The True Value of Torah - Shavuot 5775

A curious news story crossed my computer screen last week. My rabbinic alma mater, the Jewish Theological Seminary, which some of you may know that I truly love, has been in a difficult financial position for some time, and has decided to sell off some assets for the sake of easing their budget deficit. Among the items that they are selling is a treasure from JTS’ vaunted Rare Book Room: a fragment of an original Gutenberg bible.

It’s eight leaves of one of the first books ever printed by Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, in the year 1455. This fragment was donated to JTS in 1922 by the Schiff family, Jewish-American financiers of the early 20th century, who purchased it from a rare-book dealer who broke the original copy into pieces to sell it for more money. This particular fragment is the Latin translation of the Book of Esther, and it’s in excellent condition. Sotheby’s expects that it will fetch between $500,000 and $700,000.

Dr. David Kraemer, the librarian of JTS and a former Talmud professor of mine, says that selling the item is not a real loss to JTS because, since JTS is primarily focused on Jewish studies, these pages from a Christian translation are not of much use in the JTS library, and that this fragment has more or less been sitting on a shelf, “collecting dust” for more than 90 years.

The story is interesting, but I think it opens up a wider question that is entirely appropriate for Shavuot: What is the value of Torah? (And, just to be clear here, I’m not limiting the discussion to merely THE Torah, i.e. the five books of Moses, but all the Tanakh and all the interpretation that flows from it).

When I think of studying Torah, which is, according to the Mishnah, the most important mitzvah of all 613, I don’t think of dusty scholars in rare book rooms handling ancient texts with tweezers. On the contrary: you can go into any Judaica shop in the world and purchase brand-spankin’-new editions of the Tanakh with contemporary commentaries, which will be sitting right alongside the ancient and medieval interpreters, volumes of the Talmud and midrash and halakhic works and bookshelves upon bookshelves of perspectives on Jewish text, all reprinted and reprinted. There are, as the Talmudic maxim goes, shiv’im panim laTorah, 70 faces to the Torah, meaning that there are many ways of reading every word, every verse. But really, we have only yet uncovered maybe 28 of those 70. We have not even found half of the perspectives on Torah.

We continue to interpret for today. The Torah is a living document, both a testament to our historical roots as well as a contemporary perspective on our lives. While we in the Conservative movement have traditionally understood that to mean contemporary approaches to halakhah (e.g. As when the movement permitted driving to synagogue on Shabbat, even though doing so is a clear violation of the long-settled traditional halakhah / laws of Shabbat observance), there are other, less circumscribed ways to read Torah for today. These ways may be far more valuable to the average Jew than academic discussions about the details of halakhic observance.

So let me give you an example of the real value of Torah. Last night at our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, Danny Mishkin and I spoke about an idea that should be obvious when we are talking about Torah: immediate relevance.

Why is this important? Because we are living in a world of limited time, limited focus, and the ubiquitous sentiment that if it’s not relevant and/or beneficial to me, I’m not going to invest my time in it. It is a bit of an exaggeration to say that each of us has only 140 characters in which to make our point, but it’s not too far from the truth. Long form is getting to be a harder and harder sell, particularly to our children. And this is a challenge for Jewish tradition, particularly for tefillah / prayer.

But it is a challenge we must face boldly. Times change, and Torah has never been left behind; it is an eternal tradition. (By the way, Gutenberg and others were printing books for a couple of decades before the Jews decided to accept printed works. The first Jewish printed books were volumes of the Talmud produced in Italy in the 1470s, but we soon got over our skepticism about the new technology. That is happening once again as part of the paradigm shift which we discussed last night. Judaism is catching up with the rest of the world. Ein kol hadash tahat hashemesh, says Qohelet. There is nothing entirely new under the sun.)

Here is an item of immediate relevance, one which we discussed on Saturday evening. We study Torah because it helps us make decisions and guide our lives (Pirqei Avot 1:14):

אם אין אני לי, מי לי; וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני; ואם לא עכשיו, אימתיי.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am for myself alone, what am I?

And if not now, when?

Take a moment to reflect on these words.

