Parasha Ki Tezte -- Returning a Lost Object

The Case of the Lost Tefillin

I am sure many of us have had the experience of our luggage being lost by an airline. We all know that sinking feeling of waiting for our checked luggage at the luggage carousel, and one by one all of the passengers on your flight collect their luggage and leave, and you are still waiting. It is obvious the airline has misplaced your luggage. You have to through the hassle of reporting it, and usually the airline finds it and delivers it to your destination within 24 hours. Sometimes, however, the passenger and his or her luggage are, for whatever reason, never re-united. Ever wonder where lost luggage ends up? It ends up in Scottsboro, Alabama, at a Superstore called Unclaimed Baggage Center. This is a 40,000 foot “Superstore” that attracts close to one million visitors annually and employs 140 people. If an airline cannot find the owner of luggage, The Unclaimed Baggage Center buys the luggage and sells its contents to customers who shop at the store.

Most of what the store sells are things that you would expect people to travel with – clothes, electronics, books, and household items. There are also unusual items for sale at the store – car engines, moose antlers, full suits of armor to name a few. Some people apparently travel with suitcases full of cheese, vacuum packed frogs, and armadillos.  The best find ever was a 5.8 carat diamond solitaire ring.

One day last year, Rabbi Uri Pilichowski was shopping in this store looking for some cheap cell phones. He came upon a very unusual find – seven pair of tefillin – sitting on a shelf in the aisle between ladies dresses and bathing suits.  For those of you who might not know, tefillin or phylacteries in English, are two small black cubes containing scriptural verses written on vellum.  Traditional Jews attach these cubes to themselves using leather straps, one on the arm and one on the head, during weekday morning prayers. Now, high quality tefillin like the ones Rabbi Pilichowski saw at this store can run upwards of a thousand dollars a pair!  The store, however, was selling these tefillin at $45 dollars a pair. The obviously had no idea what they had, or their value.

Rabbi Pilichowski could have done one of three things at this moment. He could have seen this as a financial opportunity. He could buy these seven sets of tefillin, all in excellent condition, for $45 each and sell them to fellow Jews for between $500 and $1000 dollars apiece. He would make a killing in the tefillin market, and his buyers would have purchased quality tefillin at a discounted price. In other words, we might say, a win-win situation. Alternately, he could have simply passed them by, comfortable with the fact that the owners had probably already been compensated for their loss through the airline insurance company. He could have reasoned that they had replaced these lost tefillin with new ones long ago, and there was no point in going to the trouble of finding their owners.

Which would you have done – gone for the profit or simply moved on? Rabbi Pilichowski did neither of these. It occurred to Rabbi Pilichowski that he could neither profit from the re-sale of these tefillin nor simply ignore their existence. The Torah was clear. The mitzvah of “Hashavat Aveida”, of returning a lost object, was a commandment, not an option. “You shall not see the ox of your brother or his sheep or goat cast off and ignore them, you shall return it to your brother …. So shall you do for his garment, and so shall you do for any lost article of your brother that may become lost from him and you find it – you must not ignore it.”  Rabbi Pilichowski resolved to try to return these valuable religious articles to their owners, in keeping with this mitzvah found in our Torah reading this week. He bought the seven pair of tefillin for $45 each and set off to find their owners.

But how does one do that? These tefillin could belong to anyone in the world! When I was a child there was a section in the local newspaper in the classified ads called “Lost and Found”.  I doubt if that exists anymore. Even if it did, which newspapers should he advertise in? The owners of these tefillin could be anywhere in the world! He decided to post photos of each pair on Facebook, explaining that he was looking for the owners. Within hours the post had been shared 2000 times. In a matter of days he was able to find the owners of six of the seven pair of Tefillin and return them.

