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 True Meaning of Matzah - Seventh Day Pesah, 5774

I suspect that some of you must have a running bet over whether I’m going to begin a sermon with, “I recently heard on NPR…” I’m not sure what the current odds are, but it may be that money is about to be owed:

I recently heard on NPR a fascinating story about a church in North Carolina that really struck me. At St. Albans Episcopal Church in Davidson, a well-appointed outer suburb of Charlotte, there is a new bronze statue on the church grounds, depicting a figure lying, huddled on a bench, wrapped in a blanket. The only body parts of the figure visible are its feet, which display the wounds that, according to Christian tradition, were caused by the crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of the Romans. The statue is titled Jesus the Homeless, and, as you may imagine, has caused no shortage of uproar within the congregation. Some love it, including the church’s pastor, and some hate it. (BTW, the sculptor has a wonderful name that may resonate for some in this holiday season: Timothy Schmalz.)

What caught my attention when listening to this story is the power of this message. One goal of art, as with religion, is to take us outside of ourselves, to raise our awareness about things that we cannot otherwise see. The message that this statue projects is not the typical theology common to images found in churches - Jesus’s birth or death scenes, or decked out with glorious threads and haloes and rays of light.

Rather, the message here is, remember the needy! You who come to this well-kept suburban church, which could afford to spend $22,000 to purchase the art installation in memory of a deceased member, should remember that there are plenty of people in the world, good, deserving people, who cannot afford a home, much less one in a neighborhood like this. And this is a message that all of us who live in more comfortable environments would do well to remember.

And while some believe that this is an affront to the central character in Christianity, others see this as religious consciousness-raising par excellence. As the church’s spiritual leader Rev. David Buck puts it, "We believe that that's the kind of life Jesus had. He was, in essence, a homeless person."

Now of course, I am not here today to talk about Jesus, even though yesterday was Easter Sunday. Rather, I am going to talk about Pesah, which of course plays a role as the backdrop in the Christian bible for the events surrounding Jesus’ death.

However, I think that the symbolic intent conveyed by the statue is as valent here as it is in North Carolina, and in fact, one of the central mitzvot / commandments of Pesah, the consumption of matzah, is its spiritual analog.

Occasionally, I will admit that we have a problem in Judaism. We try to hit too many buttons at once. When you consider Pesah, for example, you can see how the central message of this holiday might be obscured amidst all the other noise. What are the themes of Pesah? There are several - this is a holiday with at least four names: Hag ha-Aviv (the festival of spring), Hag ha-Herut (the festival of freedom), and Hag ha-Matzot (the festival of flat, tasteless, cracker-like bread), and of course, Pesah, referring to the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb. But the central message of Pesah is even more specific than that. It is reflected in the following statement, which we say during the seder, right before we ask the Four Questions that get the conversation about slavery and freedom started:

הַא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא, דִּאֲכַלוּ אֲבָהָתַנָא בְּאַרְעָא דְּמִצְרַיִם.  כָּל דִּכְפִין, יֵיתֵי וְיֵיכוּל; כָּל דִּצְרִיךְ יֵיתֵי וִיפַסַּח.

Ha lahma anya di-akhalu avahatana be-ar’a demitzrayim.

Kol dikhfin yeitei veyeikhul; kol ditzrikh yeitei veyifsah.

This is the bread of poverty that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.

Let all who are hungry, come and eat.

Let all who are in need come and celebrate Passover.

Most of us probably rush by this statement on the way to more interesting territory in the Haggadah, or perhaps on the way to dinner, without thinking about it too deeply. It’s in Aramaic, and we all know that when we find ritual passages in Aramaic, it’s because the liturgical framers wanted us to understand. The passage refers to the Talmud, Tractate Ta’anit 20b. In enumerating the noble deeds performed by the great sage Rav Huna, the Gemara reports the following:

When Rav Huna was in possession of some medicament, he would take a pitcherful thereof, hang it on the door-post and say: “Whoever wishes to have some, let him come and take it.” … When he was about to sit down to a meal, he would open the doors, saying: “Anyone who desires to eat, let him come in and eat.”

