Coming Back Into the Camp – Tesuvah and Richard Goldstone

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum

Congregation Shaarei Kodesh, Metzorah 5771/2011

Last week, I told you the story of the Rabbi and his congregant:

A man saw his Rabbi leaving a BBQ place.  There was a big pig on the sign, so there was really no chance that this place could be kosher.  He sees the Rabbi walking out of the restaurant with tins of food.  The Rabbi puts it into his car and drives away.

So the man turned to his phone, took a picture of the Rabbi holding the tin, and posted it on twitter with the caption “Is this kosher?” People re-tweeted back questioning their Rabbi as a Jewish spiritual leader because he eats at Sonny’s BBQ. Minutes later, the picture spread to Facebook, and was re-posted on walls by many.

Two days later, this congregant went to the webpage of his local newspaper, he saw a picture that shocked him.  It was his Rabbi, and a local priest, delivering BBQ tins to the local homeless shelter.

So the man called his Rabbi and set up a meeting.  The man showed him what he wrote and apologized.  And so the Rabbi told him he would forgive him if he did one thing.  Delete all the postings about his Rabbi – and so he did.  Then the Rabbi said, now I want you to find every instance where your words were posted, and take them down also.  Then after that, I want you to delete every instance where someone commented on his words.

“But that’s impossible!” said the congregant. So the Rabbi told his congregant, “I might forgive you, but you can never truly right your wrong.”

Lashon Harah is a big deal in Judaism. Maimonides states in his Mishneh Torah that Lashon Harah is a greater sin than idolatry, sexual indiscretions, and murder, the three worst sins in Judaism, in other words, it’s really really bad.

I want to transition to a similar blunder that made the news this week.

As many of you know, Israel and our people have been reeling since the Goldstone Report went public. In short, the Goldstone report, was a team established in April 2009 by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) during the Gaza War as an independent international fact-finding mission to investigate alleged violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in the Palestinian territories, particularly the Gaza Strip, in connection with Operation Cast Lead. Richard Goldstone, a judge from South Africa who is also an active Jew both in his community and with Israeli organizations, was appointed to head the mission.

Israel refused to take part in the report, probably because the UNHRC has a history of being biased against Israel, and they didn’t disappoint. One “finding” that was most damaging to Israel was that the Israeli military and government intentionally targeted civilians as a matter of policy. The result of this report was evidence for the BDS movement, Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions which daily tries to damage Israel. It tried to put Hamas and the Israeli government on the same level, and in many ways, it did for many people.

Last Friday, Judge Richard Goldstone wrote an op ed in the Wall Street Journal stating that the Goldstone Report was wrong.

He wrote, “We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document…”

He goes on to state that Hamas did intentionally target civilians with their rocket attacks, while Israel did not intentionally target civilians. He notes that Israel actually pursued and prosecuted members of their military for civilian deaths, while Hamas did nothing. He was actually surprised that Hamas did not.

Looking at this letter, I can see the psyche of one trying to clean up, to wipe the look of embarrassment on their face.

There have been many editorials this week about what Mr. Goldstone should do now. Their have been very angry letters from both sides, but most of them say one thing – he should just stop talking. Others said that there is nothing that Goldstone could do at all – the damage is irreparable – there is no way to pick up all the feathers.

But I think we are all missing a very important point.

Our parashah, Metzorah is the second part to our previous parashah, Tazria. Last week, we learned about the Lepor, the one who suffers from this physical affliction. This person had to separate oneself from the community. In our parashah this week, we learn about the next step – how this person, the one suffering from Tzarat, will come back into the community. What is interesting here is that the person does not come back into the community alone. The priest, the highest source of religious authority in Israel, must help bring him in. He does this with certain items such as two live clean birds, cedar wood, crimson stuff and hyssop. Why these things? Rashi tells us that birds are bought because the lepor is being punished for lashon harah, injurious speech, or idle chatter about other people, therefore, he must bring birds which are always chittering and chirping. Rashi asks a very important question: How can this person be restored to health? He must lower himself from his haughty pride to the level of the mundane items that he brings.

This teaches us that there is a way to come back, to become pure again, but there is a certain way to do it.

This week, we observed the Rosh Chodesh of the month of Nisan is about Kapparah, seeking atonement. There was even a custom that one would fast the day before Rosh Chodesh – this day was called Yom Kippur Katan – little Yom Kippur. On Rosh Chodesh, we say Hallel as a joyous occasion, but we often forget that Rosh Chodesh is a time when we hope that God will forgive us.

Our tradition tells us that when YK comes, the sins between God and man are forgiven, but the sins between humans are only forgiven if the sinner does tesuvah.

Mr. Goldstone began the process with his public opinion piece and we must recognize that this is the first step in doing tesuvah. He has publicly announced his mistake, and therefore lowered himself. He has directly addressed the issue – much like the lepor bringing forth the birds.

My advice to Richard Goldstone, is to look to our law, especially Maimonides for guidance. Maimonides told us about the sin of Lashon HaRah, but he also teaches us about how to come back from sin – how to purify ourselves – tesuvah.

One must regretting one’s actions, confessing the misdeed privately to God, and commit to not repeat the error in the future . In addition, any sin one person commits against another also requires rectification: make amends or repay the damages, and finally, one must ask for forgiveness.

I know what you might be thinking – Rabbi, he can never do tesuvah for what he did. We all know the story of the feathers, or the twitter posts from the first story. He may not be able to collect all the feathers, but does that mean that he should not start or even try?

Here’s my advice to Richard Goldstone – get creative – if you messed up royally, than do something big to make it right. He wrote an editorial, but I would ask him to devote his life to righting this wrong – to stand up to those who seek to boycott or sanction Israel, to those who would make Israel and the Jewish people lepers who must stand outside of the international community. He will lose friends at the UN by doing this, but it is the only way to right this wrong.

It is also a message to all of us – when we sin, we have to be big enough to humble ourselves which is the hardest thing to do. We have to devote ourselves to seeking forgiveness, as hard as it might be.

The end of the ceremony of purifying the lepor is quite beautiful. The person must take one of the birds that is left alive and let the bird fly free in the open country. The bird, the reminder of this sin, flies away from the camp. They are then shaved, bathed, and allowed to enter the camp. He must still do more acts within the camp, but, as we read, he is allowed to enter.

My hope is that Richard Goldstone works hard at repentance and devotes his life to this endeavor. My hope is that we as Jews, as a nation of priests, can act as the priest to help him achieve real atonement. That we can recognize his act of tesuvah and begin the process of welcoming him back into our camp so he can continue to work for complete atonement, Kaparah.

It is not easy to ask for forgiveness, but it’s also not easy to grant forgiveness. And yet, my hope is that we will come to a time when we have the opportunity to do what God does every Yom Kippur and grant atonement to a fellow Jew.

Etzbah Ha Rah – The Evil Finger – ©Rabbi David Baum

Parashat Tazria, 5771/2011

Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

I want to start off today’s dvar torah with a little story that might sound familiar to you.  A man saw his Rabbi leaving a BBQ place.  There was a big pig on the sign, so there was really no chance that this place could be kosher.  He sees the Rabbi walking out of the restaurant with tins of food.  The Rabbi puts it into his car and drives away.

So the man turned to his phone, took a picture of the Rabbi holding the tin, and posted it on twitter with the caption “Is this kosher?” People re-tweeted back questioning their Rabbi as a Jewish spiritual leader because he eats at Sonny’s BBQ. Minutes later, the picture spread to Facebook, and was re-posted on walls by many.

Two days later, this congregant went to the webpage of his local newspaper, he saw a picture that shocked him.  It was his Rabbi, and a local priest, delivering BBQ tins to the local homeless shelter.

So the man called his Rabbi and set up a meeting.  The man showed him what he wrote and apologized.  And so the Rabbi told him he would forgive him if he did one thing.  Delete all the postings about his Rabbi – and so he did.  Then the Rabbi said, now I want you to find every instance where your words were posted, and take them down also.  Then after that, I want you to delete every instance where someone commented on his words.

“But that’s impossible!” said the congregant. So the Rabbi told his congregant, “I might forgive you, but you can never truly right your wrong.”

Usually, us Rabbis tell the story of the feather and the pillow, and how it is impossible to pick up all the feathers. But who has pillows made of feathers anymore? The truth is, these stories are more relevant today than they ever have been, and I’ll give you another example that might hit a little closer to home.

One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend.

Both were in eighth grade.

They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it.

“H* (Skank) Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a wh*re (prostitute), then text this to all your friends.” Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed “send.”

In less than 24 hours, the effect was as if Margarite, 14, had sauntered naked down the hallways of the four middle schools in this racially and economically diverse suburb of the state capital, Olympia. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of students had received her photo and forwarded it.

This is a true story from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/us/27sexting.html)

There is a big difference with the feathers of the story and what we are witnessing in our world today. Feathers need wind to spread, but all posts need are clicks. Eventually, feathers go away and sooner or later are forgotten about, but everything we put on the internet truly is there forever.

We have come a long way in just a couple of years when it comes to connectivity. Facebook, the social connectivity website that is now part of our vocabulary much like Google, was launched in 2004. By the end of that year, Facebook had 1 million users, now, in July of 2010, Facebook had 500 million active users all over the world. The revolution in Tunisia and Egypt has gained the nickname, the Facebook Revolution. These tools like Facebook and Twitter have helped our society in numerous ways, but like anything, the internet can be used for Tov/good or for Rah/evil.

Our parashah deals with two types of people in Israelite society that after having an experience must leave the camp: the birthing mother and the Metzorah, the leper. Why these two? One explanation is that both are lonely. The mother who just gave birth has this experience that no one around her can truly understand at that moment. But what about the Metzorah? Our Rabbis had to give reasons for why this person was given this affliction, and so they looked to sin – sins from idolatry to selfishness. But the sin that really became popular was Lashon HaRah and they played off the words, Metzorah, Motzi Shem Rah – Someone who brings out the bad name in others. This is exactly what happened to Miriam when she challenged Moses about his wife Tzipporah.

So it is the sinner that is afflicted – I’d like to think that. I would like to think that the perpetrator of lashon harah is the one who experiences loneliness, but I think it is really the victim that does.

The Metzorah experiences a form of living death – their skin turns deathly white, their hair falls out, and their body is given a visible affliction. Now put yourself in the shoes of Margarite, the girl who everyone saw nude on their phones. Imagine her first day back at school – she must have felt like the leper.
The leper in the midrash has sinned and is punished, but in reality, the person who must leave the camp is the one is spoken about – they are the victim.

The person who spreads the gossip has another sort of infliction, but this infliction cannot be seen on the outside, rather it is on the inside. Spreading this gossip changes you. It starts with one justification, like, they deserved to be embarrassed, I was just showing everyone the truth.

There is something at stake here that is priceless – your reputation. Everyone should do one thing: Google yourself. There are people at companies whose jobs it is to do research on those who apply for jobs. They will google your name, search your Facebook account, your friend’s accounts, etc. In the future, the way you are perceived in the virtual world by people who don’t know you, and probably never will know you, will be vitally important.

There is a Jewish name for this, the Keter Shem Tov.

In Pirkei Avot we find this line, “Rabbi Shimon says there are three crowns: the crown of Torah and the crown of priesthood and the crown of kingship (civil rule) and the crown of a good name rises above them all.”

You might have the title of Torah scholar, or the title of Priest, or the title of king or president, but having a good name is what gives you all the other crowns. The keter shem tov is how people perceive you. All of us must work together to keep our keter shem tovs.
We have developed a truly remarkable gift with the advent of these tools. People of all races, creeds, and ages can connect with each other across the world, share ideas like we have never been able to, and truly change the world for the good. But there is always another side.

Many people say that the laws that we have in Judaism are a thing of the past, but our way of life is more necessary now than ever. We can destroy a life with one Facebook post, with one forward of an email or text. How we conduct ourselves in the virtual world is a daily test that will challenge our Yetzer HaRah, our evil inclination everyday because of the power that we have in our little fingers.

We have to realize that the virtual world is also the real world.

How you are talked about on the web, and how you talk about others in the virtual world, the keter shem tov, is the thing that is going to matter most in our future in a world where everything is permanent.

Eventually, feathers turn to dust, but words, they are forever.

Guard your good name, and the good name of others.

Guard your fingers, make sure they are used for good, and not bad.

The Kehillot (Sacred Communities) of the Future…Today

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

I was recently talking to a couple who were members of another synagogue and I introduced myself as the Rabbi of Shaarei Kodesh. They told me how impressed they were with us, and then asked me an interesting question, “So when are you going to be a REAL synagogue?” I asked her, “What do you mean, a REAL synagogue, I think we already are a real synagogue. In fact, we do all the REAL things that a synagogue does.” Of course, I knew what she was referring to. She went on to say, “You know what I mean, when are you going to build a building?” As most of you know, we have been renting space since our beginnings 6 years ago. I assured her that it is something we are working on, and then we went our separate ways, in more ways than one.

Please do not take from this conversation that I judged this woman in an unfavorable light. Considering the land scape of American Judaism, she actually is the majority opinion in this debate of building versus no building.

For the past weeks, we have read a lot about building. The last parashiot of Exodus dealt with how the mishkan was to be built, the exact dimensions, materials, who gave the materials, etc.

But one really important aspect of the mishkan was left out: What do you do inside? Our Rabbis called the book Vayikra, Torat Cohanim, the Torah or instructions for the Priests, but as we learn in our Torah, we are a nation of priests. These laws not only affected those who worked in the mishkan, but all of Bnai Israel.

Nachmonides, the Ramban, a famous medieval commentator, gives us some perspective about this book. He tells us that the previous book, Exodus, is the story of our redemption from Egypt and concludes with the setting up of the Mishkan and the presence of the Lord filling the Mishkan. As we read through the book of Vayikra, we see that these sacrifices serve many purposes, but a main purpose was expiation, Kaparah, in other words, a spiritual cleaning. Ramban goes on to say that we are learning about these laws right after we read that God’s presence rested above or in the Mishkan because we want to keep God in our presence, therefore, we have to make sure that we remain ritually clean by making atonement for falling short or sinning.

The book of Exodus gave us detailed instructions on how to physically build a makom, a place for God to dwell among us, and Vayikra, the next book, continues this trend by giving detailed instructions on how to act in this makom in order to build a spiritual community.

In ancient times, we did this through animal and vegetable sacrifices, and much of this book deals with how to do this sacred acts. They are not vague ideas about the worship of God, rather, they are physical acts.

Every year, we have to make animal sacrifices relevant to a world that has moved on. Our Rabbis tell us that learning about sacrifices is a substitute for actually sacrifices, and our services, our tefillah, are called Avodat She’Balev, worship of the heart.

But is this really the only way that we let God rest upon us as God did in the Mishkan? In other words, how do we develop what our ancestors did in the wilderness, how do we establish a sacred community? I bring this question to you because we are asking these types of questions in our movement, the Conservative movement, of Judaism.

Does anyone know what is happening on March 13^th? There is a vote on the draft of the new strategic plan for the USCJ, the organization that we belong to that encompasses the total of Conservative synagogues in North America. In short, the reason for this new draft is that the synagogue business is in trouble. Over the last nine years, USCJ has lost 6% of its congregations and 14% of its membership. According to demographers, our movement is shrinking and getting older, not a good trend for the future.

But perhaps one main problem is how we look at synagogues, as businesses with a focus on building. For years, we were so interested with how our congregations looked, how our rabbis and lay people dressed, the size of our budgets, but did not pay attention to the holy work inside the synagogues.

