G’mar hatimah tovah, everyone,
good to see you all and with this tenth day of the Ten Days of Repentance, we
hope and pray that we are able to finish the holidays secure in the Books of
Life and Health and Fulfillment, and I wish you all a tzom kal, an
easy fast.
A friend of mine commented
recently that he could not imagine how I must feel to finally come to what
would be my last High Holiday sermon at Midway and was interested in what I would
have to say. He raised the issue several weeks ago, and frankly my head had not
yet risen to High Holiday altitude, and I told him that I didn’t know what I
was going to say, but I wasn’t too worried because I usually come up with something.
But his question got me thinking, not so much about a High Holiday sermon, as
much as what a blessing it has been to be involved in this congregation and what
a turn of good fortune it was to have landed here. And the irony of it all is
that a big part of my having ended up at Midway has to do with a sermon, which
is a story in and of itself. It’s a story that begins well over 20 years ago in
my search for a new pulpit. As it turned out, the Rabbinical Assembly wanted me
to interview at this wealthy and prestigious Philadelphia congregation, which I
did, and after about six weeks, I received a letter from the chair of the
Search Committee stating that there would be no future for me at that
synagogue, in pretty much those words, which struck me as a bit overdramatic, but
that was what he wrote. There was nothing to do about it and I forgot about it.
Some years later, in 2002, a book
was published, “The New Rabbi,” that chronicled the search for a new rabbi at
that synagogue, and the author, Stephen Fried, devoted a page to my interview. According
to Fried, I gave the wrong answer to the question, “What kind of sermons do you
give?” And I remember that question because I didn’t know how to answer. It was
curious that I was so caught off guard since at that time, I had already given
eighteen years worth of sermons and one would think after eighteen years, I
would know what kind of sermons I give. Anyway, not certain how to answer, I
mentioned a recent sermon I had given, a review of Bob Dylan’s religious
journey that took him from Judaism to Christianity and then back to Judaism,
and since we are all on a religious journey of sorts, even if some of us have
been parked at a rest stop for many years, I thought people would be able to
identify with the struggles encountered when searching for not merely the
truth, but a kind of ultimate truth in one’s life. So I told the Search
Committee about that sermon, and that was apparently the end of the interview
because they wanted a rabbi who would speak about “rabbinics, scholarly work,
and religious sources” (page 152) and not Bob Dylan. Frankly, I don’t know of
any congregation that wants its rabbi to speak about “rabbinics, scholarly
work, [or] religious sources.” It sounds deadly, but who am I to tell anyone
what the people in the pews want to hear? Anyway, that failed interview left me
in a professional limbo for several months, until the Rabbinical Assembly told
me that I should consider Syosset. And I may have said at the time, what is
Syosset or where is Syosset? I had no idea. But I did come out for an
interview. It went well. Midway hired me and I am now beginning my 23rd
year of delivering sermons to you, though if someone were to ask today, what
kind of sermons do you give, I most likely would still not know how to answer.
Though I have to tell you, and I’m
just making an observation, sometimes people have come up to me after a sermon
to say something like, “Rabbi, I really enjoyed your… uhm… your… uhm…well, what
you call it—a sermon?” And I’ve always felt good about that because it seems to
me that the best kind of sermon is the one that doesn’t sound like a sermon. So
one way I could have answered that fateful question long ago is that I give
sermons that don’t sound like sermons. But that answer also may not have worked
because I have a theory as to what really happened in Philadelphia.
This is the theory: The RA sends
me to this wealthy and prestigious congregation in Philadelphia. The angels
above hear what is going on and declare, Oh no—Rank is going to a congregation
that will eat him alive. What to do? The good Lord steps in and says, “No
problem—I’ll just have the head of the Search Committee ask ‘What kind of
sermons do you give?’” Another angel turns to the Lord and responds, “What good
will that do?” The good Lord says, “Rank has no idea how to answer that
question. He’ll bomb the interview and we can save him from that pulpit.” Yet another
angel asks, “But Lord, then what?” And the Lord says, “We’ll send him to
Midway.”
Now I can’t vouch that this cosmic
conversation actually took place, but I will say this. Twenty-three years ago,
I had no idea where I was going, but having landed here at Midway which has
afforded me and our family so many fulfilling years, I can’t help but think
that the hand of God wasn’t in it in some way. And putting aside all our
preconceived notions about God, we might try to think of God as this invisible lure
toward fulfillment. Why did you go to college at Binghamton and not Michigan?
Why did you take that job in the city and not in Great Neck? Why did you marry
you-know-who instead of you-know-how? All these decisions we make, some of
which we make thoughtfully and some of which are executed in a fog or in the
moment, lead us either closer or further from where we need to be. And when we
make those decisions that bring us closer to where we need to be, it’s God
working in the background, silently, unobtrusively in the extreme by which I
mean we don’t even think God is there. But a big part of what faith is, after
all is said and done, is recognizing where God is, or was, and whether we
followed the lure or resisted it. And when you are able to recognize all the
little signals and put them together, almost like those pictures you draw by
connecting the dots, it ends in one big “ah-ha!” moment, and that’s the hand of
God that has beckoned you to advance in the right direction.
