Wednesday, November 27, 2013

A FEW OF THE MORE FRAGRANT ASPECTS OF THE PEW STUDY ON JEWS

 
The recent centennial conference of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism in Baltimore was impressive.  The celebratory mood of the conference, however, did not really grab me.  As a movement, we have many reasons for concern and the Pew Research Survey on Jews made public this past October has confirmed statistically that which we have recognized for some time.
Only 18% of Jews self-identify as Conservative which is dramatically down from what it was only a couple decades ago.  For a movement that prides itself on Halakhic integrity, we find that only 19% of all Jews see devotion to Halakhah or Jewish law as integral to one’s Jewish identity.  Although 78% of Jews refer to themselves as “religious,” almost a third of the millenials (those born in the 1980’s through early 2000) claim no religion at all.  36% of all Jews refer to themselves as “just Jewish,” that is, they see no reason to engage with a particular denomination at all.
 
The Pew Survey has caused yet another round of handwringing and oy-veying throughout the Jewish community as the report seemingly points to the imminent death of religiosity, and if so, what will be left of Judaism?  And the dismal decline of Jews willing to identify as Conservative plays right into our fears for the future of the Jewish people in general.  By the same token, Jews are overwhelmingly proud of being Jewish, whatever their definition of Jewish may be.   70% of all Jews participated in a seder during the past year.   73% claim that remembering the Holocaust is central to their Jewishness. And 69% claim leading an ethical life is central to Jewish identity.  (only 69%--ouch!)
As unsettling as the Pew Report may be, it needs to be tempered by a few realities or facts.  First of all, Jewish identity is not a linear issue.  That is to say, just because one group’s numbers are declining or rising, does not mean that such a trend is irreversible.  In fact, both Reform Judaism (in the 20’s and 30’s) and Orthodoxy (in the 40’s and 50’s) were in steep decline yet neither disappeared.  To the contrary, denominationally, Reform Judaism lays claim to the largest segment of Jews connected religiously and these days, Orthodoxy is both young and vibrant.   But Orthodoxy itself is not one monolithic denomination.  Of the 10% of Jews who self-identify as Orthodox, only 3% are Modern Orthodox—and that number is no success story.  The remaining 7% involve varying degrees of ultra- or haredi Judaism.  This segment of Orthodoxy is largely separated from the modern world, undereducated in secular knowledge or employable skills, and suffers from the highest degree of poverty within the Jewish world.  If this is what it takes to remain Jewish, then the future of Judaism is indeed bleak.
Another reality that may temper the results of the Pew Study is the ambiguity revolving around the term “religious.”  What does that term really mean?  If one goes to a seder, as 70% of the Jewish community did this past year, was that a religious act?  Some will say no, but others would say yes.  If one remembers the Shoah (the Holocaust) and the terrible impact it had on the Jewish people, as 73% of the Jewish people claim is integral to their Jewishness, is that a religious act?  Some will say no, but others would say yes.  Religiosity is an inherently ambiguous term.  Even more important is the fact that religiosity is schlepping around some serious baggage these days, including insipid, long and boring worship services; financial commitments that seem greater than the value received; clergy in the news that have been misbehaving; churches in the news that have been covering for the misbehaving clergy; not to mention millions of so-called “religious” Moslems who what to destroy Israel and/or dismantle western culture and values.  Given all that, who would want to lay unequivocal claim to religious sentiments?!
The Pew Study asked people to fit themselves into categories, but these categories may not be the ones that people are fitting themselves into these days.  I was fascinated by one NPR Report that interviewed three Jews, one young lady professing to be an atheist.  She admitted to a love of the High Holiday services at her synagogue and found meaning in the annual confession of her sins before God.
Excuse me?
She saw no contradiction.  And I, for one, am willing to suggest that there may not be one.  This young lady does reject God, but the God that she rejects may be the God that many believers reject as well.  When she confesses her sins—before God!—then she has, in her head, created something greater than herself to whom she speaks.  She’s not nuts or crazy or a philosophical nit wit.  She’s a Jew for whom the power of the tradition is still real, however God marginally fits into it.  God is complicated for the most serious of sages, philosophers, and scholars—why should it be any easier for this young lady?
It was Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), twice the prime minister of the United Kingdom, and someone whose Jewish parents had him baptized at the age of 12, who purportedly wrote, “There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  I don’t mean to impugn the results of the Pew Study.  They speak for themselves.  What I do question is whether we are examining the statistics as fully as possible. 
Let’s go right to the bottom line.  Most Jews are very proud to be Jews.  That’s a huge win for the Jewish people, especially in a post-Holocaust age.  And though we seem to be drifting away from religion, it is very difficult to weed out the religion from the culture, and a lot of that weeding is of a semantic nature.  Is Judaism in general or Conservative Judaism specifically headed for the dust bins of history?  I would answer no to both questions.  I think Jews want to be Jewish and we are in a period of extraordinary transition and tumult where we are all waiting for a Judaism that speaks to us powerfully and touches us deeply.  The real question is whether  denominational Judaism will be willing to make the changes that will ultimately reconnect the Jewish people to their spiritual roots.  As for Conservative Judaism, I have faith that we will.

SELECTIVE MEMORY--REMEMBERING THE SHOAH HONESTLY

For many years, I have told the story of how the Czech Torah scrolls came to be distributed to so many hundreds of synagogues around the world. The story goes like this. The Nazis, gloating over their continued success in making Europe Judenrein (German for: Jew-Free), devised a plan to memorialize their genocidal efforts. They sought to gather the ritual items of synagogues throughout Czechoslovakia with the intent of someday displaying these items in a Museum of an Extinct Race. So they gathered these ritual items, including hundreds of sifrei Torah (i.e., Torah scrolls), but their plans would be defeated along with their defeat in World War II. Following the war, these Torah scrolls were then distributed to willing Jewish communities throughout the world for display, a sobering testimony to the Nazi downfall so starkly contrasted with the survival of the scrolls. And we have one of those scrolls.
 
It’s a great story. It’s also false. I didn’t know it was false until recently. Many of my colleagues have told the same story, innocently, but the time has come to correct the record. And now the truth. In the middle of World War II, when Czechoslovakian Jews sensed the future growing bleaker and bleaker, the Jewish Museum in Prague asked Jewish communities throughout Czechoslovakia to transfer their ritual items to the museum for cataloguing and safekeeping. The Jews willingly transferred those items to the museum thinking Prague safe. Prague was safe, but the little Jewish communities throughout Czechoslovakia were not. The Jews were murdered on the spot or transferred to death camps, but the ritual items survived the war. The scrolls represent the prescience of the Jewish community acting to safeguard its most cherished possessions. And that’s why we at Midway, like so many others, have a Czech Torah scroll on display today.
 