This book of Leviticus, which speaks about sacrifices is so foreign to us, but the work that goes in our synagogues today is just as foreign to many Jews out there in the world!

These sacrifices, the work that went on in the Mishkan, were a part of who we were, it was our center. To us, animal sacrifice is bloody, barbaric, messy, too physical, and scary. It is violent and it is primitive. But do you know what else is like that: our world.

With the advent of television and internet, we are able to see the bloody messes of this world on a minute by minute basis.

But even getting beyond that, our own lives are not neat and clean. I love asking people, how are things, and hearing the answer, good. I think deep down, you hope the other person says good so you don’t have to hear about the problems people go through because it’s a downer, and deep down, you say good even if it isn’t because you are scared to open up to people. And so we go through our lives in a neat way, just good.

Our sacrifices might have been a way to acknowledge that there is a tremendous amount of disorder in the world that deeply troubles us, but we come together as a spiritual community to bring order into the world just as God did when God created the earth.

And this is what we need to do as kehillot, the new name that the USCJ would like to call us. The new focus is not on buildings, but on communities. More and more, we are seeing young people in their 20′s and 30′s in urban centers with many synagogues shy away from them and create their own minyanim that focus on inspiring and meaningful prayer, life-long learning, and religious and spiritual growth. They meet where they can and turn the places they meet into holy places because of the work that they do.

I believe that this sacred community, Kehillat Shaarei Kodesh, shares that same vision, that is why we are here.

When someone asks you, when are you going to become a REAL synagogue, what do you say to them? A space is a space. I have been to abandoned synagogues in Poland with magen davids and menorahs hung around the room, and beautiful paintings, but no Jews to worship inside. A space without true Avodat She’balev, worship of the heart, is not holy.

That is what a REAL synagogue, the synagogue of the 21^st Century must be in order to survive and thrive.

We might be small in number, but we have a duty to inspire the rest of the community to follow our lead. This can be a place where God dwells among us not only in prayer, but in social action, in the smachot of important events in our lives, during tough times in hospitals and shiva houses, in Torah study for people of all ages, and in social events. We can be a place where you can truly tell people how you feel, and have someone listen with real care and compassion.

I know that there are many important issues that I could have discussed today. What is the Jewish response to what is going on in Libya, in Wisconsin, or Charlie Sheen? These are all important issues, that should be discussed, and we will be discussing these issues for weeks and months to come as they are not going away, although hopefully Charlie Sheen will.

But the issue that we have to deal with is how to get our own house in order. How are we going to build communities that are authentic, compelling, relevant, and holy for the Jews out there and in here?

Our Rabbis call this book Torat Kohanim, but the real name in this book is Vayikra, He Called Out. Rashi tells us that this term, to call out, implies affection. God called out to Moses to come towards Him, and God is still calling out to all of us to come towards Him, Le-haKriv, to come to the center, together, to worship and enrich our lives with the holiness that God offers.

It is our task to listen closely to that call, to come forward, and to lead others toward the center.

Va-yakhel – Delivered by Rabbi David Baum
Those Who Can Do Teach

There is a famous quote, “Those who can – do. Those who can’t – teach.” Woody Allen added on to the this quote, “Those who can do – do, those who can’t teach, and those who can’t teach – teach gym.”

This quote may get a laugh, but it is an offensive quote to the many people who devote their lives to the noble profession of teaching.

As we have all seen in the news this week, there is dangerous rhetoric not just about teachers but about those who serve the public. And yes, Judaism does have something to say about those who serve the public.

In our parashah, we read again about a famous figure who is known by us as an artist, Bezalel. We often times take this Bezalel for granted. Bezalel, like his fellow Israelites, was a slave in Egypt. They could build a pyramid and make bricks, but they were unskilled workers; and yet, with the spirit of the Lord in him, Bezalel built the beautiful and ornate mishkan. And even though there is a modern school of art named for him, I think that Bezalel was far more than an artist – he was a public servant and a teacher.

One would think that with the spirit of God, one can do anything. But Bezalel, from the tribe of Judah, one of the greatest tribes, was not alone. Bezalel brought another man Aholiav, from the tribe of Dan. Rashi points out that the tribe of Dan was one of the lowliest tribes, but Bezalel and God raised him up to serve the public. And it wasn’t just Aholiav that Bezalel lifted up, rather, he brought along other people as the text states, and turned these slaves who could only make bricks into a free people who could become skilled workers.

Bezalel could do – and yet, he decided to not only do, but also teach. When you think about how beautiful the Mishkan was and all the work that went into it, we also have to realize that there was more than just beauty that went into it, but dignity. The building of the mishkan, led by Bezalel, a master craftsman and teacher, transformed a people who were dependent on God for manna and water from rocks to a people who could build the divine dwelling place for God on earth.

Bezalel, a master teacher, did not give us the fish, but he taught us how to fish – the greatest act of tzedakah that we have.

When I look at our educators, I look at them as mini-Bezalels – a group of people who could build beautiful lives by themselves, and yet, they teach others so they can build a beautiful future for all of us.

I have a relative who lost his job as a teacher two years ago due to budget cuts. Now he is a salesmen and he recently told me that he is making more money than he ever did as a teacher. Then he told me something that seemed counterintuitive, “but i’m applying for teaching jobs for the fall, hopefully I’ll get one.” And trust me, he needs the money, but that’s not why he wants to be a teacher again. He, like so many others, wants to make an impact on our future through our children and they want to serve the public.

Judaism has much to say about those who serve the public.

Synagogues include in our Shabbat liturgy a prayer for “all those who occupy themselves faithfully with the needs of the community” — a formulation that includes both volunteers and those employed by the community. In the prayer for the community, we read about those who help do the little things that we don’t often think about, but put together are vital for a community such as providing light (in our time, maybe we can say electricity and air conditioning), wine for kiddush and other ritual purposes, food for guests that we have and for the poor, and, a blanket blessing for all those who occupy themselves with the needs of the public.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs points out in a recent article that Moses Maimonides mandated that key communal workers, such as scribes and judges, be paid enough to support themselves and their families. Commenting on this law by Maimonides, Rabbi Chaim David HaLevy, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Tel Aviv from 1973 to 1998, explained that the workers must be paid sufficiently “in order for them to devote their full energies to their important tasks… without concerns about the needs of their families weighing on them.”

I come from a family who have served the public with hard work and dedication, both through their work and through military service. They, and I can only speak for my family, could have made much more money doing other things, and yet they chose to work for government because it meant serving the public.

I cannot comment on the economics of who makes more money in the long run, or budget deficits, but I can say that public workers are people who our faith holds in high regard even if our politicians and talking heads do not.

And so when you leave here today, and you turn on the news this week and hear about how bad public servants are by some, remember that these people protect us from harm, they do the little things that keep our society running, and remember that they are in possession of the greatest future assets that we have, our children.

Stand Up To Be Counted: Ki Tissa (Bat Mitzvah of Ruby Rader)

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum

Our Bnai Mitzvahs are told to do many things, read this, bless that, say this, and say that.  But rarely are they allowed to ask questions.  So today, I have asked Ruby to ask me a Jewish question which I will answer for you all today.

When Ruby and I studied together, we read through the entire parashah.  We read about the half shekel, the sin of the golden calf, the building of the mishkan, the words about Shabbat.  When Ruby stepped into my office, she said she wanted to speak about the half shekel, and no matter how much we learned in our parashah, she stuck to her guns.  She wanted to speak about the half shekel.

As you heard, Ruby taught us about the idea of equality, and Ruby had a related question because equality in Judaism is something that concerns her.  She asked me, “Why are boys given more rights in Judaism than girls?”  What a great question, and for my answer, I would like to bring us to the parashah which you just read, and to talk about something that Ruby spoke about in her dvar torah:  equality.

Our parashah begins with the story of the half shekel

Exodus 30: 11 – 15

11The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 12When you take a census of the Israelite people according to their enrollment, each shall pay the Lord a ransom for himself on being enrolled, that no plague may come upon them through their being enrolled. 13This is what everyone who is entered in the records shall pay: a half-shekel by the sanctuary weight—twenty gerahs to the shekel—a half-shekel as an offering to the Lord.14Everyone who is entered in the records, from the age of twenty years up, shall give the Lord‘s offering:15the rich shall not pay more and the poor shall not pay less than half a shekel when giving the Lord‘s offering as expiation for your persons.

Rabbi Jack Riemer pointed out something interesting to me that I never saw before. The english says that each shall pay, but the Hebrew uses the word ‘Ish’, or in English, Each – man.

(יב) כִּי תִשָּׂא אֶת רֹאשׁ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם וְנָתְנוּ אִישׁ כֹּפֶר נַפְשׁוֹ לַיקֹוָק בִּפְקֹד אֹתָם

In other words, only the men were counted, leaving out of the adult half of the population of the camp. How could we stand for this? Scholars give reasons why women were not counted. The census was in order to count soldiers for war, and since women didn’t fight, they weren’t counted. Some say that women did not have their own money, so their husbands gave for the entire family.

This lack of counting shows us something about Biblical society: women were not equal to men. This is not a surprise. In fact, women in this country were not given the right to vote until 1919, less than 100 years ago.

This half shekel, as Ruby pointed out, was a moment of equality in the camp. All men, both rich and poor, were equal in the eyes of God because of this.

But equality isn’t always equal.

Let’s look at our own country and a ground breaking statement:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all MEN are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Notice anything interesting? All MEN are created equal. Thomas Jefferson, the author of this sentence, owned 200 African-American slaves. Was he speaking about them? What about women who could not vote or have other rights? Just like the women in our parashah, these groups in our own country were not equal until they fought and achieved their rights.

So where do we see women in our parashah?

We see the women in the details, and our Rabbis help show us. Later on in our parashah, we read about the episode of the Golden Calf. When Moshe did not come down from the mountain when he said he would, they became nervous, and they went to Aaron to ask that he make them a golden calf. Aaron tells them to, “Break off the gold rings that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.” The Rabbis picked up on Aaron’s command, to break off the gold rings. This tells us that the women would not give them their gold because they knew that idolatry was not the answer. They stood up for God, and for this act of civil disobedience, they were given the holiday of Rosh Chodesh and the custom that women should abstain from work on this day.

Can you imagine if women were counted earlier on in the census? If they had a voice, would the sin of the Golden Calf have happened?

We see here that equality is different for each time, but equality grows and grows as time marches on. We live in a time when women have more than shown that they are equal to men. We have women leaders in government and industry all over the world, and now, we have women as spiritual leaders.

But the woman’s voice in our faith, and even more so, in other parts of the world still needs to be fought for. We are seeing revolutions across the Middle East, a truly amazing thing; but if the revolution does not lead to more freedom for all, than what is it worth? Of course, we don’t know what will happen in the future. Will the revolution bring in an era of equality, or will it bring even more oppression for groups that are already oppressed in these countries, mainly, women?

Thankfully, we have a way for their voices to be heard: Facebook. As we speak, women in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries are joining a group called Saudi Women Revolution that demands, among other things, that Saudi women be treated as human beings, be allowed to drive, to not be forced to wear burkahs, and other basic rights that we take for granted.

This freedom will not be given to these women freely. As we can see throughout history, women’s voices must be heard in order to ask and demand for those freedoms.

Am I disappointed that only men were counted during the census? Yes, but I for one am glad the Torah does not say Kol Echad, but rather, Ish, because it shows how far we have come.  Ruby has just led us in prayer, a young woman who is now an equal in our Jewish community. In our Jewish communities, women were allowed to lead prayer services until 1973.  Ruby’s mother is an ordained rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary.  Just 30 years ago, this would not have been possible for a woman to be a Conservative Rabbi, and yet here we are.

The struggle for equality begins in our Torah and continues in every generation, and not just for women, but other people as well.

Ruby, may God help you achieve your dreams.  May God guide you on a path of righteousness and justice.  May God help you stand up for those who need to be guarded, and give you the courage to stand up for what you believe in.  And Ruby, help God by doing God’s work on earth and bring equality to all.  You have a long journey ahead of you.  When you fall, may you rise up stronger.  Please use this gift, the words of our God and our people, to bring shlemut, wholeness, to a broken world.

Tetzaveh:  A Light Unto the Nations: Now and Forever…

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a Dvar Torah where I asked you,”If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” As we know, sound is one sense that we use well as Jews. We love to talk, to sing, to teach Torah, all through the gift of speech which feeds one of our senses. But there is another sense that we often overlook – sight, and there is sound as to ears as light is to eyes. So which one is more powerful? Light or Sound? Here are the scientific facts:

Sound waves travel through air at the speed of approximately 1,100 feet per second; light waves travel through air and empty space at a speed of approximately 186,000 miles per second.

Both are forms of wave motion, sound requires a solid, liquid, or gaseous medium; whereas light travels through empty space. The denser the medium, the greater the speed of sound. The opposite is true of light. Light travels approximately one-third slower in water than in air. In other words, light is faster when there is a vacuum.

Please know that I am not moonlighting as a science professor, but I wanted to bring you insight into a topic that is talked about in this week’s parashah, light from our mishkan.

Our parashah this week, right away, gives us a lesson in what God wants us to see – light from fire.

(כ) וְאַתָּה תְּצַוֶּה אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִקְחוּ אֵלֶיךָ שֶׁמֶן זַיִת זָךְ כָּתִית לַמָּאוֹר לְהַעֲלֹת נֵר תָּמִיד:

(כא) בְּאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד מִחוּץ לַפָּרֹכֶת אֲשֶׁר עַל הָעֵדֻת יַעֲרֹךְ אֹתוֹ אַהֲרֹן וּבָנָיו מֵעֶרֶב עַד בֹּקֶר לִפְנֵי יְקֹוָק חֻקַּת עוֹלָם לְדֹרֹתָם מֵאֵת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל: ס

20You shall further instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps regularly. 21Aaron and his sons shall set them up in the Tent of Meeting, outside the curtain which is over [the Ark of] the Pact, [to burn] from evening to morning before the Lord. It shall be a due from the Israelites for all time, throughout the ages.

The first command of our parashah is to build something that we take for granted. The only true remnant of our Temple in our synagogues, the Ner Tamid, the ever lasting flame. Why did God need a ner tamid? God could see in light and in darkness, I mean, he created both of them, so why? The answer is that the ner tamid was actually for us. The midrash Shmot Rabbah tells us that God wanted the ner tamid, “in order that you may give light to Me as I give light to you.” Think about that: We have this eternal light in order to give light to the being that gave light to the world. When people see this light, Jews and non-Jews, they automatically think about the special relationship that we have with God. Light also symbolizes Torah – Our tradition tells us, “The words of the Torah emit light to those who study them.” But we study Torah in order to act it out; the actions of Torah, our mitzvoth, are like kindling a light to God.

Israel and the Jewish people is also famously known as an Or Lagoyim “A light unto the nations” from a quote from the book of Isaiah: “I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand, and will keep you, and give you for a covenant of the people, for a light to the nations (Or LaGoyim); To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and those who sit in darkness, out of the prison house.

David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel, took the term “A light to the nations” from Isaiah and applied it to the State of Israel. His hope was that Israel would be a moral state that would serve as a beacon to all other nations.

Others see this as a directive intended for the entire Jewish people.

How do we see this in real life? Last year, a devastating earthquake decimated Haiti, and killed over 300,000 people. Why did Israel send nurses to Haiti?

