The Jewish Mission - Mishpatim 5775

When I was young, I did not think too heavily about personal meaning in my Jewish involvement. We were a family of shul-goers and Torah readers, and our Jewish experience was defined by driving the 20 miles back and forth to our synagogue in Pittsfield, MA several times a week for Hebrew school, for Shabbat morning services, and for other types of Jewish involvement. Being Jewish meant showing up; that was the essential means through which we identified.

For many of us who came of age in the 20th century, being Jewish was about joining a synagogue, spending holidays with family, marrying a member of the community, and trying to make it in the New World despite prevalent anti-Semitism. The desire to be connected to a community, to identify with a people and a faith, was what built great synagogues like this one. Identity was defined by membership, and institutions like this were as much about social life and status as about Judaism.

And, as has often been observed, the Jews are just like everybody else, only more so. Robert Putnam, the professor of public policy at Harvard, demonstrates over and over in his book, “Bowling Alone,” that the concept of membership and group participation as an essential part of our identity peaked in the middle of the 20th century and has been on the decline since.

Today, membership is not enough to sustain identity for most people. As I have said here before, the data show that the fastest-growing religion in America is “None.” (Note: not “nun.”) Americans are far more isolated from one another, and often alienated from faith and ethnic groups. We are, as Putnam suggests, bowling alone. The “social capital” that Putnam describes as the glue that held our society together has largely eroded.

The greatest philosophical challenge of our time, and indeed the challenge facing most faith communities, is meaning. Our sense of how we derive meaning from our lives has changed tremendously.

Today, everything is individualized. It’s not about “us.” It’s all about “I” and my iPhone. (This is somewhat i-ronic, since most of us are today carrying devices that connect us into one central data location, where we are little more than bits of information.) The task, therefore, of the American synagogue is to create meaning on a personal basis for all who enter, to attempt to reach the individual heart and soul of everyone in its orbit.

So how exactly do we do this? The Torah gives us a few hints. Today in Parashat Mishpatim, we read the following (Ex. 22:20-21):

וְגֵר לֹא-תוֹנֶה, וְלֹא תִלְחָצֶנּוּ:  כִּי-גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם, בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.  כָּל-אַלְמָנָה וְיָתוֹם, לֹא תְעַנּוּן.  

You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan.

And there are many other such formulations. Over and over, the Torah exhorts us to pursue acts of hesed, of lovingkindness - for the sojourner among you, the widow, the orphan, the poor, the worker who depends on his daily wages, and so forth.

(BTW, the word “ger,” which in modern Hebrew means a convert to Judaism, is better understood traditionally not as a convert, but as a non-Israelite who lives among Israelites. That is, a ger is a stranger, one without family connections or property, and therefore presence in the margins of society.)

We understand and appreciate the plight of those in need, in all their forms of need, because we came from a needy place. We were subjected to the very worst treatment that humans can concoct. We were slaves, and we emerged from slavery as a nation.

The verse is crying out to us: slavery symbolizes what it means to be oppressed, disenfranchised, downtrodden. We understand this. And the Torah reminds us of this many times; I have not actually counted the number of times that this occurs, but an anecdote floating around out there says that it’s somewhere in thirties. Regardless, it’s far more than the number of times that we are commanded to keep Shabbat or kashrut. (And as you may know, there is no explicit Torah commandment to pray three times daily, or to read the Torah, to recite Qiddush on Friday night, etc. That is another indicator of how important hesed is, relative to those things that we consider essential parts of Jewish life.)

And it is this mitzvah, the mitzvah of recalling slavery for the purposes of doing good works for others in need, more than any other mitzvah, which has the potential to infuse our lives with meaning.

Our holy mission as Jews is to work to improve the welfare of others:  to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to uplift those whom society has neglected. Our mission is to ensure that all people are treated justly, and to fill our lives with acts of righteousness. That is why we are “Or LaGoyim,” a light unto the nations of the world.

The Viennese psychiatrist and survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, Victor Frankl, published an extraordinarily influential book a year after the end of World War II: Man’s Search for Meaning. What Frankl learned in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz was that in an environment designed to break the human spirit, those who had the best chances of survival were the people who had a sense of purpose. And, Frankl confesses, the ones who survived were not the brightest, the cleverest, or even the strongest physically. “The best of us did not return,” he says.