One pair was not found through Facebook. It had a tag inside of the Tefillin bag with the name “Malka”. Rabbi Pilichowski had once attended a Passover Seder in Ukraine with someone with that name. “How many people have that last name?” he reasoned. So he reached out to this person, who he knew was now living in Los Angeles. Yossi Malka, 37, immediately confirmed that he had lost Tefillin during a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina. The tefillin had belonged to his father, David Malka, who died several months earlier at age 58 from pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he bequeathed his cherished Tefillin to his oldest grandson, Abie, who would be soon celebrating his bar mitzvah. Needless to say, the family was devastated by the loss of this precious family heirloom, and overjoyed to have it returned.

Our sages ask, why is it even necessary to have a commandment in the Torah to return a lost object? Isn’t it obvious that we should do so? Doesn’t this fall under common human decency? How could one even think of keeping something one has found that belongs to someone else?  The answer they give is that a commandment is necessary to overcome both the greed that might lead a person to keep a valuable object they found, or the inertia that tempts one to just put the lost object away and do nothing about it. Human beings can be lazy. We might just ignore a lost object to avoid the trouble involved in returning it. Was Rabbi Pilichowski the first Jewish person who saw those tefillin in the store and recognized them for what they were? Highly unlikely! But everyone else looked at them with curiosity and just walked by. Everyone else looked the other way. Rabbi Pilichowsky, however, felt that it was his obligation under Torah law to at least try to return these lost items to their proper owners.

May the example of Rabbi Pilichowsky motivate each of us to do the right thing when we come upon a lost object.  It may mean more to the owner, and to us, than we could ever imagine.[1]

Shabbat Shalom

[1] I am grateful to Rabbi Jack Reimer for suggesting this topic and for guiding me to the news article in the New York Daily News dated July 3, 2014, which gave the account upon which this sermon is based.

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Parasha Re-eh:  Do Not Inquire

Portrain of Shimon Abeles
from a book at the Jewish
Museum, Prague, c. 1728

All we can be certain of is that he was ten years old when he died. He was a Jewish boy and the grandson of a prominent leader of the Jewish community in Prague in the late 17^th century. His death in 1694 will forever remain a mystery. His father claimed he died of natural causes. The medical faculty of Charles University, then a Jesuit stronghold, claimed he died a violent death. His father, Lazar, was arrested and charged with murdering his son to prevent his conversion to Christianity, about which the boy had shown some interest.  Lazar died from torture before the authorities could extract a confession. Although Shimon Abeles, the ten year old boy, was never baptized, he was declared a Christian saint and a martyr, and buried in Prague’s Tyn Church, in the Old Town Square.

I stood in front of that very church in January, 2009 as part of a Rabbinic mission to Prague and Israel with the Chicago Rabbinic Action Committee. It was in front of that church that I first heard the story of Shimon Abeles. Afterward, the group of rabbis went into the Church to see Shimon’s burial place. Not all of the rabbis went into the church, however. Our Orthodox colleagues remained outside.

The reason they stayed outside, on that bitterly cold January day is based on a verse from our Torah reading for this week. In our Torah portion, the Jewish people are about to enter the Land of Canaan. G-d is worried about their sliding back into idolatry when they come in contact with the Canaanite people who worship their gods in abominable ways. After the sin of the Golden Calf, G-d knows how susceptible the people might be to succumbing to idolatrous forms of worship. So, he tells the people, “Beware of being lured into their ways after they have been destroyed. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, “How did those nations worship their gods? I too will follow their practices.” Thus my Orthodox colleagues refused to enter the Church, lest they violate that commandment to inquire about other religions.

Most of us here this evening take a different view entirely toward inquiry into other cultures and religious practices. We encourage intellectual inquiry into other faiths, cultures and modes of worship. We hope that others take an interest in us as well.  In some cases this may indeed lead to the observance of another religion.  In the United States, 34% of American adults currently have a religious identity different from the one in which they were raised! What was a relatively rare occurrence at the time of Shimon Abeles is a common practice in present day America.   In fact, some firmly believe that our inquiry into the faith and customs of others leads to understanding of one another that is crucial to the very survival of our world. We Americans place freedom of knowledge and inquiry among our highest values.