It could very well be that a Nazi official here or there, spying these ritual items, thought of a Museum of an Extinct Race, but the genesis of this precious legacy was not the nefarious plan of some Nazi thug. Our story must change to fit the facts. We gain nothing in promoting fantasies. To the contrary, how we remember the Shoah will speak volumes about who we are as a people. Do we willingly perpetuate falsehood or do we demand of our memories honesty? I would hope the latter is the value by which we conduct our lives.
 
In viewing our new Shoah Memorial, designed by the talented Jewish artist, Jeanette Kuvin Oren, you will see a tribute to the Jews of Horovice (pronounced: ho-ro-VEECH-ay), the one-time guardians of this sefer Torah. They gathered in synagogue for semahot—B’nai Mitzvah and weddings—and they celebrated holidays and Shabbat. Some may have been observant and some less so. Some may have been very bright and entrepreneurial while others may have been more modestly endowed. They were people like you and me but for the way their lives came to an abrupt and cruel end. We remember them for who they were and connect our lives to theirs by assuming guardianship of their Torah.
 
We remember that although this Horovice Torah is pasul, that is, unfit for ritual use, we have a special obligation as a community to maintain the kashrut of our sifrei Torah, and as such, we have assigned a second Torah, this one kosher, in the memorial ark to be used during services on those occasions when we remember our families and friends who perished in the Shoah. And on the special mantle designed for this Torah is the design of a kiddush cup brimming with fields of flowers and grain. The kiddush cup is taken from the design of the Horovice synagogue, today a church, which features a ceremonial chalice above the main entrance. This design directly connects our Horovice Torah with the synagogue of its provenance. And the fields of flowers and grain—this is a symbol of the promise of Israel, a land of beauty and growth, a safe haven for the Jewish people. Israel is a story that does not stand as a sequel to the Shoah, but one that is not disconnected from it either. When we view our Shoah memorial, and we choose to remember Medinat Yisrael, the State of Israel, we resist the inclination to be engulfed by sorrow, and choose rather to remember the greatest symbol of Jewish autonomy and power today. This is a thought that should strengthen and empower us. And this is a memory that is far from fantasy, but based on fact. It is honest to say that we no longer are a powerless people, the hapless victims of an immoral force. To the contrary, we have become a formidable force in the Mid-East and as such, restored our fate to our own hands, to the extent that anyone’s fate lies in their own hands.
 
So there are all sorts of things we need to remember. We need to remember the truth. Were we direct survivors of the Shoah, knowing the terrible end our relatives and friends suffered, we would want to remember. We would have to remember. To forget their lives would be to subject them to a second death, and perhaps one more terrible than the first. We may not be direct survivors of the Shoah, but our Jewish identities are inextricably tied to those who are. Were we actual survivors, we would converse with each other using the lingua franca of European Jewry: Yiddish. And knowing what happened to us as a people, we would say to each other: Gedenkt, the Yiddish word for “Remember!” Gedenkt, we say, both the tragedies and the miracles. And we will remember them as honestly as possible.

 

A SENSE OF MISSION, INTERNATIONAL IN SCOPE

Most Jews I’ve met—99% of them!—live with a certain sense of deficiency about their own level of observance of or belief in Jewish practice. For those who live with any sense of guilt about it, they can rest assured that there are always Jews who are far more knowledgeable or observant than they. But suppose, due to some scientifically fictitious attack of aliens from a distant planet, every Jew who was more religious than you disappeared, and you remained, in fact, the most observant Jew in the world. Before anyone made a Jewish move, they would look to you for guidance and you were suddenly forced to be an example of respectable Jewish practice. What would Judaism look like?
 
The Judaism that you would end up presenting to the world would be in consonance with how so many Conservative Jews live. You would encourage Jews to evolve to deeper degrees of Jewish practice and knowledge, without judging those who may resist. At the same time that traditional practices would be held in great regard, the creation of new rituals to promote ancient values would be welcomed. Your Judaism would be highly inclusive—recognizing the complicated nature of the Jewish family which encompasses so many other religious traditions or sexual orientations. No one connected with our families would be made uncomfortable.
 
Your Judaism would make room for prayer and meditation, but the mitzvah of all mitzvot would be study, the recognition that all truth is in some way Torah, and all Torah is Godly in nature. Because of that disposition, one which values learning so highly, there would be an enhanced receptivity to the spiritual insights of other religious traditions and of the men and women who have chosen a path to God different from our own. Your Judaism would be one based on a deep regard for all people irrespective of gender. Women would clearly be first-class citizens with access to every aspect of Jewish life, on a par with that of men.
 
At the heart of your religious practice would be ethical practice. No one would ever be caught wondering how an “observant Jew” could have bilked the government, or abused a child, or engaged in illicit business practices. Because of your example, it would be clear that such a person was never an “observant Jew,” but a fraud from the beginning. And finally, your Judaism would bear no trace of triumphalism, no condescending positions that would suggest superiority over and above other peaceful religious traditions. Your Judaism would be a path toward a world repaired, a world of deep sensitivity to the environment, and a world at peace.
 
Avraham Avinu, Abraham our Father, the man who took the first bold steps to craft this thing we now call Judaism, asked God for one thing: a child. Eventually, Abraham and Sarah would be blessed with one child, but God’s promise to Abraham was far more generous, for God said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them…so shall your offspring be” (Genesis 15:5). God may have been counting Abraham’s physical offspring, but equally plausible would be a census of all of Abraham’s disciples, the people who might be so inclined as to embrace Abraham’s Judaism, of which you are now the most prominent representative.
 
We are humble Jews and so we play up our weaknesses without adequately acknowledging our strengths. These days, the world is exposed to a religiosity that is irrational, violent, imperious, coercive, homophobic, and mysoginistic. And the thing about religion is that, like politics, it doesn’t go away. It is too much a part of our humanity to wish it away. Then again, like politics, not all religious sentiments are worthy of our esteem or God’s blessings. But ours is a great tradition, one that welcomes the wisdom of antiquity into an age of Twitter and FaceBook.
 
Conservative Judaism has something to tell the world, something to teach the world. But the message will never be heard as long as we leave the fate of Jewish tradition to those who are presumably more religious than we. We should never diminish the depth of our own spirituality out of some tepid respect for “a more observant” Judaism we ourselves reject. Our Jewishness deserves a large shelf in the global market of ideas and philosophy and religion. We should be welcoming those who are searching for a way to God to step onto the derekh, the path we have chosen ourselves. It is not the only path to God but it is a fabulous path which deserves to be promoted. Many speak about the Tree of Life, our Torah, as having roots deep within the soil of Jewish wisdom and ethics. And it’s true. It is now time for the branches of this Tree of Life to grow ever higher, to touch the stars in the heaven, however many we can count.
 
