THE GREATEST NO-HITTER OF ALL TIME--YOM KIPPUR SERMON, 5776 / 2015

 

                Shanah Tovah, everyone.  I want to wish you all a Tzom Kal, an easy fast, and G’mar Hatimah Tovah—we should all be inscribed and sealed for good into the Book of Life for this New Year, 5776.

 

                I don’t know if you ever heard of the story of Mr. Schwartz Lumber Jack Supreme who one day walks into the offices of the North Woods Lumber Company in Wisconsin and meets with the foreman as part of his interview to become a lumberjack.  The foreman looks at Mr. Schwartz and sees an elderly man, well into his eighties, a Yiddish newspaper stuck held in one armpit, a little ax flung over his other shoulder, who proceeds to apply for a position with the company.  The foreman tries to be sensitive to the elderly Mr. Schwartz and says to him, “You know, a lumberjack is a very strenuous job, are you sure you are up to the task?”  Mr. Schwartz says, “I’m up to the task.  I’ve been choppin’ avay all my life.”  The foreman is still skeptical so he asks, “Well, where have you worked in the past?”   Mr. Schwartz replies, “Vell, I vas choppin away in the Sahara Forest.”  The foreman replies, “Mr. Schwartz, you mean the Sahara Desert.”  And Mr. Schwartz replied, “Vell now they call it a desert!”

 

                What does it take to do something extraordinary in life, something for which you will alwys be remembered? 

 

                This Yom Kippur is an anniversary of something extraordinary that happened which has had a lasting impact on the Jewish community.  Let me remind you about what happened 50 years ago on this day.  Yom Kippur fell on October 6 which just happened to be the first day of the World Series.  That year, Yom Kippur came late.  The teams in the series were the National League’s Los Angeles Dodgers versus the American League’s Minnesota Twins and the big question was would the Dodgers’ star pitcher, the Jewish Sandy Koufax, pitch in that game.  Big decision—the Word Series is the Yom Kippur of baseball and Yom Kippur is the World Series of Judaism.  In the end, Koufax did not pitch that game and it was a proud moment for Jews around the country.

 

                I was ten years old at that time and I remember the discussions surrounding Sandy’s decision.  If he sat out the game, not only would we be qvelling with pride as Jews, but as Minnesotans, we might even have a shot at winning that game.  For Minnesota Jewry there was downside to Koufax sitting out the game.  And in fact, Minnesota did win that first game but the Dodgers went on to win the series.

 

                I have to thank Brad Kolodny for reminding me about this anniversary and directing me to an article just written about it by Rabbi Jeremy Fine, the assistant rabbi at Temple Aaron in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Rabbi Fine’s question was if Sandy wasn’t at the game on Yom Kippur—where was he?  And is it true, as Minnesota Jewish lore would have it, that Sandy actually went to services at Temple Aaron.  As one might expect, there are several versions to this story.  First version—he was not at services.  Second version—he was at services.  Third version—he was at services in the morning.  Fourth version—he was at services in the afternoon.  Fifth version, he was at services and Rabbi Raskas, alav hashalom—may he rest in peace—the senior rabbi of Temple Aaron at the time, made eye contact with him but called no attention to him wishing to protect his privacy.  Sixth version, he was at services but Rabbi Raskas nev e saw him, and we can’t find anyone who did. 

 

                The Koufax story, 50 years later, is still a great story and for the Jewish community.  But why?  Was it foolish for Koufax to sit out that game?  It was, after all, no ordinary game.  This was the World Series!  Setting one Yom Kippur aside for the World Series would be understandable—wouldn’t it?  Did he really have to be so righteous?

 

                Lawrence Kohlberg is a man with whom we should all be familiar.  He was a major American psychologist whose life work was devoted to the study of moral development in people.  Like Jean Piaget who studied cognitive development in children as well as their moral development, Kohlberg saw people as progressing through several stages of ethical awareness before reaching what he had determined would be the height of moral sensitivity and practice.  You would think that a guy like this would be fairly resolved to following the law, but actually, before his matriculation at the University of Chicago, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in one year, he worked for the Haganah, the precursor to the Israeli army, smuggling Jewish refugees from Romania through the British blockade and into then Palestine.  He was captured by the British and imprisoned on Cyprus, where he and fellow inmates broke out and returned to the United States.  Now, you see, that’s a story that would make for an interesting essay on your college application forms.  So how does a man like this, willing to ignore social norms and laws, end up studying moral development?  In part, it has to do with the idea that in his scheme of moral development, the sixth or highest stage of moral evolution has to do with the ability to see above the social conventions that we grow up with and are acclimated to.  We hope that what is most familiar to us as good citizens is good and moral, we hope that the laws that regulate our lives are just and fair, but as we all know, a law is a law not necessarily because it is just or good, but because someone or a society has deemed it so, and that law or convention may be completely immoral or unethical.  Think of the years that children could be legally employed as cheap labor, or women denied the right to vote, or African-Americans segregated from the rest of the world in spite of slavery having been abolished.  It’s not the person who goes with the flow who is necessarily the good person, but the person who has the insight to look over the flow and sense that the direction is either salutary or detrimental to society.  There exists something greater than the law of the land.  Call it the law of God if you will, or if that makes you uncomfortable, call it the universal law to which all people ought to be subject.  Kohlblerg would probably tell us that his work with the Haganah was designed to circumvent the law of humanity in deference to a higher law, and in such a case, disobedience was an act of moral courage.