One of the major differences between what we call “Modern Orthodox” Judaism and what we call “Ultra-Orthodox” also known as “Haredi” Judaism is the degree to which inquiry and exploration outside of the religious community is tolerated. “Modern Orthodoxy” encourages its members to engage fully with Western culture. It believes that secular ideas and insights can inform Torah knowledge, just as Torah knowledge can inform secular ideas. Ultra-Orthodoxy, or the “Haredi”, on the other hand, sees little value in teachings outside of their own circles. Their rabbis seek to isolate their members from contact with outside world, be they secular ideas, ideas from other religions, or ideas from non-Orthodox forms of Judaism. They see non-Haredi ideas as potentially corrupting and leading their adherents astray.

Ultra-Orthodox leaders will go to extra-ordinary lengths to keep the outside, outside.   Just imagine the challenge posed by the   ever present smart phone.  As we all know, we have at our finger tips a previously unimaginable  wealth of knowledge through Smart Phone technology.  When they first came on the market, Haredi rabbis condemned Smart Phones as a new evil. One prominent leader said they were as destructive as weapons, and another publicly destroyed a Smart Phone to get that message across. In 2013, however, Rami Levy Communications, an Israeli company, came out with a kosher smart phone. How can a smart phone be kosher, you ask? It actually has a heksher, that is, rabbinical certification that it is permitted to use. What convinced the rabbis that a smart phone CAN be kosher? This is a phone that one can make a call on, one can text on, one can email on, but one whose search engine has been disabled. In its place, there are apps.  Approved apps.  Apps that Haredi Rabbis have deemed appropriate. There were 600 approved apps when the phone came out in 2013. The company hopes that this number will eventually reach 20,000.

Some Haredi authorities are doubling down on the ban on “non-kosher” cell phones. It was reported in June of this year that anyone possessing a “non-kosher” cell phone at the Musayof Synagogue in Jerusalem is disqualified from leading prayers during worship services.

Intellectual freedom, the ability to explore ideas outside of one’s own narrow experience, may constitute a risk.  One might become attracted to the religious beliefs and practices of the other, as the Torah seems to fear.  The ideas of others may challenge and call into question one’s own beliefs. One might even be tempted to go down unhealthy or even self-destructive paths. But such strict limitations on inquiry demonstrate a lack of confidence in the ability of one’s tradition to hold onto its own in the face of competing forces.  The answer to this dilemma, in my opinion, is not to control access to the ideas of those who are different from us. The answer is to study Torah, and to teach our traditions to our children so that we can pass them on. I believe when we truly educate ourselves in our Judaism we come to see and understand the beauty, the power and the logic of our faith. Once do we will want to maintain it and embrace it in the face of all challenges to it that we might confront.

Shabbat Shalom

It is from this week’s Torah portion, Ekev, that we are taught that we should thank G-d for the food we eat.  “When you have eaten and been satisfied,” the text says, “you shall thank Adonai, your G-d for the good land which G-d has given you.”  The Torah does not tell us HOW we should bless G-d, however. It doesn’t tell us the exact words we should say. It was up to the rabbis of the Talmud to develop this blessing.  It’s a good thing they did.  Otherwise we would  all be on our own when it comes to thanking G-d for the blessings of food. Some of us might recall the hilariously awkward scene in the 2000 movie “Meet the Parents”. Greg, (played by Ben Stiller) visiting his fiancé Pam’s home for the first time is invited to “say grace” by Jack, Pam’s father, played by Robert Deniro. Greg wings it – and we all cringe!