I remember seeing a news report that showed a crowd breaking into cheers after an Israeli medical team rescued a Haitian who was buried for four days in what used to be a government building.

Onlookers shouted, “Bravo! “We love you, Israel.”

It seemed like a picture-perfect moment for Israeli public diplomacy. But Major Zohar Moshe, commander of the rescue team, quickly corrected the reporter:

“It is not about that, it is about saving lives,”

This line is so important, It’s not about that public relations, it’s about the mitzvah of saving a human life – Pikuach Nefesh.

When the Israeli army takes the measures it does to prevent civilian casualties, in my opinion, more than any other army in the world, why do they do it? For public relations? No, because it is a mitzvah to save innocent lives.

I think this is an important distinction that we as Jews living in American looking over to Israel for pride must realize. Israel doesn’t send doctors to Haiti or safeguard civilians in war time for public relations, they do it to perform a mitzvah, to bring light into a vacum.

Jews living in America do not have a public relations problem. We are accepted as equals in this society, we are leaders in government and industry, so does that mean that we shouldn’t do good things because we don’t need the PR?

We have a choice in front of us today. Should Israel act in a moral way, or should we be like other nations. Remember, Ben Gurion is just one voice.

There are others that say that the goal of Israel and to be a modern Jew is that we are normal, like every other nation.

And this voice is once again being called into debate as we watch the news unfold in Egypt. There is one side that says to support the brutal dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak simply because it is ‘the devil we know’ rather than support the potential of democracy which we fear might bring the Muslim Brotherhood into power. Between a rock and a hard place.

But if I could give a direction, I would quote Bibi Netanyahu himself:

At the University of Oxford Bibi gave a mesmerizing speech arguing that in the history of the world no two democracies had ever gone to war against each other. The students attempted to refute him but they could not. He explained that in a tyranny a dictator sends other people’s sons to die in his wars. But in a democracy it is the people themselves who make the decision to go to war and they therefore pressure their leaders to exhaust every possibility before resorting to armed conflict.

Democracies prevent senseless slaughter.

These decisions are not easy, and yet, we have to make a choice because it is hard to have it both ways. If we hold ourselves up to a higher standard, than we cannot be surprised when others hold us up to a higher standard, and if we don’t hold ourselves up to any standards, than we should not be surprised that we are not acting in Godly ways and become ‘normal’.

I don’t have an answer to the question of whether we as a people will continue to hold on to this label with integrity.

My hope is that we remain a constant light, for all time, throughout the ages as our Torah tells us.

You don’t shut off your light when it is inconvenient, it is a constant light that always burns. Our parashah begins with the fuel that makes this light go: olive oil. Our fuel are these commandments and the ethical will of our Rabbis that give us direction.

We must realize that this light will only burn if we keep feeding it. Being an ‘or la goyim’ isn’t a birthright, it is a gift that must earned.

That is why being a “light unto the nations,” it not about being self centered, because it isn’t a title, it is a command.

We are an important people, if we do the right things. We are a special people who were chosen to bring God’s light to the world, but it is up to each generation to ensure that we stay special through our acts of righteousness and justice.

Light is faster than anything else much faster than sound. When lightning strikes, we can see light in an instant, but it takes a while to hear thunder.

And light spreads fastest in vacuums – this is perhaps why God wanted us to have an eternal light. When things get at their worst, when there is a vacuum, God commands us to keep that light lit, to turn off the darkness. The darkness of a vacuum is cold, it takes your breath away. But the light brings hope to those who see it, it not only keeps us warm, but makes us feel warm.

We don’t bring light to the world because we want to get into the news, we bring light into the world because we are commanded to do so.

Eloheinu, v’elohei avoteinu, hold our hand, guard us, and make us a light to the nations, an Or LaGoyim. Help us open the eyes of the blind, to free those who are in captivity, and to bring those who sit in darkness into the light.

Amen.

Last week, we invited the Palm Beach Homeless Coalition to give a presentation to our congregation about being homeless in Palm Beach County. One of our speakers, David, was a formerly homeless person. As he was telling his story, he stopped and looked at our children, and told them repeatedly, “Kids, listen to your parents, respect them. I didn’t and look what happened to me, listen to your parents.” He repeated this mantra a couple more times, and I want to state for the record that we did not put him up to this!

As I read through the parashah this week, I paid extra close attention to one of our 10 commandments that I am sure we have all heard: Honor your father and your mother, but what does it really mean to ‘honor’ our fathers and mothers? How do we do it?

Our Midrash, the Sifra, states that honoring our parents means, “Providing them with food and drink, and warmth, and guiding their footsteps when they are old and infirmed.”

The Mechilta states: “Rabbi (Yehudah HaNassi) says: The honoring of one’s father and mother is very dear in the sight of God, for He declared honoring parents to be equal to honoring Himself, fearing them equal to fearing Himself, and cursing them to cursing Himself.”

We can see from this source that our Rabbis took this mitzvah very seriously and likened our parents to God Himself! There is even a story in Talmud where Rabbi Yosef, when he heard the footsteps of his mother would say, “I will rise before the Divine Presence which is approaching.” (Talmud Kiddushin 31b)

Not only are we commanded to ‘honor’ our parents, but also to ‘revere’ them.

Revere – Yirah – found in Leviticus 19:3:

“You shall each revere his mother and his father, and keep My sabbaths: I the Lord am your God.”

How is this mitzvah of ‘revering’ or being in awe of our parents different than ‘honoring’?

The Sifra explains, “What is fearing (one’s parent)? Not to sit in his seat, or to speak in his place, or to contradict his words.

To honor is to do specific actions:

Rambam, in his Mishneh Torah summarizes what our tradition says:

We must feed them, clothe them, stand to greet them and welcome them in, and also escort them as they leave, and administer their basic needs.

Being in awe of parents means:

We do not sit in their places, we do not contradict them publicly, and we do not call them by their personal names.

One other interesting thing that Rambam adds is that we do not support their words if they say that they need the support of their child (shows that we do not take away their dignity).

Why is כַּבֵּד אֶת אָבִיךָ וְאֶת אִמֶּךָ, Honor your father and your mother, that you may long endure on the land that the Lord your God is assigning to you. a mitzvah, one of the big ones?

Mitzvoth are there because they do not come natural to us, that is why we are commanded.

Why do you think that this mitzvah is so hard?

Let’s look at the beginning of our parashah, before we read about this commandment, we see it in action.

Moshe does not really have a relationship with his father, and we see that Yitro, his father in law, fulfills this role.

The text constantly refers to Yitro with the epithet, חתן משה, Moshe’s father in law, every time he is quoted, and he even introduces himself in this way in verse 6: He sent word to Moses, “I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you, with your wife and her two sons.”

In verse 18:1, Rashi explains why the Torah uses the epithet, Hoten Moshe, Moshe’s father in law, for Yitro.

“Here it was Yitro who got respect by being related to Moses, “I am the king’s father in law!” Previously, it was Moshe who gained status by connecting himself to Yitro

In verse 1, he is Yitro, priest of Midian, father in law of Moshe, In verse 2, he is Yitro, father in law of Moshe, and finally, in verse 17, his name is Yitro is dropped; now he is just known as the father in law of Moshe.

As we read in these short passages, we see that Yitro is coming to a realization in regards to how he views himself.

I believe that this succession happens to all of us through our lives. First we are known for who we are and what we do, then we are known for being parents, and sometimes, people forget who we were, and we become these anonymous parents, our identities of who we once were disappear.

Our speaker, David, was not only speaking to our young people, but to each one of us.

The mitzvah of honoring one’s parents applies to all of us, for all time. We live in a world where our parents are thank God living longer than they ever have. The average life expectancy for Americans is 77.

Life expectancy at birth for men born in 2004 was 75.2 years, almost 10 years longer than men born in 1950. Life expectancy for women born in 2004 was 80.4 years, more than 9 years greater than for women born in 1950.

The trend is going up, especially for us.

And so we live in a reality a certain reality as parents for longer than we used to.

So as children, we must keep this mitzvah sacred for the duration of our parent’s lives. Even when our parents come to the realization that they can no longer support themselves, we must still ensure that they have the dignity that they deserve, just as Moshe did for Yitro.

We see that even though Yitro is realizing his vulnerability and losing his previous identity and honor, Moshe still views him as an equal. Verse 7 states, “Moshe went out to meet his father-in-law; he bowed low and kissed him; each asked after the other’s welfare, and they went into the tent.” The commentators write that Moshe did this out of respect, Kavod, for his father in law. Sforno writes, “Moshe did not pull rank on him, remembering how well Yitro had treated him when he was in trouble.”

The true sense of one’s worth is how you act when you have the upper hand. How will we treat our parents when they might seem as powerless as infants? Will we remember how they treated us when we were actual infants?

My mother once told me as a son, “A son is a son until he meets his wife, a daughter is a daughter for the rest of your life.” That might be the normal way of the world, but it is not how we are commanded as Jews.

Interestingly enough, there is no counterpart to this mitzvah in the reverse, to honor and revere one’s children.

The Talmud, in masechet Sanhedrin, assumes that a parent innately loves his or her children – so with that logic, you don’t need a mitzvah to honor or revere one’s children. There is some truth in this – when our child does something we are proud of, we don’t need a commandment to tell us to brag about it or kvell over their achievements.

But honoring a parent, especially when you realize that they aren’t the superheroes you once thought them to be, when you realize that they are just regular people, is a tougher thing to do. It is something that you must think about, a rule to obey in life, and it never ends.

It made it to the top 10 because it is the glue that holds our society together. Honor and reverence for our parents keeps us grounded and ensures dignity and honor for all of humanity no matter what age, and more than anything, it is a way to honor and revere God.

B’Shalach – delivered by Rabbi David Baum

This has been a week of tragedies, and if not tragedies, it has been the anniversary of tragedy. Last Shabbat, while we were in the midst of our Shacharit service, a gunmen opened fire on a crowd attempting to assassinate a congress-woman, Gabrielle Giffords, and in doing so, murdered 6 people and wounding scores others. Among the murdered, a 9 year old girl named Christina Taylor Green born on 9/11/2001 and came to hear the congress woman speak because she was interested in politics, also, Gabe Zimmerman, a Gabby’s outreach director and a Jew. Gabby herself identifies as Jewish and fondly spoke about her Jewish identity and strong support of Israel.

During this week, we also observed the one year anniversary of the earth quake in Haiti which decimated a country and took the lives of over 300,000 people.

We live in a world where we hear about tragedies almost momentarily not having to wait for the nightly news. While I think this is a good thing, I also think that there is a down side. With a 24 news cycle, we feel we must react immediately to events with an opinion or an angle to the event. And while we blame this person or that group for the tragedy, or try and explain why it happened, another event may come and we forget about what we were talking about and the lessons we might have learned.

In other words, we fall into what is comfortable. As the famous adage goes, old habits, die hard.

This week, we read about perhaps the greatest scene of the bible, the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, Kriyat Yam Suf. This miracle is the antithesis of the tragedies that I previously mentioned.

The imagery of the scene is amazing. Imagine walls of water and thousands of people walking through with the uncertainty of instant death. The people were literally putting themselves in God’s hands.

The poem that comes after the split is another amazing aspect of this scene. The song, Az Yashir Moshe, is said everyday during the Shacharit service, and is considered the oldest poem in the bible. It is similar to Egyptian poems that appear in Egypt in the period of the New Kingdom. However, this poem is different: as opposed to celebrating the exploits of a human Pharaoh, our poem focuses on praising God.

But even more interesting are the first steps that the Israelites take after the sea and after they sing.

15:22

22Then Moses caused Israel to set out from the Sea of Reeds. They went on into the wilderness of Shur; they traveled three days in the wilderness and found no water. 23They came to Marah, but they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; that is why it was named Marah. 24And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”

Right away, the people begin to complain. It is almost as if they did not see this miracle happen, almost like they forgot the beautiful song that they just sang!

The midrash in Shemot Rabbah picks up on this. The text states:

Have you forgotten all the miracles which God performed for you? …

And the midrash goes on to state even more troubling news:

But were rebellious at the sea, even at the Red Sea (Ps. CVI, 7). Why does it repeat ’at the sea’? Because at the sea they rebelled by refusing to go down…

So we see that even in the face of a miracle, there were some that did not believe, and afterward, after surviving this amazing event, they went back into old habits.

I do not think that this ‘memory loss’ only applies to Bnei Israel thousands of years ago.

As I stated before, we are constantly being told of horrible events, and miracles as well, and we promise that we will change, but as I said, old habits die hard.

Perhaps we should rethink what miracles are and the purpose of this specific miracle. One would think that God did this for Bnai Israel to show His great abilities, but did He need to do this after all the plagues? I look at Kriyat Yam Suf as not just being about faith.

To me, this passing through the Sea of Reeds was supposed to be a re-birth. The Israelites pass through God’s birth canal, re-born into a new world. They are supposed to leave all their baggage behind, and yet, they do not. They need something else.

The first steps that they take after this miracle are a path toward Sinai, and the true miracle happened as they journeyed along afterward.

The true miracle is staying on the path and realizing that at any moment, you can take on mitzvoth, commandments, and buy into this life that is so fulfilling and leads you on a direction of true purpose. Jewish law is called Halachah, from the word הלכ which means to go, to move, to walk.

Walking on a path that is set before us, rather than setting our own path is also a leap of faith that is much greater than walking through Yam Suf, because this path is constant. It is the path that Bnai Israel took after they left that Sea and traveled to the land of Israel, and that path continues to us today for those who choose to take it.

We are often challenged by amazing events in this world. I do not think that God puts them in front of us on purpose, but I do think that God gives us a chance and the ability to react to them.

A couple of nights ago, President Obama spoke about the heroic things that people did during the shooting. How people sacrificed themselves for loved ones, and how others acted quickly to save lives at a second’s notice. These acts give us hope in the face of evil. After the earth quake in Haiti, people gathered funds together, including our own community to stand up to evil with good.

But the true miracle is how to change our character, to be re-born and leave behind our behaviors that feed our evil inclination, and to follow a path set before us, not knowing exactly where that path may take us.

As the Psalm says, God is our shepherd, leading us on His path. He leads us through the valley of the shadow of death, and we should not be afraid. These are these terrible events that confront us, whether they are the earthquake in Haiti, or the shooting in Arizona, or the tragic events that will happen in the future.

When we are confronted with them, we can choose to react as we always have, or we can look to our tradition to teach us how to better act.

And one thing our tradition does teach us is that the first thing we do after a tragedy is not to debate who is to blame or to use tragedy for our own agendas, rather, it is to comfort those who are affected, those who have been spared from death, the mourners.

And so we say to those mourning those lost, and in a way, ourselves:

HaMakom Yinachem Etchem B’Toch Avalei Zion, U’Yerushalayim

May God comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Who is a Jew? Parashat Shmot, 5771/2010

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

I have often told you about my travels while I was a student at JTS. One trip I took was staffing a trip of college students to the Ukraine through the JDC, the Joint Distribution Committee. On our trip, we partnered with our Ukrainian counterparts at their local Hillel. The Hillel houses in the FSU serve as a community centers for young Jews who are not always students at local universities and they are more active than our Hillel’s here. There was a moment that I had that I still remember to this day. The president of the Hillel made a speech to us in Ukrainian and the words were translated. Sitting next to me was a Ukranian student who spoke Hebrew so we could actually communicate. After she was done speaking, he said to me, “you know, she’s really not Jewish.” I asked him what he meant and he told me that she did not have a Jewish mother. I found myself in a room with the president and I asked her about her background. She told me that her mother was not Jewish, and she never knew her father. She had some friends who went to the Hillel and came to a couple of programs. At these programs, especially Shabbat, she felt something and she said she just knew that her father was Jewish, which made her Jewish.

