Terror in Paris

Dear Congregants and Friends,

It has been a difficult week for France, for the world, and for the Jewish people. We have been riveted to our televisions once again by a vicious terrorist attack, this time in Paris.  We have seen a radical Islamic attack against the exercise of free speech, against the institutions of the French Republic and against her Jewish citizens. It is reminiscent of the al-Queda inspired attack in Toulouse in 2012. Then, one Mohammed Mera first targeted French soldiers before turning his sites on a Jewish school, where he murdered a rabbi who taught at the school, his two sons, and a third student. Those acts of terror too led to a dramatic manhunt that ended in a shootout that killed the perpetrator.  Afterwards there was widespread condemnation of the act by world leaders, including prominent Muslims. There were marches that attracted thousands of people who were horrified by the deadly act and investigations into whether the French intelligence services could have done more to prevent the killings. In many ways, it seems the terrorist attacks in Paris this past week followed the pattern set in Toulouse just two and one half years ago.

There have been at least six serious anti-Semitic attacks directed against individuals and Jewish institutions in France in the six months prior to this one. Nothing seems to have changed in France since 2012, despite the marches, despite the condemnations, despite the declarations of everyone’s good intentions.  In fact, things have gotten worse.  “Being a Jew in Paris in 2014 is a little bit risky,” said one recent new immigrant to Israel from France, “you can feel it every day.” Jews in France have been feeling insecure for a number of years. The increasingly hostile environment for Jews has led to the emigration of 5000 French Jews to Israel in 2014. This represents 1% of the entire Jewish population of France. One recent poll reports that 74% of Jews living in France have considered Aliyah to Israel.

This past week we began reading the Book of Exodus in our synagogues. It begins with the story or two courageous women who defy Pharaoh by refusing to carry out his decree to kill all the Hebrew male infants at birth. It continues when Pharaoh’s own daughter defies her father by bringing baby Moses into the palace to raise him.  These brave acts of civil disobedience are followed with the rise to leadership of Moses and Aaron, leaders who guided the Jewish people with courage and with wisdom. We pray for leaders in our own time who can inspire us to stand bravely against tyranny and to fight for human dignity. We too pray for the courage to do what is right and just. Our hearts and prayers are with all the victims of the attack in Paris and their families. Let us work toward a world where we can all live securely and without fear, and with respect for one another.

Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

A Monentous Discovery -- Parasha Vayigash and Vayechi

A Momentous Discovery

Do you remember the first time you heard about email?  For me it was through the television show, Seinfeld. Jerry was sitting at a counter table with a young woman he had just met. They hit it off, and he asked for her number. “Let me give you my email,” she said to him. Jerry looked a bit bewildered. “What are you, some kind of scientist?” he asked her.

E-mail is one of those revolutions in technology that have changed our lives forever. It was all over the news last week as Sony Pictures was hacked into and thousands of embarrassing emails were made public.  It is a reminder that we all need to be careful of what we write in emails. This brings to mind a midrash about Joseph and his brothers. When Joseph’s brothers threw him into the pit, they wanted to kill him. Reuven, the eldest, stopped them by saying, “What do we profit from killing him? Let us sell him instead.” The midrash says that had Reuven known that his words would be recorded for posterity, he would have never said the words he did. It makes him look very bad. Instead, he would have immediately stood up to his brothers and taken Joseph back to their father safely. Would Sony Pictures executives have said the things they said had they known that there would be a permanent record of them and that they could be made public? No --They would have been more careful about what they wrote. We all need to be more careful about what we write.

In this week’s parasha, we have another innovation that changed our lives forever. This was brought to my attention by an article by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. Rabbi Sacks writes that this week’s parasha marks the first time in history where forgiveness is granted to a person or persons. Next week’s parasha marks the first time that the word “forgive” is used in the Torah. You all know the story. Joseph is sold by his brothers into slavery and rises to be second in command to Pharaoh when he successfully interprets Pharaoh’s dreams. During the years of famine, Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt to buy grain. He recognizes them, but they do not recognize him. He puts them through a series of tests, which proves to Joseph that they regretted what they had done to him. When Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, they are terrified. They expect him to take revenge on them for their selling him into slavery. But Joseph does not do this. He tells them not to fear. He tells them that their actions were clearly part of G-d’s plan to save their lives. “It was not you, but G-d, who sent me here,” he concludes.  He doesn’t use the word “forgive” but the meaning of his words are clear.

