Gam Zeh Yavor - This, Too, Shall Pass - September 2020

Gam zeh yavor - This, too, shall pass.

 - common to many communities and traditions, also found in Shevet Musar

Let’s start off this column the way that we usually end at this time of year - l’shanah tovah tikateivu - may you (all) be written for a good year.

I am pretty sure that none of us, last Rosh haShanah, contemplated that what would be written in the Book of Life for 5780 was what has enfolded over the last six months.  I have seen innumerable memes about the 2020 bingo card, all of which note the arrival of some unanticipated catastrophe that has come to pass - from the murder hornets to the near pass of a meteorite the day before the election in November.  Sitting together in our seats in the sanctuary in September, none of us predicted that we would be small boxes on a screen as the next Jewish year rolled around.

The meme finds dark humor in the idea that we cannot imagine what calamity will strike next, but the idea of a “2020” bingo card also provides the hope of an end date.  As bad as 2019 was, 2020 was so much worse, that we will all heave a huge sigh of relief once it has ended.  Who could imagine 2021 being able to break the record(s) of 2020?  At least the law of averages should be on our side.

One legend states that King Solomon was asked to provide a statement that could be written on a ring to wear as a constant reminder, that would both provide comfort in difficult times and caution in times of plenty.  Solomon stated, as above, gam zeh yavor - this, too shall pass, whether this is a famine or a plague, or a time of unparalleled bounty or success.  The one thing that we know about time (to date) is that it marches on.  Whatever happens today will only last so long - and while this can be a source of despair when we are happy, when times are difficult, it is a source of hope.

Many of us found ways of joy and comfort in 5780.  In our family, our eldest, who because of camp and the rest of a busy schedule, probably would never have been living together with us again for any period longer than a few weeks (God willing), spent five months in our home.  While my spouse already was quite accomplished at baking sourdough bread, we pioneered a number of new recipes that are becoming staples in our menu.  When a relative of hers died in California, not only was I able to officiate at a Zoom memorial service that we could not otherwise have attended, but relatives from across the country were able to gather and see each other. This, too, shall pass.

Many of us felt increased stress, uncertainty and anxiety - whether from the daily worry about how to find food and toilet paper for our family, to the longer term fear of loss of employment, income, and whether or not the communities that we live in would be able to survive.  We tried to find ways to support local businesses, support each other (and thank you to everyone who helped others out with deliveries, donated gift cards, or helped in innumerable ways), and support family members who we may not have been able to spend as much time as we wanted, or far too much time than what we were ready for.  This, too, shall pass.

This past year, the normal things of life have taken on new meaning: Parents who limited screen time are trying to find how to make their children spend enough time in front of a computer. Planning dinner became much more strategic, and leftovers took on more value. While we found more time to walk and bike and play in our yards, and therefore more time to wave to our neighbors, we also wanted to make sure that we kept at a safe distance.  This, too, shall pass.

One of my child’s college professors, adjusting to the new format of Zoom teaching, said at the end of each week of classes, “Be happy.  We are now one week closer to the end of this difficult time.”  This month, we will wrap up 5780 and look forward to 5781.  It may be different, it may, for a while, be more of the same.  The one thing that we have control over is how choose to celebrate the New Year.  Will we feel overcome by worry, or will be welcome the milestone of closing up this year, and moving on to the next?

Anyone have world peace on their 5781 bingo card?

L’shanah tovah tikateivu - may we be written for for a good year.

We are a People Who Survive - August 2020

“We are a people who survive.”

We find these words in our prayerbook and where we, as Jews, look back over our tumultuous history.  We have survived Babylonia, Romans, and Nazis; the destruction of our Temple, forced conversions, and pogroms; exile, attempted genocide, and forced migration; feudalism, communism, and capitalism. We have been battered and beaten, but never broken, never destroyed.

In this uncertain time, with the world turned inside out, we have the guidance of our people’s life journey on how to survive not just moment to moment, and day to day, but generation to generation, into the future.  We have never been a majority people in the world, yet our people and our ideas have influenced the world over.  Our humor, our cuisine, and our language are a crucial part of the American zeitgeist.  And, even if we reject the term “Judeo-Christian”, concepts that frame our Jewish values are the bedrock of our legal system.