 

                I think Kohblerg is totally correct.  But I realize that there is a flaw in the argument in as much as there will always be disagreement over what constitutes a higher law.  As for example when Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses due to her opposition to gay marriage, did so on the basis of following a higher law, namely God’s law.  But here, too, Kohlberg might argue that the shortcoming in Davis’ argument would be her insistence that she knows exactly what God’s law is based on a book.  A higher moral awareness is not necessarily derived from the pages of a single book, even the Bible.   The challenge here is to determine the guiding principles in our lives.  Are we content to do what is merely expected of us, or are we bold enough to do what is right whatever the circumstances?  In Psalm 15 we read:

 

Abide by an oath even if it does us harm (Psalm 15:4)

 

Well, if I make a promise and as it turns out, I may come out on the short end, shouldn’t I try to circumvent that promise?  Generally speaking, the answer is no, because generally speaking your word is far more precious than any material losses you will incur.

 

                In January of 1982, Air Florida Flight 90, taking off from Washington National Airport for a flight to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, failed to gain altitude and crashed into the 14^th Street Bridge over the Potomac River, just two miles from the White House.  The air craft continued over the bridge, crushing several occupied cars and before sinking into an icy Potomac River.  The aircraft was carrying 74 passengers and 5 crew members and everyone was killed with the exception of six people.  About 20 minutes after the crash, a helicopter arrived on the scene dropping a life line to airlift or drag the survivors away from the crash site.  One passenger, Arland Dean Williams Jr., 46 years of age, handed the life line twice to other passengers rather than use it himself.  He was the last of the six to be recused and by the time for his own turn, the tail of the aircraft shifted and must have dragged him down into the icy waters.  The 14^th Street Bridge is today the Arland Dean Williams Jr. Memorial Bridge in memory of his heroism.  Many other honors have been conferred upon him posthumously. 

 

                How does a person like that do something so extraordinary?  How does one become so self-sacrificing—literally!  Is it nature?  Is it nurture?  Is it both? 

 

One of the great piyutim, religious poems that we recite on Yom Kippur is Ki hinei kahomer—We are like clay in the hands of the potter, or otherwise known by its refrain, labrit habet—Look to the covenant.  You are all very familiar with it.  Its first stanza reads:  “As clay in the hand of the potter, who thickens or thins it at will, so are we in Your hand, Guardian of love; Recall Your covenant; do not heed the Accuser.”  I love this poem—don’t you?  And then each stanza focuses on whom to liken Israel to given various professions—we are as stone in the hand of the mason, iron in the hand of blacksmith, the helm in the hand of the sailor, glass in the hand of the glazier, cloth in the hand of the draper, or silver in the hand of the smelter.  But what does this sacred poem ultimately mean? 

 

                I find a commentary on this piyyut by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, very compelling.  Rabbi Sacks explains as follows.  There’s a play on words in this piyyut that we have to be sensitive to and it occurs in the very first stanza where the play is on the two Hebrew words meaning potter and accuser.  The potter is Yotzer and the accuser is Yetzer.  You can hear the play very clearly even if you don’t know Hebrew—Yotzer/Yetzer, Yotzer/Yetzer.  Now even though yetzer can be translated as the accuser,  and our Mahzor does translate it as s uch, the accuser begin that no goodnick of an angel in the heavens above revealing the darkest aspects of our lives, it is more easily translated as inclination.  And you know that translation whenever we talk about the Yetzer hatov, the Good Inclination or the Yetzer HaRa, the evil inclination.  And if we translate Yetzer as inclination, then the repeating refrain of each stanza would be, God—pay no attention to our wayward inclination.  And all of this is tied up with the story of Noah and the Flood, if you can believe it.  True.  Here’s the scenario:

 

                It’s been over a year since Noah and his menagerie have been cooped up on this ark and finally, God tells them that the earth is dry and everyone is free to go as he or she pleases.  So Noah releases the family, the animals, and so forth, and as a dutifully grateful man, he builds an altar and makes offerings to God.  God, in turn, is pictured as breathing deeply these wonderful aromas of the offerings and then the Torah gives us an insight into God’s thinking:

 

Never again will I doom the earth because of man,

since his yetzer, his inclination, is evil from his youth…  (Genesis 8:21)

 

You know what God is doing in this very personal thought that is revealed to us in the Torah?  God is confessing.  God is doing Teshuvah.  Man’s yetzer, man’s nature is evil from his earliest day.  But if the problem is man’s yetzer, whom is to blame for that but the Yotzer, the Creator?  The paytan, the author of this moving piyyut is challenging God.  God you gave us this Yetzer, you gave us free will, you gave us a desire to act rebelliously, don’t go punishing us for the flaws You are responsible for!   And you know what—God buys it. It makes sense.  Who is to blame for the Yezer, the inclination to do evil but the Yotzer, the One who created us to begin with.