What does it mean to us? Is it about the balance of personal commitments vs. communal contributions? Is it about trying to make a living in a dog-eat-dog world? Is it about balancing family and work? Is it about the natural give-and-take of human relationships? Is it about managing one’s anger? Is it about monetary charity, or donating your time?

Each of us might see something different in this mishnah. But I would suggest that this is one of hundreds, or maybe thousands of quotables in Jewish tradition that would be worth keeping on a mental index card, and pulling out whenever you are faced with the challenge of choosing yourself over others, or vice versa. And these decisions come up every day, many times a day for all of us.

Hillel’s words are a mantra of balance, of figuring out where to put our energy and focus in this time-poor, over-stressed, over-stuffed world. This piece of wisdom is immediately relevant. I can use it to improve myself and my life, particularly if I refer back to it in the moment of need.

You cannot put a dollar amount on any word or page of Torah. It is truly priceless. OK, so some pages are worth more than others. But it is possible to glean personal meaning and yes, value from every page of commentary, halakhic analysis, midrash, and so forth.

This is the true value of Torah; it reflects back to us who we are, and compels us to change our behavior for the better.

So, while JTS might be selling off rarities for a few quick bucks, the real worth of those eight leaves, which tell the story of the Jewish woman who challenges authority, maintains her identity in a potentially hostile, non-Jewish environment, and leads her people out of danger, is not to be found at Sotheby’s. The intrinsic value is not the impression of the Latin words by the world’s first printing press. It is in the content, the meaning, and the lessons that we learn from Esther and Mordecai and the Jews of ancient Persia.

What makes Torah valuable is that every word means something different in each person’s mouth, mind, heart and hand, and that it brings those things together to improve our lives and repair this broken world. Furthemore, what makes it truly priceless is that it is completely ours, and every perspective it gives us is true. As we chant after a passage of the Torah is read in the synagogue:

… אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לָנוּ תּורַת אֱמֶת וְחַיֵּי עולָם נָטַע בְּתוכֵנוּ.

… asher natan lanu Torat emet, vehayyei olam nata betokheinu.

… who gave us the Torah of truth, planting within us life eternal.

Our Torah of truth gives us eternity as a people because Torah itself is eternal, and as long as we continue to (in the words of Ben Bag Bag, Pirqei Avot 5:24) “turn it over and over,” we too will continue to reap its benefits forever. It is both immediately relevant and timeless. And that is its true value.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, the first day of Shavuot, May 24, 2015.)

Making Tiqqun Olam a Part of the Conversation (Summer Sermon Series #6) - Re'eh 5773

The Torah teaches us in many places that we are individually and collectively responsible for working toward improving the condition of our world. This concept can be found among the mitzvot / commandments that are identified in Parashat Re’eh, which we read this morning (Deut. 15:4):

אֶפֶס, כִּי לֹא יִהְיֶה-בְּךָ אֶבְיוֹן:  כִּי-בָרֵךְ יְבָרֶכְךָ, יְהוָה, בָּאָרֶץ

There shall be no needy among you, since the Lord your God will bless you in the land...

This promise of plentitude applies only if, as is stated in the following verse (15:5),

רַק אִם-שָׁמוֹעַ תִּשְׁמַע, בְּקוֹל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ, לִשְׁמֹר לַעֲשׂוֹת אֶת-כָּל-הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם.

If only you heed the Lord your God and take care to keep all this Instruction that I enjoin upon you this day.

Sounds great, right? Except for the fact that God assumes that we will not follow orders, and hence there will always be needy people among us. And furthermore, the Torah requires us to take care of them (15:7-8):

לֹא תְאַמֵּץ אֶת-לְבָבְךָ, וְלֹא תִקְפֹּץ אֶת-יָדְךָ, מֵאָחִיךָ, הָאֶבְיוֹן.  כִּי-פָתֹחַ תִּפְתַּח אֶת-יָדְךָ, לוֹ; וְהַעֲבֵט, תַּעֲבִיטֶנּוּ, דֵּי מַחְסֹרוֹ, אֲשֶׁר יֶחְסַר לוֹ.

Do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman. Rather, you must surely open your hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs.

