We Need to Keep Building this Sukkah - December 2018 - Liturgy #3

Adonai, our God, let us sleep in peace; our Watchkeeper, let us wake up to life. Spread over us a sukkah of peace. Hashkiveinu, evening liturgy

At a recent clergy meeting, convened by Reform Jewish Voice of New Jersey, the rabbis around the table were asked what they felt to be the most pressing social justice issue.  One rabbi said that we could not tackle any of the other vital issues until we first restored civility in our discourse; until we found a way to listen to each other with respect.  That has long been a goal here at Temple Sholom.  As opposed to congregations that shun conversations about politics, we have tried to be a safe place where we can all share our views, no matter how diverse.

We have not always succeeded - and we need to do better.  The Sages teach that the Second Temple was destroyed two thousand years ago, because of sinat chinam - baseless hatred between one and another.

The prayer hashkiveinu was meant to be said each evening before going to bed.  The Sages viewed sleep as one sixtieth of death.  When we are asleep and unconscious we are vulnerable and there is that fear that one morning we may not wake up.  Each night, we ask God to construct a shelter of peace for us - a sukkah.  That sukkah is our protection, our blanket of comfort, but each morning it disappears and that night we have to ask for it again.

Peace is a sukkah - a temporary structure that only lasts so long, and that we must rebuild.  The safe conversational space is also a sukkah.  With each person, in each conversation, we must remember our guidelines of kavod (respect) and b’tzelem elohim (that each of us is created equally in the Divine image).  A conversation in which we respect another’s right to hold a different opinion and acknowledge that they are as human as we are takes constant attention, rebuilding, and has to go both ways.

Both ways - not only must we be able to listen to opinions that are different than our own, without judging the person who is speaking, but also, when speaking, we should not imagine we know how are words are being received.  

In Pirkei Avot 1:6, Yehoshuah ben Perachayah says, “ וֶהֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת Judge each and every person as if they had full merit.” We may not understand what they have chosen to believe.  We may be baffled by the way they have reached their beliefs. However, that makes them no more or less human than we are.  If we are hurt by someone else’s belief, or perceive their belief as harmful to us or someone we care for, we can express that, but we must also acknowledge that our beliefs - or even our disbelief of their positions - might make them feel fear and hurt as well.

The requirement of the sukkah is that it be open - open to admit others, a shelter for all, but also, we must be able to look up through the roof of our sukkot and see the stars.  The safe space of peace that we build and rebuild together is a place where we can look together to the heavens that we imagine as our goal on earth. On Shabbat, the chatimah of the hashkiveinu ends: Blessed are You, Adonai our God, the One who spreads out a sukkah of peace - over us, over Jerusalem, over all Israel, and all the world.

(See this column from summer 2016 for our Temple Sholom Jewish values for respectful conversation.)

Chosen? What Did I Do to Deserve That? - October/November 2018 - Liturgy #2

Let us now praise the Sovereign of the universe... who has set us apart from the other families of the earth, giving us a destiny unique among the nations....perfecting the world. - Aleinu, trad. Liturgy

The aleinu has always been one of the more controversial prayers in the Jewish prayerbook. Although we see the prayer as a moment at the end of the service to recommit to a vision of a more perfect future, the beginning of the prayer focuses on the idea of being a chosen people, different from others.   During the Middle Ages, under pressure from the Church, lines that were construed as critical of non-Jews (“worshippers of mist and emptiness”) were expunged.  The Reform movement removed the original wording of the first paragraph and moved up wording from the second paragraph which praised God for being the sole Creator of the world.  The Reconstructionist movement, at one point, removed the prayer completely from their liturgy.  This summer, at our movement’s youth leadership camp, I spoke with a few students who had decided to remain seated and not to participate when the prayer was sung. They told me the particularism of the prayer was offensive to them.