Meet the Parents: Greg Says Grace  (click to see clip) 

The rabbis of antiquity developed a series of four blessings to thank G-d for food.  The first blessing thanks G-d for providing food for ALL creatures.   The second blessing is narrower in scope. It thanks G-d for the Land of Israel and its bounty. It also thanks G-d for redeeming us from Egypt, for establishing a covenant with the People of Israel, and for the Torah. The third blessing is also particular to the Jewish people.  It asks G-d to have mercy on Israel and to restore the symbols of political sovereignty to the land of Israel – Jerusalem, the House of David, and the Temple.  The fourth blessing moves us back to a wider scope, as it describes G-d as the “ruler of the universe” who is a “sovereign who is good to all.”  It concludes by asking G-d to always bestow upon us grace, kindness, and compassion.

When we recite Grace we are reminded to be grateful to G-d for all that we have.  We are also reminded that although we have worked hard for the food that is before us, none of it would be there were it not for the goodness of G-d, who is the ultimate provider of this food.  We are, as it were, dependent on G-d for our sustenance.  Yet, it is far better to be dependent on G-d, than to be dependent on others for our food.  Our Grace After Meals acknowledges the shame that often comes with dependency on others when it says in the third paragraph:

Please, O Lord our God, do not make us dependent on the gifts or the loans of other people, but only on your full, open, holy, and generous hand, so that we may not ever suffer shame or humiliation. [The Sephardic tradition adds to this:]  “For the gifts that others give are small, and the embarrassment that they cause is great.”

Tsedaka, or charity, is an important value in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We must give to those in need, but when we do, we must do it with sensitivity to the feelings of those to whom we give.  The story is told of Reuben, an honest man who has fallen on hard times. He asks his friend Simon to lend him some money. “I won’t lend you the money,” said Simon, “I give it to you as a gift.” Simon thought he was being magnanimous. But Reuben was so ashamed and embarrassed that he promised himself he would never ask Simon for a loan again.  In offering to give Reuben the money instead of loaning it to him, Simon humiliated him by making him feel like he was no longer an equal, but was part of a lower class, a beggar.

The Grace After Meals is a prayer that makes us aware of G-d’s presence in our lives and our gratefulness for G-d’s gifts. It also reminds us that it is not enough to give to those less fortunate -- we must do it in a way that safeguards the dignity of those who are in need.

Shabbat Shalom

Prayer against racist violence we recited this past Shabbat at Services

Racist Violence against Houses of Worship

Oh people of conscience,
Cry out.
Cry out against arrogance.
Cry out against hatred and anger.
Cry out against violence and oppression.
For God requires us to stand
In the name of justice and freedom,
For God requires us to oppose terror,
To muster our power and energy
Against racist aggression
And to protect all houses of prayer.

Oh God,
We implore You,
Look down upon the suffering
Perpetrated against churches, mosques and synagogues,
Against houses of worship in so many lands,
By the hand of wickedness,
By the hand of malevolence,
By the hand of ignorance and sin.
Today we remember, with sadness, the attacks on
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
And the loss of precious life.

With Your gentle and loving hand,
God of Shelter,
Unite all of your children
Under Your canopy of hope and love.
Bring the light of salvation and healing
To the four corners of the earth.

© 2015 Alden Solovy 

Parasha Shelakh: Asking a Good Question

Isidor I. Rabi, the Nobel Laureate in Physics was once asked, “Why did you become a scientist, rather than a doctor or lawyer of businessman, like other immigrant kids in your neighborhood? [He responded], “My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school, “Nu, did you learn anything today?” But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “Did you ask a good question today?” That difference – asking good questions – made me become a scientist.” [1]

One of the characteristics of Judaism that is most admired, by Jews and by non-Jews alike, is the openness of our religion to asking questions. Some other religions have dogmas that must be accepted and never questioned. Judaism, on the other hand, has a corpus of literature – the Talmud—whose basis is almost entirely questions. In fact, few questions are totally out of bounds. In this week’s Torah reading we have one of them. In exploring this question, we will discover what kind of questions are good questions and what kind are deserving of …… well, of the earth opening up beneath you and your being swallowed alive to the netherworld.

