sermonics

Many years ago I deliv­ered ser­mons, but rarely now. I con­tin­ue to col­lect what I’ve writ­ten here.

This page is under major reconstruction!

“Sermons” and other materials for Rosh haShannah and Yom Kippur I’ve shared with congregations and others over the years.

5727

The Hurvitz Fam­i­ly’s Yom Kip­pur leaflet
call­ing for an end to the war in Vietnam

5753

Yom Kip­pur with R. I’lai
She came today on behalf of her hus­band, Judah. He had recent­ly begun to suf­fer extreme short­ness of breath and intense pains in his chest. A very high-strung man, Judah had worked hard and become impor­tant in his quar­ter of the city. In his free time he orga­nized efforts to coun­ter­act the increas­ing­ly unpleas­ant decrees of the Roman occu­piers. Though his neigh­bors agreed with his efforts, Judah felt they were too slow to respond.
Betha­mi sat before the rab­bi, near his line of vision and waited.A per­son­’s char­ac­ter can be judged by the way he han­dles three things; his drink, his mon­ey and his anger.Bethami under­stood the wis­dom, she did­n’t know how to express it to Judah.

5754

The “Jew­ish” Ramona
Many of you have heard me com­pare Cal­i­for­nia and the Land of Israel. Just a bit of the phys­i­cal geog­ra­phy makes a stun­ning com­par­i­son. The sun ris­es over the desert in the east and sets into the ocean on the west. The moun­tains with tall ever­green trees rise in the north and the south has more deserts and even gulfs of water. Moun­tain ranges form the north-south spines of both lands while cities hug the coasts. San Fran­cis­co and Haifa each house major nat­ur­al deep-water ports; they think of them­selves as cities of intel­lect and cul­ture. Fur­ther south, Los Ange­les and Tel Aviv sprawl across the flat ground; they live for the moment: what’s new, what’s in, how do you do, let’s win. The Gold­en State and the Land of Milk and Hon­ey even each have a great salt sea in the desert, cre­at­ed out of the fol­ly of the peo­ple who lived in the area. I can draw the phys­i­cal metaphor fur­ther, beyond the bound­aries of the State of Cal­i­for­nia to Sodom and Gomor­rah in the Neva­da desert.
But let’s turn to anoth­er fea­ture of the metaphor. Peo­ple come to this place seek­ing a new way of life. Some come for the plea­sures of an eas­i­er life where waters come from the skies and don’t need com­plex social orga­ni­za­tions to main­tain them. Oth­ers cross over riv­er and moun­tain range to seek new mean­ing for their lives. As Wal­lace Steg­n­er wrote, “[the] West is hope’s native home.”

Israel and Pales­tine
Our under­stand­ing, and appre­ci­a­tion of Israel has changed great­ly over the years. Much about how we approach Israel depends on our age, and what Israel was like when we came to know it. We have changed, Israel has changed, the whole world has changed. One thing is cer­tain, we will con­tin­ue to change we can hear this change in the songs of Israel. What new songs will come out of Zion.
Few of us here have lived long enough to remem­ber the ear­li­est days of the return to the land. Begin­ning a hun­dred years ago, young Jews from East­ern Europe and the Mid­dle East beared dif­fi­cult trav­el con­di­tions to return to Zion. They made their way to the land from which fifty gen­er­a­tions ear­li­er Impe­r­i­al Rome had expelled their ances­tors. They returned to rebuild the vil­lages from which over sev­en­ty gen­er­a­tions ear­li­er, their ances­tors had estab­lished a glo­ri­ous king­dom and had giv­en the world an immor­tal col­lec­tion of wis­dom and literature.

Shap­ing the Mud
Every­thing was moist. Dew dripped from the leaves, as dap­pled light fil­tered through the mist. The soft soil smelled of life, but lay dor­mant, as though wait­ing. Noth­ing not­ed time, so none passed. A slow turn­ing motion gave the effect of a soft breeze, blow­ing the water-jew­els in dances as they flew from the leaves to the loam below.
Damp clay lay on the spin­ning plate with no rec­og­niz­able form, a blob of mud. As the plate spun, the mud felt itself… as if hands held it, con­strained it, shaped it. The ener­gy from with­out trans­ferred into its own mol­e­cules. Still no spe­cif­ic con­tours appeared for long. A cylin­der arose only to be squashed into a broad bowl. Only one thing was cer­tain. The spin­ning guar­an­teed that the exter­nal shape always remained round.

5755

The Num­bers’ Game
The chil­dren played by the shore, allow­ing the ball to bounce light­ly on their fin­ger tips before they popped it over to the oth­er side of the line. Now and then one of them dove into the sand try­ing to keep the ball from bounc­ing on the ground. Judy took a break from the game and ran over to her father Sime­on who sat with his col­leagues, half watch­ing as they talked and munched olives with their bread and wine.“
Abba, they say that they have 40 and we have love! I know that 40 is good num­ber, after all we lived 40 years in the desert, Moses went up to Sinai to receive Torah for us and stayed there 40 days, and it rained for 40 days and 40 nights in the time of Noah. I also know that I can­not live with­out your love and none of us can live with­out the love of and lov­ing God, and so it must be good too, but what kind of num­ber is it?”
“Ah, my wise lit­tle beau­ty, you always ask such won­der­ful­ly rich ques­tions. Indeed, love is won­der­ful and valu­able, but I am afraid, that in your game, as in one of the many puz­zles of life, it is bet­ter to have 40 than love.”

