Shabbat Shekalim -- Little Boxes

This week’s prophetic portion is NOT about mystical visions of G-d experienced by the prophets. It is not about dire warnings of prophets for the people of Israel to repent or face punishment from G-d. This week’s prophetic portion is NOT about a prophet bring hope and comfort to the oppressed Jewish people. No, this week’s Haftorah portion is much more prosaic than those lofty subjects. This week’s Haftorah portion is about building maintenance. It is about fixing a leaky roof and a crumbling foundation, about repairing drafty windows and plastering cracked porticos.

The year is 813 BCE. Solomon’s Temple is about 140 years old, and is showing some wear and tear. King Jehoash, who was only seven years old when he ascended to the throne in Jerusalem, wants to raise money to repair the Temple. So he tells the priests who run the Temple that they should make the repairs out of donations that they receive from their benefactors – those who give contributions to the priests. Apparently this idea does not go over so well with the priests, because several years later when the King inspects the Temple, he finds that no repairs have been made at all!  The King then tries another tactic. He instructs craftsmen to make a chest and bore a hole in its lid. He places the chest at the entrance of the Temple, and stations guards at it. Whenever a person coming into the Temple wants to make a donation, that person would hand it to the guards, and the guards would place it through the hole in the lid and into the chest. When the guards see that there is a lot of money in the chest, the High Priest and the royal scribe would empty the chest, count the money, and deliver it directly to the general contractor in charge of the Temple repairs. He, in turn would pay the carpenters, masons, stonecutters and other laborers for their work in repairing the Temple.

Behold,  the first written account of a Tzedaka Box!  No longer chests with holes bored in the lids, these small boxes have been a feature in Jewish life ever since. In many Jewish homes it is the custom to put money into a Tzedaka box before the lighting of the Shabbat and holiday candles. It is certainly a wonderful way of teaching children the value of the mitzvah of giving Tzedaka. In keeping with the idea of Hiddur Mitzvah, or adorning or beautifying a mitzvah, many Tzedakah boxes are themselves works of art. I can’t think of a better way of reinforcing the value of giving to our children than making this part of a family’s Friday night ritual.

Perhaps the most well-known Tzedaka box is the Jewish National Fund’s “Blue Box”. Blue boxes were once found in every home and Jewish classroom from the United States to Russia. The idea to collect money for Israel through a Tzedaka box came soon after the establishment of the Jewish National Fund by the 5^th Zionist conference in 1901. A bank clerk, Haim Kleinman from Galicia placed a box in a prominent place in his office with the words, “Eretz Yisrael” – for the Land of Israel – on it. He wrote a letter to the Zionist newspaper in Vienna, Die Welt, saying that he had raised a remarkable sum through donations to the Zionist cause in this way. He further suggested that the Jewish National Fund follow suit and distribute Tzedaka boxes in homes and offices. The blue box has become not only a way to collect money for Israel, but it serves as a powerful symbol of the connection between Israel and the Jewish people worldwide.

Since that time other good causes have taken it upon themselves to distribute Tzedaka boxes with their own names written on the box. I want to conclude tonight’s sermon by sharing a true story by Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins. He writes that a prominent rabbi in Boston was attending a housewarming of a wealthy couple in his congregation. People were oohing and aaahing at the unusual pieces of furniture in the living room, the original pieces of artwork that were placed throughout the house, even the gold-plated bathroom tissue dispenser in the restroom. The homeowners noted that they had paid top-dollar to the best interior decorator in the Boston area, but it had been well worth it.

After about an hour, the elderly mother of the hostess, who lived with her daughter, motioned to the rabbi to come with her. They left their posh surroundings and climbed the steps to the second floor, where she had her bedroom. As they entered the bedroom, the woman pointed her finger toward the windowsill. The rabbi was astonished by what he saw.

The woman did not point to a rare piece of furniture or to a valuable antique. Arrayed on the windowsill were two rows of tin Tzedakah boxes – “pushkes” in Yiddish – for every imaginable charitable cause. There were boxes for hospitals, for orphanages, for yeshivahs, for women’s shelters, for children who were blind, for the deaf – for every single Jewish institution she could find that distributed boxes for charity.  

“Now this”, said the woman proudly, “THIS is interior decorating”.

Shabbat Shalom

Parasha Yitro -- Women and Leadership

It is wonderful to be back with all of my congregants after my month long Sabbatical from CBS. So much has happened since I was last here in December. The last time we met the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt, the Egyptians endured ten plagues, Moses led the Israelites through the Red Sea.  AND I just learned that new scholarship has shown that when the Israelites reached the other side safely Miriam led them in the songs of Leonard Cohen!!!  AND this week we receive the Ten Commandments. Yes, a lot indeed has happened since we last met a month ago.