 

                At one and the same time, this beautiful piyyut reminds us that we are flawed—which out to induce a little bit of humility in us all, but that we are also the creation of the greatest potter, mason, blacksmith, sailor, glazier, draper, smelter of all—God.  Because we are flawed, we are not so great.  Because we are created by God, there is always some One greater than us in the world.

 

                It’s of great interest to me that as Jews, traditional Jewish law requires so little of us.  One might even say that it requires nothing of us.  To be a Jew, according to halakhah, you have to have a Jewish mother which makes all of us Jews by accident.  If our mothers were Jewish then so are we.  But then a second question should gnaw at our beings having determined our legitimacy as Jews—so what?  So what if our mothers were Jewish?  If Jewishness is a status devoid of values or practices or rituals, if it all boils down to an accident of birth, then exactly what pride should we have in our birth?  Frankly, I have no idea, which is the reason why for me the big ideas in Jewish tradition almost always point to the sense that we may live to make a living, but whether we are truly alive or merely exist depends on whether we truly live with the idea that there is something far greater than ourselves in his world and are willing to act on it.

 

                Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook.  In 2012, Time Magazine included her as one of the 10 most influential women in the world.  Due to her holdings in Facebook, her net worth is over one billion dollars.  Her husband, Dave Goldberg, was the CEO of Survey Monkey and he died suddenly in May of this year while on vacation in Mexico.  At the end of Sheloshim, the 30^th day of mourning, which for a spouse would be the end of the official period of mourning, Sheryl posted a rather long and personal essay about her experience of death and mourning, and one of the things that leapt out of the essay, at least for me, was her trip to the hospital in the ambulance with her husband.  At some later point, she would be told the truth, that her husband had died before he ever got into the ambulance, but she didn’t know it at the time.  She wrote that the ride to the hospital was unbearably slow.  And “I still hate every car that did not move to the side, every person who cared more about arriving at their destination a few minutes earlier than making room for us to pass.  I have noticed this in many countries and cities.  Let’s all move out of the way.  Someone’s parent or partner or child might depend on it.”  What Sheryl is pointing to is the fact that we live in a world where people have forgotten how to stop.  We all must continue to do what we are doing because apparently what we are doing is so important, and since no one else can probably do what we are doing as well as we are doing it, we cannot stop and that’s true even if an ambulance is on our bumper, desperately trying to get to a hospital, at least according to Sheryl Sandberg’s experience in an ambulance ride that is now seared into her memory forever.

                The idea here is that in so many different cases, where our religious ideals ought to be trumping everything else, we often allow “the-everything-else” to trump the religious ideal.  And the social pressures are on us at all times to make those religious ideals secondary, or tertiary or whatever comes after tertiary (I looked it up, but no one ever uses those words).  The practice of our religious principles way too often fall victim to other principles that are unworthy of our esteem—convenience, economics, self-interest, personal ego.  Kent M. Keith, a Harvard law graduate, EdD, and writer, wrote a piece that has become known as “The Paradoxical Commandments.”  He wrote:

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

 

                I don’t know if Mr. Keith was thinking religiously when he wrote these paradoxical commandments, but he might as well have included a few more:

If you go to morning minyan to say kaddish on a yahrzeit, you may be late for work.

Make the minyan anyway.

 

If you devote a few hours a week to reading a Jewish book or exploring a Jewish website, you might lose some television time or playing mindless games on your smart phone.

Read a Jewish book and grow intellectually anyway.

 

If you buy a bottle of wine and a couple of hallot for Friday night, you’ll be out $15.

Buy the wine and hallah anyway.

 

If you steer business activities and meetings away from Shabbat, you will annoy clients and associates.

Steer business activities and meetings away from Shabbat anyway.

 

                You may have read some works by Dr. Oliver Sacks, the noted British neurologist and author who attained fame through his narrative expositions of his patients.  He wrote “The Man Who Mistoook His Wife for a Hat.”  The movie Awakenings starring Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro is based on a memoir he wrote on his success with treating catatonic patients with the drug L-Dopa.  He comes from a rather illustrious family.  The Israeli diplomat Abba Eban was a cousin.  Sacks grew up in a very religious family where the observance of Shabbat was a regular routine.  His last essay in the New York Times recalled the kind of Sabbath environment in which he was raised, how his mother dropped all other duties to prepare gefilte fish for Shabbat, how his father would make Kiddush on Friday evenings, how on a Shabbat afternoon they would go to an aunt’s home for Kiddush, and so forth.  He drifted from Sabbath observance with age and his disenfranchisement with religion was solidified when his mother exploded at him for expressing homosexual feelings.  The 100^th birthday of a cousin brought him to Israel, back to relatives he had not seen in years, and back to the shalom of Shabbat that he had not observed in years.  Another of his famous cousins, the Israeli Robert Aumann, the Nobel Laureate in Economics (who by the way also has a teaching position at Stony Brook), told him that had Stockholm pressed him on the issue of traveling on Shabbat to be awarded the Nobel prize, he would have refused to accept it.   The way Aumann put it, observing Shabbat was not about improving society, but rather about improving the quality of one’s life.  It was not long after, that Sacks was diagnosed with metastatic cancer.  The last paragraph in his essay was this:

And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.  (The New York Times, Sunday Review, August 14, 2015)

There was a not so subtle undertone of wistfulness, of longing for what might have been a very different life had he observed Shabbat, but now he had only to remember what Sabbath was like, as he faced the final hours of his own life.  He died just a couple weeks ago on August 30.