I. L. Peretz meets Bruria
The traf­fic flowed past, seem­ing nev­er to stop: from the ocean to the moun­tains and the desert beyond. Every­one seemed to pass along this small four-lane main street of a sleepy town, wak­ing it to the pos­si­bil­i­ties of a mer­can­tile par­adise. The ear­ly morn­ing fog and low clouds had not yet burnt off and a chilly damp­ness filled the air.
He sat there at the road­side cafe, his bulky body almost slumped over his mug. He liked his cof­fee thick and sweet (the East Euro­pean way), but tears dripped from his eyes; such a strong stream that they fell from the edges of his bushy mus­tache and salt­ed his drink. His body shud­dered as he sobbed.
She reached across the table and placed her hand on his so that his trem­bling would­n’t spill the hot flu­id and scald him.
“I am weary with my moan­ing; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weep­ing.” [Psalm 6:6]
“Tell me, Yod Lamed. Tell me.”

The Oven
At a recent meet­ing of the EPA the reg­u­la­tors dis­cussed the lat­est mod­el of a new son­ic wave oven. They dis­agreed about whether the new design was accept­able or not because of a cer­tain tech­ni­cal fea­ture.
One of the reg­u­la­tors, a fel­low named L. A. Zar main­tained that the design was fine, while the major­i­ty insist­ed that it was not.
The dis­cus­sion went around a few times and no-one could con­vince Zar to change his inter­pre­ta­tion. At the same time Zar was unable to alter the under­stand­ing of any of the oth­ers. Con­vinced that he was right, in des­per­a­tion, Zar said: “If my inter­pre­ta­tion is cor­rect, let the ele­va­tors in the build­ing all stop right now.
“Every­one around the table chuck­led and some­one sug­gest­ed that they get on with the next item on the agen­da. A few min­utes lat­er, one of the sec­re­taries came in with a report that a wit­ness who was to give tes­ti­mo­ny on a new ear­phone was delayed because all the ele­va­tors in the build­ing had shut down.

The “Scape” Goat (the “e‑scape” goat)
The young man stood watch­ing the event with both antic­i­pa­tion and dread. The past year had not been unusu­al. He had done what he could and he knew he had done well in many of his tasks yet he also knew he had failed at oth­ers. The knowl­edge of his fail­ures weighed on him. He car­ried them around with him con­tin­u­ous­ly as though they were piles of garbage on his shoul­ders; bag­gage that he car­ried with him from day to day. His friends and neigh­bors also felt their own weight. The feel­ing came not just from the heav­i­ness of the late sum­mer’s heat, the increas­ing slug­gish­ness and slow­ness that it brought on. In fact, the city, too, seemed too have accu­mu­lat­ed its share of garbage. More road kill was vis­i­ble at this time of year; as though the tiny ani­mals were crushed under the weight of their own bur­dens. The busy activ­i­ties of the long sum­mer days seemed not to have left time for straight­en­ing up and putting away. Too much lay around and there was no col­lec­tion com­pa­ny to come cart the stuff away. To where would they take it? To the edge of the city, out­side the walls? Dump it in the ravine of the Hin­nom val­ley? Or cart it off far into the wilder­ness? Any­where they took it, it would still exist. There it would be. It would­n’t just dis­ap­pear.
Now, in the cool of the morn­ing, braced by the crisp clear air of the moun­tain, the priest stood in the holy tem­ple ready to remove the emo­tion­al garbage that bur­dened his peo­ple. As all the peo­ple gath­ered watch­ing, the Levites brought for­ward a bull and two young goats. There he stood in his spe­cial clothes almost glow­ing like the sky that sur­round­ed him as he drew from a box two pieces of pot­tery marked: one for Adon­ai and the oth­er he put aside for Azazel.

5756

O Jerusalem
Our teacher crouched under the low, stone ledge. All we could see were his wrin­kled age­less hands which peri­od­i­cal­ly reached out as though they caressed the dust that sur­round­ed him.
He had arranged for us to meet before dawn on the west slope of the hill over­look­ing the build­ings on the oth­er side of the lit­tle ravine. As the sun slipped over the hill­top, all that lay before us to the west turned from pink to gold.
Call­ing out to us to come near in his creak­ing ancient voice, he picked up a rock and drew some­thing in the dirt: a line in the shape of a Tet . Some of us stepped too close and he hit their feet as they stepped on the line. Final­ly as we all stood around the line he’d drawn he start­ed his les­son. When he spoke he always had the abil­i­ty to trans­port us to a dif­fer­ent time or place.
Look, he said of his draw­ing, it almost has the shape of a heart.

