To Be Blessed With Everything : A Thanksgiving Sermon

This week’s parasha opens with the death of Sarah and Abraham’s purchase of the cave of Machpelah in which she will be buried.  After burying and mourning his wife, scriptures tells us G-d blessed Abraham “bah-kol”.  This is conventionally translated as “G-d blessed Abraham with everything”.  But what is “everything”?  Is it “everything that money could buy”?    Is it “everything Abraham ever wanted”?  

As we know, each letter in the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical value. Rashi, notes that the Hebrew letters of the word “bakol” add up to “52”, which is the same as the numerical value of the letters in “ben” -- Hebrew for “son”.  This tells us, Rashi  says, that Abraham was blessed with everything because he had a son, Isaac.  On the other hand, Rabbi Yehuda says that this verse means that Abraham also had a daughter, and her NAME was “Bakol”! 

Not surprisingly there is yet another interpretation. That is, that G-d possesses a divine trait called “KOL”, and that God blessed Abraham with this divine trait.   

But what is this divine trait?

I recently read an essay by American Jewish writer Abigail Pogroben  that gave me an insight into what this special virtue may have been. The essay is called “Gratitude Works”. Abigail Pogroben writes that she began to keep a “Gratitude Journal”.   According to a study by researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Florida, “having participants write down a list of positive  acts  at the close of a day -- and why these acts  made them happy -- lowered their self-reported stress levels and gave them a greater sense of calm at night.” According to others, keeping a gratitude journal forces us to pay attention to the good things in life we might otherwise take for granted. In this way, we start to become more aware of the everyday sources of satisfaction, enjoyment and pleasure in our lives, leading to a greater sense of  emotional well-being.  

Abigail Pogroben was skeptical at first. “I know that keeping a gratitude journal conjures up a lemming-like embrace of the latest self-help fad or the pop psychology that is now in fashion,” she writes. Despite her misgivings she gave it a try. And as soon as she started writing in her Gratitude Journal, something began to change. She writes “I found myself noticing moments when I felt good and thinking: ‘This will go on today’s page.’ But then there would be another moment, and I would find myself saying; ‘No, this is a better item to record.’ And by the time I opened my book at bedtime, I had more gems to record than I had space for, and soon I had to write in shorthand to squeeze it all in. But the greater revelation wasn’t that there were more happy moments to record than I expected. It was that there was at least one every single day!  

“Before I started the journal, if someone had asked me whether I experienced at least one moment of joy every single day, I would have answered: ‘no’. And I would have been wrong. 

“There were many such moments every day - page after page after page of them.  Some were small, hardly worth mentioning, and some were big – really big. Even when I had a bad day, there was always a good hour or a good minute shining through.....”  

Having read this, I wondered whether this could be the divine trait that G-d blessed Abraham with at the end of his days --to be blessed with everything -- the ability to be grateful for everything – big and small – that happened to him throughout the day. To see the blessing in everything and in every moment.  

 As we gather with our families and friends this Thanksgiving Day, I hope we will all take time to look around us to acknowledge the blessings in our lives. And may we turn every day into Thanksgiving Day.  Who knows -- maybe we will discover that we too have been blessed by G-d "bakol".

Shabbat Shalom 

Anniversary of the Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania

To See and To Do

The Torah is a remarkably terse document that uses surprisingly few words.  For example, if you want to know what Abraham looked like, the Bible does not tell us.  The Bible describes King Saul as “tall and good looking” and describes King David as “handsome”, but that is about it  for descriptions of men.  When it  describe s women it uses the word “yafah” or “yefat-toar”, meaning beautiful, but it doesn’t go any further like telling us color of their eyes or their hair.  The Torah, much like poetry, utilizes few words and those few words contain multiple layers of meaning.

