Parasha Re-eh

Our parasha this week instructs the Israelites not to offer sacrifices in any place that they may see, but only at the places that G-d may indicate. Earlier in the Torah sacrifices are offered throughout the land of Israel – Abraham, for example, offers sacrifices in multiple sites. By the time the Israelites are about to enter the Land of Canaan, however, the Book of Deuteronomy prohibits them from offering their sacrifices anywhere they want. Eventually, the only authorized place for sacrifices will be Jerusalem.

In his comment on this verse, Rashi notes an exception to this general rule. He refers us to the story of Elijah.  Elijah the prophet offered a sacrifice of a bull to G-d on Mount Carmel, outside of the present day city of Haifa. You may not remember the story. It is told in I Kings 18. At the time of Elijah, many Jewish people fell into worshipping two gods, Adonai and Baal. The worship of more than one god was common in the Middle East at the time – we are talking about 850 BCE. In fact, monotheism was having a difficult time taking hold in Northern Israel. The Queen, Jezebel, had introduced pagan practices, and the Jewish people adopted them alongside the worship of G-d.  Elijah, however, was a radical monotheist. He insisted that the Jewish people had to make a choice. He urged them to abandon their worship of Baal and to worship Adonai exclusively.

So he gathers the people on Mount Carmel and makes a challenge to the 450 priests of Baal. Both Elijah and the priests of Baal will offer a sacrifice to their G-d. They will each cut up a bull and place it on the altar that they construct. But neither will light a fire to consume the sacrifice. They will ask their god to light the fire. Whos ever god can do so is the true Creator of the Universe.

The priests of Baal set their sacrifice on their altar. They pray to Baal from morning till noon but nothing happens.  They then hop around in a dance and shout and gash themselves with their knives and spears, in the manner of pagan worship of the time.  Their blood is flowing from their self inflicted wounds  but still nothing happens. They do this into the early afternoon. Elijah taunts them.  “Shout louder,” Elijah says, “Maybe your god is sleeping. Maybe he is talking to someone else. Perhaps he is on a journey.” No matter what the priests of Baal do, nothing happens. When it comes time for Elijah to offer his sacrifice, he prays to G- d, “Answer me that they may know that You, O Lord, are G-d”. Immediately fire descends from heaven and consumes his offering. This is what was known in Ancient Israel as a “slam dunk”.

The question is – why is Elijah able to offer a sacrifice at the place he chooses when the Book of Deuteronomy says one can only offer a sacrifice at the Jerusalem Temple. The answer the rabbis give – can you guess it? – is that he is a prophet!  He is an extraordinary person. He has the wisdom to decide where to make a sacrifice that is “out of the box”.  Not just anyone could have chosen to make that sacrifice in that place. Elijah is special and his goal was a lofty one. He was trying to bring the people of Israel back to the exclusive worship of the One True G-d.

Symbolically this prohibition to sacrifice only in certain places has broader implications for all of us. Human beings make sacrifices for many things.  For example, parents will make great sacrifices to allow their children to participate in sports.  Societies make great sacrifices when they determine they need to go to war. How do we know that we are making our sacrifices in the right place? How do we know that the sacrifice that we make is worth the effort?  The Torah is cautioning us to exercise good judgment in choosing the sacrifices that we make in our lives. “Be careful,” says the Torah, “That you do not offer a sacrifice at everyplace you see”. Do not be ruled by your emotions when it comes to sacrifice. Do not sacrifice your time, your effort, your money impulsively. Evaluate your options. Seek the advice of others. We all need to think carefully about where we are going to invest our time and our energy.

One place where we have been told it is good to sacrifice is in getting a college education. But even here, we must heed the Torah’s warning to be cautious. There is nothing sadder than seeing a young person graduate from college with so much debt that they cannot afford to leave their parents home and start independent lives as young adults. All that sacrifice of time, energy and money and still they do not feel they are able to live independently, marry, start a family or buy a home.  All of the money they do earn is going toward paying off their college loans. This has become a real problem in our society.  70% of college students graduate with debt. The AVERAGE college debt upon graduation is $30,000, which means many students graduate with far more to pay back than that.

The Torah warns us not to sacrifice at every place we see. We need to evaluate carefully whether our sacrifice is worth it or not. We ought to ask three questions before we decide to make a sacrifice: Are we making our sacrifice in the right place?  Are we making our sacrifice for the right reason? Are we making our sacrifice at the right time? 