Two Peb­bles
Ben walked home from school, his back­pack loaded with books, a bit of left­over lunch in his bag, and a cou­ple of peb­bles in his pock­ets. A jackrab­bit leapt out of the chap­ar­ral and across his path. For a fleet­ing moment he thought of try­ing to throw one of the peb­bles at it, but no. They were spe­cial peb­bles, he’d kept them for years. Every night when he changed into his paja­mas he first put the two peb­bles on his night stand. And when he got dressed in the morn­ing, he put them back into his pock­ets again. They were almost indis­tin­guish­able, the same shape, size, col­or, weight, and yet, each day, Ben put the same one into the appro­pri­ate pock­et. He could tell, like the par­ents of iden­ti­cal twins, some­thing about the tex­ture, or the faintest streak of col­or that only he had noticed helped him dis­tin­guish which went where.
As he walked to his bus stop each morn­ing, one day one peb­ble felt a bit heav­ier than the oth­er. He could almost tell what kind of a day he’d have based on which pock­et felt lighter. The day may be over­cast and gloomy, yet Ben felt a glow with­in. He could tell by the peb­ble in the pock­et. Now and then through the day, Ben would pause, think about his peb­bles and move on with his activ­i­ty, he’d block on the foot­ball line­up with Steve and Den­nis the tack­les, count the num­ber of mea­sures rest before his next entrance in the band along with the oth­er clar­inet play­ers, read the next para­graph in the math or sci­ence textbook.…

Three Peo­ple
I recent­ly had a chance to learn with Rab­bi Jack Riemer (who had a pul­pit in La Jol­la a few years back and even now, though he lives in Flori­da main­tains a home to retire to in Ran­cho Bernar­do (where his moth­er lives)).
He asked us three ques­tions and offered three exam­ple respons­es that I want to share with you now.
1.What do you do at the moment of your great­est joy?
2.What do you do at the moment of your great­est loss?
3.What do you do at the moment of your great­est testing?

5757

  • The list of breads for tash­lich was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed to Ravnet (the online dis­cus­sion group of the Con­ser­v­a­tive rab­bis) and is the brain­child of Dick Israel. The idea has entered the folk lit­er­a­ture of our peo­ple. I’ve col­lect­ed all that I received over the past year (5757) and “alpha­bet­ized” them.

Bring­ing Emp­ty Bot­tles
A com­ment in this mon­th’s Hadas­sah mag­a­zine struck me: It is quite like­ly that more Jews around the world will have vot­ed in free elec­tions this year than in any oth­er year in his­to­ry.
What makes this espe­cial­ly strik­ing are a num­ber of oth­er com­ments I noticed as the Repub­li­can and Demo­c­ra­t­ic nation­al con­ven­tions end­ed this sum­mer.
*An esti­mat­ed 60 mil­lion peo­ple — 40 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion — heard Humphrey say on the radio that Amer­i­ca must “get out of the shad­ow of states’ rights and walk forth­right­ly in the bright sun­shine of human rights.” [at the 1948 Demo­c­ra­t­ic nation­al con­ven­tion] Few­er than 25 mil­lion peo­ple — less than 10 per­cent of a much larg­er pop­u­la­tion — both­ered to tune into the biggest view­er night of [the] Repub­li­can con­ven­tion. [Arthur Schlesinger Jr. NYTimes August 21, 1996]
But we don’t just see this decrease in par­tic­i­pa­tion in our nation­al elec­tions. I’m afraid we find it across the board.
Last spring a col­league at work told me about an event that had occurred at his room­mates busi­ness. Emi­ly had announced she was hav­ing a par­ty for all her friends and fam­i­ly. She con­sid­ered the work group among her friends and asked that every­one bring some juice to add to a large con­coc­tion she had learned how to make dur­ing her col­lege days of chem­istry study.
Emi­ly did­n’t explain the details of the recipe only that she would sup­ply a large oak­en bar­rel, a par­tic­u­lar­ly potable and potent form of alco­hol, and some dry ice. She said that the juices every­one would sup­ply would give the brew a unique taste.

What do we do with the tools we’re giv­en?
Long ago, in Chi­na, a cou­ple of par­ents need­ed to leave on a long trip. They called their three chil­dren to them to let them know of their plans:


“We need to trav­el to Per­sia to check out our con­tacts along the silk route. We have not vis­it­ed them since before you were born and we need to make sure that they have edu­cat­ed their chil­dren to take over the busi­ness as well as we have edu­cat­ed you. We will be gone for a long time and must entrust the local care of our busi­ness to your guardians since you are only now becom­ing adults. How­ev­er, we have some­thing pre­cious to give you to care for while we are gone. When we return we will deter­mine who will have pri­ma­ry respon­si­bil­i­ty and pri­ma­ry ben­e­fit from our busi­ness as we grow older.”