The question deserving of that particular punishment was asked by one Korach in this week’s Torah portion. Korach, Moses’ cousin, challenges Moses. “Who made you the leader of the people,” asks Korach, “are not all of the People of Israel holy, and is not G-d among all of us?” This question ultimately led to G-d causing the earth to open and to swallow Korach live.

The ancient Rabbis divided questioning – and the disagreements over the answers to questions that inevitably ensued – into two categories. The first category of questions were placed in the group of “leshem Shamayim” – that is, questions and disagreements “for the sake of heaven”. The quintessential example of this kind of questioning and disagreement were the School of Hillel and the School of Shammai. These sages, who lived during the Second Temple period, were often at odds with one another around ritual and theological matters. The other category of questions and disagreements was “lo leshem shamayim” – those “NOT for the sake of heaven”. The example par excellence of this – you guessed it – is Korach, our villain in this week’s parasha.  

According to Israeli scholar Avigdor Shinan,[2] a question “for the sake of heaven” is one that is posed in order to investigate, clarify or strengthen the truth. The question posed “for the sake of heaven” never seeks to denigrate the other. It is asked in dialogue, with utmost respect for opposing opinions. The Talmud is the model for questions that are asked “for the sake of heaven”. It contains a variety of opinions in response to different questions, opinions that are not only different but at times contradictory.  Yet, they are asked and answered within a context of the belief that all the answers are worthy of respect, or, as the sages put it, all are “the words of the Living G-d”.

A question asked “not for the sake of heaven” is posed in order to create conflict, to increase power, to gain a victory, or to humiliate the other.  The questioner has no interest in learning anything new, in moderating his or her position, or of paying any attention to the response of the other. He or she simply wants to win the argument and impose their world view. For the person who asks this type of question, power is more important than truth.  The questioner who asks “not for the sake of heaven” has ulterior motives for his questioning, wants to create trouble, he casts aspersion, seeks to destroy and tear down.  

The spirit of Korach lives on, writes Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, particularly in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, or, as it is commonly known, the BDS movement. Claims that proponents of the BDS movement sometimes put forth – that Israel is not the birthplace of the Jewish people, that there never was a Temple in Jerusalem, that Jewish settlement in Israel is the equivalent of European colonialism, that Israel is an “Apartheid” state – rival the claims of Korach and his company. Mark LeVine, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine and an outspoken supporter of BDS recently wrote words that are painful for me to utter and might be painful for you to hear. He writes, “There is only one criticism of Israel that is relevant: It is a state grown, funded, and feeding off the destruction of another people. It is not legitimate. It must be dismantled, the same way that the other racist, psychopathic states across the region must be dismantled. And everyone who enables it is morally complicit in its crimes.”[3] Such an argument not only fails to give Israel a fair hearing, it paints anyone who disagrees with this extreme position as morally corrupt. Both Korach and this university professor engage in demagoguery: a type of rhetoric that stirs up the emotions, fears, prejudice and ignorance of people and which eschews rational discourse. Leadership like this incites the passions and short circuits rational thinking. It leads to the scene described by British scholar Alan Johnson when he rose to speak against a resolution to boycott Israel that was being debated at an Irish University. He writes, “Anti-Israel student activists tried to break up the meeting by banging on the tables, using the Israeli flag as a toilet wipe, and screaming at me, again and again, ‘[Swear word] off our [swear word] campus you [swear word] Zionist!’” [4]

This is the appeal of demagoguery. First it divides the world into two groups – us and them. Then, it takes a very complicated situation, about which people are anxious, and presents a simple solution, which includes the elimination of the other, of “them”.  In the case of Korach, the people are anxious about their survival in the wilderness, and Korach suggests they replace Moses and Aaron and head back to Egypt. In the case of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, people are anxious about conflict in the Middle East, and suggest the elimination of Israel as the solution.