What made Rav Huna a great sage (and not a merely good one) was his willingness to share with those in need. We echo those words when we open our seder, even before telling the Pesah story, by saying, in a language that (at least historically) the Jews understood better than Hebrew, “Kol dikhfin yeitei veyeikhul,” let all who are hungry, come and eat.

We borrowed this text directly into the Haggadah because it speaks to the values that we highlight on this holiday. We should be more like Rav Huna. When we sit and discuss our departure from Egypt, an abundant meal awaiting us in the kitchen, we should not forget that we are a people whose nationhood was forged in slavery and oppression, and that we should remember (א) there are plenty of others out there who are still suffering, and (ב) that we might just as easily end up in Mitzrayim, the narrow place of Egypt, once again. It is our duty not just to recite this line, but to really mean it. If we do not open up our doors to those who lack food and shelter and clothing, then we must, in subsequent days and months, open up our hearts and our wallets.

And thus, reciting this line at the seder is far from the end of fulfilling our Passover obligation. Think about it for a moment: the first seder was nearly a week ago, and we’re still eating matzah, and (at least for the Ashkenazim) a range of meager foods.

Eating is so central to our lives - those of us who can afford to, do it almost all day long. It’s such a huge part of our personal and macro-economies that we often do not realize how omnipresent it is - how much time and energy we spend eating, or preparing, or shopping for, or growing and harvesting and transporting and all the other tasks associated with food.

So it is remarkable indeed that we eat this lehem oni, this bread of poverty, for eight whole days. Not just one or two evenings, but for about 2% of your calendar year.

Matzah is, or at least should be, something akin to the Jewish version of the homeless Jesus: a reminder: a symbol of what we have vs. what we might not have; a beacon calling us to be at once grateful for our freedom and our ability to dine like free people as well as mindful of those who have no freedom and cannot dine like we do.

Kol dikhfin yeitei veyeikhul. This potent message of the seder continues to resonate, even as this festival winds to a close.

My sister, who is living in Budapest, Hungary this year, put together a seder for some family and friends last week. She told me that the matzah that she procured in Budapest was somehow much worse than the matzah that she has been accustomed to in the States.

Now, I’m not sure how that can be - matzah, lehem oni, the bread of poverty, is not something to be enjoyed. But whether you like eating matzah or not, and regardless of its quality and relative tastiness, the meaning of the matzah is consistent: we emerged from oppression so that we can extend a hand to others.

We do not often step over homeless people here in Great Neck, nor are we frequently approached by people asking for money on Middle Neck Road. But there are needy among us here, as there are everywhere. The matzah should remind us of that, as well as our obligation to be like Rav Huna, and figuratively, if not literally, open the doors to those in need.

 

And so, to conclude, we should use these last two days of Pesah (and for many of us the last days of consuming matzah until the next 14th of Nisan) to consider how we might emulate Rav Huna, how we might fulfill our obligation to care for those who have less than we do. How can we carry the message and symbolism of matzah into the other 98% of the year? Can we commit to the following?

• Bringing food to Temple Israel when our Chesed Connection collects, or directly to the food pantry at St. Aloysius church here in town
• Participating in Midnight Run, which we host here at Temple Israel, and helping with Hatzilu, which distributes food to those in need locally
• Donating to charitable organizations that feed the hungry (e.g. Mazon here in America, Meir Panim in Israel)
• Helping our children and grandchildren to understand the importance of giving by demonstrating our willingness to do so. Get them involved!
• Educate yourself on what the issues are surrounding hungry and homeless people. Find your own way to help out. Seek out other initiatives and promote them to your family and friends. Raise the bar of dialogue.

Don’t let the message of the matzah get lost in all the other messages of this season. Let all who are hungry, come and eat.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Monday, April 21, 2014.)