Their moth­er went to a large bright­ly enam­eled chest in the cor­ner of the room where they kept their valu­ables and care­ful­ly opened it, with­drew a high­ly carved ivory box and walked over to their teenage chil­dren. They gath­ered near as she slow­ly removed the lid. There, inside lay­ing on a bed of red vel­vet were.…

5758

Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card

On find­ing the mean­ing in the pat­terns
“I mean, like, what does it mean that in the same week, along with mil­lions of oth­ers Princess Di, Moth­er There­sa and Vik­tor Fran­kl should die? Like, their lives arguably had some mean­ing, what can I say for mine?“Jack sat in his favorite chair and looked at his hands. He turned them from palm to back and then over again. He stud­ied the lines and the creas­es. He put his hands togeth­er so that the pinkies lined up beside each oth­er and watched as the creas­es from one hand crossed the sep­a­ra­tion and fol­lowed the same pat­tern in reverse on the other.Another pat­tern. And this time a mir­ror­ing pat­tern. He enjoyed find­ing the pat­terns and won­dered at the beau­ty of it all.

Bene­dic­tion
We live with a paradox:

all of our ends are begin­nings.
Where our faces end, the sky begins.
As one year ends anoth­er begins.

Things begin with endings:

sum­mer is over, we are har­vest­ing our veg­etable gar­dens,
the trees’ leaves now turn from green to yel­low and brown, ready to fall away
Autumn, when we feel so much come to an end, our tra­di­tion tells the world was created.

5758

Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card

On find­ing the mean­ing in the patterns

“I mean, like, what does it mean that in the same week, along with mil­lions of oth­ers Princess Di, Moth­er There­sa and Vik­tor Fran­kl should die? Like, their lives arguably had some mean­ing, what can I say for mine?”

Jack sat in his favorite chair and looked at his hands. He turned them from palm to back and then over again. He stud­ied the lines and the creas­es. He put his hands togeth­er so that the pinkies lined up beside each oth­er and watched as the creas­es from one hand crossed the sep­a­ra­tion and fol­lowed the same pat­tern in reverse on the other.

Anoth­er pat­tern. And this time a mir­ror­ing pat­tern. He enjoyed find­ing the pat­terns and won­dered at the beau­ty of it all.

A midrash on the Akedah Cel­e­brat­ing the day that Micha Ben-Aderet becomes a Bar Mitzvah

Father and son went off to the high wilder­ness place togeth­er. Ulti­mate­ly they had to con­tin­ue on alone to expe­ri­ence the heights and depths of each oth­er in that holy ground, to test their met­tle and explore and expe­ri­ence the essence of life as it pass­es from one gen­er­a­tion to the next.

Mak­ing Con­tact With the Oth­er
Last sum­mer, among pop­u­lar movies that dealt with The Beyond were the seri­ous “Phe­nom­e­non”, the friv­o­lous “Mars Attacks” and the ridicu­lous “Inde­pen­dence Day”. This sum­mer, their com­ple­men­tary films are “Con­tact” and “Men in Black”.
Beyond the movies, we have expe­ri­enced real adven­tures. A few months back we saw the Mar­t­ian land­ing, and now we get week­ly reports from the Mir space sta­tion. All of this has renewed inter­est in the SETI project (the search for extra-ter­res­tri­al intel­li­gence). Many peo­ple hope that these explo­rations beyond our earth will lead, not only to new knowl­edge, but an abil­i­ty to solve some of the prob­lems that plague our home plan­et.
This con­cern, this involve­ment with redemp­tion com­ing from afar is not new, nor is it lim­it­ed to Amer­i­can cul­ture. It is pos­si­ble, in fact, that it comes out of our own Jew­ish expe­ri­ence in the world. Some cul­tures view the world as suf­fused with holi­ness. In fact, ani­mists, see no dis­tinc­tion between the trees and the spir­its that make them live. We Jews have a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive on all this. We state that there is a world and it has a cre­ator. And, while we can expe­ri­ence glimpses of the Cre­ator in the world, God still reigns beyond.

5759

Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card

Unfin­ished
I’ve been con­cerned with a num­ber of para­dox­es recent­ly. Here’s one: Our tra­di­tion looks for­ward to a time of per­fec­tion, yet is will­ing to accept the real­i­ty of a world filled with peo­ple for­ev­er strug­gling to achieve it. I have come to imag­ine that this per­fec­tion­ist’s accep­tance of incom­plete­ness is woven, like the nubs of raw silk, into the fab­ric of our existence.

On the cur­rent scan­dal
What is truth? Where is respon­si­bil­i­ty?
If you were a Pol­ish peas­ant shel­ter­ing Jews who had escaped the Nazis dur­ing the Sho’a and Ger­man sol­diers came to your home ask­ing if you had seen any Jews, what would you tell them?
None of us, thank God, have been in this sit­u­a­tion. But have you ever been in a sit­u­a­tion when you felt you could not tell the truth, the whole truth and noth­ing but the truth?
Well, to flip the slo­gan over: just don’t do it.
What more do you need to know?

