Coming Home -- In Honor of Israel's 70th Birthday

Today, the 5^th of Iyar on the Jewish calendar, marks the 70^th birthday of the State of Israel. As we know,  for almost 2000 years the Jewish people had been praying for G-d to return us to Zion, “to gather those who are dispersed across the four corners of the earth and lead us upright to our land,” in the words of our prayers. We were never sure how this improbable event was going to happen, although it seemed like it called for miracle, the kind of miracle, with signs and wonders, with which we understood G-d brought us out of Egypt. But there were no miracles, at least not the type of supernatural Divine intervention that seemed the only way the Jewish people would ever return to the Holy Land as a sovereign, independent nation. Rather, Israel became a state through hard work, intelligence, determination, faith, sacrifice and courage.  Those same qualities continue to sustain Israel in a world that is largely unsympathetic to her continuing struggle for survival in a hostile Middle East.

Once the State of Israel was established, many Jews from around the world heeded the call of return. Tonight I want to tell you the story of one person who left his home to live in Israel. When Rabbi Riskin and his family went to live in Israel in 1983 he was the rabbi of the Lincoln Square Synagogue, a prominent Modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Rabbi Riskin, his wife and four young children left their comfortable life in New York City and took up residence in Efrat, an Israeli settlement a 40 minute drive south of Jerusalem. A Rabbi Riskin tells it, when he and his family arrived there were no paved roads in Efrat, no private telephones, and only one public pay telephone that generally didn’t work. During that first winter, his family was often without heat or electricity. Not only that, but after a few months Rabbi Riskin realized that he had no clear way of earning money to support his family! Whatever he had thought he was going to do to earn money had not worked out!

Rabbi Riskin writes that he began to think he had made a big mistake, leaving his position as the rabbi of a prestigious synagogue in New York City and moving with his family to this primitive outpost on the West Bank. Just as he was worrying about this, someone knocked at his door. It was the man in charge of security for Efrat, telling him it was his turn to stand guard at the gates of the settlement.

His partner for that night was a fellow resident of Efrat named Yossi. Yossi asked Rabbi Riskin where he was from, and Rabbi Riskin began reminiscing about his life in New York and his decision to move to with his family to Israel. As he talked, Rabbi Riskin began to long for those good old days when he was financially secure and comfortably domiciled. Then Rabbi Riskin asked Yossi about his life before he came to Israel.

“Believe it or not,” said Yossi, “I grew up in Holland as a Christian. As a child I went to Church every Sunday with my mother and father. In 1967, when I was a young high schooler, I read in the newspaper about Israel’s amazing victory in the Six Day War. From that day on, I became very interested in Israel. When I had to write my senior paper for High School graduation, I wrote it on Israel. In Holland, after you graduate High School, everybody has to join the army. Everyone in the army is expected to talk to a member of the clergy of some kind. Even though I was a Christian, I chose to talk to a rabbi. Then I began to learn Hebrew.

“One day at home I was practicing the Grace after Meals in Hebrew, and I noticed my mother mouthing the words of this prayer. I asked her how she knew the prayer. She told me that before the Second World War she worked as a nanny for a Jewish family, and they would recite this prayer. That is how she said she knew it.

“I was nineteen years old when the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973. All of the kibbutz members in Israel were fighting in the war, and a call went out for volunteers to come to Israel to harvest the fruits and vegetable that would otherwise rot in the fields. I was sent with three Christian friends to a kibbutz. I fell in love with the land and the people. I picked up Hebrew easily, and began to read about Jewish history and about Judaism. I started to keep kosher and observe Shabbat. Someone from the Kibbutz suggested that I might want to convert to Judaism. There were conversion classes at a nearby kibbutz, and I began to attend them.

“After an intensive period of Jewish study, I was ready to convert to Judaism. But I was only 19 years old, and so, before I did something that momentous, I decided to call my parents and tell them about my decision. My mother fainted when she heard the news. When she revived and was able speak she told me that I did not have to convert to Judaism. I was already Jewish, she told me, because …….. she was Jewish."

Yossi’s mother then told him the secret she had kept from him all of his life. Yossi’s grandfather had been the cantor in the main synagogue in the town where she grew up. Like every other Jewish family in the town, hers was caught up in the Holocaust. Yossi’s mother survived the concentration camp she was in, but her parents and siblings did not survive. She swore that if she were to ever have children, or blessed to have grandchildren, they would never go through such a horrible experience. “If there was one Holocaust, there could be another Holocaust,” she explained to Yossi. So she became a Christian. The only person who knew about her Jewish background was Yossi’s father. “But,” said Yossi’s mother, “If you wish to rejoin the religion of my parents and their parents, May the G-d in whom I can no longer believe bless you and keep you.”

