The Permanent Record - Shabbat Shuvah 5774

A few years back, Google changed its account policies, and there was an opportunity to delete your search history before it became a part of your “permanent record.” So I went in and deleted all my history, but not before spending a few moments browsing back through pages and pages of search terms, going back to the month that I arrived at Temple Israel and set up a Google account.

This was quite a revealing trip down memory lane. It told many stories about who I am: I had searched for arcane pieces of information for sermons. I had searched for old friends, and of course I had Googled myself a few times, just to see what I was up to. I had searched for information on various medical subjects, new aches and pains. I had searched for song lyrics and famous quotes that I wanted to get right. I had searched for things to do with my kids on a Sunday afternoon and things to do with my wife on our anniversary.

What struck me was how much the Internet knew about me. Even if I had not voluntarily handed over all of my private emails to it, Google could paint a pretty good picture of me: my likes and dislikes, my medical history, my family situation, and so forth. And with a few keystrokes, it was gone.

You can’t do this any more. Whatever you search for, whatever is in your email or even on your screen is being watched, catalogued, and stored. On my relatively new Windows 8 machine, I can’t even use it without signing in to my Microsoft account, and so effectively every keystroke or screen swipe or article read is monitored by some algorithm, and contributes to the ever-increasing pile of Big Data. And, of course, if you own a cellular device of any kind, somewhere out there is a record of whom you have called, where you have been, and only God and the NSA know what else.

With some of the recent revelations regarding what various government agencies are doing with these data, not to mention all of the corporate entities that pay Google and Facebook and Verizon and Cablevision and AT&T for access to all of our 1s and 0s, it’s enough to creep me out.

But I’m not paranoid. Like most of us, I use these services, try to ignore all of the invading ads that are tailored just for me (I’m not sure why Google thinks I’m interested in getting an MBA, or that I need an anti-balding cream, or a Christian dating service… really?), and hope for the best.

However, the very idea of the collection of all of our digital residue is a particularly troubling reality at this juncture in the Jewish calendar. We are, after all, on Day 3 of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance. This is a time for reflection, for seeking forgiveness from God and from our friends and family, for cleansing, for teshuvah, returning to a state of purity and holiness. This is a time in which everybody who wants it gets a second chance, or a third or a thirtieth. This is the period in which we hope that our sins are pardoned, our screens are wiped clean, our souls purified. We aspire to a good decree for the coming year despite, as we chant so movingly at the conclusion of Avinu Malkeinu, “ki ein banu ma’asim,” we have no credit in good deeds with which to plead our case.

So here’s the irony: if we achieve teshuvah / return, if we achieve cleansing through requesting forgiveness from those we have wronged, if we achieve purity through tefillah / prayer and tzedaqah / charity and afflicting our souls through fasting and self-denial on Yom Kippur, then God forgives us, and our sins are lifted. There is no permanent record.  As we read in the Untaneh Toqef prayer, the central piece of the mahzor, “ve-ad yom moto tehakkeh lo, im yashuv miyyad teqabbelo.” God will wait for us even until our day of death, and if we return, we are immediately accepted.

The Qadosh Barukh Hu (i.e. God) will forever allow you to erase your search history, if you ask nicely. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, et al will not.

This is our second year using the Conservative movement’s new mahzor (prayerbook for the High Holidays), Lev Shalem, and if you have not spent some time simply thumbing through it and reading the material in the margins, you really should. I stumbled across a wonderful interpretation courtesy of Martin Buber, one of the most important Jewish philosophers of the 20th century, who (as a sort of sidebar) collected Hasidic stories. This little nugget comes from the late 18th / early 19th c. Hasidic rebbe Simhah Bunam of Peshischa, who said that,

“On New Year’s Day the world begins anew; and before it begins anew, it comes to a close.”

We chanted here yesterday and the day before, “Hayom harat olam,” “Today the world is born.” It’s not just a new year, says the Hasidic rebbe, it’s not just a clean slate. It’s a new world. We enter 5774 with hopes and dreams for the coming year, which is fresh and pure as a newborn, as white as virgin snow. Don’t worry - we’ll soon trample through it with muddy feet, just as we did with 5773. But that world is coming to an end, and for the moment anyway, the world of 5774 is brand new.