Over the years, I have probably
spoken to you about faith and God a lot because, and I hope this doesn’t sound
too ridiculously obvious, but this is a synagogue and if not here, where? The
fact is that we don’t live in a world where we hear much God talk. This is partly
due to the secular nature of our society and partly due to living in the
Northeast. If we were down South, I suspect we would hear more God talk, but we
don’t live in the South, we live in New York, and I think in order for Jews to
be Jewish, especially for us who live hutz la’aretz, that
is, outside the land of Israel, it’s very important to live with a sense of God’s
invisible presence. The synagogue at best is the place where we need to
reenergize, refuel, recharge our spiritual selves by thinking about God as the
lure, the magnet, the pull that draws us toward the emotionally, spiritually,
and psychologically satisfying space in life—the space where we need to be.
My good colleague, Rabbi Daniel Goldfarb of Jerusalem, and a former visiting rabbi at Midway over the holidays, whom we were most fortunate to have, reminded me that teshuvah, aside from meaning
turning, also means “answer.” We could easily think of the Aseret Yemei
Teshuvah as “The Ten Days of Answer.” So if teshuvah is
an answer, what is the question? This is Jewish Jeopardy. And the question is
the question God asks Adam, the question God asks all of us Adams and Eves, “Ayeka?
/ Where are you?” Are you in the space where you need to be? Are you
home? Have you followed the Lure?
You remember Rabbi Mordechai
Waxman. Rabbi Waxman was one of the most distinguished rabbis of the
Conservative Movement, and the spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Great Neck
for many years. His influence and energy are still talked about today. Back in
1958, he edited a volume on the Conservative Movement entitled “Tradition and
Change.” And what was so influential about that volume was the title itself, such
that it became the slogan of our movement. The Conservative Movement was the
the movement of tradition and change. I don’t know if anyone ever truly
understood what the relative percentages of that two-ingredient recipe were.
Was it 80% tradition and 20% change? Was it 20% tradition and 80% change? Was
it 50/50? Did anyone dare establish what the percentages would be or was it
meant to be undefined permanently? Looking back at all the changes that the Conservative
Movement has instituted over the years, and there have been many and they have
been substantial, each one was made with the intention to reach the greatest
number of Jews and to meet Jews where they were at, in their own space. From
driving on Shabbat, to the use of electricity, to counting women in a minyan,
to ordaining women as rabbis, to homosexual marriage, each and every time we
made a change it was to expand the tent. And we have been expert in expanding
the tent, but we have not expanded the number of people in the tent. If
anything, that number has shrunk. And that’s because religion is fundamentally
about tradition, not change. Can you imagine—Midway Jewish Center: Warmth, Joy,
Tradition and Change. Hmmm…I don’t think
so. It wouldn’t work, because religion is about tradition, not change.
In the early 1900’s, our Reform
brothers and sisters invested huge amounts of money into the Conservative
Movement because they wanted us to change. They were a little embarrassed by
us. Actually, they were a lot embarrassed by us. We were East European
immigrants. We were poor. We dressed like we had come out of the shtetel, because
we had just come out of the shtetel. We spoke Yiddish. We were grateful to be
in America, but we didn’t understand America. Our already established Reform
Jewish brothers and sisters in America knew that we would never feel
comfortable in their Reform synagogues, with the organ, and the English, and the
non-kosher foods. Moreover, they knew that they would not feel comfortable with
us in their Reform synagogues. They wanted to create a middle ground movement
that would help acclimate their poorer immigrant brethren, that’s us, to
American culture. The first half of the 20th century saw tremendous
growth in the Conservative Movement thanks to, among other factors, Reform
philanthropy. Solomon Schechter, the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological
Seminary in the early 1900’s, famously said, “You can’t be a rabbi in America
unless you understand baseball.” That was a prescription for a new kind of
rabbi. Schechter was saying something about Conservative Judaism, and that was its
mission was to Americanize Jews. We succeeded. Long ago. We changed just as we were
supposed to. I would call it a success on a scale of a grand slam, except in a
grand slam, the players run around the bases and eventually come to home plate,
the space where you are supposed to be. If the Conservative Movement were truly
successful, it would have brought us back home to our Judaism. And it didn’t. At
some point, 40 or 50 years ago, the movement’s leadership had to say: Okay—we
all understand baseball. We don’t need another baseball player. Now we need
Jews who embrace their Jewish identity as fervently as they embrace their
American identity. And by Jewish identity, I mean more than just stating: I am
proud to be Jewish. I mean behaving as Jews have behaved for centuries: observing Shabbat, understanding Hebrew, praying
regularly, keeping kosher, defending Israel the Jewish homeland, and loving—with
all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our might—the Lure, the Magnet,
the Pull that draws us to the place where we need to be, that place called
home. Our Jewish home. And I think that’s where our Conservative Movement, a
movement I adore, a movement I have dedicated my professional life to, has come
up short. The inability to reinvent yourself is the road to oblivion. It’s as
if this movement has been on its own, with no direction home, a complete
unknown, like a rolling stone.