Uncovering the Meaning of Sekhakh -- Sukkot 5773

In the past week or so, I’ve been thinking quite a bit, as you might imagine, about sukkah construction - what makes it a sukkah, what makes it kosher, what makes it acceptable for fulfilling the mitzvah of “leshev basukkah,” dwelling in the sukkah, one of the principle mitzvot unique to the festival of Sukkot.  Curiously, all of the relevant literature explained the textual basis for the halakhic specifications for the sukkah, but nowhere could I find good reasons for the intent behind said halakhah.  There is a lot of “what” and “how”, but not so much “why”.  (Not that this is so unusual in Judaism, but I have found that the “why” is a much more powerful motivator than the “how.”)

Specifically, I was looking for something about the roof of the sukkah.  You may know that the covering, known in Hebrew as sekhakh (a word which comes from the same shoresh / root as sukkah) must be made from materials that grow from the ground, but why?  I checked many, many sources, and could not find anything so satisfactory.
 
We’re going to take a look at some of those sources for a bit, and then I would like to propose a reason for it -- that is, a reason beyond, “because it says so in the Talmud.”  
 
****

Here are the traditional sources, with one modern one.  Sorry for not putting up all the Hebrew -- I ran out of time before Yom Tov.  Skip to the bottom to see the conclusions.

1.  Genesis 2:6

וְאֵד, יַעֲלֶה מִן-הָאָרֶץ, וְהִשְׁקָה, אֶת-כָּל-פְּנֵי הָאֲדָמָה.

...but a mist would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth.

2.  Leviticus 23:43

...in order that future generations may know that I [God] made the Israelite people live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.

3.  Deuteronomy 16:13

You shall hold the Festival of Sukkot for seven days, at the ingathering from your threshing and your wine-press.

4.  Nehemiah 8:14-15 (6th century BCE)

They found written in the Teaching [Torah] that the Lord had commanded Moses that the Israelites must dwell in booths during the festival of the seventh month, and that they must announce and proclaim throughout all their towns and Jerusalem as follows: “Go out to the mountains and bring leafy branches of olive trees, pine trees, myrtles, palms and [other] leafy trees to make booths, as it is written.”

5.  Mishnah Sukkah 1:4 (2nd century CE)

If one trained over [the sukkah] a vine or a gourd or an ivy and covered it over [with sekhakh], it is invalid.  But if the sekhakh were more than these, or they were cut, it is valid.
This is the general principle: Whatever is susceptible to ritual impurity and does not grow from the earth may not be used to cover the sukkah; but whatever is not susceptible to ritual impurity and grows from the earth may be used as sekhakh.

6.  Babylonian Talmud, Massekhet Sukkah 11b (5th century CE)

THIS IS THE GENERAL RULE: WHATEVER IS SUSCEPTIBLE TO RITUAL IMPURITY etc. How do we know this? Resh Lakish said: Scripture says, “But there went up a mist from the earth” (Gen. 2:6); just as a mist is a thing that is not susceptible to ritual impurity and originates from the soil, so must the sekhakh be a thing that is not susceptible to ritual impurity, and grow from the soil. That is satisfactory according to the authority who says that [the booths of the wilderness were] clouds of glory... For it has been taught: “‘For I made the children of Israel to dwell in Sukkot’ (Lev. 23:43). These were clouds of glory, so says R. Eliezer.” ...

7.  Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Shofar veSukkah veLulav 5:1 (12th century CE)

The sekhakh may not be appropriate if made from any item.  One may only cover the sukkah with those things that have grown from the earth and that have been uprooted from the earth, and that are not susceptible to uncleanness, and that have no bad odor and do not shed and are not always wilting.

8.  Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, from Chabad.org (20th century CE)
 

The primary halakhic element of the sukkah is the sekhakh covering, made of branches. The covering takes on the holiness of the sukkah, and even after the holiday ends, it is forbidden to use the sekhakh for any mundane purpose. The sekhakh thus represents the act of transforming a physical part of the universe into something holy, from which the sacredness does not depart. This is the entire purpose of the Holy Temple, to take elements of the physical world and make them into an everlasting dwelling for God.