We are well positioned in the modern world.  Jews are more often affluent, well-educated, and well connected.  While we are not all well off, we still hold on to a sense of communal responsibility that commends to us the care for each other, to create institutions that allow us to share the resources of those who have, with those who do not.

As we finish our weekly reading of the Torah scroll, and place it back in the Ark, we sing, “It is a tree of life, to those that hold fast to it.”  “It” is not just the physical Torah scroll, but our tradition, the core of what it means to be Jewish.  In this time especially, we must cling to that tree of life, to the traditions of Judaism that have enabled our ancestors to survive generation after generation.

Those traditions are not just about us, but about how we live in the world, and how we treat our neighbors.  Now is not the time to only focus on ourselves.  As Hillel challenged us, after he said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me”, he followed up with “If I am for myself alone, what am I?”  Certainly not Jewish.  We are called to understand and to lift the burdens of the oppressed, to love the stranger as ourselves, and to treat those whom we live among as equal citizens.  In the world that has seen the horror of children detained in camps on our borders, of Black citizens shot and beaten to death by police, holding fast to Torah and embracing the tree of life means being not only empathetic, not only reaching out, but putting ourselves forward to be part of the solution.

We are a people who survive - and we survive best by working to perfect the world we live in, not just for ourselves, and not just by ourselves, but as an or bagoyim - a light among the nations.  Let us work together to survive, to emerge from our quarantines not only hale, but more whole.

Don't Let the Light Go Out - February/March 2020 - Creation Day 4

God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times - the days and the years; and they shall serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth.: and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the stars. And God set them in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth, to dominate the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. [Gen.1:14-19, New JPS Tanakh].

When asked to list what is created on each day of creation, the fourth day is the one that stumps most people. After all, light is created on the first day, so how is it that the things which create (or, to be completely accurate - create or reflect) light - the sun, moon, and stars - are not created until day four?  Our scientific understanding seems to rebel against this idea - there cannot be light without sources.  Yet, those who try to squish the Biblical story into our latest cosmological theories posit that the creation of light is the big bang, and only later does matter coalesce into stars, planets, satellites, etc.  As we have seen in the whole story of creation, sometimes order can emerge - bit by bit - from chaos.

In our synagogue innovation, we often travel along the same path.  Many times, an innovation that has become a signature of our Temple Sholom community - the trimester/family track program, sunset kabbalat shabbat, that our Hebrew School goal is to help our students become “leaders of meaningful (Reform) Jewish worship”, and others - come from the sudden burst of a great idea or revelation, that then takes time to coalesce into the reality that becomes the change in our community.  Contrary to the universe, however, there are many more big bangs then there are suns, moons, and planets in our congregational stellar system.  That happens for many reasons. Sometimes brilliant ideas do not seem so brilliant upon reflection. Many times, the ideas are beyond the resources of our congregation - whether that resource be staff time, program space, or funds.  Too many times what keeps those possible new stars from forming is not the lack of substance, but our inability to bring together the right group of congregants to bring that idea into our firmament.

When congregants join our congregation, we still ask in what areas they are interested in engaging.  In our old model, we would forward names to committee chairs, who would reach out and invite new members to committee meetings. In our new governance model, we have less standing committees and more limited time task forces to accomplish programs and tasks.  The lack of regular structure does not lend itself toward the regular influx of new members.  Sometimes that means new congregants fail to ignite, and our programs sputter for lack of fuel.

We need to commit from both sides - from current leadership and from engaged congregants.  Leadership needs to find ways to better reach out for new involvement, and congregants need to not only be open and looking for such opportunities, but ready to jump when the opportunity arises.  People often say that they come to join our congregation because of what they have heard - because of the light that we give from afar.  Once they are a part of the community, we often fail to discern the general glow from all the orbs that radiate and reflect.  Our job is to help make a little order out of that chaos; to keep the light glowing by each of us choosing a flame or two to tend.

