Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Kol Nidre 5774

LETTERS TO MY CHILDREN: 

PART THREE

COMMUNITY

EREV YOM KIPPUR 5774

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Dear Children,

Ten days have passed since I last wrote to you. The period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is called Aseret Y’mei Teshuvah- The Ten Days of Repentance. We’re supposed to begin the Jewish New Year in the kind of introspection and soul searching that moves us to change our ways. That’s a very different way of greeting the New Year than New Year’s Eve celebrations of the civil calendar.

On Rosh Hashanah my first letter to you was about education, and rekindling our reverence for learning, secular and religious. My second letter to you was about identity, and recognizing that today we are all Jews by choice who need to actively affirm our Jewish identity lest it slip away. I don’t know if you’d had an opportunity to reflect on these letters over the past ten days, but if not…you can find them on our website!

On this sacred evening when we gather together as a community, I would like to talk to you about… community. The community you belong to that we call Am Yisrael or K’lal Yisrael. You might consider this something of a “State of the Union” of the Jewish People.

A preliminary word on what constitutes community. A recent survey showed that the average 18- to 35-year-old has 237 Facebook friends. Does that sound about right? Would you consider those friends your community?

When this same survey asked how many of these Facebook friends you could rely on in a crisis, the average answer was two. A quarter said one. An eighth said none.

A true friend, rather than an acquaintance, even a good acquaintance, is precisely someone who “has your back” in a crisis. And a true community is made up of people you can count on to look after you in time of need.

That’s what Jews do. Our motto, you might say, has always been the Talmudic dictum, “kol yisrael aravin zeh b’zeh—all Israel is responsible one for another.” That’s why American Jews led the charge to free the Jews of the former Soviet Union. That’s why Israel has welcomed immigrants from the four corners of the globe, and airlifted penniless Jews from Yemen and Iraq and most recently, Ethiopia. That’s why in every community they settled Jews established a synagogue, then a cemetery, and then a Free Aid Society to help those in need.

In my last letter I talked about how Jews are both an ethnic group and religion at the same time. As Mordecai Kaplan put it, being a Jew is belonging as much as believing.

Now a few words about how your community is doing. In the spring I wrote a column called “Where We Live: The End of the Jewish Diaspora.” It received quite a bit of comment. I pointed out that the far reaching Jewish dispersion is dramatically shrinking. Today over 12 million of the 14 million Jews in the world live in just two countries, Israel and America. Not a single city outside of these two, except Paris, even has a Jewish population over 250,000.

Put that in perspective. Before the Holocaust Poland alone had 3 million Jews, the Former Soviet Union, 2 million, Romania, Germany and Hungary more than a half million each. There were more than 9.5 million Jews in Europe; today barely a million. And it is sobering to remember that the world Jewish population in 1933 was 15.3 million. Eighty years later we have still not replaced our pre-Holocaust numbers.

And now add to the mix the fact that the number of Jews in America is on the decline. We have barely the same number of Jews in our community today as we did in 1950, and since then the US population has increased by 65%. That means we’re now about 2% of the population, and getting smaller, and getting older.

So let’s stop and ask ourselves why. Why in the most prosperous nation on earth, with unprecedented religious freedom, and with a flowering of Jewish culture and a profusion of Jewish institutions? As nationally syndicated columnist Charles Krauthhammer rather bluntly put it some years ago: 

How does a community decimate itself in the benign conditions of the Unites States? Easy: low fertility and endemic intermarriage.”

I know this is a sensitive subject, so let me tread carefully. And I know that I am dealing with quite a few statistics in this letter, but they are important, and they are eye opening. Eye-opener #1: American Jews have the lowest fertility rate of any ethnic group in the country. We are not anywhere near close to replacing our numbers. That would require a rate of 2.1. The national average in our community is 1.8. Among non-orthodox Jews it is 1.4.

Eye Opener #2: Fifty years ago there were 540,000 Jewish children in after school synagogue religious schools. Today there are 240,000.

Eye-opener #3: Half of all marriages in the Jewish community today involve a spouse who is not Jewish at the time of the marriage. Less than a third (28%) of the children of intermarriage are being raised as Jews. Less than a quarter of the children of intermarriage will marry Jews themselves. Of the 5.5 million people who identify as Jews in this country, some 2 million live in a household that does not identify itself as Jewish. 60% of Jews under 40 live in such a household.

