High Holidays Like No Other

 

This evening marks Rosh Chodesh Elul, the first day of the month of  Elul is the month when we begin our spiritual preparations for the Yamim Noraim – the Days of Awe. Elul is the official opening of our High Holidays. The numerical value of the word “Elul” is the same as the numerical value of the word “binah” – understanding.  Through understanding comes repentance.

 These upcoming High Holidays will be, in many ways unlike any other we have ever experienced. Some of us will welcome the changes and adaptations necessitated by our need to conduct services online due to restrictions related to Covid-19.   One noticeable change is that our services will be shorter than usual.  Over the years I have been asked why we repeat so many of our prayers during the course of our High Holiday services. This year it will be “one and done, no prayer will be repeated. I have heard it said, on occasion, that some of us are bored at services.  I am happy to announce that this year, in the interest of brevity, we have cut out all the boring parts! Surely this will be a welcome change for some in our congregations.

Yet none of these changes compensate for the fact that we will not be together as a community in our beautiful sanctuary this High Holiday season. Extended families and friends are less likely to get together. We will not be able to sing together. Much of what makes the High Holidays a joyous, comforting and celebratory occasion will be absent. We will all have to work harder to make the holidays memorable, special and spiritual.

Rabbis and Cantors and worship committees throughout the world are working hard to re-design High Holiday services so they can be spiritually meaningful to themselves and to their congregation. I have been having regular meetings with my rabbinic colleagues over the internet and believe me we are all rather anxious about this. Many of us are even worried whether our congregants will show up at all! And if they do, how involved could they possibly be participating through a computer

Even in the best of times, clergy  cannot do it alone. Even in the best of times, we need the help of our congregation. These, I do not have to tell you, are NOT the best of times. The cantor and I need YOUR help more than ever if we are to make these holidays  meaningful , spiritually rich and sustaining. 

How can you help us? Since you will not be coming to the sanctuary, we ask you to make your home into a sanctuary. Cantor Matt Axelrod of Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, recently made some suggestions on how to do this. I have added several suggestions myself.    

1)     Set up a pleasant space in your home where everyone can gather to see the services. If you have external speakers for your computer, use them. If you are able to hook up your computer to your larger television screen, even better.  Buy flowers to make the room more cheerful. If you can face east, toward Jerusalem, do so. If you are unable to face east, at least know where east is in your room.

2)      Get dressed up.  Although you may choose not to get dressed up in a suit or a formal dress, you might want to reconsider attending services   in sweatpants or jeans. Buy a new shirt or blouse for the Holidays and wear it for services. It is traditional when wearing clothing for the first time to recite the Shehechiyanu blessing. Don a tallit and a kipah for services. If you do not own a tallit, this would be a great time to purchase one. (and another chance to recite “Shehechiyanu”!) Stand up and sit down at the appropriate times. Being dressed in a certain way and sitting in your specially created sanctuary can go a long way in creating the proper mood and atmosphere conducive to prayer.

3)      Come on time and make sure everybody in the family is there in your newly created worship space. Since services will be shorter, the older children in the household should be encouraged to attend throughout. When you hear a congregational melody that you know – sing!  Respond, “amen” when it is time.

4)      Hold a prayer book. Our congregation is holding a drive-through Food Donation and Prayer Book Pick-up event on Sunday September 13 from 10 am to noon. If you cannot make it, we will drop off as many prayer books at your home as you need. Each family member should have their own Machzor. You can also follow along with the Torah reading in that chumash that your son or daughter got for their bar or bat mitzvah. Or, download the Torah reading for the day from the internet. The High Holiday Machzor is also available on our website if that works for you.

5)      We will all be sitting in front of our computers. You will be tempted to check your emails. DON’T. You will be tempted to shop online. DON’T. You will be tempted to plan next summer’s vacation. DON’T. You will be tempted to go to the kitchen for a snack. Don’t go! Resist these temptations. Stay focused on the services. Stay with us, physically and spiritually. We need you.

 

        Finally, I am going to post this on our Facebook page. Please share it with your friends and fellow congregants. Spread the word and brainstorm ideas. Send your ideas to me!

