Lend Your Voice in Song - Rosh Hashanah 5775

Take a deep breath. In. Hold. Now let it go. Out. Release.

Let’s face it. 5774 was a rough year, particularly for the Jews.

This summer, as Rabbi Stecker was in Jerusalem and in and out of bomb shelters, the Israel Defense Forces entered Gaza with the stated objective of stopping the barrage of rockets by Hamas. While Israelis ran for cover, most of us here in America were struggling with the following question: How do we respond? How do we show our support? (Some things we did here at TIGN: We held a fundraiser for our sister congregation in Ashkelon; we sent them a video greeting; we held an info session for our college students, many of whom will confront anti-Israel activism on campus.)

Those of us who use Facebook (if we’re not friends on Facebook, we should be. Friend me!) were subjected to a barrage of articles, analysis, blog posts, status updates, body counts, anti-Israel and sometimes even anti-Semitic postings by people we thought were friends. Or even worse, people who really are friends but are unaware of how they are propagating canards, stereotypes, and sometimes outright lies.  Social media became a battleground that was not as physically bloody as Gaza but very nearly as emotionally taxing.

But I think the worst of it was the anti-Semitic mobs that surfaced all over the world to protest Israel’s incursion in Gaza. The hooligans in France who held a Parisian synagogue under siege. The protesters in Boston and LA who attacked supporters of Israel. The mob in Germany heard chanting, “Gas the Jews.”

A sign displayed at an anti-Israel rally in Minneapolis in July.

As was mentioned in a very timely piece in the New York Times this week, just two weeks ago in Brussels, on the European Day of Jewish Culture, as Belgian Jews gathered to dedicate a Shoah memorial, youths threw stones and bottles at them; a few days later, a suspicious fire broke out at a synagogue in the same city. This follows the killing of four at the Jewish museum in Brussels earlier this summer, even before the Middle East erupted.

Take another deep breath.

I spoke this past summer about the current surge of anti-Semitism, and my message went something like this: It is shocking and disgusting and deeply troubling. But our obligation in the face of it is to look past the hatred, as our ancestors have always done, to hold onto our traditions and our heritage.

 

But that’s not so easy, right? Especially when that hatred is staring you in the face from your computer screen.

Some of you know that my wife, the daughter of two Hungarian Shoah survivors, still has relatives in Budapest, and that we have been to visit a few times. I was in Hungary last year, and at a Masorti (Conservative) minyan that meets in an apartment in Budapest, I met an attendee named Tamás whose parents had hidden from him that he was Jewish. Tamás grew up Christian, and it was not until he was in his 40s that he discovered he was Jewish, and committed himself to learning about Judaism and to living a Jewish life. He also told me that he is not alone; there are perhaps thousands like him. After World War II, many European Jews chose to hide their Jewish identity. That was an understandable response to the horror of the Shoah. For some, it guaranteed, if you will, the objective of, “Never again” - that is, it can’t happen to me and my family again if we just stop being Jewish.

A leading Hungarian politician from the Jobbik party, which is right-wing, nationalist, and openly anti-Semitic, Csanád Szegedi, discovered two years ago that he himself was a Jew. He has since sought out his Jewish heritage, and was even circumcised, just to prove that he is seriously repentant. This is a man who has done some serious teshuvah.

What led the parents of these Hungarians to conceal their Jewish roots was hatred and fear. But what has driven people like Tamás and Mr. Szegedi to learn about Judaism and commit themselves to a Jewish life? Is it the desire to stick together in the face of hatred? In Mr. Szegedi’s case, he did not have much of a choice - his political career was destroyed and none of his old nationalist buddies will speak to him any more.

But maybe these returnees to Judaism have a more positive motivation: an ancient yearning for the richness of Jewish life and tradition. A desire to be a part of their people, Am Yisrael. Perhaps their motivation is even more simple: curiosity about their heritage, leading to a desire to learn more. Like a paleontologist unearthing fossils, the more dust she removes, the more she reveals the form of the ancient creature. The more that is revealed, the more there is to learn.

In America, the Jews have lived for decades now in relative safety, largely removed from the anti-Jewish sentiments that permeate much of the world. The ADL, which keeps track of these things, has noted that while anti-Semitic activity in America has declined in recent years, it has been on the rise everywhere else. Our member Steve Markowitz, who is the Chairman of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, recently described this country as a “Jewish Disneyland” in comparison to the rest of the world.

