From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

How can you make sure to have the most meaningful and impactful Passover? Is it about preparation? The extent to which you clean out every cabinet and kasher your kitchen? Is it about the Seder itself—the Haggadah you choose and the activities you plan for the Seder? In the spring of 2014, I was in my second year of rabbinical school and got a gig as a cruise-ship rabbi. Given that this was my first real gig as a rabbi, I was determined to create the most meaningful Passover experience ever. I researched for months leading up to Pesach and put together a folder of midrashim and teachings for every part of the Seder. Little did I know what the cruise had in store for me.....

Talk to any Israeli, talk to any American who has recently been to Israel, and the words one hears are: depressing, very concerning, unprecedented, I’m afraid. I don’t know how this ends.  How did we get here? Where does this story begin?  Last week, Rachel Korazim, our Israeli teacher of Israeli poetry, made a point that is so simple, so profound, and so important. The conflicts playing out in Israel did not just spontaneously happen in year 75. They have been cooking for 75 years. Their roots go back to the beginning of Israel’s existence. Last week she talked about how the Altalena conflict evinced deep conflicts among Jewish Israelis that continue to play out on the streets today. This week, Rachel is going to go back to 1948 again, to what Palestinians call the Naqba, as reflected in this poetry. There is no more urgent issue for American Jews than Israel. There is no better teacher on Israel than Rachel Korazim. Let’s learn together.

I am not proud of it, but one day while on a recent long flight, to make the time pass, I found myself reading a rom com, total beach reading. There were so many other worthier things I could have read. I could have read an analysis of the impasse on judicial reform in Israel. Or I could have done daf yomi, the study of a daily page of Talmud. Or with Passover coming up, I could have studied the Haggadah to get ready for the seders. But no, I read a rom com, light and breezy. I know it would be wrong to evade taking responsibility for this choice. I did it. I own it. I would never want to blame anyone else. I would never want to blame my wife Shira, for example. Even though Shira read it first and seemed to be thoroughly engaged while reading it. Even though Shira downloaded it on our family Kindle. Even though when I asked Shira for a recommendation, she pointed me to this book. Still reading the rom com is on me. The novel features a woman named Nora who writes love stories produced on The Romance Channel. All of her stories follow a script. In fact, so much so, that she challenges one of the characters to offer her some random facts, from which she will fashion one of her scripted stories. She says to this other character: Give me a gender, a location, and a career. Okay…female, Chicago, real estate developer. Okay, easy. Stephanie, a young urban real estate developer, takes a trip to rural Illinois to look into buying a dairy farm and turning it into a corporate retreat center. The young handsome owner of the farm doesn’t want to sell, and they butt heads. But as she spends more time on the farm, she sees how important it is to the community, and they fall in love….One day she gets a call that she needs to shut down the farm immediately or lose her job. She leaves for Chicago. He is heartbroken. Oh, no. Oh, yes. But wait…one day he’s plugging along, and who comes back? Stephanie! Yes! She’s gone back to Chicago and has realized big city living isn’t for her. She’s going to stay out in the sticks, and oh, P.S., she has a brilliant idea for how to save the farm. The end. Nora generates story after story that follows the script, each gets produced as a movie on The Romance Channel, and so it goes until her own husband, and the father of their two young children, walks out on her, leaving her a single mother. The writer of scripts is now living a life off script. Thus the title of this rom com is Nora Goes Off Script. Why do I mention this just now? Because the theme of this rom com connects directly with both our Torah reading—and our lives.

