The Two Keys to the Jewish Future: S + T = J (Bemidbar 5774)

I cannot look at the beginning of Bemidbar / Numbers, with its census figures of the twelve tribes, and not think about where we are as a people. I cannot help but think of the lot of demographic studies of Jews in the New York Area and nationwide of the past several years, most of which reveal shifts in measures of engagement, affiliation, and intermarriage that do not bode well for the future of Judaism in America, particularly non-Orthodox Judaism. I cannot help but wring my hands, as we have collectively done as a people for a long time.

I ask myself, “What will maintain us as a people? What will preserve our fundamental distinctiveness?” Many of you know that this is the question that keeps me up at night.

And when you read the numbers in the opening chapters of the book of Numbers, you see that we have been obsessed with the quantitative measures of our nation from its very inception. An extended family of 70 people went down into Egypt; two million emerged from slavery as a people, Am Yisrael. A million of our number were expelled from Spain in 1492, and perhaps as many remained as New Christians; six million died in the Shoah; the State of Israel was established by half a million mandate-era residents of Palestine. There are roughly five million of us here in America today.

We are captivated with counting ourselves, and the demographic bug afflicted us heavily when it emerged in the late 19th century as an outgrowth of the Zionist movement in Russia, and in particular the work of the great Jewish historian Shimon Dubnow, who established the Jewish Historical Ethnographical Committee of the Society for the Promotion of Culture Among the Jews of Russia in 1892.

We are not only fascinated with documenting and counting ourselves, but we are also continually convinced that we are on the verge of disappearing. (I noticed with interest this week that the Mashadi community, not by any stretch of the imagination in danger of evaporating, issued a taqqanah about not allowing converts to be a part of their community, similar to that issued by the Syrian Jews in Brooklyn in 1935.)

The Zionist philosopher and historian Shimon Rawidowicz labeled us “the Ever-Dying People,” and published a book by that name in 1948. (Rawidowicz, BTW, was also the editor of a collection of Dubnow’s essays and letters.). He wrote:

“The world makes many images of Israel, but Israel makes only one image of itself: that of a being constantly on the verge of ceasing to be, of disappearing.”

These ideas are built into our liturgy and our theology. On weekdays, when we recite the words of tahanun (“supplication”), we chant somewhat mournfully:  

“Shomer Yisrael, shemor she’erit Yisrael. Guardian of Israel, protect the remnant of Israel.”

It is no wonder that even today we obsess about our nascent disappearance; we are hard-wired to do so.

A Talmud professor of mine at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Dr. David Kraemer, once enlivened our class with a sidebar discussion about Jews and their attachment to Judaism. He noted that there have been times in our history when we have been more committed and engaged to living a religiously-Jewish life, and times of lesser commitment. We have survived periods of oppression, war, intermarriage, conversion away and assimilation and really all the the same issues that we face today. There is really nothing new under the sun, suggested Dr. Kraemer, and so why should we worry? “Should our children be permitted to celebrate Halloween?” we wondered. “Why not?” offered Dr. Kraemer. We rebutted with, “What about Christmas?” He gave us a wry smile, and quietly said (something like), “We already do.”

He was not talking about modern Jews adopting Christmas from their Christian neighbors, but that Hanukkah, like Christmas, is an echo of the festivals adjacent to the winter solstice that many ancient agrarian societies celebrated. Yes, our rabbis gave it a new name, a new backstory, and so forth, but fundamentally it is the same holiday.

Dr. Kraemer’s point was that we have always managed to maintain our peoplehood and traditions, whatever the outside world has thrown at us.

So what is it, then, that has worked about Judaism? Why are there still 14 million or so Jews in the world, when we could have disappeared many times over?

It can only be the strength of our heritage, the value of our teachings, the compelling nature of our rituals.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a rich, varied, and powerful tradition, one that speaks to people even in these vastly secular, disinterested times.

We have to overcome our fears regarding assimilation, and live Jewish lives of quiet confidence and commitment. And how do we do that? By focusing on our core of active participants, by strengthening the core of our community, and by creating a communal experience that is so compelling that it will draw more people in. And I think we can do so by invoking three essential concepts in Jewish tradition, the themes of the Shema section of Shaharit, which we recited this morning (as we do every morning). Those essential themes are: Creation,  Revelation, and Redemption.

Creation is, of course, about the traditional week, the six days in which God metaphorically created the world, followed by Shabbat. It’s about not only the natural environment that we inhabit, but also the rhythm of the Jewish week.

Revelation is an intimidating (and, let’s face it, goyish-sounding) word referring to our receiving of the Torah (which we will commemorate in a mere 11 days on Shavuot). It’s our national story, the basis for our rich textual heritage.

