from the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

From the desk of …                    

 Rabbi Barry Schwartz

    

ISRAEL AT 70!

Some of us were alive to celebrate the birth of the modern state of Israel on May 14, 1948.

All of us are alive to celebrate the 70th birthday of the modern state of Israel this spring (the actual date this year corresponding to the 5th of Iyar is April 19).

I am sorry that I was not yet born to witness the miracle of Israel’s founding. The ingathering of the exiles, the revival of a Jewish state, the rebirth of Hebrew: Is there a more astounding event in all of Jewish history? What a marvel, after twenty centuries, to be able to board an airplane and eleven hours later touch down in the holy land of a sovereign Jewish state. What a privilege to be able to support Israel wherever we may live.

I call Israel “my other country” or “my second home”. It’s not simply because I happen to have dual citizenship, and the fact that my family of five have ten passports. It’s not simply because I studied there, got married there, worked there, served in the army there… in fact all of that was decades ago.

It’s because I believe if you are Jewish, Israel is your spiritual homeland, if not your physical one.

It’s because you are a citizen of the United States and you are a citizen of the Jewish people.

It’s because I believe that if America is your mother and Israel is your father, you should love both your parents.

Israel is family. You love your family… and you criticize your family. As I have said before: unconditional love does not mean uncritical love. You love your spouse and children unconditionally; that does not mean that you look away when you think they are wrong. You speak up for their sake; precisely because you care. Yes, we need to work for a more just Israel, inside and out. There is a time for criticism… but not at the expense of celebration.

At this time, let’s reiterate our love and praise of Israel—that’s what families do at birthdays. And so I am asking every member of the congregation to send me a one sentence line, “What Israel Means to Me….” (rabbiblschwartz at gmail.com)

We will read every response at our special Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day) Shabbat service on April 27. Our goal is 70 statements for Israel’s 70 th birthday! We’re throwing a party… Join the Celebration!

Relgious School Autumnal News

From the pages of Kadima, the Newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

Religious School News 

     from


Cantor Sandy Horowitz

Religious School Director

Things have been busy at Adas Emuno Religious School! We capped off the high holiday season with almost full student participation in the Simchat Torah service, as our youngest students led the Torah parade with singing and flags, and the other classes each chanted a Torah verse in both Hebrew and English–I felt so incredibly proud of them! That same night, the 7th grade class was responsible for leading us in Shabbat prayers and songs and they did a terrific job as well.

Last month we celebrated the bar mitzvah of Blake Klein as he read from the Torah and spoke to us about Noah–mazel tov to Blake and his entire family. Blake is an 8th grader and is one of our valued madrichim, along with the other teachers’ helpers Hannah Futeran, Lily Futeran, Emery Jacobowitz and Maddie Racciatti.

Looking ahead, our next Shabbat Family Service takes place on Friday, November 17th. At this special service, we will have a Consecration Ceremony for new students who joined our school last year and this year. Before services, the Membership Committee is hosting a Pizza Dinner at 6:30 in honor of this year's new member families. All school families are invited to attend the pizza dinner, but we ask that you RSVP by Wednesday, November 15th. Please email (indicating how many people in your family will be attending the dinner) to Virginia at vegitter at aol.com or text to 551-404-7486.

Please make sure to check out these other dates and special events coming up in November and December:

Sunday, November 5
11:00 AM⏤Confirmation Class

Friday, November 17
6:30 PM⏤Pizza Dinner welcoming new member families

7:30 PM⏤Shabbat Family Service and Consecration Ceremony. “Decorate your own cupcake” oneg!

Sunday, November 26
Thanksgiving Weekend⏤No Religious School

Sunday, December 3
11:30 AM⏤Social Action Mitzvah Mall for students and their parents

Thursday, December 7
7:30 PM B’nei Mitzvah Parent Meeting

Sunday, December 10
11:00 AM⏤Confirmation Class

Friday, December 15
7:30 PM⏤Grade 5-6 Shabbat Family Service

Saturday, December 16
7:00 PM Community Menorah Lighting/Chanukah Party

Sunday, December 17
Chanukah Party during Religious School

Sunday, December 24 & 31
No School

 

From the pages of Kadima, the newsletter of Congregation Adas Emuno:

A Message From Our President

Dr. Lance Strate

Much Obliged

Edward Sapir was a Jewish anthropologist and a pioneer in the field of linguistics. He was particularly concerned with the ways in which different languages give us different ways of looking at, thinking about, and understanding the world. Ever hear about how Eskimos have a dozen different words for snow? The point is that they notice differences between different types of snow, because their vocabulary leads them to pay attention to those differences. For us, with only one word for snow, we tend to ignore the differences most of the time.

In a class discussion on this topic some time ago, a Japanese student explained that it is impossible to say in the Japanese language that my boyfriend drove me home. She explained that you either have to say that my boyfriend did me the favor of driving me home, or that my boyfriend was obligated to drive me home. In their language, action cannot be described in a neutral manner, divorced from social relationships. In this way, according to Sapir, the language that people speak influences the kind of culture that they have.

The Italians have a saying, traduttore, tradittore, a play on words which roughly translates to translator, traitor, or, the translator is a traitor. The idea is that something is always lost in the translation, and that's why, to be truly fluent in another language, you have to think in that other language, you have to see the world through the lens of that other language.

This comes up in reference to the Hebrew word tzedakah, which we translate to mean charity. And maybe that's not an act of treason, but it does betray a different meaning attached to similar types of action. The word charity can be traced back to the Latin caritas, which means dear, and is associated with love and caring. Tzedakah, on the other hand, has the root meaning of justice and righteousness. Simply put, charity means doing a favor. Tzedakah means keeping a moral obligation. These are differences, and they are differences that make a difference.

Nowadays, the language of love and caring comes easy to us. Some of what we love and care about may be for our own gratification, as foodies, fashionistas, or fans. Some of it may be for the sake of others, for various causes we have embraced and chosen to support. And, after all, as Americans, and as Jews, we are a giving and generous people, a caring people. We are fluent in that language.

