Jewish Journeys: Writings from our Members

I traced the ancient stone with my palm, wondering what I was feeling. My first weekend of five months living in Jerusalem, my junior year of high school was then transformed profoundly, enabling me the opportunity to live and study in the birthplace of my religion and my ancestors. This was the sacred Wall, the last remnant of the second temple, resting under my thumb. The spirituality was too great; I was not allowed to comprehend.

We rode the bus back to our kibbutz after that first Shabbat at the Western Wall, left mesmerized by the intensity of the women who had surrounded us in prayer at the Wall. A hundred and twenty North American students, we did not understand these people. Embracing the Wall and devoutly tearing in its presence, they trusted the Wall to give them guidance and hope. I could not grasp the same connection to Judaism and Israel, because it had only been explained to me. I had yet to feel it. We visited the Wall many times that semester, each trip giving me new insight. Though my left wrist was overwhelmed with red Kabbalah strings, marking each visit to the holy site, none of the simple bands were identical in my eyes. We went to the Wall for Jewish History class, and the Wall became my story; the reason the Jewish people and Israel have survived. We went to the Wall after traveling to death camps in Poland, and the Wall became essential to my existence, as I grew to be a Zionist. We went to the Wall after hiking for five days through Israel�s northern wilderness, and I had fallen in love with the land. I belonged at the Wall, because I finally understood what I had heard about understanding. I was an Israelite, a part of the Jewish people. God now had meaning to me, and I could appreciate what was holy. Though I was still considered an American Jew, I had a piece of me that was Israeli.

I lived on a kibbutz, and experienced what it felt like to be part of a real community, just as my ancestors did in founding the country, I attended Yom Hazikaron at the Wall, Israel�s memorial day for soldiers who died in battle. Shimon Perez spoke in Hebrew, commemorating the brave soldiers who gave their lives, fighting for the country that was always fighting. His Hebrew was no longer gibberish to me. I sang the national anthem �Hatikvah� and could feel the heavy grief surrounding me, with nearly everyone in the crow having lost someone to the constant war. In America, we miss school on Memorial Day, but in Israel, every eye tears. The Wall unifies Israel. On Shavuot, thousand of Jerusalem Jews stay up all night studying Tanakh and make the trip to the wall at four in the morning. Surrounded by more Jews than ever before at this ungodly hour, bumping into each other to give the sacred rock one short stroke, I felt a surprisingly warm connection. We were brought together by our heritage and our beliefs, our devotion to our proud race that has continually been cut down. The Wall accepted us, validated us as humans and as Jews, and gave us faith in the Jewish and Israeli existence that often wavers. In that moment, I knew I would be back to Israel, and I knew that I would always be Jewish, regardless of my degree of commitment to the religion.

My identity as a Jew could not be questioned, because I felt it in the Wall, and in Israel� My last day at the Wall is not like my first. I know what I feel. I grab the Wall, sobbing as the spirituality envelops me. I am a part of the Jewish people. My best friends hold me as we back away from the Wall, realizing, for the first time that semester, we will not be back soon. It is our last day together, before we all go �home�, to our different birthplaces. It cannot be denied on that last day at the Wall�we have all created a new home for ourselves, in the land of the Jewish people.

Introduction

It is my extraordinary honor to be before you this morning to try, in some small way, to enrich your experience of Yom Kippur. I am most grateful to several people who have helped me prepare this for you:

• Rabbi George Gittleman, my enlightened friend.
• Rabbi Michael Robinson of beloved memory who lives in my heart.
• Rabbi Lavey Derby whose love of the Zohar infuses his life.
• Rabbi Alan Lew whose personal challenges so informed his writing.
• Rabbi David Hartman whose gifts include clarity and thoroughness.
• Norman Fischer and Silvia Boorstein who blend Jewish and Buddhist thought.
• Our own Sheila Katz who, with David Rubenstein, leads our meditation group.

I will impart some of their wisdom, as I understand it. But I will also develop my own views based upon Hebrew language translations that I think are consistent with the evolution of Judaism. I will share with you what I have titled 'The Winds of Yom Kippur'.

With you this morning, I am going to look at two 'winds' of Jewish thought, two ways to frame Jewish identity, that have coexisted from the beginning of Jewish literature. The first is that of the Halachic Person whose life is dedicated to the study of the Law and to internalizing our traditions. This person is about doing the Mitzvot (good deeds) as we are commanded. Such M.O.T�s (members of the tribe) see personal redemption in their efforts, a redemption that will give them peace both now and in the end of their days when they unite with God. God for them is a discernable celestial entity who communicates and guides them.

A second 'wind' of Jewish thought is that of the person who desires to become a more fully-realized, and autonomous being. Their striving is to let their inner holiness manifest itself more. Such Jews seek to establish an internal core of spiritual and emotional health. Such friends seek a deeper awareness and an inner peace that will automatically aid others. For such a person God is within, waiting to continuously emerge.