After all, we have made it. Jews are accepted throughout American life and society. About a year ago, the Pew Research Center released a study on American Jews that found 58% of self-identified Jews who got married in the last decade or so are married to non-Jews. (The figure is much lower for those identified with Orthodoxy and the Conservative movement.) A couple of generations ago, few gentiles would marry us. Now we are desirable life partners; the daughter of a president married a Jew. We have arrived. (Not that this is a measuring-stick of which we are proud, but it is an indicator of our acceptance. It is also a challenge to Conservative rabbis and communities, but that’s a discussion for another day.)

Some in this room might remember a time when anti-Semitism was much more visible in America. But while American Jews in the middle of the 20th century were more likely to be subtle about their Judaism, today I have no fear about walking down the street wearing a kippah. (Despite the recent incident in Manhattan where a visibly-Jewish couple was attacked by thugs displaying Palestinian flags.)

And yet, here is the irony: as Jews have come to be more accepted in wider American culture, as we have been welcomed into formerly exclusive clubs, and intermarried with non-Jewish Americans, our commitment to Judaism per se has waned. And all the polling data backs up that assessment. Free entry into the wider society has bred a lessening devotion to Jewish life.

Once again, another deep breath.

Rosh Hashanah is a time of transition. This is a liminal moment - that is, one that marks a separation. Like lighting the Shabbat candles on Friday night or the havdalah candle on Saturday night, separating the mundanity, the ordinariness of the week from the holiness of Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah is perched on a fault line between the year that was and the year that will be. On this day, we look back to 5774, and all the ways that we succeeded or failed to meet our goals, and we look forward to 5775, a blank slate on which we hope to write a better story.

But leaving our own deeds aside, whether we all treated each other well or did what God expects of us or otherwise met our own expectations for ourselves, this past year has left a foul taste in my mouth. Commercial airplanes shot down and disappeared. Russian rebels in Ukraine. A bloody civil war in Syria. Ebola in Africa. ISIS. The death of Joan Rivers and Robin Williams, who have left us a much-less-funny planet. And, of course, there is that troubling worldwide rise in anti-Semitism.

The good news: we have a new year in front of us, and we can hope that this year will be better. And that is exactly what Rosh Hashanah is all about.

And really, it’s not just about hope. It has long been observed that Judaism is not about belief; it is about action. What we do matters. We have the potential to change our lives and the lives of others. That is why we keep coming back here every year, to these Ten Days of Repentance, when we scour our souls to bring out the shine, and recommit ourselves to making this world a better place. I might even argue that this is the central message of Judaism; each of us has the ability to effect real change. Each of us is called to tiqqun olam, repairing this very broken world.

We will invoke this same principle when we sing, deeper into the Musaf service, the great Aleinu. Yes, it is the same Aleinu that we all know and love, the one that indicates that services are coming to an end and we can go eat, but this is its original location. It is somewhat more glorified on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when the custom is to actually prostrate ourselves, signifying our bodily commitment to being God’s hands on Earth.

But the call to action is buried in the second paragraph, which is almost never sung out loud; rather, we usually mumble through it at breakneck speed. If you want to see it, open your mahzor to p. 156, top of the page. This is the beginning of the Malkhuyot section of verses about God’s kingship/sovereignty, one of the three themed sections of the RH Musaf service:

עַל כֵּן נְקַוֶּה לְּךָ ה' אֱלהֵינוּ לִרְאות מְהֵרָה בְּתִפְאֶרֶת עֻזֶּךָ. לְהַעֲבִיר גִּלּוּלִים מִן הָאָרֶץ. וְהָאֱלִילִים כָּרות יִכָּרֵתוּן. לְתַקֵּן עולָם בְּמַלְכוּת שַׁדַּי.

And so, Adonai our God, we await You, that soon we may behold Your strength revealed in full glory, sweeping away the abominations of the earth, obliterating idols, establishing in the world the sovereignty of the Almighty.

It is our duty, says the ancient composer of this prayer, to act in building a world in which our actions echo the holiness to which God calls us. In ancient language, that meant sweeping away idolatry, but to us today it means to work hard, to put actual elbow grease into making this world a better place, free of hatred, free of oppression, free of suffering and war and all types of destruction.

To that end, I would like to propose a call to action, a response to the anti-Semites of this world: We will not let you drive us further away from Judaism. Rather, we will embrace wholeheartedly our tradition, our community. We will maintain our pride in who we are, in our values, in our heritage of learning and practice.  

While the aftermath of the Holocaust may have driven the hatred of Jews underground for a time, it has emerged once again. This is an unfortunate reality that we will have to accept. But that does not mean that we should retreat, or be any less Jewish. Hiding will only embolden those who hate us.

