Happiness in TImes of Distress

Last week my wife and I spent three glorious days in Vermont soaking up the fall colors. I have to say I felt a bit guilty enjoying myself when there is so much suffering in Israel and in Gaza. There I was in peaceful, pastoral Vermont a week after 1400 people were slaughtered in Israel. There are rockets and missiles flying between Tel Aviv and Gaza City, and tens of thousands of Israeli troops are poised to invade. Then there are the 200 kidnapped men, women and children being held hostage by Hamas. As one of my Israeli friends wrote to me, “These are difficult times. If there is still a country when this is over, it will be populated mostly by people with PTSD.”

But life goes on. Even in Israel, there are still brises to be performed, bar and bat mitzvahs to celebrate, marriages to be solemnized. These are islands of joy in a sea of sorrow. At a meeting this morning, Rabbi Margaret Frisch-Klein shared this poem of Mary Oliver’s that speaks to emotional conflicts we experience at time like this and gives us permission to embrace happiness in times of distress.

Don’t Hesitate

by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

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My Jewish Name

My Grandparents Nathan (Sarkolik)
Block and Mary Dora nee' Kharnas

When I was seven years old, I began Hebrew school. On the first day our teacher, Mrs. Friedman, gave us an assignment: ask our parents what our Hebrew name was. When I asked my mom, she told me that I had been named after her mother, Mary Dora, and that my name was Mortka Dov. When I returned with that information, my teacher informed me that she would not use that name. That was a Yiddish name. My Hebrew name, the name I would be called in synagogue, was “Mordechai”.

Now Mordechai, I learned, was a famous name in Jewish history. He was one of the heroes of the Purim story, and I carried that name proudly. But later in life I became a bit troubled by it. If my parents had named me “Mortka Dov” at my bris, was that not my proper name? True, it was a Yiddish name, not a Hebrew name. But is it not my true “Jewish name”?

Once my father asked Mr. Wolf, the principal of our Hebrew school, why we were not being taught Yiddish. Mr. Wolf replied that it was Hebrew, not Yiddish, that was the language of the Jewish people. This was probably news to my father. After all, his parents spoke Yiddish, my mother’s parents spoke Yiddish, most Jews in America, immigrants and children of immigrants, spoke Yiddish.

An article in this week’s “Forward” — “How Yiddish became a ‘Foreign Language’ in Israel” shed some light on the matter. Hebrew became the language of Jews in Israel partly due to through “violence, intimidation and propaganda”. In the 1930s it became illegal to speak Yiddish in a public meeting — one had to speak Hebrew. A year after the establishment of the State of Israel, the government of David ben Gurion legally banned Yiddish theater and publications in Yiddish. Yaakov Zerubavel, a Yiddish speaker, wrote of the status of Yiddish in pre-state Israel in the thirties:

“Worse than the persecution was the methodical, psychological and ideological pogrom practiced by the authorities against the right to use the Yiddish language.”

It was against this background that my Jewish name was changed from the one my parents gave me to its Hebrew equivalent — as were many Yiddish names when the bearers of those names arrived in Israel. How could they keep those names in such an anti-Yiddish environment? They may have felt a bit like Romeo:

By a name
I know not how to tell thee who I am:
My name, dear saint, is hateful to myself,
Because it is an enemy to thee.
Had I it written, I would tear the word.

See also: “Each of Us Has A Name” by Zelda 

Avinu Malkenu

Avinu Malkenu is one of the most beloved melodies in our High Holiday liturgy. In ancient times, Jews in the Land of Israel would fast and recite this prayer during times of drought. The story is told in the Talmud that Rabbi Eliezer came before the ark at a time of drought and prayed 24 prayers, but no rain fell. His student, Rabbi Akiva, prayed after him and recited “Avinu Malkenu”, and it began to rain. The other rabbis wondered why Rabbi Akiva’s prayers were answered but Rabbi Eliezer, his teacher’s, were not. Had Rabbi Akiva surpassed his teacher in holiness? Just then a voice came from heaven. “It is not because Rabbi Akiva is greater than Rabbi Eliezer,” said the Voice, “But rather that Rabbi Akiva overlooks a person’s faults, and Rabbi Eliezer does not overlook a person’s faults”.

