Name That Jewish Value - Terumah 5772

Welcome to Adar.  In the spirit of the season, I’d like to offer you the following:

A man was boasting about the piety of his rabbi.

“My rabbi, may he live to be 120, is so pious that he fasts every day - except, of course, for Saturdays and holidays.”

“How can that be true?” asked his friend.  “Why, just this morning I saw your rabbi eating breakfast.”

“That shows how much you know,” replied the first man.  “You see, my rabbi is very modest about his piety.  If he eats, it is only to hide from others the fact that he is fasting.”  [Big Book of Jewish Humor, Novak & Waldoks, p. 198]

I’ve been having an ongoing curricular discussion with Danny Mishkin, Temple Israel’s Director of the Youth House and Teen Engagement, on the subject of Jewish values.  In rethinking the Youth House, he has insisted that classes be focused on teaching these values, and as such has re-oriented my thinking about what we do here educationally.  His goal is to help teenagers build, if you will, “Jewish-colored glasses” - that is, to encourage them to view the world according to Jewish values, and act on them.  A secondary goal is to help parents of teens and the rest of the community appreciate what their children are learning, by having them present their work at the end of each unit, and thus bringing them into the conversation as well.

My question for you today is, “What is a Jewish value?”

Truth is, I had not thought too deeply about this until very recently.  Had I been asked that question 12 years ago, before I started cantorial school, I’m not sure if I would have known how to respond.  This is, of course, not a good sign, as I am a proud product of the Conservative movement.  I grew up attending a Conservative synagogue regularly on Shabbat and holidays, attending Hebrew school, becoming bar mitzvah, and continuing in the Hebrew High School at the same place; I also spent summers at Camp Ramah and participated in USY.  In college, I affiliated with Hillel and attended the Conservative minyan there.  After grad school, I taught Hebrew school at the Conservative congregation in Manchester, New Hampshire, and when I moved to Houston, single and in my mid-20s, I joined a Conservative congregation, read Torah regularly, and sang in the choir.

Even given all of that, had you forced me to identify Jewish values, I’m not sure I could have pointed to more than giving tzedaqah and the principle of 613 mitzvot, and I would have been hard-pressed to name a long list of these mitzvot.

So now I’m going to give what might be called a “pop quiz.”  Read the following passage from the Torah, Parashat Terumah, Exodus 25:1-8.  Can you infer any Jewish values from this text?

א וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר.  ב דַּבֵּר אֶל-בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְיִקְחוּ-לִי תְּרוּמָה:  מֵאֵת כָּל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר יִדְּבֶנּוּ לִבּוֹ, תִּקְחוּ אֶת-תְּרוּמָתִי.  ג וְזֹאת, הַתְּרוּמָה, אֲשֶׁר תִּקְחוּ, מֵאִתָּם:  זָהָב וָכֶסֶף, וּנְחֹשֶׁת.  ד וּתְכֵלֶת וְאַרְגָּמָן וְתוֹלַעַת שָׁנִי, וְשֵׁשׁ וְעִזִּים.  ה וְעֹרֹת אֵילִם מְאָדָּמִים וְעֹרֹת תְּחָשִׁים, וַעֲצֵי שִׁטִּים.  ו שֶׁמֶן, לַמָּאֹר; בְּשָׂמִים לְשֶׁמֶן הַמִּשְׁחָה, וְלִקְטֹרֶת הַסַּמִּים.  ז אַבְנֵי-שֹׁהַם, וְאַבְנֵי מִלֻּאִים, לָאֵפֹד, וְלַחֹשֶׁן.  ח וְעָשׂוּ לִי, מִקְדָּשׁ; וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, בְּתוֹכָם

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him.  And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats' hair; tanned ram skins, dolphin skins, and acacia wood; oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense; lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece.  And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (New JPS translation)

The values that I see immediately here are volunteering/generosity, community, building nice places in which to worship, and the presence of God.  If we dig a little deeper, we might find others.  

(BTW: Ramban (Spain/Israel 1194-1270 CE) says that the building of the mishkan, which immediately follows the episode at Sinai, is essentially a way for the Israelites to continue the conversation with God.  Perhaps this suggests the value of tefillah.)

What are the most important Jewish values that you can think of?

Tzedaqah
Mitzvot
Learning
Social action / Tiqqun Olam (“repairing the world”)
Holiness
Prayer
God
Limits
Modesty and piety (as with joke above)

Now, not all of these are exclusively Jewish, but they are all definitely principles that Judaism upholds.

