Parasha Ki Tavo

Regaining our Sense of Purpose

The year was 1936. The Olympics were being held in Germany, and two Jewish men, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, were in Berlin to compete as part of the US Track and Field Team. Glickman was eighteen years old at the time, and scheduled to complete on the 4x100 meter relay team. The morning of the event, the seven members of the track team were called into the office of the coach. To a stunned team, the coach announced that Glickman and Stoller, the only two Jews on the team, were to be replaced on the relay event by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe. According to the coaches, there were strong rumors that the Germans were hiding their very best sprinters to compete in this event and thereby upset the Americans in the race. Glickman spoke up. "Coach, you can't hide world class sprinters." At which point Jesse Owens spoke up. "Coach, I have my three medals already. I'm tired. Give Marty and Sam a chance." Nevertheless, Glickman and Stoller were replaced, and the Americans went on to win the event. The "hidden world class German sprinters" never materialized.

Glickman's story is told in an HBO film that is being aired this Monday evening.  He always maintained that this was a case of anti-Semitism. "In the entire history of the modern Olympic Games, now going into its 100th year, no fit American track and field performer has   missed competing  in the Olympic Games except for Sam Stoller and me — the only 2 Jews on the 1936 team," said Glickman. Glickman never made it back to compete in the Olympics, but went on to an illustrious career in sports broadcasting.

Despite the many outstanding Jewish American and other Jewish international athletes in our era, Jews have never, as a people, been known for  athletic prowess. The Greeks may have been known for their philosophy, the Romans for their magnificent architecture, the Arabs for their advances in grammar and mathematics, Russians for their literature and Americans for the political genius of our Founding Fathers. The greatest Jewish contribution to world civilization lies in our religion. Ineedd we are . a people of religious genius.  

In our parasha this week, we have what I can only describe as the conclusion of a marriage ceremony with Moses as the officiant and G-d and Israel as the parties to the marriage. "You, the people of Israel," says Moses, "acknowledge G-d to be your G-d, that you will faithfully, love, honor and obey." And you," says Moses addressing G-d, "promise to treasure this people. You promise to make them renowned among the nations, famous and glorious and acknowledged as a holy people."  That's it. The only thing that is left out is the breaking of the glass!

G-d is like a groom, who shines His light upon the Jewish people, His bride. The mission of the Jewish people, in turn, is to shine that light upon the world. Our mission is to illuminate the dark places and to live exemplary lives so that others will follow our example. "Throughout the millennia, our insights about the One God, creator of heaven and earth, Source of morality and Seeker of justice, have enlightened the lives and quiet moments of untold millions," writes Rabbi Bradley Artson. 

Yet, there are those who say that in our own time we Jews have abandoned our sense of mission. They say that the messengers of G-d have forgotten the message. Rabbi Gerald L. Zelizer wrote an interesting article in the Forward last week. A rabbi of 40 years in the same congregation, Neve Shalom of Metuchen, New Jersey, Rabbi Zelizer writes that he has seen a change in the core question asked by his congregants over the years.  People used to ask, he writes, "How do we serve G-d?" People now ask, he writes, "how can G-d serve me?"  Instead of asking, "How can we bring G-d's light into the world," people ask, "How can religion enhance my lifestyle?" Indeed, he points out, surveys have shown that people who consider themselves, "very religious" have less depression and greater happiness than those who do not consider themselves religious. Religion has been shown to be a valuable coping mechanism when dealing with physical impairment. Synagogue attendance has been shown to lower blood pressure and boosts immune system responses.  Religion has become like a consumer product. Like anything we buy, we expect it to be good for us. "I find myself talking less about religious obligation," writes Rabbi Zelizer, "and more about religion as a means to self fulfillment."

Much has changed for the better in American Jewish life. Marty Glickman recalled not only the anti-Semitism at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, but anti-Semitism in his own backyard in New York City. "You went into a hotel in New York and you saw a small sign where you registered that said, 'restricted clientele' which meant, in effect, 'no Jews or Blacks allowed," he said in an interview. We don't have that in America anymore. But we have lost something. Speaking of the generation of Marty Glickman and his parents, Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg puts it this way:

They grew up on gefilte fish; we get sushi. They had chicken soup, we have miso soup.

They spoke of Yizkor and Yahrzeit; We speak of Yin and Yang.

They saw tattoos on the arms of survivors; we see tattoos on the navels of our friends.

They spoke of Israel bonds; we speak of IPOs.