What does it mean to be “set apart”?  To be a chosen people?  I would argue that one of the challenges to the relationship between Israeli and Diaspora Jews is that those abroad expect Israel to live up to Jewish ideals and act better than other nations.  Israelis reply that they are a nation like any other, and to act otherwise is suicidal.  Remember Tevye’s plea, “For once, God, can’t you choose someone else?”  We are criticized for being elitist and thinking ourselves better than others, when often the reality is we are set apart from whatever nation we find ourselves among.

The early Reformers decided that we could be uniquely chosen, but that meant we had a special path and task, not that we were better than any others.  Our history - from slavery in Egypt, through covenant at Sinai, and continuing throughout our wanderings - gives us a unique insight into humanity.  Our sovereignty in Israel ended not as a punishment, not in exile, but so that we could live among the other nations of the earth and teach the message of “what is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor”.

In the end, the aleinu is a message of hope.  For the Orthodox, the prayer is a hope for the arrival of a physical messiah who will usher in God’s rule on earth.  For us, we believe that our human role is to bring us all closer to a messianic age - an age in which those ideals we imagine are manifest on earth.  L’takein et ha-olam b’malkhut shaddai - to repair the world until it reaches the Divine ideal.  As Reform Jews, this prayer takes us into the world, rather than out of it.  This prayer comes at the end of our service for that very reason - to remind us that whatever we pray for inside the walls of our synagogue will not come to be unless we do the work to make it possible when we go back outside those walls.  If our synagogue is a sanctuary, we are not meant to hide here.  Instead, we come in to recharge and to rededicate; to strengthen ourselves after a brief respite from our labors.

Bayom hahu yihyeh Adonai echad ush’mo echad - and on that day, God will truly be one and the nature of the Divine will be understood by all.

Entering Elul with Empty Hands - September 2018 - Liturgy #1

[For this year, 5779, I thought I would theme my Temple Topics articles with quotations from our liturgy.  Although we say the prayers very often, rarely do we take the time to stop and think more deeply about their meaning and purpose.  The Jewish prayer service has been a vehicle for the hopes and aspirations of our people for millennia.  Hopefully, we can find strength and guidance in the words that have provided comfort and challenge to Jews for generation after generation.]

Hineni he’ani mima’as
Here I am, truly with nothing [to show for myself] Erev Rosh haShanah, Mishkan haNefesh

This month of Elul, the four weeks prior to Rosh haShanah, are for self-reflection.  The idea is to head into the New Year ready to ask atonement for the t’shuvah (repentance) we have already made.  The liturgy of the High HolyDays often seems harsh, pushing some of us deeper and broader than we would push ourselves.  We begin by abasing ourselves - we say we are without merit.  But this level of abject humility seems unhealthy.  If we spoke with someone who said they were worth nothing, we would immediately, as armchair psychologists, assume that they were suffering from depression.  When we are mentally healthy, we have a robust ego.  We imagine not only that we have worth, but that our value is intrinsically important to ourselves, our family, our community and our world.

For this reason, the High HolyDay liturgy asks us to take a step back.  Much of the liturgy is purposely not for everyday or even weekly reflection.  Instead, if we are going to take one time a year to see things from a different perspective, then we are challenged to truly see things without any of our dearly held preconceptions.  We imagine that what we do each day -  the choices that we have come to accept and to live with - are, if not ideal, reasonable and acceptable.  Small accommodations may have evolved into major compromises.  Those compromises may be necessary; they may not.  Taking a chance to remove the glasses of familiarity and wipe off the shmutz of the everyday can give us a chance to see clearly what our eyes may have skipped past.

So, at the beginning of Rosh haShanah worship, those of us leading the congregation in worship are asked to be an example by acknowledging that what we consider of great worth, what value we have added, may not accrue to our actions; may not be something we can rely on to be credited to our account.  What we have accomplished is not by our hands alone, but by all the hands we have held as we work together.  A renewed appreciation of those who have helped us can give us the strength to see what we need to change in ourselves.