Oh,
excuse me—I may have slipped into the Bob Dylan trap. You know, I was reading
up on Dylan’s song, “Like A Rolling Stone.” It’s regarded as a transitional,
revolutionary song for Dylan, moving him from folk into rock. Rolling Stone, the magazine, rated it as
number one in a list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Once, at a press
conference, Dylan was asked if the song wasn’t about a girl he was trying to
torment or if he wanted to truly change people by forcing them to see
themselves. And he responded with a chuckle and said, “I want to needle them,”
which I think is the kind of elusive answer one might expect from a young
artist, as Dylan was at the time. Can you imagine if Dylan were a rabbi and
someone asked him what kind of sermons do you give and he’d say, “Well, I like
to needle the congregation.”
I
don’t want to needle anyone—that sounds painful—but I do believe we need to
recognize that a Jewish community that purports to be a vibrant Jewish
community, has to intensify its observance of Yiddishkeit, Jewishness. The
locus and future of religious development no longer rests with a national
organization, certainly not ours, but rests within individual synagogues. We
have seen many synagogues either close their doors or merge, and that trend will
continue. It may be a blessing in disguise because the fact is the Jewish
community spends way too much money on heating and air conditioning, plumbing
and electricity, and the eternal and ever-present leaks in the roof, and too
few dollars on effective Jewish education for adults, children, and school
faculties. The joke about us in the 50’s and 60’s was that our movement was burdened
with an Edifice Complex—we built buildings—beautiful, architecturally
sophisticated, large buildings. We were telling America that we were proud to
be Jews and we’ve made it in this country. But many of those buildings today
have closed, and others struggle to remain open, and virtually none attract the
numbers they were originally built for. We spend way too much time and money on
buildings and way too little on the people in them. This has to change.
Midway
is going to be one of those synagogues that make it. We have to commit today
how we intend to address our Judaism that could use a good shot in the arm. I
have had extensive talks with Rabbi Joel and our president Michael, and with a
number of other members about how we must change in order to generate vibrant,
smart, engaged Jews who themselves will be leaders in creating Jewish community
here and elsewhere.
Later
this year, beginning with Hanukkah, we’re going to return to a project that we
started pre-Covid, writing a sefer Torah, completing a sefer
Torah, which is a mitzvah, and that project we hope will generate some
substantial dollars that will set Midway on a new initiative to reenergize the
Jewish future. I envision it as a Midway Birthright, used to invest in our
people, our children, ourselves, our Judaism. We won’t neglect the physical
space; the Board of Trustees would never let that happen. But this special
fund, separate from the General Fund and administered by a group separate from
the Board of Trustees will substantially subsidize transformative Jewish
experiences for the people who matter most—our children, our teens, our adults,
our families and our faculties. In the next century, we build not buildings; we
build people, we build Jews.
You
know where you can find the best people? Right here at Midway. What a cast of
characters we have had over my tenure here. You have kept me on my toes,
thinking, laughing, strategizing, studying, and growing. We have, Barukh
HaShem, a great community. I almost feel guilty on what a great time I’ve
had. It doesn’t feel like 23 years have
passed. It feels like I got here maybe just a couple years ago. I still feel
like the new rabbi, or as one famous Nobel laureate put it, forever young. That
prescription doesn’t really work in the real world. El and I were on vacation,
and this was several years ago. I was not yet eligible for Social Security. And
we stopped at a small grocery to pick up a few lunch items—some yogurt,
crackers—whatever was available in Montana that had a hekhsher on it. I paid at
the register, handed the receipt over to El (she actually looks at receipts), and
she says, the kid at the cash register gave you a discount. I said, what kind
of a discount? She said, he gave you a senior citizen discount. I said, I
didn’t ask for a senior citizen discount. She said, I guess you didn’t have to.
The
truth of the matter is that the pulpit, not the rabbinate, but the pulpit requires
young clergy, and thank God, Barukh HaShem, we have that in Rabbi Joel who is
so talented and has brought multiple, engaging new programs to Midway, and we
have it in Cantor Frei with whom it has been a privilege, an honor to work
with, and we’ve embarked on a search for an assistant rabbi whom I’m sure will
fit in and bring even more energy to the congregation.
This
is an exciting time for us all and in spite of this crazy pandemic, we’re in a
good space because it’s time for me to move on, and I’m ready to move on. Of
course, El and I have no idea where we’re going. I guess somewhere far enough
to give the new clergy configuration the freedom to operate unhampered and
close enough to always stay connected to you. Where is that? Who knows? And as
I enter this final year of service to you, you may also be wondering where the
synagogue is going. And there is undoubtedly some uncertainty about that. Well,
you know, life is a journey. And when you really don’t know where you are
going, you just have to have a little bit of faith, and a little bit of courage
to go forward. You have to pay attention to the Lure, the Magnet, the Pull. And
wherever you are in this journey, and we all are on a journey, we have to stick
to the synagogue and to tradition, because when we do that, we will never be on
our own, and we will never be at a loss for the direction home, and we will
never be a complete unknown, because in this chain of tradition that reaches
back 3500 years of which we are the most recent links, we can never be merely a
rolling stone. How does it feel? That feels pretty good.
G’mar
hatimah Tovah!
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