****
Sukkot is a holiday that directly follows Yom Kippur, just after having (ideally) achieved our repentance from all that we have done wrong in the past year, our having been cleansed of our sins.  There is a sense of rebirth that surrounds Sukkot.  We call it “zeman simhateinu,” the time of our happiness.  This is a festival of pure, unadulterated joy in the wake of the hard work that we put into seeking teshuvah just a few days earlier.  It’s kind of like the calm, self-satisfied feeling that you get after working out.
 
And then, rather than rest, we move out into these temporary huts.  What’s the message?
The sekhakh enables us to see the stars, and to let the sun and the rain through.  It does not separate us out from the natural world, from God’s creation; rather, spending time in the sukkah connects us to nature and to Avinu Shebashamayim, to our God in heaven. The sekhakh is not so much a roof, but a kind of active filter, enhancing our limited connection with the sky.  But there is even more here.
 
The sekhakh must be cut (i.e. dead) things that were once connected to the ground.  Many of you know that I am a gardener and an advocate of getting in touch with God through gardening, and what comes with that is a (curiously enough) a love of compost.  Compost is emblematic of the cycle of life: plants grow and flourish, taking nutrients from the soil; then they die, they decompose, and they provide more nutrients for subsequent generations.  
 
(By the way, there are hints of this in Jewish text as well, related to our own cycle of life.  Of our beloved departed we say, “Tehi nishmato tzerurah bitzror hahayyim” - may his soul be bound up in the bond of life.  What is tzeror hahayyim / the bond of life?  It is that which connects this cycle of life to the next, and repeats again.  Those who have passed on continue to nourish the living.)
 
The sekhakh is the part of the sukkah that connects us to the heavens, the sun and rain.  Since all the materials in the roof are compostable, this amalgam of rain, sun, and nutrients (those produced by decomposing plants) are all that nourish plants, and therefore animals, and therefore us.  Add to this Rabbi Schneerson’s formulation of the sekhakh as creating a kind of holy vessel.  My proposal is this: it is the combination of these physical and spiritual requirements that give us everything that human life needs.  This is what the sekhakh represents: a tangible metaphor for our physical and spiritual needs.
 
And this is a perfect message for the rebirth of Sukkot.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered / discussed at Temple Israel of Great Neck, second day of Sukkot, Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012.)

Unaffiliated, but Potentially Engaged - Korah 5772

When I was in rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I took a philosophy course that examined contemporary spirituality.  The professor, a somewhat non-conventional rabbi, Rabbi Alfredo Borodowski, emphasized that the primary struggle of religion in our day is to bring meaning to people’s lives.  Some of the questions that we ask are:

What does our tradition teach me?  
How can I apply it to my life today?  
I only have so much time and so much energy, so if I am going to pay attention to anything, it better be meaningful.  What can I possibly gain from paying attention to Jewish life?

This search for meaning is bound up in our character; it is the reason that we are called “Yisrael,” the name given to our patriarch Jacob as “one who struggled with God and with humans” in Genesis 32:29.

Our job as a Jewish community is to answer the question, “What does this mean to me?”  Yes, we must offer many points of entry.  Yes, we must be open, welcoming, and accessible.  But even with all that, we have to offer deep, serious, meaningful content alongside the opportunity to interact with God.

It’s not enough, for example, for a synagogue to offer services on a Saturday morning and merely expect that people will show up, no matter how wonderful the sermon or the cantor’s vocal pyrotechnics.  For people to come, even those who grew up going to shul, there has to be some meaning to it.

It’s not enough to encourage 7th-grade students to continue on into the Youth House Hebrew High School program after they have completed their Bar/Bat Mitzvah.  Those kids have to see that there is some value, some personal meaning in continuing their Jewish education, and their parents have to see this as well.  We have to demonstrate that value, teach that meaning.  If we do not, they are not coming back.

It’s not enough for me to stand here before you and talk about the essential mitzvot / commandments of Jewish life, like the observance of Shabbat and kashrut, without making a case for how doing so will mean something to us as individuals and the community.  Otherwise, such suggestions will not be heard.