There is an ancient and valuable dynamic tension between these two modes of identity. They are complementary and not mutually exclusive; I combine both, as do many of us. For example I keep what I term California Kosher. I do not buy much officially-sanctioned kosher food but I do not knowingly eat shrimp or pork nor a cheese-burger. My liberal Jewish and non-Jewish friends ask me why I keep kosher. I explain that my practice is not rational. It�s just my little way of giving thanks.

A Story

In my profession as an anthropologist I have many American Indian friends and colleagues. I remember visiting a Native American man who lived on a reservation in the desert, a desert not unlike the Sinai. I got out of my car in front of his house and the wind, just howling to the East, nearly knocked me down, snapping the car door out of my hands. Once inside the house, I exclaimed to him,

'My God, does it always blow like this?'
'No' he said as he pointed, 'Sometimes it blows the other direction.'

I thought to myself why would anybody live in this place? But it became obvious in our time together that his soul was rooted to that place, to that Rez. His ancestors were in the dust. And for him that windy place was a divine gift of sacred geography.

A windy desert of sacred geography is also shared by many of us in our relationship to our own Reservation Israel. But for many of us the relationship is more complex. I am reminded of a famous Israeli author came to Shomrei Torah and in his discussion told us essentially that if we wanted to be real Jews we would all be in Israel. That is not actually true, nor is it historically accurate.

Long ago Yom Kippur was a priestly ceremony done by a few officials inside our stone Temple. The priests did the ceremonies on behalf of the people who were never allowed into the inner Temple. There was in ancient times a geographic and architectural determinism. For Klal Yisrael (our people) there was intense personal identification with place and a specific temple. That kind of architectural determinism is clearly evident in Exodus where nearly one-half of the Book is devoted to the construction details of the tabernacle.

But with the multiple destructions of the great Temple in Jerusalem there was a cosmic tear in our identity. Our mourning on Tisha B�Av is about this fracture, our alienation, our break with the Holy One. The tribes were scattered and those lost continued to wander, ending up scattered in places from Africa to Burma. Recently, rabbi�s and anthropologists discovered the Lemba of Zimbabwe, a Bantu-speaking group of tribesman who said they were not only only Jews but Kohanim, descendants of the ancient Temple priests. 'Y' Chromosome DNA markers confirmed that. They had stayed Jewish all this time and, with this discovery, they were invited to live in Israel.

The destruction of our ancient Temple, and later the Inquisition, the eastern European pogroms, and the Holocaust, have all had a similar effect. These events forced our ancestors to develop a portable culture and a universally applicable spiritual way of being Yisrael; not dependent upon a building or a region. As such I can daven (pray) on the moon and still face Jerusalem. Such conditions have shaped my spirituality. The recently published Hubble Telescope images of two galaxies combining, whirling together as they unite, these are religious images for me. My sense of the holy is what infuses not just Torah, not just Israel, but all of Olam (existence). If we should ever encounter intelligent beings from other worlds, we should begin our dialogue with the assumption that they like us are infused with Melech Ha�Olam the force of the universe.

Loving Israel is still part of a universe-wide perspective. It is so wonderful to be in a place where almost everybody is us. I love to put my head against the stones of the Kotel (sacred wall). I feel I am there with my whole family ancestry standing with me. Likewise, I love our home at 2600 Bennett Valley Road. Our new Shul (synagogue) has somehow settled in. I think our presence has literally gone into the walls. While others may define us by that particular location, actually we define that building. We are not defined by it.

The Torah Parshah (section) for our Yom Kippur is Nitsavim in Deuteronomy where Moshe is preparing the people for a covenant with God in anticipation of conquering the Promised Land. This was written during a time in the history of the Jews when we were in a socio-political level of the Formative State. Formative states are combined chiefdom organizations that are fragile, always at war, and highly militarized. Most formative states fail, they never make to the Classic level as did the Greeks and Romans and the Maya and Inca of the Americas. It's the same in all formative states regardless of time and place; they are ready to fly apart. Such states survive by military conquest and by cutting deals with powers greater than they are. They create covenants and treaties that are enforced by penalty of death. The Torah portion Nitsavim clearly reflects formative state conditions.

Almost all such formative states are polytheistic with a hierarchy of gods and temples devoted to them. That the Israelites were not polytheistic is highly unusual. Their sense of singularity of the divine, their ancient awareness of Ehad (universal oneness) and the maintenance of that perspective for millennia is an unparalleled achievement, philosophically and spiritually. For them to conceive that the Invisible is more important than the visible, that is a major conceptual advance in human history.

About such Torah passages as Nitsavim, Rabbi Michael Robinson (so beloved) advised against taking it literally lest you wreck the poetry. The complete passage has parts that are threats of frightening proportion. These are examples of what Rabbi George Gittleman refers to as 'raw Torah' that need interpretation. We can appreciate that Nitsavim has abundant valid historical foundations, but much more is there. With Rabbi George�s observation combined with Rabbi Robinson�s assertion about the poetic, the following postulate emerges:

'Do explore Nitsavim metaphorically.' Find the deeper meaning; seek the value that transcends the obvious. There is something universal that awaits our discovery.

