Parashat Yitro

It may not hold a candle to Rabbi Goldenberg's Peace Parashat featured in the American's for Peace Now blog ( http://peacenow.org/entries/peace_parsha_becoming_truly_free), but it is for a vastly different audience.

Once there was a tiny, absolutely helpless baby who was all alone. He couldn't feed or clothe himself. He could hardly move. Left on his own, it seemed impossible for him to survive for even one day. Yet he did! How did he ever make it?

This baby was very fortunate. As out of nowhere, certain people came along and voluntarily agreed to take on the enormous expense and responsibility of providing for his every need. They took him into their home, bought him plenty of food and clothing, and even changed his dirty diapers. They spent many long and sleepless nights watching after him when he didn't feel well. They loved him and worked hard to teach him everything he needed to know to grow up and lead a good and successful life. It was a difficult task for a single person or two people to teach the baby everything that he needed to have a balanced education. The wonderful people taking care of the baby, now a big kid, sent him to school. They needed other people to share in the task of making sure he would become a competent adult. Now that the big kid was in school, the people providing for him had to have jobs to pay for his education and other needs, which meant sometimes the big kid had to rely on a babysitter after school.

When the child was grown up, he realized what these amazing people had done; he felt a tremendous sense of gratitude. He would always treat them with the utmost respect and do whatever he could to please them. He felt that it was the least that he could do. Sometimes, the child did not like his teachers, or did not want to be with his babysitter. He wished he could rely completely on the people who had taken him home from the hospital when he was a baby. Sometimes, in his frustrations, he lost sight of the importance of the roles in his life, or the sacrifices others were making to aid him in his journey toward adulthood. But in the end, as a grown up, he understood that teachers and babysitters had enriched his life, too, and that the special people who took care of him throughout his whole life wouldn’t have chosen incapable chaperones for him. Eventually, when it came time for him to take care of a baby who grew to be a child, he even realized all the reasons why one person or few people alone simply cannot do EVERYTHING. It takes a village, as they say.

In truth, each of us is that baby, that big kid, that grown up. And those special, wonderful people are our parents. In the beginning of this week's Torah portion, Moses’ father-in-law suggests that Moses appoints judges or chieftains to help him take care of all the Israelites. Of course, each individual person would rather ask Moses than anyone for advice on how to live correctly. Only Moses is so close to G-d! But they must understand that Moses alone cannot take care of all of them. Sometimes it is necessary to delegate responsibility. It also made things easier for the Israelites, making help more accessible. Besides, sometimes it’s helpful to get be able to get advice from more than one source. Our teachers and babysitters and other authority figures sometimes fill this role. They’re not our parents. We’d rather hear get the advice from, spend the time with, our parents. But they are good, smart people. If they weren’t, Moses wouldn’t have appointed them to help guide the people of Israel, your parents wouldn’t have sent you to learn from them or allowed them to take care of you.

Later in the parsha, G-d presents the Jewish people with the Torah, including the Ten Commandments. One of these ten things that G-d chose to especially emphasize was to remind us to appreciate and honor our parents. It's the least we can do. But we should remember to also appreciate and honor all of the adults who enrich our lives, just as the Israelites respected the chieftains. When teachers assign a lot of homework, remember that it is to give you more opportunities to learn. When babysitters monitor TV or internet use, remember it’s to ensure you don’t stumble upon something your parents wouldn’t want you to see. May you all learn and remember to show respect for all who deserve it.

Tu B'Shevat sermon

There's so much more to this sermon in my head, but for tomorrow's religious school tu b'shevat seder, this will have to do. Maybe in a room full of educated adults when I have next year's job security, I'll write the rest.