In our Torah portion for this week, Jethro, Moses’ father in law, visits him as he and the Israelites are camped around Mt. Sinai, waiting to receive the Ten Commandments. Jethro is shocked when he first sees Moses. Moses looks worn out. He is bearing the entire burden of leadership on his own shoulders.  Jethro counsels Moses to appoint others who will help him lead the people. Jethro tells him to appoint, “Men of accomplishment, men who love truth, men who hate evil, men who will be immune from bribery” to positions of authority. We cannot help but notice what Jethro leaves out – the appointment of women to positions of leadership and authority!

On my trip to Israel a few weeks ago, one of the issues just breaking in the news that caused quite a stir  was the controversy over the appointment of the first woman in the Israel Defense Forces to head an aviation squad at an Israel Air Force base.  The promotion of Lieutenant Colonel “Tet” as she is known – for security reasons Israeli pilots are publically identified only by Hebrew letters and not by their name – was just the latest in a series of  promotions of women to command posts in the Israel Defense Forces.  Israel was the first country in the world to mandate that all women serve in the armed forces. There were women pilots who flew in the War of Independence in 1948 and the Sinai War of 1956. However, women in Israel were eventually barred from becoming fighter pilots in particular and from combat roles in general.  It was only in 2001, following a Supreme Court decision that mandated that the Israeli Air Force allow women to apply for pilot training, that Roni Zuckerman became Israel’s first female jet fighter pilot. Since that time, the General Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces have been working to integrate women into combat units and to promote more women in the Air Force, infantry, and armored divisions of the IDF.  

This has brought a backlash from certain rabbis of the National Religious community, a sector of Israeli society that is deeply traditional but, unlike the ultra-Orthodox in Israel, encourages military service and sends many young men to serve as officers in the Israeli military. These rabbis object to the incorporation of women into the military on religious grounds –essentially, that women must protect their modesty around men and be shielded from secular influences that they may encounter when serving in the armed forces. They also believe that women should not be taking roles in the army that G-d and the Torah designate for men.  Fortunately, Prime Minister Netanyahu has supported the appointment of women in leadership positions, has expanded women’s roles in the armed forces, and has welcomed the changes the Israel Defense Forces are instituting.

This is just one aspect of the debate in Israel over the role of women in society and in the armed forces. As likely some of you know, choice to serve in the armed forces of Israel is particularly daunting for women brought up in religious households. Religious women who want to enter the armed forces of Israel must overcome two obstacles. First, like her secular sisters, the religious woman finds herself a woman in what is essentially a man’s world. Second, she finds herself as a religious person in what is essentially a secular world. In addition, religious women often attend post-secondary schools that are for women only. Coming from a very sheltered, homogeneous environment, religious women may be ill-equipped to deal with the diversity of opinions, lifestyles and backgrounds that they will find in the armed forces. Because of these challenges, many religious women apply for and receive an exemption from their obligatory military service.  This group of women instead fulfills their obligation through Sherut Le-umi, or “alternative national service”. Through Sherut Le-umi they will work for two years in hospitals, schools, nursing homes, health clinics or with disadvantaged communities or teens at risk as an alternative to military service.

This of course, represents a significant loss of talented young women to the armed forces of Israel. Moreover, these women often segregate themselves from society at large, depriving themselves, and Israel society, of the potential contribution they may make toward a healthier, more productive and more equal nation. On my recent mission to Israel with the Rabbinic Action Committee, we visited with teachers in a program that helps religious women enter and succeed in the armed forces. This program, Tzahali, prepares young religious women both physically and mentally to enter the armed services. Through classroom study and field trips that expose them to the diversity of Israeli society, the program helps strengthen their religious identities, empowers them as women, and makes them more aware and open to the mosaic that is Israeli society. In the thirteen years of this program’s existence, over 450 women have had meaningful army service, with a quarter of them becoming officers and a good number of them having made the army a career choice. The program has empowered women to be able to make the choice to serve in the IDF, knowing that they can both serve and maintain their religious commitment.

When we at Congregation Beth Shalom contribute to the Jewish United Fund of Chicago, we help support these efforts to increase the number of women in the Israeli army and help them to achieve positions of authority -- because the Jewish United Fund of Chicago helps to fund this program in Israel. It is just one way our dollars help in Israel, Chicago and around the world. So the next time an advisor tells a Jewish leader to appoint people to positions of authority, that advisor will be able to tell him to appoint “men and women of accomplishment, men and women who love truth, men and women who hate evil, men and women who will be immune from bribery.”

And to that let us say – AMEN!

Parasha VaYechi: Words to Keep In Mind When Your Kids Drive You Nuts!

