The second is our very own Jewish Food Festival on August 19.

Both of these events are enormous undertakings – truly labors of love by dozens of hardworking volunteers. How do you explain the willingness of so many to work so hard for this community?

You could argue that all of these individuals are utterly selfless human beings, but the truth is that they each receive something of incalculable value in return for their contributions of time, energy and talent. I can’t tell you exactly what motivates these members to give so much of themselves, but I do know that the result is the same: the living, breathing, vibrant, and incredibly productive community that is Shomrei Torah.

The late Rabbi Michael Robinson—a bona fide expert on the subject of giving back – often spoke of the opportunity to give as a blessing each of us receives. Rather than depleting what you already have, giving of yourself to others is an investment that repays the investor many times over.

The Jewish Food Fest is no ordinary opportunity to be so blessed. In fact, Shomrei Torah has never attempted anything quite this ambitious before. One Sunday this summer we are inviting the entire community – 1,000 of our neighbors, Jewish and non-Jewish – into our home for a veritable Jewish feast: corn beef on rye, lox and cream cheese, latkes, kugle, sweets of every kind, some music and entertainment, and a chance to experience what it’s like to be an M-O-T (member of the tribe). Or, at the very least, to eat like one.

But it can’t happen without the help of every single member of our congregation: all 430 of our households. That’s the only way other synagogue food festivals succeed: with near 100% volunteer participation.

On Tuesday, April 3, the Food Fest Committee invites you to dinner (your $10 per-person donation supports Maria Carillo High School’s culinary program) to tell you about all the ways you can help make the First Annual Jewish Food Fest a roaring success. No matter who you are, we need you, whether on a simple task or a major project; before, during or after. No matter what your capability or availability, your synagogue community needs your hep. Please have someone from your household plan to attend the April 3 kick-off dinner for volunteers. Even that small investment of your time will yield riches uncountable. You deserve this opportunity for a blessing.

B’shalom,
Bruce

The following dialogue is copied almost verbatim from a lively e-mail debate I had with Shomrei Torah member Howard Schoenfeld. He starts out with a comment about a parasha/weekly portion which he read in preparation for a d’var torah/sermon that Rabbi Kramer asked him to prepare.

Howard: Ok, I have read the section. Will I be able to do a burnt offering or is there a problem with the fire code …..On a more serious note….The section deals with both animal sacrifice and Kashrut, one of which the Halakah has kept and one discarded. At George’s suggestion, I am reading an essay by Slonimsky, “The Philosophy Implicit In the Midrash.”
(For more about Dr. Henry Slonimsky go to http://americanjewisharchives.org/aja/FindingAids/HenrySlonimsky.htm )

One of the things that he says that caught my eye is, And while Halakah will never be allowed its old dominion in Reform Judaism, there can be no doubt that more and more of it will be re-appropriated as time goes on, for there can be no Judaism without Halakah. The only question is, how much?

Rabbi George: Slonimsky sure was prescient on this one! He wrote his article when there was very little tradition in Reform worship or practice… How things have changed since then!

Howard: On the other hand, Alice (the sage of Wonderland) teaches, “Words mean what I say they mean nothing more and nothing less.” Herein lies my quandary: is there a baseline that the Reform Jewish community can require to “be a Jew.” I am not speaking of the legal definition…if a parent (Reform) or your mom (Orthodox) is a Jew, you are a Jew. Or how outsiders (like Hitler) define who is a Jew. What is the minimum the community can require? What separates us–in the positive sense? Can we just say we are Jewish (like Alice)? Is it enough to be active in social justice? There are lots of non-Jews that are, too… I guess we would agree that believing Jesus is God would rule one out, and believing in many gods as well…but it seems that we need not believe in any God…is that better than believing in many?

Rabbi George: Great questions! Seems to me this a perennial issue that is never really worked out in part because being “Jewish” can and does mean so many different things. That is to say that Jewish identity is multifaceted and can be defined a number of ways: cultural, religious, national, gastronomic, etc. One of the definitions that I find challenging is the ‘social justice’ definition because, as you point out, there is nothing particular to Judaism about social justice. Lots of religious groups care about social justice and many churches have “social justice committees,” whether they are called that or not. Of course there is a great tradition of social justice within Judaism, but it was never severed from the other aspects of Judaism. Rather, one flowed from the other. Nevertheless, I am grateful for any way Jews connect and find meaning from their Judaism, Jewish life and their/our community.

Howard: What really is the covenant?

Rabbi George: Some, like Rabbi Yitz Greenberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Greenberg) and Dr. Richard Rubenstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_L._Rubenstein) argue that there is no longer a covenant after the Shoah. Others work to redefine it. Eugene Borowitz (http://huc.edu/faculty/faculty/borowitz.shtml) is the big Reform thinker who writes on covenant. He is not my favorite theologian or writer. I think Rabbi David Hartman’s book, A Living Covenant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hartman_ (rabbi) is the best and, though he writes from a modern Orthodox perspective, I think it can apply to us as well. He basically argues that the covenant is what we make of it. It lives as much as we bring our lives to it.

Howard: Is Honoring the Shabbat in some way an essential part of being Jewish?

Rabbi George: A Shabbat consciousness of some kind seems key, for as Ahad Ha-Am used to say, “as much as Israel has kept the Shabbat, Shabbat has kept Israel” (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ahad_haam.ht), but again it will depend on your definition of “Jewish.” Another way to ask the same question is, “does one need to live with some sense of Jewish time to be Jewish?” If I said “yes,” sadly, much of the Jewish community of the U.S., not to mention Sonoma County, would be outside of the fold! On the other hand, without some sense of Jewish time – Shabbat, holidays and Holy Days – it is very difficult to have much depth or meaning to one’s Jewish experience. You are still Jewish but then, what does that really mean?

Howard: Is a relationship with Israel essential?

Rabbi George: I believe this is essential, but there are some in the Classical Reform world who argue(d) that one can be a religious Jew without a connection to am yisrael/The Jewish people. In fact, there are a few in the congregation today who feel this way. The fact is, for the 2,500 years or so of our existence, a connection to eretz yisrael (the land of Israel) and am yisrael (the people of Israel) has always been a part of what it meant to be a Jew.

Howard: We don’t want to be exclusionary… or do we?

Rabbi George: In the sense that without some boundaries there is no “there” there, we must be exclusive. For example, as far as I am concerned, a person with a Jewish background (born Jewish or converted to Judaism) who believes that Jesus is the messiah (Jews for Jesus), is no longer Jewish. Of course, Orthodoxy would say that in fact, they are Jewish, just bad/heretical Jews. Either way, they have crossed a line and are no longer considered an MOT. But inclusivity is an important value for us, as well, so we work to minimize all unnecessary boundaries. The problem is how one defines “necessary.”

Howard: We have never sought converts.

Rabbi George: We actually have sought converts. Ten percent of Rome was Jewish! We only stopped when Rome became Christian and punished those who sought Jewish converts and those who converted, with death! Same with Islam….Understandably, we lost our ardor for conversion since then.

Howard: What do we require of people? Where do we balance having a warm, tolerant, inviting community with so watering-down being Jewish that we sound like Alice?

Rabbi George: Again, I will lean on Rabbi David Hartman, who often said to me, “a religion that doesn’t require anything from its adherents is no religion at all!” On the other hand, we can’t lose sight of who our community is, and what its reality can handle, demands, needs, etc. You should know that this is a question that keeps me up at night sometimes.

Howard: You say, “Seems to me this is a perennial issue that is never really worked out in part because being ‘Jewish’ can and does mean so many different things. That is to say that Jewish identity is multi-faceted and can be defined a number of ways: cultural, religious, national, gastronomic, etc.”

This is what I struggle with….being able to define “Jewish” in a way that it means different things. Liking chicken soup should not define a Jew! Not saying morning prayers should not exclude one either.

I believe there is such a thing as a “Jewish Soul.” That is what (I think) Slonimsky would say allows us to partner with God in the continuation of creation. But it requires more than eating bagels and social justice. Maybe it is the way we eat bagels and pursue social justice? Justice Stewart famously said that “I cannot define pornography but I know it when I see it.” Perhaps I have to be satisfied with that. But I know that if we demand nothing we receive nothing.
Rabbi George: An anthropologist told me that whether other MOTs recognize someone as a member is a legitimate definition. But it may not be that helpful of a definition since East Coast Jews look different from West Coast Jews, Hassidic vs. Mitnagen, Sephardic vs. Ashkenazi, Pharisees vs, Sagucies … Seems as much as things change, they stay the same.

However, I did once attend a lecture at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. It was a debate between Rabbi Hartman and the famous Israeli thinker and philosopher, Yeshiahu Leibovitz, zikhrono l’brakha/May his memory be for a blessing, on this very subject (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibowitz-yeshayahu/).

Leibovitz argued that prior to Modernity and the development of the “Movements”, there was one definable Jewish Community, but since the proliferation of the movements like Reform and Conservative Judaism, a true splintering has occurred. I challenged him with examples of serious pre-Modern rifts in the Jewish world. He invited me over to his home for coffee and lectured me for two hours on everything, including how I needed to improve my Hebrew, if I was going to be a rabbi, even a Reform rabbi! It was the most amazing experience, literally sitting at the feet of a Jewish intellectual giant. But I still think he was wrong.

Howard: There are 29 flavors at Baskin-Robbins but each is still ice cream. It is troubling how much we do to divide ourselves. Maybe that is what makes us Jewish!
Interested in another blog on this subject? Go to http://www.shomreitorah.org/2011/05/16/what-is-a-jew/

This is precisely why the episode of the anti-Semitic joke emailed by Santa Rosa Junior College Vice President Mary Kay Rudolf is so troubling. Somehow, if the gesture was meant good-naturedly, and the joke-teller bears no actual malice toward Jews, then any umbrage we take is dismissed as simply an overreaction. “It was a joke,” said one letter to the editor of the Press Democrat, “lighten up.”

After all, Dr. Rudolf, vice president of academic affairs at SRJC, apologized. Sending the e-mail to sixty of her professional colleagues was a momentary lapse of judgment, nothing more. When we cry “foul!” we are just being oversensitive. Yet how tolerant would her boss or her students or her community be had Dr. Rudolf directed her bigotry toward, say, the African-American or GLBT communities? It’s easy to imagine the chorus of calls for her resignation, if not outright dismissal, had she chosen to poke similar fun at other frequently-targeted minorities. Lucky for her, the Jewish community is still, apparently, fair game.

Whether you find Dr. Rudolf’s behavior appalling, as I do, or are more forgiving, as was outgoing SRJC President Robert Agrella when he determined that the personal remorse she claims to feel over the incident is punishment enough, one thing is clear: ugly stereotypes about Jews and tired, discredited myths still find currency in our society, and at the highest levels. If such ignorance exists among our community’s educated elite, how much more prevalent is it among the mainstream?

When news of the event first appeared, CST leadership reacted swiftly, with direct communication to SRJC, letters to the editor, and internal discussions about how best to respond. As a leading voice of the local Jewish community, we felt a responsibility to call Dr. Rudolf to account, and we met that responsibility in a manner that was civil, respectful and, hopefully, effective.

In addition to providing a spiritual, educational and social home for Sonoma County’s Reform Jewish community, Shomrei Torah is a vital platform for raising our communal voice, defending our common values, and combating bigotry and injustice no matter to whom it is directed. This sorry event reminds us just how much a strong, vibrant and outspoken Shomrei Torah matters.

B’shalom,

Bruce

This unprecedented prosperity did not come all at once but rather was accomplished over time; there was and still is anti-semitism in America.  The difference is that, unlike almost all the other places we have lived, in America, thanks to the Constitution and the rule of law, we could fight and win, and we have!

Up to this point, folks in both lectures tended to agree or at least, go along with my premise.  Things got more interesting when I asserted that today there was little if any consequential anti-semitism.  What I meant is that, while people still hate Jews (like they hate other minorities), it is no longer socially acceptable or legal to do so.  In other words, the days of institutional anti-semitism are over, and Jews experience few if any barriers as participants in American society.

At this point my talk became more of a conversation, with participants telling their own stories, many of which included encounters, some of them quite ugly, with anti-semitism: name calling, physical abuse, discrimination in the workplace, etc.  Now, to be fair, almost all of the experiences that people shared dated to before the civil rights movement, when the last of the discriminatory practices ended.  Nevertheless, I was left wondering to what degree anti-semitism is a factor in Jewish life today?  And, just as this question began to percolate in my mind, Chris Smith of the Press Democrat published the anti-semitic joke that SRJC Vice-President of Student Affairs, Mary Kay Rudolf, had sent to 60 folks who work with her.

Since then, Ms. Rudolf has apologized to the college and she wrote me a very touching note, as well.  I think she acted out of ignorance, not out of malice, and I know she very much regrets what she did.  But this question is bigger than her:  Is anti-semitism a real problem here in America today?

I’d love to hear what you have to say, so please respond to this blog and make your voices heard; what is your experience?  Do you think anti-semitism is an issue in America today? Why? Or why not?