When I was in college at our Hillel, I would have Shabbat dinner with guys wearing black suits, peyis, and/or big kippot. But they were not Jewish. In fact, some of them did not have a Jewish parent, but they felt Jewish but they would not convert.

Why do I bring this up? I bring this up because the times are changing. When we used to have family get togethers, when I was a child, we got together as a room of Jews. I am a first generation American and so this may not seem so strange. There was actually no non-Jews in my family, but that has changed. Now, there are non-Jews in my family, and they know a lot about Judaism. One of our non-Jewish relatives’ Jewish library rivals my own!

A friend of mine sent out a question to us: what will be the big Jewish questions of the future? The one that came back was: who is a Jew?

Our relationship to non-Jews has changed significantly in the freedom that we have been allowed in this country. But it is not just here. In an increasingly global world, we are becoming more and more acceptable, just another ethnic group. With that, borders melt, and the question of who is a Jew is not as easily answered by the religion of their parents.

Truth be told, there is much we can learn about our relationship with non-Jews from our Torah portion. Our Torah portion opens up in an ominous way:

(ח) וַיָּקָם מֶלֶךְ חָדָשׁ עַל מִצְרָיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יָדַע אֶת יוֹסֵף:

1:8 – A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

But it is not the persecution that I want to focus on. We know who is the Jew and who is not in this story, but in the story of Sifrah and Puah, two little known nurses, the answer is not as clear.

Let’s open our humashim and study this together:

טו) וַיֹּאמֶר מֶלֶךְ מִצְרַיִם לַמְיַלְּדֹת הָעִבְרִיֹּת אֲשֶׁר שֵׁם הָאַחַת שִׁפְרָה וְשֵׁם הַשֵּׁנִית פּוּעָה:

(טז) וַיֹּאמֶר בְּיַלֶּדְכֶן אֶת הָעִבְרִיּוֹת וּרְאִיתֶן עַל הָאָבְנָיִם אִם בֵּן הוּא וַהֲמִתֶּן אֹתוֹ וְאִם בַּת הִיא וָחָיָה:

(יז) וַתִּירֶאןָ הַמְיַלְּדֹת אֶת הָאֱלֹהִים וְלֹא עָשׂוּ כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר אֲלֵיהֶן מֶלֶךְ מִצְרָיִם וַתְּחַיֶּיןָ אֶת הַיְלָדִים:

(יח) וַיִּקְרָא מֶלֶךְ מִצְרַיִם לַמְיַלְּדֹת וַיֹּאמֶר לָהֶן מַדּוּעַ עֲשִׂיתֶן הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה וַתְּחַיֶּיןָ אֶת הַיְלָדִים:

(יט) וַתֹּאמַרְןָ הַמְיַלְּדֹת אֶל פַּרְעֹה כִּי לֹא כַנָּשִׁים הַמִּצְרִיֹּת הָעִבְרִיֹּת כִּי חָיוֹת הֵנָּה בְּטֶרֶם תָּבוֹא אֲלֵהֶן הַמְיַלֶּדֶת וְיָלָדוּ:

(כ) וַיֵּיטֶב אֱלֹהִים לַמְיַלְּדֹת וַיִּרֶב הָעָם וַיַּעַצְמוּ מְאֹד:

(כא) וַיְהִי כִּי יָרְאוּ הַמְיַלְּדֹת אֶת הָאֱלֹהִים וַיַּעַשׂ לָהֶם בָּתִּים:

(כב) וַיְצַו פַּרְעֹה לְכָל עַמּוֹ לֵאמֹר כָּל הַבֵּן הַיִּלּוֹד הַיְאֹרָה תַּשְׁלִיכֻהוּ וְכָל הַבַּת תְּחַיּוּן: ס

15The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,16saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool: if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” 17The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live.18So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, letting the boys live?” 19The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.” 20And God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and increased greatly. 21And because the midwives feared God, He established households for them. 22Then Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, “Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

So we have a very short narrative about two women who acted to save the Jewish people from Pharoah’s decree of genocide.

The Rabbis had one very big question about this passage: were they Jewish?

The Talmud tells us that these two women are actually other women that we know. Rav said that the pair were mother and daughter: Yocheved and Miriam, while Shumel said that the pair were mother and daughter in law: Yocheved and Elisheva, Aaron’s wife. Rashi gives a similar interpretation but uses grammar to prove his point. To him, Shifra is Yocheved because she makes the child shapely, meshaperet which is similar to the word Shifra. Puah is Miriam, so called because she purrs (po’ah), talks, and coos to the child, as women do in order to pacify a crying infant.

But where do they get this from? Our Rabbis were very intelligent and they based these ideas, however crazy they might seem to us, off of a our first line, verse 15,

לַמְיַלְּדֹת הָעִבְרִיֹּת אֲשֶׁר שֵׁם הָאַחַת שִׁפְרָה וְשֵׁם הַשֵּׁנִית פּוּעָה

Meyaladot ha-ivriyot can be understood in two ways: Hebrew midwives, or midwives for the Hebrews. Also, the text uses the words Shem HaEhat, the name of the one, and Shem HaShenit, the name of the other. This seems superflous and so our Rabbis concluded that they must be hinting to different identities for the women.

But there is another side. In an early midrash, Midrash Tadsheh, we see a list of 22 saintly Jewish women listed along with their gentile counterparts. Their names read: “Hagar, Zipporah, Shifrah, Puah, Pharoah’s daughter, Rahab, Ruth, and Yael.

The Midrash plays off of another aspect of the text,

וַיְהִי כִּי יָרְאוּ הַמְיַלְּדֹת אֶת הָאֱלֹהִים

21And because the midwives feared God,

They feared Elohim, not YHVH, Our name for God, a generic name of God that more than just Jews could follow. And logically, why would Jews actually agree to kill their own people. Imrei No’am points out that we can actually call them midwives to the Hebrews.

Although we have two sides that are arguing over if they are Jewish or not on a textual basis, I wondered it there was something else to this. In other words, how did our ancestors feel about having people whose Jewishness is ambiguous so close to us. We have examples of peoples who were called God fearers, Yireh Adonai. The Encyclopeida Judaica points out:

In the Diaspora there was an increasing number, perhaps millions by the first century, of sebomenoi (metuentes, yereim – God fearers), gentiles who had not gone the whole route toward conversion. There were some gentiles both in the Diaspora and in Ereẓ Israel who did just that, among them even some of the great figures of Pharisaic history, such as the ancestors of Shemaiah and Avtalyon among the early leaders and the translator of the Bible into Aramaic, Onkelos.

And so I return to our current day, how do we feel about having those whose Jewishness is ambiguous as part of our families, both personal and collective?

So the question that we must answer is not what do we do with intermarriage, but rather, how do we bring those people into our fold? As shuls, we can rethink how we acknowledge the so called, Yireh Adonai. A Conservative synagogue in Berkley, California, developed a new category called Krovei Yisrael, those who are close to Israel. And so what will we do to acknowledge a reality that we are well in the midst of.

It is ironic that today is Christmas, a day of great unsaid tension among Jews. What do we Jews do during this holiday? Can we hang out with our non-Jewish relatives?

Ironically, our lives are as ambiguous as the phrase that gave our commentators so much material, מְיַלְּדֹת הָעִבְרִיֹּת

Hebrew midwives, or midwives for the Hebrews?

Is my cousin a Jew if he celebrates all our holidays shunning Christian holidays, says the Shema with his children before they go to sleep, and has built a Jewish home, and yet has not converted?

And so I leave you with the question that we must deal with for the future. This is why Judaism is so relevant in every generation, and why I am proud to say that I am part of a stream of Judaism that acknowledges the complexities of our world while at the same time having a foot firmly in our tradition for guidance and wisdom.

How we react to our new realities will shape what we become in the future, just as how our ancestors reacted thousands of years ago have shaped us.

This is our task, to answer the complex questions that God puts before us. Luckily, we Jews work in groups. So talk about these issues out in the open with each other. Explore options, face reality, and take hold of it. You have the amazing opportunity to write a new chapter in our people’s history, and it begins with our own answers.

Heroes – Parashat Vayigash

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

2010/5771

I have often spoke about who we revere in our society; our heroes. A recent oleh from America, Yossi Katz, wrote a book on Jewish heroes called “A Voice Called” taken from a title of a poem by Hannah Szenes, the famous Jewish paratrooper who was captured, tortured, and killed by the Nazis when she and other Jews tried to save the Jews of Hungary. He said in regards to why he wrote this book:

“For me, Jewish heroes were always my love and passion,” Katz says. “When I was growing up, astronauts and national leaders tended to be our role models. But today, kids identify people like Kim Kardashian or Bar Refaeli as people they admire. That’s a problem. Watching a TV show is fine, but when the lives of celebrities become a national obsession, then society has gone off the track. For more than 4,000 years, individual Jews have lived lives of dedication and heroism, so I set about compiling a book of stories of Jewish heroes whose inspirational lives were worthy of emulation.”

Before we discuss who heroes are, we have to discuss what it means to be a hero. Webster’s dictionary defines hero as, “an illustrious warrior; a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities; one that shows great courage.”

As Jews, we define the word with the famous line from Pirkei Avot:

איזהו גבור הכובש את יצרו

Who is a hero? One who can conquer his impulses, his Yetzer. I will talk about what this means later on.

Often times we are disappointed by who is revered, in other words, who do people spend most of their time following. And so today I want to devote my dvar torah to the subject of heroes, and I want to begin with someone who we might not think of as a hero. Someone sold his brother off to slavery, who convinced his father that his beloved son was dead, and who went to a prostitute who he later found out was his daughter in law. In other words, he is a flawed character, and yet, he is a hero. His name is Judah, our name sake as Jews, and I am not talking about the Maccabbee; I am talking about the first Judah, Joseph’s brother.

Judah is a complicated character who has his own story arcs. Judah famously sells his brother Joseph into slavery while his older brother Reuben makes an attempt to save Joseph. The Torah states, “ 26Then Judah said to his brothers, “What do we gain by killing our brother and covering up his blood? 27Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, but let us not do away with him ourselves. After all, he is our brother, our own flesh.” His brothers agreed.” (37:26-27).

Judah does the thing that perhaps comes most natural to humans by bowing to the pressures of jealousy and his brothers see this and follow him. They let someone else take care of their mess, they wash their hands of it.

After Judah sells his brother Joseph into slavery, we find the story of Judah and Tamar where Judah’s sons who were married to Tamar both die and leave Tamar a childless widow. Judah’s third son had to marry Tamar but Judah feared his death, so he withholds him from her leaving her unable to remarry and have children. In her desperate situation, Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute, and Judah unknowingly sleeps with his daughter-in-law. When she becomes pregnant, Judah accuses her of a forbidden relationship and orders her death, but she proves that Judah is the father of the baby.

Midrash Tanchuma writes about why this story occurs immediately after Judah tells his father that his beloved son Joseph was dead.

Midrash Tanchuma states, “You have no children now, and you do not know the pain of children. You have troubled your father, and caused him to mistakenly believe that his son Joseph is torn, all torn up. By your life, you will marry a woman and then bury your son, and [then you will] know the pain of children.”

Judah here experiences what his father experienced, and so we come to the climax of the story of the brothers. When faced with the possibility of losing Rachel’s second son, Benjamin, Judah becomes the leader of his brothers again, but this time, in a positive way. Judah states, 44:“ 33Therefore, please let your servant remain as a slave to my lord instead of the boy, and let the boy go back with his brothers.34For how can I go back to my father unless the boy is with me? Let me not be witness to the woe that would overtake my father!”

Judah controls his actions, he doesn’t make the same mistake he made with Joseph. Someone who acts heroically can learn from his or her mistakes and recognizes the moment when they can redeem themselves and others.

In the face of adversity, he goes against power and pressure and offers himself.

When we look at heroic behavior, we have to look at the history of a person.

איזהו גבור הכובש את יצרו

Who is a hero? One who can conquer his impulses, his Yetzer.

Sometimes the word Yetzer is translated as passions, but I do not think that being a hero means being even keeled and calm. Yetzer here, according to many commentators, means negative inclination as in the Yetzer HaRah, but it doesn’t say Yetzer HaRah. My interpretation is that this Yetzer is the inclination to do what seems natural or ordinary.

To conquer your Yetzer means to be extraordinary, and literally every person has the potential to do this. When we call someone a hero, we are mistaken. Heroes are just people who act in extraordinary ways, but they are just people. Heroes make mistakes like all of us, but they have the ability to seize the moment to extraordinary.

This week, we lost people who acted in heroic ways; they died as heroes. I read an article that Yaniv and Michelle Cohen sent about the life of Efrat Cohen who died in the fire in Israel last week. Efrat worked in the Neve Tirza Women’s Prison as an educational officer. Efrat’s mother said, “When we visited her at her work, we saw how much she was loved, as the women their were always hugging her and showing their appreciation for her. Efrat always told us not to judge the prisoners and that if they had been born under different circumstances, they might not have ended up in jail. The prisoners loved her and she loved them and cared for them all the time.”

Some of the prisoners wrote, “Some women even wrote a joint letter to Efrat: “For us you were a shoulder to rest on, an amazing, loving woman. You always extended your arm to help us, and embraced us warmly. Now you’ve become an angel that looks down on us, we will pray that you are resting in peace. We will always remember what you did for us. We will remember you forever. “

When we think of prison guards, one would think that the natural way to act is to dislike your prisoners and treat them harshly, that is ordinary, but Efrat was just the opposite and gave them the benefit of the doubt. She showed them kindness. Efrat and her follow guards were on their way to rescue prisoners when they were engulfed by the flames. Elad Riban was a high school student from Haifa, an only child.  Elad and other classmates took part in “Fire Scouts,” a volunteer program of community service which helps the Fire Department, including weekly training exercises.   Elad identified fully with the firemen and their task.  When he heard about the fire Thursday he asked his mother to bring his uniform and she drove him to the control center.  He scrambled to find a ride to the Carmel and ran to the burning bus to try to rescue people trapped inside.  The fire caught Elad, too, and he was killed, killed trying to save others.

Elad Riban could have been like any other ordinary 16 year old, only playing sports or playing video games, and yet he cared about the firemen because he volunteered with them. And so he went to help them.

We might say that they died as heroes, but they actually lived as heroes. Their lives were extra-ordinary.

These people lost their lives, but you do not have to lose your life to be hero, but you have to be extraordinary.

Our namesake Judah. He teaches us that we can make mistakes, learn from them, and change. Judah also teaches us that taking the hard route, going against the grain especially when it is hard is how we can be Giborim.

Heroics are a set of behaviors, and it can begin at any time. There are moments everyday where God challenges us to be heroes, all it takes is for us to recognize those times, and act.

Hanukiah: Sign or Symbol?

Parashat Miketz, Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

It is a famous question that the Talmud asks.  What is this holiday?  We ask this because it is confusing. There are so many different takes to why we celebrate this holiday, from the overly Godly to the completely secular.