***

Perhaps some of you saw the results of a demographic studythat came out two weeks ago, funded by the UJA-Federation of New York.  The conclusions were not surprising, although the Jewish newspapers spun it as big news. Among the major findings were the following: New York Jewry saw a small uptick in population, and most of the growth was in the Haredi / “ultra-Orthodox” sector.  Jews in the metropolitan area are on the one hand growing more rigorously traditional and on the other more unaffiliated, and particularly less identified with the Conservative and Reform movements.  

To be fair, this study does not represent the entire region -- only NYC and Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties.  As journalist J. J. Goldberg pointed out in the Forward, the 1.5 million Jews counted excluded about 500,000 who live in NJ and Connecticut, and those numbers skew more heavily non-Orthodox.  

(By the way, while it is true that Orthodoxy saw growth since the last study in 2002, it might be worth noting that Haredi families average something more than six children per family.  Conservative families have an average of 1.5 children.  I’ll leave the math to you.)

The biggest point of concern from my perspective, however, is the dramatic growth of the category known as “Other.”  More than a third, 37% of area Jews, identified themselves as something other than Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox.  Those categories include “just Jewish,” “something else,” “no religion,” non-Jewish religion (but respondent is Jewish), “traditional,” “Sephardic,” “cultural,” “secular,” and other answers.

(from forward.com)

But what do these numbers mean?  Aside from the obvious conclusion that the non-Orthodox movements are shrinking (which, by the way, has been true for several decades), the more accurate observation is as follows: We must be doing something wrong.  Why are younger people who grew up in our movement not joining synagogues or signing up their kids for Hebrew school or even identifying themselves as “Conservative” when a pollster calls?  Maybe it’s because we are expensive, and Chabad is cheap.  Maybe it’s because we stand for Israel in a world that has grown hostile to the Jewish state.  Maybe it’s because assimilation has led our people astray.  

Or maybe it is because we have not made an adequate case for why the non-Orthodox Jewish experience is meaningful.

You see, Orthodoxy has a strong, built-in meaning machine.  It’s what much of our tradition says over and over: buy into the system, accept the yoke of halakhah, and it will be good for you.  I know people who have left the non-Orthodox fold for frummer pastures because it all seems so simple: do what we tell you and it will all make sense.  Much of Orthodoxy includes with that the very simple condition of not asking questions that probe too deeply, such as, “Why are women excluded from Jewish rituals?”  Or, “Why must there be only one path to God?”

But our message, the Conservative Jewish message, reflects the richness of humanity and the complexity of the Jewish textual discourse.  Life is not black and white, and neither is rabbinic literature, or for that matter, the Torah.  There is always a dissenting opinion; there is always room for debate. The Talmud teaches us that women can be called to the Torah in synagogue and wear tallit and tefillin.  Conceptions of God by modern philosophers such as Abraham Joshua Heschel or Martin Buber are as relevant as the Torah’s multiple perspectives.

To arrive at the meaning, however, you have to dig deeper, says the Conservative movement.  It is not enough just to recite the words of tefillah / prayer quickly and accurately, it is just as important to understand them, and to re-interpret them for our times.  There is more meaning in mindfulness than in performing rituals by rote.  

I find meaning, and I hope that some of you do as well, in careful analysis, in familiarizing ourselves with these ancient texts and making them come alive. I also find meaning in asking the hard questions: “How can I believe in a God that allowed the Shoah to happen?”  “How can I accept the stories of the Torah at face value when they sometimes contradict scientific principles or archaeological evidence?”

Disagreement is an ancient tradition, and should be encouraged.  Tolerating multiple opinions was something that came out of rabbinic tradition, and is even highlighted as being “leshem shamayim,” as having a Divine purpose. As we read in Pirqei Avot, the book of the Mishnah dedicated to 2nd-century rabbinic wisdom on life and learning:

Avot 5:17:

כל מחלוקת שהיא לשם שמיים, סופה להתקיים; ושאינה לשם שמיים, אין סופה להתקיים.  איזו היא מחלוקת שהיא לשם שמיים, זו מחלוקת הלל ושמאי; ושאינה לשם שמיים, זו מחלוקת קורח ועדתו.