Meanwhile, these are my parting thoughts:  Yes, people still hate Jews in America and yes, you will also occasionally run into an anti-semitic joke or comment.  But let’s not confuse this kind of unpleasant, but relatively benign form of prejudice, with what used to be considered acceptable behavior in this country; there are no more Jewish quotas at colleges, no professions are blocked from Jewish participation, no neighborhoods can have “no Jews” in their By-Laws or deeds of sale.  Those days are over, and though the memory still stings, it’s time we stop being defined by them.  However, as I wrote in my blog about Hanukkah, we cannot take our prosperity or freedom for granted and must forever be vigilant.  If our history teaches us anything, it teaches that at any time, “a Pharaoh can arise who does not know Joseph.”

“In a time of danger one may place the hanukkiah inside one’s house. Even if it is lit upon a table inside, it is sufficient”

A chill went down my spine… I asked myself, “What is going on here?”

The great mitzvah of Hanukkah is to publicize the miracle, to remind the world of the light that should have only burned for one day but miraculously stayed aflame for eight. That’s why we are commanded to light our hanukkiyot (Hanukkah Menorahs) and place them in a window, where they can be visible from the street, or by the front door of our homes.

But “in a time of danger,” meaning when it is not safe to be public in one’s Judaism, one can light it inside, in secret, or at least not in public view. As I read this, it struck me how important this ruling must have been for generations of Jews.

Maimonides himself was forced to flee the Almohades’ invasion of Spain, to more tolerant Muslim lands in the East, eventually settling in Egypt. I bet there were many years when he could not light his hanukkiah in public. He was also in constant contact with Jews from Christendom where persecution of the Jews was even worse.

I bet their Hanukkah celebrations were dominated by this law…

In fact, surveying our history of the last 2,000 years or so, it’s not far-fetched to suggest that we were rarely safe enough, secure enough, to “publicize the miracle,” our hanukkiyot ablaze for all to see.

How times have changed, at least for us here in America! Our freedom, our prosperity, our ability to live as Jews openly and without fear is unprecedented! It hasn’t always been easy for us here; we have had to fight for our freedom, and there still is anti-semitism, but in America we could fight and win (thanks to the rule of law) and we have.

Reading Maimonides reminds me of how lucky we are to be able to light our hanakkiyot in public, without fear. It also reminds me of how fragile our freedom is. We Jews know all too well that at any time “a Pharaoh can arise who does not know Joseph”. Laws can change; liberties can be taken away.

Hanukkah literally means “rededicate.” This Hanukkah, as we light our hanukkiyot, say our prayers, sing our songs, let’s also count the many blessings of our lives here in America; “the land of the free”, celebrating the miracle of our survival and our renewal here.

Let us also remember that even our freedom in “the land of the free” is fragile; we must be ever vigilant, ready to fight for the rule of law and the many personal liberties it safeguards for us and all Americans.

We also must remember that if anyone’s rights are at risk, the rights of all are at risk.

As we light our Hanukkah lights and celebrate our deliverance from oppression long ago, let us rededicate ourselves to safeguarding the unprecedented prosperity and freedom we enjoy today while supporting those elsewhere who still live in fear.

Freedom is a precious gift and Hanukkah is a time to bask in its light…

Hanukkah Sameakh!

RG

Fast forward five years: I am about to be ordained as a newly minted rabbi and I have a decision to make. Up until that point, I ate everything and was proud of it: pork, shrimp, crawfish etouffe, you name it, I ate it, and with gusto! But now, I was not so sure of myself; would it look bad for a rabbi to be sucking the juice out of an Alaskan Crab claw? How would folks feel seeing me chow down on some bacon in a restaurant? In truth, many would not care and some would be relieved; I knew this, but it still didn’t sit well with me. It was as if David’s words were ringing in my ear, “you may not care, and God may not care, but the Jewish people have cared for over 2,000 years…” To make a long story short, as part of my ordination I decided to stop eating pork or shellfish, and I have kept that promise, more or less, for the last 16 years. I miss certain things like crab cakes and Italian sausage, and when I encounter them on a menu I often say a little prayer to myself that goes something like, “God, I love this stuff and I am giving it up for You and the Jewish people…” Really! In that sense, not eating pork and shellfish has turned out to be a prayerful experience for me. It has also raised my food consciousness in as much as I have to stay attuned to what I am eating in order not to inadvertently transgress. And it has given me a greater sense of connection with Am Yisrael, the Jewish people as we have understood ourselves for most of our existence.

What about Shomrei Torah and our kashrut policy? I have noticed that many people are confused by our policy. The basics are that any Shomrei Torah-sponsored event, where ever it is held, should refrain from serving forbidden foods (pork products, shellfish, etc) and there should be no mixing of milk and meat.

There are three things that seem to challenge people: Knowing what products are made from a forbidden food like, for example, that pepperoni is made from pork; understanding what a “Shomrei Torah-Sponsored event” is and being aware enough when planning an event, or bringing a dish to the congregation, so that you do not inadvertently violate the “no mixing milk and meat” policy.

Most of the challenges with the kashrut policy have to do with awareness; you just have to take a moment and ask yourself if the food you are bringing or the meal you are planning complies with the policy. Perhaps a bigger stumbling block is the nagging question: “Why do this?” “After all, we are a Reform Congregation; we can eat whatever we want!”

Reform Judaism is all about informed choice. When we explored this as a congregation six or so years ago, these are some of the reasons we decided on the policy:

Inclusivity – it allows more Jews to comfortably be able to eat with us, while not pushing anyone else away.

Tradition – it connects us to our Jewish heritage, linking us up with over 2,000 years of Jewish tradition.

Awareness – it offers us a chance to think about what we eat.

What do you think? If you keep a form of kashrut, what does it mean to you? If not, why? What do you think of our policy? Any suggestion how we could help people/committees understand and comply with the policy?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Rabbi Michael Robinson (z”l) used to say that the Torah has a Socialist approach to economic justice. He may have overstated things a bit, but one does find in the Torah a great concern for the most vulnerable in society whom the Bible often refers to as “the stranger” or “the orphan, the widow, and the fatherless.” These people, according to Biblical law, are entitled to an economic safety net. The Jewish laws of Pe’ah and Leket are two examples of the ancient Israelite social-welfare system.  Pe’ah  is the law that requires farmers to leave the corners of their fields so that the needy can harvest the crop for themselves ( Lev. 19:9-11). Leket refers to the similar commandment of leaving the gleanings from the harvest, that which is left or dropped on the ground during harvest, for the poor. This is what Ruth does (Ruth 2:16) and such practices along with Pe’ah are also legislated in Leviticus 23:22, among other places.

In addition to Pe’ah and Leket, there are also pockets of legislation pertaining to workers’ rights. For example, the Torah forbids taking a worker’s personal garment as pledge (Deuteronomy 24:10-13) and one is forbidden from withholding a worker’s wages (Levitcus 19:13). In addition there are the far-reaching laws of the Shmita , the Sabbatical year, as well as the Yovel, the Jubilee.

Versions of the Sabbatical Year can be found in Exodus (23:10-11), Leviticus (25:1-7) and Deuteronomy (15:1-6). While all three versions of the sabbatical call for a cessation of agricultural cultivation in the 7^th year, the version in Deuteronomy has the biggest economic impact as it calls for the remission of all debts: “At the end of every seven years, you shall celebrate the remission year.” The idea of the remission year is that every creditor shall remit any debt owed by his neighbor and brother when God’s remission year comes around. “You may collect from the alien, but if you have any claim against your brother for a debt, you must relinquish it…” (Deuteronomy 15:1-6)

Even more radical than the Shmita is the Yovel, or the Jubilee year, commanded in Leviticus 25 & 27. Among other things, the Jubilee requires that all land revert back to its original owners every 50 years.

It’s hard to imagine how even a primitive economy could function with laws like the Shmita and the Yovel. In fact, there are those that argue that they represent economic ideals and not reality. Even so, they suggest a system that sought to regularly level the fiscal playing field; all debts were wiped out every seven years, and land reverted back to its original/ancestral owners every 50 years. In effect that meant limits on how much wealth one could acquire while at the same time making sure there was never a permanent economic underclass.

While it is difficult to gain a full picture of the biblical approach to economic justice, the laws of Pe’ah, Leket, Shmita and Yovel give us at least an outline of how tzedek, justice in economic terms, was understood by our ancient ancestors:  Society has an obligation to provide for the poor  (Pe’ah and Leket) and an equal distribution of wealth was considered a Divine mandate . One could accumulate land and wealth and adversely, one could loose one’s ancestral holdings and go into debt, but every seven and then every 50 years, the economic playing field was leveled again through the Shmita year and the Yovel.

Of course, the Bible isn’t Judaism. If it was, I would be a priest and we would be doing animal sacrifices at services every week! Judaism evolved from the Torah; the Torah is the headwaters of a river that has been flowing for some 3,000 years. The headwaters is not the river but in this case the two, at least in part, compliment each other in as much as Jewish tradition builds on the basic principles outlined in Torah, offering a view of economic justice that makes foundational the idea of social responsibility – a safety net — for the poor. However, as Judaism developed, it left behind the most radical elements of the Shmita  and Yovel (remission of debts and the reverting of ancestral holdings to their original owners), while maintaining the underlying principles that no one should be forever stuck in poverty and that society has an obligation to provide for the weakest members of society.