The Talmud answers with a tale that has stuck with us today:

מאי חנוכה? דתנו רבנן: בכ“ה בכסליו יומי דחנוכה תמניא אינון, דלא למספד בהון ודלא להתענות בהון. שכשנכנסו יוונים להיכל טמאו כל השמנים שבהיכל, וכשגברה מלכות בית חשמונאי ונצחום, בדקו ולא מצאו אלא פך אחד של שמן שהיה מונח בחותמו של כהן גדול, ולא היה בו אלא להדליק יום אחד, נעשה בו נס והדליקו ממנו שמונה ימים. לשנה אחרת קבעום ועשאום ימים טובים בהלל והודאה.

Hanukah commemorates the jug of oil that lasted for 8 days, the miracle. As we all know, this is just one sliver of the story. In fact, this is the only place where we find the story of the oil. The story does not exist in the Book of Maccabees where we get most of our information about what happened during this time.

Why is that? Many scholars say that the Rabbis were uncomfortable with the Hasmoneans because they had hindsight on their side. The Hasmoneans, who fought against the Greek army and their own brothers who wanted the Jews to become full Greeks, themselves made their own moral comprises that led to their eventual downfall and persecution of Jews such as the Pharisees who later became our Rabbis.

And so our Rabbis do not focus on the Hasmoneans, rather, on God’s role in this miracle. But the miracle and even this explanation is not as simple as it seems. This holiday has one very strong symbol: the Hanukiah. You can see it here on this table – a candelabra with 8 branches, one branch for every day of the holiday, or as we read in the Talmud, one branch for the oil that was never supposed to be.

I recently read about the difference between symbols and signs. Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman wrote, “Words and shapes that elicit easy responses because their meaning does not go deep inside the human psyche are mere SIGNS. SYMBOLS are words, objects, or acts of behavior that suggest some deeper level of meaning.”

In order to show this, I want to share a story that Rabbi Hoffman told titled, Why Jewish Stars Have Six Points

How happy I was that the beautiful morning in May when the president of my student pulpit asked me for the story behind the six-pointed Star of David. Having just finished reading a scholarly monograph on that very subject, I launched a copious explanation of when Jews first started using the star, how they used it, and so on. I told her that Muslims had used it too, and called it the Start of Solomon; that Jews began putting it on their tombstones in the High Middle Ages; that it was taken over by mystics in the 16^th century; and that in modern times, it was chiseled on synagogue walls, primarily because its straight-line design made it easy for stone masons to work with. Churches had crosses; synagogues had stars. The woman who asked the question was impatient with me and quickly shrugged off everything I had to say. “Rabbi,” she retorted, “the Star of David symbolizes the Jewish People. It has six points, you see, so no matter how you stand it up, it will always have two points on which to balance. From such a firm base, it cannot be toppled. Just so, we Jews are firmly entrenched, no matter what history brings us.”

I told you about what scholars say about the Hanukiah and the story of the oil, but that explanation is a sign. And so we must search for the symbol of the Hanukiah, like the woman in our story did with the Star of David. Symbols are more than explanation. Rabbi Hoffman asks, “What does a symbol symbolize?” He writes, “They expect the answer that it symbolizes some particular object and they look for necessary relationships between the symbol and the object. But there is no object! The answer to the question, “What does a symbol symbolize?” Is simply, “It symbolizes.” It evokes memories of moments.

I told you about the Hanukiah as a sign, but what is the Hanukiah as a symbol? Close your eyes. Look at the Hanukiah, and quickly close your eyes. What is the first memory you have, what is the first feeling you have?

For me, I think of family. I think of my family around the Hanukiot in the house I grew up in. Singing the prayers together and singing Ha-Nerot Halalu, the whole thing! Rarely did I think of the meaning of the words, or the theological implications of the song HaNerot Halalu. But the feeling I had was of warmth, of the bond that our family had and the fact that God connects us. I remember the story of my family, and the miracle that we are alive after our family’s suffering during the Shoah.

Some of these symbols are mine alone, but some of them are ours.

As I read our parashah today, Parashat Miketz, I noticed some things that I had never noticed before. Joseph, the next Abbah after Jacob, did not speak about God when he was living in his father’s home. When he shared his dream, he did not mention that God was the source of them, or even God’s name, Elohim. The text states that the Lord was with Joseph when he was a slave in Potiphar’s house, but still, he does not mention God when times are good. But when he is confronted with the choice of being with Potiphar’s wife, he brings up God. Suddenly, he is put in prison and things are again at its darkest, this is when he truly embraces God as the source of the little gifts he has: the ability to interpret dreams. In our parashah, Miketz, Joseph makes up for not mentioning God. In fact, he mentions God almost every time he opens his mouth. Again, God does not talk to him like he spoke to his fathers, and we know that God is with him because the Torah tells us, but Joseph does not know this for sure. And yet, at his darkest moments, he felt a small light in him to keep him going.

Here is where I see the symbol of the Hanukiah for our people, not the sign.

The Sefat Emet once wrote, “When the Temple was standing, it was clear that all life-energy came from God. This is the meaning of [the verse:] “the indwelling of the Shekhinah [in the Temple] was witness that God dwells in Israel.” But even now, after that dwelling-place has been hidden, it can be found by searching with candles. The candles are the mitsvot; we need to seek within our hearts and souls in order to fulfill a mitsvah with all our strength. ….

Especially at this season, when lights were miraculously lit for Israel even though they did not have enough oil, there remains light even now to help us, with the aid of these Chanukah candles, to find that hidden light within. Hiding takes place mainly in the dark; we need the candles’ light to seek and to find….

The miracle of Hanukah is a symbol, it is a feeling, a memory that we all have. It is us and our continued faith in God.  God is the oil that lights us up.  When we look at the Hanukiah, we see ourselves in it.

Rabbi Brad Artson wrote about us, each one of you, as a miracle:

I look at the Jewish People. History knows of no other example of a people who were separated from their land for most of their history, who lacked the power to govern themselves or the stability to control their destiny who nonetheless retained a strong and continuous identity. Yet we did just that. There are no weekly meetings of Edomites in Brooklyn, or of Hittites in Los Angeles. But not a day goes by in which the descendants of ancient Israel do not meet with the express purpose of participating in, and strengthening, that unbroken identity. We not only know we are Jews, we care about it. Jewish creativity continues unabated.

That Jewish creativity began when we viewed our role as being God’s People. Our earliest memories focus on the quest for God. We are not unique in the quality of our art, our cuisine, our architecture, or our music. Only in our spirituality. So I link our unique trait of spirit with our unique ability to survive. The fact is that the people who claim to be God’s chosen have survived despite all the overwhelming odds to the contrary.

Mai Hanukah? What is Hanukah?  Hanukah is a time when for 8 days we realize our full potential and the miracles that we are.  It is the time to answers doubters, when people tell us that we Jews cannot do something, we say, yes we can.

In the darkest times, God shows us the light, and in turn, we show the light to the rest of the world as an Or LaGoyim.

Thanksgiving and Peace?

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Vayeshev 2010/5771

When many of us think about Thanksgiving, we often think about the turkey, mashed potatoes, football, and another annual activity: the family fights. I read an interesting article in the Huffington Post about an alternative Thanksgiving holiday. Instead of being with family, take a destination holiday!

“Thanksgiving on a tropical isle? Christmas Eve watching fireworks over the Caribbean? At a ski lodge in front of a fireplace on New Year’s Day? Spending the holidays relaxing instead of stressed? Sound good to you? Yes!!

As the holiday season begins, the tension over family gatherings begins to mount. Husbands and wives get into unnecessary arguments over the upcoming get-together at a relative’s house or the stress of having relatives come to their own home for the festivities. Memories of past holidays and “slights and fights” resurface.

Add to this mixture the emotional and physical exhaustion that accompanies it and you have the ingredients for a great holiday recipe — the recipe for disaster.”

The article goes on to give you tips on how to cancel your plans with your family.

Messy family dynamics are not a new thing. Children resenting each other, parents choosing one child over another, and more, are as old as the Torah.

The book of Genesis centers around family dynamics, especially the dynamics of brothers. We have the story of Cain and Abel, where one brother kills another out of jealousy, Isaac and Ishmael, where one brother is banished from the family, Jacob and Esau, where one brother tricks the other and takes his birthright. In all these cases, the brothers never fully repair their relationships and work together.

There is a famous adage, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” It turns out, it is actually true. Michael Norton, a social psychologists performed an experiment and found the following, “The results showed that, contrary to their expectations, the more information people had about others the less they liked them.” This study was done with friends, and as your parent probably told you at some point in your life, “you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family.”

And so we continue on with this theme in our parashah. We have a the famous fight between Josef and his brothers, and it all seemed to start with this line:

Genesis 37:4

(ד) וַיִּרְאוּ אֶחָיו כִּי אֹתוֹ אָהַב אֲבִיהֶם מִכָּל אֶחָיו וַיִּשְׂנְאוּ אֹתוֹ וְלֹא יָכְלוּ דַּבְּרוֹ לְשָׁלֹם:

“And his brothers saw that their father loved him (Joseph) more than the brothers, and they hated him and they could not talk with him in peace.”

(ד) ולא יכלו דברו לשלום - מתוך גנותם למדנו שבחם, שלא דברו אחת בפה ואחת בלב:

Rashi tells us why they could not talk with him in peace.

Out of this remark of disparagement of them we learn their praise, that they did not speak one thing with their mouth, and another in their heart.

Rashi takes this comment from a midrash which gives this message: make sure your actions reflect your feelings.

As I read this midrash, I thought about another idea that I heard about called Radical Honesty.

Radical Honesty is a technique and self improvement program developed by Dr. Brad Blanton that challenges people to give up their addiction to lying. It is characterized as direct communication that leads to intimacy in relationships so couples, families, communities, nations can powerfully create their future together.

The practice is kind of like this.  Let’s say you are acquaintances with someone, but the truth is, you don’t like them because you think they are self-centered, or arrogant, or fill in the blank.  Instead of making small talk with them, you would go up to the person and say, “the truth is, I don’t really like you.  I think you are an arrogant person.”  The hope is that this will break certain social barriers to lead you to talk these issues out leading to a renewed friendship.

It seems like Rashi and Dr. Blanton put complete honesty over another very important value: Shalom, peace.

But to counter Rashi, I want to quote Rashi himself. In a previous story in Genesis, we read about Sarah and Abraham. After the angels visit Abraham in his tent, God tells Abraham that his wife Sarah will give birth to a child. The problem is that Sarah is 90, and he is 100. The Torah tells us that Sarah laughed to herself and said, “Am I to have enjoyment–with my husband so old?”

But God changes her words when he speaks Abraham. God understands that Abraham would be hurt by Sarah’s assertion that Abraham is too old to father a child.  So God tells Abraham that Sarah referred, instead, to her own age. “Shall I in truth bear a child, old as I am?”

God is willing to ignore questions of integrity in order to preserve Abraham’s dignity and the peace between husband and wife.

And so Rashi explains this verse in the following way: “Scripture altered her statement in the interests of peace.” Mip’nei darkhei shalom.

So here, Rashi states that it is acceptable for your actions not to reflect your feelings.

Important as it is to tell the truth, honesty retains its preeminence because it helps human beings live together in peace.  On occasion, however, radical honesty can damage a relationship and in that instance, it is more important to protect a person’s feelings, self-worth and love.

The Mishnah, tells us that on her wedding day, a bride is to be told that she is beautiful, regardless of how she really looks.  Why?  Mip’nei darkhei shalom, for the sake of peace.

So we return to our parashah, taking note that the same word, Shalom, is used in our case.

ד) וַיִּרְאוּ אֶחָיו כִּי אֹתוֹ אָהַב אֲבִיהֶם מִכָּל אֶחָיו וַיִּשְׂנְאוּ אֹתוֹ וְלֹא יָכְלוּ דַּבְּרוֹ לְשָׁלֹם:

“And his brothers saw that their father loved him (Joseph) more than the brothers, and they hated him and they could not talk with him in peace.”

Our tradition states that the brothers had every reason to be angry with Joseph. Joseph used to bring evil reports of his brothers to his father, and his dreams of his brothers bowing to their younger brother did not help either.

But, rather than seeking peace with their brother, they choose to act on their feelings. In this case, their actions lead to the selling of their brother into slavery and they destroy their father in the process.

Thankfully, midrash is not law. There are other ways to act, and sometimes, it isn’t always to speak your mind to your family. When we are mad at each other, we do not act brutally honest with each other, nor should we avoid each other by banishing ourselves to a tropical destination.

Going to the Bahamas for Thanksgiving without your family might be easy, and you may come back with a tan, but it isn’t Thanksgiving.

Family is messy, it isn’t easy. The book of Genesis centers around these relationships and mirrors our lives no matter when we live.

But we shouldn’t withdraw from family and take the easy way out. We have to engage with family, and let our families test us.

Ultimately, the more we remove ourselves, the more we are alone. God said to Adam, before he had a wife, and children, “It’s not good for man to be alone.” We may think we dread our meals together, but the worse position is to be alone without family.

And so I challenge you all during these holiday times to enter the lions den. When you are with your family, even though you might resent some of them, always seek peace. Even though you think you should tell them like it is, remember that there is a cost to acting on your emotions.

Follow the direction of another brother, Aaron, Moses’s brother. Be a Rodeph Shalom, someone who chases peace, and not someone who runs away from the potential of peace.

Toledot: Sharing the Blessing

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

All of us stand here yet again, witnesses to a clash of two great powers, two great parties, that seem so different. It seems like a clear choice between the two, you cannot mistake one for the other. We read in our parashah once again as we do every year about two nations that emerge to lead, and every two years, we go through the same ritual of our elections. Our Torah states:

But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, “If so, why do I exist?” She went to inquire of the Lord, and the Lord answered her,“Two nations are in your womb, Two separate peoples shall issue from your body; One people shall be mightier than the other, And the older shall serve the younger.”

As Americans, we are clearly one people, so how is this story similar to ours? As the years go on, increasingly we see ourselves as either Red or Blue; and every time we think we are past that, we revert back.

Rabbi Irwin Kula wrote about this past weeks elections:

Grab your partner do si do. The results are in. Bush turned the country to the left and Obama has now turned the country to the right. Feels like politics has become a square dance of discontent swinging to the right, to our left and then to our right seemingly not seriously dealing with any of the challenging issues facing the country. We all know the steps — in political language the predictable spin — of this dance….

And so this year we read about the story of Jacob and Esau. In our story, the mother, Rebecca conspires with Jacob for him to claim the elusive birthright. Her goal is for the younger to be given the power over the older, just like God told her. In our story, the smaller party overcomes the odds and takes over. We know the story of Jacob and Esau and the lentil soup. In this story, Esau sold the birthright to Jacob, making him the first born. But this wasn’t enough to secure what they really both wanted: the blessing of their father Issac.

There is something that is very interesting that we rarely think about: why not bless both of them?

The Malbim, a famous 17^th Century Rabbi, asked this very question: Why was Isaac so insistent on blessing Esau? Did he not know that Esau was a man of the field and Jacob a simple man? Furthermore, could he not have blessed both equally?

This is a very interesting concept that leads us to further questions. We know what happens in the end, Isaac gives out two blessings, but would he had given Jacob a blessing had he blessed Esau first?