There is a verse from the Psalms (62:12) which states, “One thing G-d has spoken, two things I have heard”. The Talmud explains that this refers to the fact that a Biblical verse can have more than one meaning. This statement itself was expanded upon by later rabbis who declared that each verse of Torah to have seventy meanings – “shivim panim la-Torah”. Each verse of the Torah can contain multiple, and even contrary meanings, and all of them could be true.

Last week I spoke of how Joseph was “too – perfect” a character in the Torah for us to identify with. Joseph succeeds in everything he does. He is his father’s favorite child and has no obvious flaws. Although he is grievously wronged by his brothers who sell him into slavery, he forgives them, protects them, and sustains them for the rest of their adult lives in Egypt. In fact, the sages refer to Joseph as “Yosef HaTsadik” – Joseph the righteous, for his exemplary behavior throughout his life. That at least, is how Joseph has been traditionally portrayed by the rabbis.

Of course, there have been dissenters. The great sage Rashi tells us that Joseph would spend his days before a mirror, making certain every hair on his head was perfect.  Other sages came along to interpret Rashi’s remark.  Rashi, they said, was not implying that Joseph was, heaven forbid, a vain adolescent. Rashi’s words, they contend, were intended to convey the idea that Joseph spent his time correcting his minor moral imperfections.  Looking at himself in the mirror was in fact a metaphor for his recognition that he was not perfect and was concerned with improving himself morally.  Others point to the verse in the Torah that says that Joseph brought bad reports of his brothers to his father.  “How could such a righteous person such as Joseph be a tattletale?” ask Joseph’s defenders.  They answer:  Realizing that his righteous brothers had not reached the level of moral perfection that he had achieved, Joseph only wanted his father to instruct them on how to become better individuals. He did not want to embarrass his brothers by correcting them himself!

In a recent teaching, the contemporary Rabbi Jack Riemer offers another of the seventy faces of this story. Rabbi Riemer maintains that Joseph was far from perfect. Joseph is, in fact, from his description in the Torah, a troubled adolescent. Joseph has an exaggerated sense of self - importance and feelings of grandeur, as evidenced by his dreams of his family bowing down to him. Joseph is preoccupied with his appearance. He not only primps himself before a mirror, but wears his best clothes – that “coat of many colors” – even when going out into the fields to search for his brothers. Who wears their best suit to tend to the sheep? Furthermore Joseph lacks empathy toward his brothers. He relates his dreams to all of his brothers without any sense about how these dreams would make them feel.  He brings bad reports of his brothers to his father, and then, when they won’t even speak to him anymore, he keeps it up! An exaggerated sense of self-importance, dreams of power and domination, lack of empathy toward others -- all point to a diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, declares Rabbi Riemer.

So, asks Rabbi Riemer, how did this crass, self-involved seventeen year old --who would have had a serious psychiatric diagnosis were he to live today -- develop into the caring, compassionate and forgiving man and the wise leader we come to know at the end of the Book of Genesis?

Before I answer the question, I want to tell you a personal story. One of our congregants grew up in the same city, Scranton, Pennsylvania, as I did. This congregant’s cousin was at an appointment with her physician in Pittsburgh and the physician mentioned that he was from Scranton. The patient told the physician that her cousin’s rabbi in Naperville was also from Scranton. “What’s his name?” Dr. Steckel asked. “Rabbi Marc Rudolph,” the patient answered.

The physician’s eyes widened. “He’s a rabbi?” he asked in disbelief. Of course, when I was told the story and I heard the name of the physician, I immediately recognized him as someone with whom I went through school with – “He’s a doctor?” I marveled.

The point is that neither I, nor Dr. Steckel, nor Joseph remained our 17 year old selves – thank goodness! It might have been astounding to someone who knew us at 17 that I would someday become a rabbi, and he a doctor, but we both developed and grew beyond our 17 year old selves.

That’s how Joseph developed from a spoiled and self-involved child into a caring and compassionate brother and son as an adult. Joseph’s father, Jacob, and his mother, Rachel, were able to implant within him seeds of kindness, compassion, and forgiveness when he was growing up – qualities that were hardly apparent when he was a child and adolescent. That should be a source of solace to all of us who are teachers or parents and despair sometimes about whether our students or children have learned anything at all from us. We try to teach them values and provide them with ideals, but sometimes it seems that we are not getting through to them. We wonder whether they have any interest at all in what we have to offer! The most any of us can do, writes Rabbi Riemer, is to plant seeds within them which may sprout and blossom sometime in the future. We can strive to give our children positive experiences which they can remember and draw upon as they grow older. Of course there are no guarantees, and some children reject the gifts that they are given. Some even grow in an opposite direction from which we hope.  But sometimes, not always, but sometimes, those seeds that we plant germinate and develop.

So if there was hope for me, and there was hope for Dr. Steckel, and there was hope for Joseph – there is hope for our children and grandchildren as well. Think about that, next time they drive you crazy!

Shabbat Shalom