Later on in the story, another thing becomes clear. The brothers did not fully understand Joseph. Seventeen years later, when their father Jacob dies, they fear that Joseph will take his revenge. Perhaps he was waiting for their father to die to do so, they think. So they send a message to Joseph, asking that he forgive them. In the brothers message is the first use of the term in the Torah. Joseph weeps. The text does not tell us why. Perhaps he only now realizes that they never understood what it meant to truly forgive another person.

So, “forgiveness” is literally invented by Joseph. Adam and Eve don’t ask forgiveness from G-d. G-d never explicitly forgives Cain from killing Abel. When Abraham pleads for Sodom and Gomorrah, he never asks G-d to forgive their wickedness. Jacob never asks Esau for forgiveness either. He appeases Esau, he bows down to Esau seven times, he addresses Esau as “My Lord” but he never asks for his forgiveness. Rabbi Sacks, referring to a book by American classicist David Konstin entitled Before Forgiveness, argues that this is because the concept of “forgiveness” was unknown before the time of Joseph.  Not every society has a concept of forgiveness, he writes. For example, in ancient Greek society, if you wronged somebody, you could appease them. You could make excuses for your actions. You can abase yourself, as Jacob apparently did with Esau. The offended party might then let it go. Their honor is restored. They no longer need to take revenge. Rabbi Sacks calls the ancient Greeks a “shame and honor culture”. Judaism, on the other hand, is a “guilt and repentance” culture. The difference is important.

Teacher and author Brené Brown explains the difference between shame and guilt succinctly. Shame is a focus on self, guilt is a focus on behavior. Shame is “I am bad”. Guilt is “I did something bad”. Guilt is “I’m sorry, I made a mistake”. Shame is “I’m sorry, I AM a mistake.” When one feels shame, the stain of the wrongdoing sticks to one. It soils the person, it defines who they are. One might restore honor and dignity on the one who was wronged, but one could never undo the wrong or rebalance the relationship. Guilt, on the other hand, is the acknowledgement of an action that has wronged someone else. With guilt there is the possibility that one can repent of the action. Forgiveness has the capacity to restore the relationship and to free it to grow and develop. In a “shame and honor” society, relationships remain stuck in the dynamic of the one who wronged and the one who was wronged.

It is tragic when you see this shame and honor dynamic in action. Rabbi Jack Riemer tells the story of a  man who came to see him one Yom Kippur. Twenty years before, he had been wronged by his brother and they had not spoken since.  The Rabbi asked the man, who was fifty at the time of the conversation if he was the same person he was twenty years ago, when he was thirty. “Of course not,” said the man, “I’ve changed in those twenty years.” “Don’t you think your brother has changed as well?” the Rabbi asked.

In inventing the dynamic of “repentance and forgiveness” Joseph gave the world something far more valuable than email. He gave us a way to begin our lives again after we make a mistake. We can change -- we need not replay endless repetitions of the past.

Shabbat Shalom

Parasha VaYishlakh

Is prayer a waste of time? According to Reverend Tim Keller, many people do not pray because they feel that they are not being “productive”. I heard Reverend Keller as he was promoting his new book,  Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with G-d on a morning television interview show.  Reverend Keller said that people feel good when they feel productive, but “when you are praying, you are not ‘doing’ anything. Prayer confronts the need we all feel to be productive, he said. Yet, he maintains, the solitude of prayer and the practice of prayer are crucial if you are to know yourself in relation to G-d. The interviewer, with a twinkle in her eye, asked, “Given the need to be alone with G-d in order to get to know yourself – would it be OK if I made the case that this is productive?” Reverend Keller responded, “In the short run prayer makes you feel less productive; but in the long run, absolutely, it makes you more productive”.

I was struck by the fact that when speaking of prayer in this interview, Reverend Keller, a Presbyterian minister, spoke primarily about praying in solitude. The emphasis in Judaism tends to be on public prayer. Yet the practice of solitary prayer is also deeply rooted in Judaism. The Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chassidism, told this story from his childhood. "I was drawn to walk the fields and the great, deep forest near our village. Often I would spend the night in the field or forest. One morning in the forest I heard a human voice- a Jew in tallit and tefillin, praying with a passion I had never heard...'Aren't you afraid to be alone in the forest?' the man asked me. I answered him: 'I like the field and the forest, because there are no people...'" Chassidism teaches that aloneness can help us to explore the mysteries within and above us, much like Reverend Keller teaches from a Christian perspective in his new book.

