Four Essential Jewish Questions of Our Time - Shabbat HaGadol, 5773

Every year around this time, Rabbi Stecker and I find ourselves working very hard to help others with their sedarim. Starting a month before Pesah, we teach seder skills and material in a wide variety of formats and before many different audiences: the Men’s Club, the Nitzanim Family Connection, the Religious School Bet class, the Shabbat afternoon se’udah shelisheet crowd, and so forth. 

Pesah is, as I am sure many of you know, the most-practiced ritual of the Jewish year among American Jews. About 4 out of 5 of us show up to a seder of some sort, and for some of those Jews, this will be the ONLY Jewish experience that they will have in 5773; far more people come to a seder than seek forgiveness in the traditional ways on Yom Kippur.  For those of us who are regulars, who are committed to Jewish life, this is an opportunity to engage, and I encourage everybody here to reach out as ambassadors of Jewish living.

Related to that, I think that now is the time to start asking the hard questions about American Judaism, and talk about them around the seder table. After all, the seder is meant to be not only a meal, but also a discussion. It is modeled after the Greek symposium, an ancient type of dinner party that featured food, wine, discussion, and entertainment, all of which was enjoyed while reclining. We have the haggadah to guide us through our Jewish symposium. But the haggadah is only a guideline, a kind of framework: you can fulfill your Pesah obligation of “Vehigadta levinkha bayom hahu,” (Shemot / Exodus 13:8) of telling the story to your children on that day by reading it from the haggadah, but you can also fulfill it if you leave the printed page. The very word, “haggadah,” is derived from the same shoresh / Hebrew root of the commandment “vehigadta” in that verse; haggadah means telling, and does not necessarily mean reciting from a book.

Telling the story of Pesah, of traveling from slavery to freedom, usually raises a few questions. Well, four at least. But in fulfilling the obligation of “vehigadta levinkha,” of telling your children, should we not connect our modern world with our ancient tales? Here are four more questions for discussion, questions that we should all be asking around the table on Monday and Tuesday night:

1. On this Festival of Freedom, how will we ensure that our own contemporary freedom does not lessen, or indeed sever our connection with Judaism?

2. Is it indeed possible for us to continue to be Jewish while enjoying full assimilation into American society? Or is the only recourse to preserve our Jewish identity, as the Haredi world seems to believe, to self-segregate, i.e. to “enslave” ourselves, to curtail our independence?

3. What kind of Jewish world do we want in the future?

4. What are the things that we can do to make sure that our grandchildren have strong Jewish identities, and healthy, modern and open synagogue communities where they can practice comfortably?

And, like the traditional Four Questions of the seder, these can be summed up in one question: “Where are you headed, Jewishly speaking?” The question is to be asked, as it is to the Four Sons, in a manner that is both national and personal.

Let me tell you why these are the essential questions of our time.

Five years ago, Dr. Arnold Eisen, then the newly-minted Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, spoke here at Temple Israel. Responding to the state of the Conservative movement, he said that the decline in our numbers was not insurmountable, but that if things did not turn around in 5-10 years, the then-future prospects were not so good. Well, it’s been five years, and (Temple Israel’s relative stability notwithstanding) I have not detected any real change in the slope of that decline.

Numbers in the Reform movement and in Modern Orthodoxy are not much better. The only segment within Judaism that is growing rapidly is, of course, the Haredim, the fervently Orthodox.

There is no question that we Jews have greater freedom here and now than we have ever had; we are fully integrated into American society. There are few remaining barriers to Jews: We are not excluded from the best universities, as some of us were in the first half of the 20th century; we are welcome at the most prestigious workplaces and social forums in the nation; we occupy a third of the United States Supreme Court; the idea of a Jewish president is not beyond the realm of possibility; and much of non-Jewish America is willing not only to date us but to marry us as well.

There are no surprises here; we have come a long way in a few generations. Many of you know that statistics (from, for example, the National Jewish Population Survey) have shown the intermarriage rate hovering at about 50% for more than two decades. Related numbers show that children in intermarried families, on the whole, grow up with a far lower connection to Judaism. There are, of course, Jews who have married non-Jews who succeed in raising strongly-identified Jewish children, and there are many non-Jewish parents who are committed to raising Jewish children -- bringing their kids to synagogue, Hebrew school, and so forth -- but they are the exception, not the rule. 

But really, the issue is not intermarriage, which is I think merely a symptom of the greater problem. It’s about American Judaism in general, and particularly non-Orthodox Judaism. It’s time to think critically, not just about numbers, but the strength of our community’s connection to Judaism.