This week’s parasha begins, literally “G-d caused Abraham to see him”, which, in English is translated “G-d appeared to Abraham.” The root of the word “ra-ah” -- to see – is used prominently throughout the story of Abraham .   Abraham “sees” three men approaching his tent.  When two angels approach Lot, who is  sitting at the gates of Sodom, the Torah tells us that Lot “sees” them. G-d opens Hagar’s eyes and she “sees” a well.  Abraham “sees” the place where he is to sacrifice Isaac from afar, and later “sees” a ram caught in the thicket and sacrifices it in place of Isaac. Thus this parasha begins and ends with reference to the sense of sight – using the Hebrew root Resh Aleph Hey – Ra-ah.

Therefore, it is interesting when the Torah COULD use a form of the word, “ra-ah” but chooses not to. This occurs in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.  As you know, G-d destroys the city because of its sinfulness.  Not even ten righteous people live there.  The Torah tells us that Abraham rises early in the morning of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, “va-yash-kef” – which is another word for “see”. Forms of the verb “ra-ah” --to see  -- are used exactly 1,299 times in the Bible. Forms of the word “va-yash-kef” – also meaning “to see” -- are used only 22 times in the Bible.  The question is, why is this latter word for see used in when describing Abraham’s “seeing” the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and not the more common word for “see”? ^[1]

The way to answer that question is to look up the other 21 places where a form of the word “va-yash-kef” is used and look at its meaning in context.  When we do that, we find something interesting. It is almost always near the word for “window”.  When we analyze this, we understand that when the Torah uses the root “ra-ah” for “seeing” it is followed by some action on the part of the person doing the seeing. When the Torah uses “va-yashkef” the one who sees is usually passive. In using “va-yashkef” in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Torah is telling us that Abraham, usually an active protagonist in his stories, watches the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah from afar.  He will not be riding to the rescue, as he did when his nephew Lot was captured in war. Abraham is an onlooker, a bystander -- a most uncharacteristic role for this most active of men.

We cannot afford to be so passive when we see devastation and destruction.  Tonight, I want to tell you the story of someone who was personally touched by disaster but refused to just “look on”.  Howard Fienberg and his wife Marnie were enjoying a lazy Autumn Saturday morning at their home in Washington DC last year when their phone rang. It was Howard’s brother, Anthony, telling him about the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, which he had just heard about on the news. This synagogue was the one that Howard and Anthony had grown up in. Their mother Joyce was an active member there. Since Joyce’s retirement as a research specialist with the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center, several years earlier, she had made it part of her mission to help revitalize the Tree of Life synagogue.  She attended services regularly and was involved in the day to day functioning of the synagogue. In the month before the shooting, she told her son and daughter-in-law that the synagogue’s dishwasher had broken. She had been looking for the right part so she could fix it. Howard and Anthony were certain their mother, Joyce, would have been there that Shabbat morning.  Late Saturday night they were told that Joyce was one of those killed that morning at the Tree of Life.

During the period of mourning, Howard and Marnie were comforted by thousands of people, both Jews and non-Jews. Frequently they were asked the question “How can I help?” At first they understood the question to be, “How can I help you get through this difficult period of your life?” After a while they realized people were also asking “How can I help this agony from happening again?” Marnie quit her job as a government contractor to devote herself full time to social action, with the goal of empowering people to take a direct and positive stance against hate. One of her projects is an organization called “2 for Seder”. The idea is to invite two friends or acquaintances to your Seder who have never been to a Seder before. Through participation in the Passover Seder our guests learn the story of the origins of the Jewish people. They walk in our footsteps to freedom. The hope is to dispel misconceptions and misunderstandings that can lead to antisemitism as well as help combat the hatred and bigotry directed and many “others” in our country – a nation formed with immigrants from all over the world and enriched with diverse cultures from every corner of planet earth. Marnie Fienberg’s actions reminded me of what Helen Keller wrote:

 I am only one/ But still I am one.

I cannot do everything/ But still I can do something.

I will not refuse to do/the something

I can do.

Let us both “see” and respond. We cannot just gaze on, as if looking through a window and doing nothing. May the memory of Joyce Fienberg, and all of those who were killed worshipping in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania inspire us to do what is in our power to do to combat hatred and violence in our communities.

Shabbat Shalom

---

[1] My thanks to Dr. Ora Horn Prouser, President of the Academy for Jewish Religion, for pointing this out in a recent communication.