In our Torah reading for this week, we may have an instance of this kind of solitude and encounter. Jacob is returning to meet his brother Esau after a twenty year absence. The last time they saw one another, they were both living at home.  Jacob impersonated his brother Esau and stole his blessing from their blind father, Isaac. Enraged, Esau threatened to kill Jacob. Jacob fled to Haran, with only the shirt on his back -- Haran, the city in Mesopotamia where his parents had family. After marriage, children, and acquiring great wealth it was time to return to the Land of Canaan. Jacob is afraid of how he might be greeted by Esau. He sends Esau gifts to try to appease him. He prepares for war, in case Esau wants to fight. He prays to G-d, to help him.

The night before his meeting with Esau, Jacob separates himself from his family, his servants, and all that he owns and crosses the river Jabbok to sleep alone. He encounters a stranger, with whom he wrestles throughout the night. Who is this stranger? Some think it is Esau himself. One commentator [Rashbam] thinks that Jacob separated himself from his family that night because he planned to run away before dawn.  G-d sends an angel to wrestle with Jacob and force him to stay. Others think it is Jacob, who is wrestling with himself, with his conscience. Jacob’s tendency throughout his life was to meet life’s challenges with trickery, deceit and evasion. Here he decides to meet a challenge directly, with honesty. He decides to face a difficult situation head on. It is not easy, and Jacob engages in solitary prayer throughout the long night. “G-d answers a person’s prayers if the person prays by searching himself, becoming his own opponent,” according to Rabbi Benno Jacob.

One does not have to worship alone to have a life altering experience through prayer. G-d can choose other ways to send an angel. I am thinking specifically about a visit Middy and I made to the Sons of Zion synagogue in Holyoke, Massachusetts, last Monday to lead their morning services. I had been their rabbi for three years. I was anxious to return and see people I had not seen in ten years. Congregation Sons of Zion was at one time a thriving place. Due to the economy and demographics, the synagogue had fallen on hard times, and when I arrived in 2001 it had under a hundred, mostly elderly members. One of our regular worshippers was Bill. He was 82 years old when I met him, and had lost his beloved wife three years prior to my coming to the synagogue. Bill went to the cemetery every day to visit the grave of his wife. Now, our tradition discourages excessive mourning, but Bill didn’t seem to be in mourning. His was cheerful, energetic, open to new ideas and not at all depressed. He just liked to visit his wife’s grave. In fact, I like Bill so much I did something I never did before and never did since. I tried to fix him up with my mother!  He graciously declined, which was fine.

A year after I arrived at the synagogue, Mollie moved from Florida to be closer to her daughter, who taught at a local college. Mollie had been very happily married for over fifty years and had lost her husband recently. One day she appeared at the synagogue wanting to talk to the Rabbi about her loss and the transition she was going through. She was now 84 years old. After hearing her story I encouraged her to come to services as a way of connecting to our community and rebuilding her life. She began to attend regularly during the weekday and on Shabbat. Lo and behold, Mollie and Bill fell in love!

When I left the synagogue in 2004, the office manager, Nancy, who had been there for 20 years, retired. Mollie and Bill volunteered to take over the office duties. The President of the synagogue, Steve, loved the idea, because it would save the temple money. The office manager was also responsible for compiling the monthly newsletter, so Mollie and Bill would take over that task as well. I argued against the idea. How are Mollie and Bill, 87 and 85 years old, going to fulfill the responsibilities of the office manager? Steve just smiled. They can do it, he said.

As I said, I have not been to the Sons of Zion synagogue in the ten years since I left. Mollie and Bill are now 97 and 95 years old. They are still going to services on weekdays and Sabbath, still running the office, still putting out the monthly newsletter. They have even taken on more responsibilities. Since the synagogue has been having difficulty getting a minyan on Monday and Thursdays, Mollie and Bill took it upon themselves to set up a breakfast twice a week in the social hall to encourage people to attend on weekdays. They get up on Mondays and Thursdays at 5:45 in the morning so they can get to Temple by 8 am and have breakfast ready by nine!  So, Middy and I joined the congregation for breakfast following services, and got to visit with people over coffee and bagels prepared by Bill and Mollie.