How different are we in the West, who so readily compartmentalize our lives. To the extent that most of us practice our religion (and judging from the numbers who turn out for Shabbat services every Friday, that’s relatively few of us) it is confined to a specific time and place: an hour or two a week in a sanctuary. Many of us think of ourselves as culturally Jewish and identify with a tradition and a community, but we put on our religion like a suit of clothes, only to remove it again shortly thereafter when we rejoin our daily lives.

This approach to Judaism presents challenges for those of us charged with leading our synagogue community. Namely, how do we make it relevant to our members so that it occupies a central place in our consciousness? How do we engage people of varying interests, needs and levels of commitment?

This isn’t a rhetorical question; we really want to know.

Why do you belong to Shomrei Torah? Or more to the point: why do so many of us belong but rarely show up for a service or an event? What would it take to get you to temple, say, one Friday night a month? Is there a way the service could be more meaningful to you? Would more or different music help? An alternative liturgy? Are there guest speakers who would pique your interest? Would a potluck dinner do it?

Our clergy and lay leaders are open to ideas and suggestions. We are eager to consider new approaches that will help Shomrei Torah be more relevant to you. To share your thoughts, please post a comment at the bottom of this page.

We all have our own reasons to belong to Shomrei Torah. The question is how we can make Shomrei Torah belong to you.

B’shalom,
Bruce

The endless possibilities for education, Jewish connection and building community are forcing me to overcome my fears of technology. I recently read an article about the use of Twitter during High Holy Day services in a big prominent congregation to contribute to a sermon discussion. This article not only started my wheels turning but really intrigued me.

To tell you the truth, even though I am what most would consider a “digital native,” having grown up with technology, I did not understand a lot of the lingo used in this article. As many of you know, I have been excited to log on to Facebook and find fellow Shomrei Torah congregants to friend. It is miraculous that people show up to a temple event, because they read about it on Facebook. I was thrilled to discover the Sonoma Jewish Connection site to post the 20’s and 30’s Sukkah event. I felt empowered to learn how to post things to the CST website and how to add pictures, audio files and even videos!

But today is only the beginning of a new age in technology. Web 1.0 fed the reader information; Web 2.0 allows the user to connect and engage in a much more sophisticated manner. I can’t wait to see 3.0 and beyond, because I can see that the internet at its best allows people to learn more and connect in a more meaningful way.  

I am excited to infuse our services with different forms of visual t’filla. After seeing how much the kids in the Religious School pick up from the pictures on the slides with the prayers during our services, I am excited to bring new links and pages to the CST website. Now no one who has been granted the honor of an alyiah for a b’nei mitzvah needs to worry about asking for help with the prayer or the tune. There is a link on our website with a voice file.

I love grappling with different web sources to speed up administrative tasks and ease logistics. But most of all I am excited to use social media to help create a more vibrant active community, and YOU are a key to its success. Even though the High Holy Days are behind me, I still have not met everyone, and I definitely have not learned everyone’s name. But I would like to, so if you are a Facebook user, please friend me!

Oh death don’t have no mercy in this land.

 Well he’ll come to you house and won’t stay long,

Next thing you know one of your loved ones will be gone.

 Oh death don’t have not mercy in this land…

Death. Death as a foil for life is an essential, pervasive theme of Yom Kippur. Finitude, the fact that our time is limited, finite, that we are not invincible, that whatever time we have is a gift to cherish–this is what this exceptional day in the Jewish year is all about. The kittle I wear, symbolic of a burial shroud, fasting, not bathing, and other forms of abstinence, a denial of the physical, are all part of a one day rehearsal of our death.  On Yom Kippur, writes the renowned author and teacher, Rabbi Michel Strassfeld, “We are meant to feel that the natural course of our existence is in the balance. We are to face what a permanent suspension of existence – death –would be like, and thus to learn how to embrace life.”

We live in a death-adverse culture.  But, when we do face death, either because we have to or we choose to, we are often surprised by the life-giving awareness we gain.  This happened recently to the renowned Bible Scholar James Kugel, one of my favorite writers on Bible today.  He got cancer with a grim diagnosis – six-months, with treatment, maybe a year, if he was lucky.  Well 8 years later, no one knows why, but his cancer is in remission and, he is still here.  He wrote a book about his experience that I want to share with you this evening.  It is appropriately named, In The Valley of The Shadow.

In The Valley Of The Shadow covers a lot of ground.  I won’t have time tonight to explore the whole book, rather I want to focus on three perspectives Kugel gained from his near-death experience, which he called:

·        Smallness

·        Starkness

·        Boundary of the self

Smallness – most everyone has felt this before; it is all about perspective.

My first recollection of having such a feeling was sailing with my father. One time in particular stands out:

I was about 14-years-old.  It was just me and my Dad.  We set out fromFort Lauderdale, a little north ofMiami Beach.  It was late in the afternoon.  We were heading to Nassau in the Bahamas.  I remember the swell of theGulf Streamwe were crossing was big – an endless sea of rolling 10-foot waves… But the thing that struck me the most was watching the glow of Miami Beachset into the horizon… and then looking up at the sky full of more stars than I had ever seen in my life…

Smallness is all about perspective; it acts as a corrective to our often puffed-up sense of our selves; big, “on top of the world”, in control.  Kugel insists that smallness is not just comparative, our smallness relative to the grandeur of the universe.  It’s more personal than that. It’s the realization that we are just flesh and blood, confined to our own small physical space, limited by our personal, very human boundaries.  What a shock it is when our bubbles burst, our fantasy of power and control, laid bare.  Like the Greek myth of Icarus, we think we can soar sky high, only to find that our wings melt away and we plunge into the sea.

Smallness is a corrective to that fantasy, a reminder of our true place in the universe – a grain of sand, a fleeting moment, one breath, maybe two in the constant inhalation and exhalation of the life of the universe.

In Tanakh, smallness is eloquently expressed in God’s response to Job “from the whirlwind.”  It is one of my favorite passages in all of the Hebrew Bible.  First, a little reminder of the story:

Job is a righteous person, who God tests in everyway – his children are killed, his property is taken, his body is ravaged with sores. Yet, Job refuses to curse God rather, Job demands an audience, an answer to his question, which is perennially ours – why do I suffer?  What have I done to deserve such pain?

This is part of God’s response from the whirlwind:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Declare, if you have understanding. Who determined its measures, do you know?  Or who has stretched the line upon it?  Upon what are its foundations fastened? Or who laid its corner stone, (Where were you) When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?  Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued from the womb, (Where were you) When I made the cloud its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band,  And prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, And said, Thus far shall you come, but no further… Have you commanded the morning since your days began; and caused the dawn to know his place? …Have you entered into the springs of the sea? Or have you walked in the recesses of the depth?  Have the gates of death been opened to you? Or have you seen the doors of deepest darkness? …”

What can Job say?  “What shall I answer you?” he responds.  “I will lay my hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken; but I will not answer; twice; but I will proceed no further.”

Job wants an answer to his questions about suffering, and we do as well, but none is forthcoming except the truth of our utter smallness in relationship to the Ground of All Being.

The truth of smallness comes at different times for different people:

For some, the awe of the ineffable brings life into perspective.  This is certainly true for me.  The ineffable is a view, an encounter, a perspective that takes us beyond words.  William James, in the late 19^th century and later, Abraham Joshua Heschel, describes these awe-filled moments as the beginning of the birth pangs of the religious experience.  Here is an example:

Once I was somewhere along theSonomaCoast.  It was a rainy day and I was watching the surging surf… That in itself can invoke smallness!  After a while, I took my eyes off the ocean and observed this seasonal creek rushing full of water… a flash of incite…in geological time, that little, seasonal creek could some day become like theGrand Canyon…

Another, perhaps more common way to smallness, is as Kugel gets there, through personal illness or any life and death struggle that forces us to face our finitude.

And then there are historical moments that, at least for a little while, offer a collective correction to our sense of omnipotence like, for example, the horrible earthquake inJapan.  How small we all felt and not just by the destructive force of the earthquake and tsunamis.  That would have been enough, but even more devastating to our false sense of power and control was the nuclear crisis that followed and which will be with us for centuries.

It doesn’t matter how we get there, the result is the same, an often fleeting but revelatory perspective Kugel calls “starkness”.

“Starkness” is just as it sounds – the broad outline of our existence, stripped down, bare, clear.

One of my favorite genres is the literature of war precisely because war, like death, is a great foil for life – “starkness” is what war literature is all about.  There is no better example than the exceptional Vietnamnovel by Tim O’Brian called The Things They Carried.

Listen to his description of “starkness” which comes to him after a battle:

“After a firefight, there is always the immense pleasure of aliveness.  The trees are alive.  The grass, the soil—everything.  All around you things are purely living, and you among them, and the aliveness makes you tremble.  You feel an intense, out-of-the-skin awareness of your living self—your truest self, the human being you want to be and then become by the force of wanting it.  In the midst of evil you want to be a good man.  You want decency.  You want justice and courtesy and human concord, things you never knew you wanted.  There is a kind of largeness to it, a kind of godliness.  Though it’s odd, you’re never more alive than when you’re almost dead.  You recognize what’s valuable.  Freshly, as if for the first time, you love what’s best in yourself and in the world, all that might be lost.”

You don’t have to go to war to experience “starkness” but we do have to face our finitude in some way, to get clear about what is of ultimate importance in our lives.

One of the blessings of being a rabbi is that I am often with people when “starkness” becomes apparent in their lives – serious illness, death – regularly facing our finitude in these ways is not fun, but it does make for meaningful work. Often the conversation goes something like, “Rabbi, I see, for the first time, what is really important. It’s amazing really; I’ve never been so clear about what I need, what my family needs.  I’d rather have gotten it another way but now that I have it, I sure don’t want to lose it.  Am I going to lose it?”

You see, when we are gifted with clear vision, we are instantly afraid we will lose it because we sense, how rare it is, and how demanding it can be. Starkness, if you live in that clear sighted reality, often demands change and change is not something we generally want to contemplate, at least not for very long.

For example, a common realization is that we work too much or our work is not meaningful.  And, even though no one ever says on their death bed, I wish I would have worked more, or I sure am glad that I stuck that horrible dead-end job out for those 30 years, changing our lives to work less or in a different way is not so easy.  So, we often flee from “starkness”, to a safer and much more opaque reality.

Starkness can also come when someone we are close to is in their own life and death struggle.  That was my first introduction, when my brother Willie got sick. Up until that point, the distance from Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz, combined with our busy lives, kept us from getting together very often.  You know how that goes.  But then he got sick and all a sudden I found the time to regularly drive down to visit.  Some of it was simply the urgency of the moment.  And, some was a re-ordering of priorities, a clarity of meaning and purpose that starkness brings.

The grind of the Holy Days – all the services and other activities that start the month before in Elul, the prayers, the blasts of the shofar, fasting, all of it together – is to get us to a place of “starkness” where we can see our lives clearly and hopefully, adjust, do t’shuvah, so that we focus on what is of ultimate concern in our lives – meaningful work, right behavior, family, relationships, community.  And, since starkness is not a permanent state, the time to make a change is now, to use the starkness of this day to be a new person in the year ahead.

The third point, “the boundary of the self”, is harder to define and the most grounded in the particularism of Judaism.  This is what it provokes for me:

How important is my individual existence – me, myself and I – in the grand scheme of things?

Judaism values the individual – “to save a life is to save a world” -but the individual is subservient to the group whether it be family, community, or “The Tradition”.  This focus on community is lost on many, even in the Jewish Community.  Still, meaning for us is ultimately made in community.  For example, we need a minyan  - at least 10 adults – to have a full prayer service.  Our prayers, even the petitions, the ones where we ask for things like health, are in the first-person plural – “we ask for…”  Even our Master Story, the one story that more than any other defines who we are, The Exodus from Egypt, is about the collective, the birth of a people, Am Yisrael.

It is hard, especially for rabbis to get this, but it is not about – me, myself and I – it is indeed about “us” the living and the dead.

Traditionally we say, zikhronam l’brakha when we remember the dead.  What does that mean?  Of course there is not just one answer. One thing that I take away from that phrase is the idea that as long as we incorporate into our own lives what was good and wholesome in the people we love and lose they live on as a blessing in us.  We in essence carry the memory and meaning of the people that came before us – they live in us.  In that way they are a blessing and in that way, we “keep faith with those who sleep in the dust”.

A great question to ponder now is “who lives in through me?  Am I manifesting the gifts they gave me, the blessings they left behind?”

Anyone seen the latest and last Harry Potter movie?  There is this scene where Harry thinks he is about to die and he is speaking with his dead family.  He is afraid and he asks them if they will stay close by his side.  They tell him not to worry that they will always be with him in here (point to heart).

That is a very Jewish moment in a not-very Jewish movie.

We don’t have to stand alone; our ancestors are with us.  All we have to do is recognize them, see them, remember them, give them a place in here (point to heart).

 “Smallness”, “starkness”, “the boundary of the self”; there is more to James Kugel’s book for sure, but these three ideas, perspectives, points of view, allow us to see our lives in the most meaningful of ways.  We lose certain things, like the illusion of control and the false sense of our immortality, but we gain the realization of the urgency of the moment, the preciousness of even one breath.

While it is true that “Death has no mercy”, it is equally true that by facing the inevitability of death we can learn to make the best of what life we have.