The impasse over judicial reform in Israel continues to be concerning and unresolved. Protests continue. Conversations have not resulted in resolution. Positions are hardening. The compromise which President Herzog implored both sides to work towards remains elusive. Talk to Israelis—their morale is low. They are troubled. “We hope we get there”—to Israel’s 75th. This Shabbat we are blessed to have a familiar voice and dear friend offering us a genre that we have not yet encountered regarding the impasse: poetry. Rachel Korazim, born in 1948, has lived her life in Israel. She is an expert in Israeli poetry. Before the pandemic, she would teach at TE in person every year. Since the pandemic, she has continued to offer classes to TE members on Zoom. In fact, one of the classes she is offering remotely now concerns how poetry speaks to this moment. On Shabbat, through the magic of technology (thank you Brian Lefsky and David Beckman), Rachel Korazim, in Israel, joins our clergy team and in person learners in Room 24-25 in dialogue. She will share her personal experience as a citizen of Israel who has attended many protests. And she will teach three poems, one by Uri Tzvi Greenberg and two by Nathan Alterman, that will give us a helpful frame for this heavy and hard moment. Thank you Rachel Korazim for helping us connect with Israel through the sacred text of Israeli poetry.

I recently heard a podcast featuring Andy Stanley--have I mentioned him before? He is a pastor in Atlanta--and his wife Sandra, and they were discussing a most compelling question: How do we parent our children so that when they grow up and grow out, they want to spend time with their parents, and with one another, even when they don’t have to? If this is our goal, our parenting north star, that should motivate all our parenting decisions along the way.

When I was in Jerusalem last week sitting shiva for our father, after folks gave their condolences and shared their memories, they would ask me for my take on Israel. The conversation was sobering, making me feel naïve and disconnected from the real Israel that is. Me: In Greater Jewish Boston, we are so excited to be marking Israel at 75. A big contingent from our shul is going to celebrate Israel at 75! A big contingent from the whole Boston Jewish community is going to mark this joyful and incredible milestone! How are you thinking about Israel at 75? Comforters: One of two responses. The less common: “Not on our radar screen at all. We’ve given it no thought till you just mentioned it.” By far the more common: “I hope we get there. Not clear that we will make it to 75 as one country.” In the shiva house, I had the sinking feeling that there was not one death I was mourning, but two. Something has died in Israel beyond our father – a belief of Israelis in a bright future for Israel. Nothing makes that clearer than two titles of Danny Gordis. When he and his family made Aliyah in the 90s, during Oslo, his first book about Israel was called If a Land Can Make You Cry. The title evoked the pathos, the emotion, the ups and downs, the resilience, but the fundamental hopefulness of a nation whose national anthem is Hatikvah. That title seems long gone. The new title, from his piece this week: Drowning in a Sea of Resentment and Hate, It’s Far from Clear that Israel Can Make it Back to Shore. This piece details how numerous tribes within Israel—settlers, Haredis, Israeli Arabs, Palestinian Israelis, Ashkenazi, Mizrachi—feel betrayed (his word) by the state. One can sense this hate in the friction over dedicated war hero pilots who are protesting the erosion of Israeli democracy being called a “pathetic bunch of deserters” by the ruling coalition. What do we do about it? This week Thomas Friedman offered us another sobering essay with a sobering title: “American Jews, You Have to Choose Sides on Israel.” He quotes Rabbi Sharon Brous who speaks of rabbis giving Death by Israel sermons. Is he right? Is our response to this moment to see it as a political fork in the road, and we have to choose, and bear the consequences of our choice? Is there another way to frame and respond to this moment? How does our weekly Torah portion (uncannily, it involves a civil war, a milchemet achim, in the wake of the sin of the golden calf) help us frame this sad and sober moment in the history of Israel? How can we help? Can we take a principled stand in favor of democracy and against Israel becoming an authoritarian regime without checks and balances without adding to the division of this moment?

March 4, 2023

As a child, I reveled in the heroism of Mordechai. I admired him for his gumption, for the way he stood up to Haman and never betrayed his values--even when his very life was at stake. I was taught to see Mordechai as a capable and wise civil servant, as a mensch who took in his orphaned niece and loved her like his own, and as a visionary who empowered the people around him, most especially his niece, Esther. But the story of Mordechai is more complicated than that of a simple hero. Tomorrow, we're going to interrogate the narrative that so many of us were taught: Was Mordechai a true hero who lifted up good Jewish values every minute of his life? Or was Mordechai a self-centered politician who was so focused on his own image that he risked the safety and well-being of the Jewish people in order to prove his dedication to Judaism? Was Mordechai a benevolent and loving uncle? Or was he a manipulative abuser, forcing Esther to conform to his will and serve his purposes? Is the point of Purim to celebrate heroism in its simplest form, or does the holiday remind us that the line between hero and villain is impossibly thin such that we must take care in every moment not to cross over to the wrong side?