But are we also fluent in the language of obligation? Or is it, like Yiddish, a language that was native to older generations, but one that we don't really speak anymore, one in which we only know a few words and phrases? We may hear about legal and financial obligations, but are they actions we take out of a positive sense of justice, of doing the right thing, or are they something that must be fulfilled to avoid negative consequences? Of course, there are family obligations as well, but do we see them as a blessing or a burden? Do we perform them as acts of righteousness, or out of a sense of guilt?

And how do we think about our obligations as citizens of the United States, and members of our local communities?

And even more so, how do we think about our obligations to our synagogue? Our congregation? Our Jewish community? To the Jewish people? To our religion and our tradition? Is it enough that whatever support we give is given as an act of charity? There certainly ought to be a sense of love and caring that we feel. I know I feel it. I hope you do too.

But is it enough that whatever support we give is given as a favor? Admittedly, everything we do now, we do out of choice, not out of necessity, in order to protect ourselves as a people in exile, and survive as strangers in a strange land. Everything we do now, in a sense, we do as a favor. And that means that it is easy enough for us not to do anything, not to attend services and events, not to get involved in our social action and educational activities, not to donate time, money, or resources. It is easy enough for us not to send our children to religious school, not to have them become b'nai mitzvah and confirmands, not to maintain membership in a synagogue, not hold onto our Jewish identity, not to pass on our traditions.

For most of us, the language of obligation is at best a second language, not our mother tongue. And the challenge is to learn to be fluent in that second language, to go beyond thinking of our obligations as just doing others a favor, as acts of charity. The challenge is to understand our obligations as actions we perform because we want and need to fulfill fulfilling our responsibilities, as members of Adas Emuno, as members of the Jewish community, as members of a people and part of a four thousand year old history.

Can we speak the language of obligation, more so can we think in the language of obligation, so that we understand it not as a matter of putting ourselves out, or even extending ourselves on behalf of others, but as a matter of being true to ourselves, being true to who we truly are?

In the English language, the old fashioned, colloquial expression, much obliged, is generally translated as thank you, but in addition to gratitude it also carries the subtle connotation of saying, I am in your debt. It is a great example of the language of obligation. It represents a way of looking at the world that includes accepting responsibility for each other. We owe it to each other, as members of our congregation and community, to support and maintain our congregation and community.

We owe a debt to the generations who came before us, a debt to keep faith in the face of all that they sacrificed for us. How much of the life and lifestyle that we enjoy today, in which we have the privilege to make choices and grant favors whenever we care to, how much of that is built on all that they accomplished, all that they sacrificed? How much did we earn ourselves, without any assistance from those who came before us?

We are much obliged for the blessings and benefits and beauty of our tradition, our heritage, our culture and our covenant. It is a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid, except by keeping faith with the future, by preserving and sustaining what we have inherited, and not depriving the generations that follow us of their own responsibilities to the past and to the future.

We need to teach the language of obligation, and to do that we need to speak it ourselves. And speaking that language includes giving Adas Emuno your support, involvement, and commitment. Without it, we won't survive. And with it, we are, without a doubt, much obliged.

Je Suis Charlie?

The latest op-ed in the Jewish Standard by Adas Emuno President Lance Strate appeared in the January 30th issue, and perhaps takes on further resonance in light of the new attacks that occurred in Copenhagen yesterday.  In reference to the brutal acts of terrorism that occurred in Paris on January 7th, and the French and international response, the op-ed is entitled Je Suis Charlie? And it is followed by the subtitle, "It depends on what 'is' is".  And here it "is":

It says much about the age that we live in that so many of us first learned of the terrorist attacks in Paris on January 7th through Twitter, and that the slogan that came to represent much of the international response to the massacre originated as an image tweeted by French artist and music journalist Joachim Roncin, and soon morphed into a hashtag that rose to the top of the day’s trending topics, and has become one of the most popular hashtags in the history of that social network.

I am referring, of course, to Je suis Charlie, or in hashtag form, #jesuischarlie, and its English version, #iamcharlie.

Some followed up on this formula with the variations Je suis Ahmed or Je suis Ahmed Rabet, to acknowledge the Muslim police officer who was so brutally murdered in the attack on the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, and as a subtle reminder that the terrorists are not representative of Muslims in general. Others added Je suis Juif, meaning I am Jewish, to recall the fact that four hostages were murdered in a kosher supermarket, in addition to the 12 killed at the offices of the Parisian periodical. (Several of them also were Jewish.) Members of the Jewish community in France and abroad were encouraged by the appearance of Je suis Juif signs and hashtags, especially as the slogan was displayed by some French Muslims, although there has also been some criticism that it was not shared widely enough.

Another variation on Je suis Charlie, coming from the far right in France, was Je suis Charlie Martel. The reference is to Charles Martel, the leader of the Franks and the grandfather of Charlemagne, who introduced the stirrup and with it mounted shock combat (of the sort used by knights in armor on horseback wielding lances). That innovation allowed his outnumbered army to resist an invasion from the Islamic empire’s Umayyad caliphate back in the 8th century. Considered the savior of Christendom and a progenitor of the feudal system that brought order to Europe in the wake of the decline of the Rome’s imperial authority, he was given the cognomen Martel, the French word for hammer, after his victory, following the archetype of Judah Maccabee.

Outrage against the attacks has not been universally shared, however, and some have shown their support of the terrorists with the Twitter hashtag #IamKouachi, in reference to the brothers who carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack, while a British member of Parliament tweeted Je suis Palestinian. A less extreme expression of disagreement has been the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasCharlie, meaning, I am not Charlie. This counterslogan has been used to express the view that Charlie Hebdo’s publication of cartoons making fun of the Islamic prophet Muhammad was disrespectful to Muslims, without necessarily condoning the terrorists’ violent response to it. It has been used by news organizations to justify their decision not to republish or display those cartoons. And it also has been invoked as a protest against the fact that so many other acts of violence and bloodshed occurring outside the West have been ignored by journalists and social media participants.