“There is nothing in the world… that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.’ I can see in these words a motto which holds true for any psychotherapy. In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive.”

Frankl goes on to speak of a uniquely modern problem that he calls the “existential vacuum,” the sense felt by many of his patients that life is meaningless. And if, as Frankl notes, as many as 60% of Americans found life somewhat meaningless in 1946, all the more so today: as we are continually distracted by our devices, as we work longer hours for less money and watch helplessly as our children run from activity to activity solely for the purpose of impressing an Ivy League admissions committee, as we recede into the ever-more solitary environment of our comfortable living rooms and digital nests, the existential vacuum has grown.

But there is a way out of the vacuum. What gives our lives meaning? It is doing for others. It is extending our hands to those in need, in all the ways that we can. That is the holy purpose to which we are called: Gemilut hasadim - acts of lovingkindness.

The mitzvot of Jewish life, including the Top Ten that we read last week and the many more that we read today in Parashat Mishpatim, give our lives a framework for holy living. But following Jewish law - observing Shabbat, kashrut, tefillah, holidays, etc. - is not enough for most of us. Whether we pursue the 613 mitzvot with zeal or not, we must add to that the layers of activities that make Judaism a fully meaningful pursuit: reaching out to others for the purposes of hesed.

Almost every synagogue that I have ever visited contains a sculpture or other artwork displaying the tablets that Moshe brought down from Mt. Sinai, and we must always remain close to our textual tradition. But the real, essential role that synagogues must play in the future is to provide structure for going beyond these basic rules, beyond those tablets, to build communities that provide meaning for individuals. We have to create meaning. We have to be platforms that give our members, and the wider community, the chance to fulfill their holy purpose: to reach out to those in need through works of lovingkindness.

Shabbat shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

The Change Must Go On (Summer Sermon Series #7) - Shofetim 5773

Today is the dramatic wrap-up (stupendous summation / sensational send-off) of the seven-part Summer Sermon Series, a definition of who we are at Temple Israel, and a vision of who we should be.

A few years back, Temple Israel’s Institute for Lifelong Learning celebrated the 50th anniversary of the publishing of Rabbi Mordecai Waxman’s seminal work, Tradition and Change. Among the featured speakers was his son, Rabbi Jonathan Waxman, who regaled the attendees with a litany of ways in which the world had changed since 1958, when his father’s book was first published.

The world has not merely changed in the last half-century. Rather, the world has been completely turned upside-down. Consider just one thing: the ubiquity of small computers for personal use has changed our lives in ways that are so profound that many of us cannot even imagine a world without them. Of course, most of us here remember a time without such devices, and of course we all managed just fine. But the way that we receive, store, and use information has changed who we are in fundamental ways.

And of course, the Jewish landscape has changed as well. Jews have many more options today for their Jewish involvement, including, of course, the option of opting out entirely. Torah learning is widely available through wonderful translations and new electronic tools, as I noted earlier this summer.

And when Tradition and Change was published, the Conservative movement accounted for half of American Jewry. Today, demographic studies suggest that about one-third of affiliated American Jews are members of Conservative synagogues. And the number of Conservative synagogues is going down as smaller congregations merge or close.

In Rabbi Waxman’s original introduction, he points out that critics of the Conservative movement in the middle of the 20th century charged it with failing to define itself. He saw his task in editing the book to defy those critics, and define Conservative Judaism. He indicated the following (among others) as essential features of our movement:

1. A commitment to Kelal Yisrael: Rabbi Waxman uses Rabbi Solomon Schechter’s term, “Catholic Israel,” the idea that all Jews are one people, united by common texts, rituals, and values, a common language and shared history.

2. Foundations in Positive-Historical Judaism: This is a concept that originated in the 19th-century German-Jewish sphere, that our approach to Judaism is at once aware of the historical changes within Jewish law, halakhah, and custom, minhag, and that we emphasize our connection with history as we look to the future.

3. Acceptance of modern thought: Our approach to Torah demands that we open our minds to the changing currents of science, philosophy, archaeology, Biblical criticism, and so forth, and not ignore them or obfuscate when they challenge accepted tradition.

4. Authority and interpretation: We are bound by Jewish legal tradition, and our reading of halakhah depends on the classical methods of interpretation that Jewish scholars have used for millennia in different lands. And yet we are able to make serious changes in halakhic practice based on our engagement with modern thought and values. We are, in body and in spirit, involved in modern life, and as such seek to marry our heritage with who we are, and where we are today.