A Born Chooser

The In our Torah portion for this week, Avram is called by G-d. G-d says to Avram “Leave your birthplace, your home, the home of your father, and come with me to the Land which I will show you.” Why was Abraham in particular, called by G-d?  Last week we read the story of Noah. Noah too was called by G-d. Noah was called because, the Torah explains, he was the most righteous man in his generation. The Torah does not tell us that Abraham was a righteous man. It doesn’t tell us anything about why Abraham was chosen by G-d to be the Father of the Jewish people. Which led the rabbis to debate – did Abraham have any outstanding quality that led G-d to choose him, or was Abraham an ordinary person?

The rabbis tell stories about Abraham’s childhood that indicate that they thought he was very special. One familiar story claims that Terhach, Abraham’s father, earned his living selling statues of idols.  People, would pray to these statues, hoping that their prayers would be answered.

One day, Terach left Abraham in charge of his store.  A woman came in carrying a bowl of food.  “Could you please offer this food to the gods?” asked the woman of Abraham. “My husband is very sick, and I would like the gods to help him get better.”

Abraham placed the bowl of food in front of the largest statue.  When the woman left, Abraham took a stick and smashed all the other statues.  Then he put the stick in the hand of the largest idol. 

When Terach, Abraham’s father returned to the store, he saw that all the statues except one were broken and lying in pieces on the floor.

“Who did this to the gods?”  cried Terach to Abraham.

“Father,” said Abraham, “A woman came in here with a bowl of food to offer to the gods. But when I offered it to the gods, one god said, “I will eat it first.” Then another god said, “No, I will eat it first.” A fight broke out among all of the statues, and the biggest one here took a stick and smashed all the others!”

Terach, Abraham’s father said, “Do you take your own father for a fool? These idols cannot do anything.  They are just statues!”

Abraham replied, “If they cannot do anything, then why do you worship them!” 

In telling this story about Abraham, the rabbis are conveying the idea that Abraham was an extraordinary child who could see through the hypocrisy of his father’s belief in idolatry. He was thus marked for greatness from a young age. But this story is not in the Bible. I prefer to believe Abraham was an ordinary person who did something extraordinary. And that each of us, ordinary people, can do extraordinary things.

Rosa Parks is an example of on ordinary person who felt called to do something extraordinary. She worked as a seamstress in a Montgomery department store in 1955.  Her mother was a teacher and her father a carpenter. When she was growing up in Alabama, there was a great deal of discrimination and bigotry against African Americans. One small example – white children took the bus to school, black children had to walk to school. Public transportation was segregated as well. White people got the best seats on the bus, whereas African Americans had to sit in the back. In December of 1955, Rosa Parks had had enough of being treated like a second-class citizen. On her way home from work she sat in the front of the bus and refused to move to the back when the bus driver asked her. A policeman came onto the bus and arrested her. She was jailed and later fired from her job. Yet her action led to the first mass civil rights protest in an American city and became a cornerstone of the civil rights movement in the United States.

I think Abraham was an ordinary man who heard the call of G-d and did something extra-ordinary – he became the first Jewish person, taught the world that there is one G-d, and in doing so changed the course of world history. And clearly, Rosa Parks was an ordinary woman. She too heard a call -- a call to fight injustice and to stand up to oppression. In heeding the call, she helped to change the course of American history.  

Someone once said, “You are not a born winner, you are not a born loser, you are a born chooser.” Both Abraham and Rosa Parks chose to respond to what they understood was the call of G-d. Each of us is born with different strengths and unique talents. Each of us gets to choose how we use them. May we too choose to use our talents in the service of justice and compassion, in the service of G-d.

