-May 7, 2008

A hundred years ago, a Jew would never have imagined what would soon fill some of the calendar space between Pesach and Shavuot. Last week we observed Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and this week (tonight - tomorrow) it is Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day. These two new holidays reflect the two major events that we experienced in the twentieth century. A hundred years ago, or a thousand, nobody could have predicted the destruction Hitler would unleash on European Jewry which took a third of our people, and only the most optimistic would have imagined that a Jewish state would come into being and in a short time take its place among the most powerful and advanced nations of the entire world.

I often ask my classes whether it would be good if these two holidays were still on the Jewish calendar in 500 years. With the second of the two, it’s easy to say, “yes, we hope to always be celebrating the birth of the modern Jewish state.” Our only hesitation is that we just cannot be sure Israel will survive its enemies in the region. But truth be told, its existence has always been a miracle, always against all odds. So, we have to have faith, while at the same time doing what we can to help it endure and continue to grow.

With the Holocaust it’s a tougher call. One part of me thinks that we need to let go of the Holocaust a little -  it’s hard to find anything positive in what happened and it makes some young ambivalent Jews who are deciding on their Jewish future think that maybe they should run in the opposite direction. The other part of me hopes we will still be remembering the Holocaust in 500 years, because that would mean that nothing anywhere near like it has occurred since.

Who knows what will be in the year 2508? We probably won’t be among those who find out. But in the meantime we should be fighting prejudice wherever it rears its ugly head so that other genocides become less likely, and we should be supporting Israel with word and deed and heart.

Have a good Wednesday, reread the wonderful Scroll issue about Israel tomorrow and join with us for at least part of the Friday night festivities honoring Israel@60.  Bill Rudolph

P.S. Jewish Literacy 101 will resume this Sunday, May 10^th, the usual 11AM at 5214 Roosevelt Street. I know it’s Mother’s Day. I understand that some mothers and daughters and spouses and sons will not be available and support that 100%. But if learning would be a nice gift, then I am pleased to offer some.  Since my next free Sunday is not till June 15^th, I have to seize this opportunity.  Topic: “Honoring our Parents: What Does It Mean and Do We Have to Even If They Don't Seem to Honor Us?"

-April 30, 2008

Let me turn this column over to the readers and share with you some of the dozens of email responses that I have received over the last 48 hours.

1)    I will never forget this morning. [E]

2)    I recognized the man who lifted the Torah by sight, but don't know him by name.  I would like to make sure that he doesn't feel worse than he already does.  The good things are that no one got hurt, the Torah was not damaged, and it's a big learning experience for all of us. [M]

3)    We were in another shul on Sunday where [my husband] was honored with magbeah for the second scroll. I would consider it an honor to participate in the fast and will do so on Wednesday. [S]

4)    I was not in Shul when this event occurred (no surprise there).  But your heartfelt treatment of the subject prompted me to make a Tzedakah contribution anyway, almost instinctively.  My reward was this insight as I folded the bill and put it in my Tzedakah box:    We give Tzedakah when encountering a needy person on the street, and I have always thought this was to recognize that this person has given me an opportunity I would not otherwise have had to help others.  This morning I realized that in giving Tzedakah to show respect for the Torah that had been inadvertently treated less well than it deserved, the connection became clear; we give Tzedakah to those in need out of respect for 1) the recipient as our equal (in some ways our superior) and 2) to Him who has crafted the greater plan we implement and 3) to confirm our commitment to respect creation as a whole.  [M2]

5)    I'm sorry to hear about the torah scroll.  I hate to mix in, but would you consider having the scroll checked by a scribe?  Don't you feel like the incident might have happened for a reason? [from non-member J, to whom I note that this scroll had been fully checked with new Atzei Hayyim (poles) just a few months ago]

6)    Thank you for your list of options.  Since [my husband] was present with me, we have decided to study a portion of the Torah together tonight.  I could not have accomplished this on my own and consider it a blessing to be able to share this experience of Torah study with him. [A]

7)    Given our topic of the year and the incident of the falling Torah that spurred your note, perhaps donations to Project 613 [which will produce a new lighter scroll] would be most appropriate - my personal donation will be directed to that project.  [M3]

8)    Like many in the Beth El community, I fasted on Monday until sunset. A few years ago, I heard a rabbi describe Yom Kippur as being not a fast, but a feast for the soul -- that separating ourselves from food for the day enabled us to concentrate on the most spiritual aspects of our identities. Yesterday, for me, was a very special day. By fasting, engaging in the same holiness as I did on my wedding day and on every Yom Kippur, I took the time to reflect not only on how important the Torah is to us and to our community, but also on how fortunate we are to have a Torah. We are blessed both with being a people chosen to receive the Torah from G-d, but we are similarly blessed to live in a country where we have the freedom to practice our faith as we believe. [A2]