Jacob encountered himself in his solitary prayer the night before he met his brother.  Mollie and Bill encountered one another as they each prayed with a minyan in a small chapel in a small town in Massachusetts. Who said that prayer was a waste of time?  The moral of these stories for me is that prayer has the capacity to change one’s life. However, one never knows how exactly that is going to happen or what that change will be. One never knows how prayer will affect one.  Jacob was planning to run away, but, through the power of prayer, he stayed and faced his brother. Mollie and Bill were certainly not planning to find partners in their lives when they joined with others in prayer.  But through prayer they found partners, and it enriched each of their lives, and ours, immeasurably.

As Bill says, if you don’t take the time, you miss out on the spiritual side of life.

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

Shabbat Parasha Toldot

A Tale of Two Cities

It happened in Jerusalem this week, in a religious neighborhood called Har Nof. It could easily have happened here – but did not.

What happened at Har Nof, of course, was the murder of four Jews in the midst of their morning prayers and one Druze policeman who tried to stop the attack. The two terrorists, armed with axes and pistols, were killed at the scene. The attackers were Palestinians with Israeli identity cards who lived in Jerusalem. One of them worked at a grocery store down the street from the synagogue.  

What did not happen, but what could have, occurred at Congregation Etz Chaim in Lombard. On October 21 we ourselves were quite shaken by our own local expression of hatred towards the Jewish people. That evening police arrived at the scene after their custodian reported a disturbance on the synagogue grounds. A man had broken seven windows at the synagogue and scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti on the front door. When police arrived they found him driving recklessly over the synagogue’s grounds, destroying the grass and uprooting bushes. He had left a hatchet, a machete, a knife and an ax at the synagogue’s front door.  When police searched his home they found thousands of rounds of ammunition, a rifle, shotgun and four handguns.

The attack in Jerusalem succeeded in taking five lives. Thankfully, nobody was injured or killed in the Etz Chaim attack. This is an important difference. Both were terror attacks nonetheless born by hatred and bigotry. Another difference between these attacks was the public reaction to the attack by neighbors. The Arab press basically applauded the Jerusalem attack, justified it, and blamed Israel for it. In applauding the attack, one Qatari newspaper columnist cited the killing of the Palestinian boy by Jewish vigilantes following the murder of the three Jewish teens by Hamas operatives last July. “Terror can only be fought by terror,” he writes. An article in the Jordanian government daily likened the Netanyahu government to the Nazis and saw it as a legitimate act of vengeance. A Saudi newspaper called the Israel Defense Forces a neo-Nazi organization and accused Jews of fabricating our ties to our homeland in these words:  "[Calling Al-Aqsa] the 'Temple Mount' is a despicable innovation, a legend or a lie. There are no archeological remains [of this temple anywhere] in our land, and the Jewish [ancient] prophets and kings are just like this temple: they exist only in fairytales written in order to steal a homeland from its owners...”  And these are three examples from the so-called “moderate” Arab camp.

The reaction of our neighbors in DuPage County could not have been more different. Calls and emails of support and outrage came pouring into Etz Chaim as soon as the news of the attack emerged. Hundreds of people from forty different faith communities came together on Saturday night, November 8, to express solidarity with the Jewish community. Reverend Jay Moses of the First Presbyterian Church of Wheaton, Shoaib Khadri of the Islamic Center of Naperville, Dr. Jill Baumgaetner, the Dean of Wheaton College, Reverend Jim Honig of the Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church, Reverend H. Scott, Matheney, the Chaplain of Elmhurst College, Father Jim Dvorschak of the Roman Catholic Church and Rabbi Michael Balinsky of the Chicago Board of Rabbis all offered inspirational messages from the pulpit that buoyed our spirits and re-assured us that we do not stand alone when hatred is expressed against Jews. The fact that this solidarity meeting came on the anniversary of Kristalnacht was lost on nobody. Perhaps the most poignant moment came at the conclusion of the service. Rabbi Bob invited all clergy to stand together on the bima. He told a story. A couple of years ago he saw a picture in the Chicago Tribune of a Reform rabbi pointing to a swastika that had been sprayed on the side of his synagogue in Chicago. Rabbi Bob called his colleague. “What you should have done,” Rabbi Bob advised, “was to have a picture of clergy from different religions pointing at the swastika on your building.” “We don’t know anybody,” his colleague replied. Then, pointing to the fifty or sixty assembled clergy that filled the bima, Rabbi Bob said, “Well, we do.”