The classic sense of redemption is that God took us out of Egypt, setting us free from slavery.  However, when we talk about that ancient redemption, we are also hinting at a coming redemption. And we make that connection every morning in Shaharit.

Ladies and gentlemen, those three concepts are not just a series. They can also be read as an equation (and here is where Numbers creeps back into the discussion):

Creation + Revelation = Redemption

In an effort to make this easier to remember, I’m going to abbreviate it as follows:

S = Shabbat, i.e. Creation

T = Torah, i.e. Revelation

J = the Jewish future, i.e. Redemption

Hence, 

S + T = J

That’s it, ladies and gentlemen. Let me explain what I mean.

I took a couple of journeys within the last two weeks; the first was to the convention of the Rabbinical Assembly in Dallas, where I learned a whole lot of Torah, reconnected with colleagues, and reminisced about the five years I spent living in Texas. Talmud Torah, engaging with the words of our ancient tradition, is not only the greatest mitzvah among the 613 (see Mishnah Peah 1:1); it is also refreshing. We recited this morning in Pesuqei Dezimrah this morning (Psalm 19:8) “Torat Adonai temimah, meshivat nafesh.” God’s Torah is perfect, restoring the soul.

Torah, revelation, is not just refreshing to me; it is in fact what has sustained us through centuries of dispersion, oppression, and destruction. If it were not for the Torah, we might have evaporated after the First and Second Temples were destroyed. The Torah contains not only the mitzvot, but also our national story, our heritage, and our secret to everlasting peoplehood. It is greater than the sum of its parts.

But the other half of the equation is Creation, and that speaks to the second journey I took. Right after returning from Texas, my family and I drove up to Camp Ramah in the Berkshires for the second annual Vav Class Family Retreat, where Danny Mishkin and Rabbi Roth and I facilitated a phenomenal Shabbat experience for thirteen member families. What has made this program work so well now for two years running is, primarily, the simplicity of Shabbat. In camp, we observe Shabbat traditionally, including tefillot, festive meals, games, learning, discussion, and other Shabbat-friendly activities. We discourage the use of electronic devices, and of course there is nowhere to travel to and nothing to spend money on. The results are truly beautiful and inspiring.

What makes Shabbat work is that it is a great “reset”-button. It is a chance to reconnect with family, friends, and Creation. And what better place to do that than in camp? And, as if to heighten that experience, all of our tefillah experiences were held outdoors. Synagogue buildings can of course be inspiring places to communicate with God, but davening outside brings a heightened kavvanah.

For minhah on Shabbat afternoon, we first read Torah, as is traditional. Then, after the Torah was returned to the ark, we took a walk out into camp to sensitize ourselves to the beauty of Creation found all around us. We completed minhah by reciting the Amidah in a field, standing far apart from one another to recite the words of tefillah alone with God and nature. Some of us found it very moving.

Shabbat brings us back to Creation. And, moving forward, this will be an essential part of our work here on Earth. At the ordination/investiture ceremony for new rabbis and cantors at the Jewish Theological Seminary this past week, Dr. Arnold Eisen, the Chancellor, made the following remarks:

“I strongly suspect that the mitzvah on which our ultimate worth and future turns—yours and mine—may well be that of preserving God's creation. ’Tending the garden’ means something different than it ever has before, now that the survival of the planet is in question.”

Shabbat and Creation go together. And Creation + Revelation = Redemption. S + T = J.

So what is this redemption? It is that we will merit an infinite future on this planet, which God has created.

   

Ladies and gentlemen, Jews and Judaism have existed on this planet for millennia, and we will continue to exist. Our redemption is our continuation. We have outlasted the Babylonians, the Romans, and a host of other civilizations. All we have to do is keep the ideas of Creation and Revelation in front of us, and the future will glisten with the power of Torah, of Shabbat, and of a healthy planet to sustain us.

Shabbat Shalom.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 5/24/2014.)

Israel Needs Your Perspective - Ki Tissa 5772

Earlier this week, I was at the annual Policy Conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and I heard United States Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, tell the following story:

Adlai Stevenson II, who was the American ambassador to the UN in 1961, defended the Bay of Pigs operation before the UN General Assembly, but during his speech delivered the following malapropism: “Castro has circumcised the freedoms of the Catholics of Cuba.” This, the story went, prompted an Israeli diplomat to whisper to his Irish colleague, “I always knew that somehow we would be blamed for this.”