Shabbat Shalom

Exploring Beneath the Surface

Have any of you ever been scuba diving? I have been snorkeling. The two most memorable times have been on a reef at the tip of the Sinai desert at a place called Ras Muhammad, and off the beach on Culebra island in Puerto Rico. It was astounding to see an underwater world that I was completely unaware of. But I have never been scuba diving. I have never strapped a heavy tank of air on my back and plunged into the depths of the ocean. A writer named Sara Debbie Gutfreund describes her first experience as a scuba diver. She took the training, she knows how to breath, how to communicate with her hands, how to stay calm as she descends to the ocean floor. Still, she says, as she sits on the edge of the boat and her instructor tells her to fall backwards into the deep, she is not sure she can let go.

But she does it. As she drifts toward the bottom of the ocean she describes what she sees and feels. Clusters of coral reefs with thousands of multi-colored fish racing through them. A huge sea turtle. Light dancing on the surface of the water. It is so quiet she can hear the beating of her own heart. It is so beautiful, she says, she cannot believe that just yesterday she did not know that life went this deep. She cannot believe that she almost refused to let go, to fall backward, to trust that she would remember to breath.

The High Holidays are upon us, she writes, beckoning us to look beneath the surface. Urging us to let go and be open to change. Calling on us to trust in the power of G-d’s love as we courageously examine our shortcomings, forgive those who have wronged us, and ask forgiveness from those we have wronged. Inviting us to take some time to slow down to listen to the beating of our own hearts, to notice every breath that we take, to pause and be aware of the beauty of the afternoon light as it dances on the surface of the leaves.

Yes, the High Holidays are a time to dive deep into our own lives, but how exactly do we do this? She then asks a simple but fascinating question. “If you put an envelope of a million dollars into a poor person’s knapsack, but he doesn’t know that it is there, is he rich or is he poor? Likewise, if you have thousands of gifts in your life but you are too distracted or preoccupied with the demands of daily life to appreciate them -- do you really have those gifts at all?”

She writes that the homeless person is, of course, technically rich. He or she possesses a million dollars, after all. But what good does it do if that person never opens the backpack with the money? We too, may have a thousand gifts in our lives. But if we never look inside the envelope that contains our blessings, we cannot use them. The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings, says writer Eric Hoffer.

Sometimes those blessings are not at all obvious. It is difficult to see beneath the surface to the gifts that lie below. The water below can be murky, and we cannot always distinguish between our treasures and our tribulations. Perhaps that is why our tradition teaches us to bless the good fortune in our lives as well as what we consider the bad fortune. As Maimonides explains, sometimes what we think is good for us can turn out bad, and sometimes what we think is bad for us can turn out to be good. We cannot always tell what is a blessing and what is a curse. Take, for example, the story of Brooklyn-born Alan Rabinowitz. Alan suffered from a severe childhood stutter that kept him from speaking to people. But for some reason he could speak to animals without stuttering. One day, when visiting the Bronx zoo, he stood before the big cats enclosure and made a vow to them: “If I ever stop stuttering, I will become your voice.”

When Alan finally overcame his stutter at the age of 19, he lived up to his promise and devoted his life to saving tigers, leopards, and jaguars from extinction. He became one of the world’s most celebrated wildlife conservationists. The New York Times dubbed him the “Indiana Jones of Wildlife Protection.”

In a Reform Judaism magazine interview, Rabbi Naomi Levy asked Alan if he’d ever thought about the parallel between his speech impediment and that of Moses. The thought had never occurred to him, but after some reflection, Alan came to the realization that the arc of his life revealed a higher purpose. “Stuttering gave me my life,” he told the rabbi. “It was a gift. I’m so grateful to have been born a stutterer, because that’s how I got to where I am.”

The High Holiday season is a time for us to take a step back from our busy lives and take a deep dive to peer into a world that we may be only dimly aware exists. May we all discover the gifts that lie beneath the surface of our lives. And may we use these newly discovered, or re-discovered, blessings to change and to grow and to enrich our lives in the coming New Year.

All My Bones Cry Out

Recently a five-year-old girl was attending her first bar mitzvah  our synagogue. She looked on expectantly as she waited for the service to begin. She saw the Cantor on the bima tuning her guitar. She saw the bar mitzvah boy all dressed up in suit and tie getting fitted with his lapel microphone. She saw Bernie opening the doors of the Ark to check on the Torah scrolls. There was Lisa Olhausen checking the microphones on at the podiums to make sure they were working properly. As I walked into the sanctuary, I turned to the grandfather and wished him a Shabbat Shalom. I smiled at his granddaughter. As I turned to leave, I heard the granddaughter say to her grandfather, “Is he going to be in the show too?”