For the past two months, I have been on sabbatical, and I wish that all of you could be given the opportunity to step back from your work responsibilities to take up new tasks and see things with fresh eyes.  You have done that for me, but I regret I cannot do that for you.  What we can do, together, is take this High HolyDay period, with its enforced shabbat of a day or two or three, and create a space where we can see things differently and support each other in a resolve to change - to change in the ways that we would wish for ourselves.  Alone, I have nothing in my hands that can do that for you - but together, we can create a sacred space to welcome in a new year of growth and renewal.

Shanah tovah,

Rabbi Joel N. Abraham

A Learning Rabbi - Summer 2018

For learning wisdom and discipline; for understanding words of discernment; for acquiring the discipline for success, righteousness, justice and equity; for endowing the simple with shrewdness, the young with knowledge and foresight, the wise man, hearing them, will gain more wisdom; the discerning man will learn to be adroit; for understanding proverb and epigram, the words of the wise and their riddles.
Proverbs 1:2-6

In September, entering my nineteenth year as the Rabbi of this congregation and completing my fiftieth year since my birth, I entered on a process of reflection over my time at Temple Sholom along through the lens of the Biblical book of Proverbs.  Ostensibly, Proverbs was written by the middle-aged King Solomon, and I thought it appropriate to use that perspective to look back on my time here.  Over the months, I have taken different angles of the congregation and how we have grown together over the past two decades.  As I look forward to at least another decade (by contract) and perhaps another (before retirement), the time has come, once again, to step back and take a breather.

After ten years at the congregation, the Temple was kind enough to agree to give me sabbatical time - six months off (non-sequentially) over five years.  It took seven years to fit them all in, but I found them each to be of use.  My goals for sabbatical were three-fold: First to rest from the constant and overlapping concerns of the congregational rabbinate. Second to find a time for learning.  Third to see things from a different perspective.  Rest was a challenge.  It took about two weeks to wind down from the Temple, and then the next two weeks were often winding up again.  I thought of many learning projects:  I engaged in a study of Jewish graphic novels.  I worked with the Central Conference of American Rabbis to create guidelines and best practices for colleagues on sabbatical.  I worked with the Kutz Camp on program development.  I worked on my Hebrew.  I learned what it might take to create a Doctor of Ministry program in Social Justice for the Hebrew Union College.  To broaden my perspective, I visited different synagogues.  One sabbatical month, thankfully, came immediately after shivah ended when my father died, and allowed me to process and help out my family through shloshim. During another, I took his files to become a part of the American Jewish Archives.

With each sabbatical period, I brought back what I had processed and learned to the congregation.  Our new custom of taking time to find the bright spots in our week, after lighting the Shabbat candles, and sharing a word about those we have come to remember for yahrzeit or shloshim came from my re-thinking of the meaning of communal worship.

In my new contact, the congregation has again provided for sabbatical time - six months over the first seven years, and an additional six beginning in the last three years of the contract.  In order to get the most of the rest and renewal, the length of each sabbatical piece has been increased to two months.  I will be taking the first chunk this summer, from June 11th through August 10th, followed by a week as faculty at Camp Eisner.  This time, I will not only be travelling and visiting different camps - in our movement and outside - but also engaging in a Justice Ministry Education pilot through Auburn Seminary.  I will be working with a cohort out of Drew Theological Seminary focussing on Newark and the Arts.  Rabbi Goldman’s wife, Roberta, worked at the Newark Museum, and some of the program happens there.  I look forward to bringing back to the congregation the insights about art and social justice, the history and hopes of Newark, as well as what I will learn from the rest of my cohort.  When I return, I will continue with my coaching with Larry Dressler of BlueWing Consulting, who is helping me enhance my pastoral skills, and finish the second half of my Join for Justice clergy cohort.

Proverbs teaches us that wisdom is found by always being ready to learn from others.  What I bring to the congregation comes not only from my five years at Hebrew Union College, but also from what I continue to learn - from within this congregation and without, from congregants and community members, as well as teachers and professors.  All of us can continue to learn to increase our wisdom.  As I leave you in the capable hands of our Cantor and Temple leadership, I look forward to sharing what I have learned when I return.

Rabbi Abraham

Wisdom from Building Our House - May 2018

A Homeless Congregation?