Send an e-mail or call the office - let us know where you would like to help. We will try to do our part to help structure that energy into the light that warms and nurtures us all.

Show Your Work - December 2019/January 2020 - Creation Day 3

God said, “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear.” and it was so. God called the dry land “earth”, and the gathering of waters, God called “seas”. And God saw that this was good. And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation: seed-bearing plants, fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” and it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: seed bearing plants of every kind, and  trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.  [Gen. 1:9-13 New JPS Tanakh]

Biblical scholars note that one of the reasons for the precision of the Genesis chapter one story of creation is to differentiate Jewish culture, and its foundational stories, from the surrounding cultures.  In the Mesopotamian creation story, the goddess Tiamat (like the Hebrew word tahom - the deep mentioned in Torah) is killed by the god Marduk, who creates the earth from her remains. Human beings sprout up as the body deteriorates.  Our Biblical story is not only more focussed on the intentionality of the world’s creation, by a single divinity, but also puts forth a story of order, to counter the chaos that came before.  Each day has its specific category of creation, and the second three days echo the first three  - light on day one; sun and moon on day four; heaven and seas on day two, and fish and birds on day five; land and grasses on day three, and animals and humans on day six.  That one day builds on the next is evidence of order.  Order is evidence of planning and intention.

On the third day, plants are created - each according to their kind, and with their own seed included.  Each plant is created with the ability to reproduce itself.  There is no concept of evolution - necessary things come to be and then will always be, as planned at the beginning.  For people living in a chaotic world, order and intention are a comfort.  It is harrowing to imagine that planting a peach pit might yield an apple tree or a banana bush.  We want to know the end result, before we start off at the beginning.

We are so desirous of knowing the end of things, because life so often throws us twists and turns.  We may enjoy surprises - but really only good surprises.  We are much happier knowing there is a prize in the CrackerJack box, then imagining the fictional Harry Potter’s Bertie Bott’s jellybeans that may be delicious, or may be disgusting.  In a discussion the other day, an agnostic said that they were quite comfortable with not knowing the answers, and that trying to imagine God really existed was difficult.  I responded that God is the concept that we put in as the answer, for whatever question it is that plagues us.  We wish that, like our childhood math books, the answer is at the back, so that eventually we can just figure out if we are right or wrong.  The most annoying thing in math class was that our teachers always insisted that we show the work, when we just wanted to get to the end.

Perhaps Genesis teaches us a lesson - that God is not the answer, not the one missing piece which causes everything to make sense, but God is really in the messy scribbles that we make on the side of the page.  We would love for God to be the answer - let alone an easily accessible and understandable one, but we are closest to the Divine when we are doing the work of living, not trying to skip to the end.

It would be lovely if we knew that each thing we planted would reproduce the ideal that we had when we planted it; even that the recipes of our grandparents would turn out just like we remembered them.  Sometimes they do, sometimes they do not.  Sometimes, they even turn out better.  But, the love and memory is not found in that fleeting moment of consuming, but in the process of remembering and reconstructing.  When we imagine engaging in the same acts as those we have loved, they (and their memories) inhabit us, so much more so than at the end.

The Torah gives us the story of creation - not just a list of what has been created.  Our job is not to be impressed by the order, but to be inspired to do the work on our own.

The Sky's the Limit - October/November 2019 - Creation Day 2

God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that it may separate water from water.” God made the expanse, and it separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse shamayim (sky/heaven). And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. [Gen. 1:6-8, New JPS Tanakh]

When I was in rabbinic school, my teacher, Rabbi Larry Hoffman, taught us that havdalah was not the only moment of distinction marked by Judaism.  Havdalah, which means “separation”, is our acknowledgement that Shabbat is different from the other days of the week. In the last prayer of the ceremony, we mark several distinctions - between Shabbat and the other days, between that which is kadosh - holy - and that which is ordinary.  This trimester, as we explain about lifecycle events in Judaism, we talk about how life might continue uninterrupted, if we did not stop to notice differences.  I asked our Religious School faculty (teachers and madrichim - high school aides) when they became, or thought they would become, adults.  As every time when I ask this question, answers ranged from going to college, moving into a first apartment/home, having a child, when a parent dies.  We create a moment of adulthood, or at least the beginning of Jewish adulthood, with bar and bat mitzvah.  The moment is special because we have decided it is so.  We make a distinction which allows us to celebrate a process that is much longer than one moment.