In a New York Times op-ed called I am Not Charlie Hebdo, David Brooks argues that if anyone had tried to publish the content of the satirical newspaper on any U.S. campus today, it would have been accused of engaging in hate speech and shut down by the university’s administration. Moreover, Brooks points out that “it is inaccurate for most of us to claim, Je Suis Charlie Hebdo, or I Am Charlie Hebdo. Most of us don’t actually engage in the sort of deliberately offensive humor that that newspaper specializes in.” While characterizing the magazine as sophomoric, indeed juvenile in its humor, and puerile and insulting, he maintains that ridicule and provocation play an important role in any community, and that healthy societies should be tolerant of all forms of speech. They should not adopt codes of political correctness, as many of our institutions have, he says.

As Brooks suggests, taken literally, Je suis Charlie seems a bit absurd, but of course the slogan is not meant to be taken literally. It is an expression of support and solidarity, no doubt fashioned after President John F. Kennedy’s famous quote, part of a speech delivered in West Berlin in 1963, in response to the building of the Berlin Wall by the Communist government of East Germany: “Ich bin ein Berliner,” meaning, “I am a Berliner.” The ambiguity about what exactly is meant by the verb “to be” is what gives this declaration its powerful effect, but it is that same ambiguity that Brooks calls into question. It is an ambiguity that brings to mind another famous quote from an American president, Bill Clinton: “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” This was said in defense of his earlier statement about Monica Lewinsky: “There’s nothing going on between us.” (That is arguably true if “is” is limited to the present moment and not inclusive of what “was” going on in the past.) In the context of a grand jury investigation, the remark came across as invoking nothing more than a legal technicality, but in fact it reflects one of the most problematic elements of our language.

In the approach known as general semantics, the problems posed by the verb “to be” long have been acknowledged. Simply put, the word “is” tends to imply a relationship of identity, of interchangeability, projecting all of the characteristics of one thing onto another, which is why Brooks objects to the slogan Je suis Charlie. Holding the emotional impact aside, it would be more accurate to say that I sympathize with the staff of Charlie Hebdo and their families, I grieve for the victims of the terrorists attacks, and I unequivocally support freedom of speech and the press. Because we tend to respond to the word “is” as if it means “equals,” as if it means the same thing as “one plus one is two,” some general semanticists have suggested avoiding the verb “to be” altogether, with all tenses and traces of the verb eliminated. While this may seem like an extreme measure, substituting verbs like sympathize, grieve, and support for is, am, and are does result in more accurate statements. It also generally yields better writing, forcing us to use more active verbs. This is not to discount the simple power of the ich bin/je suis/I am quotes, but to understand that they are the exception rather than the rule.

To say that the Kouachi brothers are terrorists is to imply that that is all we need to know about them. We absolutely must condemn them as terrorists, and do whatever is in our power to prevent such acts from occurring again. But we do ourselves a disservice by reducing them down to a simple label and a simple equation, when we desperately need to understand the complexities of such violent activities. In the aftermath of the attacks, the statement that Islam is a religion of peace has been repeated countless times, and while we may applaud the sentiment behind it, it is as misleading as saying that Islam is a religion of violence, as misleading as making similar statements about Judaism, Christianity, or Buddhism. Substituting other verbs, such as preaches and promotes, would be helpful, but general semantics also would recommend dealing with more concrete terms. Islam is an abstract concept (so is Judaism, Christianity, or Buddhism), and it helps to use more concrete terms, to refer to specific individuals and groups, statements and texts, and especially, actions.

Modernity, and with it the establishment of the State of Israel as a Jewish homeland, has led to much agonizing over the question of who is a Jew. And while there are issues we grapple with concerning Jewish identity, to a significant degree, the problem may be in our verbs, not ourselves. The answer to the questions of “Who is a Jew?” and “Who is Charlie?” would depend on what the meaning of “is” is.

It is significant to note that this is a problem that does not exist in the Hebrew language, at least not in the present tense. There are no words for is, am, and are, and the verb lihiyot, “to be,” is conjugated only in the past and future tenses. It is a quality that Hebrew shares with several other languages, including Arabic. While it is far from a cure for our many linguistic maladies, it should serve to point us in the right direction. And it is consistent with Jewish ethics to say that what really matters is not so much what someone is, but what someone does. And that includes standing up for the right of free expression and religious affiliation. And that includes defending the right to live in peace and free from terror.

The Return of the Violin

The following film by Haim Hecht comes very highly recommended by Rabbi Schwartz. It's just over an hour long, so set aside a little time to stop, look, and above all, listen.  We think you'll find it moving and thought-provoking. As Rabbi Schwartz put it:

This is worth watching if you have any interest in music, history, Joshua Bell, Huberman, Mahler, Strauss, Brahms, Toscanini, Stradivarius, Mehta, Lloyds of London, the fall of Communism, origin of the Israeli Philharmonic, the Jews of Poland and Europe, Carnegie Hall, etc.

If you agree or disagree with Rabbi Schwartz's comments on the film, or if you have any further thoughts or opinions, let us know—we'd love to hear from you and share your responses here on our congregational blog.


And best wishes for a happy and safe civil new year!

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Yom Kippur 5775

OUR MOST COMMON MISTAKE

YOM KIPPUR 5775

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Maybe you've heard the story about the Yeshivah University rowing team? One year they were asked to compete in the Ivy League Division. Unfortunately, they lost race after race. They practiced every day, for hours, but finished last at every meet. Finally, the team decided to send their captain, Morris, to spy on Harvard, the perennial champ. Morris went up to Cambridge and hid out along the banks of the Charles River. He carefully observed the Harvard team. A week later he returned to New York. "Well, I figured out their secret," he announced. "What? What is it? Tell us!" his teammates shouted.

"Well," he said, "We should have only one guy yelling. The other eight should row!"

Isn't it true that we yell too much?

Isn't it true that we criticize too much?

Isn't it true that we gossip too much?

I teach a unit in Confirmation class about Lashon Harah—Inappropriate Speech. It's about time to talk about it from the pulpit—when a lot of people are listening.

Judaism has a great deal to teach on this subject.

And, when you stop and think about it... foot-in-mouth disease is probably our most common malady.

I'm going to ask you a question that I ask my Confirmation students when I introduce this unit.

How many of us can go a week without saying something we later regret?