Not only will there always be people in need, but we are eternally obligated to take care of them, to help them get back on their feet when they are down. Many of us refer to these verses and others like them as referring to tiqqun olam, repairing the world. The Torah teaches us here and elsewhere that the world will always need repair, and we are obligated at least to try to fix it.

A few years back, Temple Israel had a tiqqun olam consult with one of my colleagues, Rabbi Jill Jacobs. Rabbi Jacobs is the Executive Director of T’ruah, the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, an organization of clergy from across the North American Jewish spectrum that works for protecting human rights. Rabbi Jacobs spoke with us about our ongoing involvement in social action programs. During the course of our discussion, she highlighted a message that has continued to resonate with me - that we should raise the volume of discussion about social action, that tiqqun olam should be considered as an essential plank in the building of community.

Which brings me back to what I am sure you will recognize as one of my favorite topics: community. The whole point of this Summer Sermon Series is to identify the essential values of our community. And as far as I am concerned, the true value of community is exhibited in what we do for one another, in how we take care of each other.

Why do we gather to pray, ladies and gentlemen? Is it merely to fulfill the rabbinically-ordained mitzvah of daily prayer, to discharge our otherwise-meaningless obligations to God? I hope not, although there is a segment of the Jewish world that things so. Is it to improve ourselves through the meditative process of self-consideration? Maybe. Is it to ensure that we rub elbows with the other members of our community from time to time? Perhaps.

More likely, it is to open us up, to sensitize us to the world around us. Jewish custom dictates that a synagogue must have windows, so that we do not get so wrapped up in spiritual expression that we lose sight of the outside world, that we forget that our relationship with God includes the other, the less fortunate, the members of our wider community that are not here with us.

In short, prayer is a call to action. It is to inspire us to feel God’s presence, to inspire us to go out and repair the world. A good tefillah experience will take you outside yourself, will help you see the things that need repair.

And all the more so, that is the whole point of being a community. Temple Israel is not a country club, where you pay dues to gain entry. On the contrary, Jews have formed communal organizations wherever they have lived throughout history so that they could take care of each other. Our people has an excellent track record of communal responsibility; a quick glance at the list of all the various Jewish organizations, the “alephbet soup” of Jewish institutions. I think that we are the only ethnic group that has an umbrella organization of organization leaders: the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, of which our illustrious congregant Jack Stein, alav hashalom, was once the Chairman.

Often, we Jews look inward, and take care of our own. And sometimes we look outward: As the great sage Hillel said in Pirqei Avot (1:14):

אם אין אני לי, מי לי;

וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני;

ואם לא עכשיו, אימתיי.

Im ein ani li mi li?

Ukhshe’ani le’atzmi mah ani?

Ve’im lo akhshav, eimatai?

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

And if I am only for myself, what am I?

And if not now, when?

These three deceptively simple questions speak to the depth of our obligation to look both inward and outward -- the task of tiqqun olam must be done now, and we must spend as much time repairing ourselves as repairing the rest of the world.

I think that if Hillel were to reappear in the 21st century, two millennia after his time on this Earth, he would be shocked at the way we live today. We have unprecedented personal wealth; even America’s working poor might seem quite well off compared to ancient rabbis living in the Middle Eastern agrarian society of the first few centuries of the common era, the period in which the Talmud emerged. We have technology that enables us to eat the same foods year-round, regardless of climate or location; we can travel great distances very quickly; we can communicate immediately with people all over the world. Our economics and technology have enabled to live far more independently than all of the generations that have preceded us. And this is, in many ways, contrary to the way that the rabbis envisioned Judaism.

Today, you do not need to be a part of any community. If you can work and earn enough money to pay your bills, you can live entirely independently. You can move to a place where nobody knows you and be completely anonymous.

But that is not the Jewish way. Jews have always depended on each other. And I am a fierce advocate for the case that Jews need Judaism, and they need their community -- if not for the material support, then at least for the spiritual nourishment. Because if there is one thing that we are sorely lacking in today’s world of great independence, it is guidance for the soul.

When we repair the world, ladies and gentlemen, we find within ourselves the Divine sparks that nourish our souls.