Both Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eliezer were great scholars. But Rabbi Akiva was more forgiving and compassionate than Rabbi Eliezer, and this is why his prayers were accepted and Rabbi Eliezer’s were not. “Do not judge one’s fellow until you stand in his place,” was a saying of Hillel the Elder. Apparently, Rabbi Akiva was a better practitioner of this than was Rabbi Eliezer.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once said, “When I was young, I admired clever people, now that I am older, I admire kind people.”

Here is Barbara Streisand singing Avinu Malkenu.

May You Be Sealed in the Book of Life for the Coming Year.

Please visit my new website www.rabbirudolph.online

Jonah and the Whale

Today I came upon an article by my colleague and friend Rabbi Steven (Simcha) Bob on the website http://www.TheTorah.com which is of timely interest. On Yom Kippur afternoon we chant the Book of Jonah for our Haftorah. Perhaps better known as a children’s story, the Book of Jonah raises some profound theological issues. Rabbi Bob asks an intriguing question — Why does the “God of Israel” bother sending a prophet to a foreign city to warn them of their wickedness and ask them to repent? And not just any foreign city, but the city of Nineveh, the Assyrian capitol, the capital of the empire that is destined to destroy the Northen Kingdom of Israel in the year 721 BCE.

Rabbi Bob explores the views of four medieval Biblical commentators: Rabbi David Kimchi (Radak), Don Isaac Abravanel, The Malbim and Ibn Ezra. Reading the article helped me to answer two different questions: 1) Why did Jonah run away when G-d asked him to prophesize, and 2) why was Jonah so distraught when the people of Nineveh repented? After all, other prophets, most famously Moses, rejected their initial call by God, but none took the extraordinary step of running away with the exception of Jonah. Other prophets would have been thrilled if the people heeded their words (few did) but Jonah was crushed by his success with the people of Nineveh.

I invite you to read the article and write me with your thoughts. And please visit my website <www.rabbirudolph.online> for more about me and my writing. 

For an interesting novel about ancient Assyria I recommend All Our Broken Idols by Paul M.M. Cooper

Shana Tovah

Photo by Andrea Holien on Pexels.com

 

I would like to share a beautiful story about the meaning of the call of the shofar. The story is from <Chabad.org> and was adapted by Suzie Jacobson for her study sheet on <Sefaria.org> The photo above, taken by my wife, Middy in our dining room, is of a shofar that we bought in Sefat several years ago.

A King had an only son, the apple of his eye. The King wanted his son to master different fields of knowledge and to experience various cultures, so he sent him to a far-off country, supplied with a generous quantity of silver and gold. Far away from home, the son squandered all the money until he was left completely destitute. In his distress he resolved to return to his father's house and after much difficulty, he managed to arrive at the gate of the courtyard to his father's palace.

In the passage of time, he had actually forgotten the language of his native country, and he was unable to identify himself to the guards. In utter despair he began to cry out in a loud voice, and the King, who recognized the voice of his son, went out to him and brought him into the house, kissing him and hugging him.

The meaning of the parable: The King is G-d. The prince is the Jewish people, who are called "Children of G-d" (Deuteronomy 14:1). The King sends a soul down to this world in order to fulfill the Torah and mitzvot. However, the soul becomes very distant and forgets everything to which it was accustomed to above, and in the long exile it forgets even its own "language." So it utters a simple cry to its Father in Heaven. This is the blowing of the shofar, a cry from deep within, expressing regret for the past and determination for the future. This cry elicits G-d’s mercies, and He demonstrates His abiding affection for His child and forgives him.

Shana Tovah......Please visit my website at www.rabbirudolph.online

Two Pockets

Shortly after I moved to Naperville in 2008, a knowing magazine proclaimed Naperville as "The best place to live in America". 

Oh, I said to myself, my moving here just tipped the scales! It is because of me! 

Now that I am retiring from my pulpit and leaving Naperville, the Chicago Tribune declares in an editorial that "Dupage County is Not Boring Anymore." 