We have wonderful examples of interfaith families making the commitment to raise their children Jewish right here at Adas Emuno. We celebrate that, but we need to face the fact that it is the exception to the rule. Put another way, for every one interfaith family that makes that decision, two will not.

Now here is where it gets personal, and I’m going to try not to get emotional.

I know you are in a relationship, or may be in a relationship with someone from another faith.

I know you may be in love or may fall in love with this wonderful person.
      
I know you may get married.

If he/she is your soul-mate, you will have my blessing.

What will break my heart is not your falling in love with another human being, be they of a different faith; that is preposterous. Love is beautiful, and we need more of it.

What will break my heart is if, as a result, you abandon Judaism.

What will break my heart is if you turn your back on your family, and your faith, and your people.

I pray that you will have a Jewish wedding.

I pray you will be blessed with Jewish children. At least 2.1 of them! (We have plenty of space for them in our hearts, and in our religious school.)

I pray that the bonds of love are never broken.

Make no mistake about it, we are all profoundly grateful to be living in the greatest country in the world. The doors of assimilation are wide open to a place of dignity, equality and security. We are walking right through those doors. For us as individuals- who can say anything bad. But for us as a community, as Krauthhammer puts it, 

assimilation is a disaster for Jews as a collective [people] with a memory, a language, a tradition, a liturgy, a history, a faith, a patrimony that will all perish as a result.

Could it be that the only remaining significant Jewish community in the world outside Israel will quietly wither away in two or three more generations?

Will a small, orthodox and ultra-orthodox core be all that’s left?

Will the seduction of assimilation accomplish what the assault of anti-Semitism never could? Will we succumb to self-inflicted wounds?

The Ten Tribes really did disappear from history. As did the great Persian Jewish community. As did the great Spanish Jewish community. As did the great Polish Jewish history. They disappeared from annihilation, or expulsion. The American Jewish community would be the first to disappear from assimilation.

That would be deeply sad and deeply disconcerting.

Sad that in the place we could finally be free, as Jews, we opted not to be.

Sad, because this country has and can continue to greatly benefit from what American Jews have contributed, as Jews.

Disconcerting, because that would leave only Israel, and as wonderful as the Jewish State may be, to put all our Jewish eggs in one basket, so to speak, is probably not wise for many different reasons.

You are old enough to appreciate the harsh demographic realities facing our community. I have not hid them from you. So what message do I want to convey to you, the next generation, today?

To paraphrase President Kennedy: “Ask not what your community can do for you. Ask what you can do for your community.”

Yes, even if you are a tween, teen, or twenty-something…you are not too young to give to your community. What institution or initiative in the place you call home could benefit from your involvement? Is it your synagogue youth group or college Hillel? Is it a gap year in Israel, or a Birthright trip to Israel? Is it a Birthright Alumni program or a Jewish summer camp? Is it a young Jewish leadership circle or a young Jewish professionals’ network? Is it the JCC or ADL? Is it J-Date or J-Street?

One of these groups will be a better place because of you. You may not be able to change the world, but you might just be able to affect your corner of it.

Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

The Talmud reminds us: “You are not required to finish the task; neither are you free to desist from it.”

And remember this too: despite the doom and gloom of our waning numbers, this is still, arguably, the greatest time in our history to be a Jew. Imagine that for 2000 years there was no Jewish homeland, and then, in the lifetime of many in this room, 65 years ago, modern Israel rose from the ashes of Jewish history.

And what a state it is: Jewish, democratic, vibrant, entrepreneurial. In a bad neighborhood; for sure. Problems internal and external; no doubt about it. But Israel is a miracle by the Mediterranean. Our miracle.

And the American Jewish community in which you live is still a great one. There is more Jewish learning, more Jewish activism, and more Jewish influence than in any diaspora Jewish community in history.

Israel. America. In the ashes of the Holocaust, two amazing Jewish centers… waiting for you!

President Kennedy said in his great Inaugural address “the torch has been passed to a new generation…”

You, dear children, are now the torch bearers. You are the precious link between a hundred Jewish generations past, and a hundred more to come.

Don’t let the light go out. Keep the flame burning as surely as the Ner Tamid, the Eternal Light, above me.

Find your place. Find your community.

You are young. You are good looking (very). You are hard-working (most of the time). You are searching. You have a bright future. We need you. We love you.