Nitsavim literally means 'The Standing Ones'. The intensity of writing emphasizes the immediacy of the message. We read that Moshe is offering something that is available to anybody, literally the water haulers and wood-choppers. This metaphor means that no matter where we are in life, we are all equal in our potential to access an important beginning. This Covenant, presented by Moshe, is part of a process where we must 'stand' aware while keeping in mind the Ha-Aretz ha Muvtakhat the Promised Land. We formalize that process, we encourage that beginning on Yom Kippur.

Kippur the Hebrew word for our high holy day does not actually appear in the Tanak (five books of Torah). It is the plural form kippurim that is there. The root for the word is shared by the word kapparah that means to cover, or more specifically, to save face. This is similar to Kipper, to make perfect. There are related words in Aramaic and Arabic that mean to wash clean. For us perhaps a more useful interpretation of Kippur is Renewal. Moshe is telling us that everyone can be a Standing One. Everyone can begin the process of Renewal. We read that what awaits us is not in the clouds, not across the sea, but in our mouths and in our hearts. Our potential for renewal is already within.

Our renewal happens when we have Teshuvah, the most important concept for Yom Kippur. The root word Shuv, taking to heart, is used seven times in Deuteronomy, its importance could hardly be more emphasized. Teshuvah is translated on the cover of your prayer book as Repentance, thus Sha'arey Teshuvah, Gates of Repentance. But that translation seems so derived. Shuv really means turn, return, or answer. It might be meaningful to reframe the translated title of our prayer book as Gates of Return, or Gates of Answer. I like very much the Reconstructionist Rabbi Michael Strassfeld's reworking of the phrase Day of Atonement by using the same letters to construct Day of At-One-Ment. That is so refreshing. Of course the recognition of sin and transgression is part of becoming a better person. But overemphasized sin becomes emotional quicksand, it's difficult to get out of it.

In our turning as we seek that At-One-Ment we rely on l'heetpalel, prayer, the core activity of Yom Kippur. That word for prayer is illuminating because it is reflexive. Reflexive words are about self and one�s own experience. Thus prayer is meant to be an inner-directed, inner focused process. As we chant the phase 'who shall live and who shall die' we acknowledge our suffering at the loss of those we know and those we love. But in a reflexive sense, this life/death duality can also mean that we are supposed to inwardly determine what part of our selves we wish will flourish? What part of our self can we try to renew or replace with some other way of feeling? Is there a new understanding that might encourage new behavior. Each of us can ask: Can I find it in myself to turn? Even just a little?

Last February, my mother died. She went so hard, gasping for life with the terror of years of dementia in her eyes. I have horrible memories of those final moments, memories that I wish I could erase. Her death, along with other life issues, for me produced months of unhappiness. But I invested in l'heetpalel (prayer) and hitbodedut and hitbonenut (forms of mediation). Months went by when I had a sudden realization that I was feeling happiness, real happiness for the first time. I was actually having a really good day. That day I encountered someone I barely knew who asked me 'How are you?' From deep within me it just came out �I am just so good today, I am really happy.' I saw instantly that my expression of awareness changed her, I could see it in her face. My inner change somehow gave her hope and we connected at that moment. I had somehow given myself permission to �turn� and it was evident to others. There was acceptance, inside me, of my life�s situation. There was forgiveness, forgiveness for Mom and our difficulties. I had forgiveness for myself and for my shortcomings in our relationship. The only thing that matters for me about her now is that she loved me and I loved her. I have realized that some things we just cannot change, no matter hard we want to. I can't change my relationship with my mother. However, what we can always change is our response to difficult experience. I had changed inside.

Our turning, our returning, our answers take time. For some of us it can happen over the month of Elul before the High Holy Days. For others maybe it can happen during the ten Days of Awe. For some of us it may take 40 years of wandering in the desert of a cluttered mind. Some of us like Moshe may never make it into the Ha Aretz Muvtakat (promised land). But it does not really matter. We are only asked to begin.

As Tselem Elohim (beings who image God) we are asked by Torah to make the effort to find what is already in us that will allow us to turn, to answer. Bob Dylan wrote:

The answer my friend is blow'n in the wind,
The answer is blow�n in the wind.

In Hebrew 'wind' is Ruach, so to paraphrase, the answer is 'blowing' in the Ruach. But Ruach also has another important meaning. It means our soul, our spirit.

We are asked on Yom Kippur to try to allow a slight shift in our Ruach, our internal wind direction. That shift will be a sense of goodness within. We are to let that goodness be, to let it live, to choose life. It may be imperceptible at first. I was not aware of my own changes until they were solidified. But I am not the same person anymore. I know now that when we allow such a small shift to start, our personal Renewal can begin, even if we do not feel it at first.