Tu B’shevat, or the 15^th day of the month of Shevat in the Jewish calendar, marks the New Year for Trees. Ecologically, this is the general point in the year where trees in Israel begin to bud anew. Jewishly, this date is specified for the start of the new cycle of tithes relating to the budding of trees. The idea of celebrating Tu B’Shevat formerly and the creation of the seder comes from the 17^th century kabbalists’ understanding of the line in Deuteronomy, For man is like the tree of the field. The full passage says, When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? I read an old Hasidic story from the 6^th Rebbe of Lubavitch about a boy and his father taking a walk in the woods, and the father, gesturing around at the trees, exclaims to his son, See G-dliness! Every movement of each stalk and grass was included in G-d's Primordial Thought of Creation, in G-d's all-embracing vision of history, and is guided by Divine providence toward a G-dly purpose.

So far, now, we know that trees are really important and should not be innocent casualties of war, a man’s life is no more important than that of a tree, and G-d created the natural world perfectly, with every plant exactly where it is meant to be. As Jews, when we celebrate the New Year for the Trees, we should keep these ideas in mind.

The phrase, “making the desert green” or “bloom” has become so embedded in the images and language surrounding Israel that its origins are now difficult to trace, and we lose track of what it really means. Before the creation of the state of Israel, Jews were kicked out of many countries, oppressed, and persecuted around the world. Planting trees in Israel is a way of setting in our people’s roots as well as the plants’. But it’s really important to know that we plant the right kind of trees.

If G-d made the world as it was meant to be, than we can assume that the desert was meant to be a desert. Deserts are not green. They should not be made green. We can set down our roots in olive trees, a few date and fig trees, a cactus or two, but turning the desert green the way North America or Eastern Europe (the places where most Jews who “plant trees in Israel” are from) is just ecologically bad.

For a long time, the Jewish National Fund planted evergreens in Israel. Evergreens require a lot of water, of which there is not much in the desert, and they also deposit acidic needles which kill all other plant life that share the same plots of soil. This created a large “Green Belt” around the areas where the trees grew, making miles of land unusable for anything else. It created lasting environmental problems, and displaced a lot of farmers whose olive groves were destroyed.

There are parts of the northern country that get enough water to sustain greenery. Lebanon’s national plant is the evergreen, so planting along that border would probably have been fine. But this Green Belt was being planted closer to Jerusalem, an area that already had a lot of environmental issues due to overpopulation and substantial infrastructure, and pressures on water resources and land ownership relating the divides and conflicts between the Jews and Arabs in the area. Adding this dead zone of acidic needles was the pine cone on the camel’s back, and the JNF has subsequently been blamed for lost utility in Palestinian lands close to the West Bank/Israel border.

Now, the JNF and others have learned that we can’t make Israel look like the countries we come from. Now, more environmental awareness is spreading and people are realizing it is just as an important Jewish value as human rights. So now, the JNF has its new campaign to uproot the evergreens, and is planting desert-friendly trees in your name instead. It’s really important that we take note of this. I’m sure you all know, it’s not easy to admit such a big mistake. Their pride or legitimacy as an organization could have been damaged, but they knew it was more important to just fix it. When you send money to groups like the JNF, send a letter or note with it, saying, “Hey, we support you. Thanks for cleaning up your mistakes,” so that they know you want them to keep doing it! Spread the word, not the pine needles. And the next time someone says something about making the desert green, you say, “No, we’re making the desert healthy.” L’Shana Tova L’ilanot!

D'var Torah for Torah Portion BO

1/28/12

Lizz Goldstein, Rabbinical Intern

As you all know by now, I am not from this area. I grew up outside New Haven, CT, which does not have a professional sports team. We have out New Haven Ravens baseball, and the UConn Huskies basketball always riles everybody up, and we have the best thin crust pizza in the world. But we don’t have a national point of pride, so instead we’ve become the battle ground for the great Yankee-Red Sox rivalry.

In my home, the Yankees won that fight. My parents took my brother and I to a few games when we were kids, before my dad figured out that my brother and I were more excited for stadium nachos and the souvenir helmet that ice cream sundaes came in than the games themselves. There’s one trip to Yankee Stadium in particular that will live in infamy in our family. I was probably 9 or 10, making my brother and our neighbor Brittany about 12, just age kids start needing to sleep til noon, and girls start needing an hour to do their hair, even if it’s just to spend a sweaty summer day watching baseball.