Rather, now is the time to take pride in our culture, our history, and our heritage. Now is the time to renew our covenant with God, to refresh our communal ties, to strengthen our identity. Just as the best response to anti-Israel activists is to arm ourselves with knowledge about the complexity of Israel’s position, the best response to anti-Semitism is to be not merely comfortable, but downright exultant in knowing who we are and what we stand for.  The best response to anti-Semitism is to arm ourselves with knowledge: where we came from, what our sages have shared with us across the ages, how and why we maintain our traditions and pursue our spirituality, what we have given to the world.

You may ask, “How might I do that, Rabbi?” I’ll tell you:  

1. Learn something new about Judaism. Most of us have not considered terribly deeply all of the richness of Jewish tradition since our benei Mitzvah. It’s not just about matzah and apples and honey and potato latkes. Now might be the time to get back into the game: Read a book, take a class, come learn with me. I will offer to lead a discussion for you and any group of friends you can assemble. Just call my office (or email, or find me on Facebook or Twitter).

2. Re-connect to Jewish life. You have a great opportunity in the Great Neck Shabbat Project, Oct. 23-25:

But of course we are here with plenty of Jewish offerings every day of the year.

You can start small - merely by typing a few keywords into a search engine. Here is a list of reliable online resources:

For taking a break on the seventh day: sabbathmanifesto.org

For learning about all aspects of Judaism: myjewishlearning.com

For issues about Jewish parenting: kveller.com

For current events and analysis: forward.com and tabletmag.com

For figuring out what time services are at Temple Israel: tign.org

But the final suggestion is as follows: Lend your voice in song.

I recall one of my first Hebrew School teachers, maybe when I was in first or second grade, Mrs. Bashevkin, explaining to us that when in hot water, Jews stick together. OK, so I was like, 7 years old, and this was a very confusing image. I figured out a few years later what she meant: We stand together, we support each other, we think and act as a community.

As a teenager, my family attended Shabbat morning services every weekend. Occasionally, when my mind would wander in synagogue (nothing has changed!), I used to think about all the Jews that were in other synagogues at the same time, all up and down the Eastern time zone. Were they all on the same page in the siddur? Could it be possible that we are all singing “Aleinu” at exactly the same time?

The image is a powerful one. One of the ways that we stand together as a people is that we literally stand in prayer together, all around the world. And we sing together.

And we need your voice. The voice of every single person in this room. Not necessarily to be in synagogue every Shabbat, or to take upon yourself all 613 mitzvot at once, but to contribute to the great Jewish chorus any way you can.

My friend Michael Goldwasser, a music producer, R&B songwriter and performer, pointed out to me recently that he was invited to join an organization called Creative Community for Peace, which features members of the performing arts community who are supporters of Israel. Among the boldface-names who have signed on to their ads are Paul MacCartney, Madonna, Elton John, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber; there are many more. Many of the celebrities who have lent their names to the campaign are not Jewish. Most are probably not too familiar with all the political complexity surrounding Israel, Gaza, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and so forth, or for that matter the long and complicated history of anti-Semitism. But all are willing to figuratively lend their voices in support of Israel.

And you can too - not just in support of Israel, but in support of Jews, Judaism, Jewish life, and Jewish identity. Find a way to lend your voice - by learning (the highest mitzvah of all of the 613!), by showing up and committing time to your community, by seeking to understand Jewish values and implement them in your own life, by traveling to Israel (if not outright making aliyah), by representing your people well in the public sphere.

The true response to anti-Semitism is not to retreat. The true response is rally together as a community and lend your voice. Our ancestors survived two millennia of persecution, of oppression, of dispersion, of moving from one place to another as they were alternately welcomed and then kicked out of places all over the world. Did they give up on being Jewish? A few did, here and there. But the vast majority of us did not, and that there are so many of us gathered in synagogues on this day around the world is a testament to our historic victory over anti-Semitism.

The greatest threat to Judaism is not hatred. It’s not Hamas or ISIS or al-Qaeda. The greatest threat to Judaism is apathy.

So take another deep breath, and lend your voice, so that we may work together in repairing this world. Your people need you now.

Shanah tovah. A healthy, satisfying, and peaceful 5775.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Rosh Hashanah 5775, September 25, 2014.)

You and I Will Change the World: Arik Einstein and the Hope of Israel

Leaving Israel is, for me, always accompanied by a certain sense of melancholy. Some authorities in our tradition (reading from Numbers 33:53) teach that while it is arguably a mitzvah to go to Israel, it is an aveirah, a transgression to leave.