Rabbi Riskin writes that when he heard this story, he knew that he had made the right decision to live in Israel -- despite the unpaved roads, lack of electricity, and other inconveniences. The words that Moses spoke to the Israelites 3500 years ago came back to him, “You will be scattered to the ends of the heavens, for there the Lord your G-d will gather you, and from there he will take you up… and return you to the land of your ancestors.”

Rabbi Riskin knew he had truly come home.

Shabbat Shalom

Building Bridges

The ancient Romans regarded bridge building as a sacred pursuit. The position of bridge builder was an important one in ancient Rome, a city which spanned the holy Tiber River and was in need of bridges to unite the city. The ancient Romans called their priest the “pontifex” which means bridge builder. The word “Pontiff” comes from this ancient Roman word. Indeed, in much of Christianity, the clergy is the bridge between G-d and the laity. Just as a bridge unites that which nature divides, so in the Roman Catholic faith the Pontiff is the person whose role it is to bring together the divine and the human.

This week in our Torah portion, we read about the ordination of Aaron and his sons into the priesthood. In Jewish life, it was the “Kohen” or priest, who was originally the bridge between the Divine and the human. The sacrifice was the means, with the priest as mediator, by which  the connection between the worshiper and G-d was made. But when the Temple was destroyed the sacrifice could no longer be offered, and the priest lost his function as bridge between the Kadosh Barukh Hu and the Jewish people. It was not a person who took the Kohen’s place, but rather an act – the mitzvah. It became the performance of the mitzvah, both ethical and ritual, that would from now on bridge the gap between the Jewish people and G-d. In fact, the very word mitzvah comes from the three letter Hebrew root, tzadi-vav-tof, which means “to connect” or “to unite”.

Last Sunday evening Middy and I attended the opening of an art exhibition at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Downers Grove. The exhibition was titled “Beyond Bridges.” It featured the works of 21 Arab, Persian and Jewish artists from 11 countries representing Islam, Christianity and Judaism. I was asked to represent the Jewish community at the event and to give some opening comments for the exhibit.  

The 21 works of art on display were originally part of a larger exhibition that showcased in Paris, Cairo, London, Metz, Germany, New York City, Spokane and Portland. Through a variety of medium these artists urge us to focus on what we have in common with one another. The goal of the exhibition it to encourage us to look at ways we can honor and respect cultural and religious diversity.

It seemed fitting that this exhibit opened in our area on the week that we remembered the 50^th anniversary of the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel of the Jewish Theological Seminary once described Dr. King’s message as “like the voice of the prophets of Israel.” Dr. King was a bridge builder. He called “for a world-wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation …… a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men.”

Coincidentally, yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel. The Nazis burned the bridges between Jews and their neighbors so that the Jewish people of Europe found themselves on an island, isolated and alone. Once isolated, “a Jew” was defined as less than human. Then they were brutally and summarily exterminated. To paraphrase Heinrich Heine, first they burned bridges, then they burned books, then they burned people.

Aaron Elster, who died this week, was a survivor of the Holocaust. He was born in Poland in 1931 and in 1942, at the age of 11, went into hiding with a Polish family for the duration of the war. In 1947 he immigrated to the United States. He settled in Chicago and became a prominent member of the Chicagoland Jewish Community. He was an active member of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and often spoke to community groups about the lessons of the Holocaust. . He also spoke to children.  He said that when he told his story to children, he hoped they would take away two ideas.  “First, [that] you must believe in yourself. You must trust that you are stronger and smarter than you think you are. Second….. that prejudice and intolerance against others can lead to another Holocaust. As the decision makers of tomorrow children must understand the consequences of indifference and hate. They must not be bystanders, they must always be proactive and have the courage to speak up and care."

The stranger is one of the most vulnerable people in any society, and the Torah places a special emphasis on caring about him. According to Rabbi Eliezer in the Talmud the Torah “warns against the wronging of the stranger in thirty-six places; other say, in forty-six places.” Whatever the exact number of times, the Torah is challenging us to build a future world where everybody would feel at home, and nobody would be a stranger.

Art events like “Beyond Bridges”, and all events designed to increase understanding between people of different faith and cultures, are attempts to bridge the chasm that separates us and makes us strangers to one another. In building bridges, we lay the foundation for a future where another Holocaust could never happen, to anyone.

Building bridges between faiths and between people -- Can there be a greater mitzvah in life than that?