A lens to understanding Judaism is that it teaches us to discern things in the world - one day from the next; one week from another, one just act from another which may be unjust.  We must learn to distinguish difference before we can make choices.  The Torah teaches us that this knowledge began when our first ancestors ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but our first story of creation is all about separation and difference. The very concept of day is created after the first separation of light from darkness.  The second day consists of a separation which is difficult for our modern cosmology - the construction of a barrier between the waters; making waters above, and waters below, separated by the heavens.  For our Biblical ancestors, there was water underneath the earth (That’s why wells work.) and water above the earth (That’s where rain comes from.)  Without a firm barrier between them, all is water - as the flood story was not just about rain, but about the waters rising up from below as well; the firmament being removed.

The kabbalistic mystics influenced by Rabbi Isaac Luria imagine that before creation, God was everywhere.  God, being perfect and therefore unchanging, had to withdraw (tzimtzum) from a portion of the universe in order to allow space for the world. Let us think about that image.  All around the world we live in is our ideal, our aspiration to the Divine.  We are separated from that aspiration by the skies above, the heaven that we imagine.  On the one hand, how frustrating to be able see perfection, but be unable to attain it.  On the other, as the poet Browning said, “Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?” [Robert Browning, in the poem “Andrea del Sarto”]  There is no moment that we as human beings are satisfied that we cannot be better, do better.  Part of human nature is to be unsatisfied.  What better focus for that dissatisfaction than in striving to bring heaven to earth?

This year, as we mark another cycle around the sun, five thousand, seven hundred and eighty such spins, as our text counts since that first day of creation, we can look again to the firmament - the barrier that does not keep us from the ideal, but draws us forward and upward.  The waters have been separated, not to remove us, but to inspire.  Let us look up and be inspired.

Let There Be Light - September 2019 - Creation Day 1

[As there will be six issues printed of the Temple Topics this year, I thought it would be good to go back to the beginning, and focus each column on one day of the first creation story of the Torah.]

When God began to create heaven and earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water - God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day and the darkness God called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day. [Gen. 1:1-5, New JPS Tanakh]

In distinction from our ahistorical ancestors, we believe that things change, that there is an arc of history, perhaps moving forward in knowledge and civilization.  If we take that backwards, there must have been a starting point.  Cosmologists believe that the universe began with a “big bang” - that there was nothing and then there was something.  Our Jewish understanding has several versions of how it all came to be - two of them prominently placed at the beginning of our sacred text, the Torah.  The first version posits an orderly creation - six days with a development from nothingness to the world that we have received.

At the beginning, all was potential.  That which was to change things from nothing to something, the Creator we refer to as God, waited and considered in that potentiality: What would be and how should that existence be created?  The first thing was to get things moving to create time, and thus: a first day.  Day and night are marked by darkness and light, so God created light - and by creating light, defined darkness as its opposite. 

We often define ourselves by our creations - our work, our family, the home(s) that we have owned or made our own.  Some of us create more tangibly with visible objects.  We also create with words - spoken or written.  The way that we treat those around us is a creates the world that we live in; the environment that we inhabit.  Judaism challenges us to imagine each new year as a unique creation.  It is colored by the year that has come before, by who we have been up until that point.  Yet, the High HolyDays tell us that we are not solely defined by what we have done - that we can resolve to be different, once we have made healing for what we have done. To say goodbye to our old selves, or at least the parts that we want to leave behind, we are instructed to take a self-inventory, and to make right for others the wrongs that we have done.  Then, without baggage, we can imagine who we would be in the new year.

If we do it right, the idea of the new year can strike us like the light of creation - illuminating the path forward.  Once we have our light, we can define darkness - that which we would rather not do. Only once we have taken the decision to move forward, can we understand where we should and should not tread.