Tem­per­ing the Decree
[based on the Une­taneh Tokef: Teshu­vah, Tefillah and Tzedakah tem­per the decree.]
At least once in every sev­en pass­ings, as an impor­tant part of her edu­ca­tion, she approached her con­sole and reached into the soft vel­vety fab­ric that sur­round­ed the globe.
In much the same way as we sit down at the piano or com­put­er, place our fin­gers on the keys and pause con­sid­er­ing what we want to express, she hes­i­tat­ed. Deep con­cen­tra­tion; and a dark glow formed in the orb. She tried blank­ness and the glow dis­si­pat­ed. A smile brought a trail of lumi­nes­cent bubbles.

Cre­at­ing Your Own Cus­tom Reli­gion
I have a lot of ques­tions.
As most of you know I teach the Intro­duc­tion to Judaism course spon­sored by the UAHC and housed at Tem­ple Adat Shalom. I’ve taught this course every year but one (odd­ly the year one of Noam’s best friend’s moth­er want­ed to take the course) for over 25 years. One sum­mer, while we were still in New Jer­sey, the Union tried an exper­i­ment and offered the course in the sum­mer when it met twice a week instead of the usu­al once a week.
We met, as we do in Poway, in the class­room or library of a con­gre­ga­tion in Edi­son, New Jer­sey. I share this with you now because dur­ing the class, a young man, who had been raised a Jew, made one of the most amaz­ing state­ments about Judaism I can recall. It has stayed with me ever since We had been dis­cussing the ori­gins of Chris­tian­i­ty (which I usu­al­ly do some­time late in Decem­ber, but this time it was in the humid heat of sum­mer) and our con­ver­sa­tion had moved on to whether Jews should have Christ­mas trees. The young man said: “I like Reform Judaism because I can do any­thing I want.“
Sor­ry.
I under­stand that I may have lost a con­gre­gant to Etz Chaim for mak­ing a sim­i­lar com­ment (“Sor­ry”) here my first year. Well, such is life.
What do you think, you can just make Judaism any­thing you want it to be?
I don’t deny that Judaism has changed great­ly over the mil­len­nia, I am an active par­tic­i­pant in that trans­for­ma­tion. And, even though Hil­lel when asked two thou­sand years ago about how to find out what the appro­pri­ate response to a ques­tion of prac­tice, answered: Go check what the peo­ple are doing. Nonethe­less, there is a process.