Here are Danny’s top three Jewish values:

Hakhnasat Orhim - welcoming guests, and this might refer not just into your homes or into the synagogue, but also welcoming those on the periphery of the Jewish community into the center

Avoiding Avodah Zarah - not making idols, and perhaps more specifically the false idols of the wider society - pursuing material goods over good relationships, the whole range of activities that we undertake for selfish interests only

Im ein ani li mi li, ukhshe’ani le’atzmi mah ani? (Pirqei Avot 1:14) - your wants do not outweigh the needs of others

I think that this discussion speaks to the central question of Jewish identity in today’s world.  That is, how can we maintain our Jewishness when there are no barriers to complete assimilation into the wider society, and we are (on the whole) not committed to traditional Jewish practice?  (Aside: Poll numbers from Gallup released last week showed that among American religious groups, Jews have the highest well-being, and are also the least “religious.”)

There are, of course, many different ways to be Jewish, and many types of Jews.  Speaking not as a rabbi but as a lifelong Conservative Jew, I would say that all of us in the Conservative movement are committed to living a life that is distinctly Jewish but not isolated from the wider society.  That is, the vast majority of us embrace most holiday observances and lifecycle events, and we believe in teaching our children something about Judaism.  Many of us practice some form of kashrut.  But as far as an ongoing, daily commitment to every jot and tittle of traditional Jewish religious observance, most of us are not in the same place as many of those who identify as Orthodox.

So that leaves us with this essential question: how can we make our daily lives infused with Judaism, if many of us do not see ourselves as living within what the Rabbis called “arba amot shel halakhah,” the four cubits of personal observance of Jewish law*?  

This is a question that I wrestle with daily.

People often suggest (especially on weekdays when we don’t make a minyan) that the rabbi should speak more forcefully from the pulpit about fulfilling various aspects of halakhah, of Jewish law.  Although I have done this occasionally (for example, two years ago on Yom Kippur I spoke about “turning off” for Shabbat), I am not convinced that it is an effective use of this space.

Rabbi Stecker and I could stand up here on this pulpit and exhort this entire community (or at least the ones in the room) to pray three times daily in a minyan, to get all your suits checked for sha’atnez (the prohibited mixture of wool and linen), to commit to wearing tefillin (yes, even the women), not to spend money or drive anywhere (except to Temple Israel**) on Shabbat, and so forth.

But most of us are not likely to embrace significant changes in our Jewish practice, or at least, in accord with the philosopher Franz Rosenzweig’s famous pronouncement on the subject, “not yet.”  Most of us are comfortable with the moderate approach that has become the de facto, if not the ideological stance of the Conservative movement - that is, a traditional, egalitarian synagogue experience and some home rituals and lifecycle events, but without the communal expectations for public and private halakhic observance that the Orthodox world demands.

(By the way, did you see the article in the New York Times about Tibet’s favorite food?  Apparently, the Dalai Lama, who is expected to be a vegetarian in accordance with Buddhist values, occasionally eats meat outside of his compound in Dharamsala, India.  In other words, he keeps a kosher home, but eats treyf out.)

Returning to the question of maintaining Jewish identity, I think that Danny is onto something here, and that something is the set of Jewish values that we have already identified.  That is, we should try to orient our thinking such that we understand that everything that we do, that all the choices we make, can be seen as extensions of our Jewish selves.  If we envision our lives through the lens of these Jewish values, we have a better chance of maintaining an ongoing relationship with the set of principles that define Judaism.

Let’s take, for example, hakhnasat orhim, welcoming guests.  There are many ways we can act on this value.  Yes, we can open our homes to others, just as Avraham Avinu opened his tent to the strangers who were walking in the desert.  But what are some other ways to welcome?

Welcoming people in this building - making this a true place of comfort for all
Inviting “the other” into your life / activities
Getting to know your neighbors
Being involved with your community, and bringing others with you
Making school, work, synagogue, street, etc. a safe, welcoming space for everybody

All of these things, which can include many sub-activities (e.g. greeting somebody, giving directions to the sanctuary, engaging a visitor in conversation, and so forth), can all be understood as acting on the Jewish value of hakhnasat orhim.  

Point is, we can take all of the Jewish values that we have listed, and re-frame our thinking such that we see all of our daily activities as flowing from our Jewish identity.  These are things we can teach to our children, and speak of when we are at home and away.

Here’s a suggestion for an “assignment” that you might want to take on: find a Jewish value to which you would like to commit.  Print it out and stick it to your refrigerator door with a magnet.  Put it on a sticky note in your wallet.  And then pay attention to what you do every day, and see if you are living up to that value.