 
 

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

WHAT KIND OF JEW ARE YOU?


ROSH HASHANAH, 5774 / SEPTEMBER 5-6, 2013

                Shanah Tovah, everyone.  Here we are again, Rosh Hashanah, gathered together in celebration of a new calendar year and in contemplation of yet another personal year added to our own lives.  It is always an inspiration to see so many of us converge on these few days of High Holiday with the express purpose to think about the passage of time, its meaning, the way we use our allotted years in that period, and what changes need to be made.  May it be a year of good health and happiness, but also one of discovery and renewal for us all.

                An evil angel comes to the good Lord one day and says, “God, I can make the greatest tzadik on earth curse You from morning ‘till night.”  God replies, “No you can’t.”  The evil angel counters, “Come on…let’s put a little money down on this now give me your biggest tzadik.”  So God says, “OK—Work your magic on Sadie Sternstein in Great Neck.”  “O, come one, God, you can do better than that.” But God says, “No, really, she’s unbelievable.  She’s the most positive person in the face of adversity you’ll ever meet.”  So the evil angel reluctantly agrees, thinking the challenge is beneath him but he goes to work.  Suddenly, Sadie gets a call on her cell phone from her daughter, “Ma,” she hears her daughter weeping, “Rick wants to divorce me, the baby has 102, I just got fired, and there’s water flooding the basement.  Can you please come over.”  Sadie responds, “Honey, stay put.  I’ll be right over with some Starbucks.”  Sadie terminates the call and thinks to herself, “Such a mehcaye—my daughter’s in trouble and who does she call? Her Mama—such a good girl!”  She drives to the Starbucks and picks up the coffee.  The evil angel realizes that his scam has failed.  So he says, “OK—may her keys be locked in the car.”  Sadie gets to the car and sees her keys are locked inside.  “Oy—she says, it’s a good think I got that On-Star program.  I’ll call the On-Star people and they will unlock the door.”  The evil angel says, “May her cell phone disappear.”  Sadie looks through her purse—no phone.  “Aha”—Sadie thinks, “that nice young clerk at Verizon who sold me the insurance—even though I didn’t want to get it—he was right.  Such a good boy.  In the mean time I’ll go get a hanger from the cleaners across the street and maybe I can jostle the car door open.”  She gets the hanger, returns to the car, so the evil angel says, “Don’t let her succeed in picking the lock,” and sure enough, Sadie fails, whereupon she exclaims, “Oy—these car manufacturers have done an outstanding job in making sure the car doors remain securely locked.  The evil angel is really frustrated since Sadie is not reviling God at all.  So he says, “OK, I’ll send a crook to rob her blind.”  Just then, a motorcycle pulls up alongside her.  It’s filthy, old, sputtering, loud and the motorcyclist is bearded, greasy, is wearing a muscle shirt, his arms are covered with tattoos, he’s wearing a skull rag and a cigarette dangles from his lips.  Sadie, looks at him and smiles, and says, “Young man, do you know how to get a car door unlocked.  He says, “Sure.”  He gets off his motorcycle, grabs the hanger from her hands, sticks it in the lock and within 5 seconds has the door open.  Sadie reaches into her purse to give him a five dollar bill.  He says, “Lady, you’re giving me $5.00?”  Sadie thinks she’s insulted him with such a meager gift so she reaches into her purse to give him a ten dollar bill, whereupon he says, “Lady, you’re giving me $10.00?”  As she begins to reach into her purse yet again, the biker finally says, “Hey lady, look, ya gotta understand.  I’m a crook.  I break into cars for a living.”  “Oy” Sadie says.  She reaches into her pocket book pulls out a $100 dollar bill, hands it to him and says, “I didn’t realize you’re a professional.”

                It’s very common to think that what we see in the world tells us about what is actually in the world, but the truth of the matter is what we see in the world tells us a lot about who we are as people.  We see the world not necessarily as is, but with our own eyes, we see the world as we think it is.  Fifty years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, a rather short but charismatic black leader by the name of Martin Luther King referred to this problematic seeing when in his brilliant speech to some 250,000 civil rights demonstrators said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  What a beautiful sentiment!  What a powerful sentiment!  And yet, the very idea that such a sentiment was expressed not as a fundamental reality of our lives, but only as a goal that our nation may someday reach, only as a dream that some day may come true is truly pathetic.  Shouldn’t it have been obvious to any smart, intelligent, sophisticated human being of that day and age that we look beyond the surface in order to get to know people?  Or were we so simple, so shallow as to think that the surface is all there is?  This peculiar way of seeing, in the context that Martin Luther King used it, is racism, however, suppose this peculiar way of seeing was not relegated to the way people see each other racially, but the way we see the world generally, looking at the surface without ever going deeper?

                The story is told about a professor who brought his philosophy students to a diner and there set about the task of teaching his young scholars an important lesson.  The waitress comes by and asks for their order.  The professor says, I’ll have a bowl of soup.  The waitress says OK—we have matzah ball, minestrone, split pea, mushroom barley or a nice gazpacho.  And the professor replies, No thanks—I’ll just have a bowl of soup.

                There is such a thing called soup.  We might even say to our friends something along the lines of—I like soup.  But in the end, that statement is rather meaningless unless by it we mean that we like every possible variation of soup that exists in the world.  Would that be true?  Can we make such a statement?  Chances are we may come across a form of soup we may not like, as for example in the Indiana Jones movie, The Temple of Doom, when a very hungry Willie, played by Kate Capshaw, innocently asks for a bowl of soup and receives a bowl of hot, steamy liquid with what would appear to be something very unsavory floating around in it and staring back at her.  The question is not whether we like soup, but what kind of soup we like.  Do we like it cold or hot, mild or spicy, veggie or meat based?  Our dependence on a generalized category of soup is a guarantee that we will end up with no soup at all.  There’s something deeper to soup than just a bowl of soup.

                That apocryphal story about the professor is attributed to Sidney Morgenbesser who taught philosophy at Columbia University for close to 50 years, but whom others remember as an ordained Conservative rabbi from the Jewish Theological Seminary.  He was a deeply influential teacher in the world of philosophy and taught us something important about the pitfalls of generalizations.

                I want to share with you one of the great generalizations within the literature of Halakhah, the Jewish path in life.  The question is this:  who is a Jew?  And the answer, according to the Halakhah, is a Jew is someone born of a Jewish mother.  It’s a very clear definition.  It’s also, believe it or not, a very inclusive definition as it excludes no one for lapses in ritual behavior, or for ideological heresy, or for theological blasphemy.  Is your mother Jewish?  If so, then you are a Jew.  Simple.  Period.  But as we have seen, being just a Jew allows one to hide behind a wall of unspecificity.  Exactly what kind of Jew are you?