So the cards are in our favor.

Here is the great news: you may not be able to delete your permanent digital record. But you get a clean slate for the New Year, and the New World, if you pursue teshuvah during these Ten Days of Teshuvah. To that end, I’m going to suggest the following:

1. Look deep inside yourself. This is not so easy. Like Shrek, the (very Jewish) ogre in the animated movie from 2001, we have all built up around us such a complex series of layers, like an onion, that getting to the honest, objective truth about ourselves is next to impossible. But I think that we all have an innate moral compass that allows us to know where we’ve missed the mark, even if we do not outwardly admit it. Look for those red flags: Do we work too many hours at the expense of our families?  Do we confuse our needs with our wants? Do we inadvertently send messages to our children that suggest that grades are more important than learning?

2. Find an opportunity to apologize. Honest apologies are really hard to come by, and for that reason they are that much more appreciated by the recipient. Of course, it’s not so easy to really, candidly apologize, let alone even look in the eye somebody whom we have seriously wronged. But this is the season to screw your courage up and do it. Perhaps we need to ask forgiveness of a co-worker or with whom we were impatient or rude. Have we been dismissive of our partner’s repeated pleas regarding household responsibilities?

3. Try to find a moment of honest prayer. That could be something that occurs in the siddur, during services here. Or it could be when you have a quiet moment alone somewhere else. Our lives are so filled with distractions; if there is a time of year when you should seek out a prayerful moment, this is it.  I know this is not easy - it takes intent and practice to learn how to gently push aside the noise in our head and to make space for love and truth, but doing so once in a while is invaluable to body and spirit.

4. Try to suspend, even if just for a moment, your doubts about the efficacy of prayer, the role of God in your life, the meaning of the Book of Life, and so forth. In Prager & Telushkin’s The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism, Question 1 is, “Can one doubt God’s existence and still be a good  Jew? You would not be a modern human being if you did not have doubts. Contemporary society dismisses religion as ancient hocus-pocus, and we are all swathed in many onion-layers of healthy skepticism and ironic distance. But every now and then, we have to just let the feeling of spiritual engagement rush through us, and now is the time. If the Yom Kippur crowd is too much of a distraction, then craft some holy time for yourself during the next week. Take a walk through the woods in King’s Point Park, or lock yourself in the quietest room in the house with no electronic gadgets for 20 minutes. Who knows? You may find enlightenment, or at least a path to teshuvah.

Through deep introspection, through apology, through prayer, and through suspending our doubts even for just a moment, we all can emerge from these Ten Days of Teshuvah with a spotless record and a clear conscience.

This season of teshuvah, of repentance, of return, might be the only time each year that many of us give in to the power to change ourselves that Judaism offers. Don’t let it pass you by! You may have a permanent record out there in cyberspace, but here in the synagogue, we can all benefit from the great reset, the cold boot. Get a fresh start: make this New Year of 5774 truly one of spiritual satisfaction.

Shabbat shalom, shanah tovah, and hatimah tovah. May we all be sealed for a wonderful year.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 9/7/2013.)

Mystery and Power: The Question Marks of Jewish Life - Behaalotekha 5772

My odyssey through Judaism has been peppered with question marks. Our tradition is one of questions.  Everything can be challenged -- that is the Jewish way, the rabbinic tradition of the last two millennia. I would suggest that the most appealing feature, and indeed the central tenet of our intellectual history is the openness of our tradition to what is unknown and can therefore be discussed.  All the more so, what we do not know, what is not concrete, lends to the mystery and power of Jewish tradition.

In 1987, when I was seventeen, I visited Israel for the first time.  I was there for eight weeks on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel program, where we studied Jewish history from ancient times until the present, visiting relevant sites all over Israel.  I matured in many ways that summer -- living away from home for the first time, in a foreign country -- and grew in my relationship with Judaism and the Jewish State.