We know that Orthodoxy, and in particular Haredi Orthodoxy, is booming. They are growing rapidly, with many children per family, strong communal interconnection, and of course a zeal for Judaism and Jewish life. You may have read NY Times columnist David Brooks’ piece on this recently, a fawning account of his visit to black-hat Brooklyn titled “The Orthodox Surge.”

Brooks reports an excursion to Pomegranate, the top-shelf kosher grocery store that he likens to the specialty-food supermarket giant Whole Foods. I will not dwell on the strengths of Brooks’ argument, or its weaknesses. But in response, Jordana Horn of the Forward wrote an opinion piece that should be mandatory reading at your seder table. Ms. Horn describes herself as a committed Conservative Jew, and resents Mr. Brooks’ implication that Orthodoxy holds the Jewish future.

After pointing out that it is possible to be dedicated to Judaism and not Orthodox, she makes the following observations:

I fear that when my children grow up, they will encounter a world in which they will have to choose to be Orthodox or secular, and that no other options will exist — that while Conservative and Reform Jews were busy building gorgeous edifices of synagogues, they will have neglected to build communities that ensure their survival. 

I long for someone to stand up in Conservative and Reform synagogues and say, “Hey — if we want our egalitarian models of Judaism to have a fighting chance in the future, we need to think out of the box.

“We need to put our money where our mouths are when it comes to ensuring a Jewish future. We need to make sure our young congregants are on JDate. We need to make sure to reach out to and include Jewish singles and young families as much as we do senior citizens.

“We need to have a financial plan for making Jewish nursery school the best possible option, and an accessible one, for Jewish parents. We need Jewish day care in our synagogues for working parents so that the synagogue is seen as an indispensable part of life. We need to have infant and child care in every single service and program we offer.”

Ms. Horn is right on. And she could have said far more. Not just Chabad, but many variants of Orthodoxy have a tremendously impressive suite of outreach offerings that are easy to enter; they bring them right to you. They go where the Jews are, and they invite people in. Ladies and gentlemen, we say on two nights of every year, in front of all of our friends and family, “Kol dikhfin yeitei veyeikhul,” “Let all who are hungry, come and eat.” But aren’t we just paying Aramaic lip service? Are we really working hard to bring people into our fold? 

And furthermore, are we working hard with the people who are already there at the seder table, young and old, intermarried and in-married, to give them the tools that they need to live authentically Jewish lives as mainstream Americans?

Many of you have heard me say this many times in this space that we in the Conservative movement are committed to Rabbi Mordecai Waxman’s slogan of “tradition and change.” You know that I am committed to the Judaism of the Torah and the Talmud, the faith which inspired our ancestors and sustained them through centuries of misery, poverty, persecution, and wandering across continents and oceans. You know that I hold steadfast to the principles that Moses Mendelssohn, as the first emancipated Jew, held dear in the middle of the 18th century when he successfully joined German society as a practicing Jew. You know that I reject the isolation that the Haredi world pursues, that I am committed to living as much as an American as a Jew, that I support the moderate approach to halakhah and interpreting our canonical texts through a lens that is at once traditional and modern and scholarly. You know that I, that we at Temple Israel, stand for open engagement with both the Torah and with science, with egalitarianism and modernity, with Israel and with America.

And yet I, like Jordana Horn, wonder if my daughter and her children and grandchildren will have to choose between the Jewish approach that is stuck in 18th-century Poland and the one that hangs bagel ornaments on Christmas trees.

So those are the four questions we should be asking our friends, our family, our children and grandchildren. Where are you going, Jewishly? 

And hey, maybe that’s OK with most of those 80% of American Jews who show up for a seder. Maybe they do not care if there is a middle ground to Judaism. But I’d like to think that they do, and that if we all reach out to them, just like Chabad is doing so successfully, maybe they would be happy to come around here once in awhile, and not just on a major holiday or a family simhah.

For extra credit, the followup question is this: If you do indeed want a middle path to Jewish life, what are you going to do to make sure it does not disappear? Are you going to marry a Jewish person, or insist on conversion for a non-Jewish partner, or at the very least, work to agree that said partner will commit to raising your children as Jews? Are you going to join a synagogue? Are you going to take your family on vacation to Israel, rather than Mexico? Are you going to make sure your children obtain a Jewish education? Are you going to challenge yourself to try on for size just one new mitzvah, one that is easy and meaningful to you, like lighting Shabbat candles or blessing your children on Friday night, or studying some Torah? Are you going to discuss with your children how important it is to you that your grandchildren know that they are Jewish and why?

After all, what is the use of freedom, and freedom to practice our religion, if there is only one variety to choose from, and that variety rejects the very freedom we enjoy, and the secular structures that make it possible?

