-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 10th,
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 15th, 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
This is our year of Torah, but who knew
it would be the year we dropped one? Faithful readers have surely
learned of the incident this past Sunday. I don’t fully understand the
extent of the shock wave that has gone through those in attendance and
even many who just heard about it, but it’s good that we can still be
shocked.
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
Boker Tov and Moadim L’simchah (happy intermediate days of Pesach).
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.
In the meantime, I wish you a good Wednesday and nice last days of Pesach.
-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 18th
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
P.S. Check
www.bethelmc.org (News and Events) for instructions for when Passover begins on a Saturday night and for music to make your sedarim sound sweet.
-April 9, 2008
Last
week and this week the Torah readings are mostly about the priests
healing people with various skin diseases. It is not easy material with
which to dazzle you, so let me take this as an opportunity to honor
those, especially the many physicians in our congregation, who do (or
did) healing as their life calling. I honor them by sharing a story
pointing to a way of working/thinking by which I think every good
physician lives, and which makes him/her very much like a Biblical
priest. The story comes from Rachel Naomi Remen, who is herself a
physician. I found the story hunting for material about the portion
last week. The story is much too long for It’s Wednesday, so I cut a
little in the first part and beg your indulgence since it is still much
too long. But worth reading I think.
Immy
was a frail little girl, the only child of older parents. At 3, she was
only as big as the average l8 month old. She was unable to walk more
than a few blocks and did not have the strength to play any games that
you could not play sitting down. A desperately wanted and long-awaited
baby, she was born with a hole in her heart and a badly formed heart
valve. Only the most careful medical management had enabled her to
live until she was old enough to undergo extensive open-heart surgery.
She had been followed since birth in the Pediatric Cardiology Clinic at
New York Hospital and many of the pediatricians knew her and her family
well. Despite her physical problems she captured the hearts of all
those around her, including Dr. Remen.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.
End of story. One worth
reading I hope. Do you remember last year’s theme, taking care of our
bodies AND our souls? Certainly that is what good physicians do. Be
sure to thank them sometime soon, and have a good Wednesday.
-April 2, 2008
The $5.00
cucumber has made it to New York City. And the $8.19 half gallon of
orange juice. Trust me, it’s true. Now both are genuine organic
products; going organic is not cheap. On the other hand, taking care of
our bodies is a good thing, as we talked about all last year. What goes
into our bodies should be good, for health reasons and because we are
each a mikdash me’at, a small sanctuary that we hope is appropriate for God’s indwelling. And who wants God to be dwelling in pesticides?
The last few weeks we have been reading in Leviticus about the sacrifices that were offered in the mishkan,
the portable tabernacle used in the wilderness, and ultimately in the
Temple. Let me share two related thoughts on this topic, which occupies
a lot of space in the Torah.
First,
the Hebrew word is “offerings” not “sacrifices,” and it talks literally
about things we "bring near" to God - usually for purposes of
thanksgiving or repentance. While these offerings represented a big
sacrifice for these poor Israelities, the idea of “sacrifice” as we
know it (= giving up something that means a lot to you for some purpose
or cause) is not what was happening.
What
was really happening? It goes back to what we put in our mouths. What
may have been the original purpose of these offerings is described by
Yale Bible Scholar William Hallo. Hallo says that the spilling of
animal blood so that we could eat the meat was in a real sense an
offense against nature and courted the risk of punishment. It was to
obviate such punishment that successive provisions were made to invest
the act of animal slaughter, so we could eat, with a measure of divine
sanction. So, the whole sacrificial system, says Hallo, was a symbolic
way of turning mere slaughter into something holy – animals were
prepared and offered in a holy way by holy priests on a holy altar. In
Hallo’s words, “the ‘sacrifice’ was a sacred-making of the consumption
that follows.” Carefully and humanely slaughtering the animals at the
holy place made it permissible for us to eat them at our dinner table.
