Wednesday Kavvanah, 8/24/2011 - Shake it up

A good part of my job as a rabbi is to encourage people to feel something Jewishly - to connect to Judaism in a way such that they are emotionally moved.

I did not feel yesterday's earthquake. At the time I was on the telephone to Israel, and was walking around the room and did not notice it. Afterwards, however, I saw the dining-room chandelier swinging a bit, and it was obvious that we had been shaken up.

Sometimes, getting slightly shaken is a good thing. Now, with the High Holidays just five weeks away, I can't help but think that now is the time to prepare to get shaken. Those of us in the room this morning at minyan must have been moved enough to join us at 7 AM for ritual holy moments. But I am concerned that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will bring thousands of people to our services, most of whom are neither prepared for nor willing to be shaken up.

I will try to make those services meaningful, to help people connect. If I could schedule a small temblor, just enough to move the floor (and maybe some hearts and minds as well), I would do that. Since I can't, we will just have to work harder to move the congregation otherwise.

Tuesday Morning Kavvanah, 3/15/2011 - The Limits of Creation

In Psalm 145, recited three times daily as the "Ashrei" prayer, we read the following:

מַלְכוּתְךָ, מַלְכוּת כָּל-עֹלָמִים; וּמֶמְשַׁלְתְּךָ, בְּכָל-דּוֹר וָדֹר.
Malkhutekha malkhut kol olamim, umemshaltekha bekhol dor vador.
Your kingdom is an eternal kingdom, and your rule is for all generations.

Although we as humans are given explicit permission by God (in Bereshit) not only to till and tend Creation, but also to have dominion over it, there are limits. Perhaps the lesson to be drawn from the nuclear meltdown in Japan is that there are limits to what we may explore. God will always have sovereignty over the world, and maybe we should leave the tremendous energy potential of the atomic nucleus untouched; this is the eternal kingdom of God.

Friday Morning Kavvanah, 1/14/2011 - The God I Can't Believe In

One year after the earthquake in Haiti, which killed 200,000 people, I have to remind myself that natural disasters are not punishments from God. Although there is no shortage of clergy, Jewish, Christian, or other, who will say even today that the people of Haiti or New Orleans or the Jews of Poland merited their fate through bad behavior, this is not a theology that I can embrace.

The God that I know and praise does not work that way. Even though the Torah and rabbinic Judaism is rife with such thinking, I am certain that God is a good God, and does not mete out collective punishment.

The only way to account for such natural disasters is that God's Creation contains a certain dose of randomness, incorporated into the design. To credit God with wanton destruction today does not fit into my understanding of God.