Ambassador Rice was one of a handful of high-level speakers that I heard in Washington.  Others included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and of course Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu.  I missed President Obama and Israeli President Shimon Peres, because I was teaching tefillah in the Religious School here at Temple Israel on Sunday morning, certainly an acceptable excuse, since the mitzvah of veshinantam levanekha, teaching your children the words of Torah, surely takes precedence over listening to politicians.

Unfortunately, I can’t say that any of the headline presentations that I heard were particularly enlightening, of for that matter, at all interesting.  And here’s why: they all delivered slight variations on the same theme:

1.  Iran must be prevented from building a nuclear weapon.
2.  All options are “on the table” to prevent Iran from doing so, including the use of force by the US.

It is true that Iran has nuclear capability and is most likely working on building nuclear missiles.  It is true that such weapons pose the gravest existential threat to the Jewish state.  It is true that Iran supports anti-Israel terrorism on multiple fronts, and of course it is true that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made it a stated goal to “wipe Israel off the map,” and this should not be taken lightly.  As British neoconservative author Douglas Murray put it in a YouTube video that I saw yesterday morning, Iran is controlled by “leaders who deny one Holocaust while saying they want the next.”

Nobody believes that Prime Minister Netanyahu is crying wolf over the dangers that Iran poses. However, after hearing it for the second or third time, I began to wonder if  we are doing Israel any favors by presenting such a monolithic image of the threats facing Israel.

***

There are at least two instances in the Torah where God stands corrected.  That is, God is about to do something rash, and a human being challenges God to see things a different way.  One of them is in Parashat Ki Tissa, which we read this morning.  God is so angry about the molten calf that He tells Moshe that he is going to destroy all the Israelites and make a new nation from Moshe alone.  

But Moshe counters with the broader picture.  “Are You telling me, O Lord,” says Moshe (I’m paraphrasing a bit), “that You brought all these people out of Egypt just to schmeist them in the desert?  What will the Egyptians say?  What about Your promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and, for that matter, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah?”  And God backs down, thanks to Moshe’s wider perspective.

If I had one single wish for the American Jewish community, it would be to have a wider perspective on the Jewish State.

***

Every now and then, I hear from a student or a parent that he or she is afraid of going to Israel, because of terrorism.  I always respond by pointing out that I have lived in Israel, and I go there regularly, and I have never had any reason to fear for my safety.  Israel is not a war zone; it is, in fact, much safer to be in Israel than it is in, let’s say, New York City, because in Israel, everybody is watching for suspicious activity or packages.  Statistically speaking, you are, in fact, safer in Israel than when you get into your car and drive on American streets.  Our perception of Israel as a dangerous place is clearly fed by the media, which zealously follow the maxim, “If it bleeds, it leads.”  And that is exactly what terrorists want; that’s why they are called “terrorists.”

But to some extent, we, the Jewish community, reinforce that perception.

If you ask Israelis if the State of Israel is in imminent, mortal danger, they will say no.  If you ask if they are worried about terrorism, they will laugh at you, and then make insulting remarks about Americans to their friends.  My son is in Kitah Heh, fifth grade, in Nes Tziyyona, a half-hour south of Tel Aviv.  The State mandates that fifth graders receive training about what to do in case of various types of attacks, and some government folks came to his class last fall to do this training; most parents kept their kids home rather than subject their 10-year-olds to this.

Israelis are not living in bomb shelters, clutching rifles to their chests in trenches and eating their rations in the dark to avoid drawing enemy fire.  On the contrary, Israel is flourishing.  The economy is healthy; democracy is thriving; last summer’s tent protests notwithstanding, Israelis are living fairly well, especially when compared to most others in their geographic neighborhood.

There is no question that it is essential to prevent a nuclear Iran.  But the palette of Israel’s contemporary issues is far more complex.  Dr. Arnold Eisen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, put it in his most recent blog post:

The matsav [the current political situation] is… not permitted to interfere with the joys, cares and satisfactions of daily life. Existential danger to the country, for everyone but soldiers on active duty, constitutes one more hassle one learns to handle. This is perhaps as it should be, or needs to be.

Israelis live with this matzav night and day, but they do not live according to it.  We in the Diaspora, by reinforcing the perception that Israel is besieged, be-bunkered and beleaugered, only strengthen the hands of those who seek to destroy it.

***

The AIPAC Policy Conference, held annually around this time in Washington, has grown tremendously in the past few years.  This was my fourth conference, and in the past few years the number of attendees has more than doubled.  There were over 13,000 people at this conference: older people and college students, religious and secular Jews, black and white Christians, clergy of all stripes, conservatives, liberals, and all of them proud Zionists.  In addition to the big-name political speeches, there are also many, many panel discussions and smaller presentations by journalists, academics, think-tank guys, and activists of all sorts.  It’s really an overwhelmingly impressive show of support for the Jewish state.

(Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the conference for me was a musical performance by the Israeli world-beat ensemble, the Idan Raichel Project.  If you are not familiar Mr. Raichel’s work, you should be; if you are interested, I will be glad to point out for you which albums to get.)

I truly feel that the work that AIPAC does is essential.  Israel needs the United States - for aid, for political and military support, for trade, and so forth.

Zealously protecting the alliance between the US and Israel is paramount to Israel’s future as the Jewish state.  AIPAC volunteer lobbyists work with every single member of the House of Representatives and Senate, and particularly with newly-elected members, to help them understand Israel’s history and matzav.  

But AIPAC’s mission by definition prevents it from addressing many other issues facing Israel.  In working hard to protect the US-Israel alliance, AIPAC follows the current Israeli government’s line, and Mr. Netanyahu seems to be only interested in Iran.  When the Prime Minister delivers a keynote address to 13,000 people and a fully-loaded press box and does not say the word “Palestinian” once, that is a lost opportunity.  What about the new realities on the ground in Syria and Egypt?  Yes, the breakout sessions addressed some of these things.  But there was no room in the major plenary sessions for anything other than Iran.

As such, we who are committed to the State of Israel have to look for other ways to discuss the issues facing Israel and the Israeli government, the ones that were absent in Washington.  The stalled negotiations with the Palestinians, for example.  And the following issues addressed by Chancellor Eisen further along in his blog post:

Will the State be ruled by the laws passed in the Knesset or by halakhah as interpreted by ultra-Orthodox “Torah sages”? Will soldiers wearing kippot obey orders from their commanders or their rabbis? Will Israeli public space be made to conform with Haredi convictions, a move that infringes particularly on the rights of women? (Buses segregated by gender with women forced to the back, streets divided down the middle like an Orthodox synagogue, women’s voices silenced within range of Haredi men’s hearing.)

These are all items with which we must be engaged.

A few weeks ago we hosted a program here at Temple Israel called Faces of Israel.  This was, in my opinion, one of the best Israel-related programs that we have had here.  The program featured a group of young Israeli adults from a variety of backgrounds speaking about their personal experiences, their struggles and successes, their challenges in the context of a vibrant, open society.  This was not meant to be a political program, although members of our community continuously tried to bring the guests back to political issues with leading questions.

Particularly moving was the story that one of the participants told, about the day that he had to choose between attending the wedding of a good friend and the funeral of another, who was killed in an operation on the border with Lebanon.  Such are the choices that Israelis face every day, between school, work, family, and service to the State.

This program was so human, so personal; it tapped into the nuances of daily existence, the same spectrum of human emotions that we all face.  When urged by the audience to speak about the matzav, one of the participants said, “You can’t achieve peace without talking to the other side.  At some point, they will have to trust us, and we will have to trust them.”

I support AIPAC, because it serves an essential role, one which no other pro-Israel organization can fulfill.  But our discussion of Israel must be much wider.

The State of Israel and the people of Israel (that is, us) must continue to be Or LaGoyim, a light unto the nations.  If we allow any single threat to eclipse all other issues pertinent to the world stage, then we are committing a grave error of omission.  We are not merely Hitler’s victims or Haman’s would-be victims; we have a mandate from God to lead, to cast light where there is none, and to, in the words of the Psalmist, “baqesh shalom verodfehu,” seek peace and pursue it (Psalm 34:15).

Perhaps the most poignant moment at the conference came at the end of Ambassador Rice’s address, when a roomful of rabbis and cantors from across American Jewry sang together the words of Psalm 133: Hineh mah tov umah na’im, shevet ahim gam yahad.  How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together.

Next year, I hope that many of you will join me in Washington for the AIPAC Policy Conference.  But in the coming year, I hope that we will also seek out other ways to widen our perspectives on Israel, and engage with the complexity of Israeli life.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 3/10/2012.)

Devarim 5771 - Talk is Cheap: Word Inflation

I’m not much of a talker. Really, I consider myself very bad at small talk. I just can’t kibitz.

But that might be because I grew up in rural New England, where silence really truly was golden. My parents, city folk from Boston, they are the loquacious sort. My brother, sister, and I - the strong, silent type. Better a stiff upper lip. We were direct, short and to the point, and small talk was avoided unless absolutely necessary. But that is not typical for our people.

Woody Allen once quipped that his Jewish ancestors, responding to pogroms and other forms of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, had to be quick with words: they learned how to talk their way out of a tight spot.