How many of us can go a day?

Whether in content or tone, lashon harah, the Hebrew expression for hurtful speech, deceptive speech, unnecessary speech, inappropriate speech, is our number one mistake.

On this Day of Atonement, it's therefore worth a look at the subject.

One needs to look no further than our own High Holiday prayer book to appreciate the dimension of the problem. Minutes ago we recited the al cheyt enumeration of our sins. No less than half of the dozen of the listed mistakes are connected to our misuse of language:

For the sin we have sinned against you by idle talk.

For the sin we have sinned against you by offensive speech.

...by speaking ill of other people.

...by scoffing and mocking.

...by gossiping.

...by swearing falsely.

I went back to the traditional High Holiday machzor, with the really big list of sins. [Our prayer book carries an abbreviated list]. I counted a dozen sins connected to speech. Here they are, Hebrew and English:

1. tipshut peh—thoughtless speech
2. latzon—scoffing
3. motzi shem rah—slander
4. bitui s'fatayim—offensive speech
5. dibur peh—insincere confession
6. sh'vuat shav—swearing falsely
7. bitui peh—foolish expressibns
8. hilul hashem—blashphemy
9. tumat s'fatayim—impure speech
10. n'tiyat garon—arrogant speech
11. r'ichilut—gossip
12. k'lala—cursing.

The ancient Psalmist wrote, "Mavet v 'haim b 'yad lashon—Life and death are in the power of the tongue" (Proverbs 18:21).

The truth is that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will also hurt us. They may not break the body, but they break the soul. They injure by slighting, by embarrassing, by branding, by marginalizing, by prejudicing. And as we all know, a slip of the tongue in the heat of the moment can occur as quickly as a slip of the foot on a sliver of ice.

The Psalmist declares, "Mi ha ish—Who is the man that loves life, and desires good fortune? The one who guards [his] tongue from evil, and his lips from deceitful speech" (Psalm 34:13).

Just how quickly and deeply words can wound is evidenced by a dramatic story told by the late, great Isaac Asimov. Asimov recounts that when he was a 15 year old high school student, his writing class teacher, Max N. asked for volunteers to read their essays. Asimov's hand shot up.

"I had read only about a quarter of it," he recalls in his memoir, "when N. stopped me and used an opprobrious barnyard term to describe my writing. I had never heard a teacher use a "dirty word" before and I was shocked. The class wasn't however. They laughed at me uproariously and I took my seat in bitter shame."

Asimov goes on to say that, despite his acute embarrassment, he took the criticism to heart, and greatly improved his next piece. When N. printed it in the school literary journal, Asimov went to thank him, only to be wounded again when his teacher told him that the only reason he had printed it was because he needed a lightweight submission to round out the serious articles.

Isaac Asimov went on to author and edit over 400 books and articles, and is considered one of America's greatest writers and intellects. Yet anyone who reads his memoir feels how fresh the pain of his embarrassment is, even though the account was penned 55 years after the event. Asimov writes at the end, "I wish I has a time machine and could go back to 1934 with some of my books and some of the articles that have been written about me and say to him, "How do you like that, you rotten louse? If you had treated me right, I could have recorded you as my discoverer, instead of branding you a rotten louse."

Asimov's experience illustrates the potent teaching of our tradition that one who shames another in public, it is as if they have shed blood. While we say that words are only words, the humiliation and hurt they may bring when misused have powerful lasting effects, whether we like it or not.

Later this afternoon, I will tell a classic Eastern European Hasidic story at our Yom Kippur Children's Service. My props are a small pillow case, and a bag of colored feathers. A boy, sometimes I call him Mert the Blurt, is sent to the rabbi for calling out bad things about other people. Unable to impress on the youth the error of his ways, the rabbi tells the stubborn kid to take a feather pillow from his home, go to the center of town, cut it open, and watch the feathers scatter to the wind. 

The boy does as he is told, returns, and asks the rabbi, "Am I forgiven now?" 

"Not quite," replies the rabbi. 'Now I want you to gather up all the feathers." 

"But that's impossible," protests the boy. "The wind has scattered them everywhere. "

"Precisely," the rabbi answers. "Your words are like feathers. Once they leave your mouth, they are everywhere. How can you repair the damage you have done?"

To make matters worse, the sad and harsh truth is that we tend to most often hurt the people closest to us.

Maybe it's because they are around the most. We interact with them more than anyone else. Improper language, exploitative language, abusive language... we use it all... and it hurts the people we love the most. Which is why all of us come to Yom Kippur with something to confess....

And so, in the final analysis, what can we do about our motor-mouths and loose tongues? How do we repent of the sins of our speech? After all, don't we want to address our most common mistakes in order to repair our most precious relationships?

They say "prevention is the best medicine" and here therefore are the three most important lessons I've learned wrestling with the subject over the years:

First: Think twice before speaking. I know it seems obvious. But if we only paused for a nanosecond before blurting out much of what we say; if we just paused and asked ourselves, "Do I really need to say that?" or "Do I really need to say it in that tone of voice?" think of how many screw-ups, never mind unintentional sins we could avoid.

Second: Be careful with the truth. Judaism teaches that a statement that is true, but derogatory, is still lashon harah, inappropriate speech. Conveying a negative or embarrassing image of someone, even if that description is factually correct (and maybe even deserved) is still wrong. It harms another person. The harm may end up being physical, financial, or emotional. Short of slander it may be legal, but that does not make lashon harah right.

Be careful about the truth for another reason. The truth can be slippery. A seemingly innocuous statement can be easily exaggerated or taken out of context. When in doubt, do without. If you have any apprehension that something you say may be misconstrued, misinterpreted, quoted out of context, or blown out of context... don't say it!

And third: Avoid gossip. I know you're saying, "how original!" But it's so true... and so hard. The Jewish teaching here is that we should not only avoid gossiping ourselves, but we should also avoid repeating it, or supporting it. We relate less than flattering images of other people to our spouses, family and friends. We repeat questionable things we've heard with the excuse that its common knowledge. We talk behind one another's back. We embarrass in jest. Gossip has its ways.