Wisdom has built her house. She has hewn her seven pillars. Prov. 9:1

Our congregation is ever growing and ever renewing.  When I first arrived at Temple Sholom of Plainfield in 1999, we had been in one location for almost ninety years.  The building was large enough to fit all that we needed, but was feeling a little tired. Finding new members was a struggle, and old members were moving away.  The month before I began, the new congregational president promised that we would move to Scotch Plains by the time his term was over.  The announcement was a surprise to some; of concern to others.  We spent the next two years deciding what it meant to be a thriving congregation, and then realizing we had a decision to make - would we move, merge, or maintain?  In the end, to save our congregation, we took a leap of faith and sold our building, finally leaving in 2003, and setting ourselves up as the guests of the Fanwood Presbyterian Church.  In the end, it took fifteen years (and almost seven presidents, with one repeat) to find our new home in Scotch Plains.

In the beginning, we thought the toughest part of a move would be getting to a decision.  We thought it would be easy to move from one old building into a new one.  It turns out that you need a pretty big float of money to do that.  We needed to proceed in steps: move out to temporary quarters, sell the old building, find the right new site, purchase the site with money from the sale of the old building; raise money, get approvals, build and then walk the Torah scrolls to our new home.

Many of our current members only know us in Scotch Plains, and are surprised we have been around for over a century.  While we were in Fanwood, many of our members only remembered the church and Union Catholic high school.  Only those who have been a part of the community for more than fifteen years remember our building in Plainfield, and the leap of faith it took to begin our journey.

In our wilderness period, we constantly told ourselves that our congregation was more than a building; that our community existed without walls.  It was ironic that our congregation, which had been one of the founders of a temporary homeless sheltering program found ourselves without a home and unable to house those in need.  We used that time to change our self-image - from a congregation that hired people to do things, to one that did things ourselves; whether it was listening to a talented cantor and organist, or serving coffee at the onegs.  We learned that our congregation was only what each of us collectively contributed.  In the end, that was the only way we could build a new home, by finding the means within ourselves.

In the end, it almost didn’t happen.  When faced with the uncertainty of a large mortgage, many congregants who had joined since Plainfield wondered why we needed to make such a leap of faith.  To those older members, we were already in the middle of the leap, and we needed to find a place to land.  We felt that we were starting to be seen as the little congregation that couldn’t, and each passing year would make it more difficult to stretch out and reach our new home.  So, we gathered ourselves together, and we took the leap - and here we are.

Here we are - but our journey and period of homelessness has taught us several lessons:  We need to keep our long-term goals in mind, and keep faith with those who helped us get to where we are today.  Sometimes, we need to take a risk and to trust that we will land safely.  We need to remember that however big the journey, we only make it by helping each other take the important steps.  Our congregation - building or no - is still only as strong as its members, and as healthy as we choose to make it.  Finally, we know what it was like to be without a home, and we feel more strongly to help others in an analogous situation.

Proverbs teaches us that Wisdom built a house and set a table to attract those who would learn.  We have done the same, but the shell is the house and the table, the real attraction is the wisdom.

Rabbi Joel N. Abraham

Let Us Learn in Order to Do; Let Us Teach, So They Will Act - April 2018

A Nurturing Congregation

Listen, my child, to the mussar of your father, and do not turn away from the torah of your mother. Proverbs 1:8

We have heard a lot of commentary of the students who have risen to activism following the shooting in Parkland, Florida. People have said they are not really students, that they are actors, that they are trained.

They are not actors. They ARE trained - and many of them are ours. It is important to share this fact, because we can be proud of them, whether or not we share their political views. What they are doing is what we have hoped they would do; what we have trained them to do.