As Jews, we understand the value of words. Yes, we are the “People of the Book,” (a moniker bestowed upon us by the Muslims, by the way). But our words are central to our faith. Which is all the more reason for us to be concerned about the future of the word. But I’ll come back to that.

Here are some of the primary ways in which our tradition elevates words:

1. We offer the words of our lips in place of sacrifice; the amidot that we recite every day are in place of the sacrifices that took place in the Temple in Jerusalem. This is the hallmark of rabbinic Judaism, the Jewish practice that emerged in the wake of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE (which we commemorate on Tuesday, when we observe Tish'ah Be'Av) - that words are the primary medium of our relationship with God. Gershom Sholem once described normative Judaism as only allowing words to bridge the gap between us and God.

2. Not only this, but all of our rituals involve words. From the Pesah seder to the vidui confessions of Yom Kippur, from the most seemingly insignificant berakhah to the soaring recitation of Tal, the prayer for dew, we mark our holy moments with liturgy, the words of tefillah / prayer.

3. We read the Torah cover to cover each year, interpreting and re-interpreting, commenting and agreeing and disagreeing and occasionally taking it out to parade it around and dance with it. The Torah contains (according to the Masoretic note at the end) 79,856 words, but it has yielded millions upon millions of others.

4. We highlight study and learning above all other mitzvot: the rabbinic principle of Talmud Torah keneged kulam (the study of Torah outweighs all other mitzvot / commandments) speaks to the centrality of the word in Jewish life and tradition. Everything we do comes, in some way, from the Jewish bookshelf, and we continually revisit these texts to learn more.

5. And, understanding the harm that words can cause, we also prohibit lashon hara, gossip, motzi shem ra, slander, nibbul peh, having a detestable mouth, and of course taking God’s name in vain.

The opening of the book of Devarim / Deuteronomy, which we read this morning, is Elleh ha-devarim. These are the words, said Moshe. Or maybe, the concepts. The ideas. The actions associated with these commandments. Because a word, in Jewish tradition, is not just a word.

One ironic idiosyncracy of the rabbi standing before you is that while I am lousy at small talk, I love words. I have often fantasized about being the next author of the pseudonymous Philologos column in the Forward, which (I have on good authority) is written by the author Hillel Halkin. So please consider the following lexical diversion a sort of audition:

The Hebrew “davar” can be read in multiple ways. In modern Hebrew, a “davar” is a thing, and usually a “millah” is a word. But in the ancient language of the Torah, a “davar” can be read as either a word, or a matter or affair.

Those of you who are Hebrew grammar buffs know that the most common verbal form of “davar” is ledabber, to speak. But that is in the pi’el, or intensive conjugation. In the rare qal or regular conjugation, the (theoretical) infinitive is lidbor, which might be translated as “to have the ability to speak, although not currently engaged in doing so.” One might make the observation that a “davar,” a word or matter, is more clearly connected to the qal verb. That is, the word or concept exists, but not until it is actually pronounced aloud does it become “dibbur,” speech.

Rashi, Rav Shelomo Yitzhaqi, the celebrated 11th century French wine merchant, was the first to give a running commentary to the Torah and hence democratize the learning of Torah and Talmud for all generations to come. Rashi describes his guiding principle in a comment to Genesis 3:8:

ואני לא באתי אלא לפשוטו של מקרא, ולאגדה המיישבת דברי המקרא - דבר דבור על אופניו

“I have come only to teach the plain meaning of the passage, and such Aggadah [stories] that settles the words of the Scripture, each word in its proper way.”

Rashi’s last four words, “davar davur al ofnav,” might be translated as “a word worded in its way.” Each word, says Rashi, has a simple, contextual meaning, dictated by the way that the Torah has applied it. His job as a commentator, and that of all Torah commentators who followed him, is to be sensitive to the word and its context. Every word is powerful by itself, but it does not stand alone; it is supported by the verbal structure around it.

A midrash about the opening of Parashat Devarim connects the word “davar” with “devorah,” a bee. The words of Torah can be sweet like honey; but if we stray from them, they can sting like bees.

Judaism elevates the word; we understand that words have power. The written word is concept; for the spoken word, which puts the concept into action, the stakes are even higher.

Which is all the more reason for concern regarding the future of the word, both written and spoken. Frankly, I’m worried. Verbal inflation has arrived. The word is being rapidly devalued. As with money, when you have more in circulation, every greenback is worth less. And there’s no debt ceiling with words.

Ladies and gentlemen, the world is changing. We are the witnesses to an unprecedented paradigm shift, as the printed word eases its way out of this world, replaced by its electronic cousin.

Is it possible that with the explosion of news sources, entertainment options, and Internet search engines that seem to read our minds rather than our keystrokes, that we are gradually losing ourselves in a sea of information?