5760

  • 5759
  • 5760
    • Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card
    • No dum­mie’s guide need­edRemem­ber, there is no book “Shab­bat for Dum­mies,” or “Judaism for Idiots.” None of us here are dumb or idi­ot­ic, some of us have sim­ply not been practicing.
    • If The Entire World Is a Very Nar­row Bridge What and Where Am I?I’m not cer­tain whether this occurred in the first, sec­ond or third per­son. So, I began at one. You can read/hear it in the num­ber you want.I crept up to the edge. I looked to the right where it seemed to go on for­ev­er. Then I turned to the left where it appeared as though it curved out of sight. Ahead lay an expanse that stretched to the hori­zon. Up, I already knew had no lim­its. I hes­i­tat­ed before look­ing down.
    • Learn­ing the CheersOver two thou­sand years ago, the Jews liv­ing all around the land of Israel lived a busy life. The main event hap­pened in Jerusalem up in the moun­tains. The roads were less than two lane and most peo­ple usu­al­ly had respon­si­bil­i­ties at home so they did not go up to the Tem­ple in Jerusalem as often as they might. In fact, they divid­ed up the activ­i­ties in the tem­ple so that dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties would have a reserved place (on the 50 yard line so to speak) at des­ig­nat­ed times of the year. Even then not every­one in town was able to go. When it was their turn, the town’s rep would go up to Jerusalem to the Tem­ple and the locals would gath­er at the club­house. In fact they called it a meet­ing house “Beit Knes­set”. There, in the town club­house the locals would wear the appro­pri­ate clothes, drink the appro­pri­ate drinks, eat the appro­pri­ate foods, and call out the appro­pri­ate cheers… as though they were there in Jerusalem with their bud­dies, the representatives.
  • 5761
    • Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card
    • The Elec­tions and the Jew­ish Ques­tionIt was com­mon then for min­is­ters, priests and rab­bis to speak and work on behalf of soical issues.One of Sen­a­tor Lieber­man’s first com­ments when accept­ing Vice Pres­i­dent Gore’s invi­ta­tion to share the Demo­c­ra­t­ic tick­et was a vari­ant of the She­hechayanu. We have here a Jew in high office who is extreme­ly com­fort­able with his Judaism and the expec­ta­tions it has of him, both in terms of his per­son­al and pub­lic piety as well as how it should inform his polit­i­cal agen­da. As he has said: “I can only be myself… My reli­gion is impor­tant to me; I try my best to be faith­ful to, and strength­ened by it. But I have nev­er mis­un­der­stood the fact that I am a very imper­fect being, so if I stum­ble, it’s human.” What does this all mean for us?
    • How to Raise — or grow up to be — a Men­schThere is very lit­tle in our clas­sic lit­er­a­ture on how to accom­plish this. After all, the term “men­sch” is a fair­ly mod­ern, Cen­tral Euro­pean term and does not appear in the Bible, Tal­mud or lat­er, medieval codes.
  • 5762
    • Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card
    • Think­ing about the birth of the world after Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001Dear Anne.… Thank you for the descrip­tion of your “spir­i­tu­al” search­ing since the ter­ror attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11. I under­stand how you might find Bud­dhism attrac­tive, espe­cial­ly at a time such as this. You use the word “lib­er­a­tion” where­as I would prob­a­bly choose “sep­a­ra­tion” — i. e. from the world. For­give me if I set up a few “straw men” for a moment. We can, per­haps describe Bud­dhism as sep­a­ra­tion or denial, Islam as sub­mis­sion, Chris­tian­i­ty as accep­tance and Judaism as engage­ment. Each way has its own approach to liv­ing in the world that makes (more or less per­fect) sense from with­in it. Because the lan­guage I learned to speak as a child is the Jew­ish one, and because, as an adult I have con­tin­ued to learn more words with­in this lan­guage I can best (if not only) explain what I see and what I must do using Jew­ish metaphors and sim­i­les. At the same time, I grew up liv­ing in at least one oth­er civ­i­liza­tion and learned its lan­guage: mod­ern west­ern sci­en­tism. So here, in writ­ten form (instead of as a “rap” which is how I usu­al­ly do it) is what I shared with my con­gre­ga­tion on Rosh haShan­nah morning.
    • The Future of Israel Is In Your HandsA year has passed since the dis­tur­bances in Israel have become the new Intifa­da. Our lives as Jews have, once again, been trans­formed. There was a short time (not long after the Intifa­da began) that it seemed as though Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties around the world would be tar­get­ed. That passed, thank good­ness. How­ev­er, the recent Unit­ed Nations Con­fer­ence on Racism renewed the world’s atten­tion’s focus on Israel, Zion­ism, World Jew­ry, and even Judaism itself. We read the dai­ly head­lines with trep­i­da­tion, won­der­ing how world events touch us per­son­al­ly and, per­haps feel­ing uncom­fort­able with the atten­tion. And, now, even in our col­lec­tive Amer­i­can grief, we can see peo­ple point­ing fin­gers at Amer­i­ca’s Mideast poli­cies as the cause of the ter­ror­ist attacks just two weeks ago. Blam­ing the vic­tim may have been a rea­son­able expla­na­tion for world events at the time the Baby­lo­ni­ans destroyed the first Tem­ple in Jerusalem. It may have even been accept­able when the Romans destroyed the sec­ond Tem­ple in Jerusalem. But, since the destruc­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ry bare­ly more than a gen­er­a­tion ago, it is no longer a the­o­log­i­cal­ly accept­able expla­na­tion. We may not have anoth­er expla­na­tion, but the old one does not work.
  • 5763
    • Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card