The Talmud and other rabbinic sources teach that there are two different kinds of evil that are committed in this world. The first kind is called le-tey-a-von. In Hebrew, “Beh-tay-ah-von” means “Bon Appétit”. This type of violence is called “le-tay-a-von” because it emerges when a person cannot control their appetite.  It includes the kind of evil that occurs when someone hurts another person because he is drunk.  I believe that this is the kind of evil that was perpetrated at Congregation Etz Chaim. This person acted, in part, because of a mental illness.  Our tradition states that there is hope for the person who acts “le-tay-a-von”, because he may come to regret what he has done. There is room for repentance afterward. The second kind of evil is called le-ha-khis. It is related to the word, kah-ahs – anger. The person who acts le-hakhis acts out of a spirit of defiance.  He acts deliberately and wantonly. He is motivated by pure anger and spite. This was the motivation of the killers in Jerusalem. For them, there is no redemption.

What can be done about this violence? Is it true, as the Qatari newspaper columnist claimed, that “terror can only be fought by terror”? This is a chilling thought, and can only lead to an unending cycle of violence. That question – how do we stop terror – was asked of Moshe Yaalon, currently Israel’s Defense Minister and a man known for his hawkish views.   How do you think Moshe Yaalon, a general, a military man, responded to this question? I will tell you what he did not say. He did not say that terror can be fought with terror. He did not say that terror needs to be fought with guns, or tanks or better intelligence. He responded that terror can only be combated with education. It will only stop when people teach their children not to hate.

The reason so many Christians clergy stood in solidarity with Jews against the anti-Semitic attack against the synagogue in Lombard is because for the past fifty years the Church has stopped demonizing Jews. They have educated their clergy; they have educated their parishioners and congregants that their past practice of teaching hatred toward the Jewish people was wrong.  This has led to their being receptive when we Jews reach out and seek to join in solidarity. This has led to them reaching out when the Jewish community has been attacked.  As we know, thousands of years of anti-Jewish teaching in the Church contributed mightily to the Holocaust. Likewise, there will not be true peace until Arabs teach their children the truth about Jewish history. There will not be true peace until the Arab people stop denying the facts about our historical ties to the Land of Israel.  There will not be true peace until our Arab neighbors teach their children not to hate.

I conclude by sharing with you a poem read by Dr. Jill Baumgaetner of Wheaton College at the Etz Chaim Solidarity Rally. It was written by Wislawa Szymbor-ska, a Polish poet.

HATRED  

See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape—
our century’s hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

It’s not like other feelings.
At once both older and younger.
It gives birth itself to the reasons
that give it life.
When it sleeps, it’s never eternal rest.
And sleeplessness won’t sap its strength; it feeds it.

One religion or another -
whatever gets it ready, in position.
One fatherland or another -
whatever helps it get a running start.
Justice also works well at the outset
until hate gets its own momentum going.
Hatred. Hatred.
Its face twisted in a grimace
of erotic ecstasy.

Oh these other feelings,
listless weaklings.
Since when does brotherhood
draw crowds?
Has compassion
ever finished first?
Does doubt ever really rouse the rabble?
Only hatred has just what it takes.

Gifted, diligent, hard-working.
Need we mention all the songs it has composed?
All the pages it has added to our history books?
All the human carpets it has spread
over countless city squares and football fields?

Let’s face it:
it knows how to make beauty.
The splendid fire-glow in midnight skies.
Magnificent bursting bombs in rosy dawns.
You can’t deny the inspiring pathos of ruins
and a certain bawdy humor to be found
in the sturdy column jutting from their midst……

It’s always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it’s blind. Blind?
It has a sniper’s keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.

Parasha Chayei Sarah

To Choose to Be Jewish

This evening I am going to talk about two people. One of these people chose Judaism. The other person did not choose Judaism, but wished he had.

In my experience, people come to Judaism for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they fall in love with a Jewish person and want to establish a Jewish home. They believe that the best way to do this is to join the Jewish people through conversion. Other people are married or partnered to a Jewish person for a long time before they decide to convert to Judaism. These individuals eventually fall in love with Judaism, through participation with their partner or spouse in holiday celebrations, synagogue life, life cycle rituals or through living the rhythms of the Jewish year. I’ve also had more than a few people who seek to convert because they know Jewish people and admire them.  They admire the kindness of their Jewish friends, their strong sense of community, their intellectual curiosity, their warm family relationships, and their commitment to making the world a better place. These people come to Judaism seeking to integrate those values into their lives and the lives of those they love. 

In this week’s parasha, we have an example of the latter.  Abraham sends his servant back to the place of Abraham’s birth in order to find a wife for his son, Isaac. This is a long journey across a harsh landscape. The servant finds the right woman for Isaac --Rebecca. Abraham’s servant is attracted to her kindness, as she offers him water by a well and then offers to water his camels as well.   Based on these attributes the servant  concludes Rebecca would make a good wife for Isaac. But why does Rebecca agree to marry a man who she has never met? Why does she agree to leave her home and her family and her gods to undertake the arduous journey to the land of Canaan? Once there, she will not be able to return home.

The rabbis of the Talmud noted that Torah is unusually lengthy when telling the story of Rebecca at the well. It first tells the story in a third person narrative form. When the servant later meets Rebecca’s family, he tells them the story of what happened at the well in the first person, following the narrative version almost word for word. Why doesn’t the Torah just say, “The servant told them what had happened.” Why the repetition?

My teacher and colleague Rabbi Isaac Mann offers the following thoughts on the matter. In repeating the narrative word for word, the Torah wants to hint at the reason for Rebecca’s decision to leave her family and join the Jewish people. The Torah is demonstrating the servant’s humility and sincerity and his ability to pierce the heart of this family.  His pious words and simple faith in G-d make an enormous impression on one and all. It convinced Rebecca to join the family of Abraham, and allowed her parents to let her go. Not unlike some people who talk with me wanting to join the Jewish people, Rebecca is influenced by her friendship with a man she has come to admire and who represents what Judaism has to offer.

Rebecca chose Judaism. She is the world’s first convert to our religion. I will now share the story of a man who would have chosen Judaism, but he could not. His name is Louis Brandeis. Brandeis served on the United States Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939. He was the first Jew appointed to the Supreme Court. Brandeis graduated from Harvard Law School at the age of 20 with the highest grade point average in the school’s history. His fellow students recognized his brilliance. They also realized that one thing was holding him back. He was Jewish. At that time in our American history, there was a great deal of prejudice against Jews in our country. Louis Brandeis’ Christian friends urged him to convert. If he were Christian, they said, he might well be appointed to the Supreme Court some day! Brandeis never responded to their suggestion.

In his final year of school, Brandeis was inducted into the honor society. Brandeis’ name was called, and he went to the podium to speak. Slowly, he looked around the room. “I am sorry,” he said, “that I was born a Jew”.

The room erupted in applause. “Finally, we convinced him,” members of the audience said to one another. “He has finally seen our point”.

Brandeis waited until the applause subsided. Then he continued, “I am sorry I was born a Jew --but only because I wish I had the privilege of choosing Judaism on my own.”

This time there was no applause. The room was silent. Then members of this exclusive honor society began to stand. But they did not walk out. Instead, awed by Louis Brandeis’ conviction and strength of character, they gave him a standing ovation.

Of course, in many ways, Louis Brandeis did choose Judaism. Just like Rebecca did thousands of years ago, at the beginning of our history.  Just like we all must.  To live a Jewish life means making a conscious decision to make a deliberate effort to live a Jewish life. To be a Jew by choice is the most fulfilling kind of Judaism of all.

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

Parasha Va-Yera

“For I have chosen him so that he will instruct his children and his household after him that they may keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.”

I was perusing the newspaper a few months ago when my eye caught the obituary of a man named Leo Bretholz. The name was not familiar to me, but the title of the article caught my attention, “Age 93, Escaped from Train to Auschwitz”. Mr. Bretholz, however, did not get his obituary written up in the New York Times for simply escaping from a train to Auschwitz. True, toward the end of the war he became a member of La Sexieme, a Jewish resistance group that operated in France. La Sixieme was originally a network for rescuing Jewish children and youth. It later developed into a fighting unit that helped to liberate Southwestern France. La Sexieme was credited with rescuing several thousand Jews. But it wasn’t for that that Mr. Bretholz got his obituary published in the New York Times.

On November 5, 1942, fifty two years to the day that I write this, Mr. Bertholz was being transported on a train from France to Auschwitz. He and another man pried the bars from the windows of a train car and, when the train slowed around a bend, they jumped out. They had to avoid the surveillance floodlights that the guards aimed over the entire curvature of the train as it slowed. It was a daring escape that he detailed in his 1998 memoir, Leap into Darkness, Seven Years on the Run in Wartime Europe.

But Mr. Bertholz was not given a prominent obituary in the New York Times because he wrote a Holocaust memoir. Mr. Bertholz was given an obituary in the New York Times because he was a prominent eyewitness in a class action suit brought against the French Railroad that transported him to Auschwitz. The suit sought to recover damages from the railroad company, S.N.C. F. for the part it played in the murder of Jews deported from France to the gas chambers of Poland. Between 1941 and 1944 this railroad company transported 76,000 European Jews to the Franco-German border in 76 cattle cars. From there, German trains took them to the death camps. The suit died when the US Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the suit was outside of American jurisdiction. 

The company formally apologized to Holocaust survivors and victims in 2011 a few months after American lawmakers, Holocaust survivors, and their descendents tried to block the company from participating in bidding on American high speed rail systems. They sought to prevent the company from getting these lucrative contracts before acknowledging their role in shipping tens of thousands of Jews to their death in Germany.  The company offered a formal apology but refused to pay reparations. It portrayed itself as a victim of German occupation itself.

Mr. Bretholz was a star witness before Congress and the Maryland legislature as he testified in the attempt to pass legislation that would bar the company from bidding on contracts until it paid reparations to its victims. The company, claimed Mr. Berholz, was actively complicit in the deportations. The rail operators packed people into cattle cars, he said. They failed to provide adequate food and water, he said. They provided the guards that prevented people from escaping, he said. “Wartime France,” he said, was “the most important and very venal cog in the wheel of Hitler’s Holocaust co-conspirators.”

The Jewish People have rightly been called a “justice intoxicated people”.  In our parasha this week, Abraham challenges G-d over G-d’s plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. ‘Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” Abraham impudently says to G-d. “Far be it from You – Will not the Judge of all the earth act justly?” We have here the very first instance of that “fanatical love of Justice” that Albert Einstein spoke about when he expressed his gratefulness that he was part of the Jewish people.  That love of justice is beautifully expressed in Psalm  94

“Rise up, O G-d, Judge of the earth/ repay the arrogant with what they deserve…….   They crush Your people; they oppress Your heritage                                                The widow and the stranger -- they kill / the orphan -- they murder.                            They say, “G-d does not see” / The Divine One of Israel does not take notice.”

Abraham was chosen by G-d, says scriptures, so that he could teach the world what it “right” and “just”.  Abraham was chosen so he could teach the world to have a conscience.  Hitler knew this. He wrote that conscience was a Jewish invention. Like circumcision, he said, it is a blemish on humanity. By seeking to destroy the Jewish people, Hitler sought to banish G-d from our world.

The contemporary Israeli writer Yossi Klein Ha Levi puts it this way:

“A photograph taken in Poland offered confirmation that the Holocaust was a spiritual war. It is a well known image: A Jew, wearing tallis and tefillin, is about to be shot by the jeering Nazi soldiers who surround him. The ultimate disputation:  The Jew insists on the existence of the Creator and the primacy of soul over body, while the Nazis, by exposing Jewish helplessness and the absence of an invisible Protector, insist on an empty cosmos.”

Companies that collaborated with the Nazis and benefited financially from that cooperation ought to pay reparations to their victims and their descendents. People like Mr. Bertholz are doing G-d’s work on earth when they stubbornly pursue those reparations in the name of justice. They are bearing witness to the presence of G-d in history, carrying out the Jewish mission long entrusted to Abraham and his descendents.

Shabbat Shalom

Parasha Lech Lecha

We Are All Immigrants

One of the great pleasures of being a rabbi in Chicagoland is the opportunity to hear scholars from all parts of the world who come to our area to speak. That pleasure is only surpassed by sharing what I have learned with you, my congregation. This past Thursday I had the privilege of attending a rabbinic institute featuring the new President of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Aaron Panken. Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is North America’s first Jewish seminary and is responsible for teaching and ordaining all of the Reform rabbis in the United States. Rabbi Panken is a true “Renaissance man”. In addition to his Rabbinic Ordination and Doctorate in Hebrew and Judaic Studies, he has a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins and is a certified commercial pilot and sailor. How a person who is 50 years old has the time and energy to accomplish all of that and be married with two children is truly a remarkable accomplishment.