So asking question, like much in life, can lead to both positive and negative consequences, depending on the questions one asks and the motivation of the questioner. Asking questions “for the sake of heaven” can lead to greater truth and understanding. But asking other kinds of questions can take us down the path of falsehoods and hatred. May we have the wisdom to recognize the difference.                         

Shabbat Shalom

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[1] Letter to the Editor New York Times January, 1988 in A Different Night by Noam Zion and David Dishon

[2] Pirke Avot Perush Yisraeli Chadash by Avigdor Shinan

[3] Jewish Review of Books, Spring 2015  “Climate of Opinion” by Alvin H. Rosenfeld

[4] ibid

Parasha Be-ha-ah-lo-techa: How to be a Good Father in Law

Do you remember the movie, “Meet the Parents”?  It starred Ben Stiller as a prospective son-in-law and Robert Dinero as his father-in-law to be, Jack.  Greg, the character played by Stiller, is a male nurse from Chicago who visits his girlfriend Pam’s home intending to propose marriage. Once there he finds he has to pass muster with Jack, an ex-CIA agent who takes an instant dislike to his beloved daughter’s suitor. Greg tries to impress Jack but everything he does only makes him look worse. 

The movie plays on the anxieties that all of us feel when meeting our prospective in-laws. We can all relate. This is one factor which made the movie such a success.  Clearly Jack is every man’s nightmare of a father-in – law. But what makes a good father in law? Our Torah reading for this week provides some answers.

Our Torah portion for this week,  Behaalotecha,  re-introduces Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, who last made an appearance in the book of Exodus. This evening I want to look at that relationship, as well as two other son-in-law/father-in- law relationships in the Bible. I hope by studying this, we can gain some guidance on how to be a good father in law.  

The first the relationship I want to examine is between Jacob and his father-in-law, Lavan.  Lavan deceives Jacob from the very beginning by substituting his older daughter, Leah, for his younger one, Rachel, on Jacob’s wedding day. Lavan takes Jacob into business with him, then exploits his labor. He cheats him, and never allows Jacob to lead an independent life. Finally, Jacob has had enough. He flees with this wife, his children and all his possessions. Lavan pursues him, intent on harming Jacob and bringing back what he thinks Jacob has stolen. But G-d comes to him in a dream warning him not to cause Jacob any harm. Yet, when Lavan finally catches up to Jacob, he claims, with stupefying arrogance, that “the daughters are my daughters, the children are my children, and everything that you see is mine.” Still, mindful of G-d’s word, he lets Jacob return to the Land of Caanan with his wives, children and possessions. This is not a model of a relationship with a son-in-law that we want to emulate.

The second son-in-law/father-in-law relationship that I want to discuss is that of Saul and his son-in-law, David. Saul is the King of Israel, and David a commoner. Yet David becomes a successful warrior and is wildly popular among the Israelites. Saul becomes intensely jealous of David’s renown among the people, and wants him dead. To that end, he arranges a marriage with his daughter, Michal, who has fallen in love with David. However, David is poor and cannot pay the bride price. Saul sees his opportunity to be rid of David once and for all. “I desire no other bride price than the foreskins of 100 Philistines,” he craftily tells David, thinking that David might be killed in the process of gathering these, and Saul would be rid of him forever. “No problem,” thinks David when he hears of Michal’s bride price. David goes out with his men and brings King Saul two hundred Philistine foreskins! David marries Saul’s daughter, Michal, but David’s relationship with Saul continues to deteriorate.  I am sure you will agree this also is not a foundation upon which to build a loving family relationship.

Here is some rabbinic advice – Don’t be a father-in-law like Lavan or a father-in-law like Saul. Both men are jealous and competitive with their sons- in – law. Both men try to control them and their families. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Rachel and Leah, Lavan’s daughters, were miserable in their marriage to Jacob. Saul’s daughter, Michal and her husband, David grew to detest one another as well.