I believe firmly in this formula. I could never have articulated this stuff before going to rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, but looking back at the Conservative synagogue of my youth, my summers at Camp Ramah in New England, even my family’s Shabbat dinners, I can see how these ideas were essential to my formative years: how all of the members of my family read Torah, how my Hebrew school experience complemented my secular studies, how I knew that although driving a car to synagogue on Shabbat would violate several Shabbat principles, that nonetheless the Conservative movement had decided that it was more in the spirit of Shabbat to drive there than not to go to synagogue at all, etc.

No matter the numbers of the Conservative movement, we are still here. And we still stand for the principles of Tradition and Change - of the approach to halakhah / Jewish law, as halakhic decisors have guided it for centuries.  That is, rabbis have always issued halakhic decisions appropriate to the times and places in which Jews have lived. What was true for Rambam in the 12th century in Egypt was not necessarily true for Rabbi Moshe Isserles, the Rema, in 16th-century Poland, and so forth.

Rabbi Waxman’s principles still apply today. And, of course, the Conservative movement has changed in the last half-century. In particular, in 1958, the extent of egalitarianism in American Judaism was mixed seating. I think we have also witnessed a change in Conservative clergy. The Rabbi Waxman model was rabbi-as-academic-scholar. Today’s Conservative rabbis and cantors are scholarly, yes, but are also expected to make personal connections and work harder at community-building initiatives, to focus on pastoral care and counseling congregants in new ways.

And, of course, the Conservative laity has changed dramatically. While the bulk of Jews in the Conservative pews in 1958 were immigrants and children of immigrants, people that knew the sound and feel of Central and Eastern European synagogues, today’s membership is in a different place. We are largely not naturalized Americans. We are Americans, no longer living in the shadow of the Holocaust, no longer plagued by the types of institutional anti-Semitism that kept our people down for centuries. The State of Israel is a given. Attendance at synagogue service is way down. Sermonic pyrotechnics and cantorial recitatives that moved congregations of the last century are rarely heard, let alone appreciated, by Jews under the age of 40.

And American society has changed dramatically as well. Formality is out; digital interconnectedness is in, even while our actual, physical interconnectedness (that which sociologist Robert Putnam calls “social capital”) is down. Personal choice is our highest ideal. Membership in organizations of all kinds, including religious institutions, is declining. Intermarriage of all kinds is in; homosexuality has moved into the mainstream.

And for all these reasons, the need for synagogues like Temple Israel of Great Neck is as prominent as ever. Ladies and gentlemen, Judaism needs the American middle. Let me tell you why:

The vast majority of American Jews (near 90%) are not Orthodox, and no matter how much money Orthodox organizations like Aish HaTorah and Chabad spend on outreach, most of us will never be Orthodox with respect to Jewish practice. Yes, there will be a few young people who grew up in non-Orthodox homes whom they will succeed in bringing into the Orthodox fold. so-called “ba’alei teshuvah.” But most American Jews are very well educated, and will be unwilling to buy into a set of beliefs that refuses to admit to the human hand in the Torah, that demands commitment to the tiniest stringencies, some of which only emerged just last week, that tends to isolation from our non-Jewish neighbors and co-workers, that in some cases even rejects the State of Israel and Zionism. We do not live in a shtetl, and most of us are not moving back there; we are integrated into American society, proud of our heritage, and dedicated to maintaining our Jewish connection without isolating ourselves.

And yet, most Jews want some kind of Jewish experience, and many of those, when they come for their Judaism fix, they want it to be traditional, and yet open to contemporary thought and sensibility.

Consider the recent Conservative publication, The Observant Life. Meant as a successor to the classic halakhic work by Rabbi Isaac Klein, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice (1979), The Observant Life contains all you need to know not only to practice the ritual aspects of Judaism (kashrut, Shabbat and holidays, daily tefillah / prayer, mourning practices and so forth), but also includes chapters on such non-ritual topics as business ethics, civic morality, sexuality, intellectual property, caring for the needy, and so forth. As such, this book is an invaluable addition to the contemporary Jewish bookshelf, providing useful, readable answers firmly based in Jewish sources, from a moderate, open perspective. You should own this book (and btw, I get no commission; and also Rabbi Stecker and I will be leading a seminar for adults on this book in the coming year, so watch for it.)