• Think twice before speaking. 
• Be careful with the truth. 
• Avoid gossip. 

And now let me conclude on a completely different note. Well, actually, on the flip side of what I have been talking about. Lashon harah is all about inappropriate speech. But consider, and maybe this is my fourth lesson, not just decreasing lashon harah, but increasing lashon hatov—kind and generous speech.

• We need less criticism, and more compliments.
• We need less reproach and more praise.
• We need less gossip and more tribute.

A classic story from the late, great Art Buchwald:

I was in New York the other day and rode with a friend in a taxi. When we got out, my friend said to the driver, "Thank you for the ride. You did a superb job of driving."

The taxi driver was stunned for a second. Then he said, "Are you a wise guy or something?"

"No, my dear man, and I'm not putting you on. I admire the way you keep cool in heavy traffic."

"Yeah," the driver said and drove off.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

I am trying to bring love back to New York," he said. "I believe it's the only thing that can save the city."

"How can one man save New York?"

"It's not one man. I believe I have made that taxi driver's day. Suppose he has 20 fares. He's going to be nice to those 20 fares because someone was nice to him. Those fares in turn will be kinder to their employees or shopkeepers or waiters or even their own families. Eventually the goodwill could spread to at least 1,000 people. Now that isn't bad, is it?"

"But you're depending on that taxi driver to pass your goodwill to others."

"I'm not depending on it," my friend said. "I'm aware that the system isn't foolproof so I might deal with ten different people today. If out of ten I can make three happy, then eventually I can indirectly influence the attitudes of 3,000 more."

"It sounds good on paper," I admitted, "but I'm not sure it words in practice."

"Nothing is lost if it doesn't. It didn't take any of my time to tell that man he was doing a good job. He neither received a larger tip nor a smaller tip. If it fell on deaf ears, so what? Tomorrow there will be another taxi driver I can try to make happy."

"You're some kind of a nut," I said.

"That shows how cynical you have become. I have made a study of this. The thing that seems to be lacking, besides money of course, for our postal employees, is that no one tells people who work for the post office what a good job they're doing."

"But they're not doing a good job."

"They're not doing a good job because they feel no one cares if they do or not. Why shouldn't someone say a kind word to them?"

We were walking past a structure in the process of being built and passed five workmen eating their lunch. My friend stopped. "That's a magnificent job you men have done. It must be difficult and dangerous work."

The workmen eyed my friend suspiciously.

"When will it be finished?"

"June, a man grunted.

"Ah. That really is impressive. You must all be very proud."

We walked away. I said to him, "I haven't seen anyone like you since The Man From LaMancha."

"When those men digest my words, they will feel better for it. Somehow the city will benefit from their happiness."

"But you can't do this all alone!" I protested. "You're just one man."

"The most important thing is not to get discouraged. Making people in the city become kind again is not an easy job, but if I can enlist other people in my campaign..."

You just winked at a very plain-looking woman," I said.

"Yes, I know," he replied. "And if she's a schoolteacher, her class will be in for a fantastic day."

Well...

You're a wonderful congregation.

You've done a superb job listening to me.

Have a fantastic new year!

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Kol Nidre 5775

THE DAY OF E-TONEMENT

EREV YOM KIPPUR 5775

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

Last year a piece ran on the eve of Yom Kippur, in the Wall Street Journal, that I knew I would talk about this year. The article was entitled: “Atoning for Yom Kippur—There’s an App for That.”

Here’s the story: Sarah Lefton is a digital animator in San Francisco. She was sitting in services two years ago. Maybe she was a bit bored…. Early in the service she flipped ahead to the Torah reading, and was instantly absorbed. The story, from Leviticus, explains the original Yom Kippur, when the High Priest carried out a ritual to absolve the people of sin. The ritual involved two goats. One goat was sacrificed on the altar of the Tabernacle. The other was banished to the wilderness, bearing the weight of the community’s confession. This chosen animal is the origin of the term scapegoat. “To me the story was so wild and interesting,” says Ms. Lefton. “I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if there was this Internet scapegoat you could just send around and upload your sins.”

So a year ago August she launched eScapegoat, just in time for the season of repentance. Users anonymously upload their 120-character confessions onto a cartoon goat via text or email. When confessors press submit, they are greeted with the image of a googly-eyed goat being pushed off a cliff by a priest, which is how the Talmud said it was done.

I googled the site this summer to make sure the goat was still there. He/she/it still is. A tag line says, Like in Bible Times, only nerdier. You have two options: start and see others’ sins. I did neither. I guess I’m old school. I exited.

I just have a hard time confessing my sin’s on-line… and I’m not sure I want others to read about it. Maybe I’m just showing my age or prudishness here. The site reportedly had 15,000 users during its first month.

And that’s nothing compared to the other virtual confession sites I learned about. Dailyconfession.com, founded in 1999, has 32,000 users-a day. Think about that.

And there’s evidently a massively popular app called Whisper, which invites you to share secrets and express yourself. I’m not going to ask how many of you have heard about Whisper, or use Whisper. A year after its launch in 2012, Whisper, according to Wikipedia, had more than 3 billion page views a month.

What is going on here?

Well, I suppose that the popularity of these sites testifies to the same phenomena that fills sanctuaries at the High Holidays. People feel a need to confess because we have reason to confess! We make mistakes. We make them unintentionally… most of the time. We make them intentionally …some of the time. We feel regret. We have a guilty conscience. We may fear judgment, from others or from God.

Several years ago when I was in England I visited Salisbury Cathedral, maybe the most magnificent of all the awe-inspiring cathedrals of Great Britain. On the bus back to London our spirited tour guide asked us how the Church raised the money for these incredible houses of worship. She pointed out that the Church was the most successful fundraising organization in history.

Her answer: indulgences. The promissory notes, if you will, that the Church gave out, in return for good deeds (notably including donations to the Church) that helped ease judgment for one’s sins. As I understand it, these indulgences did not absolve one of sin and they did not alleviate the need for confession. But they did mitigate damnation, which Christians to this day take very seriously.

We may not confess in the same way as Biblical forbears, or in the same way as neighboring Catholics, but we share in the primal need. So what better time, than now, to talk about… sin?