As text messages multiply, content aggregators aggregate, and newspapers around the world go out of business, we have to face the uncomfortable reality that the way in which all of us here over 30 years of age acquired information, is going the way of the typewriter and the rotary-dial telephone.

When Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our teacher, stood before the Israelites, knowing that he would die before they entered the land of Israel, he laid before them a whole book of words, a series of commandments. Elleh ha-devarim, he said. The Greek name for this book is Deutoronomy, meaning, “second law.” Many of the commandments laid down in the fifth book of the Torah were already given in the previous four, but many were not. It was a final parting gift of tremendous value, a gift platter loaded with the most potent, well-chosen ancient Hebrew words / concepts / commandments / affairs that Moshe could deliver. Elleh ha-devarim. These are the words.

Estimates are that today, total global data storage is on the order of zettabytes - that is, trillions of gigabytes - 10^21 characters. We have no choice but to ignore nearly all of them. We search through volumes of them online to find only what we want; we save multiple copies of them throughout the cyber-cloud; estimates are that as much as 70% of those stored zettabytes is actually redundant material.

The cheapening of words has social consequences: we listen to national politicians abuse words by selling us one story while executing another. We watch helplessly as the words of the State of Israel, its government ministers, its spokespeople, its regular Jews, are openly doubted in the press and in mainstream thought.

Chancellor Arnold Eisen of the Jewish Theological Seminary has recently begun blogging, and I have very much enjoyed reading his pieces on the state of the Conservative movement and ideas for its future. He posts a new article every week.

His last two articles have been about tefillah / prayer, and how to reinvigorate it in the Conservative movement. I was struck by one of the comments left by a reader, who was obviously inspired by the level of discourse achieved in the discussion thread about last week’s post. He wrote, “Finally, in the last 3 or 4 weeks, I believe this has turned into a real conversation.”

Now, I suppose it is wonderful that the blog discussion has yielded what at least one reader thinks is a “conversation.” But it is hard for me, lapsed Luddite that I am, to see how comments posted on a website, pixels on a screen, can equal the real-time give-and-take to be found in an actual conversation. I have found that online discussions are more often merely people with extreme views talking past each other.

I have to be careful not to confuse the medium with the message. Nonetheless, I fear that words have become devalued, because there are just too many of them. How can we possibly stay on top of all of the electronic clutter? How can we filter the signal from the noise? In the future, how will we know who to believe, who to trust, if all pixels are equally bright?

Given our history and tradition, what can we do in the face of word inflation? What must we do to combat this cheapening of the word? We have to return to our texts, to study them again, to turn them over and over. We have to recommit to Jewish learning, to being sensitive to the meanings of our words. We have to drag our friends to adult ed classes, to cajole our teenagers to enroll in the Youth House, to urge our college students and young adults to find an open-minded place to learn Torah and Talmud. We have to learn more Hebrew, our language. We have to truly rejoice in the rolling of the Torah back to the beginning on Simhat Torah, and start all over again with Bereshit / Genesis.

If we allow our words to be devalued, our rich tradition will not survive another generation. So please forgive me if I fail at small talk - I am simply trying to maintain the value of words.

Shabbat shalom.

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 8/6/2011.)

Shavuot 5771 - Plugged In to the Torah

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Wednesday morning, June 8, 2011.)

Have you been on the New York City subway lately? You might have noticed that a hefty percentage of your fellow travelers have earphones tucked into their ears. What they are listening to one can only guess. Classical music? Classic rock? Hip hop? Reggae? Or maybe NPR podcasts (my personal favorite)? Regardless of what we listen to, many of us are plugged in.

Two weeks ago Cantor Frieder and I were at the annual Cantors Assembly convention in Toronto, and one of the featured speakers was Dr. Arnold Eisen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary. (For those of you who do not know, JTS is the primary teaching institution of the Conservative movement, and includes the rabbinical school where Rabbi Stecker and I were both ordained, and the cantorial school where I was invested as cantor and where our own hazzan teaches, and taught me as well.)

Speaking to a room full of hazzanim, Dr. Eisen spoke about the importance of making tefillot / words of prayer meaningful to our congregations. He suggested the following image, which I really love: When we engage in tefillah, when we pray, we should all be wearing stereo headphones. In one ear, we would hear the sounds of tefillah: the liturgy, the nusah, the congregational melodies. In the other ear, we would hear a running commentary: the meanings, structure, themes, history, development, choreography, everything that goes into making a prayerful experience valuable and attainable.