Fortunately, there is someone to model ourselves after in the Bible, and that is Moses’ father in law, Jethro. You recall that Moses is pasturing Jethro’s sheep when G-d appears to him at the burning bush. Moses returns from the divine encounter and tells his father in law Jethro that G-d told him he needs to return to Egypt to lead his people out of slavery. Some other father-in-law might have not-so-gently inquired if Moses was still taking his medication. Some other father-in-law might tell him that this is not a good time to leave the family business. Some other father-in-law might have said, ”You can go, but my daughter and her children must stay.” Upon hearing that Moses needs to leave, Jethro simply says, “Go in peace”. Moses then departs for Egypt with his wife Tzippora and their two sons.

Moses’ wife and children eventually return to Jethro’s home in Midian and do not participate in the Exodus from Egypt. We next meet Jethro after the Exodus, bringing Moses’ wife and children to the Israelite encampment at Mt. Sinai. Despite the danger inherent in the journey across the wilderness, Jethro apparently feels that it is important that Moses’ sons grow up with a father in the house. He overcomes whatever anxiety or misgivings he may have about life in the desert and puts his daughter’s happiness and grandchildren’s wellbeing in the forefront of his concerns. They might be safer living with Jethro in Midian, but Jethro knows they belong with Moses and the People of Israel. When he sees Moses suffering under the burden of leadership, Jethro offers him one piece of advice. He should appoint judges to help him. That is the only advice that Jethro ever gives his son-in-law, and Moses puts it to good use.

In this week’s Torah portion, Moses invites his father-in-law to join the community and journey with them to the Land of Israel. Jethro declines. “I shall not go; only to my land and my family shall I go.”

So we can derive four lessons on how to be a good father in law from Jethro’s example. 1) Respect the decisions of your daughter and her husband.  2) Always put their welfare before your own. 3) Just give one piece of advice – no more.  If you follow this example you will always be welcome to visit, as was Jethro.  Therein lies the fourth lesson – like Jethro, when you do visit, remember to leave.

Shabbat Shalom

Created in G-d's Image

We studied the poetry of Yehuda
Amichai (above) with scholar Rachel Korazim
in her Jaffa home. 

It is wonderful to be back following our nearly two week pilgrimage to Israel. Sixteen of us from our congregation, joined by a son and his 84 year old father from the Boston area, traveled the length and breadth of Israel, taking in the sites and learning about the people and the country. We visited the new Rabin Museum in Tel Aviv and studied the poetry of Yehudah Amichai with scholar Rachel Korazim in her home in Jaffa. We visited an Arab town that straddled the “green line” and met with Lydia Aisenberg, an Israeli woman who volunteers for an Educational Foundation called Givat Haviva to enhance Israeli-Arab dialogue and cooperation. We met with Rabbi Dubi Hayyum , a Conservative Rabbi in Haifa who studies sacred texts weekly with an imam. We met Assaf Luxembourg, an entrepreneur in Tel Aviv who does business with the Chinese.  He gave us insights into Israel as the “start-up nation”. A chance meeting with a soldier at a rest stop, a friend of our remarkable tour guide Kayla Ship, gave us an up close view into what it means to serve in the Israel Defense Forces.  Just two Shabbats ago we worshipped together at the new egalitarian section of the Western Wall. It was a deeply moving experience. We studied and discussed the story of David and Bathsheba at the ruins of David’s ancient palace. We explored Masada and we and floated in the Dead Sea. We learned about wine production in the Negev and the geological forces that create a natural wonder called a “Machtesh”.  We gazed at stars on a cool desert night and listened for the still small voice that Elijah heard when he fled from King Ahab. We picked carrots and plucked strawberries on the Salad Trail as we learned about desert agriculture from Uri Alon, a former Israeli Navy commander turned high tech farmer. We sampled Israeli beers on our bus as we traveled to the airport for our departure. We did all of that, and much more. Even those of us who had visited Israel many times agreed that we had experienced Israel close up and personal.