It’s interesting and not a little bit ironic that today we Jews are uncomfortable with sin… the word. The Reform movement is working on a new machzor, High Holy Day prayer book, to replace the one we are currently using. The committee likes to use surveys and focus groups on potentially contentious matters. So they queried people about how to translate the word cheyt, the main Hebrew term for sin, which as you know, appears frequently and centrally in our Yom Kippur liturgy (as in al cheyt shechatanyu… for the sin we have sinned…).

There was quite a bit of feedback. It seems that half favor keeping sin and half don’t. The half in favor say we should continue to call sin a sin. To use mistake or wrong or missing the mark is to weaken our language and reflects a moral relativism that is, well, a sin.

The other half says that the English word sin has too many Christian overtones. In truth, there are differences in what the two religions teach. For example, Christianity speaks of original sin that we are born into, while Judaism holds that sin is an act, not a state of being. Christianity often emphasizes that sin is overcome with right belief. Judaism maintains that sin is overcome with right action.

I vote for sin… keeping the word. Why let others co-opt it? More importantly, why let ourselves off the hook?

Not long ago Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the former head of the Union for Reform Judaism, wrote an interesting piece called “The Battle of Sin vs. Self” that was picked up by the Huffington Post. He describes taking a break from High Holy Day preparation by turning on the TV and coming across an interview with a well-known televangelist and author. The preacher’s message was unrelievedly upbeat. He said that people no longer wanted to go to their congregations to find out what they were doing wrong and to leave feeling guilty. Instead, they want to leave feeling uplifted, positive, and inspired.

Yoffie notes the trend across denominational lines. He writes,

 As different as we are from each other, in some ways we are remarkably alike: We are pragmatic, and above all, positive. We speak the language of positive reinforcement. We avoid talking about sin.... [We] focus on making people happy in their religious faith, and on creating worship services that are fashionable and convivial…. [and] yes, we need religion that is joyful and pleasant, comforting and community-building, and that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Yoffie points out that this is very American and very Jewish, yet he continues,

But Judaism is also about balance, and we need a better balance. Yom Kippur is... a reminder that we need less talk of what we want and more talk of what God wants of us… less emphasis on self and self-confidence, and far more on our obligation to be humble before God.

When you stop and think about it, what we are doing right now is so archaic, so odd, and so counter- intuitive… to much of our lives. We’re praying. We’re praying half in Hebrew. We’re listing our sins. We’re getting specific: offensive speech, lustful behavior, disrespect, lying, fraud… you name it. We’re confessing collectively, first person plural… but within the confines of sacred community it’s one-on-one with God.

It’s so different even from our Shabbat worship. So formal, so uncompromising… even I would say, so harsh.

Yet, I hope you would agree, so unexpectedly compelling.

The rest of the time it’s all about eating; today it’s all about fasting.

The rest of the time it’s all about forgetting our troubles; today it’s all about facing our troubles.

The rest of the time it’s all about having a good time; today it’s all about being a good person.

The rest of the time, it’s all about me. Today it’s all about God.

A final thought about sin. Judaism doesn’t just have one word for it… it has three. The main term I already mentioned: cheyt. But there are two others that are not uncommon in the Torah and in our liturgy. The Talmud (Yoma 36b) says that each of these expressions must refer to a distinct kind of sin.

As the sages understand it, cheyt refers to unintentional sin. Avon refers to deliberate sin. And pesha refers to rebellious sin.

The new machzor plans to occasionally translate cheyt as wrongs, avon as acts of injustice, and pesha as moral failures.

What‘s the point here? We make mistakes all the time. We know that. Many are unintentional. But we still did wrong. Usually they were not terrible sins. We can make them right. The possibility of change exists. The opportunity to rectify the wrong is readily before us. We missed the mark but we can do better next time. We can live up to our full potential. We can move closer to the ideal.

Our deliberate mistakes are more serious. Whether by omission or commission our willful neglect caused real harm. We let ourselves get carried away. We turned a blind eye. We know better, but we still messed up. The result is an injustice toward another. Repentance is still possible, but it will be harder.

Our rebellious sins are the most serious. We knowingly have embraced the wrong, and the harm extends beyond the individual to the community. These are true moral failures. We are subverting the values of our faith. While not all the harm can be mitigated, and full repentance and atonement may not be possible, that does not free us from trying to make amends in the best way we can.

The tough, tough message of Yom Kippur is that we have committed all three: cheyt, avon, v’pesha. That’s right: category one—unintentional, category two—intentional, category three—downright rebellious.

Hopefully not too many in two and three… but that unblinking memo to self is that we have been less than we should be. We have not measured up. Sorry. We’re not necessarily bad people. We have plenty of marks on the good side. But we fell short.

Yom Kippur is saying that if you were to sit down with God right now and honestly lay it all out… there is… room for improvement.

God expects more. We expect more. Others need more.

Our highest selves are still out there, waiting to be realized.

And that, my friends, is the bright spot in the reality check (or shall we say, gut check) of the Day of Atonement.

We can change. We can improve. We have not tapped our full potential.

We can take stock. We can make amends. We can sincerely apologize. We can wipe the slate clean.

We can atone. We can forgive and be forgiven. We can love and be loved again.

There’s no app for that. There’s no goat banished to the wilderness, real or virtual.

There’s just you and your soul.

There’s just me and my conscience… tapping into the power within us, and the power beyond us.


Bestowing the strength to search ourselves; better ourselves; transcend ourselves.

On this holy day, so may it be.

The IDF Choir Performing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in Hebrew

Maybe you've seen it, it's been all over the internet and social media lately. This recording made by the official choir of the Israeli Defense Forces is five years old, but as moving and haunting today as it was then. And many are suggesting that it's the best version of the song that was written by Leonard Cohen, and recorded by a multitude of artists—there are over 300 known recorded versions according to Wikipedia!  Or maybe it's 301? Anyway, is this version better than all the rest? You decide!





Whatever the verdict, I think we can all agree that it's a great rendition of what Rolling Stone magazine called one of the greatest songs of all time.