Of course, Dr. Eisen did not mean this literally. He did not suggest investing in the electronic infrastructure such that we can all be plugged-in during services. On the contrary: his idea is to equip everybody with the knowledge that will enable them to fully participate as if they were wearing these theoretical headphones. That is, to teach tefillah. To teach the context, the understanding, and not just the words and the melodies. To arm each of us in the pews with the tools to gather spiritual meaning from this central act that we do together as a Jewish community.

Let’s face it: tefillah is not easy. And don’t think it’s just us: there’s a very telling quote in the Talmud Yerushalmi, when four rabbis (R. Hiyya, R. Bun bar Hiyya, Shemuel, and R. Matnaya) collectively lament their inability to concentrate during tefillot. One admits that during his whole life, he only found true kavvanah / intent once. Another says that he counts chicks while praying (and he meant baby chickens, not attractive members of the opposite sex). Another says he counts layers of stones. The last one admits that he gives credit to his head, which knows when to bow by itself.

Point is, these ancient rabbis, who were immersed in learning, had difficulty focusing. All the more so for us, whose heads are filled with far more distractions than were found in the ancient world.

As Dr. Eisen reminded us, “our movement is defined primarily by synagogues; synagogues are defined primarily by worship services.” As such, it should be our goal as a community to make the tefillah / prayer experience meaningful. Otherwise, our synagogues will be the spiritually empty shells that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel mourned in an oft-quoted address to Conservative rabbis in 1953:

“The fire has gone out of our worship. It is cold, stiff, and dead... Yes, the edifices are growing. Yet, worship is decaying. Has the temple become the graveyard where prayer is buried?”

And then Heschel takes to task the rabbis and cantors of the American synagogue:

“There are many who labor in the vineyard of oratory; but who knows how to pray, or how to inspire others to pray. There are many who can execute and display magnificent fireworks; but who knows how to kindle a spark in the darkness of a soul?”

Dr. Eisen thinks that Heschel was too harsh; that the reality lies somewhere between services that are deeply meaningful and moving and Rabbi Heschel’s bleak emptiness of tefillah by proxy in stunning buildings led by brilliant clergy.

Nonetheless, the critique is valid. Tefillah is hard. And, let’s face it, are we indeed equipped with the knowledge streaming from those imaginary headphones? Are we tuned in to what’s going on on the page, in our hearts, in our minds, and on the bimah?

The giving and receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai is depicted as a having been something like a wedding. God asks the people if they will accept the mitzvot / commandments, and the Israelites respond with, “Na’aseh venishma,” we will do and we will listen. What better way is there to commemorate this holiday by re-dedicating ourselves to the pursuit of meaningful prayer, to the pursuit of tapping into our spirituality.

We here at Temple Israel are prepared to offer you some help and guidance with that. We can build those figurative headphones. ($6 Million Man reference: “Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology...”) We already have opportunities in place, like the Havurah tefillah discussion that happens every 2nd and 4th Shabbat of each month, one-half hour before the Havurah service in the Multi-Purpose room. My discussion-based service, The Whys and Wherefores of Shabbat Morning Tefillot, met this past Shabbat, and will be resuming again in the fall; this is an opportunity to dig further into the words that we recite. As those who attended this service found, every word in tefillah contains multiple layers of meaning; every sentence has depth and breadth.

Dr. Eisen further suggested that every service include a devar tefillah, a brief note about meaning or connection that we can find in tefillah. Rabbi Stecker and I now regularly give kavvanot at weekday morning minyanim; you can read mine on my blog, where I post new ones usually on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and sometimes Wednesdays.

But I actually did not want to limit my discussion today to tefillah. Actually, the story is much greater than that.

As I pointed out a few weeks ago, when I suggested in this space the Five Pillars of Judaism, ours is a complicated tradition. It’s not easy to learn. Even those who are very serious, dedicated and learned continue to learn throughout their lives. That’s how much material there is. As I often point out to families that attend the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Family Workshop that I run a couple of times a year, the Jewish bookshelf contains many, many volumes of collected knowledge spanning at least 3000 years. In rabbinical school, I learned the equivalent of just a few of them. I continue to learn, and we all should do so as well.

The greater message that Dr. Eisen mentioned in Toronto was the following: that we need to transform our congregations from places where people come to drop off their kids for Hebrew school or celebrate semahot or listen to a High Holiday sermon, to communities where we all strive after the Torah, where we cling to its words, where we dig deeper into the Jewish bookshelf to uncover the treasures found within.

Temple Israel, after all, is not a “temple.” It is a beit kenesset, a gathering place. The Greek word, “synagogue,” means exactly that. Yes, we gather to pray here. But more often, we gather to learn. And we need to learn more.