 

                Over the centuries, Jewishness has been most closely identified as the tradition of Kashrut and Shabbat.  It’s the tradition that said we don’t have to avail ourselves of every food and we don’t have to work every waking hour.  And in spite of those restrictions, no one will ever starve and no one will ever grow poor.  To the contrary, one’s life may be enriched in ways no metric can ever measure precisely because we connect our lives with principles of enduring and eternal worth:  we are guests in God’s world, spirits in matter, forces of kindness, beings of self-reflection and mindfulness.  We’re pretty good at doing this a few days a year, but our lives and our families would be far better off if we practiced those principles with greater regularity, let’s say, once every seven days.  Like any master will tell you, the perfection is in the practice.  No one has to become a Hasid to do Shabbat.  You just have to choose something: Kiddush, hallah, Torah study, attending a service, refraining from business, and if 25 hours of a business-free period is too much then do twelve or six or three hours.  But do something not because you’re so religious but because Shabbat is what Jews do.  And make it fun because if it isn’t fun, you’re doing it wrong.

 

                According to a few baseball statistics I checked, Sandy Koufax pitched four no-hitters in his career and one perfect game.  But the no-hitter that the Jewish community and perhaps the rest of baseball fans will always remember him for is the no-hitter in the first game of the 1965 World Series, a no-hitter because he refused to pitch.  For Sandy, baseball was big but there was something bigger. And whatever it is in our lives that’s big, there’s something bigger.  And it shouldn’t take a Yom Kippur to remind us of that big idea.  So here is the challenge.  What is your no-hitter?  What will you do or what will you refuse to do because as a Jew, you are a promoter of that big idea? 

 

Shanah Tovah…

GETTING THE MESSAGE STRAIGHT--ROSH HASHANAH SERMON, 5776 / 2015

Shanah Tovah—A Good New Year, everyone.  So good to see you all in a new space for a new year.  The holidays should not only be a time for accepting apology and granting forgiveness, but also for expressions of appreciation and gratitude for what we have been given during the year.   And I want to begin with a thank you to you all.  I want to thank you for teaching me so much and sharing your wisdom with me.  When I listen to you, your challenges and frustrations, the lessons you have gained through professional and personal experience, I gain a great deal—with almost every interaction I have with you.  And the insights you give me, the perspectives you grant to me are greatly appreciated.  That kind of knowledge cannot necessarily be found in books—secular or sacred—which make those lessons all the more special.

Imparting the right lesson is not always easy and even professional teachers run the risk of inadvertently communicating the wrong lesson. There was the crisis of the grammar school teacher who wanted to convey to her young charges the evils of liquor so she secured two very large glass jars, one filled with pure spring water and one filled with good ole’ Kentucky Bourbon.  She had her fifth graders gather around the exhibit and then took a worm and dropped it ever so delicately into the jar full of spring water and there the worm swam about in carefree delight to the amusement of all the children in the class.  The teacher then took another worm and dropped it ever so delicately into the jar of Kentucky Bourbon and within ten seconds the worm grew listless and, to the horror of the children in the class, sunk dead to the bottom of the jar.  The teacher then looked at her stunned class and asked, “Children, what do we learn from this little experiment?”  And one kid in the back shouted, “Drink Bourbon and you’ll never get worms.” 

So that clearly was not the moral of the story, at least as the teacher hoped it would be conveyed, but there you have it—we don’t always learn what we are supposed to learn and when our learning seems off, when the message doesn’t seem right, it’s important to stop and seriously question whether we got the message right, if the message was in some way garbled, or flawed in its transmission, or if we simply misunderstood it in some way. 

The fact is that we live in an ocean of messages.  The music we listen to, the ads we read, the television shows we watch, etc. all are designed to convey something to us.  And one of the great message delivery systems that surround us on a daily basis is architecture and design.  The way we arrange the space in which we live is a message about what is important to us or what values we aspire to.  If you look at your living room or den, the place where you spend the most time, perhaps it is the kitchen, those spaces and how you have arranged those spaces tell a story about who you are.  Maybe it’s a story about elegance, or hobby collections, or revolt against authority; or maybe a message about safety, or living life in a fun way.  When I see a mezuzah on the front door, or if I don’t see one, it tells me something about the people inside.  It may be the wrong message or the right message.  The mezuzah on that front door conveys some message.  But ask yourself, and ask your family, what your home design reveals about what is important to you and above all, if the message that is being conveyed is the message you want conveyed.  What might you do to tweak the design in order to tighten the message?  It’s an interesting question and I’m sure there are several interior designers in the congregation today who would start passing around their business cards were it not for it being Yom Tov, a sacred day when we don’t do business. 