Let’s read the exchange between Isaac and Esau:

27:33 – 38

33Isaac was seized with very violent trembling. “Who was it then,” he demanded, “that hunted game and brought it to me? Moreover, I ate of it before you came, and I blessed him; now he must remain blessed!” 34When Esau heard his father’s words, he burst into wild and bitter sobbing, and said to his father, “Bless me too, Father!”35But he answered, “Your brother came with guile and took away your blessing.” 36[Esau] said, “Was he, then, named Jacob that he might supplant me these two times? First he took away my birthright and now he has taken away my blessing!” And he added, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?” 37Isaac answered, saying to Esau, “But I have made him master over you: I have given him all his brothers for servants, and sustained him with grain and wine. What, then, can I still do for you, my son?” 38And Esau said to his father, “Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too, Father!” And Esau wept aloud.

Interestingly enough, Isaac does bless him.

And here we see how Isaac is different than his father Avraham and how he acted as a father.

Genesis 17:18 – 20

18And Abraham said to God, “O that Ishmael might live by Your favor!” 19God said, “Nevertheless, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac; and I will maintain My covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring to come. 20As for Ishmael, I have heeded you. I hereby bless him. I will make him fertile and exceedingly numerous. He shall be the father of twelve chieftains, and I will make of him a great nation. 21But My covenant I will maintain with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this season next year.”22And when He was done speaking with him, God was gone from Abraham.

In this case, Avraham made God make the choice, but here, perhaps Isaac saw things from the other side. Isaac received the blessing, even though he was not the first born. How must Ishmael have felt by being passed over? Unfortunately, we do not here Ishmael’s voice, but we hear the voice of the defeated through Esau.

Isaac could not have blessed both of them equally for various reasons. The Rabbis point out that Esau took a Hittite wife which the text states led to, “a bitterness of spirit unto Isaac and to Rebecca.” Esau’s behavior led to his downfall, but Isaac still felt that he should receive a blessing.

In the end, both sides were blessed, and this is important to note.

And one thing that is also very interesting is that they are both fighting over a blessing, and neither knows what they are fighting over.

And in our case, both parties too want the same thing: the blessing. We often focus on the end of the blessings, that one will be a master, and one a servent. It is true that in Jacob’s blessing, he is promised that his brother will bow to him, and Esau is told that he will serve his brother, but Esau is also promised that he will break this yoke of control.

In the end, I think the most important part of the blessing, the first part of the blessing and the part of each blessing that will not be taken back in the future is the promise of sustenance and success for all.

Jacob is told, “May God give you of the dew of the heaven and the fat of the earth, abundance of new grain and wine.

Esau is told, “See, your abode shall enjoy the fat of the earth and the dew of the heaven above.”

As we turn from one brother breaking the yoke of another, and the promise that they will pay their brother back, we often forget one thing: they are brothers.

Jacob and Esau had to separate after this incident, but eventually, after many travels and experiences, they came back together and made up.

But more than forgetting that they are brothers, perhaps our leaders forget the first part of the blessing: that our people should enjoy sustenance and prosperity for the future.

In the end, Isaac righted the wrong of his father Avraham and how he treated his children. Isaac did not wait for God to bless his sons, rather, he blessed them both, and in a way, he blessed them equally that they should be successful in life.

As voters in this country, we have played the role of Isaac. Each side, Jacob and Esau, was waiting for their blessing, but like Isaac, we made the choice to bless both sides. In the end, the success of our country will be based on shared blessing.

Rabbi Kula used the analogy of the square dance for this election which had led us to more shared control of government, and ended his article by saying: Square dancing requires adjustment to changing partners as we move round and round. Maybe gridlock is the necessary space in which we need to learn to dance with different partners trying to understand how they move and how we can move best with them.

Now is the time where we start dancing together. We have to learn from each other and realize that all sides want the best for this country, we just have different ways of getting their.

And so I hope for all of us that as Jacob was told, “May God give us of the dew of the heaven and the fat of the earth, abundance of new grain and wine.

And Esau is told, “See, your abode shall enjoy the fat of the earth and the dew of the heaven above.”

Let us come together and work toward the greater blessings that we have been promised as citizens of this great nation. To ensure that all people are treated as equals, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Chayei Sarah – Prayer, Doubt, and Conversation

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum

In our Theology 101 class, we have something called a Doubt Box. In this box, we have a couple key phrases such as, “most of the time, some of the time, all of the time….” and you fill in your own doubt.

For our class, and the first one I picked up was great – “Most of the time I doubt the personal connection to God some people express.”

Here’s another one, “Sometimes I am not sure that God was listening to me.”

The truth is, Jews don’t do the best job of speaking about God or to God. Yes, we daven, we say these words, but have you ever wondered – even if I have something to say, why would the God who created the universe listen to little old me?

Furthermore, how could a God this powerful listen to each individual? If God does not listen, then should I pour my heart out?

When we think of worship in Judaism, especially in the Bible, the first thing we think of is the idea of sacrifices. Sacrifice in our tradition is called Avodah or as we call it, service. Avodah is very important – in fact, there are books of the Bible dedicated to the intricacies of this ancient worship. Our Rabbis did not forget about this worship even after it ceased as we read in the Mishnah. Avodah is rigid – there are certain rules to it that must be abided and certain times of the day when these acts were performed. We don’t engage in these acts anymore, but this rigidity has transferred to our synagogues and our current form of worship. We have a printed siddur, prayer book, which contains the words which we say in their proper order. We listen to the words of the Torah and Haftarah readings that do not change year after year. In a way, this can be very passive:

How many of us actually and truly communicate with God at shul? It seems like we have no model for this behavior. It doesn’t seem very Jewish, but we can learn from others. So today, I want us to begin by learning from a non-Jew who is in our Torah portion: Eliezer.

The first actual prayer that is listed in the Torah is by Eleizer

Eliezer becomes our teacher: In verse 12-14, Eliezer prays to God, “O Lord, God of my master Abraham, grant me good fortune this day, and deal graciously with my master Abraham: Here I stand by the spring as the daughters of the townsmen come out to draw water; let the maiden to whom I say, “Please lower your jar that I may drink,’ and who replies, ‘Drink, and I will also water your camels’ – let her be the one whom You have decreed for Your servant Isaac. Thereby shall I know that You have dealt graciously with my master.” (24:12)

He understands the gravity of this moment. His master, Avraham, sends him to find a mate for his son, Isaac. Eliezer has the hopes and dreams of an entire people in his hands, and he has to make the choice, he cannot bring Isaac with him. And so he turns inward and upward by saying a personal prayer, the first personal prayer in the entire Torah.

Nahum Sarna wrote, “The prayer is of interest because it is a “prayer of the heart,” uttered spontaneously and without formality. It implies a concept of the individual as a religious unit in his own right, as distinct from the community. Individual, direct contact with God and an understanding of God as approachable are prominent motifs in the religion of Israel. They find expression for the first time in the simple, pious prayer of the servant.”

I believe that there is something significant in this expression. Eliezer, a servant, teaches us that we can approach God as individuals.

How many of us are sent on significant tasks? Did Eliezer know that Isaac’s offspring would be a great people that would be alive thousands of years later? Probably not, but he knew that it was something great. How many of us need to pour our hearts out like Eliezer, when we are faced with our own challenges; and we have many. The pressures of raising children, sustaining marriages and family relationships, pursuing careers that test us everyday, and along with all that, being true to our tradition and our faith.

When Eliezer says these words, when he cries out to God to listen to him, does God answer? It can be interpreted that God does answer Eliezer, but I do not think that the prayer is the reason why Rebecca came into his life. The prayer reveals something about our nature. Do we ask God for things or call out to God in the hope that these things will come true? And if they don’t, does that mean that God does not listen to us? And if God does not listen to us, is there a God? By asking for things, by communicating with God, we open ourselves us to Doubt.

Doubt is a good thing, it helps us grow and develop a dynamic relationship with God. Your relationship to God must by dynamic in order for it to be healthy. It will change just like your life changes, but there must be consistency built in. This is why we have a fixed calendar, and fixed prayers. It offers us order in an every changing reality.

At the end of our petitions, we ask God, Shema Kolenu – hear our voices – hear it, but you have the power to act upon it. Only you know what really should happen, so we ask for these things…

Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers – song by Garth Brooks

Just the other night a hometown football game
My wife and I ran into my old high school flame
And as I introduced them the past came back to me
And I couldn’t help but think of the way things used to be

She was the one that I’d wanted for all times
And each night I’d spend prayin’ that God would make her mine
And if he’d only grant me this wish I wished back then
I’d never ask for anything again

CHORUS:
Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers
Remember when you’re talkin’ to the man upstairs
That just because he doesn’t answer doesn’t mean he don’t care
Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers

She wasn’t quite the angel that I remembered in my dreams
And I could tell that time had changed me
Inn her eyes too it seemed
We tried to talk about the old days
There wasn’t much we could recall
I guess the Lord knows what he’s doin’ after all

And as she walked away and I looked at my wife
And then and there I thanked the good Lord
For the gifts in my life

Just because God said no, does not mean that God does not listen, and it does not mean that we cannot and should not petition. But it is more than petitioning, it is conversing.

As we have seen, Eliezer is an important character. In chapter 24 verse 34 of our parashah, Eliezer says, “I am Abraham’s servant,” which constitutes the exact middle verse of the chapter. This shows us his role, Eliezer is the connector between generations, between Abraham and Isaac. And Isaac continues the trend of prayer.

At the end of the parashah, we see another example of prayer.

(סג) וַיֵּצֵא יִצְחָק לָשׂוּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶה לִפְנוֹת עָרֶב וַיִּשָּׂא עֵינָיו וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה גְמַלִּים בָּאִים:

63And Isaac went out ”לָשׂוּחַ“ in the field toward evening and, looking up, he saw camels approaching.

What does this word mean? Some say it is meditating. Rashi says that this word means to converse, but he writes, “this language means ‘prayer’. The Talmud states in regards to Yitzhak, “ein Siha, ela tefilla” which could be translated as ‘conversation is a form of prayer’.

It is a give and take, a conversation between heaven and earth. When you pray, you open yourself up to the reality of another person or being. By entering into the conversation with God, we trying to understand life from God’s perspective, not just our own. This conversation that Isaac had became the basis for our Minha service, our fixed prayer in the afternoon.

Before the Amidah, this communal prayer where we pray for the needs of our people and our world during the week, and we thank God for the amazing miracles of our world on Shabbat, there are words which we are supposed to whisper. We never say these words with a loud voice, rather, they are to be said with in a hushed tone, each person to themselves, but they must be said out loud.

Adonai Sefetai Tiftach U’Fi Yagid Tehilatechah – Adonai open my lips that my mouth may declare your praise.

We are asking God to open our mouths, as if we cannot do it ourselves.

I ask again, how many of us pray on our own without being asked? How many of us look upward and inward in troubling times like Eliezer reach out? How about on a daily basis?

Prayer is not easy.

These are the words of the Psalmist, open our mouths, help us do something that is so hard for us to do. Help us enter into conversation with you, no matter how much doubt we have, no matter how hard it is, help us.

Today, I ask God to help us open our mouths so we can start the conversation. Help us on a daily basis, help us take the steps to learn how to pray. Help us add our own selves to the prayers, help us to add something new to every prayer like our Rabbis have commanded us to do.

Help us realize that conversation is prayer.

Vayera 2010

The Jewish Way of Welcoming

Parashat Va’yera 2010/5771

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

At a recent Board of Rabbis meeting, one of the Rabbis lamented a cliché that is going around. Every shul claims to be more welcoming than the next. One shul even had a high holiday advertisement: If you were not welcomed as you came into our service, your tickets are free!

What do you think of that advertisement? In fact, almost every high holiday advertisement contained the adjectives, “warm and welcoming”. It’s funny, but often times, if you have to stress that you are a welcoming place, it might mean that this is a difficulty for your congregation. And so synagogues now have ushers who bring people to seats, and they have trained greeters who hand you a siddur with a smile and say hello. But is this the extent of welcoming?

But what does it mean to truly welcome others in the Jewish way?

This parashah, Vayera, has many core stories. The parashah begins with the story of Avraham sitting in his tent and seeing three angels come in the heat of the day.

As you read today, there is great beauty in this account. Avaraham rushes to cook these unknown guests food. The welcoming is a family affair, and has his whole family involved in the process. But directly after this beautiful story, we see where these angels of God are going: to Sodom and Gemorah.

The story of Sodom and Gemorah is famous in history as being the most evil places on earth. God states out loud that he must destroy these cities and these people. Avraham argues with God against sweeping away the innocent with the guilty, but they cannot find even 10 innocent people to save the entire city.

The Torah does not explicitly state what the sins of these people were.

Our prophets and Rabbis have told us what went on – crimes of sexual nature

But as we look at the text of the Torah, we see some interesting clues. In Genesis 19:9, we read these words, “We will deal worse with you than with them (the guests)…and they (the residents of Sodom) approached to break down the door.” The Talmud states, “If a poor man happened to come there (to Sodom), every resident gave him a denar, upon which he wrote his name, but no bread was given him. When he died, each came and took back his. They made this agreement amongst themselves: whoever invites a man [a stranger] to a feast shall be stripped of his garment.” (Sanhedrin 109b)

It seems that the crime of Sodom was actually inhospitality.

We often forget something because we work so hard to be hospitable. Being hospitable is a choice, an active choice that we make in behavior, but inhospitality is also a choice in behavior. When we invite people into a shul, or give them a siddur, or let them sit in our Makom Kavuah (our set seats), or invite them into our home, we give something up.

Pirkei Avot 5:13 talks this idea of sharing:

משנה י
[ט] ארבע מדות באדם האומר שלי שלי ושלך שלך זו מדה בינונית ויש אומרים זו מדת סדום שלי שלך ושלך שלי עם הארץ שלי שלך ושלך שלך חסיד שלי שלי ושלך שלי רשע:

13. There are four types among men:

He who says, “What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours”–this is the common type , though some say that this is the type of Sodom.

He who says, “What is mine is yours and what is yours is mine”–he is an ignorant man.

He who says, “What is mine is yours and what is yours is thine own”–he is a saintly man.

And he who says, “What is yours is mine, and what is mine is mine”–he is a wicked man.

The first behavior does not seem wicked at all, and the text rightly says that it is a common way of thinking, in Hebrew, בינונית, means in the middle, not hot or cold – parve. בינונית is easy. There’s no sharing, you stay in your box, I’ll stay in mine. We are very much used to this behavior, that’s why it is called normal. But the text points out that some say it is the quality of Sodom. This quality is codified indifference to the plight of others.

And so we have one story, where our forefather practices radical hospitality, and the next story, where the community practices radical inhospitality.

Avraham possesses practically nothing and sits by his tent, but the inhabitants of Sodom dwell in luxury inside their homes. Avraham welcomes in three travelers, but the Sodomites refuse to allow these same guests and others to sleep overnight. Sarah, Avaraham’s wife immediately responds to the needs of the travelers, but Lots wife looks back at Sodom as they leave apparently being unable to separate herself from everything that Sodom represents.

In both cases, it takes active behavior to be both hospitable or inhospitable, even though we don’t realize it, and both acts have consequences. When we are hospitable and inhospitable, what kind of society are we creating?

One of our congregants said that beauty of Shabbat Across CSK was that they invited people over who they normally would not have. This opportunity allowed them to get out of their comfort zone. I am used to being a host now, but at one time in my life, I was a guest.

I will never forget one Shabbat I had in Israel. I was 22 at the time, no family, and few friends. I came to Israel with a suit case, got a roommate who I didn’t know, and my clothes were still in a duffle bag in my tiny room.