And even with all this learning, you will undoubtedly still find kavannah / intention elusive, like the four Palestinian rabbis. But you will also derive new comfort and power in exploring and parsing Jewish text with friends old and new. And it will be gratifying just to be “in the know,” to be able to answer questions about your own religion and heritage.

That is, in fact, the message of Shavuot. Let’s not just wear the headphones during tefillot, but all the time.

Maybe some of you saw the article in the New York Times magazine a few weeks ago entitled, “Is Your Religion Your Financial Destiny?” The article graphed statistics that compared level of education and income against religion. And, no big surprise here, Jews came out on top; only the Hindus have more advanced degrees, but the Jews make more money, on average.

Frankly, the article made me a wee bit uncomfortable; in the wake of our fellow tribesmen, high-profile thief Bernie Madoff and the banker and philanderer Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the Jews really do not need any more publicity that invokes traditional stereotypes. But the author did say the following, which I think is quite telling: “Some of the income differences probably stem from culture. Some faiths place great importance on formal education.”

Judaism, Jewish life, and Jewish culture have always valued learning. We have always been plugged into education. In the wake of the Enlightenment, those of us who opened up to secular studies focused some of that traditional inclination to learn in areas other than the Torah.

It is time, my friends, for the pendulum to swing back.

I will conclude with a few words from Pirqei Avot, the tractate of the Mishnah which is simply saturated with the rabbinic imperative to learn the words of Jewish tradition (Avot 2:15):

רבי יוסי אומר:... התקן עצמך ללמוד תורה, שאינה ירושה לך

Rabbi Yose taught: ...
Perfect yourself in the study of Torah -
It will not come to you by inheritance.

That is, don’t wait for the Torah to come to you, just because it is our yerushah, our inheritance. Get plugged in, now.

We commemorate today the giving of the Torah. And not just the Torah, but the entirety of Jewish learning, which includes that most central of Jewish activities, tefillah. Tefillah is learning; learning is tefillah. And that’s just the beginning.

Let’s turn Temple Israel into a learning community. That is our heritage, and it is also our future.

Thursday Kavvanah, 6/2/2011 - Stereophonic tefillot

Tuesday's kavvanah pointed to the obligation to take action; echoing Dr. Arnold Eisen's words to the Cantors Assembly, being Jewish means to do something, and that is our role in this world.

But all the moreso, to be Jewish means to learn. Dr. Eisen created a wonderful image for the roomful of cantors about the ideal tefillah (prayer) situation: stereo headphones. That is, in one ear, the participant in a service should hear the prayers themselves, the ancient liturgy, the Hebrew formulas and melodies that constitute tefillah. In the other ear, s/he would hear the history, the context, the development, the structure, and all the things that make tefillot leap off the page and into reality.

Simply reciting the words is not enough; we have to be engaged with them as well. Dr. Eisen's image is not a literal one. His point is, rather, that those who come to pray need to be properly equipped, or the words are just words, the melody is just singing. And that's not tefillah.

We need to be committed to davening in stereo.

Tuesday Kavvanah, 5/31/2011 - Do Something!

Last week I attended the annual Cantors Assembly convention in Toronto, and on Wednesday we were addressed by Dr. Arnold Eisen, the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is committed to the concept of mitzvah, of our being commanded to perform particular actions, and has guided the Seminary in recent years to establish the Mitzvah Initiative, a program that helps Conservative Jews get in touch with Jewish living.

He began his remarks by reminding us that we are bound by a covenant (in Hebrew, "berit") with God, and our end of the bargain is to perform those mitzvot that God has asked of us. Jews, said Dr. Eisen, do not exist merely to exist; we are here in this world to do something, and that something ranges from the ritual (e.g. tefillah / prayer, holidays) to the mundane (e.g. kashrut / dietary laws) to the active care of each other (mitzvot bein adam lehavero / mitzvot that are incumbent upon us regarding our obligations to other people, e.g. tzedaqah / charity or ethical business practices).

Today is a back-to-work Tuesday, and at morning minyan I reminded the assembled that having donned tallit and tefillin and recited the morning tefillot was the beginning of the day's Jewish life, not the end. As we go about our day, it might be helpful to remember that we do have a purpose in this world. Do something!

Conservative Judaism moves into the blogosphere

Well, it's about time. The Jewish Theological Seminary is now hosting a blog featuring weekly essays by Chancellor Arnold Eisen, and judging by the first two, this blog will be an active discussion about the state of the movement. There are also sidebars by Conservative Jewish notables, and feedback by all the rest of us. Enjoy!

http://www.jtsa.edu/prebuilt/blog/covenant.html