during Yizkor, an opportunity to hang out with friends in the parking lot, and thinking that thousands of teens like me were doing exactly the same thing. And, growing up in a place with so few Jews, it was all the more powerful - I am communing with my people, thought I. We were not close to the major urban centers of Jewish settlement, but I felt that we were all together in spirit at this moment. 

In some ways, the Jewish world has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Orthodoxy is resurgent, buoyed by the Haredim on the right. The non-Orthodox movements, not what they once were in American Jewish life, are holding their own, although secularism is growing, and along with it intermarriage. Regular synagogue attendance seems to be on the wane. And so while on a Shabbat morning there are still plenty of Jews taking out the Torah at the same time, the demographic cross-section of those Jews is quite different. The Jewish people have changed; the 21st-century definition of Jewish peoplehood has changed. 

It had not occurred to me until recently that the idea of “Jewish peoplehood” is a modern construct (and indeed, “peoplehood” is a modern word, according to this Philologos column from 2004). I have heard the term “kelal Yisrael,” what Solomon Schechter used to refer to as “Catholic Israel,” throughout my life. The concept is something like this: As Jews, we are all interconnected with each other, and together we form a people (or perhaps a nation) who share not only a religious tradition but also a common set of values, ideals, and destiny. Though we have been dispersed from our original land and scattered all over the world for more than two millennia, we are united in history, language, and culture. 

The Babylonian Talmud, compiled in the Diaspora, in Baghdad-area yeshivot about 1500 years ago, hints at the idea of kelal Yisrael when it says (BT Shevuot 39a):

כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה

Kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh

All of Israel is responsible for one another. 

But the idea of the Jews as a unified nation with that word’s modern connotations seems to have emerged in the 19th century, a product of the Jewish Enlightenment and early Zionism.

Here’s the problem: I’m not sure if it’s still true (or, for that matter, if it was ever true). Consider this: today’s Jewish world contains religious groups that not only do not agree about matters of Jewish law and practice, but even on more fundamental issues of identity. That is, who is in the fold and who is out; who may count in a minyan and who may not; who has the right to make decisions regarding Jewish law or may speak to Jewish community issues, and who may not; whose conversions are valid and whose are not, and on and on.

However, there is a dangerous trap here, one that I am inclined to fall into myself. That trap is to portray Orthodoxy (in all its many non-monolithic shades and varieties) as guilty of not participating in kelal yisrael. We, the non-Orthodox, are sometimes put off by some of Orthodoxy’s characteristics, like the reluctance by some to participate in aspects modern life and society, or to cooperate with non-Orthodox institutions, a tendency to elevate the minutiae of  halakhah and minhagim, Jewish law and customs, over all other Jewish values, and perhaps most insultingly, a refusal to acknowledge that non-Orthodox movements are legitimate expressions of Judaism).

Despite this, I think that we can sound here a hopeful note. The Torah, in all its full glory of interpretation and re-interpretation throughout the ages, still belongs to all of us, that nobody holds the keys to absolute truth, and there are certainly things other than anti-Semitism that unite us as Jews.

Nestled in among our volumes of midrashic readings of Jewish life is an image that I find quite striking: the people of Israel as a vineyard. Not a neatly-pruned, efficiently-designed modern grape factory, but a wild, sprawling, creeping tangle of vines. There are young vines and old vines, big and small leaves, sweet and sour grapes, and we are all interconnected, and all growing from the same root stock.

One of Judaism’s greatest strengths, and perhaps the only reason that we have survived for two thousand years after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans, is that we are decentralized - a mess of vines with no center. The Romans, you might say, did us a kind of favor; they ended the Israelite sacrificial cult described in the Torah, and created a spiritual void among Jews that was eventually filled with Rabbinic Judaism. That is the Judaism that we all practice, the series of laws and customs elaborated upon by the rabbis who wrote the Talmud between the 1st and 6th centuries. Rabbinic Judaism, unlike the sacrificial system, is both portable and malleable.

It spoke to us in Baghdad in the 9th century and Barcelona in the 12th; Budapest in the 19th century and Brooklyn in the 20th. Wherever we have traveled, we have taken our Torah and Talmud with us, as our outlook and fortunes and relations with the non-Jews have morphed.

But even while crossing centuries and continents, we have remained connected to each other through shared stories and memories. Our tradition reinforces these memories, not only by means of Jewish law and customs, ritual and prayer and holidays, but also by remembering those who have come before us -- the ones we have known personally and the ones whose names have been lost to ages of wandering and persecution.

On this day of memory, we invoke those shared memories -- the tangle of vines that we all share.

And it is worth remembering, ladies and gentlemen, as this eight-day festival draws to a close, that the freedom that we celebrate on Pesah is what has enabled modern Judaism to flower into different streams. And although we might not all see eye-to-eye on many issues, there is a certain responsibility for maintaining this admittedly-modern idea of kelal Yisrael. Rabbi Herzfeld put aside his own feelings for the sake of kelal Yisrael in Maine; we should all follow his example.

We need to reach out both ways, and we here in the American Jewish middle, the Conservative movement, are uniquely poised to do so. The principles of Conservative Judaism include not only fealty to halakhic tradition, as in Orthodoxy, but also an open, egalitarian outlook, as in Reform.

So, with an eye to kelal Yisrael, perhaps we should consider the following ways of reaching out to others in our community, to the right and to the left of us, here on Old Mill Road and the rest of the peninsula. A few of you might know that the JCRC, the Jewish Communal Relations Council, has already begun an inter-movement discussion on our relationship with the State of Israel, in which a few members of our community are participating. Also, many of you came to hear the Rabbinic Dialogue on the Sunday before Pesah, but lately that has been the only cross-movement forum here in Great Neck.

Let’s have joint study sessions, where all members of our community learn Jewish text from one another and from our respective rabbis and get an opportunity to see how others approach Jewish learning.

Let’s bring our teenagers together for softball games.

Let’s express our communal support for neighbors and colleagues of different streams by welcoming them as guests, visiting them when they are ill, and making the best effort to attend shiv’ah minyanim, even when a non-egalitarian service might make us uncomfortable. 

Let's host a community-wide, respectful dialogue about what it will require to make sure that our grandchildren are Jewish, and Jewishly-committed, in a way that does not resort to mere finger-pointing and declarations that "our way is right." 

These are just a few ideas about how we might invest in kelal Yisrael.

It is well-known to all who know and appreciate wine that the oldest vines produce the finest grapes -- the most complex, tasty fruit. In some sense, we owe it to our ancestors, the ones who provided us with the sublime words of Jewish tradition that continue to inspire us today, to make sure that kelal Yisrael, that Jewish peoplehood continues to sustain us as we move forward. As we now recall the names of those who have left this world, we should remember that the future of our people should also reflect the values that they held dear.

~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Tuesday morning, 4/2/13.)