Thank you for listening. Only one more letter to go… Shana tova…

Love, Abba

Yom Kippur and A Whale of a Song

Yom Kippur begins this evening, and tomorrow afternoon we read the Book of Jonah from the Tanakh. So, to get in the mood, here is a song by Ari Lesser special for the occasion:





You can also watch it over on YouTube, under the title of Ari Lesser - Jonah In The Whale - Yom Kippur - 5774. 

And with that we wish you a Shana Tova, and we look forward to seeing you tonight!

Scenes From Tashlich 2013

As we do every year, weather permitting, Congregation Adas Emuno held its Tashlich service on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, this year on the morning of Friday, September 6 at the Englewood Boat Basin. In preparation for Yom Kippur, the Tashlich prayers associated with casting off our sins are symbolized by the act of casting bread upon the waters, an act particularly appreciated by some avian onlookers:

Following the brief ceremony, participants also partook of a picnic lunch.  Special thanks to Linda Kowalski for providing these photographs.

Rabbi Schwartz's Rosh Hashanah Prayer 5774

ROSH HASHANAH PRAYER 5774

Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz

Eloheinu, velohei avotenu

Our God, God of all generations:

Help us to thoughtfully reflect on the year just past,

And to courageously embrace this year, 5774, just born.

We stand before You grateful for our own sustenance and prosperity, but painfully aware that too many of our fellow citizens languish in economic hardship.

Too many of them remain unemployed, underemployed, and uninsured.

Too many do not share in the promise of this country.

Too many are being left behind.

Remind us, O God, that we can and should do better.

Remind us that our wealth is but Your gift, and that the 1% are called upon to not forsake the 99%.

Remind us, in this jubilee year of the great March on Washington, that we all share in the American dream.

In a year after which we re-elected a president for these United States, guide our leaders to enlightened decision making, inspired vision, and basic cooperation for the public good.

May those who govern lay aside personal gain and partisan politics to engage in the unfinished work of justice in our society.

Foster a spirit of common sacrifice that the vast richness of this land be shared more equitably, and that, in the words of Torah, the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger be not forgotten, “for you know the heart of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

At this New Year we cannot help but remember our soldiers in harm’s way, still fighting and dying in America’s longest war…and we pray for their safety and speedy return.

At this New Year we cannot help but think about our brothers and sisters in the land of Israel, who also stand in harm’s way and are daily threatened by a burning Middle East.

Israel too has reaffirmed its vital democracy in the election of a new government, even as its neighbor to the south collapses, its neighbor to the north turns murderously on its very own, and its neighbor to the east, sworn to, “wipe the Zionist entity off the map,” is now on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

We pray for peace. Give us the wisdom to pursue the surest way to finding it.

And finally, at this New Year, we cannot help but think of the innocent victims of violence and of natural disaster that seared into our conscience this past year, near and far, from the children of Newtown, to the children of Damascus.

We pray for healing and the surest way to pursue it.

Our God, Source of all life and blessing:

At this New Year of hope and possibility,

May we find common purpose to do Your will, to rise to our greatest potential, to reflect our creation in Your image… and to walk with You forward to peace and purpose.

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Rosh Hashanah Morning 5774

LETTERS TO MY CHILDREN: 

PART TWO 

IDENTITY

ROSH HASHANAH 5774

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Dear Children,

Good morning. Shana Tova. I hope you slept well. This is my second letter to you. Last night I spoke to you about education, and what the love of learning and the reverence for learning has meant to the Jewish people. This morning I want to speak to you about identity.

All four of my High Holy Day sermons this year, you will recall, are in the form of letters to you, my children. My three children… and to all our young people, “my children” in the collective sense.

I don’t mind if the adults listen in as well.

Let me begin with a story I recently came across, from your world, the high-tech realm of computers. Here’s a provocative question: Could you be fooled by a computer pretending to be human?

One of the key pioneers of the computer, British mathematician Alan Turing, posed that question in 1950. He proposed an experiment: If expert judges, in typed conversations with a person and a computer program, couldn’t tell them apart, then we would have to consider the machine as capable of “thinking.” We would have to say that the computer has a mind. Turing predicted that programs capable of fooling judges at least 30% of the time would exist by the year 2000.

In 2008 at a competition called the Loebner Prize the top chat-box (as a human-mimicking program is called) fooled 3 out of 12 expert judges. That’s 25%... but eerily close to Turing’s prediction. One day, in your lifetime, you may not be able know if you are typing, or even talking, to a human or a chat-box.

The lines of our human identity are becoming blurred. Today I want to talk to you about the lines of your Jewish identity, and whether they too are becoming blurred.