Uri Alon, of the Salad Trail

It is invaluable to see Israel up close, and I hope that many of you here this evening will join us for our next congregational trip to Israel in 2017. There is also great value, however, in stepping away and seeing Israel from a more distant vantage point. We were at services on Shabbat morning in Jerusalem when the rabbi of the congregation welcomed a group of young people who were visiting with their day school from Baltimore. Alluding to the recent unrest in their city, he cracked that they probably felt safer in Israel than they did in at home.  Frankly I cringed when I heard that remark. It struck me as unfortunate for a number of reasons. First, it felt like an insult to their city of Baltimore.  Second, the visitors were hardly the impoverished black youth who actually did feel threatened by the police in Baltimore – they were white children of privilege whose lives were far removed from the concerns of inner city African Americans. Third, at the very moment that the rabbi made that remark, Israel was in fact embroiled in its own controversy with treatment of Ethiopian Jews by Israeli police. I had not realized this was going on there because I was focused on the excitement of traveling in Israel and learning with my congregation. I only became aware of the irony of his comment when I returned to the United States, and could once again view Israel from afar.

          Just ten days before we arrived in Israel Tel Aviv police were recorded on a cell phone beating a young Israeli soldier of Ethiopian descent, by the name of Demas Fekadeh, for no apparent reason. The release of the video led to demonstrations throughout the country that turned violent in Tel Aviv as participants pelted police with rocks and bottles and police responded with tear gas and stun guns. As in Baltimore, the demonstrators were protesting not only the immediate incident of police brutality, but the years of discrimination at multiple levels in housing, in education and in jobs. Lieutenant Colonel Zion Shankur, a decorated member of the Israeli Defense Forces and a member of the Ethiopian Israeli community, put it this way, “I know that the moment I take off this uniform, I will no longer be that successful Lt. Col. Shankur from the IDF, whose name precedes him. I will be Zion the Ethiopian, who will not be able to easily get into any club in Tel Aviv……. If I walk around Tel Aviv without my uniform and there is some act of violence or a murder, I will be the first person police will stop. And that is only because I am black.” 

Ethiopian Jews celebrate their first Passover in Israel (2012)

Of course, the historical circumstances that brought Africans to the United States could not be more different from those that brought Ethiopians to Israel. Africans were brought to our shores against their will, as slaves. As we know they were oppressed and brutalized for 250 years before their emancipation following the civil war. They then endured legalized discrimination under Jim Crow laws for the next century before finally winning equality in the eyes of the law in the 1960s. As our recent history in Baltimore, in Queens, in Cleveland, in Ferguson and in Florida has shown, there is still much work to be done to achieve equal protection under the law.

Ethiopian Jews understand themselves as the descendents of an ancient Jewish community dating back to Biblical times and have been accepted as such by the rabbinate in Israel. They are ardent Zionists who yearned to come to the Land of Israel and came there willingly. Although their historical experience has been different from other Jewish communities in Israel, they share a deep religious bond with her fellow Jewish citizens. A particularly poignant reminder of this occurred as demonstrations in Tel Aviv brought traffic to a standstill.  A group of white ultra-Orthodox men who emerged from their vehicles to recite their evening prayers were joined by some of the Ethiopian protesters to form a minyan.

Israel is indeed a country of wonders, of innovation, of contradictions as we experienced on our trip there. But it is also a country made up of human beings in all of our glory and folly. The sages had a discussion about the most important verse in the Torah. Rabbi Akiva said it was “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself” from Leviticus. Ben Azzai, his fellow sage, disagreed. He chose a verse from Genesis, “This is the book of the generations of man; on the day that G-d created man, He made him in the image of G-d.” May we strive to see that image of G-d in each man and woman’s face, no matter what the color of their skin.  As Reverend Joseph Lowery, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference along with Martin Luther King said, “We need to turn toward each other, not on each other.” To that, let us say, AMEN!