Above all, please do not wait until the last minute to think about how you will experience the High Holidays this year. In previous years, walking into the synagogue and taking your seat among the congregation was enough. That is not possible this year. This year, physical preparation and spiritual preparation go hand in hand. Think of this not as a loss, but as an opportunity to take more responsibility for your own experience of the Days of Awe.

Shabbat Shalom

 

Give Peace a Chance

 Our Cantor just sang the prayer, "Shalom Rav" set to music by Debbie Friedman, of blessed memory. 

Shalom Rav Al Yisrael Amekha means grant ABUNDANT peace to Israel, Your people. The word “rav” you might remember is related to the word “Rabbi” in English (“rav” in Hebrew) A “rabbi” is someone who makes learning “abundant” in a community. We also have the words “Shalom Rav” in our prophetic reading from Isaiah this week, albeit reversed.

וכל־בניך למודי יהוה ורב שלום בניך׃

“All of your children will be knowledgeable about G-d, and abundant shall be the peace of your children”.

The rabbis of Talmudic times noted that there were three other instances where the Bible uses this phrase, “rav shalom” – not merely “shalom”, peace, but “rav shalom” abundant peace. The first is from Psalm 72:

Oh G-d, grant your wisdom to a king, and Your righteousness to his son/ May he judge your people justly, Your humble folk fairly/ May he judge the poor of the people, save the needy, crush the oppressor……/ May the righteous flourish in his day, and may there be “abundant peace” [rav shalom] in the land.”

Although we no longer have Kings, the poet’s point is still relevant in our day. The writer of this psalm maintains that those who govern around the world can be judged by how successfully they care for their country’s poor. This, in turn, will lead to “rav shalom” abundant peace. Rav Shalom thus comes from wise, compassionate leadership and good government.

The second instance where the Rabbis find the term “rav shalom” is in Psalm 119. In this, by far the longest Psalm in the Bible, the author is focused on the idea that G-d can be found through adhering to Jewish ritual and leading an ethical life. The psalm’s author writes “There is rav shalom– abundant peace – to those who love Your Torah, for them there is no stumbling block”. In our own context, just as the government, in the previous example, must be knowledgeable and competent, so too the citizenry must be well educated and strive to lead moral lives. Then there could be “rav shalom”.

The third instance where the Rabbis find the words “rav shalom” is found in Psalm 37. The Psalmist writes, “….Place your trust in G-d, do not be bothered by a successful people if you know they are schemers/Give up on anger and abandon rage….for it leads to doing evil….soon the wicked will vanish entirely…./ in turn, the humble will inherit the earth, they shall revel in rav shalom – an abundance of peace.”

These days, in the Age of Covid-19, many are feeling an amorphous anger and frustration with “the world” or “the system” or “our leadership”.  The poet cautions us that our justifiable anger about this can lead to committing wicked acts ourselves. Putting our trust in G-d can help to guide our actions in combatting injustice so that we do not begin to resemble those who we are opposing. It is those who are humble, those who cleave to G-d’s moral law when pursuing a righteous cause, who will cause “rav shalom” an abundance of peace, to come into our lives. For G-d does not really “grant peace” at all, as it says in our prayers. Rather, G-d places the desire for peace in our hearts and within our reach.

Shabbat Shalom

Photo courtesy of Alice Donovan Rouse at Unsplash.com

 

 

 

No Person is an Island: Thoughts on Parasha Ekev

 

My colleague, Cantor Sandy Horowitz, shared an old Peanuts cartoon she dug up which aptly illustrates the relationship between Moses and the Jewish people after 40 years of leading them. In the cartoon Linus shares with his big sister Lucy that he wants to be a doctor when he grows up. Lucy replies that Linus could never be a doctor. Linus asks why not? “Because you don’t love mankind,” replies Lucy, “That’s why”. To which Linus replies:

 

One cannot question Moses’ love, commitment, and dedication to the Jewish People – am yisrael. He has sacrificed everything to promote their welfare. It is the actual people he cannot stand! In the parasha for this week he bitterly rebukes them. He recounts their sins in detail – the sin of the Golden Calf, how they complained and had little faith in G-d, how they rebelled and wanted to return to Egypt. He tells them that they really do not deserve to inherit the Land of Canaan. They will only possess it, he says, because of the promise that G-d made to Abraham and Sarah, to Isaac and Rebecca, to Jacob, Rachel and Leah.