                Moshe Rabbeinu, our teacher Moshe, was known to be a tireless servant of God and of the Jewish people.  But even a personality like Moshe couldn’t do it all himself.  So God devises a plan whereby 70 elders would be invested with the spirit, that Godly spirit that would, in the end, qualify them as servants of God as well.  Certainly not on a par with Moshe but he would ultimately get the support staff that he so required.  The 70 Jews are appointed and asked to go to the Ohel Mo’ed, the Tabernacle, where the spirit would descend upon them.  Do 70 Jews go out to the Ohel?  Of course not.  God forbid we should all be in agreement even when God asks something of us.  But the success rate was not bad—68 show up and two remain at home watching a football game.  And then, something extraordinary happens.  The spirit of God descends upon all 70.  You would think that it would descend only upon the 68 that actually showed up at the meeting, but no—the spirit descends upon all 70, which prompts Joshua, Moshe’s personal servant, to run to his master and complain that Eldad and Medad, the two who remained at home, have begun to prophesize in their local neighborhood.  They essentially became prophets, the spirit of God having so animated them.  Joshua cries out to Moshe that he should stop them immediately and put an end to this outrageous trespass into a domain solely Moshe’s himself, but Moshe dismisses Eldad and Medad’s so-called affront to his authority, and says—


Josh, If only God would make all the people prophets!

                It’s classic Moshe.  It’s the kind of response you get from a leader who is so self-confident and so secure in his connection with God that what others might see as a an assault or a challenge to their authority Moshe sees only as a blessing.  Yes—this is exactly what he has been aiming for in his wilderness labors: a people so invested with the divine spirit that they too would become prophets.

                There is a group of women in Israel known as Women of the Wall or WOW.  They are a group of women who each Rosh Hodesh, that’s a new month on the Jewish calendar, go to the kotel, the wall in Jerusalem, in order to pray.  A couple years ago I attended that service.  Not exactly with them because mixed davening at the kotel is not permitted.  The area of the kotel is under the jurisdiction of an Orthodox authority that would not permit such a gathering to take place.  There is a mehitzah, a partition that divides the women side of the wall from the men’s side.  The women’s side is much smaller than that of the men’s side but nonetheless, there is this section and I stood right next to the mehitzah where I could hear these women praying and I, too, followed along with their service.  It’s the kind of service that any of us here would all feel very comfortable at.  They sing together, they pray together…it was lovely.  Over the past year, the police of the kotel have arrested several of these women, including two American Conservative rabbis, Rabbi Deborah Cantor of B’nei Tikvo Sholom of Bloomfield, Connecticut and Rabbi Robin Fryer Bodzin of the Israel Center for Conservative Judaism in Queens.  Their crime: chanting Torah out loud at the kotel and wearing a tallit, actions prohibited to women by the Orthodox authorities. 

                The response of the American rabbinate, almost across all denominations, including many Orthodox, was—You did what?!  You arrested women for reading Torah and wearing a tallit?!  And, in fact, at this time, most Israeli authorities have come to the same point of embarrassment:  We did what?!  The Supreme Court of Israel actually found the detentions illegal and in violation of Israeli law, but I want to talk about what exactly did the Orthodox authorities at the kotel see when those handful of women donned tallit.   Did they see people moving closer to God, taking up tradition, reciting words of prayer, words of peace?  Or did they see people challenging their authority, women no less challenging men,  undermining their power base, trespassing into a world of spirit that they have staked out as their own, non-members need not apply.  Did the Israeli Orthodox authorities who sanctioned those arrests see with the eyes of Moshe or the eyes of Joshua?   Did any of them have the guts to step out and say—Would that every Jewish woman don a tallit and recite words of Torah?  No.

                When we give 13 year old girls B’not Mitzvah, when we count women in a minyan, when we call them to the Torah, when we ask them to lead services, when they serve as witnesses during various legal proceedings, it’s not because we’re liberal or lax or uncaring about Jewish law.  L’hefekh—just the opposite.  We are creating a Jewish path of life that recognizes the dignity of every human being, man or woman, and granting them equal access to God.  We look at the world with the eyes of Moshe that go way deeper than the surface.

                America may be different but we still live in a world where some women are prohibited from driving, or can be killed for dishonoring the family, or kidnapped for use in a multi-billion dollar sex trade,  or where she must cover her body, from head to toe, less she be arrested for indecency.  Nev er think for a minute that our egalitarianism as a community emanates from a lax or liberal or uncaring attitude toward Jewish law.   This is a community whose views on women, and the equality they deserve, are reflected in our spiritual practices.  What kind of Jew are you? 

                 One of our good members was drawn away from Long Island for awhile to attend a family simhah north of us.  And the simhah could not have come at a better time.  It was during those days following Sandy, their electricity was out, the refrigerator was empty…  it was a good time to get away to an area where power was available.  Their trip was not extensive and soon they had to return.  While traveling through Connecticut, they thought it a good idea to stop at a hardware store to pick up a plastic gas can.  And they did just that only to find the store sold out of such containers.  As they turned around to leave, the owner of the store asked, “Where are you people from?”  They told him Long Island.  He said, “Long Island—how did you fare through Sandy?”  And they answered, “A little bit of water damage, not too bad, but still no power.”  The storekeeper took a long look at them and told them to wait, went into a back room and came out with a gas container, his own, and said, “I want you to have this.  Good luck.”  And as they relayed this story, they told me that the encounter was as humbling as it was moving.  With only the exchange of a few innocent words, they had unwittingly become the objects of charity.  But how did that happen?  They were not poor people.  They owned a home, they pay a mortgage, they send their children to expensive colleges, they own a car, and so forth…  How could they have become the objects of charity?  And yet, they were deeply moved by the generosity of one hardware storekeeper for having gifted to them that gas container.  They really needed it.


May we never find ourselves in need of the gifts of others or their loans
So the prayer in birkat Hamazon, the Grace after meals, but that dividing line between those times when we are handing out the tzedakah and when we ourselves become in need of tzedakah can be very thin. 

                When we see a beggar on the street, what exactly do we see?  Do we see a lazy bum?  Do we see a drain on society?  Do we see a drug addict or a loser or an embarrassment to society?  What do we see?  Our tradition teaches us to proceed with great caution because what we see there could some day, God forbid, be us.  We could someday be on the receiving end of those hand-outs because as the Tanakh teaches us:


For the time of mischance comes to all (Ecc. 9:11)

A citation from Ecclesiastes which is eerily identified 9:11, that is, chapter 9 verse 11.  This is no dictate to give a hand-out to every beggar on the street; that would be foolish.  But it’s a question: what is it that we see when we see that homeless person on the street?  Do we see a beggar and automatically define that person as someone else, the other, not me, not possible, never?  Or do you see and appreciate the fragility of our lives, the fact that what we have today may be gone tomorrow and whatever it is that separates us from that beggar is not so thick, or solid, or impassable.  Tzedakah, giving to others is, I think, not a tool to cleanse our conscience but an instrument of God designed to remind us that we are all one.  What kind of Jew are you?