    • Look­ing at the World Through Jew­ish-col­ored Glass­esI chose to be Jew­ish. I found that look­ing at the world Jew­ish­ly gave my life great mean­ing. I know that I am part of an ancient peo­ple who has giv­en great gifts to the world. We reach back into ancient times. Our sto­ries tell of the abil­i­ty to trans­form the world. I learned that every­one has the abil­i­ty to look at the world through a vari­ety of lens­es. You can see that I wear glass­es (spec­ta­cles). If I did not wear them, I could nei­ther see the page from which I read, nor could I see your faces. My glass­es help me make sense and give mean­ing to the world around me. You have seen me with sun­glass­es. Each time I wear sun­glass­es, I see the world in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent man­ner. I could wear yel­low lens­es in my glass­es and the world (even in the evening) would look much brighter. I could wear rose col­ored glass­es, and the world would look, well, “rosier”. I fig­ure my reg­u­lar sun­glass­es help me see the world more Jew­ish­ly. So, I have a pair for many of you (I can get more). I hope, that as we begin this year we will begin to see the world more Jew­ish­ly and find that look­ing at the world in that man­ner will give our lives more meaning.
    • Why does one day have many names?There are many ways of approach­ing Rosh haShan­nah. We’ll exam­ine two of the terms that refer to this day that will help us focus on its imme­di­ate mean­ing for us as indi­vid­u­als. These are Yom Harat Olam: The day of the cre­ation of the world and Yom Teru’ah the day of the sho­far blast; the lat­ter com­ple­ments and adds mean­ing to the former.
  • 5764
    • Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card
    • Time, how we under­stand it, name it and mark its pass­ing How do we know when an infant becomes a baby and then a tod­dler… child… ado­les­cent… young adult, etc.? Each time we use one of these terms we asso­ciate dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions in our minds. Some have defined ado­les­cence as the time from first onset of puber­ty until the child fin­ish­es his or her advanced degree and/or gets a job, becom­ing com­plete­ly (at least for basic nor­mal needs) finan­cial­ly inde­pen­dent. I have begun to describe mid­dle age as the entire peri­od from when some­one who’s par­ents are still alive becomes a par­ent him or her­self (after all, you’re still a child and you’re also a par­ent… right there in the mid­dle, regard­less of how many years you’ve been alive.) We know that, as the evening shad­ows length­en and the autumn leaves start to fall we (more or less) adult Jews gath­er to note the pass­ing of an old… and wel­come in the begin­ning of a new year. How you behave depends on where/who you think you are in that flow of time. 
    • Let’s talk a bit about God and prayer May we, tiny divine mus­tard seeds as we may be, look for­ward in this com­ing year, to be watered, mend­ed and rebuilt, as we open our­selves to the full enjoy­ment of the rich bakla­va of our Jew­ish tradition. 
    • The day is short, the work is much… What is R. Tar­fon get­ting at here? He knows that many of us pro­cras­ti­nate, are dis­tract­ed, and due to all kinds of exter­nal rea­sons may nev­er com­plete our life’s task. He has a tremen­dous amount of com­pas­sion for us and under­stands that we may not achieve what we hope for. Yet, we should not (accord­ing to R. Tar­fon) den­i­grate our efforts because of that… so long as (!) we don’t sim­ply give up on the mat­ter alto­geth­er and spend our time in friv­o­lous pur­suits say­ing: “I know I can’t com­plete it, so I won’t even try.”
  • 5765
    • Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card
    • Let’s think of Abra­ham as a father for a moment and less as a “holy man”; the first Jew. Yes, we know that God has promised him that his descen­dents will be num­bered as the sands by the shore of the sea and the stars in the sky. But, let’s put that aside for the time being and think about this man and his son. Or, per­haps even, this man and this daugh­ter, or this moth­er and this child.… A par­ent and a child.
    • Many of us remem­ber the old school bell (at least from sto­ries). When it rang, we knew it was time to learn. Now that bell is a buzzer at best. But, the bell can still serve as a reminder of our abil­i­ty to learn.
  • 5766
    • Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card
    • We have heard a lot of dis­cus­sion recent­ly about the teach­ing of “Intel­li­gent Design” in the sci­ence depart­ments of our schools. Let’s take a look at some Design Fun­da­men­tals. Can we make a dis­tinc­tion between the polit­i­cal­ly charged prop­er noun phrase “Intel­li­gent Design” and the sim­ple con­cept (low­er­case) “intel­li­gent design”?
      (You know, like, I used a bit of intel­li­gent design when I wrote this, and I think there might be some intel­li­gent design in the way in which the cos­mos func­tions, but I’m not so sure that I would call that “Intel­li­gent Design”.)
    • There he was. Moses stood, now, bare­foot. The lamb he had fol­lowed to the Place had wan­dered off, yet again. And there he stood before flames that did not con­sume. He might have said: “Oh my God!” but that would have been trite, and we, thou­sands of years lat­er, would tit­ter. So, he stood there, silent, wait­ing. In time, he heard him­self called. Called to return to his suf­fer­ing peo­ple. And then, he won­dered, who was he, Moses, that he should do this task and how could he tell oth­ers how it had come to be that they should lis­ten to him. Moses stood there, alone on a moun­tain in the desert before flames that did not con­sume & and received one of the most author­i­ta­tive answers of all time. The kind of answer that allows each of us to sleep peace­ful­ly at night, know­ing that all is well with the world.
      I will be what I will be.
      [Exo­dus 3:14]We live in a world des­per­ate for easy solu­tions and author­i­ta­tive answers. On a sim­ple lev­el, our pop­u­lar cul­ture believes that mur­ders must be com­mit­ted, solved and the cul­prit put away with­in 52 min­utes. But this belief in sim­plic­i­ty and author­i­ty pos­es threats to our life as Jews in Amer­i­ca (an Amer­i­ca that I cel­e­brat­ed as we reached the 350th year of our arrival on this con­ti­nent only last year at this time). Many claim that our legal sys­tem must be absolute and carved in sol­id rock. Oth­ers (some of these are the same peo­ple), argue that poten­tial life trumps exist­ing life. And still oth­ers believe that our schools must teach that the ori­gins of life are to be explained, not by any process that has room for test­ing and re-eval­u­a­tion, but by recourse to a Design­er of Supreme Intel­li­gence. In each instance a reli­gious group wants to enforce its reli­gious beliefs on the rest of Amer­i­ca.