Shabbat Shalom

 

Parasha Ekev

Some Thoughts on the Deaths of Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall

This week we lost two great American actors: Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall. Fellow Americans and people from all over the world were shocked and deeply saddened by the unexpected news of Robin Williams death by his own hands. Many of us have lost a loved in similar circumstances. At moments of such tragedy we most likely turned to our religious beliefs in the hope of finding comfort and seeking spiritual sustenance. What does Judaism specifically says about suicide? How are we to make sense of a fundamentally incomprehensible and senseless act?

Judaism holds nuanced and complex positions on suicide. In this area Judaism has naturally evolved through our history. . The first King of Israel, Saul, died by his own hand. He fell on his own sword rather than be captured by the Philistines in battle. He was fearful that he would be tortured, killed, and his body desecrated. For this, the rabbis praise him. The Bible itself does not comment on it. There is also a story in the Talmud about boys and girls of Jerusalem who were captured by the Romans and were being brought to Rome to be sold as sex slaves. They all threw themselves into the sea. They also and are praised by the rabbis for taking their own lives. There are heartrending and terrifying stories about Jews in the Middle Ages killing their wives and children before taking their own lives, rather than falling alive into the clutches of the Crusaders. Again, they are praised as martyrs. All of these are considered, “anoos” – that is, forced by circumstances – to act as they did. But there is no discussion in any ancient or Talmudic Jewish text of a person who takes their own life while living in seemingly normal circumstances. The first time we find this discussed in a Jewish text is in the Middle Ages. Here it states that a person who takes their own life with a clear mind and with stated intent is to be afforded no burial rites, although their families are to be comforted. But how many people, living in normal circumstances, take their own life with a clear mind?  The contemporary American writer William Styron describes the onset of his own debilitating depression and suicidal thoughts this way, “My brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and un-nameable tide ……. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul….. [Severe depression] remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode.

Several years ago many of us watched a Mexican movie for selichot night, “Nora’s Will”, written and directed by the Mariana Chenillo.  In this film a rabbi insists that a Jewish woman who had committed suicide be buried in a remote section of the cemetery reserved for criminals. According to him her suicide was akin to murder – albeit murder of the self. This punitive attitude toward suicide is not the thinking of most rabbis today. The great 19^th century halakhist Rabbi Yechiel Epstein writes in his magisterial work the Arukh HaShulkhan, "We seek all sorts of reasons possible to explain away the person's action, either his fear, or his pain, or temporary insanity, in order not to declare the person a suicide.” The person who takes their own life should be treated with dignity and respect in death. They should be afforded the complete burial rites prescribed by Judaism.

The death of Lauren Bacall was not shocking – she died in the fullness of her years. She was born Betty Joan Perske, to Jewish parents in Brooklyn in 1924 in the Bronx, in New York City. She came to Hollywood at a time when having a Jewish sounding name could be a hindrance in ones career, and therefore changed her name to Lauren Bacall, after her mother’s maiden name Bacall-Weinstein.  She was 19 years old when she was brought to Hollywood by the director Howard Hawkes.  Hawkes was known for his disparaging remarks about Jews, and when he soon made one in front of her, she thought, “Oh, no, don’t let him be anti-Semitic. G-d, don’t let me come all this way and have it blow up in my face.” She acquiesced to Humphrey Bogart’s suggestion that their children be baptized, although she had misgivings. Together they made the calculation that with discrimination being so rampant in our world becoming Christian would give their children one less hurdle to overcome in life. “True, I didn’t go to synagogue,” she wrote, “but I felt totally Jewish and always would. I certainly didn’t intend to convert to Episcopalianism for the children, or to deny my own heritage. At the same time I knew how important it could be to a child to have a religious identity.”

Lauren Bacall struggled with her Jewish identity at a time when being Jewish was not very accepted, and there was a great deal of discrimination against Jews. Once, she revealed to some other models that she was Jewish. They expressed surprise, “You don’t look Jewish”, they said. They meant this as a compliment. “I resented the discussion — and I resented being Jewish, being singled out because I was, and being some sort of freak because I didn’t look it,” Bacall wrote in her autobiography. “Who cares? What is the difference between Jewish and Christian? But the difference is there — I’ve never really understood it and I spent the first half of my life worrying about it…..”

We live in a very different world than Lauren Bacall did early in her career, a world where Jews are accepted and indeed embraced in American society. So, it may be hard for us to understand her struggles around Judaism, to sympathize with her pain, to accept the choice that she made to baptize her children.