But the moment that I remember more clearly than any other that summer was my first visit to the Kotel, the Western Wall of the Temple Mount.  I remember approaching the ancient rocks, feeling the July heat radiating forth from the wall, and I remember the tears.  They came from deep down inside, uninvited, unprovoked.  I had this moment of resonance, as if my connection to the past had drawn them up from within me.  I cried and cried and cried.  I looked around me, and all my friends were experiencing the same thing.  Even the tough guys among us (although I can’t say that I counted myself among that group).

Although I may not have been able to express this at the time, what we all experienced at that moment was the power and mystery of Judaism; the qesher / connection with our ancient national stories, our collective relationship with the central historical site where our ancestors worshiped, and where, we are told, the Shekhinah, God’s presence, once dwelt.

Looking back, it occurs to me now that those tears came from the depths described in Psalm 130: Mimaamaqim qeratikha Adonai.  From the depths I cry to You, God.  I recently encountered this verse while preparing for an adult-learning course that I am currently teaching in Great Neck on the Zohar, the 13th-century Spanish compendium of Jewish mystical tradition  These are not the depths of life, says the Zohar, but the depths of the soul, because that is the place from where true tefillah, true prayer comes.

What makes Judaism continue to be a relevant, living tradition is that many of us still occasionally feel the power in Judaism.  We might feel it when reading the words of the Torah or while reciting tefillot.  We may relate to the chain of tradition across generations when fulfilling rituals that punctuate Jewish life.  We might feel the pride and power in connection with the modern State of Israel, the miraculous product of 2,000 years of wandering and yearning.  Even as urbane, sophisticated people, what brings us back to the Kotel, to the synagogue, and the Passover seder and so forth is the desire to feel that mystery and power.  

This is in fact one of the themes that ran through today’s parashah, Behaalotekha.  During their decades of wandering in the desert, the Israelites needed to be reminded from time to time of God’s mystery and power. Where did they find it?  It was right in the center of their encampment -- the mishkan, the portable altar and sanctuary that is described in overwhelming detail in the latter chapters of Exodus.  The mishkan contained the aron, the Ark that carried the tablets that Moshe received on Mt. Sinai (you know, the same one that was featured in Raiders of the Lost Ark).  

We read today that when the Israelites were in camp, there was a cloud that settled over the altar, and that cloud became something like fire at night.  That must have been reassuring; if you ever had a doubt, all you had to do, night or day, was look in the direction of the mishkan, and there was your proof that God was with you.

Well, OK.  So let’s face it: we don’t have visible reminders like this today.  Quite the opposite: everything that happens in our world is explainable according to scientific principles, logic and rationality.  Unnatural, Divine clouds that burn at night don’t appear in your building’s air shaft.  (And if one did, you would call the super.)

Some of you know that before I became a cantor and a rabbi, I worked as an engineer.  I used to design parts of petrochemical plants: pumps, heat exchangers, boiler systems, relief valves, exciting, inspiring stuff like that.  I am by nature a scientific person, a lover of logic and the laws of physics, and as such it is usually difficult for me to get swept away by the mystery and power that our ancestors must have perceived.  I know that I’m not alone here; these are skeptical times.  The fastest-growing religion in America is “none.” More and more of us, Jews and non-Jews, seem not to be actively seeking a connection with God, at least in public.

And yet, every now and then, like my experience at the Kotel, we have those transcendent moments, the moments that open up the depths of the soul and allow us to feel the resonance of ancient wisdom.  

That is exactly where we as Jews need to be.  We have to be explicit about the fact that our stock-in-trade as a synagogue, as a sacred community, is a potential glimpse of the Divine.  This is not only a place to socialize, or to enjoy the qiddush, although these things are of course important and valuable in creating connections among us.  And though part of running a synagogue is the mundane sphere of managing budgets, personnel, maintenance and so forth, its raison d’etre is something far more elusive, and far more lofty.  It’s about people trying to bring some holiness into their lives.  Ideally, this is what synagogues do.