    • My moth­er, who loved to talk and tell sto­ries about the var­i­ous things she had seen or heard, read or expe­ri­enced, suf­fered a stroke on April 14, 2005. The block­age hit the left side of her brain, the area that con­trols speech. Not only could she bare­ly speak, the stroke also blocked the use of her right hand so she could not write either. She had almost no means of mak­ing her­self under­stood. She and I would sit togeth­er for hours at a time com­mu­ni­cat­ing as best we could. Mom’s sight, hear­ing and com­pre­hen­sion were as sharp as they had always been, but she could not make her needs, con­cerns and desires nor her joys, plea­sures and excite­ments known to us. Some­times her efforts to com­mu­ni­cate would result in odd, or fun­ny mis­un­der­stand­ings. What can we do to increase the qual­i­ty of our com­mu­ni­ca­tions?
    • Jon­ah stands between the peri­od of these Days of Awe (Rosh haShan­nah and Yom Kip­pur) and The Sea­son of Our Joy (Sukkot). In fact the expe­ri­ence of Jon­ah him­self at the end of “his” book con­tains a fore­shad­ow­ing of Sukkot. Jon­ah final­ly makes his prophe­cy (all of five words: “od arbaim yom ve-nin­veh nehep­e­het” In forty days Nin­eveh will be over­thrown.) and goes off to the east to watch the results from a dis­tance. He gets upset with God for accept­ing the repen­tance of the Ninevites (the mis­be­havin’ peo­ple of Nin­eveh). God cre­ates a plant to give shade above the sukkah in which Jon­ah has found refuge. The plant grows overnight and is gone the next day. You remem­ber the line… I used it with Noam not long ago when some­thing he cared about (but had lit­tle respon­si­bil­i­ty for) dis­ap­peared: “Are you so deeply griev­ed about the… [what­ev­er]?” What Is This Dove Doing Here Now??
  • 5767
    • Rosh haShan­nah greet­ing card
    • It’s time to brush up on our “doing Jewish”.There are 1,440 min­utes in each day. My Son­i­caire tooth­brush “forces” me to brush my teeth for two min­utes at a time. In the morn­ing and the evening, that’s 4 min­utes, or 0.2777777777777778% of each day. So, it seems that we spend three times as much of our lives doing Jew­ish as we do brush­ing our teeth. Steve Shevin­sky might be sat­is­fied with that ratio (no hard feel­ings, actu­al­ly, I’ve checked and Steve says I can and should press that but­ton again… brush­ing for a total of eight min­utes each day (or 0.5555555555555556%)). But, I’m not sat­is­fied, and I hope that Steve isn’t either.
    • Try to Remem­berI lay awake one night, unable to sleep due to cas­cad­ing mem­o­ries of the day, like ping pong balls in a demon­stra­tion of the chain reac­tion effect, or the piano I pre­pared with lit­tle flash­light bulbs lay­ing on the strings… so that, as I played the writ­ten score, and the piano’s ham­mer hit a string with a bulb on it, the bulb flew into the air land­ing on a ran­dom string… extend­ing the “melody” in unan­tic­i­pat­ed ways. And so my thoughts went, careen­ing around.Try to remem­ber that time in Sep­tem­ber­When the moon was newAnd you stood as a JewAs I’ve men­tioned in pre­vi­ous years, this day has a vari­ety of names. Four years ago I spoke about two of these names: Yom Harat Olam [The day of the cre­ation of the world] and Yom Teru’ah [The day of the sho­far blast]. This year, we’ll look more close­ly at the name: Yom haZikaron [The Day of Remembrance].Certain mem­o­ries are burnt, almost brand­ed into our aware­ness, as they are cut into our flesh.Memory itself is an uncer­tain state of con­scious­ness and we Jews have long been busy remem­ber­ing. Grab hold of your brain for a moment… you think you’ve been remem­ber­ing? Wrong. Hen­ri Berg­son, a French Jew­ish philoso­pher at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry said: “The brain’s func­tion is to choose from the past, to dimin­ish it, to sim­pli­fy it, to uti­lize it, but not to pre­serve it.”So…
    • What is our task as Jews?We know that at this time of year we are to do all we can to ask for­give­ness of those we’ve harmed and search with­in to find ways to make our lives bet­ter, but…What is our “gen­er­al” task as Jews?In my Hag­gadah I write that we face the “tasks that still await us as a peo­ple called to ser­vice, to a great pur­pose for which the peo­ple of Israel lives: to bring to real­i­ty a world of whole­ness, and, until that time, the preser­va­tion and affir­ma­tion of hope.”But, I’m sure that we have more than one task. So, in the sid­dur there appear a cou­ple para­graphs that begin:It is upon us to…עלינו לשבח לאדון הכל.
    • Snakes and Gar­dens and, …Mis­trans­la­tions… Oh my!We Amer­i­can Jews have had our appre­ci­a­tion of Judaism deeply informed by the Eng­lish lan­guage and one of the core texts of that lan­guage is the King James Bible. The KJB (not to be con­fused with the KGB [or the KBH]) used a vari­ety of words that are com­mon­ly used in Eng­lish, but have dif­fer­ent mean­ings in Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish con­texts. The KJB took our holy writ­ings and re-inter­pret­ed them in Eng­lish with a Chris­t­ian slant. So, it’s not sur­pris­ing that many of our under­stand­ings of the words that we use in Eng­lish are col­ored by this Chris­t­ian over­lay. Though it both­ers me, I can’t stop the Chris­tians from mis­in­ter­pret­ing our holy writ­ings, but, it’s a shame for us Jews to mis­con­strue them the way they do… rather than under­stand them the way we Jews have accept­ed them for millennia.So, for exam­ple, the sto­ry of the Gar­den of Eden is used in Chris­tian­i­ty to explain the exis­tence and the mean­ing of “orig­i­nal sin”. But, no word “sin” appears in the sto­ry! Adam and Eve mis­be­haved. So, what’s going on here? Why should we be tar­nished by their actions if we “Ain’t Mis­be­havin’”What Did We Do In The Gar­den To Cause So Much Trouble?
  • 5768
  • 5769