9)    … I found the deafening silence even more powerful than the audible gasp that preceded it.  Like so much else in religion, I think many people associate themselves with the importance and holiness of certain elements of the faith, especially tangible objects, even when they don't necessarily devote themselves to crossing all the i's and dotting all the t's of daily practice.  Part of what makes Judaism so special.   It is so much about personal choices, and so many people practice in different ways -- all of which are great if they increase their spirituality and personal connection to Hashem - but we never lose the common threads that hold us all together, the Torah being the greatest one of all.  Let's call it individualistic communalism. [A3] 

With appreciation for the wisdom and compassion and commitment of all who responded in one or other way to this incident, let me wish you a good Wednesday. Bill Rudolph

P.S. This evening begins the one day observance of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Our 8PM evening minyan will be augmented with special prayers and musical selections to commemorate the destruction of European Jewry. You should light the candle you received from the Men’s Club this evening as well. 

-April 23, 2008

Let me interrupt the year of Torah commentaries for some more Passover Torah, again from my favorite new Haggadah, A Night to Remember. One of the selections in the Mah Nishtanah (Four Questions) section is a little reading from the Czech novelist and anti-Communist activist, Milan Kundera. It’s called, “The Stupidity of Having an Answer”:

“A novel does not assert anything; a novel searches and poses questions. I invent stories, confront one with another, and by this means I ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties, the novel is dead. The totalitarian world is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place. In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.”

Jews are famous for asking lots of questions. We have turned that into a kind of art. Ask any rabbi. So, Milan Kundera should like us and we him. But the more I thought about this reading, the less I liked it. It’s not enough to ask great questions. We have to have some answers. And the world is not a question and life is not a novel. 

As Jews, we need to move on from the questions and start offering some answers. Is it any coincidence that the faith streams with the most answers (eg. Orthodox Judaism, evangelical Christianity, some Muslim sects) are growing the most? I am not advocating that we aim for their kind of certainty, but we can do better than stopping where we do.

A symbolic way to start redefining ourselves is with the very Four Questions that sparked this column. In fact, they are NOT four questions at all – there is one question at the beginning and then four answers. Maybe the misunderstanding started as innocently as that. Regardless, I hope that Pesach can provide us with a real jump start in our search for answers to the big questions that beg for response.

-April 16, 2008

Pesach is looming, so I will interrupt the year of Torah commentaries for some Passover Torah. My favorite new Haggadah is A Night to Remember, which is actually the literal son of the very popular A Different Night. The latter was edited by Noam Zion, our Scholar-in-Residence a few years back, while the new one is co-edited with his son Mishael. There are so many excellent readings and commentaries; let me just highlight one.

The parts of the seder after the meal are my favorites in many ways, and I urge you to allow time for them. The Elijah’s cup ritual is symbolically very rich. Since Elijah will announce the coming of the Messiah, we eagerly await his arrival and what better time than Pesach? Pesach, after all, represents our redemption (= the end of fighting and suffering) in this world, while the Messiah will bring the permanent redemption that we call the world to come. And how we could use that about now!

There is a nice custom in A Night to Remember that was practiced by Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Horowitz, an 18^th century Hassid from Ropshitz Poland. This Rebbe used to go around his seder table inviting each participant to pour from their personal cup into Elijah’s cup. This symbolized for him the Kabbalistic concept that divine action will occur when there is a corresponding human action, an awakening from below that precedes it. So even the Kabbalists, mystics to the core, thought that redemption wouldn’t come just with faith and being close to God – we have to get off our hands and prepare the way.

I invite you to try this custom this year. Each participant in your seder(s) should help fill Elijah’s cup of future redemption while, silently or aloud, making their own wish for a better year. May that wish come true, but remember it will more likely come true if their own initiative comes first and then – hopefully – will come God’s help.

I wish you a good Wednesday and a happy kosher Pesach.     Bill Rudolph

-April 9, 2008

When the time for her surgery finally came, her parents were understandably anxious.  These were the early days of cardiac surgery and the risks were considerable, but the parents agreed since without the surgery they knew she could not survive for long. As the senior pediatric resident, Dr. Remen met with Immy's parents before the surgery to do an intake interview.  They were committed but very pale. As they spoke, they sat close together, holding hands.  Afterwards, Dr. Remen took them with her to the children's ward to examine Immy. She greeted everyone with her smile. She was holding a new teddy bear and someone had put a bandage across the bear's chest.

A few days before the surgery Dr. Remen examined Immy carefully.  Her heart sounds were not good and you could only marvel at her endurance. As Dr. Remen helped her dress, she noticed a St. Christopher medal pinned to her tiny undershirt.  "What's this?" the Doctor asked her parents.  Hesitantly, her mother said that a relative had made a special trip to Rome to have this medal blessed and then had dipped it into the healing water at Lourdes.  "We feel that it will protect her," she said simply. 