When you allow this to happen, to just let some inner goodness be for awhile, the gentle wind of the Spirit of Ehad (Oneness) shall be with you. And you shall have placed your foot and your soul into your own River Jordan. And maybe, just maybe you shall sense your direction home.

Shalom to each and everyone of you on this blessed day.

Let me tell you a story�

B�reishit bara Elohim, et ha shamayim v�et haaretz: �In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth�.� Because the first verses of the Book of Genesis celebrate Creation, it�s an appropriate reading for Rosh Hashanah, a holiday sometimes called Yom harat olam, the birthday of the world. Many Reform congregations prefer reading this Torah portion and its account of epic miracles, to the foreboding Akeda, the binding of Isaac, which we heard today. Instead of the Akeda�s terrifying story of a father agreeing to sacrifice his only son, the opening chapter of Genesis offers the far more upbeat litany of the day-by-day construction and subsequent praise of the world. But B�reishit teaches us more than the story of creation; it begins our education in how to understand any story, and provides an introduction to how stories define who we are as Jews.

From the very first words of the Torah, we are forced into not just reading but rereading, and interpreting as we read. To start with, Genesis offers not one but two creation stories: the one scheduled for today, in Genesis, Chapter 1, and a second version that starts immediately after in Chapter 2. The two stories speak to one another in fascinating ways. Chapter 1 provides a series of direct declarations--�Vayomer Adonai, Y�hi Or And God said: Let there be light! And there was Light! And God saw that the light was good (Ki tov).� Chapter 2 offers a more complex and self-conscious narration; it calls itself toldot, the Hebrew word for �chronicle.� It knows that it�s just a story, a report. Whereas the beginning of Genesis states, �the earth was chaos, unformed, and on the chaotic waters� face there was darkness,� the second chapter bends over backwards to depict that chaos with specific detail: �No shrub of the field was yet on the earth, no plant of the field had yet sprung up�for Adonai had not poured rain down upon the earth, and there was not a soul to till the soil�though a flow would emerge from the earth and water the surface of the soil.� This is an account that takes some untangling: it describes what�s not there by explaining what will be there in the future. The self-conscious narrator already knows how the story ends, but we need to untie its knots.

After a quick summation of the whole Creation, the second version of the story focuses on Day Six and the creation of man and woman, an incident quickly passed over in the first version. While the first chapter says God created male and female together; the second tells a very different story, of the formation of Eve from Adam�s rib, Sadly, this second version has maintained more power in our patriarchal Judeo-Christian world, and it has been used to justify centuries of oppression against women. Juxtaposing the two stories reminds us that according to the Torah, as well as in society as a whole, still, women remain both equal to men and treated as subservient or second-class.

The two creation stories, their very different modes and concerns, require from us synthesis and analysis. Why did the ancient editors of the Torah keep both, even though they seem to contradict each other? Both stories can�t be equally true! We are forced to compare and contrast them, study their details, select meanings. By their very nature, all stories�whether the ones told to us or the ones we tell ourselves�demand interpretation. Stories cannot dictate action or reaction; they merely offer the material from which we infer significance. Stories are full of gaps which the reader or listener must fill with meaning. As a result, we become actively engaged in making meaning. In a story, every aspect demands our attention: Why did the teller choose this particular word, or this metaphor? Why emphasize this detail over that one? In not only telling a compelling story of divine power and earthly abundance, but in calling our attention to the nature of story telling itself, the opening of Genesis, while welcoming us to a celebration worthy of the new year, introduces two crucial threads of Jewish thought and action: story and interpretation.

Storytelling is at the heart of who we are as Jews. Even our names, traditionally selected to honor someone who has passed away, embody stories. As we grow, we are told about the person we are named for, what he or she was like, or what he or she did. At Passover, we sit around the Seder table to fulfill one key purpose: to retell the story of the Exodus. At Purim we revisit the drama and triumph of Esther�s story. As a people, we are known by our stories and the treasured texts that contain them. My favorite label for Jews is Am haSefer, the People of the Book. I confess: my own childhood identification with this moniker probably led to my becoming an English teacher.

In his 2000 essay, �Towards a Hebrew Literature,� Israeli author and literary critic Assaf Inbari, writes, �The essence of Jewish identity is not ethnic, religious or lingual�but literary. The literature that we have created, beginning with the Bible, is the foundation of our common heritage, the essential inheritance which every generation of Jews must interpret and build upon before passing it on to the next�.�The nucleus of our textual heritage,� Inbari argues, �is to be found in literary stories�.historical, national, deed-based narrative prose.� Such narrative prose, he goes on to say, �is the innovation of the Bible.� Beyond the Bible, Judaism continues to express its belief in narrative prose in the Talmud, in popular folktales and in Kabalistic and Hasidic stories. For those unfamiliar with the Talmud, essentially it presents discussions of Jewish law and tradition, discussions full of anecdotes�stories layered upon stories. Why, Inbari asks, did the rabbis �teach by means of a story that which can be presented as an explicit thesis?�

The answer is easy: because stories teach us so well, and so much more than simply �what happens next.� To understand how stories teach, we can start by considering how we learn language itself. I remember hearing Shirley Brice Heath, a linguistic anthropologist who teaches English at Brown University, talk about the work that led to Ways with Words, her now classic 1987 study of how children develop language at home. Heath described how different cultures teach children in vastly different ways. For instance, in some cultural groups, parents routinely use a question-and-answer mode; in others, they teach through stories. As a culture, Jews fall in the latter group. One mode of teaching, Heath assured us, is not superior over another, just different. Beyond teaching teachers how to cope with multi-cultural classrooms, Heath�s research raises an important question: what does its preferred teaching mode say about a culture? What does our story-telling say about the Jews?

When the great sage Hillel was asked to teach all of the Torah while his challenger stood on one foot, he responded succinctly: �Do unto others as you would have others do unto you; the rest is commentary.� Learning through stories, I would argue, reinforces this important lesson. First, it teaches us to develop skills in understanding others as people like us. Child psychiatrist, oral historian, social anthropologist, and Harvard professor Robert Coles, author of The Call of Stories, explains:

All fiction helps us, the readers, to join the company of the characters whose lives we get to meet on the pages of a book - to become, really, companions on a search, a journey within ourselves that often can prompt all sorts of valuable questions about how we are spending the precious time allotted us. A story becomes a friend, a guide, a source of entertainment and enlightenment both, even, sometimes, a shaping influence on how we think, what we try to do, as we move along, day after day, on our journey.

Parents and teachers alike know how stories can prove memorable for children; they offer models of behavior, inspiration, vicarious thrills and harmless spills. The same holds true throughout our lives. Most importantly, in young and old, stories stimulate critical thinking, producing the interpretations and �commentary� to which Hillel refers.

Consider the power of stories in the current health care debate. While one side argues using emotionally charged labels, the other offers countless tales of individuals and families trapped in the insurance maze, struggling with illness and unpaid doctors� bills, forced to delay or forgo available, often life-saving, treatments. One side tells us what to think and invents stories of a dire future; the other provides narrative evidence it trusts will lead us to make the right decision. I for one have never read or heard any stories about a single American who has actually suffered because of a public insurance option.

Stories help us find out who we are. When we construct our personal histories, the stories we tell ourselves and others, we apply narrative conventions in order to discover ourselves. Our understanding of those conventions�and hence, our ability to �read� and make sense of our own stories�depends upon our experience of stories within the larger culture. Whether we frame our own experiences through the dramatic perspective of the latest film, or the comic lens of Jon Stewart, or the ironic stance of Jane Austen, or the sentimental rhymes of the lite rock songs we overhear in the dentist�s chair, popular narratives �provide models for telling our lives� and help us �to structure possible narratives of the individual self� (Appiah). That�s why reading books enriches our lives: they give us more stories from which to choose.

Stories enable us not only to discover ourselves, but also to discover our affinity for others. Because our natural attraction to character and plot leads us to identify with the people we meet in the pages of a book, stories can teach us empathy. Now, I know that word, �empathy,� took a beating this past summer during the nomination and subsequent confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. I, for one, agree with President Obama�s recognition of the importance of empathy in a judge. It is the work of all judges to listen to cases (usually, told as stories of who did what to whom); to consider the laws that apply to a given case; then, working from a selection of precedents (themselves, stories of cases won and lost) and within a variety of legislated constraints, to interpret and then apply the law. As with all interpretations, results can differ case-by-case, lawyer by lawyer, judge by judge. It is not an absolute, mechanical justice that is dolled out, but a human, and therefore, hopefully a humane one.

Whoever we are, we always bring something to every text, whether personal or public: our knowledge, our experiences, our values. Recently I received a request for a donation to the YWCA Safe House program, our county�s only emergency shelter for women and children escaping domestic violence. This past July Governor Schwarzenegger�s budget eliminated $20.4 million of funding from the state�s 94 domestic violence centers, including $200,000 from Sonoma County. The letter told the simple story of one client, fleeing from her abusive husband with her two small children, who received safe housing, supportive therapy for her kids, job training, and other vital services from the program. The story left me in tears�okay, I know it was supposed to. They were raising money after all and the way to a woman�s purse is through her tear ducts. But the story caught me in its web�I wanted to fill its gaps, to know how the woman got trapped in her predicament, what finally convinced her to break free, what the children were feeling, and what they had seen. The narrative so contradicted my own story � safe as I was with my loving, gentle husband, our comfortable home, relatively secure teaching jobs, and protective families and friends�that I wanted to know more. The story also resonated with my broader concerns for women�s safety and self-respect, for governmental responsibility, for the damage being done to our social safety nets during economic hard times. I brought my values to the text and found myself in the story. Employing even the most basic conventions of narrative, it engaged me, made me responsible, chastised me for sitting passively by while this woman�s story unfolded. And yes, I wrote a check.