One of my first Shabbatot was a little lonely because I had no place for dinner. At the front of the room, at Shirah Chadashah, a woman said, if you would like a place for a shabbat meal, or you would like to host one, please come forward. And so after services, I took a big leap. I was not poor, I had food, but I didn’t have people to enjoy the food with. So I went to her, and she matched me with an older couple who were having people over. The man of the house was a Conservative Rabbi who made aliyah who was now a real estate agent. I went to his home, not knowing him or his family with some others, and we dined together. I honestly do not remember his name, or even what part of Jerusalem he lived in; but I remember the warmth and kindness that they showed this me, a lonely student who was looking to share a meal.

I never repaid this person directly. As hosts, we may not always be re-paid. We may not get an invite to this person’s home for various reasons; but, you do a great mitzvah, and as our tradition says, mitzvah gorreret mitzvah, one mitzvah causes another.

I repaid this Rabbi turned real estate agent by inviting others who did not have a place to my table. I learned how to share my bread with those who were not fortunate enough to have a Shabbat table of their own. And I brought this lesson to this program.

Shabbat Across CSK has an implicit message: hospitality is not just about saying hi in shul, but it is a philosophy of life that is a part of Judaism. From helping our neighbors find the page in their siddurim, to inviting people to a meal and getting to know them.

We are having another Shabbat Across CSK in February, but do not hesitate to have a Shabbat meal with a congregant you do not know.

We make choices in our communities about how we share the gifts that we have, but never forget that whether we open up our homes to those who we do not know or whether we just shake their hand and let them leave is also a choice.

These choices we make have real implications on the communities and societies that we build. Shabbat Across CSK is an attempt to build a certain type of community.

He who says, “What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours”–this is the common type , though some say that this is the type of Sodom.  He who says, “What is mine is yours and what is yours is yours”–he is a saintly man.

You can choose to be like Avraham, or you can choose to be like Sodom. You can choose to give of yourself, whether your food or a place in your home and not expect anything in return, or you can stick to yourselves.

You can choose to be extraordinary, or you can choose to be ordinary.

My hope you choose to be like Avraham, to be special, and to create a community of true hospitality.

A People Of “The Land” Parashat Lech Lecha 5771/2010

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

We are often called the People of the Book. For thousands of years, we have been identified with the Bible, a people who have been connected with a story. We lived for a time in the land, but ironically, we have lived outside of the land which we are called: Israel, for over 2,500 years. For the last 2,500, the majority of our people have lived outside of the Land of Israel.

When we say that we are the People of the Book, there is a double meaning in it. Until our recent history, we have literally been a people of the book. We experienced God and our faith through books. In the Diaspora, Jews developed the Babylonian Talmud, our law codes, and much of our great literature.

But books are pieces of paper that contain words. Words are real, but you cannot touch words, you cannot smell words, you cannot taste words.

We often forget that just as much as we are the book of the Book, we are also, if not more so, the people of the Land, the Land of Israel.

Who has stepped foot in the land of Israel. We can spend hours talking about what your experience was like, and I want you to share those experiences at your Shabbat lunch tables. I remember my visits to Israel as a child, especially when my grandfather took us for a b’nai mitzvah gift. My most vivid memory and something that gets me every time I go to Israel are the bill boards. The bill boards are written in Hebrew, the language that many of us take for granted from our Hebrew school days. I remember specifically being moved by seeing a billboard for Israeli coffee, and the words on the bill board said, “Shannah Tovah – Happy New Year.” I also noticed that the Coca Cola bottles around Rosh Hashanah, not in December, but in September, say Happy New Year. I remember the smells of the pastries in the bakeries all around the city of Netanya where my grandfather has an apartment. I remember how the sand feels on the beach, the sounds of the music and the people dancing on Saturday night after Shabbat in the center of the town. It wasn’t only the language, but it was our people and our faith alive in one place.

For 2,500 years, we read about the land, we made laws about it, we dreamed about it. Some of us lived there, although very few, in fact, few people lived there at all. It was a land that existed in our dreams, Yerushalayim shel Ma’alah. But we have entered a new time, Reishit Tzmichat Geuloytenu (the beginning of the time of our redemption): the establishment of an independent and Jewish state of Israel. Being a people of the land, this message is important now more than ever.

Today I want to begin with the first commentary that Rashi gave in the Torah which could be found at the beginning of the our first book of the Torah, Bereshit.

רש“י בראשית פרק א פסוק א

Rabbi Issac said: The Torah, which is the book of laws, should have begun with the verse; this month shall be unto you the first of the months, which is the first commandment given to Israel (parashat Bo). What then is the reason that it begins with the creation? Should the nations of the world say to Israel, “You are robbers because you took unto yourselves the lands of the seven nations of Canaan.” They (Israel) may reply to them, “The whole world belongs to the Kadosh Baruch Hu, the Holy One Blessed Be He. He gave it to whom He pleased, and according to His Will, He took it (the land) from them and gave it to us.”

What is so interesting about this commentary is when it was written. Rashi, a Medieval scholar, was alive during the times of the crusades. He did not have television or newspapers, so I do not know if he was aware of what was actually occurring in the world. This land that he and our people love so much, was being fought over by two other faiths: Christianity and Islam. We, the Jewish people, were a distant third in ownership of the land according to everyone else. To those other peoples, we had no legitimate stake in the land.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So why did he write this commentary? I think he wrote it, because of Israel, the land, is our story. As much as the written words of the Torah define our identities, so too does the land define us, and we define it.

Our story actually begins this week with our parashah: Lech Lecha.

God tells Avram, “Go-you forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

Avram and his relatives had a life in Haran and in Ur Casdeem, but he is told to leave it all behind and make a new home. This journey is more than just a move from one physical place to another. In verse 31, we read about Avram’s father, Terah, who took his family from Ur Casdeem with the intension of going to the land of Canaan. Alas, they did not make it and they settled in a place called Haran. And so the story could have ended in Haran for Avram. Or maybe he could have continued on his own to the land that his father wanted to go to: Canaan. But would the story have ended in the same way without the command from God? Would Avram has realized that living in the land was much more than building a house for himself and his family, but it would be building a permanent home for the Jewish people?

The journey that Avram and his family took was not just a shift in from one physical place to another, but also a shift in spirit and destiny. This land that he is about to make his new home will become the center of our people, where our very identities will develop, and where we will become who we were destined to be.

From this soil, the judges and the house of David will guide the Jewish people. From the center of Jerusalem, King Solomon will erect our holy Temple where we worshipped God through animal sacrifice for a thousand years. On this site the Maccabees rededicated the Temple. On this land, our holy Bible was compiled; where our prophets spoke, and where the psalms were composed and chanted. Years later, our Mishnah and our midrash, the core text of Rabbinic Judaism was created. It was on that soil that the Beit Midrash, the school house, and the Beit Knesset, the synagogue, was born. We developed and maintained our calendar in this land.

When Avram came to the land, it had the potential of holiness; but as he lived on the land, had his many experiences, and created a life – it eventually became holy land, and so did he. Eventually, Avram’s name changes to Avraham. But it took time to get this name, and it took experience.

We learn in the Talmud that the holiness of the land of Israel is equal to the holiness of the people of Israel. It took time and experience to develop this holiness, to turn Canaan into Israel, and to turn a family from Ur Casdeem and Haran into a nation called Israel.

And now, we have a gift. As I remember my experiences in Israel, I realize how lucky I have been in my life to have developed a real relationship with Israel. Not one based on prayer and study alone, but one based on experience. But it is not just the land, it is the country itself, and the fact that the flag that flies over this country has a Magen David, a shield of David, and two blue stripes surrounded by white, the color of a talit – Kahol V’Lavan – Blue and White, as the song famously says, these are my colors.

The hope of two thousand, to be a free nation in our own land, a Jewish nation, is here.

In our parashah, God instructs Avraham, “(Kum)Up, walk about the land, through its length and its breadth, for I give it to you.” (13:17) Just as God commanded Avraham, so He commands us.

We have a responsibility to make a home in Israel. We have to look at ourselves as having a physical home, and a spiritual home. The Midrash states, “If one walks in a field, whether along its length or its breadth, one acquires it.”

We must rise and walk through the land…

When we walk the land, we acquire it.

I urge you all to do something. Visit Israel, take a trip with us, or on your own, but make that trip, and keep on visiting. Send your children on trips, let them spend a year of study in Israel.

As you visit, take comfort in knowing that this land is our Jewish homeland, and should always known as the Jewish state.

And while you are here, I want you to make sure that everyone knows that Israel is our Jewish homeland. As Jews, we always strive for peace, and many things are negotiable. But, as Rashi stated, certain facts are not negotiable:

“The whole world belongs to the Kadosh Baruch Hu, the Holy One Blessed Be He. He gave it to whom He pleased, and according to His Will, He took it (the land) from them and gave it to us.”

There is only one place that became holy because of us, and we became holy because of it. Let us always fight for this.

“Honey. Something terrible is happening. I don’t think I’m going to make it. I love you. Take care of the children.”

“Hey Jules. It’s Brian. I’m on the plane and it’s hijacked and it doesn’t look good. I just wanted to let you know that I love you, and I hope to see you again. If I don’t, please have fun in life, and live life the best you can. Know that I love you, and no matter what, I’ll see you again.”

I love you a thousand times over and over. I love and need you. Whatever decisions you make in your life, I need you to be happy, and I will respect any decisions you make.”

We are fortunate enough to live in an age where almost everyone has cell phones, and what I read you I just read were a couple of transcripts, sacred words, words of goodbye from victims of 9/11.

Today is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, named for the first line from the Haftarah, Shuv, or return. Implicit in its name is the concept of Tesuvah, something we have spoken a lot about in the last week.

But today is also the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the worst terrorist attack on American soil. The memories of that day will always be etched in our minds. Close your eyes and remember where you were. As you close your eyes, I am sure that you see the scene of the planes crashing into the towers, and the towers falling.

Some of us may have known people who were lost on that day, and I am sure that it got us all thinking about the fragility of life. This is the time of the year when these themes come to light.

It is fitting that this week’s parashah gives us the last words of Moshe to the people. Moshe knows that he is about to die, and so he gives his people one last poem.

“Give Ear, O heavens, let me speak; Let the earth hear the words I utter! May my discourse come down as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, Like showers Like droplets on the grass” (Deuteronomy 32:1-2).

The questions that come to mind as we read this parashah are:

Who will be around after I die? Who will tell my story? Who will assure my legacy?

Moses is about to die and wants to impart his final lesson to the people. The question of who will pass on this tradition and assure Moses’ legacy is clearly on Moses’ mind. He therefore, calls on heaven and earth to listen to his charge to the people since they will be around for all time to attest to Moses’ message.

Through this prologue, Moses is assuring that his message is heard and heeded even after he dies.  Moses is just like any one of us who wonders what we will leave behind and what his enduring legacy will be.

Moshe is looked at in some ways as a tragic character. He had the extreme burden of leading a stiff necked people. His life cost him his family as well, and at the end of his long journey to the promised land, he is not allowed in. Rather, he can only see what his people will experience.

But Moshe had something that many people do not have: the opportunity and time.

Rabbi Eliezer famously said: Shuv yom echad lifnei mitatach.

Repent one day before you die. (Pirkei Avot 2:15)

That’s a great idea, but who knows the day they are going to die? It looks like only Moshe had that gift, the reason why he was so lucky.

So a commentary to this verse says the following:

A person should repent every day, lest he die tomorrow (Avot D’Rabbi Natan Chapter 15). But what does it mean to repent? The word repent has many Christian overtones (unfortunately, I often think about the Spanish Inquisition), but to do tesuvah means something else.

Shuv means to return from Chet (sin), to return to a path from which you went astray.

I heard a great analogy from Dr. Ron Woflson, a Jewish writer, who gave the analogy of an archery range. The archer sets an arrow in the bow, lines it up, and lets it go, hoping to hit the bull’s eye. Occasionally, everything is perfect and arrow pierces the center of the target. More often than not, the archer “misses the mark.” The archer tries again, this time, adjusting technique, straightening the aim.

And so when we miss the mark or sin, we have to adjust our technique, straighten our aim, and try again.

How do we this? It takes patience and precision, but we can change, and it all starts with the little things. The little adjustments make a big difference.

A person should do tesuvah (adjust their aim) every day, lest he die tomorrow…

There is always the possibility that, God forbid, we will not see the next morning’s light. That’s why you should start correcting your aim with the small things:

Never go to bed angry with your spouse, partner, or your children, and always kiss them good night.

Ask for forgiveness, and offer forgiveness to those who ask for it – immediately, don’t wait.

If you knew that tomorrow you would die, would you hold the same grudges? What would your messages be?

So on this Shabbat, I want you to ask yourself the following questions in the days leading to Yom Kippur:

What do you want your legacy to be?

How will you see it come to fruition?

These questions will help give you goals for the coming year.

But I also want you to tell your family you love them, let go of grudges that really aren’t important, and work on the small things.

You don’t have to wait until the last moments to do these things, you have the gift of living now, so why not take advantage of it?

Moshe refers to God as a rock in this parashah, the first time we see this in the Torah and it is used three times in 15 verses.

A rock is great imagery and very comforting in times of turmoil. A rock is unchanging, it won’t move no matter how much energy you put into pushing it away. A rock is forever, it was there in the beginning and will be there in the end.

So while you struggle with your shortcomings, please know that the Rock, God, is there for you when you want to come back.

And finally, let us mourn those who fell just 9 years ago, and let us pray for their families who struggle with their losses to this day.

May their names be a blessing to all of us, and may their final words of love teach us what really matters in life. Amen.

Ki Tavo – How To Be A Light Unto the Nations Everyday Of Your Life

Dvar Torah by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh, August 28, 2010

There are many famous chain emails that we send as Jews, and one that I have often read is the list of Jewish Nobel Prize candidates.  In fact, Jewish Nobel Prize winners account for 22% of all winners, and Jews represent 36% of all U.S. recipients.  Keep in mind that Jews make up only .25% of the world population and 1 – 2% of the U.S. population.  We are quite proud of these people that have made a difference in the world and changed humanity for the better.  They have given our world many blessings.

But rarely do I receive the other types of emails.  The emails of Jews who have done bad things and have left the world worse off than when they came into it.  I am sure that you can name a few of these people who have made our lives more difficult especially in the last couple of years.

Our actions have the potential to bring both blessings and curses to our world and to our reputation as Jews, but something we often do not think about is how we affect God through our actions.

Our parashah, Ki Tavo, deals with the reality of living amongst others.  Bnai Israel is about to enter a new land where they will not be alone.  Their actions had a great impact in the wilderness, but amongst non-Jews, they will have an even greater impact.  And so our Torah gives us a list of blessings and curses.  The Torah states the great blessings that we will receive if we follow God’s commandments.  Deuteronomy 28 states:

“Now if you obey the Lord your God, to observe faithfully all His commandments which I enjoin upon you this day, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.  All these blessings shall come upon you and take effect, if you will but heed the word of the Lord your God.”

The Torah goes on to proudly list all the blessings that we will get, and the Torah ends with the connection that others will make between us and God.

⁹The Lord will establish you as His holy people, as He swore to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in His ways. ¹⁰And all the peoples of the earth shall see that the Lord‘s name is proclaimed over you, and they shall stand in fear of you.