Leonard Cohen will turn 80 next month, and will celebrate with the release of his 13th studio album, entitled Popular Problems. In addition to being a songwriter and recording artist, Cohen is a widely respected literary figure, as a poet and a novelist. And not surprising, he is especially popular both in his native Canada, and in Israel, where he has performed many times.

Reflections

The August 1st issue of the Jewish Standard included another op-ed piece by Adas Emuno president Lance Strate. This one was entitled Reflecting on Reflection, and carried the subtitle, "Jewish life needs—and provides—an opportunity to slow down, think, and soul-search."

You can read it online on the Standard's site by clicking on the title in the preceding paragraph, or read it right here on our congregational blog:

One of the personal challenges we all face here and now, in 21st century America, is finding a time and a place for reflection. 

In the last century, it was said that no one has had a complete thought since the invention of the telephone, a device that we brought into our homes so that we could be interrupted by the outside world at any hour of the day or night. How quaint—and how naïve—that seems today, now that we carry our phones around with us wherever we go, and are continually bombarded by a variety of email and text messages, alerts, apps to play with, and yes, even actual phone calls. There seems to be no room in our busy schedules to simply sit and think, no escape from the deluge of information, interaction, and entertainment made available at our fingertips, the habitually twitching digits of this digital age.

Thinking, in and of itself, is not unique to our species, but human beings have developed a unique set of tools for thought that sets us apart from other forms of life.

First and foremost is language. Much of what we call thinking consists of talking to ourselves silently, carrying on an inner dialogue or monologue. Notice that for the most part, we do not think by somehow imagining that we are writing or typing, or reading our own words on a page or screen. Language is a set of sounds that convey meaning, and for tens of thousands of years—which is to say for most of our history as a species—human beings survived without the aid of the written word. And somewhere along the line, we learned how to internalize speech in the form of thought.

Compared to the spoken word, writing is a relatively recent development, dating back only about 5,500 years. Its purpose was to record speech in a durable form. Before writing, both speech and thought were fleeting, ephemeral, subject to the vagaries of memory. And while we should not discount the power of collective memory, writing gave language a permanence that we had never known before. Writing also made it possible to step back from our words, to see them as fixed signs, available for study.

In other words, writing gave us new tools for thought, allowing us to fix language in place, allowing our words to become the object of prolonged contemplation. Writing recorded the speech and the thoughts of others, allowing readers to view and review their statements and arguments. And writing gave us a way to step outside of our own thinking processes, to observe our thoughts from the outside.

Simply put, writing gave us a mirror for the mind. And in doing so, the written word made possible our capacity for reflection.

That capacity is the subject of an extended essay by Ellen Rose, a professor of education at the University of New Brunswick, which was published in book form, titled On Reflection: An Essay on Technology, Education, and the Status of Thought in the Twenty-First Century. In considering the meaning of the word “reflection,” Dr. Rose relates, “when I close my eyes and try to picture reflection, I immediately envision someone sitting in a book-lined room, reading or pondering silently.” She concludes that the essence of reflection is “deep, sustained thought for which the necessary pre-conditions are solitude and slowness.” Dr. Rose rightly argues that reflection is in decline—has been for some time now—because of our many technological innovations, particularly electronic media.

The decline of reflection is a cause for concern among thoughtful people everywhere, but it ought to be viewed as particularly alarming in regard to the future of the Jewish people. Our religion, tradition, and culture are based on the written word, on the Hebrew aleph-bet and the study of sacred texts, on Torah, Tanach, Talmud. Our rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, the bar or bat mitzvah, is a literacy test. Our houses of worship also are houses of learning, our synagogues also are schools.

It is worth recalling that one of the goals of Nazism was to wipe out the capacity for reflection, and not simply in the service of totalitarian domination. Consider the following observation on the part of historian Elizabeth Eisenstein in Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending:

"Anti-Semitic stereotypes attributed a soft, flabby, and sedentary lifestyle to the bookish Jew, in contrast to the masculine, muscular Aryan. Observers in 1933 witnessed the book-burnings of works by Jews and other “decadent” authors, along with the elimination of the same works from libraries and bookshops. The elimination of Jewish books served as a prelude to measures in the next decade aimed at eliminating the Jews themselves."

The problem we face today is not the elimination of books, but their growing irrelevance to our lives. Could the disappearance of the quiet time we need for reading and for thinking, for the solitude and slowness that forms the basis of deep, sustained thought, possibly be a prelude for a more serious threat to Jewish survival, as a culture or even as a people?

For Dr. Rose, the best hope for the future lies with education. But we also can turn to another opportunity to claim a time and space for reflection, in Jewish worship services of any stream, Orthodox or Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist. Prayer is a form of thought, an exercise in ways of thinking that differ from our everyday thought patterns. And prayer provides an opportunity for profound forms of soul searching, serious introspection, contemplation, and meditation. If we are to reclaim our capacity for reflection, and in doing so safeguard what is essential to our tradition and culture, we will need both our schools and our shuls.

For the earlier op-eds, see our previous posts, Jewish Stereotypes on TV and Jewish Movie Marvels.

The Less Than Perfect God of Hebrew Scripture

This year in our Saturday morning Torah study led by Rabbi Schwartz here at Congregation Adas Emuno, we have been reading the Mishneh Torah of Moses Maimonides, the 12th century Jewish philosopher and theologian, and discussing his attempt to integrate Aristotelian logic into Talmudic scholarship, and provide an accessible summary of Rabbinic Judaism's interpretation of the Torah.

As a supplement to our studies, and a matter of general interest, a recent post on the New York Times Opinionator Blog, entitled An Imperfect God, seems worthy of our attention.  The author is Yoram Hazony, president of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and the author of, most recently, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture:

Here now is Hazony's commentary, posted on November 25th:

Is God perfect? You often hear philosophers describe "theism" as the belief in a perfect being - a being whose attributes are said to include being all-powerful, all-knowing, immutable, perfectly good, perfectly simple, and necessarily existent (among others). And today, something like this view is common among lay people as well. 