As the adults were starting to get shpielkes to get on the road, Brittany finally sprinted out of the house and into the car. I don’t remember if there was argument about time management, or how far into the ride it took her to reassess her preparations for the game. But at some point, we were all forced to take note of how she had been spending those last minutes before darting into the car. She was decked out in her fan gear: shirt and shorts and her windbreaker baggy pants over her shorts all imprinted with the Yankees logo. Her hair straightened and brushed and pretty in its ponytail, and on her feet…. Nothing.

I don’t recommend walking Yankee stadium barefoot. Or any sports arena of any kinds. The adults, in their disgust and concern for Brittany’s feet, searched souvenir booths for Yankees flip-flops, just to have something to put on her feet! But amongst all the other random souvenir junk, it seems that shoes have not been stamped with Yankee approval and set for sale.

The search climaxed in one question by one kiosk salesman that really encapsulated the issue of poor planning. “Two pants, no shoes?” We gave up looking then, because the man had a point, two pants, no shoes? How could Brittany have forgotten something so vital in her haste, when her haste was self-imposed anyway.

In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites flee Egypt in haste and do not have time to leaven their dough. Their hurry is mandated by Pharoah and G-d, and the result has become the most symbolic representation of our liberation. But couldn’t a tastier representation of freedom than matzah? In all that time that Moses is in talks with the Pharoah, didn’t the Israelites think to prepare? Did they know it was going to take all ten plagues, but didn’t know they would have to exit swiftly after the tenth?

If they had the time and resources to make the bread at all, despite their slave status, why didn’t they start during the first or second plague and stockpile baked good as noshes for the road? The Torah really doesn’t offer any information or details on the Israelite people. All we really know, is that they’re slaves, and that they are spared some of the horrors of the plagues. But more had to be going on while the story focuses on Moses and Pharoah. Did the Israelites find blood in their water, or frogs in their beds? Exodus 8:19 specifies that G-d put up a division between the Israelites and the Egyptians to protect his people from the swarms of wild beasts, but it doesn’t seem like anyone tells them that. Did they know that they were protected, or were they afraid despite their safety? Or were they so divided that they didn’t even know what was happening on the Egyptian side at all?

Answers to these questions would really help explain why they didn’t or perhaps couldn’t prepare ahead for their hurried escape and their arduous journey to follow. One thing is certain, though, I don’t want to end up in the desert with only matzah or at Yankee stadium with two pants, no shoes. And probably, neither do you. So despite our self-perpetuating sterotype of running on “Jew time,” maybe a lesson here, the lost Jewish value, is time management!

When you get ready for your day, or better yet, the night before, think about your upcoming events and possible sidetracks and outcomes of each day. Prioritize the activities you spend time on. Is it more important to do your hair or put on shoes? Do you want that extra ten minutes of sleep, or you do want to be certain to make the bus? After a hard day’s work (ie as slaves), do you really need to immediately crash, or can you spend the time to prepare for tomorrow (put your leavening in now), in case tomorrow ends up being more rushed than you expected. If you just think ahead a bit, you might find yourself much more prepared for life’s curveballs, and you are more likely to be on schedule and fully dressed or fed for important events, like baseball, and freedom, and being on time for services at Temple Beth Emeth.

So in the future, may you never yourself asking, “Two pants, no shoes?”