But of course, I have a job and a family and a life here in Great Neck. I have a congregation that needs me (well, sometimes). I am 100% American, and in many ways I belong here. (Once in a while, I am complimented by actual Israelis about my accent in Hebrew, and they are surprised to learn that I grew up in Massachusetts. But I don't look or dress or have the body language of an Israeli, and the more astute observer can pick out an American long before he opens his mouth.)

Nonetheless, I feel a sense of belonging in Israel that I have never had here. These are my people. This is my land. Whether sitting at a cafe (and the cafes in Israel are numerous and excellent) drinking kafeh hafukh (literally, “upside-down coffee,” what the rest of the world calls cappucino), hiking through the desert, visiting an archaeological site, strolling through one of Israel’s many shopping malls (Israelis love malls!) or lounging on the beach, I feel at home. Yes, I speak the language, and I have spent in aggregate more than two years there, and am accustomed to the quirks and unpleasantries of Israeli society and culture that often make life there challenging for Americans. But there is something more there, a steadfast bond that connects me on a primal level to those ancient, contested rocks.

Apropos of the beginning of the book of Shemot / Exodus, the story is told of how God asked Moses which place he wanted to be the Promised Land. Moses, as we all know, was slow of tongue. So he starts to say California, but can’t quite get it out. So God says, “Canaan? That wasteland? Well, if you say so.”

But the last laugh may be on God, since the discovery of natural gas off the coast of Haifa in Israel’s territorial waters. It’s the largest natural gas field in the Middle East. Go figure!

I’m not sure exactly what is the source of my connection with Israel, or why it is so strong. But I do know that this feeling is quite real. Israel lights a fires in my soul. And my daughter seems to have the Israel bug as well: she has been saying for at least two years that she plans to marry her Beth HaGan classmate Andrew and make aliyah and live in Jerusalem. (Judy and I are not quite sure if Andrew was at all complicit in hatching this plan.)

And one thing of which I am certain is that Israel is a symbol of hope. It represents what the early Zionist poet Naftali Herz Imber called Hatikvah HaNoshannah, the ancient hope of our people to live in our own land. His poem was later modified to become the Israeli national anthem that we know and love. And there’s another hope, a hope for the future that Israel inspires in me: the hope of tiqqun olam, the potential for repairing the world. Both of these hopes were encapsulated in the best-known song of Israel’s most-beloved pop singer, Arik Einstein, who passed away a few weeks ago when I was there. Anybody who knows anything about Israeli pop will surely be familiar with some of his songs.

The NY Times ran an obituary for Mr. Einstein, which is remarkable not only because very few people in America have heard of him, but also because if we read anything in the American press about Israel, it’s only either about violence or the peace process, which paints a very narrow picture of Israel as it is. Let’s face it: Zionists only make for good copy when they are threatening or being threatened.

Arik Einstein's grave in Trumpeldor Cemetery, Tel Aviv, December 1, 2013.

But Arik Einstein was a Zionist - perhaps not overtly or politically, but he was an essential part of the fabric of Israeli culture, and a devoted citizen of the State of Israel and the voice of a musical revolution. Born in Tel Aviv in 1939, the son of a stage actor, he grew up in the center of the artistic and cultural ferment of the nascent Jewish State. Einstein took cues from the Beatles and other international pop groups of the 1960s and ultimately fashioned an experimental rock and roll sound that was at once distinctly Israeli and universal. While the state-sanctioned music of the time still presented the themes of love and war and good ol’ Eretz Yisrael, Mr. Einstein (to whom everybody in the country was referring as “Arik” in the wake of his death) emerged at a time when Israeli musicians, just like those all over the world, were beginning to challenge the status quo.

His best-known song was a favorite among American youth groups in the 70s and 80s: Ani VeAtah:

אני ואתה נשנה את העולם,

אני ואתה אז יבואו כבר כולם,

אמרו את זה קודם לפני,

לא משנה - אני ואתה נשנה את העולם.

אני ואתה ננסה מהתחלה,

יהיה לנו רע, אין דבר זה לא נורא,

אמרו את זה קודם לפני,

זה לא משנה - אני ואתה נשנה את העולם.

You and I will change the world

You and I, and then everybody else will come along too

Others have said it before me, but it doesn’t matter

You and I will change the world.

You and I will strive from the beginning

If there will be anything bad for us - no problem! No big deal.

Others have said it before me, but it doesn’t matter

You and I will change the world.