  

Surely, none of us would want to find ourselves in the position that Robin Williams faced. Nor would we want to find ourselves in the position that Lauren Bacall faced. Robin Williams was unable to resist the call of death. Lauren Bacall was unable to resist the call of assimilation. It is a challenge for us to remain understanding when we have difficult feelings like anger or disappointment toward actions others take, especially those we love or admire.

The sage Hillel said, “Do not separate yourself from the community; do not trust in yourself until the day you die; do not judge another person until you have been in their place.” Hillel is saying we should remember that we are all human beings and subject to the all human foibles, all human passions, all the pitfalls and stumbling blocks that afflict humanity. We should never say, “It could not happen to me.” And therefore, we ought to resist the temptation to judge – if we were in their place, in their time, in their circumstances, if we felt what they felt -- we might have done the same.

  Shabbat Shalom

 

 

Parasha Ve-et-cha-nan

The Answer to our Prayers

Yesterday morning our adult study group read the first chapter of the Book of Lamentations – the scroll that we read on Tisha B’Av. The first chapter describes the destruction of Jerusalem and the demoralization of its inhabitants in 586 BCE. Jerusalem’s enemies wreak death and destruction and  Jerusalem’s so-called friends and allies gloat and offer no help. The final verse of this chapter is a prayer. It implores G-d to deal with Israel’s enemies as G-d has dealt with Israel for her transgressions. This prayer asks G-d, pay back in kind our enemies and those who stood by while we suffered!

Susan Ganden, a member of our group, was troubled by this –“ Rabbi, she asked, is it proper for a Jew to pray for revenge?” Is it fitting that we should ask G-d to harm those who have harmed us? There is, in fact, a teaching about this in the Talmud.  One story describes how there were hooligans in Rabbi Meir’s neighborhood who caused him much trouble. He prayed to G-d that they should die. His wife, Beruriah overheard him and confronted him. “How can you believe that such a prayer is justified?” she asked. “Pray not that the sinners cease to be, but that the sins cease to be. Once the sins cease, there will be no more wicked men!” Rabbi Meir listened to his wife and did pray for the hooligan who had besieged him, and they repented.  So no, we should not pray that someone who harmed us be harmed themselves. Rather, we should pray that they come to see the error of their ways, and repent, and therefore be no longer deserving of punishment.

There is also another category of prayer that is inappropriate to recite. This is called a “tefilah levatalah” – a prayer said in vain. The classic example of this is of a person who is approaching his town and sees smoke rising up from its midst. The person must not say, “G-d, I pray that it is not my home that is on fire.” The fact is, there is a fire in the town, and either your home is on fire or your home is not on fire. Your prayer cannot effect the situation if your home is already on fire. It is folly to ask G-d to undo something that has already happened!  Therefore, one should not utter this prayer at all.

What if something has already happened, but we don’t know it? At the end of June three teen-age boys -- Eyal Yifrach, 19, Naftali Frankel, 16, and Gil-ad Shaar, 16 – were kidnapped by Hamas operatives on the West Bank.  For weeks their whereabouts were unknown. For weeks, people around the world prayed for their safe return. Their bodies were finally found in a shallow grave outside of Hebron. Forensic examination revealed that they had in fact been killed by their captors shortly after they were abducted. We all prayed for them on the assumption that they were still alive. We had no information otherwise. This then, was not a prayer in vain. It was a prayer that went unanswered”.

Rather than unanswered, should we not say instead that G-d hears our cries but sometimes says “no”? We have an example of that in this week’s Torah reading. Moses pleads to G-d that he be able to enter the Promised Land. He has given the last forty years to leading the Jewish people to just this goal. Now, he is to be denied entrance himself?  The midrash tells us that Moses enlisted the sun, the moon, the stars, as well as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to entreat G-d to allow him to enter the Land. G-d’s response? “Moses, do not speak to me of this anymore.”

Sometimes “no” is the answer to our prayers. “No” was the answer to the prayer of Moses. After telling Moses “no”, G-d tells him to ascend Mt. Pisgah and to look upon the land. He should look “West, North, South and East.” He may look over all of the Land, but he may not enter.

Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof, of blessed memory, notes that Moses is told to look “West, North, South and East,” not “North, South, East, and West” as we would say. In this particular word order, he says, there is a moral lesson.  It is a teaching on the perspective we ought to take when the answer to our prayers is “no”. Moses is first told to look toward the West. The West is where the sun sets. The setting of the sun represents the past, the yesterday that will never again be. Moses must look there first, and let go of the past without regret. Moses must say goodbye to his fervent hope that he might enter the Holy Land. He must no longer dwell on G-d’s refusal to grant his request. Moses looks North and South, but concludes by looking toward the East. The East represents the dawning of a new day, the beginning of the future. One name for “East” in Hebrew is “Kedmah”, which is related to the word for “going forward”.  Moses still has work to do. He must go forward. He must prepare the Jewish people for the leadership of Joshua. He must give them final instructions. He must bid them farewell by blessing them. G-d’s “no” closes off one path. Moses must continue to look forward to the new day.