In the end, if the path is well imagined, we are inspired to travel upon it.  Then, just as God said at the end of the first day, it will be good - good for us, good for others, good for the world.  Let us resolve in this new year to pause, to consider what we are creating, to prepare ourselves for that new world, and, illuminated by the light of purpose, do our best to do good.

Shanah tovah,

Rabbi Abraham

Pray As If It Means (Some/Every)thing - Summer 2019 - Liturgy #8

And may the worship of Your people, Israel, be always be acceptable - God who is near to all who call.
Avodah (R’tzei) - T’fillah section of the liturgy

Prayer is a tricky thing.  We spend a great deal of time at the Temple teaching children the correct forms of Jewish communal prayer - the right pronunciation, tune or chant, and choreography.  Recently, we have begun to go deeper, and help them find meaning not only in individual prayers, but in worship as a whole.  We are getting better at explaining why Jews come together to pray, and what we hope to get out of those moments.  We spend virtually no time at all on individual prayer - on the communication with the Divine that happens outside of prescribed worship; personal prayer which does not require the participation of others.

One of the common questions that I hear from students is, “Why do I have to learn Hebrew?”  Beyond the question of difficulty and effort, there is an earnest inquiry - “Doesn’t God understand every language?”  The answer that we give is about community - Jews throughout history and all over the world today, pray (at least in part) in Hebrew.  Our Confirmation students, when we worship together with our sister congregation in Budapest, feel at home because, while the Hungarian parts are different, as are some of the tunes, the words of the Sh’ma, the v’ahavta, the aleinu, and so much else is familiar.  At that moment a bond is formed: we have something in common.

Yet the question remains valid. Further, how can we create spontaneous, heartfelt, personal prayer, in a language which we do not speak or even fully understand?  The prayer known as the avodah comes to answer this question.  When the rabbinic sages of two thousand years ago were moving Jewish worship from sacrifices offered in the (then newly destroyed) Temple in Jerusalem to this new concept of offering up words of prayer, they were nervous about whether it would work - whether the act of verbal prayer would carry the power and transformation of sacrifice.  In the service, at the end of the amidah, they placed this prayer, which was both a hope and an apology for the whole effort.  We ask God, in words, that our prayers will be acceptable, in place of those sacrifices.  The original version contained a promise to return to sacrifice once the Temple was rebuilt; that this was only a temporary solution, for use in exile.  Reform Judaism, which threw out the idea of a Messianic return to a rebuilt Temple, removed that reference, but kept the idea of praying that our prayer would be sufficient, would be formed correctly, would be pleasing, would be acceptable.

However, this prayer has more meaning than just an apologia for prayer in place of sacrifice.  The words imagine a greater truth - whatever we offer in worship to God, we trust it will be acceptable, as we believe that God is near to those who call.  The very act of reaching out to God is what draws God near.  For those who believe in a Theistic God - a God who hears prayers and responds, the idea is easily comprehensible.  For those with different Divine concepts, this metaphor may tend to alienate rather than bring close.  Let us then imagine the motion in the opposite direction.  When we open ourselves up to the Divine, then we let God, who is already near, in.  God, not as an external object or separate being, but, perhaps, the concept that ties us to other creatures, the spark we all have in common.  For those who understand God as the voice within themselves that calls them to do better, prayer is the moment of silencing the other voices, and focussing on the Divine, on our better nature.  For those who are called to transcendence by the world around them, prayer is the moment to step away from the centrality of ourselves, and be overwhelmed by the world of nature.
May the worship of Your people Israel, be acceptable to You, God who is near to all who call.  No matter what the nature of that worship, if it is a moment of opening ourselves up, of allowing the concept of something beyond ourselves - our ties to humanity, to each other, to the world, to a higher power - then let us learn to accept that moment as true worship and prayer.  Only then can we find the usefulness of prayer, once we open ourselves up to the possibility that we actually have the power to do it correctly.




Let us end this year’s study of liturgy with the words that bring us out of our silent prayer, our prayer of the heart, in our worship service - May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts, be right and proper prayers before You, our sure and secure Anchor, the Idea through which we save the world.