From the second day of Pesah until Shavuot we count off seven weeks of Sefirat HaOmer, the counting of the sheaves of grain that our ancestors were commanded by the Torah to do. Although today we bring no sheaves, we are understand this period as one of self-discipline, of kabbalistic meditation on the emanations of God, and as a period of preparation for receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai. It is a time of study, and as it seems likely that the theme for our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot will be an examination of the role and power of the qehillah qedoshah, the synagogue community, I urge you to begin to consider these themes as we launch into Pesah and beyond.

 Where are you going, Jewishly? Ask these questions around your seder table.  Shabbat shalom and hag sameah.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 3/23/2013.)

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

What's Your Path? Four New Questions for the Seder - Thursday Kavvanah, 3/22/2012

Every one of us has a different path through life in general, and through Jewish life in particular. Sometimes, it's a good idea to perform a quick self-check, to remind ourselves: Where am I going? Why am I here? How do I connect?

Admittedly, finding an interesting homiletic point buried in the Torah's graphic details of sacrificial offerings, which have not taken place for two millennia, is a challenge. Parashat Vayyiqra identifies the five major types of offerings that the Israelites could bring to the Temple when it stood in Jerusalem:

עֹלָה - olah, the burnt offering
מִנְחָה - minhah, the grain offering
זֶבַח שְׁלָמִים - zevah shelamim, the well-being offering
חַטָּאת - hattat, the sin offering
אָשָׁם - asham, the guilt offering

Each of these sacrifices was brought to the kohanim / priests by an individual who had a specific reason for bringing it.  Likewise today, we each have our own individual reasons for participating in Jewish life: some come to the synagogue to remember deceased loved ones, some want to teach their children about Judaism, some are committed to a ritual routine, and so forth.

In two short weeks (whose idea was it to put Pesah the week before tax day?), the single most popular Jewish ritual of the year will take place.  The seder is something like the Superbowl of Judaism: with upwards of 80% of American Jews participating, there are more of us around the table than at any other time.  As such, it's an opportunity to help each other re-connect, and to that end, I'd like to suggest four questions to ask at your seder, perhaps as a supplement to the traditional Four Questions, or even in place of:

1.  What are the ideas or principles or relationships that bring us back to the seder, year after year?

2.  What are the memories of Jewish life, from Passover or otherwise, that keep us connected?

3.  What are the Jewish values that we regularly call upon, particularly in secular contexts?

4.  What can we all do to help each other re-connect, or deepen our connections?

Now discuss!  You might be surprised to hear the range of paths of those around the table.  Shabbat shalom!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Wrestling with the Big Questions

In virtually every class that I teach, I encourage students to ask questions, and all my students know that a good question can easily toss the lesson plan out the window.


In his recent column appearing in The New York Jewish Week, Rabbi David Wolpe pointed to the centrality of questions in Jewish life.  They are so intrinsic to Jewish practice and learning that we ask a series of them every day in the warm-up passages of Shaharit, the morning service:


?מָה אֲנַחְנוּ? מֶה חַיֵּינוּ? מֶה חַסְדֵּנוּ? מַה צִּדְקֵנוּ? מַה יְשְׁעֵנוּ? מַה כּחֵנוּ? מַה גְּבוּרָתֵנוּ
Mah anahnu?  Meh hayyeinu?  Meh hasdenu?  Mah tzidqenu?  Mah yish'enu?  Mah kohenu?  Mah gevuratenu?
What are we?  What is our life?  What is our piety?  What is our righteousness?  What is our attainment?  What is our power?  What is our might?


The siddur, the prayerbook, reminds us on a daily basis, even before our morning coffee, that we must ask questions, that we must probe the depths of our understanding and relationships from the very moment that the day begins.  


This passage also serves as a reminder that, as Rabbi Wolpe put it, questions drive us deeper than answers.  As such, much of the Jewish experience surrounds asking good questions, and I would not have it any other way.

Elul 3: Teshuvah inventory questions

For the purposes of introspection, here is a list of ten questions that we might consider for the next four weeks leading up to Rosh Hashanah:

In the past year, have I...

... taken care of the people around me enough?

... sought reconciliation with loved ones whom I have struggled with?

... improved my connections with others?

... tried to focus on personal behaviors that I would like to change?

... sought humility?

... evaluated how my actions affect others?

... volunteered my time for the betterment of society or the environment?

... mistreated anybody, deliberately or not?

... not fulfilled promises?

... considered ways to improve this world, and taken appropriate action?


Writing this has given me plenty to think about! Feel free to add your own introspective questions in the comments below.

*****

This is the fourth in a series of thoughts for Elul. Here are the three previous ones:

Rosh Hodesh Elul: What's more important than electricity?

Elul 1: Resonances of the Shofar

Elul 2: The Spaces In-Between

Follow these and many other daily posts on Twitter with the hashtag #BlogElul.