Shabbat Shalom

Parasha Vayikra "Food, Glorious Food"

This evening, in honor of the start of the Book of Leviticus in our annual Torah reading, I am going to talk about food. Food, you ask? We thought the Book of Leviticus is about sacrifices and the laws of purity! But, what are sacrifices if not food? All ancient peoples worshipped their gods by providing sacrifices to them. They imagined they were feeding their hungry gods. The Jewish people also sacrificed to the G-d of Israel, but not to provide food to satisfy G-d’s hunger. Rather, the Torah tells us that G-d was pleased with the aroma of the cooking food. Rashi reminds us that this metaphor means that a sacrifice performed with the proper intention and the proper ritual would be as pleasing to G-d as a pleasant aroma would be pleasing to a human being.

What do you think is the most Jewish of foods?  Perhaps for some of you Challah is the most Jewish food. As we know it is a reminder of the manna that G-d sent to sustain the Jewish people in the wilderness. It also graces our tables on Friday nights and festivals. Each week the priests of the Temple would place loaves of bread on the table in front of the ark. Surely the challah is the most Jewish of foods. This week I learned something about the origins of Challah, and this led me to conclude that Challah is not the most Jewish food. The braided bread that we call Challah was invented by the women of the Teutonic tribes of what is now Germany. They used to offer the braids of their own hair to a German goddess. In order to preserve their own braids they began offering the goddess a braided bread instead. German Jews of the 15^th century adopted this custom of braided bread, using it for the bread placed on the Sabbath table each week. The custom of using a braided bread for Sabbath eventually spread all over Europe. It turns out that the name of the Teutonic goddess to whom the bread was offered was “Holle”, from which the name “Challah” comes from.

Knowing this, I cannot accept that “Challah” is the most Jewish of foods. 

Surely, then, the most Jewish food is chicken soup! After all for generations Jews have enjoyed chicken soup at Passover Seders, Rosh HaShannah dinners and Friday night meals.  But chicken soup was invented by the Chinese around the time when chickens were domesticated -- between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago. True, the Chinese are the most Jewish of the non-Jews, which is why one finds Chinese restaurants packed with our people on Christmas day! The medieval rabbi and physician Maimonides learned from Chinese and Greek texts about the medicinal properties of chicken soup. In his book, “On the Causes of Symptoms”, Maimonides recommends chicken soup to “neutralize body constitution”. He also recommends it for the treatment of asthma and leprosy. Known by some in our day as “The Jewish Penicillin”, chicken soup is prescribed as a treatment for anything from the common cold to a broken heart. I don’t know about you but, given the Chinese connection, I am not sure I would pick chicken soup as the most Jewish of foods -- although it surely lifts the spirits warms the heart.

 For me personally the most Jewish of foods is……….. the eggplant! The eggplant originated in India and was brought to Spain by the Arabs. There it became a dietary staple of Sephardic Jewry, much like the potato would become the staple of Eastern European Jewry. When the Jews were expelled from Spain, the eggplant and its recipes went with them.  The Jews then spread their love of eggplant dishes throughout the Mediterranean countries where they settled.

There are three reasons I think the eggplant is the most Jewish of foods. First, it went into exile with the Jewish people when we were expelled from Spain and took root in other countries, just like us. Second, the eggplant was considered poisonous in much of Europe and was not consumed, thereby suffering the same kind of undeserved discrimination as the Jewish people. Third, did you know that the eggplant is a berry? To the blueberry and the raspberry, the strawberry and the blackberry, the eggplant must look like a very odd berry indeed. The eggplant is the outsider of the berry family, the berry that is different.

Another reason I choose the eggplant as the most Jewish of foods is that Jews composed songs to the eggplant. For example there is the Ladino song “Si Savesh la Buena Djente” in which an eggplant and a tomato battle it out for supremacy. Then there is the song “Siete Modos de Guisar la Berenjenas”—Seven Ways to Cook Eggplant. This song is actually a shortened version of a Ladino poem describing 35 ways to cook eggplants. It goes like this:

Siete modos de de guisados/se guisa la berenjena
La primera que la guise  /es la vava de Elena
Ya la hace bocadicos  /y la mete en una cena
Esta comida la llaman  /comida de berenjena

There are seven different ways to cook eggplant.
The first recipe is that of Elena’s grandmother.
She cuts it into bite-sized pieces and serves it for supper
and this meal is called a dish of eggplant.

Chorus: Ah, my Uncle Cerasi, how he likes to drink wine/ Wine wine wine – lots of it he feels fine

La segunda que la guise  /es la mujer del Shamas /La cavaca por arientro
y la hinchi d’aromat /Esta comida la llaman /la comida la dolma

The second kind is that of the shammas’s wife.
She hollows it out and fills it with herbs.
This meal is called a dish of dolmá.(stuffed vegetables).

Follow this link for a version of this song. I think you will like it 

Siete Modos de Guisar la Berenjenas

To that we say – be-te-a-von --- Bon Apetit!  And Shabbat Shalom