Immy spent the next day undergoing tests.  The medal had been moved from her undershirt to her hospital gown.  It seemed so important to her parents that Dr. Remen mentioned it in passing to the cardiac surgery resident as they sat writing notes in the nursery station the night before the surgery.  He gave Dr. Remen a cynical smile.  "To each his own," he said.  "I put my faith in Dr. X", he said, mentioning the name of the famous cardiac surgeon who would be heading Immy's surgical team the next morning.  "I doubt if he needs much help from medals."

Dr. Remen made a note to herself to be sure to take the medal off Immy's gown before she went into surgery in the morning so that it wouldn't get lost in the operating room or the recovery room.  But she ended up spending that morning in the emergency room, and by the time she reached the floor, Immy had been taken upstairs for surgery.

The surgery lasted almost twelve hours, and things had not gone well.  The bypass pump, a relatively new technology back then, had malfunctioned for several minutes, and Immy had lost a lot of blood.  She was on a respirator, unconscious and unresponsive, in the intensive care unit.  The next day, Immy's mother told Dr. Remen in a shaking voice that Immy's gown had been removed in the operating room and thrown into the hospital laundry.  The medal was gone.  Concerned,  Dr. Remen called the surgery resident and told him what had happened. 

And now let Dr. Remen tell the rest in her own words.  "Perhaps you should tell Dr. X", I said.  He began to laugh.  "Don't be absurd," he said. "Why would you want to bother a world famous surgeon over something as silly as that?"    That night I couldn't sleep.  Back in the house-staff residence, I kept thinking about the lost metal and what Immy's parents had told me about it.  At last, sometime around two a.m., I took some paper and wrote a note to Dr. X, telling him what had happened and how important this medal was to Immy's family.  Folding the note in half, I dressed and went back to the hospital and taped it to the door of Dr. X's office.   I had signed it, and on my way back to bed, I began to wonder. What if I had done something really foolish?  If the surgical resident laughed at me for caring about a medal, what would someone as famous as Dr. X think?

When I returned to the hospital for the evening shift, I stopped by the Intensive Care Unit to examine Immy and to speak to her family.  Immy was still unconscious, but when I leaned over to listen to her chest, I suddenly noticed a medal pinned to her hospital gown.   Turning to her parents with relief, I asked: “How were you able to find another one so quickly?"  "Oh, no," her mother said: "This is the one that was lost.  Dr. X came in this afternoon and brought it to us."  I told them how pleased I was that it had been found.  "We are too," said the father.  "I feel that she is safe now, no matter what happens."

The next morning, the surgery resident told me how the medal had been found.  On the previous day, Dr. X had made his rounds as usual, accompanied by a dozen or so young surgeons in training.   But instead of ending his rounds at the ICU where he usually did, he had taken them all to the laundry department which is in the sub-basement of the hospital.  There, he explained what had happened, and then he, and all his residents, had gone through the laundry from the day before, looking for Immy's gown.  It took them more than three quarters of an hour, but they found it, neatly folded, with the medal still attached.

I was astonished.  "Did Dr. X say anything when he asked you to do this? I asked.   "Oh, yes," the resident replied.  Standing there, surrounded by all those sheets and towels, Dr. X told these young surgeons-in-training that the reason he was making them go through the laundry this way was so that they would learn that it is as important for a doctor to care about the souls that are entrusted to him or her as it is to care about their bodies.

Interrupting the year of Torah commentaries for a word about Purim, which starts tomorrow evening. It is not a holiday discussed in the Torah (Esther is in the Writings section of the Bible) – so we can work to our heart’s content and cook/clean/burn CD’s all day long if we wish. But it’s not a total free ride. There are four mitzvot to be exact: hearing the megillah, attending a festive meal in the afternoon, gifts to friends (mishloach manot) and at least two gifts to the poor (matanot le’evyonim.)

Purim is surely the most mysterious of all holidays. While Haman reminds us of others over the ages who wished to destroy us for no good reason, there is also a farcical aspect to this holiday which overrides the serious. Examples of this abound. At the beginning of the book of Esther, after Vashti refused the drunken king’s orders to appear (naked but for her crown?) before his drunken noblemen, the noblemen issued an edict that wives must obey their husbands. Imagine! Then we are told to drink on Erev Purim so much that we cannot tell the difference between the expressions “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordecai.” And then we note the remarkable similarity in the names of the two heroes of our story to those of two major pagan deities, Marduk and Isthar, making us wonder if this is more about pagans than Jews. And finally, when we realize that God appears nowhere in the whole story, the only book of the Bible with such a striking absence, we wonder how seriously we are supposed to take this holiday.

And if you are still wondering, the Talmudic tractate Megillah (7b) gives us the final clue: “Rabbah [a great rabbi, as his name implies] and Rabbi Zera joined together in a Purim feast. They became drunk and Rabbah arose and killed Rabbi Zera. On the next day, he prayed on Rabbi Zera’s behalf and brought him back to life. Next year, Rabbah said: ‘ Will your honor come and we will have the Purim feast together?’ Rabbi Zera replied: ‘A miracle doesn’t take place on every occasion.’”