Behatzlahah!  Good luck.  Shabbat shalom!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, February 25, 2012.)



* Talmud Bavli, Massekhet Berakhot 8a

הכי אמר רב חסדא מאי דכתי' (תהילים פז) אוהב ה' שערי ציון מכל משכנות יעקב אוהב ה' שערים המצויינים בהלכה יותר מבתי כנסיות ומבתי מדרשות

והיינו דאמר ר' חייא בר אמי משמיה דעולא מיום שחרב בית המקדש אין לו להקב"ה בעולמו אלא ארבע אמות של הלכה בלבד

Thus said R. Hisda: What is the meaning of the verse: “The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob” (Psalm 87:2)? The Lord loves the gates that are distinguished through Halachah more than the Synagogues and Houses of study.  

And this conforms with the following saying of R. Hiyya b. Ammi in the name of Ulla: Since the day that the Temple was destroyed, the Holy One, blessed be He, has nothing in this world but the four cubits of Halachah alone.


** In 1950, the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards passed a teshuvah / responsum on the Shabbat that said that if you do not live within walking distance to a synagogue, it is better to drive than to stay at home for Shabbat.

Bo 5771 - A Piece of the (Social) Action

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel, January 8, 2011.)

There are two beggars sitting on a busy sidewalk in Mexico City. One is wearing a large cross, and the other a magen david. In front of the Christian beggar is a hat filled with a large pile of money, and in front of the Jew an empty hat. As people walk by, they continue to put more cash into the Christian’s hat.

Finally, a well-meaning stranger approaches the Jewish beggar, and explains, in polite Spanish, that in such a devoutly Catholic place, he might have better luck if he weren’t Jewish. So the Jewish beggar turns to his Christian colleague and says, “Nu, Moishe, this guys tryin’ to tell us how to run our business!”

* * *

In today’s parashah, we read the last three plagues, and the Pharaoh’s (temporary) decision to let the Israelites leave Egypt. This is a defining moment in the Torah, in our national story, and one to which we continually refer, not just at Pesah but year ‘round.

When are some of the occasions that we invoke yetzi’at mitzrayim / the Exodus from Egypt?

Pesah (of course)
p. 113 - third paragraph of Shema
p. 114 - shaharit, right before amidah
p. 125 - Festival amidah (You gave us this day in memory of the Exodus)
p. 312 Fri. night kiddush
p. 338 Birkat hamazon (nodeh lekha...)
p. 133 Hallel

These are, in fact, some of our holiest moments. We recall the redemption from Egypt, because we hope that soon we shall be redeemed as well, and this theme pops up all over our liturgy and our rituals. We’re going to talk about another primary Jewish activity that invokes yetzi’at Mitzrayim.

* * * *

This week, I was fortunate to participate, along with a few others who are in this room, in a discussion with Rabbi Jill Jacobs, a Conservative rabbi who is the rabbi-in-residence at the Jewish Funds for Justice and the author of a recently-published book about our Jewish obligations regarding social action.

Rabbi Jacobs was not necessarily trying to help us come up with a concrete plan regarding how to focus our energies, but rather an attempt to draw out our own personal stories about social justice and injustice with an eye toward helping to focus the congregational discussion of the matter.

Rabbi Jacobs said that while most congregations have social action committees and plans and programs, the mistake that many organizations make is to focus on the action, rather than the discourse. That is to say that there is always a core of committed people to run programs - a Mitzvah day, a food drive, a coat drive, a fundraising project, and these people often run themselves into the ground trying to save the world, when their work is unappreciated and perhaps even largely unnoticed by vast swaths of the community. But of greater importance is the discussion, the thematic integration within the larger picture.

As if to prove her point, during the course of this discussion, members of Temple Israel’s Chesed Connection were ducking in and out of the room, whispering to each other, exchanging information and supplies, all in preparation for tomorrow’s Campaign Against Hunger, a program that we are running in coordination with the Tikkun Alliance of the North Shore. I know from having spoken with members of the committee, having been copied on some of their emails, and having seen them running around during the past week in a sustained frenzy, trying to get everything lined up for tomorrow, that this program is taking a heavy toll on those committed to seeing it through. Tiqqun olam / repairing the world is hard work.

And for sure, many people will benefit from it - not only the needy people in Hempstead who will be receiving food, coats, and supplies, but also those involved with the giving, and particularly the children who are participating in various ways and seeing the modeled behavior of adults committed to bettering the lives of others who are less fortunate. And Temple Israel will benefit, as this is one way to build our own community, a topic which continually sashays through many of the meetings that I attend as a rabbi.