We just finished a major renovation of our synagogue and sanctuary.  We’ve pulled out the building a bit, installed an elevator, made the building handicap-accessible, redesigned the Ark, installed new lights, tore up the carpeting and laid new carpeting, and replaced individual seats with bench pews.  The new design says something about us as a Jewish community.  It says a lot of things about us, including the desire to feel uplifted, and necessarily by the springs in the seats we sit on.  There is something else that our new sacred space says about us louder than anything else and I think it would be a shame to leave its identification only to our imaginations.  So I’m going to spell it out for you. 

But before I spell it out for you, I want to talk to you about an issue that has been particularly troublesome to me and to the Jewish community in general.  It has been this controversy in the community about our government’s leading role in creating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, more popularly known as the Iran deal.  Senator Schumer and Congressman Israel have both come out in opposition to the deal, but Congressman Jerry Nadler didn’t.  And Congressman Nadler represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan—a pretty liberal concentration of people—but also some very Conservative areas of Brooklyn—Midwood and Borough Park.  Anyway, after a truly consistent record of supporting Israel throughout his lifetime, Nadler was condemned as anti-Israel and New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind parked a double decker bus in front of the Congressman’s Manhattan office with a banner of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei smiling and thanking America.  And then, what happens, is the New York Times and the Jewish Week print articles about how the Iran deal is tearing the Jewish community apart.  The New York Times, August 28, 2015, headline:  “Iran Deal Opens a Vitriolic Divide Among American Jews.” 

Now I have to tell you, I am really opposed to this deal.  In fact, I am scheduled to speak at a rally in New York City, just outside the United States Mission to the United Nations, East 45^th Street between First and Second Avenues this coming Sunday, September 20, at Noon.  That’s how opposed I am to this deal.  I don’t like this deal at all.  I don’t believe that this is the only way to respond to a belligerent nation like Iran; given all we know about the historically lethal mixture of religion and politics, I don’t think nuclear power and a theocracy is a combination that in any way serves American interests; I especially distrust that combination when such a country refers to us as the Great Satan; and although I don’t trust Iran to abide by whatever protocols have been set, I really don’t trust the inspectors to reign in Iran when Iran will, as even the deal’s supporters admit, violate the agreement.  But I say all this with the following caveat:  I may be totally wrong.  I am, as someone once said, really bad at predictions, especially about the future.  And that’s why Jerry Nadler deserves better, especially from the Jewish community, because he’s doing what I’m doing—really what we are all trying to do—each from our own peculiar perspectives:  Do what is right for the free world.  He may be right or he may be wrong.  I may be right or I may be wrong.  One thing for sure: Neither he nor I, nor anyone in this room, can predict the future and that ought to dampen some of the passions that have erupted in the Jewish community.  We all ought to state our positions with a little more humility. 

Several months ago, Newsday asked me to write a piece for their weekly Ask the Clergy section, and the question was whether we should take the Bible literally.  This is the kind of question I love and so I consented to write a piece, which they edited—I would say conservatively—and even the photo they printed of me was a faithful rendering of exactly what I looked like 17 years ago.  But aside from that, in that piece, I quoted Abraham Joshua Heschel, the great theologian and poet of the 20^th century who wrote: “The surest way of misunderstanding revelation is to take it literally…”  He is basically saying—Don’t be a fundamentalist.  Don’t read the Torah literally.  Don’t be so sure that reading the words themselves gives you a full appreciation of what the Torah is trying to say.  And though that may sound radical or even heretical, it is pure rabbinic Judaism—whether one is Conservative, Orthodox or Reform, none of us reads the Torah literally because we have always read the Torah, these Five Books of Moses, through the lense of another Torah, namely the Oral Torah or the Talmud.

The Talmud has a curious way of presenting arguments to us and it’s a bit frustrating but it’s the Talmudic style.  It begins with an old rabbinic teaching called a Mishnah, and then later rabbis give us some interpretations of that Mishnah.  Maybe it’s a Mishnah about when Rosh Hashanah begins, or what constitutes a kosher sukkah, or whether to believe witnesses when they bear testimony.  Once the Mishnah is stated, rabbis who live at a much later time give us their interpretations of what the Mishnah really means, and guess what, the Talmud often rejects the rabbis’ interpretations as illogical or irrational.  You may ask, well if that rabbi’s argument was irrational or illogical, why did it find its way into the Talmud?  Great question.  And the answer, I believe, is that the rabbis weren’t put out by illogical or irrational answers.  They were delighted that anyone would take the time to argue a point of Torah.  The Talmud is what we would refer to as a sefer kadosh, a holy book, and its holiness comes not from is dogmatic prescriptions but in its respect and admiration for all those who would busy themselves with words of Torah, who would struggle with those words, play with those words, debate those words.  They saw a certain sanctity in the conversation and in the dialogue.  In fact, on those occasions when the Talmud will actually cite the law, it will give us the opinion of the hakhamim, the Sages, which one generally can assume to be the Law, but then it also might include words to the effect of Rabi Me’ir Amar—But Rabbi Mei’r says something else.  In other words, the Talmud gives us the minority opinion.  But why should we care about the minority opinion?  It’s not the law.  We shouldn’t follow it.  It’s only one guy’s opinion—but the Talmud sees that solitary opinion as critical.  There is a respect shown to the minority by citing the opinion.  My friends—this is Judaism at its best.  This is a Judaism that creates a safe space for people to speak honestly, openly, and respectfully.  And even though it could very well be that one positon is correct and the other is not, both positions are accorded a certain degree of legitimacy.