To return to Rabbi Jill Jacobs for a moment, how do we raise our consciousness about tiqqun olam? How do we move forward with our commitment to social action? Her concern, and it is a valid one, is that what happens in many communities is that a few dedicated volunteers take on the responsibility for all of the social action activities of the congregation. And soon enough, these folks get tired and burnt out and resentful that they are doing all the work. And so the goal should be not necessarily to do more, but (and this seems counter-intuitive) rather to talk more about tiqqun olam, to make social action a part of the regular discourse of the community.

But how do we do that? Sure, Rabbi Stecker and I can dedicate a certain fraction of every sermon to tiqqun olam, and benei mitzvah can talk about their “mitzvah project” every week, and so forth. But I do not think that’s enough.

Maybe we need to bring more speakers from different charitable organizations to talk about what they are doing in the world. Maybe we need to host panel discussions about big issues, like hunger or the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa or urban decay. Maybe we need to arrange a congregational mission to Cuba or Uganda or Detroit. Maybe we can dedicate next year’s Tiqqun Leil Shavuot to tiqqun olam.

Or maybe we can connect this with the subject of the third installment in the Summer Sermon Series: Torah. The key, it seems, is learning. The more we learn from our traditional sources (Torah, Talmud, commentaries, halakhic codes and so forth) about our obligations regarding others, the greater chance that we have of increasing our own levels of engagement with tiqqun olam, and the more likely that we will work more effectively as a community to repair the world.

This I know from personal experience: learning leads to action.

I was recently asked about God’s role in today’s world. Does God actively bring about the good and bad things that happen to us? Does God actually (as we state in the second paragraph of the Shema, which we read last week in Parashat Eqev) bring the rains when we follow the mitzvot, and shut off the heavenly water spout when we do not?

Anybody who has ever heard me talk about God knows that I cannot accept this sort of simply-constructed theology at face value. And neither can at least some of the rabbis of the Talmud, given their own observations of who is rewarded and who is punished (Berakhot 7a). Furthermore, I have no satisfying answers to the ancient question of why bad things happen to good people, but of course I am in good company with regard to that.

But one thing of which I am sure is as follows: that our God is fundamentally good, and that the proof of this is that God has given us the capability to do good for others. When we read in Bereshit / Genesis that God created us in the Divine image, we can understand this as meaning that God gave us a share in Divine goodness. It is through performing acts of hesed, lovingkindness, that we raise those sparks of Divine holiness, that we illuminate the faces of our friends, family, neighbors, and even complete strangers with the light of God’s own face.

Our very conception of what it means to be a sacred community must therefore include the idea of responsibility for each other, the obligation to, as the Torah puts it, open our hands. Let’s keep mining our holy books for the imperative to raise ourselves up through helping others in need; learning leads to action.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 8/3/2013.) 

This is the sixth in the Summer Sermon Series, a seven-part exploration of the most essential values of Temple Israel of Great Neck. The previous five installments were:

1. Telling our story

2. Being a welcoming congregation

3. Engaging with Torah

4. Egalitarianism

5. Israel

A Jewish Value for Fat Tuesday - Tuesday Kavvanah, 2/21/2012

Our Director of the Hebrew High School and Teen Engagement, Danny Mishkin, is in New Orleans and Biloxi, Mississippi this week with 36 teens from Temple Israel (and more from other local congregations) on a community service mission to help communities that are still rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina.  Danny uses every opportunity that he can to help inculcate our teens with Jewish values, and in speaking with him yesterday, I asked him to identify those values that he places at the top of the list.

"I want them to consider that their wants do not necessarily outweigh the needs of others," he said, and cited the words of the first-century BCE sage Hillel from Pirqei Avot:

הוא היה אומר, אם אין אני לי, מי לי; וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני; ואם לא עכשיו, אימתיי
He used to say, "If I am not for me, who will be?  If I am for myself alone, what am I?  And if not now, when?" (Avot 1:14)

In other words, sometimes we hold a narrow view of the world, one in which our desires seem the most important, to the detriment of others.  Hillel's suggestion is that while we must take care of ourselves, we also cannot lose sight of those around us.


Our hope is that the teens participating in this trip, where they will be rolling up their sleeves and contributing  physical labor in an effort to repair the Gulf Coast and, writ large, the world, will not only help people in need, but will also gain unparalleled insight into a key Jewish value that they will carry with them into adulthood.  On Mardi Gras, when Louisiana parties with abandon, this is an all-the-more-essential lesson.  I look forward to hearing their stories when they return.