                Last year, a 16 year old girl from Staten Island by the name of Felicia Garcia tweeted a brief message which read, “I cant.  im done.  I give up.”  She later went to the Staten Island Railway station,  where many of her friends take the train home and hurled herself onto the tracks as a train pulled into the station.  Her classmates later admitted that she was the target of vicious bullying and though she seemingly put up with it, some critical threshold was crossed and she saw fit to take her own life.  The statistics on suicide among young people in the country are rather startling.  Suicide is the number three leading cause of death among teens accounting for some 4400 deaths per year, and for every completed suicide there are around 100 attempted suicides (http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/bullying-and-suicide.html).

Much has been written about the need to talk to teens about the evils of bullying and that’s fine and I think worthwhile.  But there is something else here that needs to be addressed and it is a question of ownership:  to whom do our bodies really belong?  That seems like a rather straight forward question with a straight-forward answer, but maybe not. Many of us have grown up with, or at least have been exposed to, the idea that our bodies are ours.  And the strength of that position is clear due to the number of people in this world who think that our bodies are theirs, and that they can thereby make decisions for what we can either do or not do with our bodies.    But maybe that answer—that our bodies belong to us—is incomplete.

Over Rosh Hashanah, we read a particularly challenging story known as Akedat Yitzhak, the Binding of Isaac.  And it is a story that is disturbing because we don’t like God’s test of Abraham.  God is testing Abraham’s devotion—all very well and good—but don’t let the success or failure of this test rest on Abraham’s relationship with Isaac.  Don’t ask him to sacrifice his child.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who has been chief rabbi of Great Britain since 1991, has an intriguing interpretation of this troubling passage in Torah.  He tells us that we are all misreading it because we have forgotten the social context in which this passage was written.  It was written at a time when people not only owned land, but people also owned people.  God, we know, promises Abraham both land, the land of Israel, and people, that is, many, many children.  But the Torah lets us know that when it comes to land, although it may be gifted to us, we never truly own it because all belongs to God.  And when it comes to people, even children, we can’t own them either, because they, too, belong to God.  This may still rub you the wrong way, particularly in thinking of your own children, because are they not yours.  Well, yes they are, but not totally.  You can’t do with your children anything you like.  You can’t as minors, send them to work, you can’t abuse them and you certainly can’t God-forbid, punish them by death.  But in Roman law, you could.  The Roman law of patria potestas meant that children were property, you owned them, you owned their income, you owned their assets, and you had the right to punish them, you had even the right to subject them to the death penalty.  The story of Akedat Yitzhak is a question about ownership.  To whom does this body belong?  To the parent on earth or the parent in the heavens above.  And if the body belongs to the parent in the heavens above, then the parent on earth has far fewer rights over that child, than the ancient world though obvious.


You have created the human being with great intelligence…

So we say in the prayers.  It’s a very powerful idea.  This is more than life is sacred.  This is the idea that we are the craftsmanship of God.  We don’t trash a Picasso, a Rembrandt or a Michaelangelo.  We don’t mess with those works of art.  They are too precious, too perfect, too magnificent.  We are too precious, too perfect, too magnificent for any of us or our children to take our lives.  And who are we to take our own lives when our lives do not belong to us to begin with. 

                I hope I don’t get into too much trouble for saying this, but let me go off on a bit of a limb here and tell you that I can save everyone a little bit of money right now.  How?  Because I want to tell you that by and large, you don’t need any tattoos, no body piercings, no nose jobs, no face lifts, no botox, no nothing.  You don’t need any of that because God has made us a masterpiece and whatever imperfection that may be a part of us is that which makes us wonderful and unique.  I want you to know that and more importantly, I want our children to know that.  No one should ever look into a mirror and see anything less than a godly work of genius that requires our love and attention and care.  God forbid we should ever do anything to our bodies that would harm them thinking well, it’s just my property—I can do with it whatever I want.  We can’t.  We belong to God.  What do you see when you look in the mirror?  And based on what you see, what kind of Jew are you? 

                Of course, there are many different adjectives we can apply to our Jewishness.  There are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist Jews.  There are secular, cultural, Zionistic, and humanistic Jews.  There are Jews by Choice and Jews by Birth.  There are Jews who are Buddhists, the so-called Jew-Bus.  There are hundreds of other kinds of Jews we could mention but the point here is this:    when someone asks you, even if its yourself, what kind of Jew are you, the answer is not “I’m just a Jew,” because that is the theological equivalent of “I like soup.”  Great.  What kind of soup do you like and what kind of Jew are you?

                That‘s a question that only you can answer but I’ll tell you this.  I hope you are the kind of Jew that is prepared to defend Jews, men or women, who are searching for a path to come closer to God no matter how unorthodox a path they choose.  I hope you are the kind of Jew who sees the oneness of all humanity and can respond with appropriate compassion at the right times.  I hope that you are the kind of Jew who sees the hand of God as having crafted you, as well as operating within you.  Your body, your person is precious and we take care of such a gift the way only a precious gift given to us by a dear friend must be cared for. 

                It’s very common to think that what we see in the world tells us about what is actually in the world, but the truth of the matter is what we see in the world tells us a lot about who we are as people.    I hope that this year we can all move beyond an identification of ourselves as “just a Jew.”  We deserve more than that and the world needs more than that.  May we all be Jews who see deeply, Jews who look below the surface, Jews who see the world with the eyes of Moshe. 


                Shanah tovah, everyone, a good year to all.