So what do we make of the so-called vitriol of debate within Jewish circles?  Well, it isn’t the kind of Judaism that the rabbis ever envisioned.

When I came out with my article against the deal, it generated several letters from people who took issue with my reasoning.  And that’s fine.  That’s what healthy debate is all about.  Am I angry with them?  No.  Are they haters of Israel?  Not the people I corresponded with.  They made some excellent points.  They haven’t convinced me, and I don’t think I convinced them, but that’s okay.  We can disagree with each other and still remain one people.  And by the way, whenever the media reports that the Jewish community is divided on some issue, that’s not news.  The Jewish community has been divided for about 3500 years.  But is our primary message a message about division?  Not at all.  The message is this:

All of Israel are friends 

It’s a phrase lifted directly out of a prayer we recite prior to Rosh Hodesh, each new month.  And it’s not a joke.  It’s serious, but clearly there are people who got the message wrong.  If the Jewish community, a community that has been divided for 3500 years and a community that has stuck together for 3500 years cannot model how a loving community disagrees, humanity is lost.  None of us knows the ultimate truth.

                Beware the people who know the truth.  They are dangerous.  In August of this year, Jerusalem was the scene of a Gay Pride Parade.  An ultra-Orthodox Jew, recently released from jail having served a ten year term for attempted murder and aggravated assault, went on a stabbing rampage in the parade, wounding several people and ultimately murdering a 16 year old marcher by the name of Shira Banki.  When a crime of this nature is committed, and committed by an ultra-Orthodox Jew, it embitters us toward religion, and observance, and Orthodoxy, and even God.  People were deeply upset as well they should be.  And even if you may not have heard of this horror, the crime sent a shock wave throughout Israel.  Shira’s name headlined every newspaper in Israel.  But there is a Conservative / Masorti rabbi in Jerusalem, Yosef Kleiner is his name, who wrote something rather remarkable.  He wrote that after all was said and done, he was very proud of what happened.  What happened?   What happened was almost every arm of the Jewish world expressed outrage at what this haredi man had done.  It was clear to one and all, from the Prime Minister of Israel to the mayor of Jerusalem, that his actions did not represent Torah, did not represent Orthodoxy, did not represent the will of God, and was nothing less than a total hillul hashem, a violation of God’s name.  The perpetrator of this crime might sport a beard, wear a black hat, white shirt, black pants, tzitzit flying at his side and the message of his dress says something, but one thing it doesn’t reveal is the spiritual state of his heart or soul.   Just because you dress for piety doesn’t make you pious.  This man was so sure of his Torah, so sure of his position that he granted himself the authority to kill.  But I can tell you right now that anyone who operates with that kind of certainty in their life knows nothing about God and what they think they know about God is probably wrong.

                Shalom Bayit—Peace within the home, is a very important Jewish value.  For there to be peace within our community, our synagogue, our homes, we have to think differently about how we listen to each other and how we speak to each other.  A few years ago, Dianne Schilling wrote an on-line article for Forbes on “Ten Steps toward Effective Listening.”  You can look it up on-line if you like but I want to underscore just a few of her ten points:  She wrote that in order for listening to be effective, you have to 1) Keep an open mind; 2) Don’t interrupt and don’t impose your “solutions;” 3) Try to feel what the speaker is feeling; and finally 4) Pay attention to what isn’t said—to the non-verbal cues.  I find her advice very wise.  In order to listen to the other person, you have to really keep quiet and engage that person face to face and listen to the words, the feelings and the emotions.  It doesn’t matter if we are talking with our boss, our employees, our spouse or our children.  In order to listen you have to be quiet and attentive. 

When it comes to speaking, you need to ask yourself only three questions before you open your mouth.  The three questions are:  1) Is it true?  Thinking something is true, doesn’t make it true.  Hearing that something is true, doesn’t make it true.  Reading something on the Internet almost invariably means it’s false.   I like to say that everything on the Internet is false until proven true.  Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but really, if you are going to say it, it better be true and that means doing a lot of research before saying anything.  2)  Is it kind?  Words can be terribly damaging.  If you need to say something, you ought to be able to say it in a kind way, without wounding, without sarcasm, without resentment or anger.  I know that’s difficult, but maybe it’s better to not say anything rather than say something in the wrong way or at the wrong time.  And finally 3) Is it necessary?  What you are about to say, do you really have to say it?  What would happen if you didn’t say it?  Sometimes the better part of diplomacy is not what is said, but what is not said.  There is sometimes great wisdom in writing long letters, printing them out, and then ripping them up or deleting them before you hit the Send button.