A new year is fast approaching. This year, let us commit ourselves to being a little more Jewish. I don't mean more religious, I mean, let us live more Jewish lives. Eat at a kosher restaurant when you are in the North Shore. Set aside time for Jewish study. Come to our Yizkor service on Shemini Atzeret. Buy a piece of Jewish art for your home. Put up a mezuzah – and if you have a mezuzah already, put up a Sukkah this year. Read a Jewish book.  Join the Spertus Institute in Chicago and attend one of their programs.  Say the Shma before you go to bed at night. If you have not been to Israel, start planning that trip. Commit to sending your children to a Jewish overnight camp. This coming year, ask not what your G-d can do for you – ask what you can do for your G-d.

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

 

 

Parasha Ki Tetze

Enlarging our Tent

Last week I attended a fascinating Webinar hosted by an organization called "Jumpstart." This was a webinar held exclusively for rabbis across the United States to share the findings of a comprehensive survey done this past year on Jewish giving to charitable causes. Previous surveys have found that  people in the United States give more to  charitable causes than any other national group in the world. This survey found that of all the different ethnic and religious groups in the United States, Jews are the most generous.  Seventy six per cent of Jews say they gave to a charity last year. Sixty three percent of the general population said they donated to charity during the same time period. Moreover, Jews gave an average of $1200/year to charity, twice the amount given by the general population of the United States. Rather significant numbers, I think.

The survey found that the more Jewishly engaged we are, that is the more Jewish friends we have, the more times we attended religious services, the more we volunteer at our synagogues, the more Jewish organizations we belong to, and so forth  – the more likely we were to give and the more we gave both  to Jewish and non-Jewish causes.  The survey broke Jewish people into denominations.  Orthodox synagogue members were the most generous; Conservative synagogue members were the second most generous; Reform synagogue members were the third most generous. Jewish people who did not belong to a synagogue at all were by far the least generous of all the Jewish groups.   

The seminar the moved on to research findings on fundraising to support synagogues – the charitable organization of most interest to the rabbis who were invited to this webinar. This is a topic of vital concern to all of us.   The survey found that the more authentically engaged we are with our synagogues the more we give to our synagogues financially. The sense of Social connection and the sense of "ownership" of the synagogue is directly correlated with the amount we contribute financially to our synagogue.  The Social Scientist Steven Cohen, who was present at the Webinar and was one of the survey's chief investigators, put it this way to the rabbis in attendance. "The best way to get people to give is to get people socially engaged and then they will give to an institution that we all care about!"

Perhaps the most surprising finding for us rabbis pertained to the language we use when we ask members to support their synagogues financially.  In this survey, congregants who were approached to give money to their synagogue reported that using Jewish terms like "tsedaka" and "mitzvah" or "Tikun Olam" when making a fundraising appeal was off-putting.  Many congregants reported that when Jewish words were used to raise funds they felt like outsiders. Sometimes they were not sure what a Jewsih word meant, but were embarrassed to ask.  The use of these words made them feel excluded from some inner synagogue circle that they imagined at least, was comfortable speaking in Hebrew. 

 In reporting these findings to our Board earlier this week we gradually became aware of something that had not occurred to any of us previously – certainly not to me! 

We became aware of the large number of Jewish words that our congregation uses to describe the wide range of activities that we offer to our congregants. Might these Jewish words, indavertantly, cement uninvolvement? In other words have we been putting up barriers, unbeknownst to us, for your engaging more in Jewish life?  For example, in our membership package we have something called an Oneg Sign-Up Sheet. It is extremely well done and very informative. It tells me that hosting an oneg is a great way to support the congregation.  It takes a minimum of time. It is easy to host. I should host at least one.  I might want to host one when my child's class participates in religious school.  As I looked at it through my new eyes, the eyes of a person who is brand new to synagogue life, I am left with one vexing question – What's an Oneg??

We ask people if they want to be on the Avodah committee, the Tikun Olam committee, the Chesed committee, or if they want to be a Darshan. For those of us comfortable with the terms, they are second nature.  I ask you, how might they sound to a person who is taking his or her first tentative steps back to Judaism in adult life? How would it feel to a person making their way from the margins of Jewish life to be asked to join a chavurah, if their children would be interested in Kibbutz Katan, or their daughters could benefit from our Rosh Chodesh group or their sons from Shevet Achim?   

We need to remember that many of the people we are trying to attract to our synagogue are curious, and eager to learn about Jewish traditions. Often what keeps some of those individuals away is precisely their self consciousness that "I am   not knowledgeable about Judaism".  Yet, it is not our fault if we did not get a good Jewish education or if Judaism was not observed in our family of origin.