Will everything be OK? Will all the things that I am worrying about be OK? Will all the things you are worrying about be OK? Will all the things we are worrying about be OK? I would love to believe the premise of a children’s story by Anna Dewdney with an evocative title--Everything Will be OK. The plot is that a little bunny worries about little things, like getting the wrong kind of sandwich for lunch; medium things, like losing a kite; and big things, like missing family. In each case the bunny wonders will everything be OK, and in each case the answer is yes, everything will be OK. This book resonates for me because it gives voice to an inchoate anxiety that many of us feel, and to a question that many of us ask: Will everything be OK? What do we do with this question that never goes away? And what do we do when the real answer to the question, if we are being honest with ourselves, is no. That happens to all of us. Our health, or the health of somebody we love, is not OK. Somebody we love is struggling with mental illness, which can be a formidable, sometimes seemingly intractable foe. Not OK. A spouse loses their partner and now lives a much lonelier life. Not OK. Somebody we love dies young, and our world is shaken. Not OK. Somebody loses their job and has to deal with the uncertainty of now what do I do, and the resultant financial anxiety. Not OK. Relational stress and conflict. Not OK. It’s great when the problem gets solved, and everything is OK, but what happens when that does not happen? That is the situation for the Israelites in the middle of the Book of Exodus.

The mass murderer of 11 innocent people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh will go on trial in April. The Justice Department is seeking the death penalty. What do we think of that? Two questions present themselves. First, if we were to look for wisdom from Jewish sources, should the Tree of Life mass murderer be sentenced to life in prison, or the death penalty? One of the strongest arguments against the death penalty is concern that the justice system might makes a mistake and convict and execute an innocent person. That is not a concern here. There is 100% certainty that on October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the defendant murdered 11 innocent human beings. If we know that he did this unspeakable act of evil, would the primary Jewish source suggest that this is one of the rare times we would favor capital punishment, or not? Remember, however, that mass shootings in America are tragically and depressingly all too common. If you believe that the defendant in the Tree of Life murders should receive the death penalty, would you advocate for the same result for all the defendants guilty of murdering innocent people in mass shootings? There are a heartbreaking lot of them. Second, with what organ do we decide this question: our head or our heart? You will remember the first question in the famous debate of Governor Dukakis and Vice President Bush in 1988. If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would the Governor support the death penalty? The Governor answered all head, no heart, and many thought he lost the election in that moment. Are feelings of anger, revenge, and tribal connection appropriate or not appropriate as we think about the worst massacre of Jews on American soil in American Jewish history coming to trial in a few weeks?

Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz and Alan Teperow as they discuss Alan's passion for painting.