That, of course, has nothing to do with me. 

In his book, "Tales of the Hassidim, Martin Buber relates the teaching of Rabbi Simcha Bunem of Pershyscha who taught his students:

"Everyone must have two pockets, so that he can reach into the one or the other, according to his needs. In his right pocket are the words: ‘For my sake was the world created,’ and in his left: ‘I am but dust and ashes.’”

When we are very young, we indeed experience the world as if it was created for our sake. Everybody hovers around the newborn and, if we are fortunate, our parents do make us feel like they exist solely to meet our needs. As we mature, we begin to realize that other people have needs as well, and that the world does not revolve around us. Yet, understanding this does not mean that we are "nothing". Healthy self-esteem and a realistic sense of ourselves and our place in the world lie somewhere between "For my sake the world was created" and "I am but dust and ashes".

Naperville did not become "The best place to live in America" because I moved here. And it has not become an exciting place to live because I am leaving. I know that.

As part of my transition to retirement, I am starting a new website <www.rabbirudolph.online> From here on I will be posting from there. You can subscribe to my blog and receive my posts in your inbox. You will also be able to comment on the posts. I will not be posting sermons, but rather short pieces like this one. The website will have other resources, such as my past sermons, prayers, translations, and whatever else strikes my fancy. Right now, the website is a work in progress. But it is live and online.

I also have a new email address <rabbimarcrudolph@gmail.com

Thank you for being a reader and/or subscriber to this blog. And please, keep in touch.

Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

 

Four Poems for Fathers' Day

My Mother is at the Bridge Table  by Leslea Newman

My mother is at the bridge table with Loretta, Gert
and Pearl, when my father
finds his way to Heaven.

“Sit down, dear,” she says,
patting the seat beside her
and barely looking up from the hand

she’s been dealt. “The game is
almost through.” But my father is
too overcome to sit. He stands

and stares at his beloved, free
of wheelchair and oxygen tank
happily puffing away

on a Chesterfield King
held between two perfectly
manicured fingers, sipping

a cup of Instant Maxwell
House, leaving a bright red
lip print on the white china cup

her hair the lovely chestnut brown
it was the day they met,
her face free of worry

lines, the diamond pendant
he bought her on their first trip
to Europe glittering

against her ivory throat.
She looks like the star
of an old black-and-white movie
who would never give him
the time of day but somehow
spent 63 years by his side.

“I missed you,” my father
tells my mother, leaning down
to kiss her offered cheek.

“Of course you did,”
says my mother, who always
knows everything.

She plays her cards
right, and after Loretta and Pearl
and Gert fold, she stands to let

my father take her in his arms
and in their heavenly bodies
they dance

 “My Father” by Yehuda Amichai

The memory of my father is wrapped up in
white paper, like sandwiches taken for a day at work.

Just as a magician takes towers and rabbits
out of his hat, he drew love from his small body,

and the rivers of his hands
overflowed with good deeds.

“Shoulders” by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

 

“My Father Was God” by Yehudah Amichai

 

My father was God and did not know it. He gave me 

the ten commandments neither in thunder nor in fury, neither in fire nor in cloud 

but in gentleness and in love. He added caresses and added kind words

 adding, “I beg you,” and “please.” He sang “keep and remember”

 in a single melody and he pleaded and cried quietly between one commandment and the next:

 Don’t take your God’s name in vain; don’t take it, not in vain.

 I beg you, don’t bear false witness against your neighbor. He hugged me tightly and whispered

 in my ear 

Don’t steal. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t murder. And he put the palms of his open hands

 on my head with the Yom Kippur blessing. Honor, love, in order that your days might be long

 on the earth. And my father’s voice was white like the hair on his head. 

Later, he turned his face to me one last time

like on the day he died in my arms and said, “I want to add

 two to the ten commandments: The eleventh commandment: Don’t change. 

The twelfth commandment: You must surely change.

 So said my father and then he turned from me and went off 

disappearing into his strange distances.

"My Father was God" Translated by Rabbi Steven Sager z'l  sichaconversation.org

Photo by Time Mossholder on Unsplash.com