Rabbi Panken’s talk was based on the first two verses of this week’s Torah portion. “G-d said to Avram, ‘Go forth from your land, from your birth place, and from the home of your father to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great people, and I will bless you, and I will magnify your name, and you will be a blessing.’” Rabbi Panken asked us to consider, “What was it like for Abraham to go into the future, and not know what it looks like?” He then asked us to consider this question from the perspective of an American Jewish community that metaphorically is moving into a new place, an unknown future where things will be very different from what we have known.  We are all immigrants to a new land, he said.

What does it feel like to move to a new place? First, one experiences a sense of loss. One misses the comfort of being in a place where one is familiar. There is an initial sense of disorientation. Then there is the anxiety. Where are we going? G-d tells Abraham that he is going “to a place that I will show you.” It is not a place of Abraham’s own choosing. It is to a place with an uncertain future, of unknown challenges. This is also the situation of the American Jewish community, says Rabbi Panken. We are heading somewhere that will be very different from where we are today. That place is certainly not one of our own choosing!

G-d promises Abraham many blessings. These blessings are good, and big, but they are not specific. The future is promising, but Abraham has no idea what it will look like. This is true of the American Jewish community as well. We too can look forward to many blessings. What will they be? How do we work toward them?

We know things are changing in the country as a whole. We know that these changes will affect the Jewish community in profound ways. And, we know that the Jewish community is changing as well. Our own community reflects the changes happening in society as a whole.  On Tuesday I attended a meeting of the Naperville Interfaith Leadership Association. We met with Dan Bridges, Superintendent of District 203 and Dr. Karen Sullivan, Superintendent of District 204. The presented some interesting statistics. Since 2000, the student population of each District has decreased by five percent. Experts forecast that over the next several years it will continue to decrease slightly, before it levels out. District 204 will become a majority minority school district within two years. In other words, District 204’s racial and ethnic minorities will make up over half of the student population. By 2043 it is projected that the United States will be a majority minority country, with over half the population composed of ethnic and racial minorities.

Given the overall decrease in student population in our community, it is not surprising that Congregation Beth Shalom’s student population is lower than it was a number of years ago. Our youth numbers are tracking the numbers of the overall population of our area. The community in general is aging. Add to this an American Jewish birth rate that is below replacement level, and we can begin to see some of the challenges our community, and the American Jewish community as a whole, faces in the not too distant future.

Like Abraham, we have some idea where we are going, but we know exactly how it will look when we get there.  What will Israel-Diaspora relations look like in the future? How will declining Jewish birthrate and declining rates of affiliation affect synagogue membership?  Will the Jewish community need to organize itself differently?  How will Jews maintain a sense of community and cohesiveness as we cease to live in specifically Jewish neighborhoods and spread out across metropolitan areas and across the country?

Rabbi Panken laid out some of the challenges of the future for us. How do we educate our children in the future? Are after school religious schools, the model we have been following since the 1920’s, capable of educating the youth of the twenty first century?  The demands on children and families are so different now from when I was growing up, yet the model of Jewish education has remained essentially the same. How far can synagogues stretch in order to attract and keep members?  Is a membership model of affiliation the way that communities should be organized?  How does the role of rabbi need to change in the American Jewish community of the future? Change is inevitable, and we will need to work together to meet its challenges. It will take innovation and experimentation to address the needs of the American Jewish community of the future.

As a cautionary note about change, Rabbi Panken taught us the following passage from the Talmud:  The Rabbis decreed that ten cups of wine should be consumed at a house of mourning : Three before the meal to increase the appetite; three during the meal to aid digestion; one each for the four blessings of the grace after meals.

To these ten, later rabbis added four more: one to honor those who did the burial, one to honor those who helped pay for the burial, one in honor of the Temple, and one in honor of Rabban Gamliel. They began to observe that they were drinking and becoming intoxicated. So, they returned to their prior practice of drinking only ten cups of wine.

The moral of the story is that sometimes innovations can have unintended consequences. Along with innovation should come assessment. We should never be afraid to admit we made a mistake. After all, when you are an immigrant in a new land, you are bound to take a wrong turn or two! 

Shabbat Shalom.