Ladies and gentlemen, many of us live lives that are stretched to the breaking point.  Our waking hours are filled with family, work, recreation if we are lucky, and we are all running a sleep deficit.  We must constantly make choices about where to focus our energies, choices that wear us down and spread our attention too thin.  What is it that will keep people coming back to Judaism?  Is it services?  Bar/bat mitzvah?  Sermons?  Well, maybe not.

What will maintain our connection to Judaism in the future is our ability to make this congregation a qehillah qedoshah, a sacred community, to offer something that you cannot get anywhere else: the opportunity to interact with God, to get a peek behind the veil of the ordinary to what lies beyond.  

What does the word qadosh mean?  We think it means “holy” (qodesh = holiness; qiddush = sanctification; qaddish = being holy, etc.).  But what it really means is “set apart.”  (Some here might know that the opposite of qodesh is hol,  literally, “sand” i.e. that which is commonplace, mundane.  A synagogue, and the qehillah qedoshah / sacred community that resides therein, are set apart from the madness of life outside this building -- our family commitments, our schools, our co-op boards, and so forth.  This is a place where we can have those moments that make Judaism special, where we can share the quiet moments of personal prayer, and sing together with gusto.

We read a passage in the Torah this morning that I remember seeing as a young boy, and which continues to intrigue me to this day.  After describing the cloud over the mishkan, the Torah says the following (and this may sound familiar):

וַיְהִי בִּנְסֹעַ הָאָרֹן, וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה:  קוּמָה יְהוָה, וְיָפֻצוּ אֹיְבֶיךָ, וְיָנֻסוּ מְשַׂנְאֶיךָ, מִפָּנֶיךָ.  וּבְנֻחֹה, יֹאמַר:  שׁוּבָה יְהוָה, רִבְבוֹת אַלְפֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.

“Vayhi binsoa ha-aron, vayomer Moshe: Qumah, Adonai, veyafutsu oyevekha, veyanusu mesan’ekha mipanekha.  // Uvnuho yomar, shuvah Adonai rivevot alfei Yisrael.”

“When the Ark was to set out, Moses would say: Advance, O Lord! May Your enemies be scattered, And may Your foes flee before You!  
And when it halted, he would say: Return, O Lord, You who are Israel’s myriads of thousands.” (Numbers 10:35-36)

Although the text here is curious (it’s about strength, rather than holiness; perhaps those two things were more closely related in ancient times), what is really fascinating is how it appears in the Torah: it is set off by two upside-down Hebrew letters, two nuns.  (You can see this in the Hertz humash on p. 613.  Coincidence?) This sort of typographic trick does not occur anywhere else in the Torah, nor does any other kind of punctuation.  An ancient editor (possibly God), felt the need to graphically show us that these two verses are different, set apart.  We do not know why or how this appeared in the text identified this way, but for me that only heightens the mystery.  

To this day, we recite these words when we take the Torah out and when we put it away, hinting at the mystery, the big Question, to which those nuns point.  

What makes our stories appealing from one generation to the next is not their concrete nature, but the ambiguities that allow for reinterpretation in every age.  The Torah is not about the period; it’s about the question mark -- in fact, myriads of question marks -- the difficulties detected and explored by rabbinic tradition -- from the Mishnah and Gemara to Rashi and Ibn Ezra and the subsequent centuries of hermeneutic possibilities.  All of Jewish life flows from the question mark.

Maimonides, the 12th-century Spanish rationalist, rejected the wild speculations of qabbalah regarding the nature of God.  And yet he still maintained the mystery by denying that God has a physical form (The piyyut Yigdal, often recited at the end of synagogue services as a closing hymn, is based on Maimonides' 13 principles of faith, and includes the line: Ein lo demut ha-guf, ve-eino guf - God has neither a form nor a body).  God’s “mighty hand and outstretched arm,” which we all know from the Pesah seder, are metaphors, says Rambam; the reality of God is elusive.  Martin Buber, the early 20th-century Jewish philosopher, went even further: God is so beyond description as to be completely unconditional.  Unlike objects or beings, our relationship with God is beyond any possible limit or boundary or presupposition.  That is mystery and power, indeed.