This week, we are reading Parshat Mishpatim. This Torah portion is all about rules and regs. After the revelation, God spells out in minute detail what the people should do and how they should behave. It’s not a conversation, not open to interpretation, the laws are given without explanation and the people simply accept them. They say, na’aseh v’nishmah—we will do what God says and then we will seek to understand what we are doing and why. So often, this is how we engage with our world. That is how law enforcement agents get into trouble. They get so hooked on forcing people to behave in a certain way, so focused on doing rather than thinking, that they lose track of what is appropriate force and end up causing harm rather than maintaining order. It happens in the classroom too. Recently, I was speaking with a family. Their child had come up with a creative way to solve a math equation. Their methodology wasn’t the same as what was being taught, but it worked. Every answer they wrote on their worksheet was right. But the teacher gave them a 0 for the assignment. Why? Because the way they did the work was different than what the teacher had taught. And the teacher wanted them to follow the rules—na’aseh v’nishmah. When we receive rules and follow them in this way, there is a strength. It saves mental energy. Na’aseh v’nishma means you don’t have to evaluate every given situation. You just do, you follow the rules, you get through the day, and you save your mental energy for the projects and ideas you care about most. But there is another way to engage with rules and with law that is revealed in the book of Vayikra. God says וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֤ם אֶת־חֻקֹּתַי֙ וְאֶת־מִשְׁפָּטַ֔י אֲשֶׁ֨ר יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה אֹתָ֛ם הָאָדָ֖ם וָחַ֣י בָּהֶ֑ם you shall guard my laws and ordinances and you shall live by them. In other words, rules aren’t just limits that are intended to be followed without thought. In an ideal world, the process of following rules, of affirming societal norms, should enhance and sustain our lives.

A 26-year old named Ilya Sosansky was the seventh victim of the terrorist attack in Jerusalem on January 27 in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood. Ilya Sosansky was a graduate of AMIT Technology High School. AMIT sent out an email describing the indescribable loss of this young man. Ilya Sosansky was a beloved, popular DJ. His friends described him as a young man filled with a joy for life, who could cheer up anyone. Adi Yona referred to Ilya as, “A charm, a walking smile, a good soul who only did good.” At the end of AMIT’s email are three Hebrew words: “Hashem Yikom Damo,” meaning, may God take revenge for his blood. How do we think about praying for revenge? It is a complicated question with sources on both sides. On the one hand, there is a famous prayer for bloody revenge during the Shabbat Musaf service Av Harachamim that is in traditional Orthodox siddurim that channels the vengeful, bloody energy of Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon, there we say…and wept”), which climaxes by invoking a blessing “on him who seizes Babylonian babies (Babylon destroyed the first Temple) and dashes them against the rocks!” These prayers for vengeance are wholly absent from our siddur, where in the same spot in the Shabbat morning service we offer a Prayer for Peace and a Prayer for the Renewal of Creation. On the other hand, whether we know it or not, we actually do pray for revenge three times a day, in the malshinim prayer of the thrice-daily Amidah which is deliberately mistranslated by the Rabbinical Assembly siddur in order to take out the offensive edge. Famously the Jewish people have been debating for thousands of years whether, at our Passover seders, when we reduce our cup of wine by ten droplets for the ten plagues, those are tears of joy (our enslavers got the punishment they deserved), or are tears of sadness (the Egyptians are also human beings made by God, and they also suffered). The ambivalence of this seder ritual carries forward to today. Do we pray for revenge of the terrorists who murdered Ilya Sosansky, just desserts for those who spilled innocent blood? Or do we channel the wisdom of the famous Beruriah in the Talmud, tractate Berakhot, interpreting Psalm 104, that we want sin to disappear not by the sinners dying, but by the sinners changing their ways so that they are no longer sinners? Sadly, this issue is not going away. It recurs. Just this week a 17-year old Jewish man, and a 20-year old Jewish man, were stabbed in Jerusalem. The news source reporting the story concluded: “The terrorists, 14 and 13 years of age respectively, hailed from eastern Jerusalem.”

February 11, 2023

If there's one lesson of this coming Shabbat, it is that life is not a solo sport - we are better when we are together - all of us. That applies to leadership - Yitro teaches Moses to include others as leaders. That applies to family - Moses listens to Yitro, including him in decision making. And that applies to community - when our ancestors gathered at Sinai, they spoke together as one, including all. We are holy when we are one. We are stronger when we are one. We are better when "we" is truly inclusive of all! This week at our Talmud Class we have the privilege of learning in conversation with a true expert on how to get inclusion right, Shelly Christensen, co-founder of Jewish Disabilities Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month (JDAIM). She will be teaching us, “From Longing to Belonging: How wisdom from Isaiah gives us God’s definition of inclusion.” Click here for texts.