There are two famous problems with this view of God. The first is that it appears to be impossible to make it coherent. For example, it seems unlikely that God can be both perfectly powerful and perfectly good if the world is filled (as it obviously is) with instances of terrible injustice. Similarly, it's hard to see how God can wield his infinite power to instigate alteration and change in all things if he is flat-out immutable. And there are more such contradictions where these came from.

The second problem is that while this "theist" view of God is supposed to be a description of the God of the Bible, it's hard to find any evidence that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible (or "Old Testament") thought of God in this way at all. The God of Hebrew Scripture is not depicted as immutable, but repeatedly changes his mind about things (for example, he regrets having made man). He is not all-knowing, since he's repeatedly surprised by things (like the Israelites abandoning him for a statue of a cow). He is not perfectly powerful either, in that he famously cannot control Israel and get its people to do what he wants. And so on.

At this point, an interjection seems appropriate, to note that Hazony is raising the famous problem of free will, one that Maimonides among many others have taken up.

Philosophers have spent many centuries trying to get God's supposed perfections to fit together in a coherent conception, and then trying to get that to fit with the Bible. By now it's reasonably clear that this can't be done. In fact, part of the reason God-bashers like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are so influential (apart from the fact they write so well) is their insistence that the doctrine of God's perfections makes no sense, and that the idealized "being" it tells us about doesn't resemble the biblical God at all.
So is that it, then? Have the atheists won? I don't think so. But it does look like the time has come for some rethinking in the theist camp.

I'd start with this: Is it really necessary to say that God is a "perfect being," or perfect at all, for that matter? As far as I can tell, the biblical authors avoid asserting any such thing. And with good reason. Normally, when we say that something is "perfect," we mean it has attained the best possible balance among the principles involved in making it the kind of thing it is. For example, if we say that a bottle is perfect, we mean it can contain a significant quantity of liquid in its body; that its neck is long enough to be grasped comfortably and firmly; that the bore is wide enough to permit a rapid flow of liquid; and so on. Of course, you can always manufacture a bottle that will hold more liquid, but only by making the body too broad (so the bottle doesn't handle well) or the neck too short (so it's hard to hold). There's an inevitable trade-off among the principles, and perfection lies in the balance among them. And this is so whether what's being judged is a bottle or a horse, a wine or a gymnastics routine or natural human beauty.

What would we say if some philosopher told us that a perfect bottle would be one that can contain a perfectly great amount of liquid, while being perfectly easy to pour from at the same time? Or that a perfect horse would bear an infinitely heavy rider, while at the same time being able to run with perfectly great speed? I should think we'd say he's made a fundamental mistake here: You can't perfect something by maximizing all its constituent principles simultaneously. All this will get you is contradictions and absurdities. This is not less true of God than it is of anything else.

The attempt to think of God as a perfect being is misguided for another reason as well. We can speak of the perfection of a bottle or a horse because these are things that can be encompassed (at least in some sense) by our senses and understanding. Having the whole bottle before us, we feel we can judge how close it is to being a perfect instance of its type. But if asked to judge the perfection of a bottle poking out of a paper bag, or of a horse that's partly hidden in the stable, we'd surely protest: How am I supposed to know? I can only see part of it.

Yet the biblical accounts of our encounters with God emphasize that all human views of God are partial and fragmentary in just this way. Even Moses, the greatest of the prophets, is told that he can't see God's face, but can only catch a glimpse of God's back as he passes by. At another point, God responds to Moses' request to know his name (that is, his nature) by telling him "ehi'eh asher ehi'eh" -"I will be what I will be." In most English-language Bibles this is translated "I am that I am," following the Septuagint, which sought to bring the biblical text into line with the Greek tradition (descended from Xenophanes, Parmenides and Plato's "Timaeus") of identifying God with perfect being. But in the Hebrew original, the text says almost exactly the opposite of this: The Hebrew "I will be what I will be" is in the imperfect tense, suggesting to us a God who is incomplete and changing. In their run-ins with God, human beings can glimpse a corner or an edge of something too immense to be encompassed, a "coming-into-being" as God approaches, and no more. The belief that any human mind can grasp enough of God to begin recognizing perfections in him would have struck the biblical authors as a pagan conceit.

One more interjection seems called for here, just to note that the translation of the Holy Scriptures from Hebrew to Greek was not just a matter of linguistic substitution, but actually a translation of worldviews and philosophies. That this is inherent in the act of translation is a point made long ago by the linguistic anthropologist, Edward Sapir.

So if it's not a bundle of "perfections" that the prophets and scholars who wrote the Hebrew Bible referred to in speaking of God, what was it they were talking about? As Donald Harman Akenson writes, the God of Hebrew Scripture is meant to be an "embodiment of what is, of reality" as we experience it. God's abrupt shifts from action to seeming indifference and back, his changing demands from the human beings standing before him, his at-times devastating responses to mankind's deeds and misdeeds - all these reflect the hardship so often present in the lives of most human beings. To be sure, the biblical God can appear with sudden and stunning generosity as well, as he did to Israel at the Red Sea. And he is portrayed, ultimately, as faithful and just. But these are not the "perfections" of a God known to be a perfect being. They don't exist in his character "necessarily," or anything remotely similar to this. On the contrary, it is the hope that God is faithful and just that is the subject of ancient Israel's faith: We hope that despite the frequently harsh reality of our daily experience, there is nonetheless a faithfulness and justice that rules in our world in the end.

The ancient Israelites, in other words, discovered a more realistic God than that descended from the tradition of Greek thought. But philosophers have tended to steer clear of such a view, no doubt out of fear that an imperfect God would not attract mankind's allegiance. Instead, they have preferred to speak to us of a God consisting of a series of sweeping idealizations - idealizations whose relation to the world in which we actually live is scarcely imaginable. Today, with theism rapidly losing ground across Europe and among Americans as well, we could stand to reconsider this point. Surely a more plausible conception of God couldn't hurt.

To this conclusion can be added the point that this may well be part of the attraction of Kabbalah in recent years, as Jewish mysticism incorporates a concept of God that is quite different from the absolute perfection of Hellenized theology. And if nothing else, Hazony helps us to better understand how the worldviews of Athens and Jerusalem are difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile.