An Ancient Principle Revived: Our Shared Story - Vayishlah 5774

This past week we observed Veterans’ Day, which, I think, is just behind Memorial Day in the list of Most Unappreciated American Holidays. NPR played stories of recent veterans - one man who served in Afghanistan and is recovering from horrible burns, vets who are finding work and community by becoming firefighters, older vets recalling their experiences in WWII as their numbers dwindle. The stories were touching indeed, but my sense is that most Americans were not reflecting too seriously on Monday about those who have served in the nation’s armed forces.

What Veterans’ Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving do for us as Americans is to help maintain our shared story. This is who we are; this is our history; these are the memories and principles that sustain us as we move forward.

Problem is, I don’t think we have a shared story any more. Maybe we never did, but in any case, the texture of American society is too varied, and our willingness to spend time reflecting about anything is too scarce. We are more likely to spend these days shopping than celebrating our American-ness or recalling those who served and died for this nation. Furthermore, the heterogeneity of our society has, I think, yielded multiple Americas: Consider how we are failing to speak to one another in the public sphere - our politics, issues of education or race or even religion.

And, thanks to the magical information-sorting mechanism known as the Internet, we are moving to a place where we are all living in our own little echo chambers. As print media and even broadcast journalism (is anything actually “broadcast” today?) continue their slow decline, we are gradually growing more isolated due to the search engines that make choices for us regarding what we want to read or watch, all in the name of the advertising dollars that sustain Google and Facebook by getting us to click on more and more links.   

Abetted by the binary thinking that underlies computer technology (everything boils down to ones and zeros; you either “Like” something on Facebook or you don’t), there are two mutually-exclusive narratives on climate change, two narratives on health care, multiple narratives on Israel, and on and on. These binary echo chambers are, in some ways, limiting our abilities to see the complexity in difficult issues and ancient religious traditions.

In this environment, it is very hard for us to have a shared story.

However, ladies and gentlemen, shared stories are the vehicle that binds us to each other. And no matter how talented our electronic devices become, they will never bring us together in the ways that our ancestors bonded, first over communal meals by the fire, then in the foundational myths that held ancient societies together, then in the common ideals and dogma of the great religions, and in contemporary times, the modern tales of war, revolution, and technological advancement that have shaped our world.

So, while shared stories have always been the glue of societies ancient and modern, consider for a moment the following. In the last month, I have been to four different gatherings of Jews discussing the Jewish future: 

• the United Synagogue Centennial Convention,
• a seminar on the future of the rabbinate with Long Island colleagues, hosted by UJA-Federation’s Synergy program,
• a workshop on using the model of community organizing for synagogues hosted by the Rabbinical Assembly (Clergy 2.0), and
• a training session for congregational facilitators of United Synagogue’s Sulam for Emerging Leaders, a leadership-development program that we are launching here at Temple Israel next month. 
   

At three out of four of these gatherings, significant attention was paid to the need to build relationships between people by sharing stories. In the seminar on community organizing, I and 43 other Conservative rabbis spent a day and a half learning techniques for eliciting stories from members of our communities, individually and in small groups. It seems that the idea of sharing stories is one of the foundational principles of the brave, new world of reimagining faith communities.

But here’s the irony: we know that! In particular, we, the Jews, the People of the Book - we know that stories bind us to one another. We are the keepers of the greatest contribution of storytelling to Western society: the Torah!

In fact, we read this morning what I have long felt is the most essential, foundational story in the Torah related to Jewish peoplehood. It’s Yaaqov’s one-on-one encounter with an angel, where he wrestles all night long, but before the angel departs, he bestows upon Yaaqov a new name: Yisrael.

What does Yisrael mean? The Torah tells us:

כִּי-שָׂרִיתָ עִם-אֱלֹהִים וְעִם-אֲנָשִׁים, וַתּוּכָל.

For you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.

We are Benei Yisrael, the children of Israel. Our very name says everything you need to know about the Israelite people. We are the people who struggle with God. We ask questions. We argue. We disagree. That is an essential quality of the Jewish character. I could rattle off any number of relevant jokes here, but what I am saying is actually quite serious: our theological struggle, our willingness to wrestle with the words of the Torah and Jewish tradition and yes, with God, defines our peoplehood.

And this story of who we are is just one of literally hundreds in the Tanakh, the entire Hebrew Bible. Why do we read the Torah in its entirety every year? Yes, because we continue to learn from it. Yes, because God has commanded us to meditate on these words day and night (c.f. Joshua 1:8). But all the more so, because these are the stories that unite us. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, even the Secular Humanists have to admit that the Torah is our collective, national story.

Here is the challenge that we face as the 21st century picks up speed: the Torah may not be enough. Why are all these Jewish organizations exhorting their rabbis and lay leaders to focus on building relationships through shared stories? Because we have lost sight of our heritage. Because we no longer have one narrative.

How many of us are hear the Torah read regularly? How many of us are meditating on it night and day? I can tell you that in my weekly parashah discussion, Dor HaBa, we usually have about 12 very eager participants. It’s always a great discussion, but can we seriously say that this community is engaged with the Torah?

The recent study by the Pew Research Center indicates that only 11% of American Jews attend synagogue once per week or more, and another 12% once or twice a month. Most of the people in those two categories are Orthodox. That means that ¾ of American Jews, and the vast majority of the non-Orthodox, are not engaged in the time-honored tradition of hearing our Jewish story on a regular basis. And furthermore, even of the ones who are there week after week, how many of us are actually listening, reading, and actively engaged?

We have to work harder to find our contemporary shared stories, so that we can maintain our ancient story, the Torah.

And that will require cultural change. What made big synagogues like this one function through the middle of the 20th century until recent years is the common narrative of its members. Not just the Torah, but the immigrant experience in the New World, the common foods and musical tastes and cultural pursuits, the struggles provoked by anti-Semitism here and abroad, the wake of the Shoah and the establishment and building of the State of Israel.

But we don’t have that anymore. We are far more diverse today, with an ethnic mix far more varied than that of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, with different tales and origins and foods and music. Israel is not struggling for survival. 73% of Jews in the Pew study indicated that “Remembering the Holocaust” is an essential part of being Jewish, but as the survivors among us dwindle and World War II recedes further into our national memory, this will also figure less as a uniter of Jewish peoplehood. (BTW, only 19% that “Observing Jewish law” is essential to being Jewish, although this, of course, is material for another sermon entirely.)  

What this institution, and all the institutions of American Jewish life need, at this point, is cultural change. We are going to need a change that is akin to Yaaqov’s name change, from the one who aspired at birth by grasping the heel of his older twin brother, to the father of the nation that struggles with God. That kind of change.

And that change will have to come from within. It will emerge through a range of conversations: individual conversations one-on-one with members of the clergy and senior staff or lay volunteers, larger conversations in group meetings, and so forth. The primary question that we will be asking, ladies and gentlemen, paraphrases that most famously asked by President John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address. The question is not, “What can Temple Israel do for you?” but rather, “What are you willing to do with Temple Israel? What might you do to make this a more engaging place for more members of this community?”

We will need to move this congregation from a transactional relationship with its members (i.e. you pay your dues, we provide you with services) to that based on personal engagement and participation. And we can build that personal institution. Yes, there are some among us who will always prefer to write out a check than participate in a hands-on way, and there are many of us who feel like we simply do not have time for a more active role in Jewish communal life, and we need all of those people too. But it is upon us as a community to seek ways that we can reconnect, to make this a place of shared stories, to make this institution less, well, institutional.

We are all searching for personal meaning, and we as a community have to get to a place where meaning can be found in our relationships with members of this synagogue, where our stories bind us to each other and to God. And to find those entry points, to create the environment in which we can share those stories, we, the clergy and the laity of Temple Israel will need your help. So we hope that you will step forward when asked.

Until that framework is created, however, here is an easy suggestion: When you are in the building, don’t just talk and greet your friends. After today’s service is over, at the kiddush, find somebody you have never met before and get to know them. Ask: What’s your story? What brought you here today? Tell me about yourself. What makes you want to be involved with a community? What are the things about Judaism that appeal to you? If you had the time, the energy, and the resources, what great idea might you initiate in this community?

We have to continue to struggle with God. We have to continue to engage. If we stop doing so, then we will no longer be Yisrael, the ones who struggle with God. Look for those opportunities to elicit the stories of others, and to share your own. It’s an ancient idea whose time has come again.

Shabbat shalom.

~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, November 16, 2013.)

Darwin and the Future of Religion - Vayehi 5773

When I was in Israel a few weeks back, I was shopping for Hebrew-language children’s books for my kids, and I found something curious: a book about Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. The level seemed a bit too high for my five-year-old daughter, but I couldn’t resist. I bought it.

After thinking about this a little more deeply, buyer’s remorse set in: I realized that this book might create an unintended consequence. As a proud alumna of our Beth HaGan nursery school and, well, the daughter of a rabbi who likes to read Hebrew Bible stories to his kids, my daughter not only wears her faith proudly, but will also talk your ear off about all of the wonderful things that God does for us. She is certain that God created the world and all of its creatures in six days and rested on the seventh. Will introducing her to another, potentially conflicting idea at such a tender age confuse her? Will she merely accept this as another story that can comfortably live alongside the opening chapters of Bereshit? Will she reject one or the other, and will this jeopardize her chances of getting into Harvard, or worse, JTS?

In any case, we have not yet read it. But I am nonetheless cautiously looking forward to the conversation that we will one day have.

Of course, the discourse about the role of religion in modern life is not only ongoing, but perhaps getting louder. We are all in some sense still struggling to respond to modernity, a process that began (at least in Jewish life) two and a half centuries ago, when Moses Mendelssohn succeeded in joining the intellectual elite of Berlin while maintaining his Jewish identity and practice. Meanwhile, there has been what amounts to an inadvertent series of op-ed pieces in the New York Times about religion and modernity, perhaps featured because December is the time of the year that Americans are most likely to be thinking about religious involvement. Each of them merits individual discussion, but I wanted to address them in the context of this morning’s Torah reading.

Today in Parashat Vayehi, we read about Jacob’s deathbed blessings and curses given to his twelve sons (we’ll talk another day about why his daughter Dinah is not mentioned). As is typical of end-of-life scenes in the Tanakh (like that of Moses at the end of Devarim, or our haftarah today, which took place at the end of King David’s life), Jacob’s pronouncements look backward and forward, referencing stories elsewhere in the Torah (even to events that have not yet taken place according to the Torah’s chronology) and making what seem to be predictions about the future for each son’s tribe. (Biblical scholars actually see this passage as having been written in a different place and time, probably much older than the surrounding text, and co-opted here as Jacob’s words. Hence Jacob’s seeming foreknowledge of where the tribes dwell in Israel and who is scattered among whom.)

But here is the curious thing. Jacob is the only patriarch to die in Egypt, in what we today refer to as the diaspora. He himself has been in Egypt for seventeen years, and he does not know for how long his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be there. He makes his sons promise that they will bury him with Abraham and Isaac in the Cave of Makhpelah in Hebron, but does not insist that they stay there. He seems to be quietly comfortable with the knowledge that someday they will return to the land that was promised to all three patriarchs, that someday their exile will end, and his descendants will take up residence in a land that is now occupied by Canaanites and Philistines and Hivites and Jebusites and so forth. He is not worried that his son Joseph is married to the daughter of an Egyptian priest; all the more so, he adopts Joseph’s Egyptian-born children Menashe and Ephraim as his own, declaring that (Genesis 48:20):

בְּךָ יְבָרֵךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר, יְשִׂמְךָ אֱלֹהִים כְּאֶפְרַיִם וְכִמְנַשֶּׁה

By you shall Israel invoke invoke blessings, saying, God make you like Ephraim and Menashe.

These are, of course, the words we still invoke each Friday night when we bless our own children today.  Jacob, taking the long view, is not concerned about his family’s future, their identity as members of his clan or issues of intermarriage and assimilation.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are times when it is very easy to worry about the future of Judaism, or indeed religious practice in general. As you have heard me say many times in this space, the fastest growing religion in America is “None.” There are those in the more “fundamentalist” sphere (of all of the Western religious traditions) that believe that this is merely a symptom of the gradual tearing down of religious authority to which Spinoza and Darwin and Marx and many others have arguably contributed. We are now reaping what we have sown, they say. 

But my concern is not the decline of religion due to active denial or apparent contradiction between the principles of religion in modern life. My concern is indifference - the vast numbers of people who pass through these doors every year and are not only untouched by the richness of their own tradition, but are also gradually finding themselves alienated by Judaism through their own non-involvement. The threat is not Darwin, ladies and gentlemen, but a dearth of inspiring moments: words, prayer, feelings, music, and communal togetherness.

But these recent pieces in the Times have struck a hopeful chord. The first, one that I discussed last week when I substituted for Rabbi Stecker at his bi-weekly “Jews and the News” class, is by an evangelical pastor, John Dickerson, about the decline of evangelical Christianity. While reading Rev. Dickerson’s piece, I experienced a strong sense of what psychologists call counter-transference: the phenomena that he describes (declining membership, fewer young people involved, decreased political power of their adherents due to smaller numbers) mimic patterns in non-Orthodox Judaism. His conclusion is that evangelicals must focus on their core principles, and that a movement in disarray has hope for building.

The second op-ed of interest was written by University of North Carolina history professor Molly Worthen about the apparent growth and power of secularism. She points to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showing that the “nones” of America are now 20% of the population, up from 16% just five years ago. Dr. Worthen cites religious Christian activists who pointed to this study as evidence that the foundations of our society are crumbling.

But Dr. Worthen also gives us a historical reality check, noting that despite the apparently declining interest in religion, that there have always been a fair share of what we today call the “unaffiliated”. Even in traditional America, where the French sociological tourist Alexis de Tocqueville found in the 18th century an open market of religious ideas that led to greater religious commitment than in Europe, regular church attendance before the Civil War “probably never exceeded 30 percent.”

Meanwhile, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the largest Jewish organization of the British Commonwealth, wrote a wonderful essay about the continuing value of religion today. He cites similar statistics about declining religious involvement in Britain and the U.S., and then observes the following:

“The irony is that many of the new atheists are followers of Charles Darwin. We are what we are, they say, because it has allowed us to survive and pass on our genes to the next generation. Our biological and cultural makeup constitutes our “adaptive fitness.” Yet religion is the greatest survivor of them all. Superpowers tend to last a century; the great faiths last millenniums [sic].”

Like Dr. Worthen, Rabbi Sacks also points to the invaluable research of sociologist Robert Putnam, author of the essential works Bowling Alone and American Grace. Putnam concludes that while “social capital,” the glue that binds us all together in society, is on the decline, religious communities are still supplying social capital in spades.

“Mr. Putnam’s research showed that frequent church- or synagogue-goers were more likely to give money to charity, do volunteer work, help the homeless, donate blood, help a neighbor with housework, spend time with someone who was feeling depressed, offer a seat to a stranger or help someone find a job. Religiosity as measured by church or synagogue attendance is, he found, a better predictor of altruism than education, age, income, gender or race.”

Rabbi Sacks offers this as proof that not only will religion survive the Darwinian forces of natural selection, but that it will serve as a bulwark against the creeping individualism that the information age seems to have hastened. Rituals, prayer, study of traditional texts, and so forth build trust, empathy, and foundations of a healthy, cooperative society.

What these articles all point to, and particularly that of Rabbi Sacks, is that religious tradition will always have a certain appeal, and that the mere fact that we are still here a century and a half after Darwin published On the Origin of Species testifies to this. Of course we have to work hard to do what we do better, and there may in fact be even leaner years on the horizon. But, like Jacob, we know that not only will we continue to offer inspiration in the future, we will do so in all the resplendent complexity that the modern Jewish world offers: many choices, many approaches, many points of view. And that’s a good thing.

I recall a trenchant discussion from when I was in rabbinical school. I was in Talmud class with Dr. David Kraemer, who is also the librarian of the JTS Library, one of the finest collections of Jewish books and documents in the world. We had taken a slight diversion from discussing some of the finer points of hilkhot Sukkah, the laws related to fulfilling the mitzvot of the festival of Sukkot, to talk about why it was OK for Jewish kids to collect candy on Halloween. Judaism has never lived in a vacuum, he reminded us, borrowing ideas and holidays and rituals and music from surrounding cultures. Halloween, or for that matter Christmas, are no more threats to Judaism and Jewish culture than Israeli supermarkets that sell pork products. We will continue regardless; we will continue to be, as was promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as “numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17). Our concern should only be to continue to try to reach people through all of the means at our disposal, traditional and not-so. 

In short, the message of the day (with a nod to science fiction writer and staunch atheist Douglas Adams) is this: Don’t panic. Judaism, including liberal variants such as ours, will soldier on and continue to offer inspiration to those who seek it. Our task is to, just as Rev. Dickerson suggests, focus on the essentials of our faith, and let the forces of natural selection do the rest.
Shabbat shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, December 29, 2012.)

Being Ready for the Call - Friday Kavvanah, 12/30/2011

Having just returned yesterday from Israel, I was up quite early this morning, and it afforded me plenty of quiet time while the family was still asleep.  I read pretty carefully through Parashat Vayyigash, and through my jet-lagged haze spotted the following (Genesis 46:2):

וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב יַעֲקֹב; וַיֹּאמֶר, הִנֵּנִי
God called to Israel in a vision by night: "Jacob!  Jacob!"  He answered, "Here I am."

The dialogue is a precise echo of the end of the Aqedah, the story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22:11):

וַיִּקְרָא אֵלָיו מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה, מִן-הַשָּׁמַיִם, וַיֹּאמֶר, אַבְרָהָם אַבְרָהָם; וַיֹּאמֶר, הִנֵּנִי
Then an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven: "Abraham!  Abraham!"  And he answered, "Here I am."

Even the trope marks (the Masoretic accents that historically clarify the text and today indicate chanting melody) are identical, including the "pesiq," the vertical line placed between the repeated names, indicating a luftpause, a break for air that audibly recalls the beat separating them as the story unfolds in real time.

Why the exact repetition?  The biblical author surely wants us to connect the two stories.  Abraham is about to slaughter his son Isaac; his grandson Jacob is about to leave Canaan, the land that has been promised to each of the Patriarchs, to go down to Egypt for Lord knows how long.  Each is a hugely significant moment, lush with personal and national meaning, and the readiness of both characters to answer to God's call is formidable. Both are moments when God's voice is not expected, but clearly needed.

Some Jews come to the synagogue on a regular basis to communicate with God, but how many of us are ready to answer God's call to us when it comes?  Rabbi David Kimhi (aka Radaq, 1160-1235 in Provence) comments that here God calls Jacob's name twice because it had been so many years since Jacob had received any kind of prophecy, and thus he was probably not expecting to hear God's voice again.

Similarly, if God calls on any of us, would we hear it?  Shabbat shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Ancient and Not-So-Ancient Connections - Thursday Kavvanah, 12/8/11

At the very beginning of the Shaharit / morning service, every day of the year, there is a passage that we generally buzz through quickly without giving it much thought.  But it really should be in BOLD CAPS (if there were capital letters in Hebrew), because it nicely prefaces the act of tefillah / prayer.

The passage (found on page 7 of Siddur Sim Shalom for Weekdays), mentions that we are partners with God in the berit, the covenant established with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and cites some of the key berit-making events that are taking place in the current run of Torah readings.  And then comes the following:


לְפִיכָךְ אֲנַחְנוּ חַיָּבִים לְהודות לְךָ וּלְשַׁבֵּחֲךָ וּלְפָאֶרְךָ וּלְבָרֵךְ וּלְקַדֵּשׁ וְלָתֵת שֶׁבַח וְהודָיָה לִשְׁמֶךָ
Therefore it is our duty to thank You and praise You, to glorify and sanctify your name.


One source of our obligation to recite words of prayer daily is the connection to the founding ancestors of our tradition.  Tefillah / prayer becomes an act of historical resonance, building a sort of pipeline to the patriarchs and matriarchs and allowing us to receive the benevolence bestowed upon them.


But the motivation that connects us even more powerfully today is, I think, not that of ancient times but of the more recent past.  When I daven, I sometimes like to picture my grandparents, great-grandparents and so on, peeking in through the windows.  We are all the inheritors of a long chain of tradition, unbroken for centuries; it is up to us to claim that tradition.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

The Subconscious Wrestling Match - Friday Kavvanah, 12/9/11

Jacob's fourth angelic encounter occurs in Parashat Vayishlah, completing his ascent into adulthood and assumption of his role as patriarch.  (The first occurred after he had fled from his brother Esau, just after obtaining the blessing from his father Isaac.)

When he wrestles with the "man" (or perhaps elohim, a "divine being," as the Torah later refers to him) in Genesis 32, the struggle seems to take place in both the physical and metaphysical context: on one hand, Jacob appears to be literally wrestling with a stranger; on the other, he is also locked in battle with himself.  Given that he is alone at the time, it suggests the possibility that this is a dream, like the encounter in Genesis 28.  But this episode plays out as much in the conscious as the subconscious.

This is Jacob's liminal moment: he is facing his past and future, preparing to reunite with his brother Esau and accept his destiny.  The angel supplies him with his new name, Israel ("he who strives with God"), signifying his transition.  Jacob struggles as much with God as with himself.

And so too is this the point of transition for us, the descendants of Jacob.  We are Yisrael, the ones that engage with God, and in doing so to this day, we struggle as much with ourselves.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Jacob and René

Sunrise this morning was at 6:58 AM, and as I hurried to make it to morning minyan / service at 6:45, the lawn in front of Temple Israel looked very much like this:

I had a momentary fantasy of strolling with a bowler and umbrella through a painting by the Belgian surrealist, René Magritte: L'Empire des Lumières / The Empire of Light.

One way to approach the artwork of the Torah is to place ourselves in it.  When Jacob finds himself, at the beginning of Parashat Vayyetze, transfixed by a vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder to the sky, he is awestruck:


וַיִּירָא, וַיֹּאמַר, מַה-נּוֹרָא, הַמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה:  אֵין זֶה, כִּי אִם-בֵּית אֱלֹהִים, וְזֶה שַׁעַר הַשָּׁמָיִם
Shaken, he said, "How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway to heaven." (Bereshit / Genesis 28:17)


When we find ourselves struck by something we see or experience, it is an opportunity to recall the sense of "radical amazement" that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel brought to our attention in his theological writings:


"Among the many things that religious tradition holds in store for us is a legacy of wonder. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin." (Heschel, God in Search of Man).

I imagine that I too would have had that sense of wonder if I were walking through Jacob's vision.  Much more challenging, however, is to find the radical amazement in the commonplace; look for it.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson