An Interfaith Trip for the Ages
March 22, 2010
Several weeks ago, I was one of several Temple members helping the children of Rabbi Robert and Charlotte Shapiro (both of blessed memory) in the difficult but necessary job of sorting through a number of file boxes and keepsakes in preparation for the cleaning and sale of our “rabbinage.” We were trying to make the determination of which items had either intrinsic or sentimental value for the surviving family members or for our congregation, which they had been part of for some forty years.
There was one item in particular that caught my attention — a plaque given by the leaders and membership of Old North Church, honoring Rabbi Shapiro on the occasion of his retirement, which the family didn’t wish to keep, and which I felt carried no small amount of historical value as part of Judaism in America. The story of our two communities of faith sharing a covenantal bond of friendship for nearly half a century is the kind of story that could ONLY be told on these shores, and so along with a lengthy explanatory note, the plaque now resides in the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Our covenant with Old North has, nearly from our establishment, been an important part of our very identity as a Temple community, and even though Old North preceded our founding by more than 300 years (!), that same covenant is looked at with both pride and seriousness whenever Old North tells its own story as a church and community. But to be both candid and direct, I believe that the strength of our relationship has diminished in recent years, and it is clear to me that, as a whole, our current membership seems to hold it with somewhat lesser appreciation than had been the case in the decades prior.
I have discussed my feelings quite openly with Rev. Calhoun, and he agrees that a combination of our Temple’s demographic changes and Old North’s period of several pastoral transitions are key factors to consider. But more importantly, we likewise both agree that the time is ripe to do something dramatic that will re-invigorate our precious and historic relationship.
And that is why we will be travelling to Israel together – Temple Emanu-El and Old North Church, and that, too, will be of historical importance, particularly for our two congregations. News of our plans have been slowly getting out (the trip will take place from February 13 – 24, 2011), and during Rev. Calhoun’s recent Friday night sermon, as part of our ongoing and annual “Pulpit Exchange”, he described most eloquently what this trip will mean to him as a pastor and even more, as a Christian. When I preach at Old North later this month, I’ll also be reflecting on the significance of the trip.
I am grateful that the Reverend gave me the opportunity, based mainly on my years of experience visiting Israel, to shape our itinerary, and I devoted a great deal of time during my recent “mini-Sabbatical” to do just that. As I’ve expressed in the past, I have always found great beauty and spiritual inspiration, not only from the “Jewish sites” in Israel, but from the Christian holy places as well. So for instance, a little over a year ago, during a break from my Convention activities, I took the opportunity to tour the grounds and gardens of Notre Dame de Tsion, a French monastery located high in the Jerusalem hills, dedicated to contemplation, hospitality, and interfaith understanding.
As part of our trip with Old North, I’ve arranged for us to share a lovely lunch up in those gardens – a place that the vast majority of Jewish tourists never venture. And it will follow immediately on the heels of our trip to Yad VaShem, the newly re-built Holocaust Memorial which can be seen from afar. Of course, on our journey we’ll see the ancient and contemporary Jewish holy places in Jerusalem. We will explore the fortress of Masada, dig for archeological treasures from the days of the Maccabees, and learn the story of Israel’s modern independence through the architecture of Tel Aviv. And of course, we will worship together on Shabbat.
But we will also worship together on the Sunday following, and we’ll do so near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City’s Christian Quarter. We will follow in the footsteps of the New Testament Apostles, as we sail aboard a ship across the Sea of the Galilee, dine in the cellar of a hillside winery, climb the Mount Of Beatitudes (the site of the famous “Sermon on the Mount”), and walk inside an ancient synagogue in Capernaum, where Jesus himself used to worship as a Jew.
Designing this trip has truly been a “labor of love”, and I’ll admit that the days will be rather full, but still with enough free time for folks and families to explore on their own. In case you can’t tell, I couldn’t be more excited. More information will be coming soon. Feel free to be in touch with any questions in the meanwhile. As we’ve said for centuries: Next year in Jerusalem!
Rest and Renewal
December 10, 2009
Some four thousand years ago, when the concept of Shabbat was first introduced to the world, the Torah tells us that having finished the work of creation, God rested, shavat, and replenished His Soul, va-yi-na-fash. So in keeping with both longstanding wisdom and contractual agreement, the rabbis of our congregation, in the cyclical aftermath of seven years of service, have been afforded the opportunity for sabbatical renewal. Eight years ago, thanks to the generosity of our congregation and its leadership, I was likewise granted such a sabbatical period (although by mutual agreement, it came at the conclusion of my 10th year of service to the Temple).
The years now having passed, beginning this November, I was to have begun another such sabbatical period of renewal and regeneration. However, as I assessed the difficult circumstances faced by so many of our members and families, and recognizing this as a time of both transition and transformation for our Temple, I decided that it was not in the best interests of our congregational community for me to accept the sabbatical period as previously agreed. Instead, I proposed to our leadership that the six months promised to me for spiritual and intellectual growth might be divided into somewhat more modest and manageable segments of two month-long interludes. And so, that is why I will be taking a brief, but most welcomed and appreciated sabbatical spell this January and February.
Looking back some eight years ago, I think back to all I was able to accomplish during that period, and how I tried to make each and every day meaningful. I began my Doctoral Studies at Spertus College with an intensive course on the History of Jewish Spirituality. I attended lectures on Pastoral Therapy at Hebrew College, studied Bible with Elie Wiesel at Boston University, and explored Jewish Mysticism at Brandeis. I also was invited to lecture on Jewish Theology to a gathering of over one hundred Christian ministers in the Midwest, and laid the groundwork of research for two papers that would later be published in national, scholarly journals.
Without a doubt, our congregation was equally the beneficiary of my own, personal learning and spiritual journeys. Upon my return in early 2002 from six months of sabbatical, we began a process of introspection and change that would result in the long overdue and thorough renovation of our patterns of worship, of study, of leadership and of communal outreach, which transformed, all for the better, the very face of our congregation.
So now looking ahead to the next eight weeks, even though the time away will be so much more fleeting, I am confident knowing that once again, my personal rejuvenation will bring seeds of transformation and growth for our congregation as well. I have already laid out a course of study to continue towards the completion of my Doctorate, and I also have a certain number of other goals in place – including becoming more proficient at chanting the nusach – especially Haftarah tropes, and experiencing modes of worship in different synagogue settings.
I know that the weeks will pass quickly — in the blink of an eye, and am grateful to our wonderful congregation for affording me these sabbatical moments. I am already looking forward to sharing with you all that I might learn and discover, as I continue growing intellectually and evolving spiritually as your Rabbi.
Lessons of Recession
November 1, 2009
Yom Kippur Morning 5770 (2009)
Temple Emanu-El, Marblehead, MA
We all expected that the substantial and consistent growth of this Jewish community that’s taken place over the past two decades would only continue, but the rather sudden and extreme economic downturn has changed all of that. Times are tough, but still, Jewish parents are continuing to encourage their children to pursue higher education with the hope of their finding upward, economic mobility. But some kids – a lot, actually — are choosing to stay in college and graduate school simply because they can’t find work in their chosen fields right now.
Because of the shortage of jobs, towards which neither the local government nor the Jewish Federation can offer much assistance, our local Jewish newspaper has begun to run advertisements so that out-of-work community members might publicize their available skills.
The Union for Reform Judaism just distributed a guide entitled. “Financial Security for the Synagogue,” which offers budgetary suggestions as well as advice for attracting & retaining members, because synagogue memberships have plummeted in virtually every congregation. Even at Temple Emanu-El, home to some of the city’s most affluent Jews, membership has decreased by 44 percent. The precipitous decline in membership has resulted not simply from disinterest in synagogue life, but from the inability or unwillingness of many congregants to continue paying dues. Some members have formally resigned, while others have simply stopped dropped away.
So at its annual conference of the North American Reform Rabbinate, the comment was made: “We are suffering not only from financial depression; the depreciation on spiritual and religious values is evident at every hand… The religious life of the Jewish people, its manifestation in synagogue and home, is at a low ebb…”
The American Hebrew and Jewish Tribune reads the situation more gravely: “Judaism is badly in need of a major operation,” it writes. “Send for the ambulance – or the undertaker.”
The year is 1935, and all of this is part of the historical record of our American Jewish community at the time. (1) Oh, and the Temple Emanu-El I mentioned is the one in New York City. Here in Marblehead, we hadn’t yet come into being.
But it all sounds frighteningly familiar, for we are now living through the most significant economic decline since the Great Depression of those 1930’s. And keeping the wise truism of historian, Santayana front and center, that if we don’t learn from the past, then we are condemned to repeat it, I think it is crucial for us to learn from the past. What happened to the Jewish community back in that last, Great Depression, and what were the ramifications for the succeeding generations? How did the Jewish community respond to the grim conditions, and how might we do better this time around?
Of course, the Jewish community of the 1930’s was still becoming integrated into mainstream American life, particularly here on the East Coast. During the Great Depression, Anti-semitism forced Jews into very specific, economic niches, and Jews, like many minority cultures of today, needed to form their own banks, professional alliances, and even schools of advanced learning.
When the first so-called “Jewish” bank in New York City went belly-up in 1930, its closure left thousands of Jewish families and businesses devastated. At the time, most New York Jews had little connection to Wall Street, and the previous year’s Crash had little immediate impact on them. But the failure of the Jewish-owned Bank of the United States, which held the savings of nearly 20% of New York’s Jews, transformed the community both economically and psychologically.
“When a non-Jewish bank falls through,” wrote the Yiddish newspaper, The Day, “it is said that only an individual or an individual institution did not act as it should have. But when a Jewish banker and a Jewish bank go bankrupt, people right away create the impression that it is the downfall of all Jewish bankers and all Jewish people.” (2)
Of course, our current economic depression is taking place within a much different set of realities for the American Jewish community. With the exception of the large influx of Jews from the Soviet Union that started taking place a quarter-century ago, we are no longer a community of immigrants or children of immigrants, and in intervening years, we have established a much more diversified presence both socially and economically on the American continent. Nonetheless, some rather dire predictions are already being pronounced looking ahead to the aftermath of this current economic downturn.
Dean of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Steven Windmueller, a specialist on politics and American Jewish history, suggests that in the aftermath of the current economic upheaval, our American Jewish community will be forever changed. Looking forward, Windmueller believes that the political and economic clout of American Jewry will be seriously compromised as the result of the community’s being perceived as structurally and functionally weakened by the current crisis. He notes how the Bernie Madoff affair has not only caused the loss of anywhere between $600 million to $1 billion to our Jewish communal resources, but also the loss of confidence and trust in the management of our most essential philanthropic institutions. Windmueller believes that the impact of the global, economic downturn has already generated a significant increase in anti-semitism overseas, as seems to always accompany economic turmoil, and may be becoming more evident in the United States as well. He anticipates that many of our Jewish institutions will not survive this crisis, and many others will seek to merge or be acquired by stronger organizational partners. (3)
Our own community’s recent Task Force project, led by Carl Sloane and a team of Harvard Business School interns, has presented some of these same predictions, although their more hopeful reading of the landscape includes specific strategies that might result in healthier outcomes for our Jewish, communal future here on Boston’s North Shore.
In addition to surveying contemporary realities, I strongly I believe that we can and should learn from the past, as we make predictions and strategies for the future. There are three specific lessons from experience of American Jews during the Great Depression that, through my own studies, I think are crucial moving forward and through this most difficult time of recession.
First, it is recognized among all scholars and historians that as synagogue membership plummeted during the Depression years, and membership in Jewish Community Centers likewise dropped, Jewish education was left on the back burner of communal concerns. Historian, Beth Wenger, writes of the situation facing some of New York’s most prominent synagogues:
“During the Depression, student enrollments drastically declined. Without a steady income from tuition, synagogues had difficulty supporting programs and paying teacher salaries. In 1931, the Institutional Synagogue owed $9,000 in back salaries to teachers who remained unpaid for four to seven months at a time. Like many congregations, the Kane Street Synagogue could not fund a paid teaching staff and relied on volunteers (usually women) to serve as teachers in its Sunday school. Many professional educators denounced the practice of hiring unskilled volunteer teachers and were particularly incensed when congregations made school budgets the primary victims of money-saving efforts. Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox rabbinical organizations publicly protested the decisions of congregations and Federations to allot Jewish education secondary status in budgetary decisions…” (4)
Professor Jonathan Sarna of Brandeis University, one of the foremost experts on the history of American Judaism, suggests that the losses in the realm of Jewish education were never regained, and that the impact of years of Jews poorly educated in their faith and traditions is a deficit we continue to pay in this generation.
There is no doubting our own congregation’s ongoing commitment to maintaining a strong Religious School, Youth Programs, and continuing education opportunities, and every member of this Temple helps to support our school through our dues and other contributions. Our Temple budget will not be balanced on the backs of our children. But even as the Temple leadership is doing everything possible to help families who are hurting financially to maintain their memberships, even our school cannot be completely exempted from budget cuts and salary freezes.
That is why creative solutions, such as our groundbreaking collaborations with Congregation Shirat Hayam are so important going forward at least in the near future. Interestingly, our decision to pool resources with Shirat Hayam in the hiring of our new Youth Director, Darren Benedict, as well as the trial merging our 8th Grade Service Learning classes, was one of the few places where Temple Emanu-El was mentioned in Carl Sloan’s Task Force report. In the area of education, we were singled out as a model to be emulated moving forward through this difficult economic climate. Therefore, as a community, and as families, let us learn from the past by staying firm in our resolve not to let the Jewish education of our children become a casualty of this day, and thereby, a liability for the future.
Professor Sarna has also written of how the American Jewish community turned markedly inward during the years of the Depression. (5) Rabbis and other communal leaders struggled to convince the local Jewish population to maintain their support for world-wide Jewish concerns. And I have to wonder, how might history have been different if we, on these shores during the ‘30’s were paying greater attention to what was happening on the European continent, as the Nazi Party was rapidly gaining momentum?
Looking both backward and ahead, I worry that we might be seeing a similar trend happening again today. I think back to last December. The war Israel was fighting in Gaza to protect her civilians under fire by Hamas terrorists may have been the first time when Israel has been forced to defend herself, and American Jews failed to mobilize much in the way of support. Oh yes, we had our rally here on the North Shore. Maybe two hundred people showed up. And we sent some Ipods to the Israeli soldiers and Game-Boys to the kids of Sderot. But other than those rather negligible expressions of support, we, like most American Jews, for the first time ever, pretty much let Israel go it alone.
As a Board Member of our local Jewish Federation of the North Shore, I don’t think I’m crossing any boundary of impropriety by sharing with you that discussions and research are on-going to explore the possibility of Directed Giving as part of the Federation’s campaign strategy. I support the initiative, and hope that it will help increase giving by allowing donors more of a say in how their contributions will express their values and priorities. But as I have shared with Federation Director, Liz Donnenfeld, and President, Robert Salter, I am concerned that the pressing needs of Jews in Eastern Europe, in South America, in the former Soviet Union, on the African continent, and of course, in Israel may end up getting shortchanged as a result. We must be diligent in communicating the ongoing importance of looking to the welfare of our brothers and sisters in other lands beside our own. And I think that history provides the sobering reason why this is so true.
Finally, looking back to the lessons of the Great Depression, we can find certain, positive outcomes for the Jewish community, that we might also learn from and hopefully emulate. As Jews had always done, throughout the previous two thousand years while living in diverse lands across the globe, the Jewish community did its best to care for its own.
In 1654, newly arriving Jews met significant resistance from New Amsterdam’s governor, Peter Stuyvesant, who feared that the new arrivals would soon become destitute and would drain the limited resources of the fledgling colonies. Meanwhile, the Dutch West India Company urged Stuyvesant not to expel the immigrants, whom they believed would be of great benefit to enlarging the new, local economy. After some negotiation, the three parties reached a compromise: Jews would be allowed to settle in New Amsterdam, provided they agreed to take care of their own poor and needy. This agreement came to be known as the “Stuyvesant Promise”, and it evolved into an accepted Jewish norm to reject government support and establish their own philanthropic and social welfare agencies. (6)
Here in America in the 1930’s, the “Stuyvesant Promise”, which for some 250 years had guided the sense of mutual responsibility among American Jews, ironically did not survive the Depression. The Jewish community had nowhere the resources to meet the significant needs of the day, and many Jews were forced to seek help from state agencies and welfare programs. But of course, individual Jews and organizations stepped up their efforts to plug the gaps. Some Yiddish newspapers began their own relief funds, and as I mentioned at the outset, a regular column in one Jewish periodical provided space for unemployed men to list their qualifications, under the headline: “Do You Have A Job For Him?” (7) Interestingly, this past summer, our own Jewish Journal of the North Shore mounted a similar campaign, but it has yet to bear much positive result.
Our Jewish Family Services, which knew remarkable success in the historic re-settlement of émigrés from the Soviet Union back in the 1980’s, simply hasn’t the capacity to manage the enormous needs of the current crisis. Nearly a half-million dollars in accumulated debt, I expect our JFS soon to be absorbed or merged into some larger institution.
However here, within our own congregation, perhaps in an ironic twist on the idea of the Stuyvesant Promise, the imperative of member-to-member assistance in time of crisis continues to take hold. Recognizing the pressing needs, on the more micro-level of our synagogue community, you continue to answer the call for help through our Hineynu Initiative, which was imagined and spearheaded by our President, Stuart Cohen, our Board of Trustees and professional staff nearly a year ago. This became our opportunity to pull together resources as a community within a community, and as a family of families. And I personally want to thank every member of our Temple who has responded – either by sending grocery gift cards, offering transportation assistance, volunteering medical advice, legal counsel, and employment guidance. As we say in our weekly Shabbat announcements: “Do you need help? Can you offer help?” That is the way we say to one another: “Hineynu – We are Here.”
During the Depression years, the ethical obligation that one community member should care for and support another, history has shown, was key to emerging safely from those years on both the individual and communal level. And so we can look for it to be in our current situation going forward.
Who might have imagined, back in 1935, the scenario during which I began this sermon, that in the aftermath of the Great Depression, a powerful spiritual revival would take hold in America, and that our Jewish community, revitalized, would engage in a period of growth and expansion unseen even in the years preceding the Crash? Might that possibly be what the future holds for us, as well, despite the dire predictions of what lies ahead for the American Jewish community?
This past March, as we were announcing the formation of our Hineynu Initiative, I shared a parable in our monthly Temple Bulletin, that I would like to conclude with on this day of Yom Kippur.
It is told of two woodchoppers who felled a tree that was over one hundred years old. Looking at the growth rings to determine the tree’s age, the younger man noticed that there were five very narrow rings. He concluded that there had been a five-year drought, during which the tree had shown very little growth.
However, the other lumberjack, a wise, older man had a different viewpoint. He contended that the dry years actually were the most significant in the tree’s history. His reason: because of the drought, the tree had to force its roots down farther to get the water and the minerals it needed. With a strengthened root system, it was able to grow faster and taller once conditions improved.
So do we hope and trust that these “dry years” will find us strengthening the very foundations of our congregation and community. The power to make it so is in each of our own hands, and history will have the final word as to how well we do. Let us stay the course on our commitment to Jewish education. Let us keep our eyes open to the situation of Jews world-wide. And let us continue to look to one another, and be there for one another to our fullest capacity, to help withstand whatever storms we might face.
In so doing, may future generations look back to what we were able to accomplish, and perceive this as likewise a period of strength and promise. Perhaps some scholars and rabbis of the future will look to this time, this community, and especially, this congregation to help discover ways to weather their own generation’s unforeseen economic crisis. Looking to the past, perhaps they, too will learn its lessons, and not be condemned, but blessed, to repeat it.
(1) See Beth S. Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression. Uncertain Promise. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1996.
(2) Wenger, p. 14.
(3) Dr. Steven Windmueller, “The Unfolding Economic Crisis: Its Devastating Implications for American Jewry”. Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, No. 47, 16 August 2009 / 26 Av 5769.
(4) Wenger, p. 191.
(5) Jonathan Sarna, “Reinventing American Judaism”, Reform Judaism, Fall 2009.
(6) Marc Dollinger, “Die Velt, Yene Velt, and Roosevelt’: The New Deal in the Jewish Community”, in Franklin D. Roooseveldt. The New Deal and Its Aftermath, Thomas P. Wolf, William D. Pederson, and Byron W. Daynee. p. 38.
(7) Wenger, p. 143.
A “Jewish” Halloween?
October 8, 2009
Like some of the other American observances that have morphed from earlier religious practices, over the years Halloween has come in for its own share of controversy among Jewish families. After all, the pagan roots of the holiday have little to do with how Jews view the world and its unseen inhabitants. Not to mention that our customary and traditional holiday day for wearing masks amid parades and revelry is, of course, the Festival of Purim. But I have always seen Halloween as, at worst, harmless (of course, I’m not a dentist!), and at best, as carrying the potential for expressing genuine Jewish values.
The origins of Halloween are pre-Christian, rooted in the Celtic Pagan year, which was divided into two halves. The first half, roughly from spring to fall, was for the world of light, and the second half was for the world of darkness. Holidays marked the transitions from each half to other. In spring, “Beltane” celebrated the spiritual beginning of light-filled summer days and the life-giving force of the sun. By contrast, “Samhain” (pronounced “sow-an”), the precursor to Halloween, fell on November 1 and represented summer’s end, winter nights, and, in general, darkness. It was seen as a bridge between two opposite worlds: the human world of light and good on one hand, and the netherworld of darkness and evil on the other. Our evening “Ma-ariv” prayer and morning “Yotzer” prayer can be understood as twice-daily rejoinders to these Pagan ideas, by stating that there is but One God, who both “fashions light and creates darkness.”
However, I have never believed that the Pagan origins of Halloween should dissuade American Jews from allowing their children to participate in what has become a purely cultural, rather than religious, celebration.
I remember when my children were little, how they would dress in their costumes (somehow always favoring Red Sox and Patriots and Celtics get-ups over the more customary ghosts and goblins). We would go to one of the local nursing homes here in Marblehead, where the staff members had prepared a Halloween path through the rooms of the residents, and while the hundreds of kids walking through got their bags filled with treats, the residents were able to delight in seeing and greeting the happy children.
There were other years when we would take kids to “Trick or Treat” at the homes of Temple members who were ill or house-bound, thereby also fulfilling the mitzvah of “bikkur holim” (visiting the sick), which brought joy to everyone involved.
Yes, there are “Jewish” ways to celebrate Halloween, and over the years, we keep finding out new and different ways to make it more meaningful. Some families collect canned goods in addition to candy while going door to door. We have often sponsored a “Share the Loot” collection for kids to share their goodies with the needy. And because the holiday is absolutely NOT religious, it allows various communities to come together for the fun, who might otherwise have limited opportunities for celebrating together. These are not only American values, but they’re Jewish as well. So although at my age, I’ll still save my own costumed revelry until Purim, I’m looking forward to seeing the neighborhood kids, many of whom, of course, are Temple members, coming to the front door ready to fill their bags to the brim.
A Tribute to One of Our “Guardians”
September 23, 2009
A famous story from the Jerusalem Talmud tells of three rabbis who were sent out to survey whether or not the Jewish communities of the Land of Israel had appropriate teachers of Torah. When they came to a certain community and found no such teachers, they said to the members of the local Jewish community, “Bring us the guardians of the city.” The members of the community brought them the city police officers. They said, “These people are not truly the guardians of the city….” The local Jews then asked, “And who, then, are the guardians to the city?” The Rabbis said to them, “The teachers of Torah, as the Biblical verse states, ‘If God does not build the city, the workers have labored in vain.’” (Psalm 127:1)
The wisdom emerging from our traditional Jewish sources provides a seemingly endless supply of texts extolling the role that teachers of children play in the grand scheme of Jewish, communal life. As a religious culture that embraces Hebrew literacy as a fundamental opening to meaningful spirituality and moral living, it is no surprise, then, that the teachers of Torah are given such an elevated position. To a large extent, teachers are likened not only to parents (for they help fulfill the parents’ obligation of instructing children “diligently”), but even as partners with God. A remarkable text in the Talmud (Bava Metzia 2:11) goes so far as to suggest that if a person has two lost objects to return, one belonging to his teacher and one belonging to his parent, he should first return the object belonging to his teacher, because as the text reasons: “His parent brought him into this world, while his teacher brings him into the World to Come.”
On Erev Simchat Torah, our annual celebration of Torah will also provide us the opportunity to thank and honor one of our congregation’s most devoted and beloved teachers, Leona Glazer. For almost forty years, Leona has guided the Temple’s Hebrew school curriculum, and worked with our students as they not only learned the basics of Hebrew reading and prayerbook literacy, but also as they took their first, tentative steps in leading the congregation in worship from the bima. Leona has been blessed with the uncommon experience of teaching into the next generation of her students’ children, testifying and bringing to life the wisdom of the sages:
“Whoever teaches a child does not teach that child alone, but also the child’s children and grandchildren, and so on – to the end of all generations!”
Our entire congregation has been blessed through Leona’s decades of tenderly instructing our children in the knowledge of Hebrew and Jewish worship. And as expressed in the wisdom of our tradition, the generations to come will likewise benefit from her years of devoted service. It will be our honor to honor Leona on Simchat Torah this year, for she will always be considered among our most precious “guardians”.
Hidden High Holydays
August 12, 2009
When we imagine what to expect during this year’s upcoming High Holyday services, now only a few days away, the scene conjured is likely one of our synagogue filled from front to back; of fellow Temple members dressed in formal solemnity, and of the awesome majesty of the pulpit, liturgy, sermons and music. The “Days of Awe” evoke a heightened sense of grandeur, and as such, are for many of us, the peak of spiritual beauty. But for others in our community, that same majesty can be an imposing hindrance to spiritual elevation. I know that for some, the formality, the crowds, and even the duration of worship doesn’t quite serve the higher purpose. Perhaps that is why, as the years go by, more and more of our congregants experience their favorite High Holyday moments through the more modest and quiet services of the season.
The first such example would be our annual Selichot service (this year to be observed Saturday evening, September 12th). Selichot means “Penitential Worship”, and originally, the Selichot service was observed at midnight at the end of the last Shabbat preceding Rosh Hashanah as a means of anticipating and even entering into the spirit of the Holyday season. And although we have established the tradition of worshipping at the somewhat earlier hour of 10:00pm, the special time of quiet and reflection affords a unique opportunity for contemplation that may be more difficult to experience during the bigger services of the season.
The Selichot service includes most of the primary themes of the season, and although it is intended to set the stage for the High Holydays to follow, I know that for many of our members, it is truly one of the highlights. It has also become our custom, during that service, to dress the Torah Scrolls in their white mantles for the season. And yes, the service is somewhat brief – generally only a half-hour or so in duration.
Another such example of a more “hidden” service of the season would be our annual “Kever Avot” – a memorial service shared at our Temple Emanu-El Memorial Park in anticipation of the High Holydays. (This year, the service will be held on Sunday, September 13th at 12:00noon.) The service of “Kever Avot” (meaning “at our ancestors’ resting place”) is rooted in the longstanding practice of visiting the gravesites of loved ones during the High Holyday season. Some medieval, folk-beliefs held that our departed dear ones might have the ability to intercede on High on behalf of the living, particularly for the blessings of health, prosperity and goodness for the year to come.
Naturally, at the New Year, as at all festive seasons and occasions, our thoughts turn to our departed dear ones. We long for their nearness, while at the same time, feel close to them in our thoughts and prayers. So while our Cemetery Memorial Service lacks the formality and grandeur of the Yizkor on Yom Kippur afternoon, many find that the simplicity of the setting, and closeness of those gathered in our Memorial Park’s meditation garden is a moving and special highlight of the season.
All of us at Temple Emanu-El wish our members and their families a meaningful and inspiring High Holyday season ahead, and hope that the variety of opportunities for worship, reflection, and observance will enrich our entire community.
L’shanah Tovah!
The Calendar and the Cosmos
May 12, 2009
In a recent Boston Globe article (5/2/09), astronomer Alan MacRobert, a senior editor for Sky and Telescope magazine, commented on the manner by which people mark time according to astronomical cycles that don’t fit neatly into our human, mathematical structures.
“Three great astronomical cycles - the day, the month, and the year - have governed people’s ordering of time throughout history. The day is one rotation of the Earth. The month is one cycle of the moon. And the year is one revolution of Earth around the sun.
“Since prehistoric times, nearly every culture has considered these cycles to be a sort of cosmic clockwork built by the Creator to mark out the cycles of nature and human life. The problem is that its gears don’t mesh. Each one of the three spins along on its own, disconnected from the others. So every calendar that attempts to interrelate them, as if they were part of a single plan, becomes an ever-more-complicated mess of approximations and kludges…
“Contrary to humanity’s assumption since forever, they were not intelligently designed. They resulted from the random, natural processes of how the solar system fell together at its formation 4.6 billion years ago (and various random perturbations since then), like stars and planets everywhere. These large-scale happenstances show no more planning than swirls of dust in the wind. People have lost their faith over less.”
In reading MacRobert’s observations, I thought immediately of how our Jewish perspective actually refutes his argument and turns it on its head. In the Book of Exodus, just before the night of the Passover, God instructs the Israelites as follows regarding the reckoning of sacred times and seasons: “This month shall be for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.” (Exodus 12:2) The sages of our tradition, noticing the emphatic qualification “for you”, taught that the recognition of sacred times was, therefore, entirely a human enterprise.
Likewise, in the Book of Leviticus we read: “These are the festivals of the Lord which you shall proclaim…” (Leviticus 23:4) And so again, the rabbis understood that God was telling the Israelites: If you proclaim them, then they are My festivals, but if you do not proclaim them, they are not My festivals.”
In other words, Judaism asserts that sacred days and seasons, and even the very reckoning of time are NOT inherently part of the order of the Universe. The cosmos and the natural universe know nothing of our festivals, New Years, or Sabbaths. These are, indeed, purely human institutions! But rather being than a challenge to our faith, we believe that this simple reality provides us with both a great gift and the remarkable power to create and declare sanctity in time.
In fact, sacred moments come into being only through the behaviors we choose to follow. For instance, Friday night and Saturday only become Shabbat when we decide, in the parlance of our tradition, to “make Shabbat.” And therefore, when we decide to elevate time, such as Shabbat or the festivals, through the practices of our tradition, we suffuse that time with holiness that would otherwise simply never be present.
Despite MacArthur’s assertion, it makes little difference to our Jewish faith that the irregularity of the moon’s rotations about the earth, and the earth’s rotations about the sun, and even the earth’s rotation on its own axis, force us to joggle our calendar every now and then so that the seasons remain in the correct order. More important to us is the realization that all of time contains the possibility for holiness, if we simply decide to make it so.
“Ahalan”
April 20, 2009
An Israeli entry into the annual Eurovision Song Contest from 1991 includes the following joyous verse:
“Here I set my table
A piece of bread, a fresh flower
I opened the door for my neighbors
And whoever comes, we’ll greet ‘Ahalan’
And whoever comes, we’ll greet ‘Ahalan’
The song titled“Kan Beti / Kan Nolad’ti (Here Is My Home / Here I was Born)” came in 3rd place in the contest, and that concluding word of the verse, “Ahalan” captures an interesting bit of contemporary, colloquial Hebrew.
There are, of course, several ways in which we greet one another as Jews. A very traditional greeting is the somewhat formal expression, “Shalom aleichem” (Peace be upon you), to which the customary response is offered, “V’aleichem ha- shalom” (and upon you be the peace). News broadcasts on TV and radio often begin “Shalom rav” (great peace), or simply “Shalom”.
But more and more, when Israelis on the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Netanya, or K’far Saba greet one another, they use the term “ahalan.” Like many words in contemporary Hebrew slang, ahalan is taken from the Arabic language. In Arabic, Ahalen WaSahalen is a formal phrase connonting “welcome.” The Arabic word ahal is one of many terms for “family”, a word related to the Hebrew word “ohel”, meaning “tent”, or the place where the family lives.
In his regular column on language that appears in the Jerusalem Post, Hebrew scholar, Joel Hoffman reflects, “What better greeting could be offered to a weary desert traveler than to be welcomed into the protective shade of a tent or the warm company of family. Indeed, Abraham is known for his generosity in welcoming strangers into his family tent. And though tents are now rare in Israel, the cordial greeting pays homage to a form of ancient hospitality.”
In our Temple’s Mission Statement, we express that same desire to welcome into the open doors of our tent …all who seek a Jewish religious connection and who choose to embrace and participate in Jewish culture.” From the early days of our people to the Jewish world today, such warmth, hospitality and welcome continues as an essential value to be both expressed and realized by our words and our actions. Let us always bear in mind, as members of a warm and welcoming congregation, that “whoever comes, we’ll greet ‘Ahalan’.
“Please Touch”
March 20, 2009
Since the establishment of the State of Israel in the aftermath of the Holocaust, the mere existence and survival of the Jewish State has been testimony to the remarkable endurance of the human spirit. And in the span of a mere sixty years, that indomitable spirit has been revealed again and again through the accomplishments and innovations emerging from the people and culture of Israel, affecting such diverse areas as agriculture, technology, medicine and the arts. (Remember that, if you’re reading this on-line, the technology to do so would not have existed were it not for Israeli high-tech innovations!)
But if I were to find a single expression of the power of human spirit exemplified in Israeli society, I might just turn to a simple, theatrical performance that I had the chance to attend during my recent visit this past month. The play took place in a sold-out, 500-seat theater in the old port area of Jaffa, and was titled “Not By Bread Alone.” It was produced by a company called “Nalaga’at”, (which means “Please Touch” — a play on the sign often seen in Israeli shops telling customers “Please Don’t Touch”).
And touching as a means of communication between the actors was essential, because the Nalaga’at Theater actors are all Deaf-Blind. Some have traces of sight, some have traces of hearing, some are totally blind and some are totally deaf. The majority of the actors suffer from an inherited genetic disorder called Usher Syndrome, which initially results in acute deafness and is followed by loss of vision. One of the actors was born blind, and as a complication of meningitis became deaf.
I’ll admit my initial skepticism. How could a troupe of Deaf-Blind actors produce meaningful theater – a genre that is all about communication with the audience? Would this simply be an occasion to offer gracious support to kind but sadly handicapped men and women? What I witnessed was nothing short of startlingly powerful, moving, and beautiful.
According to the event program, most Deaf-Blind people have the ability to communicate only with those who are familiar with sign language through touch. “Within Nalaga’at, in addition to the accepted sign language, the actors communicate with each other in many different ways. Each and every member has his or her specific communicative needs and abilities, and during their years together the members of the group have learned how to communicate with each other.
“For instance – with Itzik we talk by using the glove language (each joint on the hand symbolizes a letter) typed on his hand. But Yuri writes Braille on Itzik’s hand. Yuri, Igor and Mark talk in the Russian sign language that Tikva translates for them. Tikva also translates the Russian that Genia speaks into Hebrew and Israeli sign language. Nahche speaks loudly into Shoshana’s and Genia’s hearing aids. And Miki, a deaf interpreter watches the sign language of another interpreter in the group and passes on the information by touch to one of the actors. And there you have the communication in Nalaga’at.”
Some of the actors were able to speak, and others could play musical instruments, pantomime or dance. Together, they all shared in the opening scenes of kneading dough in their make-believe bakery, telling through words or translated sign-language the stories of their own lives. Over the course of this hour and a half performance, dream-like sequences combined with real-life thoughts and memories as each of the actors expressed the meaning of lives lived out in utter silence and darkness. Like any other play, the drama included stories of love and fear, loneliness, hope, and triumph. The action was moved forward through various means – including synchronized drumbeats that could be felt by the actors, and their varied means of communication enabled dialogue, cues, and stage direction. And as the show unfolded, the wonderful scent of eleven pans of bread being baked on-stage filled the theater in a manner that transcended the boundaries of sight and sound.
I would not have imagined that a theater company composed of Deaf-Blind actors could inspire an audience, at the climactic final scene, to rise as one in a thunderous ovation. How was it possible for them, rather than the fully seeing and hearing audience, to have shattered the barriers of silence and darkness?
Perhaps it’s another example of a saying we hear and say rather frequently:
“That’s Israel.”
Hineynu– We are here. We are ready.
February 17, 2009
Words, over time, accrue added layers of meaning. That is one reason why the Hebrew language is so vastly deep and rich, for over the millennia, varied contexts in which individual words and phrases have appeared infuses them with ever increasing significance, associations and nuance.
Among the first words a young child learns in Hebrew School is often Hineyni – a term composed from the word “Hiney – Here” and the pronominal suffix connoting “I.” And so the student will answer to the teacher’s roll call of names with a confident “Hineyni”, meaning “Present.” Or more literally, “I am here.”
But in the Torah, when Abraham answers God’s call to service with the same word, “Hineyni”, he is indicating more than his mere physical presence. His response is a confident affirmation of understanding the gravity of the sacred task before him, and his willingness to take on the challenge to the best of his ability. For Abraham, and other Biblical prophets who likewise answer God’s call, Hineyni really means: “I am here. And I am ready.”
Recognizing the increasing challenges and difficulties confronting many of our members, particularly in the midst of economic recession the likes of which haven’t been experienced for more than a generation, our Board of Trustees authorized the creation of a new taskforce to explore the unique role that the Temple might play in providing assistance, support and direction to those facing a variety of needs. For many years, and throughout the history of Temple Emanu-El, caring for our members in times of sickness, sorrow or pain has been a core aspect of our mission. Our rabbis, staff, auxiliaries, and countless volunteers have always tried to respond when some extra help and support might be needed, but our leadership recognized that these times call for heightened awareness and a significantly more coordinated response.
Wasting no time, such a task force was promptly assembled and went immediately to work, exploring the variety of ways we, as a congregation, can help and support one another. The name of the program was chosen to indicate how important it is to be present when a need arises. Thus, “Hineynu”. We are here. And we are ready.
Of course, the Temple does not possess the resources of a social service organization. Rather, we will work in concert with communal resources such as Jewish Family Services, the Marblehead Counseling Center, and various local and State agencies (even while recognizing that all of these are likewise enduring severe budget cuts and shortfalls). Wherever possible, we will try to make up for a shortage of financial resources with an abundance of human resources, for those we possess in no small measure.
The story is told of two woodchoppers who felled a tree that was over one hundred years old. Looking at the growth rings to determine the tree’s age, the younger man noticed that there were five very narrow rings. He concluded that there had been a five-year drought, during which the tree had shown very little growth.
However, the other lumberjack, a wise, older man had a different viewpoint. He contended that the dry years actually were the most significant in the tree’s history. His reason: because of the drought, the tree had to force its roots down farther to get the water and the minerals it needed. With a strengthened root system, it was able to grow faster and taller once conditions improved.
So as we launch our Hineynu initiative, we do so in the hope and trust that these “dry years” will force us to further strengthen the very foundations of our congregation and community, which is our ability to look out for the well-being of one another. Perhaps future generations will look back at what we were able to accomplish and perceive these years, too, as years of significant growth and progress.