American Judaism needs the middle. And that means that we in the middle are going to have to work harder to maintain ourselves. We need to take a longer, harder look at the “Change” part of Rabbi Waxman’s slogan, and consider ways to make the middle more viable. What makes us Conservative Jews is that we accept change conservatively, and even Rabbi Waxman conceded that by 1958, there had been few really drastic changes effected by the Conservative movement. But the world around us continues to change. To that end, I am going to suggest two important areas that we need to address, in the spirit of Tradition and Change.

1. Ladies and gentlemen, the social fabric of America has been permanently altered. The very definition of what it means to be a family has changed, and Judaism needs an authentic Jewish response to single-parent families, to families with two spouses of the same gender, to intermarriage.

Some of you may have heard that Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, one of the most prominent Conservative synagogues in America, recently announced that he and the other clergy will perform gay marriages. He was taken by surprise at the very serious backlash to this announcement. But in his recent three-part sermon series on Conservative Judaism’s take on God, Torah, and Israel, he noted that Jews are meant to bring light into this world, and that we cannot do this if we do not engage with it.

Now, we may not be ready yet to have that particular conversation here. After all, this ain’t California. But we cannot close our eyes to the changing realities of the modern Jewish family.

2. Ladies and gentlemen, the powers that be in the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism decided a few months ago to cut funding to Koach, the on-campus arm of the movement. This move virtually guarantees that the only people reaching out to our college students will be various types of Orthodox organizations. There are many of these, trying to bring us into their fold; they dismiss our approach to Judaism, and believe very strongly and teach that we are illegitimate.

At the same time, in the current issue of The Jewish Week, there is a profile of the newly-named President of the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Aaron Panken. What’s he talking about? The congregation that wants their rabbi outside the building - finding the Jews at Starbucks, meeting them at the gym, bumping into them at the bookstore. He hopes to make “creative outreach,” including the use of various new technologies, a key component of Reform rabbinic training.

And you know what? Kol hakavod to all of them, to putting their resources into attracting young people. Why aren’t WE doing that as a movement?

****  

Today in Parashat Shofetim, we read about the commandment to the (at this point theoretical) Israelite king that he must keep a copy of the Torah next to his throne. Nobody is above the words of the Torah, the words of God. But a flesh-and-blood king deals with real problems; he must be engaged with society in real time. The Torah is not to keep him in the past, but rather to help him confront the present.

One more thing that Rabbi Wolpe mentioned: when Rambam was asked why he rejected astrology, when the rabbis of the Talmud clearly believed in it, he answered by saying that our eyes are in front of us, so that we look to the future, and not to the past.

We will continue in the spirit of Tradition and Change, and change we must if we are continue to provide a home for the much-needed Jewish middle ground.

A final note: United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism is celebrating its 100th year, October 13-15 in Baltimore. Rabbi Stecker and I will be there, and Rabbi Waxman will be there in spirit. Join us.

Shabbat shalom.


~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 8/10/2013.) 

This is the seventh and final installment in the Summer Sermon Series, an exploration of the most essential values of Temple Israel of Great Neck. The previous six installments were:

1. Telling our story

2. Being a welcoming congregation

3. Engaging with Torah

4. Egalitarianism

5. Israel 
6. Tiqqun Olam (repairing the world)

Tuesday Kavvanah, 8/23/2011 - Building Community: Sacred Moments

The third level of building relationships is bein adam la-qehillah / between individuals and the community. How do we do this? By creating shared sacred moments.

It is indeed possible to have sacred moments alone - some of us might identify our most mundane rituals as holy to us: that first cup of coffee in the morning, the quiet read before bedtime, and so forth. But I have found that the most powerful sacred moments are the collective ones: lifecycle events (weddings, benei mitzvah, etc.), special tefillah / prayer experiences, singing together after Shabbat dinner on Friday night.

These are the moments that connect us to each other, that establish relationships between the individual and the qehillah, the group. We need to find more of these. As the sociologist Robert Putnam pointed out in his essential book, Bowling Alone, our "social capital," our interconnectedness as a society has gradually eroded over the past half-century. As such, the need for shared sacred moments is greater than ever; we should strive to create more of them, both within and without the synagogue.