Monday, May 20, 2013

THE ETHICS OF SIN


If we are to trust anything about our understanding of DNA, then we must admittedly conclude that thousands of years ago, we stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, imbedded deep within the kishkes of our ancestors. We, as they, were directly exposed to an energy of God, which we later transformed into Ten Commandments. That transformation rendered clear, powerful and absolute words which we cherish till this day…

Thou shall not steal
Thou shall not bear false witness
Thou shall not murder


Each year, leading up to Shavuot, we remember the victims of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and recall a period of time when every one of those famous commandments was in some way trampled, broken, and violated. As a prelude to Shavuot, Yom haShoah bears a bone-chilling message: treat these commandments lightly and this is the kind of world you end up with. Scary! But what complicates the message is that sometimes the crimes committed are not those of the perpetrators, but those of the victims, who in a fight for survival or in an act of revenge, stole, lied, or killed. Are we to condemn them for their sins? In rationalizing their misdeeds, do we expose a double-standard, a hypocrisy of sorts?
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), perhaps the greatest of all modern philosophers, would say that we do. Kant’s work helped us to understand why science could come to definitive truths about the world around us but failed to do the same in such areas as ethics. And yet, civilization depended on ethical living, people who would keep promises, pay debts, testify truthfully and so forth. What to do? Kant argued that the only way to live morally, was to live in such a way that our actions were worthy of becoming universal law. So, for example, if truth is the foundation of all morality, then one must be truthful at all times, independent of circumstances or consequences, because only truth was worthy of universal law. This idea has been given a fancy philosophical term: the categorical imperative. And it sounds good and reasonable, but then Yom haShoah gets in the way. Consider this…
You’re a Jew in Nazi Germany, 1942. Your family has been taken away and your Jewish neighbors have disappeared. You have been witness to countless acts of violence, verbal and physical, directed against Jews by Gestapo agents and Nazi soldiers. You run to another town where no one knows you and due to your blond hair and perfect German accent, you pass yourself off as a Christian, obtaining work with a family as a maid. Periodically, Gestapo agents enter the home to interrogate the family. They ask you about your background and you fabricate your birth date, birthplace and religion. You know of Jews hiding in the neighborhood, and when asked about whether you have heard any such rumors to that effect, you not only deny any such knowledge but patriotically declare it an honor to transfer such information, should it ever come to you, directly to the Gestapo. You lie. In the course of that interrogation, and indeed in every second of your life, you lie. Immanuel Kant would use you as an example of an unethical and immoral person. Jewish tradition would regard you as a courageous soul.
The Ten Commandments are not the Ten Commandments, at least not in Hebrew. In Hebrew, we refer to these so-called commandments as Aseret HaDibrot, which roughly translated could be the Ten Utterances or the Ten Speakings or the Ten Musings. Commanding and uttering are two different animals. A commandment tends to end with a period—Do X, no if’s, and’s or but’s. But an uttering or a speaking or a musing is an invitation to a conversation. If only morality or ethics could be summarized with a few hard and fast rules, creating a just world would be so much easier. But the blind adherence to a few ethical rulings, divorced from all circumstances, will lead you to a freakish morality. A woman is running away from an armed rapist. She takes refuge in your home. The rapist comes to your door and demands to know if she is there. You say she is because you cannot tell a lie. Kant would declare this a moral act. Jews might view this as an instance of idolatry where even the truth has been turned into an object of worship.
There is a famous argument in the Talmud between Hillel and Shammai about what to say to a bride. Does one praise the bride commensurate with her beauty or lack thereof, the view of Shammai, or does one exuberantly praise her beauty and charm, whatever her appearance, the view of Hillel? It should come as no surprise that Shammai’s slavish obedience to some ethical principle was rejected. In place of that our tradition chose the magnanimity and graciousness of Hillel. Does that mean that Hillel encourages us to lie? No. It means that we cannot advance along the path of morality by following a recipe book—Do X, period. We come to morality through dialogue and deliberations that take into account the thousands of details which comprise every given challenge. That is the wisdom of the Aseret HaDibrot, in establishing not commandments but musings or speaking that require thoughtfulness and conversation, something that Jews have been doing ever since that fateful meeting at a place called Mount Sinai, where we all stood, imbedded deep within the kishkes of our ancestors.

Friday, April 12, 2013

REMEMBERING WHY PEOPLE HATE US




This year, Yom HaShoah, a memorial dedicated to the murder of six million of our people, will be observed on Monday, April 8. My suspicion is that most Jews will mark the occasion mentally with an awareness of its existence, but without any real dedication to its observance. Can you blame them? This Jewish genocidal campaign is a horrific memory, and it is only human nature to avoid pain. Furthermore, why draw attention to this darkest of all periods in our history? We are sometimes charged with whining too much about anti-semitism and its effects. Perhaps the best way to snatch victory from the Nazi’s mechanized murder enterprise is to reduce 1933-1945 to a few brief sentences in our consciousness, paying it as little attention as possible, not dignifying it or its perpetrators with the memory it does not deserve. But to ignore it seems an enormous insult to those who could not, and if Jews do not perpetuate their memory, there’s little hope that anyone else will.

There is no doubt that the Christian teaching of contempt for the Jews, blaming the Jews contemporaneous with Jesus for his death, and then claiming that every Jew thereafter is thus tainted with the crime of murder, laid the ground work for innumerable blood libels, national expulsions, porgroms, all of which culminated in the mother of all pogroms, the Shoah. The Church has officially repudiated the teaching of Contempt, for which we are grateful, though historically, the damage has been profound. Beyond this Christian detour from reason, there are reasons why others may view us as a threat, or dangerous, or worthy of contempt. And we should be proud of them all.

Jews tend to be arty, at the cutting edge of music, visual arts, and literature. But acting as the avant-garde is almost always synonymous with challenging accepted standards and norms. The blazing of a new trail often means damaging an accepted or comfortable space, and the general public is not always happy about, let alone receptive to, change. Our own creativity is a mirror of divine creativity, which is the Bible’s first lesson to us about what it means to be godly. And in moving people tothinkg differently, to see differently, etc., comes a resistance that can itself morph into resentment. There is a price to be paid for creativity and Jews don’t seem to care. Thank God for that.

The success that Jews enjoy tends to give us headlines far beyond what our paltry numbers should allow. There are plenty of impoverished, dim-witted, and untalented Jews. But there are plenty who are not. Motivated by sociological forces that would humble us or driven by a deep-seated cultural energy of achievement, we produce success stories worthy of everyone else’s attention. We need not be embarrassed by the technological advances we create, or the new truths we discover, or the wealth we accumulate. These achievements are legitimately ours, but success easily breeds jealousy. We do not control the arts, the banks or the media, but there is no denying the tremendous influence we wield in these very human areas of activity—and there is no shame in that.

As the oldest of the ethical-monotheistic traditions, we so often seem cast in the role of world conscience. We have been unafraid to challenge the status quo—whether in areas of race relations, sexual relations or human/civil rights in general. Our tendency to challenge is so all-embracing that our own institutions and leadership cannot escape our sometimes caustic critiques, and thus Jews who challenge Israel’s political stances or the Federation or the Jewish establishment in general. Beware Jews situated next to apple carts—those carts will not be upright for long. But average people like their apples in the cart, no matter how damaged the apples, unstable the carts, or corrupt the merchants. We gain no friends in playing this role, yet dare not abandon a role so integral to advancing the human condition in the world today.