October 15th D'var Torah

Last week we had our High Holidays. We’re now in a new year, we’ve atoned and forgiven for the sins of last year, and we are ready to start again. We spend this week hanging out in fun little huts, enjoying the last warmth of Fall, thinking about the impermanence of things, and traditionally this would be a time of preparing for the coming winter by harvesting our wheat, but most of us aren’t farmers anymore. Unless any of you have to hurry off after Religious School to harvest your wheat? Next, it will be Simchat Torah, when we will unroll the whole Torah and bless the children of the religious school.
Why do we do this? It’s important to be able to sort of rewind the Torah and pass it on to the new group of students. We start reading it over, and you all get to be a part of the new year’s study. The Torah has a lot to say and a lot to teach us, but it also says a lot that may no longer feel relevant. For example, there are rules about how we should farm, but probably no one in this room has decided to become a farmer in the last thirty seconds since I asked. That doesn’t mean we can’t still learn from those parts of the Torah, too. It may say, “leave the corners of your field untouched, so that the poor can come eat,” but we can now interpret that in new ways. Since we don’t have fields, we can’t leave the corners untouched, but we know that the idea is that poor people should be able to accept charity with dignity. So now maybe instead we make an anonymous food donation to a soup kitchen, where the poor can come and eat there without us knowing who were feeding.
There are also parts of the Torah that we may think really have no more lessons to teach us, like laws about how to treat your slaves. Now the people realize how bad slavery is, and those laws are pretty outdated. But they still can teach us about the society our ancestors lived in at the time the Torah was written. It’s good to learn about our history and see how our people has evolved.
Next week, when we start the Torah over again on Simchat Torah, there is a part of the celebration that’s all about you kids. A lot of you are still too young to read from the Torah, but you’re certainly never too young to start learning about the Torah, and soon enough, you’ll all become Bar/Bat Mitzvahs and will join the ranks of adult Torah study! We want to be able to pass down the Torah to you and invite you into the study groups. Because its not only important to reread the whole Torah every year, but to have fresh eyes looking at it, to hear a new perspective, to study with different people. It’s helpful to hear the next generations’ approach to G-d and Torah if we want to continue learning new things. So think about what you learn in Hebrew school and what it means to you, how it fits the G-d of your understanding. Ask questions. Learn. Interpret. And may you all continue to fulfill the mitzvot of learning Torah. Amen!

Kol Nidre Children's sermon

Shana Tova. It’s so good to see you all here tonight! This is a very special Shabbat, because it is Erev Yom Kippur. For a lot of Jewish adults, Kol Nidre, the big prayer of tonight, that we heard Cantor Noni chant earlier, is one of the most important, spiritual, holy moments of the year. Something about that prayer makes people feel reminded of their Jewishness in a way a lot of us don’t remember day to day. The same can be said for High Holy days in general, and the blowing of the shofar, that calls people back to a memory of our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. But there is something extra special about Kol Nidre.

You’ll see it in movies and plays and stories (The Jazz Singer, Cutman). Young Jewish people like all of you that want to be singers or play an instrument. Or maybe they want to be boxers, or join some kind of club, and maybe those meetings or practices or performances conflict with their Jewish lives. In these stories, we see the main characters trying to find the balance between being Jewish and being a regular kid like their non-Jewish friends. But the big decision making always comes down to Kol Nidre. The big performance or boxing match that could make or break their careers and make them rich and famous, happens to fall the evening before Yom Kippur. Not to ruin any classics for you, but I’ll tell you, in the Jazz Singer, the main character chooses temple over his big performance, and it looks like the right choice but then movie ends so we don’t really know. In Cutman, the main character chooses his boxing match over temple and he gets beat real bad and decides to never miss shul again. I’m not saying that something bad would happen if you and any Jewish person decided to skip an Erev Yom Kippur service; that’s just a story. But you might regret it here [point to heart].

I’m sure some of you have had to choose sometimes, or maybe your parents have chosen for you, whether to go to soccer practice or Hebrew school. And maybe even tonight, your friends are having a sleepover or are all at the movies, but you’re here. It’s hard sometimes to remember to put your Judaism before your secular interests and hobbies. But it’s important to do, and probably in your future, this day will serve as the reminder for that. A lot of grown-ups don’t come to services every Friday night. Even if they know how important it is and they want to be able to do so, they maybe have to work late, or take care of their kids. Sometimes it feels like life gets in the way of being Jewish, especially for us as Reform American Jews. Or are we Reform Jewish Americans? Sometimes we forget or get confused about which part comes first. But when we hear Kol Nidre being chanted, we always remember we are Jews. May you continued to be reminded every Shabbat and holiday this year, and again, Shana Tova (Happy New Year).