                I used to think that our greatest failing as human beings was our love of material goods.  This sacrifice of the spiritual in favor of the material—the pursuit of luxury or money—that was our greatest failing.  But I think differently now.  Today I believe that our greatest failing as human beings is our love of the petty resentments and hatreds that we either nurture or collect year after year after year.  This inability to forgive others and to dwell on the injustices that have hurt us.  The inclination to judge others as if we ourselves were the bearers of ultimate truth.    There is something in human nature that loves that sort of negative energy.  And the thing is this.  You can collect money your whole life and actually create the potential for doing something good with it.  But if you collect resentments and nurture your anger year after year, and indulge your will to judge others, no good, no good at all, will ever come of that.  

                The renovation.  I want its message to be clear.  I want the Torah to be read in the middle of the sanctuary, and so that is where the bimah now is.  The Torah has to always be central to our lives.  Those laws that question our instincts and reign in our more unseemly inclinations—that needs to be in the center.   There can be no partition between the bimah and you and there isn’t, because the Torah has to touch our lives and we have got to respond to Torah. 

The word has got to be very close to you

Close enough that you can hear it, understand it, respond to it,

In your mouth

So you can repeat it, question it, argue it, love it,

And in your heart so that eventually you can do it   (Deuteronomy 30:14) 

Or perhaps not do it, but you’ll never know what to do, unless you come to struggle with the words of Torah that lead us down a certain road.  And what road is that?

Its road is the road of pleasantness

And all its paths are paths of peace  (Etz haim hi…)

Shalom Bayit—Peace within our home, our community, our synagogue, our world.  This is a great Jewish value.  Let’s pledge to listen more intently.  Let’s pledge to speak more carefully.  Let’s cleanse ourselves of the petty hatreds and resentments that undercut the positive energy that flows through us from God.  Let’s make Torah central to our lives.  This is the year of renovation.  The sanctuary speaks a certain message.  Now is the time to integrate that architectural message into ourselves and by so doing, renovate our very selves.

Shanah Tovah, everyone.

THE IRANIAN DEAL AND THE SUNSET OF AMERICAN RESOLVE

It is not possible for people of faith to remain silent politically, and yet remain religious, spiritual or godly.  The kind of religiosity that builds a concrete wall between church and state, or synagogue and state as the case may be, is the kind of religiosity that is blind to injustice and divorced from ethics.  That’s not religiosity as any of us would define it.  And so there comes a time when we must comment on a political development because to not do so would be an act of spiritual and moral negligence.  And it is in that spirit that I share a few of my own thoughts on the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” more commonly known as the proposed P5+1 deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran, or just the Iran Deal, that has largely been brokered by the United States.

We can all appreciated the advent of diplomacy over war.  It is better to talk than destroy.  And in this case, talking or diplomacy has achieved some advantages for the Mideast.  It has succeeded in moving the leading State Sponsor of Terrorism, Iran, to commit to a reduction of its uranium supply to no more than half of what it would take to make a bomb; to dismantle 2/3 of its 2,700 uranium-enriching centrifuges from Fordow and to stop refining there; and to agree to permanent, international monitoring of its atomic energy industry by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).  In exchange, the economic sanctions that have been imposed upon Iran would be lifted as soon as 2016, as well as certain military sanctions that would follow later.  That’s the deal. In spite of its advantages, I don’t like it.  Let me tell you why.

I don’t want to give any nation that is a non-nuclear power and views America as the enemy, permission to go nuclear even under a controlled environment.  When the mullahs of Iran refer to America as the Great Satan, I get the sense that they are not using the term metaphorically.  The cultural system that we promote, that has evolved in a milieu of civil liberties and freedom, is one that espouses equality for women, legitimates homosexual unions, separates religion from political rule, and embraces ethnic and religious diversity as an enriching phenomenon in life. These are cultural norms that even some Americans have difficulty with, let alone the fundamentalist and medieval clerics of Iran’s religious and political leadership.  It is not difficult to understand why they think of us as satanic.  The former American embassy in Tehran, the place where American diplomats and employees were held hostage for 444 days, is now known as the Museum of Spies.  Its walls are plastered with graffiti and a depiction of Lady Liberty shows her to be a skeleton, Death personified, her torch a machine gun.  We are Satan, and we are not little.  We are the Great Satan.  So, no, that’s the kind of country whose nuclear program I would not want to contain; I would rather terminate it, for good. 