But - how many members of the TI community will participate in tomorrows activities? We do our best to get the word out through various channels for many of our events, and it is almost always the usual suspects who, kol hakavod to them, show up. (And, let me add that we are all grateful to those who do.)

What Rabbi Jacobs suggested is not that we desist from such programs as the Campaign Against Hunger, but also that we do not necessarily create more such programs. Rather, what she proposed is to widen the discussion - to make social justice awareness a feature of every activity that goes on under this roof. To integrate our stories, our discourse, through all the arms and schools of this community, such that this congregation breathes tiqqun olam, such that we have, as she put it, “a coherent story about social action.”

Many of you know that I grew up in a family that was strongly committed to Judaism and our Conservative synagogue. I attended Hebrew school all the way through high school, was involved with USY and spent several summers at Camp Ramah, the summer camp affiliated with the Conservative movement. I of course knew about tzedaqah. I thought I knew a good deal about the Torah and what was in it.

And yet, I am embarrassed to admit that the discourse of repairing the world was not part of my Judaism for most of my life. Not long after starting cantorial school, about 10 years ago, I was at a shabbaton, a Shabbat retreat for rabbinical and cantorial students, and on Shabbat afternoon I participated in a small-group discussion about tiqqun olam. I was only just beginning to learn critically, the way that students at the Seminary are taught. I asked, is there really a Jewish imperative to take care of others? And the subtext was, maybe that was just an idea cooked up by 20th-century bleeding hearts. Maybe it is not in the Torah at all.

Somehow, all of those years of Jewish education had not adequately relayed one of the essential planks of Judaism - that we are obligated to care for those in need. I had failed to connect the dots regarding whom to take care of, other than myself.

And where does this obligation originate? From what text does it emerge?

Where, indeed, and how is it that I had somehow missed that, after 30 years of commitment to Jewish life?

It is in yetzi’at Mitzrayim, what we read this morning. Well, OK. Not exactly. But it is when you juxtapose some of the verses we read today with others in the Torah. Let me show you:

Exodus 13:6-8 (Etz Hayim, p. 392):

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day where shall be a festival of the Lord. Throughout the seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten; no leavened bread shall be found with you, and no leaven shall be found in all your territory. And you shall explain to your son on that day, “It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt.”

The commandment to remember actively, as an institution for all time, the Exodus from Egypt, how God brought us out of Egypt, from slavery to freedom. And we must teach this to our children: vehigadta levinkha (this is the origin of the word haggadah, the telling, for the book that we use on seder nights).

OK, so do you see on this page the obligation to take care of those in need? Not really? OK. So now let’s take a look at another location. In two weeks, the Children of Israel will receive the Decalogue, the Aseret HaDibberot, the Ten Commandments. Not in the Exodus version, but the one in Deuteronomy, there is a particular justification for the commandment to observe Shabbat:

Deut. 5:12-15 (pp. 1019-1020):

(Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work - you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your ox or your ass, or any of your cattle, or the stranger in your settlements, so that your male and female slave may rest as you do.) Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day.

Who is the Shabbat intended for, other than yourself? It is a gift to all in your land - your slave (I hope nobody here has slaves; they were kosher in biblical times, but not today), but also the strangers - the non-Israelite workers among us, who were historically landless and therefore by definition poor.

Not convinced yet? In my own bar mitzvah parashah, Qedoshim:

Leviticus 19:33 (p. 700):

When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

The justification for treating the poor sojourner with respect is right there in black and white: ki gerim heyyitem be-eretz mitzrayim - for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

The Exodus is repeatedly mentioned all over Jewish tradition not only to remind us of our past redemption from Egypt. We also invoke yetzi’at Mitzrayim to remind us that our actions in this world, if they are the right ones, will merit our ultimate redemption in the world to come. And this includes, of course, treating the needy among us with dignity and giving everybody, no matter their background or station in life, a fair shake.

* * * *

And so where do we go from here?

The conversation has only just begun. The Chesed Connection is off to a good start, but we must broaden the discussion, bring in more people, and keep telling stories. In the coming months, I am hoping that the Chesed Connection will spend some time strategizing how to foster that community-wide discussion, how to put tikkun olam on the table, how to tell and hear our stories of repairing the world.

If you want to be a part of that conversation, join us tomorrow starting at 9:30 AM here at Temple Israel to prepare the food that is going to Hempstead, and then from 1:30 - 3:30 at Kennedy Park. And join us on an ongoing basis as we work to bring social justice to the foreground at Temple Israel.