Let’s start with the question of how one becomes a Jew in the first place? A simple question… or maybe not so simple. There are two ways: You can be born a Jew, or convert to Judaism. That alone reveals a rather unique situation. Is one born a Christian or born a Muslim? Not really. If your parents are Christian or Muslim, you are presumed to have that identity, but you assume it only after agreeing to the faith propositions of those religions. The act of birth alone does not bestow your identity; a declaration of faith does.

For those born of Jewish parents, no declaration of faith, and no pledge of allegiance, is required. In this regard, Judaism is like a nationality or ethnic group. You are a member by simply being born into it. In halakhic Judaism, which follows traditional Jewish law, you simply need to be born to a Jewish mother. In Reform or Reconstructionist Judaism, a Jewish mother or father. Either way, nothing else is required.

If you are not born Jewish, you can convert to Judaism. In this sense, Judaism is not an ethnicity, but a religion. Besides circumcision and ritual immersion in a mikvah, converts are asked to study Judaism, appear before a rabbinic beit din, tribunal, and make a declaration of faith. Interestingly, if you were converted as a child and were too young to make that declaration, you have the right to repudiate that conversion once you reach age 13. Today we call converts “Jews by choice.” Individuals not born Jewish have to do something to be Jewish; they have to actively choose it.

My message to you is this: Today, we are all Jews by choice. The reality is that we have to choose to be Jewish, or it will slip away. We have to affirm our identity, or it will morph into something else. We live in a society that is 98.5 % not Jewish. We live in a society that is largely secular, except when it is Christian.

You were born Jewish. A hundred generations of your ancestors were too. Many of them suffered for being Jewish. Yet many of them fought to remain Jewish. Thankfully that hostility is largely gone. Thankfully you have probably never experienced serious anti-Semitism. Nobody tells you what faith to belong to. Nobody legislates your religious identity. There is no penalty for being an atheist, an agnostic, a mild believer, or a fervent believer.

And there is no internal penalty either. Should you decide to be a non-practicing Jew, or a marginally affiliated Jew, you may encounter some disappointment from your parents, but no punishment. If you marry a non-Jewish partner you will not be disowned like Tevyeh’s daughter in Fiddler on the Roof. If you actually embrace another faith, convert to another religion, the consternation will be greater, but you are unlikely to be excommunicated or ostracized.

People say that America is a religious country, at least compared to Europe. Yet religion is considered a matter of personal choice in America. We have enshrined the separation of church and state. Your practice of religious liberty is constitutionally guaranteed, and so is your non-practice of religion. So in a way you’ve got a free pass. You are Jewish by virtue of your birth. You don’t have to do anything to be considered Jewish. Nobody will restrict you in your pursuit of a Jewish identity; nobody will hassle you if you leave it.

A major sociological study was released this year by the highly regarded Pew Research Center. The headline it garnered was “The Rise of the “‘Nones’.” The “nones” being referred to are certainly not n-u-n-s, but n-o-n-e-s, religiously unaffiliated Americans, American’s who listed their religious denomination as “none.” An unprecedented 20% of Americans, that is 1 out of every 5, do not identify with any religion. In your age category, adults under 30, the figure is 32%, one out of every three. So if you want to disappear religiously in this country it’s easy to do so. There’s a big pool of like-minded people to jump into; a pool of fifty million or so.

So my question is: What are you going to do with that free pass? Are you going to opt in or opt out? If the tide is pulling you away from the shore, are you going to slowly drift away? Or are you going to swim against the tide and reach dry land?

Sometimes we hardly feel the current carrying us further and further away. Before we know it we are far out. The only way back is to swim. But we have to want to swim, rather than float. We have to choose it.

This question takes on added urgency because there are so many changes going on in your world. You generally leave home at 18. You complete a first degree at 22. Establishing yourself in your profession, and possibility pursuing an advanced degree is taking longer and longer. You do not necessarily feel the need to marry in your twenties any more. Doing so in your early thirties is not uncommon. Waiting a few more years after that to begin a family is normative. By the time those children are old enough to raise the question of religious education, more than twenty years have passed since you were likely involved in a synagogue. That’s a long time to drift. Can you still see the shore?

Don’t lose sight of it. Don’t drift so far away that you can’t find your way back.

I say that because you are the guardians of a beautiful heritage. A sacred trust that has indeed been a light to the nations. This heritage is yours: a hundred generations behind you, a hundred in front of you.

Nearly a century ago a young Jewish man in Paris named Edmond Fleg grew very estranged from his heritage. He almost left it completely before something pulled him back. He wrote a little book, an extended essay really, called Why I am a Jew. The concluding lines are as poetic a description of the spiritual legacy of Judaism as you will find. He wrote:

I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands no abdication of my mind. 

I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps.

I am a Jew because every time that despair cries out, the Jew hopes.

I am a Jew because the word of Israel is the oldest and the newest.

I am a Jew because for Israel the world is not complete; we are completing it.

To be a Jew by choice today is to cast your lot with the Jewish people, and their noble mission.

The first Jew by choice made that very declaration. You read her story at your confirmation. Ruth the Moabite said, “your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

To say that you are Jewish means taking an active and proud part in the destiny of your people and making the practice of Judaism central to your lives every day, week, month, year.

It means that the decisions you make as an individual are made as part of a community as well.

It means taking to heart the words right behind me, da lifnei mi atah omed—“know before whom you stand.”

It means understanding, as Elie Wiesel once put it, “that as a Jew my life begins before I was born and continues after I die.”

To be a Jew by choice means to see the world through Jewish eyes, to celebrate birth in a Jewish way, to sanctify time in a Jewish way, to mourn in a Jewish way.

I cannot help be reminded that when you were young we once found a rare and beautiful songbird in our front yard. It was an indigo bunting. But it was dead. When we went to bury it, you, Talia, insisted that we say kaddish for the bird. That is seeing the world though Jewish eyes. That is having a Jewish soul…

Well, my time is short, and in this brief letter I can only leave you with a concluding thought, a challenge: to live up to your namesake. As a people we get our name from the book of Genesis, Chapter 32. Before his fateful encounter with his long estranged brother, Jacob wrestles with an angel… or is it his conscience? The angel says to him, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel [Yis-ra-el, which means the one who wrestles with God], for you have wrestled with God and men and prevailed.” 

We are Israel, the God wrestlers. We are the strivers, the seekers. As Britian’s Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks puts it, “The definition of a Jew—Israel—is one who struggles, who wrestles with God and humanity and prevails.” And Rabbi Sacks adds, “Jacob says something very profound to the angel: “‘I will not let you go until you bless me’.”

Dear children: Do not let go of your heritage until it blesses you. Do not give up until you have wrestled and struggled and prevailed. You have the power to break that hundred-generation chain of tradition in one. You likewise have the power to extend it to your children and your children’s children.

Back to the chat-box: If you were part of that experiment, if the judges were having that conversation with you and with the machine, what would be the result?

I have no doubt that the experts would know right away that you are the human beings, because you are beautiful, passionate, caring young people. We are proud of who you are. As your parents we love you unconditionally. (That’s unconditionally, not uncritically!) No machine could ever mimic you… I think.

But would the judges be able to tell that you are Jewish? And how would you match up against a Jewish chat-box? Would they glimpse your Jewish soul?

Enough said. Shana tova.

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Rosh Hashanah Evening 5774

LETTERS TO MY CHILDREN: 

PART ONE 

EDUCATION

ROSH HASHANAH 5774

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Maybe it’s because I turned 55 this summer. Maybe it’s because my youngest graduated from college, and I’m done paying tuitions (I think). Maybe it’s because—how shall I say this—we are not always in full agreement with the choices our three young adult children are making…

Whatever the reason, this is “my year of letter writing.” This is what I’ve decided to do: Write all four of my High Holiday sermons in the form of a Letter to My Children. I’ve certainly never done that before. All four sermons, you say? Four letters? Well yes, I’ve got a lot to say! And I believe that the themes I will touch upon, education, identity, community, and empathy, are relevant to our community in general and these High Holydays in particular.

Point of clarification: when I say “my children” I don’t only mean my own. I really mean “our children” in the broadest collective sense. My sons and daughter… and yours. My message is to our Jewish youth today, for the sake of their future tomorrow. Over the years I’ve always thought of all the students I teach, b’nei mitzvah, confirmation, post-confirmation, as “my kids.” In fact sometimes I would refer to them as such and confuse Debby. This is for all my kids, even if addressed some of the time to my own.

My Dear Children,

If you talk to your grandfather, or anyone of his generation, who grew up the child of immigrants, who grew up during the Depression, who grew up walking to school so he could save the nickel it cost to ride the trolley… education was everything. Your grandfather was told by his father, “bury your head in the books.”  He was told “a degree is your passport to a better life.” He was told “without education you are nothing,” and “I want for you what I didn’t have for myself.”

This first letter to you is all about education.

Regretfully, you did not know your great grandparents, save for one. You did not hear firsthand their immigrant saga. You did not imbibe their epic journey to a new land, their monumental struggles, their Yiddish inflections, their fierce pride in their Judaism in the face of endemic anti-Semitism.

You know a bit more about your grandparents’ story, the so called “greatest generation” because they sacrificed so much in the defense of this country, during the Second World War and Korean War, and then returned home to build America into the greatest country in the world. Your grandfathers did this through sheer guts and determination, but also by being given one of the greatest and wisest gifts in American history—the GI Bill. Hundreds of thousands put themselves through school studying during the day and working at night, or studying at night and working during the day… and often while raising families. They cherished their education and venerated the schools that bestowed the skills they would need to succeed. 

And they excelled. Let me express a little bit of ethnic pride here. Jewish students were represented all out of proportion in select city high school like the Bronx High School of Science and Stuyvesant. And the young Jewish graduates that poured out of schools of higher education like City College and Brooklyn College (both of which were attended by your grandfather) were the top engineers, the sharpest lawyers, the most astute accountants, the most gifted teachers, the most brilliant mathematicians, the most daring scientists. They were hungry to succeed, and nothing was handed to them on a silver platter. They wanted to get ahead, for sure, but they also wanted to give back to society by realizing their highest potential.
You are fourth generation Americans. Now, I have a thesis about that, which has preoccupied me for some time. The fourth generation of American Jews has no direct connection to the immigrant experience. You did not spend your childhood, like me, making the monthly trip into Brooklyn from Westchester County, every month and every holiday. You did not hear, over and over again, the stories of coming to America, surviving the Depression, fighting to build a better life. You did not see the tiny home crammed with graduation pictures, from high school, from college, and the copies of the diplomas: the bachelor’s degree, the masters degree, and the doctorate.

As fourth generation American Jews you were born and raised in the comfortable climes of middle to upper middle class suburbia. You were shuttled from one extra-curricular activity to another. You did not need a paying job during the school year. You did not have to leave school early to support your family. Your college tuition was covered. You graduated debt free.

Part of my thesis as it relates to education, is that when you don’t have to fight for something you value it less. You are likely unaware that the children of immigrant Jews like your grandparents were so high achieving that beginning in the 1920’s many of the elite universities in the country instituted quotas to limit the number of Jewish students. Sociologist Jerome Karabel documents that these Jewish quotas at Harvard, Yale and Princeton were not lifted until the 1960s.

Forgive me for saying so, but your generation of American Jews has lost its edge when it comes to education. Asian Americans now comprise the highest achieving ethnic group at Bronx Science and Stuyvesant, the highest cohort of National Merit Scholars and valedictorians. Many are second or third generation Americans and thus have the direct connection to the immigrant generation, not to mention the zealous, demanding parenting as described in the bestselling Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. A generation ago that book would have been Battle Hymn of the Jewish Mother.

Jewish culture venerates learning and celebrates educational achievement. As American Jews have slipped away from their Judaism they have also slipped away from academic excellence. I read a fascinating book over the summer. Permit me a few minutes of historical digression. The book, by social economists Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, is entitled, The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History. Their thesis is simple and daring: The fate of the Jews is linked to their level of education. When the Temple and the Jewish homeland were destroyed by the Romans in the year 70, Judaism shifted from a small elite of priests offering sacrifices for the masses to a dispersed community of rabbis and lay leaders who demanded participation and accountability from the common man.

The authors write:

Rabbi and scholars transformed Judaism into a religion whose main norm required every Jewish man to read and to the study the Torah in Hebrew himself and, even more radically, to send his sons from the age of six or seven to primary school or synagogue to learn to do the same. In the world of universal illiteracy, as it was at the beginning of the first millennium, this was an absolutely revolutionary transformation. At that time, no other religion had a similar norm as a membership requirement for its followers, and no state or empire had anything like laws imposing compulsory education or universal literacy for its citizens.

The authors go on to explain an intriguing phenomenon. While the Jews remained primarily farmers in an agrarian society under Rome their numbers drastically declined. As they point out, in this rural economy educating the children as Judaism requires is a cost but brings no economic benefits because literacy does not make a farmer "more productive or wealthier." What we don’t like to talk about is that sizable numbers of Jews opted out of Judaism in the first centuries of the Common Era, when our population dropped from 5.5 million circa the year 65 to roughly 1.2 million circa 650.