It is a tremendously moving song that speaks of the ability of each of us to influence those things that seem unchangeable, of the power that we each have to do good in the world and for each other, despite the naysayers. I have at times been moved to tears by this song.

Ani VeAtah is not explicitly Jewish, other than the fact that it is in Modern Hebrew. It does not quote any traditional source - the Torah or the Talmud or midrash or anything. But it implicitly references two fundamentally Jewish texts: Hatikvah, which I have already mentioned, and Aleinu, everybody’s favorite “we’re-almost-done-with-services” prayer.

Why Hatikvah? Because Ani VeAtah is the flip-side of the Israeli national anthem. Hatikvah is about the ancient Jewish yearning for return to Israel. It tells a story of hope, of national desire, and the actions of a small band of politicians, ideologues, and fighters that realized the ancient dream of Israel, a seeming impossibility. Arik’s anthem for changing the world is a plea to turn the realized ancient hope, that hope of 2,000 years, into the universal message that hope should never be lost in the future.

Why Aleinu? Because it contains a line (in the second paragraph, which we always recite silently here at Temple Israel) that speaks of our hope to repair the world: letaqqen olam bemalkhut Shaddai - we hope that that You, God, will perfect the world through Your sovereignty. In its original context, the author of Aleinu meant tiqqun olam to imply bringing everybody in the world to worship our God. But modern interpreters see this as the origin of the idea of repairing this very broken world through deeds of hesed, of lovingkindness to our fellow people. Arik’s 20th-century lyrics reflect our obligation to work toward this goal, that despite obstacles, we each have the potential to right the wrongs around us: to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to straighten the bent, to house the homeless, to promote environmental stewardship, to seek peace and pursue it, in the words of the Psalmist, and so forth.

You might think that the lyrics are naive, particularly given the great complexity of all of these challenges. And Arik himself confesses as much in the song. But, “lo meshaneh.” It doesn’t matter. The simple message of hope is the one that inspired the complex process that brought about the miracle of the State of Israel in our time, and this message will guide us in the future in our task of further perfecting the world.

It has often been observed that the book of Shemot is about the creation of the Israelite nation. Curiously, much of this nation-building takes place outside of the land of Israel, in Egypt and Sinai, and so from the very beginning of our people, we have faced the challenge of diaspora, of living away from our home.

There has been much talk, in the wake of the Pew Research Center study released in October, about the challenges facing American Jews concerning our relationship with Judaism. (Temple Israel and SHAI hosted Uri Cohen of the Queens College Hillel this past week, and he spoke about some of the implications of these statistics.) There are many voices in our sphere saying that contemporary Diaspora Judaism has a problem, that is, the disengagement of Jews with Judaism.

For centuries we have focused much of our yearning, as filtered through the lens of Jewish prayer and text, on redemption. This theme is found throughout your siddur, and permeates rabbinic literature. The future redemption that Jews have prayed for and meditated on and repeated over and over in the beit midrash, the study hall, like our first redemption from Egypt, is the return to our land after centuries of dispersion, the re-establishment of the Davidic throne over a united kingdom over the entire Promised Land.

Part of that redemption has arrived, ladies and gentlemen. It is an imperfect, incomplete redemption. But we now have sovereignty within our historical land. And that is, at least on a personal level, one of the most inspiring, most appealing aspects of living as a contemporary Jew, here in the Diaspora or in Israel.

The answer to the disengagement suggested by the Pew study is Israel. The messages sent by its pre-eminent rock-and-rollers, is the inspiration that we all need, the answer to the Diaspora’s Jewish malaise. It is the very essence of hope. Israel might very well be the world’s poster child for the ability of Hatikvah, of hope’s ability to effect change.

No, it's not perfect. No, it's mostly not even holy. Yes, there are many, many political and social problems in Israel.

But no other place gives me that sense of hope, of hatikvah hanoshannah, of ancient and future hopes that ignites a fire under my Jewish identity.

As another great Israeli songwriter, Ehud Manor, put it, “Ein li eretz aheret.” “I have no other land.” (Translation here.)

I am fortunate that on the heels of my most recent trip, I will be returning to Israel in February with 35 teens on Temple Israel’s Youth House trip to Israel. I know from having done this before that Israel will ignite a fire under those kids’ Jewish identities as well.

Through our active embrace of the Jewish State, by going there and experiencing all that Israel has to offer, we can sustain that feeling, that connection. We can feel the hope. And we can change the world.

Keep singing, Arik, and Shabbat Shalom.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 12/21/2013.)

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