We are the guardians of those ancient mysteries, the inheritors of centuries of rabbinic inquiry and debate.  And therein lies the secret that will maintain Judaism: this is ours.  This rich, varied tradition offers so much to us today, and to our children and grandchildren tomorrow.  That is what being a qehillah qedoshah is all about.  Ledor vador -- from generation to generation -- we pass on that sense of wonder.

It may be that there is no pillar of cloud or fire today, hovering over the mishkan.  But we do not necessarily need to look for this kind of miraculous occurrence; we can be rationalists like Maimonides, and still maintain the mystery and power of Judaism, Jewish life and learning. By doing so, by seeing ourselves as a sacred community that draws on this mystery, we will enable all who enter this synagogue to plumb the depths of the soul, and thereby reach higher.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

My Laptop Doesn't Love Me Back! - Thursday Kavvanah, 1/26/2012

In anticipation of today's e-waste collection by the Town of North Hempstead, Judy and I decided late last night to clear out our old laptops.  So we fired 'em up to delete important items, and after a while they were ready to go.  Judy closed her erstwhile machine for the last time and sighed wistfully as she said goodbye.


How ironic, thought I.  Many of us communicate more with our devices than we do with each other, and so it makes sense for us to feel a sense of loss when an aging computer is put out to pasture.


But these are only tools; they are no more capable of loving or being loved than a hammer or an electric drill.  They (usually) do what we tell them to do, no more or less.  


By contrast, the bonds that we make with people are much more complicated and much deeper.  And all the more so with God; the modern Jewish philosopher Martin Buber describes the relationship with God as being the most intimate, the only partner upon which we place no conditions.


We will not be sitting shiv'ah (the seven day Jewish mourning period) for our discarded computers.  But as I reconsider my relationships with my current devices, I am grateful for the people in my life, and all the more so with the Unconditional.  We read three times a day in the Ashrei prayer:


קָרוב ה' לְכָל קרְאָיו. לְכל אֲשֶׁר יִקְרָאֻהוּ בֶאֱמֶת
Qarov Adonai lekhol qore'av, lekhol asher yiqra'uhu be'emet
God is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him with integrity. (Psalm 145:18)


However it is that God can be described as being near, I am fairly certain that God is nearer to me than my laptop.




~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Vayyera: Watch Carefully! - Friday Kavvanah, 11/11/2011

The great 20th-century Jewish philosopher Martin Buber coined the German term "leitwort" ("leading word") to refer to the Hebrew Bible's repetition of a thematic word or root in a specific context.  The leitwort gives us an internal emphasis on a particular concept.

In the case of the opening verses of Parashat Vayyera, Genesis 18:1-2, the leitwort is those words having to do with seeing:


וַיֵּרָא אֵלָיו יְהוָה, בְּאֵלֹנֵי מַמְרֵא; וְהוּא יֹשֵׁב פֶּתַח-הָאֹהֶל, כְּחֹם הַיּוֹם  


וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו, וַיַּרְא, וְהִנֵּה שְׁלֹשָׁה אֲנָשִׁים, נִצָּבִים עָלָיו; וַיַּרְא, וַיָּרָץ לִקְרָאתָם מִפֶּתַח הָאֹהֶל, וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ אָרְצָה

1.  The Lord appeared to him by the terebinths of Mamre; he was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot.  

2.  Looking up, he saw three men standing near him.  As soon as he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them, and, bowing to the ground... (New JPS)

Leaving aside the question of whether Abraham sees God or three strangers approaching, what the leitwort brings to our attention is that Abraham is carefully watching.  He is paying attention, and ready to welcome the men into his tent.

I remember distinctly a word that my own childhood rabbi, Rabbi Arthur Rulnick, gave as a piece of advice to my confirmation class somewhere in the mid-1980s: as you grow older and more mature, look carefully at the world around you as you seek your path.  Just as Abraham is watching the area around his home intently (heh heh), so too should we be equally watchful as we move through life.