So it is with us. Our most fervent prayers are at times answered with a “no”. We may not understand it. We may be angry. But to rail at life when it has cast our lines in unpleasant places is of little avail. We must face our setbacks in life, our “unanswered” prayers, with courage, with fortitude and with dignity. Like Moses we must turn toward the new dawn and go forward.

Shabbat Shalom 

Parasha Devarim

I Am For Peace .....

Since I last spoke from my pulpit so much has happened that it is difficult to know just where to start. While I was on vacation I constantly thought about what I wanted to – no, needed to -- talk about when I returned.  As I was visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC at the end of June, I was thinking of the three kidnapped teen-age boys in Israel -- Eyal Yifrach, 19, Naftali Frankel, 16, and Gil-ad Shaar, 16.
 At that point I thought -- as I was walking through the Holocaust Museum --  I would talk about how when Jews in Europe were kidnapped, Jewish leaders were powerless to get them back. Now, when Jews are kidnapped, there is the Israeli army to vigorously pursue those who are responsible. I thought I might talk about the bravery of the mothers of the teens, and the words of Rachelle Fraenkel, Naftali’s mother, and what it says about the nature of Israeli society as well as world-wide Jewry:  “We feel deeply embraced by the entire Jewish nation, which accompanies us throughout the day, which gives us so much support,” she said.  “We ask that the prayers continue… That’s it, all we want is to hug our children. Eyal, Gil-ad, Naftali, we love you, we miss you, be strong, be strong!”

Then the news came that the bodies of the three teens had been found in a shallow grave outside of Hebron. I thought I might talk about the grief that we all felt, the anger that we all experienced, the outpouring of sympathy from much of the world, the perverse response from Israel’s enemies, who began to send rocket fire from Gaza. Then came the grisly murder of sixteen year old Muhammad Abu Khdeir , a resident of East Jerusalem, at the hands of Israeli Jews. When I return, I thought, my first sermon must surely be about this. How could this have happened?  What did this say about the coarsening of Israeli society toward the Arabs? 

Then of course came increasing rocket fire from Gaza, escalating Israeli responses, a ground invasion, the discovery of terror tunnels, increasingly harsh criticism of Israel, anti-Semitic demonstrations in Europe, accusations of genocide, a cease fire, a breaking of the cease fire, an Israeli soldier kidnapped.  So many words, so many images, such a maelstrom of emotions……  Where to start a d’var torah – especially when you just returned home this morning?  What exactly is there new to say, after the dizzying pace of events in the past month? It all seems so complicated. It all seems like a moral morass. It all seems so confusing.

Yet, it is, in fact, very simple, in my opinion.

Here are the words from the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel, written in 1948. These words represent the highest ideals of the people of Israel. These words articulate Israelis profoundest hope for the future of the Middle East.

“[The State of Israel] will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations……

“WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”

Here are some excerpts from the Covenant of Hamas. This is the founding charter of the organization, written in 1988. It represents the highest aspirations of the Radical Islamic Movement.  Its words too articulate its profoundest hope for the future – of the Middle East, and beyond.

'Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.' (Preamble)

'The day the enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In the face of the Jews' usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.' (Article 15)

'[Peace] initiatives,   and   so-called   peaceful   solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” (Article 13)

The Charter also blames Jews for standing behind the French  Revolution; for standing behind  the  Communist  Revolution; and for being behind  “ most   of   the revolutions we hear about...”;  for being responsible -- “with their money”, it says -- for secret organizations – “such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions  - which are spreading around the world, in order to  destroy  societies and carry out Zionist interests…;  for both “World War 1 and World War ll “through which they made huge financial gains”. Article 32 cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – the 19^th century anti-Semitic forgery -- as a proof text for Jewish ambitions in the world.

It is painful to hear these words, and the values and ambitions of the Radical Islamic Movement.  But we need to keep in mind what Israel is up against.

I close with the words of Psalm 120:

Woe, that I dwell with the ruthless/ that I live among the lawless/Too long have I lived with those who hate peace/I am for peace/ but whenever I speak/ they are for war.

Shabbat Shalom