There is something of the theater in our worship services. There  is the raised platform – a stage in the theatrical world, a “bima” in our worship.  There is the "audience". There is music. There is drama. There is choreography. It is part of that choreography that I want to teach about tonight.

I am frequently   asked why Jews move when we pray. At least in some communities, “shuckling” or rocking back and forth as we recite prayers, is a feature of Jewish worship. I believe is likely that people began naturally swaying as a response to the rhythm of the prayers they were reciting when they were standing up. The 12^th century Spanish sage Yehudah HaLevi writes that the custom arose because of the lack of prayer books. According to his theory, worshippers would lay one large prayer book on the ground, then take turns bending over it to read a passage. The practice has also been connected to two verses in scriptures. The first is from Psalms. “Kol Atsmotai Tomarnah Mi Chamocha” – all of the bones of my body cry out ‘Who is Like Unto You, G-d….” Not only our mouths move when we pray, but our entire body prays to G-d. Every fiber of our being is involved in our worship. Alternatively there is this  verse is from Proverbs. “The soul is the candle of G-d.” Just as a candle flickers on the wick, so our soul causes our body to move as it attempts to break free of the body and ascend on high during worship.

Most of us here, however, do not shuckle. We may have seen shuckling when we have attended an Orthodox synagogue, or seen a movie featuring Orthodox characters, but most of us don’t do this when we pray. In fact, when I was in seminary one of my fellow students had an internship at a Reform synagogue. During prayer, he began shuckling. He was told by the members of the congregation, in no uncertain terms, that this was inappropriate in their synagogue. It made other worshippers feel uncomfortable. So, be careful where you shuckle, if you shuckle at all.

There are movements, however, that are part of our worship here at CBS. We take three steps back from the ark when begin the Amidah, and then move forward three steps. At the conclusion of the Amidah, we take three steps backwards, and bow forward, then to the right and to the left, as we recite “Oseh Shalom”.  What is that about? Where does this custom originate, and what does it is its significance for us?

The Talmud relates that on Yom Kippur the High Priest would enter the Holy of Holies, the sacred space in front of the ark, and offer incense. When he exited that room, he would walk backwards. This became the appropriate way for a student to leave his teacher. The Talmud tells us that when R’ Elazar wished to depart from his teacher, Rabbi Yochanan, he would walk backwards until his teacher could not see him turn around. The Talmud then teaches, “One who has prayed the Amidah should take three steps backward, and afterward say, “Shalom”.

When we recite the Amidah, which is the set of prayers to which our services build, it is as if we are standing directly in the Presence of G-d. We are the priest, offering our sacrifices to G-d on the altar. We take three steps backward, to prepare ourselves for the moment, and then three steps forward, to come before “The Throne” as it were. When we conclude our prayers, we take three steps backward, bow, and turn to the right and the left. Our turning to the right at the left – and reciting the “Oseh Shalom” represents our return to the normal world. We symbolically say “Shalom” to the people on our right and the people on our left. This distinguishes between the holy place where we were standing, and the mundane spot where we stand now.

Why three steps, and not two or four? For this we can point to the Book of Deuteronomy, which describes Moses’ ascent to Mt. Sinai. It says that Moses encountered “darkness, clouds and fog”. These were the three “gates” that Moses went through. When Moses exited, he went through the same three gates. Therefore, when we depart from G-d, we take three steps backward.

In reality, our bones do not cry out when we pray. In reality, our souls do not cling to our bodies like a flame to the wick of a candle. In reality, G-d does not sit on a Throne above our ark. Yet we use these metaphors to express our connection to G-d. We are drawn to use our creative powers to articulate our connection to the ineffable, of the mystery of the Divine. Sometimes our most profound religious experiences require acts of imagination.

Shabbat Shalom