~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Shemot 5772: Seeking Transcendent Moments

Did you notice the new rack sitting in the front lobby, opposite the office window?  If you were here during the day this week, you might have seen it displaying children’s books.  We have not officially “rolled out” the program yet, but the books are courtesy of a program called PJ Library, which will soon be providing Jewish books free of cost to children of this community who are 8 years old and younger.  I am sure that you will hear more about it very soon.

But the more interesting thing at the moment about that rack is its placement, just opposite the office window, where Susan (who usually sits at the reception window during the day) can keep an eye on it.  Why?  Because we are all pretty sure that, if nobody’s watching the rack, the books will climb down and walk out the front door, perhaps assisted by members of this community.  That is to say, they will be stolen.  

On what basis would we make such an assumption?  Well, it seems that theft is not an uncommon problem in this building.  I am not going to go into details, but children’s books and other items around the building have been stolen.  That’s right - in a place where people come, at least in theory, to get a taste of qedushah, of holiness, some valuable items need to be carefully guarded.  (It might be worth it to point out that we offer unlimited quantites of contact with God for free.)

As a naive, trusting soul, I never would have expected that.  Then again, I am also continually surprised when I see cars blast through the stop sign in front of my house, or people who throw trash on the ground in public places, or other acts that seem to me selfish.

And let’s face it - we live in a world of plenty.  Americans have lots of stuff.  We have so much stuff that many of us actually rent storage space outside of our homes to keep it.  We have to have stuff, because our economy depends on our buying more of it.  Not to have lots of stuff is un-American. (Perhaps some of you are familiar with George Carlin’s routine on stuff, which I of course cannot repeat in this space.)

Ironic that in such an environment, there are those who simply cannot resist a “free” item.  Now, there are many possible reasons why people steal, and among them may be genuine poverty or the thrill of getting away with it.  Not all theft is equal.  But on some fundamental level, theft, like disobeying traffic laws, like selling houses to people who can’t afford them or derivative securities to those who don’t understand them, or even like cheating on tests, all of these are acts of selfishness.  Whether conscious of it or not, the thief makes a statement that goes as follows: I and my desires are more important than those of whoever owns this item.  In order for theft to happen, the owner must be depersonalized, unconnected.

Of course, in some ways, putting oneself before others is necessary to our survival.  The sage Hillel says so in Pirqei Avot (1:14): Im ein ani li, mi li?  If I am not for myself, who am I?  But I’m talking about the kind of worldview that places the self above all others, the kind that Hillel goes on to chastise: Ukhshe-ani le-atzmi, mah ani?  And if I am only for myself, what am I?  And in this sense there is no question that we are living in a very selfish age.  What can we do about it?

Put that thought on hold for a moment; we’ll come back to it.

* * *

Let’s turn our attention to the Torah.  From a narrative perspective, the Torah really only contains three parts: before Egypt (i.e. the book of Genesis), the Exodus story through the giving of the Torah, and then everything after, which is kind of a mish-mash of lots of different types of material.

But the middle narrative, the one about Egypt and the Israelites’ exit, up to and including the episode at Mt. Sinai, is the shortest and perhaps most intense tale of the book, and arguably the most central to Judaism and Jewish theology.  

The Exodus story, as I noted two weeks ago in our Torah discussion about whether or not Joseph was a success, is the pre-eminent national myth that pervades Jewish life.  (And here I use “myth” in the positive sense - not a story that is untrue, but a folkloric tale that helps a community make sense of its experience.)  We refer to Exodus constantly in liturgy, on holidays, in sermons, in calls to social action, and on and on.

Leaving Egypt, the departure of the Israelite slaves, the children and grandchildren of slaves, is the second most important moment of the Torah, eclipsed only by the episode at Mt. Sinai.  These are the moments that define us as a people.  (One popular take on Sinai has it that all Jewish souls were there.  That is, indeed, a statement of transcendence.)