Originally
humans did not eat meat, just veggies (cf. Genesis 1:29). God allowed
us to eat meat after the Flood, as a concession I think to our need to
have full stomachs with the hope that we – especially men - would get
into less trouble if we are less hungry. But killing animals is not
really OK, and it took the whole sacrificial cult to try to make it
less objectionable.
Nowadays
we don’t have an altar or priests, so how can we make animal slaughter
and consumption “sacred?” For me, the answer is to eat meat as little
as possible. Buy organic, fine, but eat less meat. That will be better
for the animals and for our health and, ultimately, our values. And now
bring on the beef lobby!
Best wishes for a good Wednesday, the first of the spring. May your grill soon overflow with veggie burgers.
-March 26, 2008
We are deep in the heart of Leviticus in our
Torah reading cycle. Leviticus is not famous for a lot of action. It is
best understood as an instruction manual for the priests who would
supervise the sacrifices. Last week was the action-packed exception.
The inauguration of the sacrifices in the tabernacle built for the
forty year wilderness journey took place, with Aaron the High Priest
officiating. It should have been the happiest day of his life. But two
of his four sons brought a “strange fire, which they had not been
commanded to bring” into the Tent of Meeting inside the tabernacle and
they were struck down. Just like that.
The text offers four theories as to what the two sons, Nadav and Avihu, did wrong. You
just read the first two: they brought a strange fire, and they did what
was not commanded. The third theory is that they were drunk when they
entered the Tabernacle (see the juxtaposition of Leviticus 10:8ff with
this tragic event). And the fourth is presented to us a little later in
Leviticus (chapter 16) where, in a description of the Yom Kippur
sacrificial rituals, it says almost incidentally, “The Lord spoke to
Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they drew
too close to the presence of the Lord.”
This last theory is the most controversial. Isn’t the whole point of religion to get us closer to God? Isn’t that what Jewish mysticism is about, what Kabbalah offers to those who can master it? Maybe not. Remember
the Tower of Babel and how God frustrated that plan for the ancients to
build a tower up to heaven? And here God frustrates the plans of two
priests to get close to him. To me it seems that we have misunderstood, and continue to do so. Religion is more about bringing God closer to us,
on God’s terms and timetable not ours. And that is a very different
process in which the onus is on us - not to study esoteric texts or
wear red strings but to work to make our world and our community and
our own selves into the kinds of holy places that God would like to
visit. Helping to repair houses in New Orleans or supporting programs
that prepare the undereducated and ex-offender population for a
productive role in society. That to me is more what religion is
supposed to do. And if we meet God along that road, I for one would not
be surprised.
Best wishes for a good Wednesday. Bill Rudolph
P.S.
Jewish Literacy 101 meets again this week, the usual 11AM hour at 5214
Roosevelt Street. We will study a midrash about the binding of Isaac
and see what it teaches us about faith and forgiveness.
-March 19, 2008
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.’”
Now we can understand God’s desire to keep His/her distance from this story. But we are allowed and encouraged to revel in it, step out of real life for a few moments, and celebrate times when a Jewish community was saved from disaster. And remember the ultimate prize reserved for Purim: “When all the other festivals are abolished [in messianic times] Purim will remain.” [Midrash Mishle 9:2]
Please join us Thursday evening at 6:45, 7:30 and 8:15PM for Megillah readings and partying. Times listed are in ascending order of amount of the Megillah itself that will be read. And have a nice Wednesday as you get costumes prepared and dancing shoes polished.
P.S. Jewish Literacy 101 next meets this Sunday March 23rd. At my home, the usual 11AM hour. Topic: “Why did God let Cain kill Abel and why does God let bad things happen to good people?” On Shabbat, the day before, come for the “graduation” of our latest Adult Bnai Mitzvah class. What they have accomplished is inspiring and it will make you want to be part of the next class. Remember, it’s about the learning and bonding, whether you had a Bar/ Bat Mitzvah ceremony or not.