Had the P5 + 1 agree to lift sanctions in exchange for a non-nuclear Iran, then even with Iran’s bad boy behavior in the neighborhood, the deal would be justified.  But the deal does not address Iran’s appetite for supporting terrorism—Hamas in Gaza, Hizballah in Lebanon, the insurgency in Yemen, or Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime, a regime that has now retained power at the expense of 220,000 dead by United Nations estimates.  Rather than punishing Iran for bankrolling terrorism, the Iran deal rewards an insidious power that is looking for greater power, not less.

The reward itself would come in the form of dollars.  Once sanctions are lifted, Iran could have access to $100 billion dollars.  In truth, I have read or heard this estimated figure to be as high as $150 billion, and as low as $50 billion dollars.  Let’s go with the low estimate.  $50 billion is greater than the state budget of Virginia.  Why would anyone want a terrorist state to receive that kind of money?  Why would we open access to that magnitude of revenue when even under our “tough” sanctions, Iran still had money to spare for supporting their nefarious deeds throughout the Mideast?  It makes no sense.  This is a time to choke their revenue pipeline, not open it.

Of course, the counter argument is that the world cannot impose sanctions on Iran forever.  India and China have much of Iran’s money in frozen bank accounts and will not hold it indefinitely.  And that is a sad fact.  Sadder still is the idea that American interests have fallen victim to a global community that no longer sees us as Leaders of the Free World, but just another nation that can’t act decisively unless there is a committee of nations in agreement.  Who actually is the leader of the Free World?  Does that leader exist?  The principal broker of this deal, the United States, has negotiated from a position of weakness, and Iran knows it.

What has become of this great nation?  Where is the conviction of our principles?  The deal includes provisions for the United State cooperating with Iran on projects of common economic and technological interests.  This is not the vision of America we were raised on.  America does not cooperate with the enemy, especially when allies like Israel or Saudi Arabia openly question the wisdom of the deal.  People who don’t know their enemies are in trouble; but the people who don’t know their friends are in deeper trouble.  And the same is true of nations.

The Congress must approve this deal, we are told, because without the deal, Iran will be in the fast lane to securing a bomb.  CNN on July 24, 2015, quotes the Secretary of State, John Kerry, as follows:  “This is not a question of what happens in 15 years or 20 years… This is a question of what happens now, tomorrow, if we don't accept this deal. Because Iran will go right back to its enrichment."  Mr, Kerry’s summation reads like an international extortion scheme.  We must approve a deal that leaves Iran with limited nuclear capabilities and billions of dollars in revenue or else it will build a bomb.  That’s an extortion scheme—and one, oddly enough, initiated by the victim, the western world. 

When has satisfying the demands of a thug ever ended well? 

It seems to me that threats of an existential nature—we will build a bomb or else!—should not be honored.  The deal positions Iran to capitalize off its extortion ploy.  Please don’t feed the beasts—it makes them grow stronger. 

Iran’s history of consistently violating United Nations resolutions is well-documented.  There is every reason to believe that this deal will be violated as well.  In fact, commentators do not speak of “if” Iran will violate the agreement but “when” Iran will violate the agreement.  Perhaps these violations will be only minor, and only here and there, but here and there over ten or fifteen years evolves into “all over the place,” and the deal does not specify any consequences for multiple, minor infractions.  That’s not a minor, but a major omission in a deal of this nature.

But there is no other alternative, Mr. Kerry claims.  Actually there is.  It’s just not a very popular one.  It’s called bombing Iran conventionally before a conflict escalates into—God forbid!—a nuclear clash.  It is clear that Iran has used its anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric to galvanize the Islamic masses within its own nation and beyond, positioning itself to achieve regional hegemony.  And sad to say—their hateful rhetoric works.  So if the rhetoric works, chances are the regime will not abandon the tactic. It therefore makes no sense to let them build their nuclear capabilities under some sort of supervision while they continue to nurture their hatred of all things western (read:  Israel and the United States). 

In response to the bombing option, Mr. Kerry says that you cannot bomb away the knowledge of how to build the bomb, and Iran already has that knowledge.  True, but the argument is spurious.  Obviously, you cannot bomb away knowledge, but bombs are meant to destroy the infrastructure that goes into making weaponry.  That’s what you destroy.  It’s an inelegant message, but it’s a very powerful message—we won’t stand for state-sponsored terrorism, for international thuggery.  If we truly believe in ourselves, in our principles, in what we stand for, then we shouldn’t stand for a country that represents the very opposite of those ideals, particularly one that repeatedly threatens war.

This is a watershed moment in the history of American diplomacy and one in which we dare not remain silent or complacent.  This deal changes a dynamic between a 21^st century world and another still mired in the medieval period.  Time may be universal but humanity does not evolve uniformly, not when one world is applauding homosexuality and the other stoning women to death for infidelity. 

What a shame it is for a little country like Israel to have to chastise a great country like America for its myopia and recklessness.  America should be older and wiser.  We should be more confident and stronger.  Instead, we’ve come up with a deal that is a testimony to America’s weakness, lack of resolve, and waning influence within the international community.  Shame on us.  Congress should vote this deal down. 

And don’t worry about there being no other option.  Diplomats need to stay in business.  They will find a way.