Rosh HaShana Sermon

In the beginning there was darkness. On the first day, G-d created light and separated the light from the dark and called the light day and the dark night and G-d saw that this was good. There was an evening and then there was a morning, a First Day. The autumn brings with it the fallen leaves, the dead grass, and the chills that foretell winter is just around the corner. The sun sets earlier and earlier every night, and light that follows the dark is months away in the Spring.

Rosh HaShana marks the evening of the year. Aside from the fact that it began at sundown, as every Jewish holiday and traditionally each day really does, autumn is the seasonal equivalent of evening. It’s not quite winter (nighttime) but it is twilight. The darkness approaches. What does it mean to us that we begin each day and each year with a darkening instead of with the dawning of light? Why isn’t New Year (Jewish or Gregorian) in the Spring with the dawn of new life? There was evening and then morning, one day.

We’ve all heard the expression, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” In the beginning there was darkness, and G-d created light. When I was finishing up college, beyond the jubilation of graduation, there was an intense fear of the unknown. This fear became anxiety and depression as various Jewish jobs and internships and rabbinical schools could not seem to find a place for me in their communities. Throughout all of college and, indeed, most of my academic career, I planned on becoming a Rabbi and just assumed that each step would follow the last exactly as I pictured it. Well, life doesn’t work that way. I was forced to take a year off from “The Plan,” and just live for a while after college. In the beginning there was darkness.

One day early last Spring, a college friend came to visit from Great Neck, NY the apartment I shared with two other former Hampshire students. I was discussing with him how I was not accepted to the rabbinical school of my choice, and would have to spend a second year out of school. I had no idea what to do, as I certainly wasn’t about to spend a second year in Western Massachusetts hanging out with college friends feeling anxious. Should I go to Israel? Should I apply last minute to Yeshiva University and get an MA in Jewish administration and become a rabbi in twenty years instead of now? This friend looked at me funny and said, “Why didn’t you just apply to my mom’s school?” All the years we had been friends and I had known his mom was a teacher, I just assumed she taught at a Jewish day school. I had no idea she worked at a trans-denominational rabbinical school. I didn’t even know the Academy for Jewish Religion existed. I applied, was accepted, and shortly thereafter received an internship offer at a lovely synagogue in Brooklyn. From spending the winter sitting on my couch reading Radical Judaism, to sitting in class at learning radical Judiasm, working with B’nai Mitzvah students and a youth group, essentially back on track toward living my dream. I’m working toward being radically rabbinical, shedding a new light onto Judaism, Jewish life, and Tikkun Olam. At Hampshire, the student body is largely self-proclaim radical social activists, and I sought to break down the beautiful idealism I shared with them into digestible pieces that fit more realistically into the world. I find that Judaism teaches us well how to repair the world rather than tear it apart and start anew (which is how I felt many of my peers viewed their call to activism). This friend from Great Neck, the son of a rabbi and a rabbinic teacher, was always one of my most fervent supporters. If he had not been such a good friend, if he did not believe in my dreams or in my ability to fulfill them, if he had not been there that particular weekend, when I had received my letter from the other rabbinical school, if his mother did not teach at Academy for Jewish Religion, if, if, if… Would I have found my way back on track on my own? Where would I have decided to spend this year if not AJR? But then G-d created light.

As Jews, we’re good at remembering darkness in light. Each year we light a candle on the anniversary of the death of a loved one. There is a light in front of us, a celebration of that person’s life, but there’s a darkness in our hearts that they are gone that needs a physical representation that is the Yartzeit candle. When we celebrate our freedom each year during Passover, we are also reminded of the slavery that preceded it, and eat the bitter herbs lest we ever forget. In the beginning, there was darkness and G-d created light.

With this New Year, this synagogue is undergoing a transformation of its own. I know I am not intimate with nuances of this transition for all of you, but as this is all new for me it is unifying to say for all of us, we are now in the process of each creating our light together anew. After darkness comes light, and creation follows. The new year starts with a seasonal dusk, followed by complete night, but we all know that the day follows, that there will be light and spring and new beginning to come in this year. May you all find the light you seek within and around you. Amen.

Just sayin

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