Over the past year, many of us have participated in Shomrei Torah�s �Community in Conversation� project. The goal is to discover, through many conversations, what we as a congregation care about, both within the congregation as well as in the broader community around us, and what motivates us to take action. For those of you who have yet to participate, I can tell you what lies at the heart of the experience: the telling of stories. Instead of just introducing ourselves to fellow participants, we are asked to share stories that shaped who we are; instead of merely cataloguing our concerns for our congregation and the larger community around us, we tell the story of something which happened that gave rise to our concern. We not only get to know each other better, but our stories help others find their points of connection to us, and motivate our commitment to take action.

Sometimes, what it means to be Jewish is to be burdened by stories�from the Torah, from our history, from our families, from our own successes and failures, and near misses�stories that relentlessly call out for our interpretation and reinterpretation as we strive to understand ourselves, over and over again. The act of interpretation is never ending. It keeps stories alive and refreshed: we reread because we are ourselves always different each time we sit down to them. Because we enter them from new directions each and every time, stories, like the Energizer Bunny, keep on going.

I tell my students: reading and interpretive skills are not just study skills; they�re life skills. The better we perform them, the better we understand ourselves and others. Recognizing conventions, the repetition of patterns, help us gain a valuable perspective on our day-to-day concerns. For instance, while these are challenging times, they are in so many ways no more challenging than times past. If we�ve learned to read those stories well, we know that the economic crisis will end; we will pull out of it, but we will be different afterwards. The pattern goes back at least as far as to Joseph�s advice to Pharaoh about fat years and lean ones, proving yet again the timelessness of stories.

Over the next ten days, between now and Yom Kippur, we�ll reconsider the year we�re leaving behind. How will we write the stories of last year? What stories are we telling ourselves for comfort and inspiration? To some, the new year ahead may already look like the same old story�we�ll be back at work on Monday, back to the same busy lives we left on Friday. But Rosh Hashanah encourages us to strive to write a new story, a better story, for ourselves. We stand at Bereishit�in the beginning-- what stories will we compose in the coming year?

L�shana tova tikoteyvu: may your stories in the new year all have happy endings.

While many of our congregants are traveling in the month of July, I too have been away from Sonoma County. I have just spent the last 5 days with 600 singing Jews. I am talking about the 20th annual Zamir Jewish Chorale festival in upstate New York. It was an incredible experience to sing Psalms, liturgy as well as Yiddish music throughout the day and night, as well as attend workshops by some of the top talents in Jewish music. We started the day with a Community Sing led by many of the actual composers and arrangers themselves, and ended each day standing around the piano in the lobby, singing with cantors from around the world.

When I arrived, the only person that I knew was my sister from Virginia, who has attended the Festival in the past. Like her, most of the attendees were from the east coast. There were very few people from the west coast, let alone from Sonoma County. So imagine my surprise as I was walking through the hall of the Hudson Valley Resort, and ran into Shomrei Torah congregant Alan Shotkin and his daughter Ilana. Alan has attended the conference many times before, but Ilana was a newcomer like me.

Throughout the week, we all sang in small ensemble groups with master conductors. On the last evening of the Festival, each group performed for the others. We also were treated to the sounds of the Zamir Chorale and Ha Zamir conducted by Matthew �Mati� Lazar, accompanied by the amazing Beth Robin (pictured with Sherry) on the piano. It wasn�t until I was talking with Beth on the last evening of the festival, that I discovered that she is the sister of our very own Ellen Robin.

See more pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/SherryFink/Zamir#

On the final day of the festival we were honored to have the opportunity to sing with Elie Wiesel, who led us with some meaningful tunes from his childhood, ending with a full choral version of Hatikva. It was quite moving. (Actually I balled like a baby).

I must admit that I accumulated quite a bit of new music to share with Leira and my fellow members of our choir. Maybe next year we can increase the number of Shomrei Torah attendees.

Can a 13 year old know what it feels like to lose a love? I can. In the summer of 2008, in the long hot sticky weeks of August, I lost a love. Camp URJ Newman has changed the way I look at things. I learned more about myself and the world. Every day at camp is like going to Disneyland with unlimited fast passes. At Camp I learned many things about myself, others and the world. In my opinion the most important thing I learned at camp is how to love and be loved in return. At camp we learned about Israel, and all the wars going on there. Sometimes when I get upset about little problems, I start to think about what�s happening on the other side of the world, and I feel like a brat, and try and feel grateful for what I have.

At camp I learned to appreciate what I have. Before camp, I couldn�t appreciate what I had if it scared me in the face. For that I�m very grateful to camp for helping me grow up and learn more about myself. One time at camp, I happened to be in during services; a weird feeling came over me and made my senses stronger. I took in my surroundings and took in the moment. I could smell the sticky sunscreen melting off my skin. I could hear the voices of other campers singing, laughing, talking, and just enjoying themselves. They sang in voices like birds singing �shalom chaverim shalom chaverim shalom shalom.� I felt the rough prayer book and thought about my connection with god at camp. As I would look around, I would see all the things and people I loved at Camp Newman. At that moment I realized I was in love with that camp and for the rest of my life will always tell stories about that one time at Jew camp. I felt so many emotions coming over me in that moment I didn�t know what to do with them, and I could then taste the wet salty liquid coming from my eyes.

To love can be an amazing feeling and I am so grateful that I got the chance to love. It feels like a rollercoaster having its ups and its downs but you never want to get off. To be loved in return is also an amazing feeling. You know that someone or thing that you care for so much feels that same way for you. I as a 13 year old girl knew what it felt like to love and be loved. I will never want to get off of the rollercoaster.

Four weeks at camp have changed my life forever. I can�t look at things the same ways I did before. I have grown mature. Mostly I have learned to love and be love in return. All three of these things are reasons they made the camp. I love camp so much and I hope that my children and great-grandchildren will also continue on my tradition of going to a Jewish summer camp and following in the ways of Judaism.

What a time this is! And how joyous Michael Robinson would have been to witness the amazing events that we have seen this week. It started so much earlier, when he was young and refused to sit in the back of the bus, when he sat in at lunch counters where they refused to serve blacks, while he was a student at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He did civil disobedience through the years, protesting the unfairness of white society.

When in 1964 Martin Luther King sent out a call for rabbis to protest in St. Augustine, he went with 15 other rabbis and was jailed under the watchful eyes of Ku Klux Klan members. He was in Selma, Alabama after Bloody Sunday, where African Americans were marching in the struggle for voting rights.

He went on a White Community Listening project in Jackson, Miss., where he heard many leaders of the city express their beliefs that segregation was right, until some of them talked themselves out of it and said, �I guess we have to change now.� He was in Washington, D. C. when King made his �I Have a Dream� speech.

Michael, ever steeped in Jewish beliefs and commandments, was a man with the courage of his convictions, who never stopped being a part of the struggle for social justice and peace, with compassion for all, and the willingness to do the right thing as he saw it wherever that might lead. How delighted he would be to see the inauguration of Barack Obama � as president of these United States.

A very sad day in my life, during Michael�s last illness, was when someone called on the phone needing him to intercede, and he said to me, �I can�t help anyone anymore.� We were blessed to have him for 81 years. May he rest in peace.

May we be blessed and able to do our part to help change the world.

Regarding Rabbi Gittleman�s Yom Kippur sermon and his description of torture and water boarding, Jews have been victims of persecution and torture more than most and should not stand idly by while it happens to others. The behaviors that lead to torture have similar characteristics to social cruelty, relational aggression and domestic violence: all are about power, intimidation and control.

In schools this behavior is called bullying. According to the American Medical Association, some 160,000 children a day refuse to go to school for fear of being bullied. This fear and trauma leaves the victims of bullying little energy left for learning.

Here are some things we know about bullying: (1) Children continue bullying behaviors into adulthood; (2) studies estimate that 75% of students who were school shooters were bullied in school; (3) the bystander encourages the bully and is at risk of becoming desensitized to the cruelty; (4) unless new behaviors are adopted, bullies continue to bully throughout their lifetime.

Addressing �Bullying� means addressing the three components: the bully (the perpetrator), the bullied (the victim) and the bystander. Most children are approached by a bully early in their school years. How they deal with that initial approach often determines whether or not they will be approached again. Ask if your child�s school has a clear policy stating that bullying behavior is unacceptable, and a program in place to address bullying when it occurs.

Jewish Family and Children�s Services� Parents Place programs stand ready to help you, your child or your child�s school deal with this important issue. I would like to suggest that we can work to stop perpetrators and bystanders who allow one person to use power, intimidation and control over another human being.

originally published in the Press Democrat
February 23, 2008

Flashbacks of racism in all of its ugly forms have come back loud and clear as the Republican presidential candidates debated immigration reform and the Democratic candidates scuffled over the history of the Civil Rights era.

I was born a second generation American Jew in Boyle Heights and grew up in East Los Angeles in a predominantly Latino neighborhood.

The first time I saw racism was when I was 16, and it was targeted against two black female co-workers. It wasn't until I joined the U.S. Navy in the late 1950s that I had some first-hand taste of anti-Semitism.

In 2002, I was appointed to the Sonoma County Commission on Human Rights. This was my first involvement in this kind of work following more than 35 years working in private industry.

Several of my L.A. friends wondered aloud ``is there really much discrimination in Sonoma County?'' A bit parochial thinking perhaps because, alas, the commission had plenty to keep us busy.

Some of these same liberal folk are unable to get beyond the words ``Latino immigrants'' before the rant begins. Example: My best boyhood friend is the only Anglo in a group of Latinos in an investment group. He tells me they want the ``borders blocked'' and feel it is important that everyone come in legally. In a bit of irony, some of these people or their parents arrived in California years ago. NIMBYs indeed.

In Sonoma County, a fifth grade teacher tells of a student's aunt, awakened at 5 a.m. by U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents who arrested her as undocumented and deported her that day to Tijuana, leaving her three young children behind. She had worked here for 15 years.

An SRJC educator reports that her student's son was also deported although he lived here from infancy and spoke no Spanish. ICE officers called him racist names when they took him.

The reality is we need to separate our feelings about illegal immigration from how we treat people who -- whatever their motives -- came to the United States as immigrants.

As a local community, we can begin that conversation on Sunday, at an educational forum on the rights of immigrants in Sonoma County.

The forum will include first-hand accounts on what is happening to immigrants in this community.

Co-hosted by Congregation Shomrei Torah's Social Action Committee and the Sonoma County Japanese American Citizens' League, the goal of the effort is to tell concerned citizens how they can help protect the rights of everyone in our county.

Ultimately, organizers hope to create a County of Refuge, similar to what has been declared in San Francisco, Berkeley, Los Angeles and other cities. The designation essentially asks that city employees, including local police and sheriffs deputies, do not go beyond what is legally required by state or federal law in cooperating with immigration officials.

Discrimination in any of its forms is a thorny subject.

If I remember anything from my stint as a Human Rights Commissioner involved in getting a fair hearing for the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in their quest to build a gaming casino, it is the need to separate the bigotry from the particular issue. And therein lies a formidable challenge.

At the Biennial in San Diego of the Union for Reform Judaism, Shomrei Torah�ns filled an entire row of seats. There were twenty of us* there in that cavernous hall. With thousands of other Jews we sang the Shema. I could feel it in my soul. For Paul, Sue, Fran, and Sheila that spiritual intensity infused their Biennial experience.

During four full days of activities Shomrei Torah�ns attended dozens of lectures, seminars, and shmoozes. We are home now with new awareness and perspective about the future of Shomrei Torah in Sonoma County. For many of us including Marlene, Dianne, Melissa, and Miriam, Shomrei Torah seems to be in the forefront of American Reform Jewish communities. We are already doing some of what URJ President, Rabbi Eric Yoffie brilliantly advocated in his plenary speech. Shomrei Torah continues to sustain our egalitarian and welcoming spirit and our acceptance and integration of non-Jews into our synagogue family. Rabbi Yoffie also stressed how important it is for synagogues to have an authentic shabbat experience. Just as Shomrei Torah already does, Rabbi Yoffie said that synagogues must integrate bar and bat mitzvah celebrations into a real shabbat, but not reduce shabbat to a minor part of a family�s private celebration. Throughout the Biennial, Heidi, Fran and Melissa noted the fabulous music that was part of every large gathering. We were reminded that Shomrei Torah music is so integral in our services and we appreciate Leira�s energy, dedication, and magnificent voice. Her work is truly our musical blessing.

At the Biennial, John Weinstein resonated with Rabbi Yoffie�s strong advocacy of outreach and dialogue with American Muslim communities, regardless of how polarized the relationship might be at present. Our own Rabbi George has already begun to forge such a dialogue in Sonoma County. But at the same time, as Marlene emphasized, Reform Judaism must assert the legitimacy of Israel. We must do so even if we take issue with some governmental policies there. Similarly, Marcy noted that Reform Judaism has global responsibilities to advocate for healthcare and environmental sustainability. Our responsibilities as Jews are local, regional, and global in scope.

Many of the Biennial attendees, especially Marlene, Marcy, Cynthia and Miriam, have a clear sense that Shomrei Torah cannot risk complacency, not for a moment. The crisis situations faced by many other synagogues made it abundantly clear to us that our beautiful Shomrei Torah community is really quite fragile even while we enjoy its current successes. Our leadership needs to continue to clarify and affirm our Shomrei Torah values. A central question is what are the core elements that define us as Shomrei Torah? We must also have clarity concerning the feelings and sentiment of our membership regarding our community. We need to continue to monitor our community health, making appropriate changes and enhancements as needed. For a Jewish community to be in stasis is to risk slipping into decline. It is a fine line. Consistent with creative thinking about our future, Ann would like to consider something unusual in the Reform movement, a mikvah.

Cynthia comes back to us convinced that Shomrei Torah must do everything in our power to create conditions that foster long-term, effective membership participation and leadership. She emphasized that successful recruitment and retention of membership takes years of planned attention to every new household. At every Shomrei Torah event there must be greeters welcoming every stranger who cares enough to visit.

And finally, all of us at the Biennial were reminded that our Rabbi George is a precious part of who we are at Shomrei Torah. So many synagogues have declined when they failed to secure dynamic rabbinical leadership. At Shomrei Torah it is our responsibility to nurture George�s rabbinate, even as he nurtures us, so that he may be fulfilled for as long as we are blessed with his presence.