Every disagreement that is for the sake of heaven will stand; every one that is not for the sake of heaven will not stand.  What is a disagreement that is for the sake of heaven? One between Hillel and Shammai.  What is a disagreement that is not? The one concerning Korah and his sympathizers.

The disagreements between Hillel and Shammai, two schools of thought referenced in the Talmud, are usually about finer points of halakhah / Jewish law.  (A classic dispute, one that I know that is taught in our Religious School, is how to light the Hanukkiah, the Hanukkah menorah.  Shammai says to start with 8 candles the first night, and to lose one on each successive night; Hillel says that we should start with 1 and go to 8, as we all do today.)

Korah, however, brought together a group of malcontents merely to struggle against Moses and Aaron, claiming an unfair distribution of power. In pleading his case before Moses, he said:

כִּי כָל-הָעֵדָה כֻּלָּם קְדֹשִׁים, וּבְתוֹכָם ה'

For all of the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. (Numbers 16:3)

In other words, we are all endowed with some of God’s holiness, says Korah. What makes you guys, Moses and Aaron, so special? Rashi concurs, offering that all the Israelites stood at Mt. Sinai together, not just Moses and Aaron. Korah is advocating for a share in leadership that he thinks that he deserves.  

On some level, Korah is right: we all do have a share of the Divine.  We all stood at Mt. Sinai.  We all received the Torah.

And this is still true, by the way.  Regardless of the validity of Korah’s claim on leadership, and regardless of what synagogue we choose to attend or join or not, there is no question that we all have a share in the Torah, a share in holiness.

In today’s complex, multi-layered Jewish world, we do not necessarily disagree about the meaning of the text.  More pointedly, what we disagree about is the “how.”  How do we create holy moments?  How do we relate to Jewish law?  How do we observe?  How do we make our tradition relevant?

This is, in fact, the essential mahloqet leshem shamayim, disagreement for the sake of heaven, of our day.  This disagreement an essential part of who we are. Remember that we are Yisrael, the ones who struggle with beings Divine and human.  We challenge ourselves as much as we challenge God.

But we cannot let this dispute distract us from our holy task -- that is, bringing meaning to all those who enter this building.  As Rabbi Howard Stecker pointed out to me the other day when we were discussing this, what were the people doing while the leaders were arguing?  Did Korah’s dispute pull Moses and Aaron from their holy work?  Perhaps that is precisely why the Mishnah labels this as an un-heavenly debate.

**

The fifth line on the chart, the one that we do not see, is the line of the “Unaffiliated, but Potentially Engaged.”  Or maybe “Unaffiliated, but Still Seeking.”  That line is also on the way up.  It may not include all of the Unaffiliated, but it certainly includes some proportion of them.  

And that is where we come in.  Those are the ones who might enter this synagogue, and even stick around, if:

1.  If they are greeted and welcomed properly.
2.  If they make connections with others in this building.
3.  If they get a personal boost, a shot of meaning, out of the time spent at Temple Israel of Great Neck.

That third item, conveying the meaning of our brand of Jewish life, is the most difficult of all, because we set the bar higher in terms of understanding.  We dig deeper, and that is hard to convey in 140 characters or less, or even in the context of a Shabbat morning service that is already chock-full.  

But that’s where we should aim.  Let’s talk about why women and men can be understood as equal under Jewish law.  Let’s talk about how modern perspectives on the Torah add to our understanding.  Let’s teach that it’s not all or nothing, glatt or treif.  Let’s engage with those questions that bring meaning to who we are as modern people, as modern Jews.

Thoughtful analysis of Jewish ideas couched in a friendly, easily-accessible format that includes a healthy dose of spiritual openness is one thing that will bring those in that other category in. That’s where we need to focus our energies.

In the wake of the UJA study, plenty of commentators lamented the disappearing center of the New York Jewish community. I say, bring it on. The center is still here, but we have to work harder to pull others in with us. All we have to do is make it meaningful, and that invisible line of the Potentially Engaged will start to creep back down.  

Shabbat shalom.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 23 June 2012.)