Then the Jewish world radically changed again with the conquest of the Muslims. Their vast empire saw the rapid growth of urban centers, and the establishment of new industries and commerce. These changes vastly increased the demand for skilled and literate occupations. The Jews answered the call and filled the void. In the next two and half centuries 75% of the world’s Jews, in Mesopotamia and Persia, left agriculture and moved to cities and towns. The Chosen Few argues that the literacy and education skills of the Jews gave them such an advantage and incentive that as Jews spread throughout North Africa, Spain, and Christian Europe that they put a premium on advanced education and networking.

The authors conclude, 

The rabbis and scholars who transformed Judaism into a religion of literacy during the first centuries of the millennium could not have foreseen the profound impact of their decision to make every Jewish man capable of reading and studying….  an apparently odd choice of religious norm-the enforcement of literacy in a mostly illiterate, agrarian world… turned out to be the lever of Jewish economic success and intellectual prominence in the subsequent centuries up to today.

So much for the history lesson… My question to our children today is: Do you have the hunger for learning that distinguished your forbears? Do you have the passion for wisdom that defined your culture? Do you have the commitment to Jewish literacy? Do you have the commitment to general literacy? Is your thirst for knowledge or for some other drink? Is your appetite for understanding or for some other pursuit?

You’re into making money, so let’s talk about that for a second. Level of education still matters. There is a direct correlation between educational attainment and lifetime earnings. Today a high school dropout cannot expect to make a million dollars during their entire working career. A high school graduate can expect to earn $1.4 million. A college graduate: nearly double that, $2.4 million. A master’s degree holder, add another half million. A doctorate- it jumps to $3.5. And the highest of all, a professional degree… lifetime earnings of $4.2 million dollars.

Your secular education matters. And your religious education matters. In part because of the connection I just talked about. Studying Judaism instills a love of learning. And in part because religious learning does something secular learning cannot do, or at least cannot do fully—teach you how to be how to be a mensch.

This past May our youngest son Noam remembers that we sat in the rain as he graduated from Rutgers (magna cum laude I will add). He didn’t really pay attention to the commencement speaker, a recently retired NJ Supreme Court Justice, in part because she went on too long after saying she would not go on too long. But I reminded him of one thing that I found worthwhile. She recalls that when she got her first exam back from the Catholic school she attended (which she aced), her teacher, a nun, wrote on her test: "Good job. Be smart. Be good."

Love learning because it sharpens your mind, and your heart. Cherish your secular and religious education because it makes you a more informed citizen, and a more compassionate one. Strive for academic excellence not because of the awards it will bring but the insights it will bestow.

There’s a classic teaching in our tradition which lists some of the dearest ethical commandments of Judaism and then remarkably concludes with the expression v’talmud torah c’neged kulam, “but the study of Torah is the greatest of them all.”

Why does the Talmud say that study is the greatest? The sages reply: because it leads to all the rest of the commandments… to learning them and observing them.

So on this Rosh Hashanah I say to you, my children, and all the young people here: don’t stop learning. Don’t drop out after bar/bat mitzvah. Don’t stop after confirmation. Pledge yourself to lifelong learning as a Jew. Need a good book? Just ask me.

Don’t stop learning in your secular studies. Excel in high school, shine in college, pursue the advanced degree… and then keep learning in your profession and in general. Your education is not a burden; it is a privilege. And your great grandparents, the ones who did not have the opportunity you have, were right. It is a passport to a better life, in more ways than one.

Your great grandfather told your grandfather to bury his head in the books. He did so… and think about how we benefit from that to this day.

So I will conclude this first letter by wishing you on this Rosh Hashanah not only a shana tova u’metukah, a good and sweet new year, but a shana tova v’haskalah, a good and educational new year.

Love, Abba.

Aiming Higher

Here is a New Year's wish from Israel's Technion, as shared over on YouTube:






And here's their write-up:

Aiming Higher, a Rosh Hashanah New Year's experiment. How we dip the apple in honey at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Follow this link to learn more about Technion: http://pard.technion.ac.il

And we join together with the Jewish people in Israel and all around the world in saying: 

L'Shana Tova Tikatevu

May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year!

and

Gemar Chatima Tova

May your final sealing in the Book of Life be good!