Finally, skirting personal responsibility by blaming others for one’s plight is as old as human history itself, and when searching for the perfect scapegoat, a minority group is a risk worth taking. There is, as the old adage goes, strength in numbers, and our numbers (less than one tenth of one percent of the world’s population) is rather pathetic. If there is one area of human experience in which our ineptitude is evident, it is in the area of reproduction. It is, very simply, easy to hate Jews because with a population as scant as ours, it’s difficult to strike back in any substantive way. Jew-hatred and Jew-scapegoating can be carried out with relative impunity, all of which brings us back to the Shoah.

Hitler figured out a way to promote his power base in a Germany not necessarily enamored with his politics. Blame all the country’s ills on a helpless minority that is already despised by many. Convince the public that only by controlling these vermin can the nation’s ills be resolved. Finally, remove the vermin once and for all. Kill every Jew possible and all will be good. And so, Yom HaShoah is not only a day to remember the evils of anti-semitism, but to ponder the reasons why tht hatred is so difficult to excise from the world.

This year, on Yom HaShoah, make sure to light a yahrzeit candle. The flame, most obviously, is in memory of the six million, but even more so a symbol of Jewish passion—artistic, moral, political, and academic—the light that others would so readily extinguish, the light that we must so passionately guard.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

GOOGLE YOUR PESAH




Have you ever taken a mental health day?  Mental health days are days during which you skip whatever it is you are supposed to do, and do whatever it is your little ole’ heart desires.  It is a day when submission to the tyranny of your daily routine will do no one any good—not your clients or customers, not your superiors or co-workers, not any member of your family, and above all, not you.  When the drudgery of what some call “the daily grind” feels stifling or overwhelming, that is the perfect day for a mental health day.  Most people, so entrapped in the routine of daily life, are unaware of the mental health day’s dividends or profits.  And they are the poorer for it.  They ought to learn from a leading tech company in our own day:  GOOGLE.

At GOOGLE, employees are allowed 20% free time to do whatever they would like, as long as it is tangentially connected to company productivity.  This may sound like a direct attack on the American work ethic, but GOOGLE, mindful that creative minds need to dream, scheme, and envision, expect their employees to break their routines and indulge in something totally different, believing as it does that the dreamers will inherit the earth.   Does it work?  Guess where the idea for Gmail was conceived:  20% time.  The future belongs to the creative.

The Jewish people are master routine smashers.  We smash routines through sacred time, that is, allowing Yom Tov or a festive day to remove us from the work place, the school, or whatever the flavor of our daily grind, in order to do something wholly other—living out the myths of our people, pondering the values we cherish, examining our lives as individuals and as part of a collective, and thereby thrusting our potential to evolve into high gear.  Many an employee or boss, educator or student might object to so many sacred days off as literally counter-productive.  The truth may prove just the opposite.

If one were to religiously observe all the Shabbatot and Y’mei Tov  (plural of Yom Tov) that our tradition asks us to observe, we would be removing ourselves from the daily grind about 18% of a year, less than GOOGLE’s 20% but more than 3M’s 15%, which started in the 1940’s.  It was during 3M employee Art Fry’s 15% that he came up with a simple idea that revolutionized our lives: the post-it note.  So imagine what the Jewish people could do with their 18%.    We would have time to reflect, ponder deep truths, critique, self-analyze, face difficult realities and consider solutions to profound problems.  Our creativity as Jews is a reflection of a divine attribute—the power to create—but as we all know, the Creator ceased from such creativity on the seventh day. I suppose even God needs 20% time (actually 1/7 is about 14% or 2 x 7, a sacred Jewish number and the number of days needed to create the universe).  

It may seem like a lot to ask people to take a day off from work or skip school for a Yom Tov.  But as some wonder how they could afford it, I wonder how they cannot afford it.  Our tradition teaches us how to live a mental health life.   You might want to start slow and take just one of the Y’mei Tov off.  Thus does the Lord your God deliver you from the House of Routine, which is another name for Egypt, which is the land from which God wishes to rescue us at this time of year, and actually,  each and every day of our lives.  So this year break habit and routine.  Stay home.  Exercise your creative potential.  Experience an exodus out of your own Egypt.




Friday, March 8, 2013

A MEETING OF THE MINDS, HUMAN AND DIVINE


One area of communal behavior at which we Conservative Jews excel is beating ourselves up. More than any other denomination, we’re unhappy with the shape we’re in. We don’t pray regularly; we cut corners with kashrut; we ignore Shabbat; we are Hebraically illiterate; and our knowledge of Judaism is thin at best. On top of all that, we are dying as a movement. We know this because every Jewish media outlet takes great joy in printing our obituary week after week. After reading the Jewish press, I feel like standing up and singing that Spam-A-Lot tune, “I’m Not Dead Yet.”

In truth, we all could be doing a better job in the Jewish identity department. Equally true is the fact that all Jews, no matter who they are or which denomination they belong to, could be doing a better job in the Jewish identity department. One of the greatest lessons of the Torah is that it ended before the Israelites entered the Promised Land. Why? Because one never truly enters the Promised Land. First of all, if one entered it, it would cease to be the Promised Land, as a promise fulfilled ceases to be a promise. And secondly, to enter the Promised Land implies the end of a journey—and that’s impossible, because as long as we live, the journey continues. In short, we could all be better Jews.

It’s been well over a year since any of us have heard the term “mitzvah” translated as “commandment.” We have switched to referring to a mitzvah as a “sacred connection,” from the Aramaic term of the same root, “tzavta,” meaning a joining together or collection. A mitzvah is something that connects us to our history, Bible, God, people, and so forth. But what do we really mean when we talk about mitzvah as a connection?

The most recent edition of Science Illustrated (January/February 2013) had an article entitled “Twins of The Same Mind,” about Tatiana and Krista Hogan. These two Canadian girls, now six years of age, are conjoined at the head, sharing major parts of their brains. It is an extraordinary story. Only one in 2.5 million twins are conjoined in this manner, and of that tiny grouping, only one in four survives. Tatiana and Krista are actually a success story as they have not only survived, but seem to be developing normally, to the extent that is possible for twins so joined. Their connection is so real and so organic that when Tatiana looks at an image, it is registered mentally by Krista, even if Krista hasn’t looked at the image directly, and vice versa. What Tatiana sees, Krista immediately visualizes. We would not wish their anatomy on anyone, but the photo of the two of them standing together, holding hands and smiling, is deeply reassuring. And they share a cognitive intimacy that few of us have ever or will ever know.

All this has a bearing on referring to a mitzvah as a sacred connection. Imagine, if you will, a magic potion that would allow us to think like an Israelite about to cross the Red Sea, like an Israeli assigned to a military operation in Gaza, like a Polish Jew in the 1940s who has just been loaded onto a box car--or, incomprehensible as it may be, like God. There is no such magic potion, of course. But there are mitzvot, and the mitzvot are designed to connect us to our people, wherever they are, and whenever they have lived.