When we do a great thing that is praiseworthy, that makes us look good, we also sanctify God, a Kiddush Hashem. Kiddush Hashem is a term that we use for a Jew who give his or her life up for being a Jew, but the essence of this word is the sanctification of God through positive action which brings honor to God’s name.

But there is another side.

The parashah goes on to list a torrent of curses that are so extreme that Jewish law states that the Torah reader must read these lines in a hushed voice.  They are hard words to hear out loud.

There is a term for this that our Rabbis developed called Chillul Hashem, a desecration of God’s name. This term comes from the words in Leviticus 22:32

לב וְלֹא תְחַלְּלוּ, אֶת-שֵׁם קָדְשִׁי, וְנִקְדַּשְׁתִּי, בְּתוֹךְ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל: אֲנִי יי, מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם.

32You shall not profane My holy name, that I may be sanctified in the midst of the Israelite people—I the Lord who sanctify you,

The Tosefta, a Rabbinic work that dates around the time of the Mishnah, defines this term: “Robbery from a non-Jew is more serious than robbery from a Jew because of the desecration of God’s Name (Hillul Hashem).” (Tosefta Bava Kamma 10:15)

The Talmud gives another example of Hillul Hashem when a shopkeeper who gives a lot of credit out to his customers and then collects it all at once. (Kiddushin 40a).

Dr. Meir Tamiri, a seminal figure in Jewish business ethics, writes that Economic misbehavior is one of the most common examples of Hillul Hashem. Spread by modern means of communication and the mass media to an extent unknown before in human history. Thus the desecratory effect of such immoral actions is multiplied. Jews involved in fraudulent bankruptcy, white collar crime, tax evasion, economic exploitation in whatever form, or Social Security fraud automatically contribute to the defamation of His Holy Name.

This was written in his book, Al Chet: Sins of the Marketplace, published in 1962 (if he only knew what would happen in the future).

It is interesting that the overwhelming majority of our confessions on Yom Kippur are in the plural: Al Chet SheCHATANU lefanecha, for the sins that WE have sinned before You…

When we sin in public, not only do we sin before God, but we sin before the entire world, and this has an effect on God.

The parashah began with great blessings, but ended with these awful curses. After we read these curses toward the end of our parashah, it is hard to feel good.

For the last couple of years, when we have heard about one Jewish businessman after another cheating and lying in public, just like after we hear a torrent of curses, it is hard to feel good.

As we reflect back upon the sins we have caused, sometimes we forget about the blessings.

And so our Haftarah reminds us about our special relationship with God.

Our Haftarah, Isaiah 60, is a message of hope and consolation for Israel. It speaks about a future time where zion will be restored and the author uses the imagery of light to show Israel’s success. There is a midrash about a line from our Haftarah, “No longer shall you need the sun For light by day, nor the shining of the moon for radiance (by night); for the Lord shall be your light ever lasting.” The Midrash talked about the idea of God giving light to the rest of the world through the Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple in Jerusalem where God dwelled on Earth. The Rabbis talked about the windows of the Beit HaMikdash being different than windows of a regular house because instead of being designed to let light in, the windows of the Holy Temple were designed to let the light out to the rest of the world. This light was akin to the sun on Earth that gave warmth and hope to everyone. One would think that this light was extinguished when the Beit Hamikdash was destroyed, but it wasn’t. After the Temple was destroyed, we brought the holiness of the Temple into our synagogues and our homes, we created a number of “mikdashei me’at,” small temples. The light was never extinguished, rather, it is in all of us.

Dr. Meir Tamari goes on to give the other side of his argument after he talks about those Jews who have sinned. He writes, “Conversely when Jewish-owned corporations and individual businessmen conduct themselves scrupulously and in accordance with God’s Law, they bring honor and sanctification both to the Jewish People and to He Who spoke and the world was.”

How we act in the world, especially in regards to how we conduct ourselves in business in our everyday lives, has tremendous implications for us and for God.

God cares how we look to the rest of the world which is why we must do tesuvah, repentance, for the sins of our fellow Jews. It is up to us to show the light that we have in us to the rest of the world. Each one of you can do this in your personal life.

You can act as a model for your fellow Jew in how you live and act in a world amongst non-Jews. You can light the spark within yourself and spread it to your fellow Jew, and then we must come together as a community to show the rest of the world the beautiful light that we have in us.
Israel is often called an “or lagoyim” “light unto the nations,” but often times people look at this as being too self centered, that we think we are too important. I respectfully disagree. We are an important people, if we do the right things. We are a special people who were chosen to bring God’s light to the world, but it is up to each generation to ensure that we stay special.

War and Peace

Rabbi David Baum, Parashat Shoftim,

Congregation Shaarei Kodesh, August 14, 2010 (5770)

Our country is in the midst of two wars, Operation Enduring Freedom, arguably the longest running war in our nation’s history, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Since 2001, Israel has been through two wars, the second Intifada and the second Lebanon War.

The term ‘war’ is thrown around quite often. Football players have been quoted as equating their sport to war (the game is won in the trenches), and every time there is something we want to eradicate, we declare war on it such as the war on poverty from the 1960′s, the war on drugs from the 1980′s, or the war on terror in the 2000′s.

There are many definitions of war:

• the waging of armed conflict against an enemy;
• an active struggle between competing entities; “a price war”; “a war of wits”; “diplomatic warfare”
• a concerted campaign to end something that is injurious; “the war on poverty”; “the war against crime”

We all know war when we see it, but do we ask ourselves, how should we act during war? Our parashah gives us a Jewish response for why and how we fight.

Our parashah tells us about how soldiers practice during war.

Chapter 20 gives us some of the rules of biblical warfare:

When you go out to battle against your enemies, and see horses, and chariots, and a people more numerous than yourselves, do not be afraid of them, for the Lord your God is with you and brought you out of Egypt. And when you are close to battle, the priest (Cohen) shall come forward and speak to the people, saying to them, “Shema Israel, Hear Israel, as you draw near today to do battle against your enemies, do not let your hearts melt, fear not, and do not tremble, nor be terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.” (Deuteronomy 20:1-4).

Essentially, this is a speech to give the troops hope and motivation to win be victorious in battle. We are all familiar with pre-battle speeches in movies. Here is one from the movie Braveheart:

WALLACE
Yes. Fight and you may die. Run and you will live, at least awhile. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that, for one chance to come back here as young men, and tell our enemies that they make take our lives, but they will never take our freedom?

Deuteronomy: This is an interesting pep talk. For one, the Torah highlights that they are fighting a people who are greater than them and have more resources. Second, who would you like to hear from, a general who is going into battle with you, or a priest who knows nothing of war?

The truth is, the Torah is being realistic and is acknowledging human nature. It is natural for people to be scared when they famous tough odds – they have real fear and you have to acknowledge this. In fact, the rest of the procedure involves the commander asking the troops questions, one of them being:

8“Is there anyone afraid and disheartened? Let him go back to his home, lest the courage of his comrades flag like his.”

The goal is to have the soldier overcome their natural fears of death. In Braveheart, William Wallace uses the idea of freedom and personal impact, “when YOU are dying in your beds, alone.” The Torah gives us an alternative.

In the speech, the Torah seems to be giving a history lesson to the troops about a moment when they were in a similar circumstance: the Exodus from Egypt when Pharaoh’s horses and chariots were approaching them. But what the Torah is really doing is getting them to think of themselves as a people, not as a person. They are fighting together, they are united with God as their center, and they are not only fighting for themselves, but for the Jewish future and the Jewish past. If they fail, then the generation of the Exodus also fail.

It is not YOU, it is WE, and it’s not just now, but past, present, and future.

One of the rules I learned as a community organizer was that true power came from organized people. But how do you get organized? You get organized by being in relationship with each other and having a shared destiny.

There are immense problems that lie before us. What seems like constant wars in the Middle East, the continued survival of Israel, terror, environmental disasters, poverty, hunger, homelessness, disease, and more and more.

As we watch the news alone, we must think to ourselves, what can I do against these chariots and horses?

First, we have to look in the mirror and tell ourselves that alone, there is nothing you can do, and trying to tackle these large issues alone is not only impossible, but foolish. In the end, you will ultimately lose faith and retreat.

But there is an alternative.

In the first line of our parashah, we read: “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof”…Justice Justice shall you pursue Tirdof (תרדוף) (is the verb form of the root רדף, while the noun form, רודף means a pursuer or someone who chases after someone or something) that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

AJ Heschel states, “It implies more than merely respecting or following justice-we must actively pursue it”.

Tzedek, as we read in our Etz Chaim Humash, is both formal justice to govern society and distributive justice, “ensuring that everyone gets at least the minimum of what is necessary to live.”

In the end, the goal of war is peace, as the prophet Isaih wrote which we will recite together during the prayer for the country, “They shall beat their swords into plough-shares, Their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaih 2:4)

But how do we get their? Through being Rodfei Shalom:

The rodef shalom first appears in Hillel’s famous statement in Pirkei Avot: “Be among the disciples of Aaron - a lover of peace (ohev shalom) and a pursuer of peace (rodef shalom); a lover of all people, bringing them closer to the Torah.” A few centuries later, the Avot d’Rabbi Natan elaborates on Hillel’s words:

“How to be a rodef shalom? The phrase teaches us that a person should be a pursuer of peace among people, between each and every one. If a person sits in his/her place and is silent, how can s/he pursue peace among people, between each and every one? Rather, one should go out from one’s own place and go searching in the world and pursue peace among people.”

In other words, we can do this by being in relationship with each other and asking each other basic questions that we are scared to ask each other: What keeps you up at night? In other words, what are the things in your life that are holding you back and oppressing you? And when you work with that person for justice, they will work for you for justice for what oppresses you.

Each person has their own seemingly insurmountable chariots and horses that pursue them, but we won’t know what they are until we ask each other. Once we know, then we can pursue justice together. If we fail, we not only let ourselves down, but the past and the future. But if we succeed by pursuing Tzedek, Justice, than we bring our people one step closer to the end of war, to Shalom.

But we cannot be complacent, we have to chase after it to end war.

We pursue Tzedek in order that you we may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving us. We all share space on this land together, the sooner we start acting like it by pursuing justice, the sooner we will see Shalom in our time.

Living In Mitzvah Is A Blessing

Delivered by Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

Parashat Re’eh, 2010/5770

The Jewish day begins at evening and ends at evening. Yesterday actually began on Thursday night. Our nighttime liturgy, the Maariv service, is reflective of how humanity viewed the nighttime before street lights brightened our paths. Nighttime without lights is a fearful time, it brought our predators, both animal and human, and it reminds us of our mortality. The Talmud tells us that sleep is one-sixteith of death as a way to acknowledge the fear that we all have: one day, we will go to sleep, and never wake up. Every night, we prayer that we will wake up. During the Hashkivenu prayer, we ask God to let us lie down in peace, and awaken us again in the morning. Every evening prayer has a parallel to the morning prayer except for this one. During our Shacharit service, we thank God for restoring our souls; nighttime is when we fear we will lose them.

On Thursday night, we were all struck with the reality of the fragility of life as we honored the memory of Myra Goldberg, Zichranah L’vrachah (may her name be remembered in blessing). We began this service with Mincha, we spoke about Myra’s legacy and life, and ended with Maariv. Maariv brings out the fears that we have where we openly admit the curses that we have in this world, and yet, this service offers us a comfort from the darkness.

On Friday morning, I woke up and experienced perhaps the polar opposite of what I felt the night before. Instead of saying goodbye, I said hello to a new addition to our Shaarei Kodesh family, the son of Daniel and Mela Kandler, Max, Avimelech ben Daniel v’Esther who was welcomed into our brit, our covenant, on the same Jewish day, the 26^th day of the month of Av.

These are two extremes, what seems to be a curse, the darkness and uncertainty in our world, and what seems to be a blessing, the morning and life.

I could not help but think about the first line of our parashah:

כו) רְאֵה אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה:

כז) אֶת הַבְּרָכָה אֲשֶׁר תִּשְׁמְעוּ אֶל מִצְוֹת יְקֹוָק אֱלֹהֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם הַיּוֹם:

כח) וְהַקְּלָלָה אִם לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּ אֶל מִצְוֹת יְקֹוָק אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וְסַרְתֶּם מִן הַדֶּרֶךְ אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם הַיּוֹם לָלֶכֶת אַחֲרֵי אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים אֲשֶׁר לֹא יְדַעְתֶּם: ס

“See (behold), this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day, and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced.

This very famous beginning to the parashah reveals a great deal about who we are as a people and how we live.

It seems to be quite simple: if you do these things that God commands you, than you will be blessed, if you do not do them, you will be cursed.

This is a troubling concept and ultimately we ask ourselves, if this is true, then why do bad things happen to good people?

The truth is, the concept of blessing and curse is not so cut and dry.

The Malbim, a great 19^th century Jewish commentator commented on the following verse, “a blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord”: implying then that the very obedience to the Divine commandments constitute a blessing. Do not imagine that there is any reward on earth outside of the good deed itself. It is not like the case of the master who rewards his servant for loyalty and punishes him for disobedience, where the servant’s due is dependent on the master’s whim and is not inherent in the action itself. The parallel is to the doctor who assures his patient that he will be well, as long as he adheres to the regimen he prescribes, but if he does not, then he will die. The consequences are here inherent in the deed itself.

One of the points that the Malbim makes here is that the reward for a mitzvah is a mitzvah – it is its own reward. To take it a step further, the blessing you receive is continuing to enjoy the gifts of the world that are already given to you.

Mitzvah translated means commandment. When we think of commandment, we think of two parties, the metzaveh, the commander, and the metzuveh, the commanded. We commonly think of God as being the commander, and the Jewish people are the commanded.

Before we do a holy act, we say a blessing acknowledging that this act is not something we feel like doing, rather it is commanded of us.

The parashah begins with a commandment, ראה literally a command to see, but it is given in the singular, but the sentence goes on to say, See this day I set לִפְנֵיכֶם before you all, which is in plural.

If some Jews do the mitzvoth and others do not, who gets punished? Who gets rewarded?

As we fully understand ‘mitzvah’ we realize that there is a bit of both the individual and the community in it. Each individual must choose whether they want to be a true partner in our brit, our covenant, BUT when they choose to be commanded or choose to be free of obligation, their choice affects those around them, whether they are in their neighborhood or across the world.

We have the choice not to be a part of this life, not to do these things called mitzvoth that make us Jews. When we do them, our lives turn into blessings.

But what about the curses that we heard about in the same breath as we heard of the blessing?

The way I live life is through the concept of mizvoth and obligation, without being commanded to do these things, without having an obligation to others outside of myself, without being part of a community to follow them with and to support me on my journey would be a curse.

As hard as it seems, it is not natural to comfort people when they are mourning, it is not natural to celebrate with others when they have a simcha.

Nichum aveilim (comforting mourners) and celebration during a simcha is not something that comes natural if they are not your close family, but as Jews, we do them because we are commanded to do these things.

Death and life have the potential to be curses or blessings. If life is without God, without support, without meaning, without a community, it can be a curse, but if they are with support, if there is a common goal with a community with God at its center, than it is a blessing.

The night can be a time of terror and curse if we are alone, or it can be a time of warmth and blessing if we gather together to support each other in prayer and deed.

The question that we must ask ourselves is not, why do bad things happen to good people? Rather, we must ask ourselves, when bad things happen to our people, how will we act? When good things happen to our people, how will we act?

Our act, is a choice that each one of us makes, and our choice to live in mitzvah, to live in obligation, affects our whole people.