Several of the students speaking out are Reform Movement children. They grew up in our camps (URJ Camp Coleman) or are active members of their NFTY region. They have become Bar or Bat Mitzvah in Reform congregations. Several of the students were recently at a training for select first and second year camp staff, where they shared their experience - not the speeches they give to the general public, but the feelings they could express to their friends and peers. Zoe Turner, finishing up her term as Social Action Vice President in the STR region, was elected national Social Action VP soon after the shooting. The next week, she headed up to Tallahassee to speak with her legislators about what needed to be done. You can read about it here - https://nfty.org/2018/02/22/nfty-teens-made-history-tallahassee-not-done-yet/ When Zoe spoke - and said to a Florida legislator - It is not your job to finish the task, but you are not free to desist from it, she carried the words of our tradition in Pirke Avot into the world we live; she used the experience she gained in our Reform youth movement. When she and her peers needed more training, they reached out to the Religious Action Center, where many of them had attended a L’taken weekend. Zoe will be bringing this experience and this energy to our national movement, and we are lucky to have her.

The URJ - as an organization, mobilizing the Religious Action Center, and the Youth Department - decided soon after the shooting that the most important thing that we could do would be to support our youth and let them lead. On Saturday March 24th, as students gather all over the country, Reform synagogues in Washington, DC will have opened their doors and floors to marchers. The RAC will have rented a space, nearby the rally, for our youth leaders to lead a Shabbat morning service to imbue the event with Jewish meaning, and to bring our community support and strength.

We at Temple Sholom have done our part as well. Each of our B’nei Mitzvah students is asked to complete not only 13 “mitzvah” hours, but also to complete a mitzvah project. The goal of this project, as we tell parents and students, is that if they see something wrong with the world, they should not need to find someone else who is fixing the problem, but they should feel that they can themselves begin to set things right. We so regret that these Parkland students need to speak up on this issue, but we are so proud that we taught them how to speak up and gave them the experience and courage to do so.

This nurturing of our children is the best that we can do as a congregation. Whether we will it or not, they will be what carries on the world that we leave for them, and the Judaism that we hope will continue. If we can give them the Jewish tools to make the world better not just for themselves, but for generations to come, then we have truly understood what it means to pass on the covenant we received at Mount Sinai. They are trained - by our Jewish teaching - and if they are actors, they are acting in the world through tikkun olam.

Rabbi Joel N. Abraham

I'm Glad to (Re)Meet You - March 2018

A Welcoming Congregation

A house is built by wisdom, and dedicated with understanding - Proverbs 24:3

1925 Lake Street is not where Temple Sholom began. When I came to the congregation, we were located in Plainfield in a large building that had been built and added to over the congregation’s first nine decades. The sanctuary and social hall were huge. We had sixteen classrooms and a chapel in a separate wing. On most days, when it was just me and the office staff in the building, it felt deserted.

When I first came to Temple Sholom in 1999, we considered ourselves a welcoming congregation. Now every congregation thinks it is warm and welcoming - no one advertises themselves as cold and impersonal. Yet, at the oneg after Shabbat services, congregants only talked to the people that they already knew. They were embarrassed to introduce themselves to others, because they were afraid the person they thought might be there for the first time, was really a long-time member. We wanted to be welcoming; we were just afraid. The sad proof of this fact was when an African-American woman came to services, everyone “knew” she was not a member, and she was inundated with well-meaning welcome.

In 2003, the congregation made the leap of faith to sell our building and set up temporary quarters at the Fanwood Presbyterian Church. We told ourselves that we were more than a building; that our congregation was a community. That truth was proved by the fact that we grew as a congregation while in exile, and were able to summon the energy and resources to build our new home in Scotch Plains.

This house we now live in was built by wisdom. The wisdom was that the life our congregation was in knowing who we are and finding a way to share that with others. If we wanted to be a warm and haimische congregation, then it was not enough just to say it, we had to do it as well. We trained ourselves to say hello to people at our oneg shabbat - whether we thought we knew them or not. We changed our fundraisers from an expensive yearly gala, accessible only by a few, to many, smaller, more social events. (We talked about putting the “fun” in fundraising.) We moved our worship space into a semi-circle. We brought down the height of the bimah. We made our worship more accessible. Even our Hebrew school moved to an open classroom model.