Also and most importantly the people we want to welcome, to include, to engage in our community are not Jewish at all -- they  are the spouses, partners, parents, grandparents, of many of our Jewish members.

In our prophetic reading for this Sabbath, Isaiah proclaims that Zion will welcome her children back. "Enlarge the site of your tent/ extend the size of your dwelling, do not hold back/Lengthen the ropes and drive the pegs firm."  We are a synagogue that wants to embrace those who may have strayed far from Jewish life and make sure they know that here, at CBS they have the opportunity to be welcomed home.  We are a synagogue that wants to help non-Jewish family members feel comfortable and included in our community. We want to be a big tent.  May G-d open our eyes to remove the stumbling blocks we put in the way. 

Parasha Shofetim

We The People

For me, one of the most significant things about our first congregational trip to Israel this June was seeing Israel through fresh, bright and clear eyes.  Although I have traveled to Israel many times by now, there is, of course much I have not seen. Yet it was quite amazing to me that even the places I had seen many times before, I was seeing for the first time again!!!   Perhaps it was because I was leading a congregational  trip  of my synagogue (a real treat for me), or perhaps it was because of  the group of congregants I traveled with, or perhaps because of the exceptional,  enthusiastic and  fun tour guide who accompanied us on our trip. Or perhaps it was a combination of all these reasons.

One place I had been before was Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.  Only a few years ago I visited Yad Vashem's huge campus alone, by myself.  Frankly, when I heard that we were going to have a 2 hour guided tour by museum staff through the museum, I was a bit hesitant. Bruce, our tour guide thought that was a bit long as well, and told me he would ask if we could keep the tour to an hour and a half. By the time we left the museum, a full two hours later, it felt that we had not spent ENOUGH time there. The tour was riveting, thought provoking and poignant.  I felt like it was the FIRST time I had visited there, and was grateful that the docent who led us on the tour paid no heed to our request to shorten our visit.

One of the last exhibits that we saw at Yad VaShem was an 18 foot rowboat.  It looked like any boat that you would see tied to a dock on a lazy summer day, except that here it was, sitting in a museum that documents the destruction of European Jewry.  Its black hull and oars painted orange and green sat silently against a wall of Jerusalem limestone just before the exit from the exhibits. The boat is a quiet, surviving witness to a remarkable, little know story that I want to share with you this evening.

When Germany occupied Denmark in 1940, the Danish government reached an agreement with the Nazis to protect Denmark's 7,500 Jews.  However, that agreement broke down in 1943, and word reached the Danish government that the Nazi's had decided to deport the Danish Jews to concentration camps.  Alerted to this plan, the Danish authorities, the Danish Jewish communal leaders and countless private Danish citizens, began to hide the Jewish population. Danish police refused to cooperate with the plan, denying the right of the German police to enter Jewish homes by force, or not identifying the Jews that they found in hiding.

 Over the course of about a month, Danish authorities, the Danish organized resistance and countless ordinary Danish citizens brought the Jewish population to the eastern coast of Denmark.  From there, they were ferried across the Baltic Sea to safety in Sweden.  Some seven thousand of them made it to safety in Sweden.  The small rowboat before us had been used in that rescue.  It hardly looked seaworthy! We were in awe.

Then our docent told us a moving story about this particular boat.  Several weeks previously she had been giving a tour to a group like us. The group stood before the boat, much like we were on that day.   Suddenly there was a gasp from a woman in the group. Shaken, she told the story of how she had been a little girl growing up in a small fishing village in Denmark during World War II.  She recognized the boat as similar to one that had belonged to her father!  She remembered as a child watching the evacuation of the Jews from her coastal village to a refuge across the sea. She told our docent that what the Bible said was so true, and then referred to the Book of Deuteronomy where G-d says, "See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse – a blessing, if you follow the commands of G-d and a curse, if you do not follow My ways."  She said, "Our village did what was right in G-d's eyes, and it is true – we have truly been blessed since that time."

Maimonides teaches that one of the central messages of the entire Torah is exactly this – that a person has free will, and that we have the ability to choose right from wrong.  If we choose the right path, our lives will be blessed. If we choose the wrong path, we will suffer the consequences. This principle however, is articulated very early in the Bible, in the story of Cain and Abel.  G-d tells Cain – "If you do what is right, you will be uplifted." What is Moses teaching us in Deuteronomy that has not already been learned in the Book of Genesis?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches that there is indeed something new here.  In the Book of Genesis, G-d is speaking to Cain as an individual. It is easy to understand that the individual has free choice. But Moses is speaking to the people as a whole. Moses is speaking to a nation.  Moses is saying that a nation, as well as an individual, has the capacity to choose to do what is right in G-d's eyes.  A nation cannot therefore protest by saying, "we were conquered, we were defenseless, we had poor leadership, it was not our idea, it was done against our will, we could do nothing about it." It is noteworthy that throughout Europe there were many individual righteous Gentiles who risked their lives and the lives of their families to save Jews during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem – its full name is "Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority – pays tribute to them as well as to the victims of the Holocaust. Denmark, however, is the only case in which an entire country mobilized its citizens to rescue its Jewish population.  Denmark, as a nation, chose the Godly path.

This extraordinary example illustrates the relationship between covenant and freedom.  In our Parasha this week Moses continues to lay out the terms of the covenant between G-d and the Jewish people. These are the rules and laws by which they are to live when they enter the Land of Canaan.  If they follow the laws, they will, as a society, be blessed. If they transgress, they will be cursed. By accepting the covenant with G-d the Jewish people freely choose to be bound by the standards and values articulated in the Torah.  All people in the covenant are responsible to uphold it, as it says in the Torah, "from the heads of your tribes, your elders and officers to the hewers of wood and drawers of water."   It has been said that the Torah provides the first example in history where a people attempt to form a free society.  It is a society where everybody – of all stations in life – takes upon themselves the obligation to participate in it and guide it. Entered into in a world where the King or Emperor WAS the law, and often a god in his or her own right, Israel envisioned a society where all, even a king, would be subject to the law.  Some 3000 years before the framers of our constitution used the words, "We the people", the Jewish People entered into a pact with one another where they knew that the collective choices that they made would determine the fate of the nation. 

The challenge of how to govern ourselves is as relevant today as it was when the Israelites stood at the borders of the Land of Canaan and ratified the covenant that would govern their behavior in the Promised Land.  Today, as then, G-d has given us freedom.  We are called upon to use it to contribute to making our country a just, a generous and a moral society.

Shabbat Shalom

 

 

Parasha Re-eh

Justice and Trayvon Martin

This summer I had the opportunity   to do some readings that I had put off for too long. One of these readings was a book entitled The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. Wilkerson,  a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, writes about one of the great untold stories of the twentieth century – the massive migration of African Americans from the South to the North, to the  Midwest and to the West.  From 1917 through 1970, some six million – that's right – six million African Americans left the south and migrated to other parts of the country. The author structures the book by following three families who left the South during this period – Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's wife who left Mississippi for Chicago in the 1930s; George Swanson Starling, an agricultural worker who left Florida in the 1940's for New York City; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, a physician who left Louisiana in the early 1950's for Los Angeles.

Why did they leave the South? The author Richard Wright put's it poetically – and I quote

I was leaving the South/ To fling myself into the unknown…. I was taking a part of the South/ To transplant in alien soil/ To see if it could grow differently,                                                                                                 If it could drink of new and cool rains,/Bend in strange winds/Respond to the warmth of other suns/and perhaps to bloom.

We tend to forget the lessons from our High School history class. Or, more likely, we were never taught what life was like for African Americans in the South under the Jim Crow laws.  One very painful and very hard to hear illustration of this reality involves James K. Vardaman. He was a candidate for governor of Mississippi in 1903  when he declared that "If it is necessary, every Negro in the state will be lynched," and "The only effect of Negro education is to spoil a good field hand and make an insolent cook." Almost as difficult to hear is that the people of Mississippi elected him the governor that year. Later, the voters of Mississippi sent him to the United States Senate!

Of course there was the  shame and humiliation of segregation – in schools, on buses, in movie theaters, on elevators (blacks used the freight elevator) , in amusement parks, swimming pools ,ambulances, hearses, train platforms, waiting rooms, restrooms, cocktail lounges, post offices, telephone booths, license plate registration windows, bank tellers, taxicabs – any public space where blacks and whites might meet.  There was nothing "separate but equal" about it. Whites always had the privilege, and blacks always got what was second class, dirty, or unfit.  When two motorists were at an intersection, the law said that the black motorist had to yield to the white motorist.  A black motorist could not pass a white motorist no matter how slow he or she was going.  A black person dare not offer to shake a white person's hand.

Then there was the violence against blacks.  Wilkerson tells us that violence had become such an accepted way of life that a 1950 report by a Florida governor's special investigator observed that there had been so many mob executions in one county that "it never had a negro live long enough to go to trial."

Reading this reminded me of another mass migration – the migration of 2 million Jews from Eastern Europe from 1880 through 1920. All of my grandparents, as no doubt many of yours as well, were participants in that migration. They set off for the warmth of other suns for much the same reasons that African Americans did.  They lived in the Western part of the Russian Empire, known as the Pale of Settlement.  This is a huge area, as large as the Mississippi Valley in the United States. The Jews of this area made up 12% of the overall population.  They could not live or move where they pleased. They did not have the right to own agricultural land. They could not choose an occupation freely. Higher education opportunities were closed to them.  They could not practice their religion freely, nor did they have the right to speak Yiddish publically and officially. State sanctioned violence against Jews was persistent and deadly. Partial data, available for 530 communities indicate that between 1917 and 1921 there were 887 major pogroms in which 60,000 Jews were killed and many more wounded. We will never know the true extent of the violence directed against our people during this period.

That is why our ancestors made the difficult trip across an ocean to this new land. It was to escape the discrimination, the segregation, the lack of opportunity, the inhumane treatment, the insecurity, the hopelessness and the state sanctioned violence that confronted them every day. This is why our people felt compelled to travel to Palestine to seek out freedom and a future in our ancient homeland. Thus Jewish and African American histories have much more in common than each people's experience of slavery.

This knowledge of the painful and horrific history of our fellow Afro Americans citizens helped me   understand the African American outrage at the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case this summer.  To people with a historical as well as personal memories of utter and persistent discrimination, the Trayvon Martin verdict was a miscarriage of justice.  As we know, many people from all races share the outrage of the Afro American community. Here, after all, was a situation that pulled a scab off of a deep wound that has not yet healed, that will never heal.  Here was an example of another black man—this time an adolescent -- killed by a white person in the South – and the white man does not answer for having taken a life. Given the history, it feels like an old story. It feels like nothing has changed in the South. That is why, whether we agree or disagree with the verdict in this particular case, we must react to the disappointment and anger about that verdict with understanding and empathy. Perhaps drawing on our own people's history will help us to understand these feelings.  Just think of the pain we experience when harsh criticism is leveled against Israel by those with no knowledge let alone understanding of Jewish history and Jewish suffering.  How do we feel when people deny history and claim that Jews in Israel are European colonialists? We need to be sensitive to the historical experience of African Americans in order to understand the pain they experienced with this verdict, just as we expect others to be sensitive to our history when they disagree with us over Israeli policies.

As the trial was going on, the words of Deuteronomy came to mind. "Justice, Justice you shall pursue." I feel that justice was eventually pursued in this case – whether it was achieved is a matter of opinion. Like so much in this world, ultimate justice is in G-d's hands. Hertz writes about the difference between the idea of Justice in Ancient Greece and in the Bible. To the Ancient Greeks justice implies the harmonious arrangement of relationships in society, where everybody knows their place and those who are subservient know how to treat those who are superior.  It stresses the inequalities in human society. The Biblical understanding of justice is connected to the understanding that all human beings are created in the image of G-d, and that within each human being there is a divine spark. It stresses the essential equality of all human beings.  Therefore, a person should not be treated as a thing, or as a member of a racial group or religion or social class or nationality, but rather as an individual, as a unique person.  Justice, Hertz writes, "is the awe inspired respect for the personality of others, and their inalienable rights." Injustice, then, is the lack of respect for the individuality of the other. One thing the Trayvon Martin case can teach us is the tragic consequences of not seeing the other for who he or she is – in this case, a 17 year old high school kid out to buy candy and a soda --  but for what we fear  or assume or imagine him or her to be.  That is an injustice for which there is no remedy in law. 

This is also one of the strengths of the Wilkerson book, The Warmth of Other Suns.  By focusing on the lives of three individuals she helps us to understand them as distinct personalities and not as part of a threatening horde of African Americans ascending from the South.  As one of our congregants said to me upon finishing the book, "I'll never look at African Americans the same way."

In this respect, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us to pursue justice in our own lives and in our own relationships, to treat each individual as a person with inalienable rights and with infinite respect and worth.  Justice means not making assumptions about a person based on the color of their skin, their religion, their gender, their sexual orientation.  Remember that God's spark is in him and her.  That indeed is a life-long goal worth pursuing by young and by old alike.

Shabbat Shalom