Really, it was not even God who was the first to declare us a people, but rather Pharaoh.  Not the good Pharaoh that appointed Joseph the viceroy of Egypt, but the the bad Pharaoh, the one who “did not know Joseph,” who enslaved the Israelites.  As we read this morning at the beginning of Parashat Shemot:

(Ex. 1: 9-10)
Hineh am benei yisrael, rav ve-atzum mimenu; hava nithakkemah lo pen yirbeh.

“Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.  Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase...” (Etz Hayyim, p. 318-319)

Even in the mouth of the Egyptian despot, this is a transcendent moment in the Torah narrative.  The 70 people, members of a family who went down to Egypt at the behest of Joseph and the earlier, good Pharaoh, have now become a nation, an “am.”  

This acknowledgement marks the beginning of Israel, the people, the point of transition from mishpahah to am.  The Israelites needed to crystallize as a nation before God could give them the Torah, before they could enter the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, before they could think of themselves as a connected to each other.

Transcendent moments, however, are not limited to the Torah.  I am sure that we can all think of them - times that connected us - to other Jews, for sure, but also to other Americans as a nation, or to our families, or schools, or workplaces, or the modern State of Israel, or to ourselves as sovereign individuals, or God.

The tragedy of 9-11 is probably the most powerful example in recent memory.  For my parents’ generation, the killing of JFK in 1963 was a transcendent moment.  Those of us in the room who remember the Six-Day War, when nobody was sure whether or not Israel would survive, and yet triumphed, might think of that as a transcendent moment.  You get the picture.

The events that connect us to each other, help to make us feel like a part of something greater than ourselves.  They are, I think, the exact opposite of what we do for so much of our waking existence - that is, make our own choices, think independently, and go about our lives as distinct creatures.  Every now and then, we need to be literally shaken and reminded that we are a part of a larger subset of humanity.

We as modern Jews need more transcendent moments.  Young and old, Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Haredi, Reconstructionist, secular, in Israel or the diaspora, Ashkenazic, Sephardic, the Jewish world is fragmented.  We need shared experiences that bring us all together.

Given events of late here and in Israel, one might think that different corners of the Jewish world have little in common.  We have such a talent for cutting each other down, such formidable zeal for denying legitimacy or respect for this group or that group.  

And therein lies one problem that we all face.  If we have no shared moments of transcendence as a people, no experiences to bring us all together, then how can we possibly feel connected as a group moving forward?  How will we prevent the global forces of modernity from continuing to strip from us our personal interdependence?  How will we ensure that our children’s children feel connected to each other as Jews?

And this, of course, brings me back to the beginning: if members of a synagogue community do not feel connected to each other, what will prevent them from stealing children’s books in the lobby?  Hanging a sign in the lobby that says, “Lo tignov,” do not steal (Ex. 20:13), probably will not work.

OK, so there will never be another Exodus.  And we may have to give up on the rest of the Jewish world, the ones who do not belong to Temple Israel.  But we can create transcendent moments here.  And sometimes we do.

Some of us have shared a moment when families come together for Shabbat Hamishpahah on Saturday evening, hold candles aloft and sing a Hasidic niggun as we bid goodbye to Shabbat.  Some of us share a moment when we strain forward in hunger and exhaustion at the end of Yom Kippur to hear the shofar blown.  Some of us share a moment when we gather food and clothes to deliver late on Saturday night for Midnight Run.  Some of us might point to a lifecycle event: birth, berit milah, Bar Mitzvah, wedding.  Some of us might even point to the moment in the Musaf service on Shabbat morning when we embrace others with our tallitot during birkat kohanim.  

Let’s face it: connecting a community of over 900 families is next to impossible, especially when we live in such a selfish age.  But we are going to continue to try, and the more that we reach members of this community in smaller contexts, the better chance that we have to reach deeper into the larger group, to foster the sort of transcendence that makes us all feel that we are part of something greater.

Prayer, singing, eating, learning, studying the Torah (Talmud Torah keneged kulam!) together all work to connect each of us to the other, even if we do not know each other.  Until we can bring everybody along on our journey with us, Susan will still have to keep an eye on the PJ Library book rack.  But let’s hope for and work together for a day when she can turn her back and know that it will be OK, because we will have transcended selfishness.  Now that’s a vision for the future!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 1/14/2011.)