This house we live in now was dedicated with understanding. The gift of a new building means we had to meet all ADA building codes, without the added expense of retrofitting. Our inclusion committee led the way in helping us understand what it meant to be welcoming to all - no door jambs to stumble over, a hearing loop to listen, bathroom facilities for any identity, and a religious school tailored for each of our students. We no longer see ourselves as one particular hair color or ethnic last name, but we run the gamut of many of the heritages that we find in our United States.

Have we become a welcoming congregation? Yes. Can we do more? Absolutely. Last month I was on a call that addressed some of the issues that Jews of color feel. One participant said that she did not want to feel welcomed into a synagogue, as if she were a guest, but rather made to feel at home, because she was a part of the family.

How do we move from welcoming the stranger as a guest to making them feel at home? Start with yourself. Rather than ask someone who they are, tell them who you are; introduce yourself. It is not easy to remember all of the 260 families in the congregation. If you cannot remember someone else’s name, it is not hard to imagine that they may have forgotten yours as well. Beyond that - be accepting and forgiving. Do not be indignant if the person you sat next to for four hours on Yom Kippur does not remember. Be glad they are reaching out again to have a conversation.

How do we build our congregation? How do we strengthen our community? By realizing the wisdom that it takes work every day, and the understanding that we all have to try to connect with each other.

Rabbi Joel N. Abraham

What Did You Say? January/February 2018

Wisdom belongs to those who seek advice - Proverbs 13:10b

First of all, I want to thank the entire congregation for the celebration last month of my first 18 years at Temple Sholom. I was touched to see so many who were able to be there for the dinner and service, or sent kind regrets; those who have contributed memories or thoughts to the scrapbook, and those congregational alumni who sent words to be read at the service. It was wonderful to be able to look back with all of you and now to continue to dream forward.

Speaking at the service, I was drawn to the depiction of the bush burning unconsumed on our Ark. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner explains that the miracle is not the bush itself, but that Moses took the time to notice that it burned without becoming burnt out. What is the secret of continuing to give light, to constantly renew oneself, without running out of fuel? That is my challenge at what may be the midpoint of my rabbinic career. How do I continue to inspire the congregation? By being inspired in turn.

At the service, I shared that I would like to spend time with you, as individual congregants, to discover what brought you into the congregation, what inspires you, and thereby, where we can all go together. As some congregants know, I am always happy to go to lunch. For those of you who are able to take time for lunch in our area, let’s find a time to sit down and talk. If lunch is not possible in your schedule, perhaps we can find time for coffee in a morning or evening, or on a weekend. I will be reaching out to some congregants - but there are a lot of you. If I have not gotten to you yet, please reach out to me.

Ben Zoma asks, “Who is wise? The one who learns from everyone.” (Pirke Avot 4:1) That is a rather large task, but there is a Torah that is each of us, and we teach by sharing who we are. As quoted above, Proverbs says, “Wisdom belongs to those who seek advice.” Advice is often freely given, and even without asking, but the learning behind that advice is only found through deeper listening.

In looking back over my past 18 years, we have talked about being a reflective congregation - on that learns from its experiences, and changes in order to grow. The way that we reflect is by knowing who we are. We are a congregation that cares about each other - not only to we show caring by paying attention to others in our community, but we build that community by deepening our ties. So, as I set out to learn from each of you - I challenge you to learn from each other as well. Be bold - approach a fellow congregant whom you know only in passing and invite them and their family over for Shabbat dinner. If you are a little less bold, then start up a conversation at an oneg or social event. You may have something in common. They may have a different opinion that expands your view of the world. Seek out their wisdom and honor it. Thank them for sharing.

When the sage Hillel was stumped for the answer to a question of Jewish law, he decided to crowdsource. He said, “But leave it to the Jewish people; if they are not prophets to whom God has revealed His secrets, they are the sons of prophets, and will certainly do the right thing on their own.” (Pesachim 66a). We are the great-grandsons of those prophets, and between us, we know the right thing as well, we just need to listen to each other to figure it out.

Rabbi Joel N. Abraham