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.