Wait, wait, you may be thinking. You know plenty of Jews, observant Jews, who fulfill mitzvot daily, regularly, religiously, and never have you heard them being connected in this manner. That may be true, and the explanation is twofold. First, do you know for sure that they are not so connected? Have they ever shared with you the experience of mitzvah and how a specific mitzvah impacts on their lives? That may be a discussion worth having. And secondly, let’s say that in ascertaining exactly what the experience of the mitzvah is for them, we find that it doesn’t really go much beyond the physical, mechanical act. In that case, I have a question of them: Have they really experienced the mitzvah? And if the answer is that many so-called observant Jews who fulfill mitzvot do so mechanically or thoughtlessly, is there a huge difference between them and those terrible Conservative Jews who don’t observe the mitzvah at all? Personal opinion: I think not.

The other day, I was speaking with a lovely young lady from the Former Soviet Union. She said that for her, Pesah is the most important Jewish holiday. She remembers her mother pulling her out of a Jewish Sunday school, out of fear of the reprisals that might come upon the family for subjecting their child to such foolishness. Every Pesah, she told me, her grandfather would stand in line outside the synagogue in the wee hours of morning, waiting for a special package, and then bring home a case of matzah. She would munch on that matzah and realize that to sacrifice freedom for a few creature comforts was no way for a human being to live. She’d rather align herself with a people that pursued freedom, even if she had to subsist on hard, thin, “taste-challenged” bread. When she ate that matzah, on Pesah, in the FSU, even though she had no knowledge of what blessing to recite, she definitely fulfilled the mitzvah. She was connected with her broader family, the Jewish people around the world, who dedicate their lives to freedom and truth.

One of the strengths of Conservative Jews is that, on balance, we question not tradition, but the meaning of tradition. We want to know why we ought to do mitzvah x, y, or z. We ought to take pride in that thirsting for a reason, for unless we know the point of a mitzvah, the way in which it will connect us sacredly, we cannot really fulfill it.

When we are able to engage in a mitzvah experience the way it was truly meant, a sudden thought will pop into mind—one that has been generated not by our mind, but by God’s. It is with God’s mind that we connect whenever we perform a mitzvah that is brimming with meaning. And that’s the way it was meant to be done.

Monday, January 14, 2013

THE POWER OF HURRICANES AND GOD

During the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, as I pondered a row of cars waiting for gas, stretching down many blocks of South Oyster Bay Road, while another 25 people holding gas containers waited in line at the station, I remember thinking—is this Long Island? It seemed too weird, too foreign. It would have been easier to think of it as a stage for the filming of a movie—one of those doomsday flicks. It just seemed like anywhere in this world, but Long Island.

But it was Long Island. Our home—Nassau County, Town of Oyster Bay. And during those days following Sandy’s destructive visit, life was a combination of normal and abnormal. We had access to food, though we could not necessarily cook it. We could sleep in our beds but not without a lot of blankets. We could surf the Internet but only if we could access Wi-Fi somewhere. Some of us experienced property damage—uprooted fences, downed trees, collapsed electrical wires and, of course, flooding. For us, nothing quite compares to the damage our neighbors experienced in Long Beach, Freeport, Oceanside, Breezy Point, or Staten Island. Their cars were totaled, their houses flooded, and in way too many cases, precious memories and important documents along with homes were burnt to the ground. We are all of us no more than one degree removed from someone who was so affected, which means that we are the lucky ones.

That was the mantra I heard over and over. Rabbi—we are very lucky, we are blessed, we have many reasons to thank God. And I must say that I was heartened by these expressions of gratitude. The day after the hurricane, Rabbi Hearshen and our good member Ari Yares suggested that we open the synagogue to the community, Midway having miraculously retained power (though having lost telephone and Internet) during and after the storm. It was brilliant and so right! We did our best to spread the word, and the word spread, and the people came—to warm up, recharge, watch a movie, schmooze, drink a hot cup of coffee, and just for the record ladies—to blow dry their hair. It was marvelous.

It was marvelous to ask the community for clothing and to be inundated with donations. Within one day of this desperate appeal from Rabbi Greenspan of Oceanside Jewish Center, the contributions were so great we had to put a halt to it. It reminds me of a verse in the Torah when those constructing the mishkan, the central structure of worship for the Israelites, tell Moses, “The people are bringing more than is needed for the tasks entailed in the work that the Lord has commanded to be done” (Exodus 36:5). Until Sandy, I had never actually witnessed communal generosity of that magnitude. Now we all have.

And for those who cynically observe that Sandy brought out the worst in people—the looters, the price gougers, and so forth—we can honestly counter that the goodness far exceeded the evil. Sandy’s power to destroy was great, but the power of God that worked through the hearts of all who opened their homes, opened their wallets, donated their time, was far greater. Sandy should not be referred to as an act of God—it was an act of amoral nature. The people who were so ready to help others, their collective efforts—that was an act of God! Long ago, Elijah discovered that God was not in the blustering wind or the quaking earth or the erupting fires, but God was elsewhere. In his case, God was apparent in a still, calm, and healing voice. In our case, we witnessed God in the healing generosity of New Yorkers. One couple anonymously gave me $3600 to distribute for hurricane relief efforts. I have—Barukh haShem, thank God—been able to distribute $4200 in aid.

Sandy is not over for us. We’re all going to be feeling the emotional impact of this storm for months to come. More critically, there are people whose homes have been so destroyed and whose lives have been so uprooted, that the drama and trauma of rebuilding will continue for months and possibly years. There are ways for us to continue to donate both money and time. For a list of such opportunities, just click here

On the Shabbat evening following Sandy, we recited a communal Birkat Hagomel, the Thanksgiving blessing, recited after emerging from an event of a harrowing nature unscathed or healed, or in the very least, alive. It seemed like the right blessing. In English it is:
We bless You God, for You guide us through this universe,
and You graciously bestow upon the unworthy so much goodness,
and whose goodness has now been bestowed upon me.

I love this blessing except for the “unworthy” reference. What’s that all about? I never understood it until I read the tale of John Bradford (1510-155), an English reformer who fell out of favor with the ruling powers of England and found himself haplessly imprisoned in the Tower of London, his ultimate fate yet to be determined. And as he sat in his cell, he watched a man escorted to the gallows at which time Bradford was purported to have said, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” And with that story, I finally understood Birkat Hagomel. Who are we to have been spared our cars, our homes, our lives? Are we so worthy? So many lost so much! Were they so unworthy?

There, but for the grace of God, have gone us. Thank You God for having blessed us so richly. We are the lucky ones.