In evoking the names of our ancestors Moses is reminding the people that they are part of something greater than themselves. He is reminding them that they are but the latest link in a story that began well before they themselves walked the earth.

The Torah that G-d has given them through Moses will serve as a constitution of sorts by which they will govern themselves when they settle the Land of Canaan. Unlike our Constitution, there is no “Bill of Rights”.  Rather, the Torah speaks in the language of “obligation”—our obligation to G-d and our obligation to one another. When the Torah speaks, as it does in our Parasha, of being rewarded for following the commandments and punished for violating them, it is not addressing the individual. It is addressing the community. It is the community that will prosper if the community follows the law, it is the community that will suffer if it does not. I would go so far as to say that in the Torah the individual exists only in the context of the community. There is no Jew without a Jewish community. The English poet John Donne expressed how inextricably we are bound to one another in his famous poem:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.                           

 

John Donne’s message of our deep connection to one another, and Parasha Ekev’s message of collective responsibility, were never more relevant than in our own age of the Covid virus. If we ignore the laws of science, and instead choose to focus on our own autonomy,  on our right to act as we please and reject the idea that we are but a part of a whole, that we  have an obligation to others, then our immediate future looks bleak indeed. As G-d says in the Torah, “I set before you life and death, blessing and curse – choose life!”

Shabbat Shalom

Friday Night Sermon: Remix Judaism

Rabbi, would it be alright if I lit candles on Shabbat?

At first glance, a strange question to be coming from a fellow Jew. What objection could a rabbi possibly have for a person to perform the mitzvah of “hadlakat nerot”, kindling the Sabbath lights? But a deeper look revealed the anxiety that lay behind the question. First of all, the person asking the question was a man. Traditionally, it is women who light the Sabbath candles. Secondly, the person explained, he did not intend to perform the other rituals associated with the Sabbath Eve. He was not going to recite Kiddush. He was not going to have a challah or sit down to a special meal with a white tablecloth. He worked late on Friday, so he would not arrive home soon enough to light candles before sunset. He was not intending to attend services on Shabbat. He wanted to light candles, not because he wanted to follow Jewish Law. Jewish Law was irrelevant to him. He did not want to light candles because it was a “mitzvah” to light candles. He wanted to light candles because he remembered that, as a child, his mother lit candles. Lighting candles brought back warm memories of his childhood. But could he take up this custom, which he associated with something “religious people” did. After all, he was not “religious”. How would a rabbi feel about this? Was it kosher?

A new book by Roberta Kwall addresses the unease experienced by this Jewish man who wanted to light candles on Friday night. The book is titled “Remix Judaism: Preserving Tradition in a Diverse World”. It is written for Jews who want to experience a more meaningful Jewish existence outside of the parameters of an orthodox life-style. In the book Roberta Kwall writes about a woman named Sophia Marie Unterman who lives in New Orleans. Sophia hosts “arguably the least kosher weekly Shabbat dinners south of the Mason-Dixon line.” Sophia writes unapologetically about the contradictions inherent in her Jewish practice:

To me, mine is not a less Jewish Shabbat because there is shellfish, and bread-breaking long after sundown, but a just-as-meaningful one; it’s time to take a break from an insane workweek, relax with loved ones over a well-earned meal, give thanks for those elements, and keep my favorite family tradition alive.

Roberta acknowledges some in the Orthodox world may view the practice described above as completely misguided and even sinful. But Roberta believes that Sophia’s desire to observe Shabbat by hosting weekly dinners should be seen as something positive. She wants to keep a tradition alive that is meaningful to her and that she has adapted to meet her individual needs. In this day, Roberta writes, Sophia’s passion for Judaism is not something to be taken lightly.

Roberta Kwall, the author of Remix Judaism,will be speaking to us this Tuesday night, August 4, as part of our Speaker Series organized by Mickey Passman. I heard Roberta speak last February at a Chicago Board of Rabbis meeting. She is an engaging, entertaining, and vibrant speaker. I hope you can join us this Tuesday and see for yourselves.

Shabbat Shalom