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

A Message From Our President

Dr. Lance Strate

Politics and Religion

It used to be said that you should never talk about religion or politics, at least not in polite society, or mixed company. And maybe many still consider it rude to do so. Of course, these are topics that were never entirely taboo, but rather reserved for private conversation among intimate associates, confederates, that is to say, like-minded individuals.

Of course, within the confines of our houses of worship, congregants have no compunctions about engaging in conversation on the topic of religion. As Rabbi Schwartz has so eloquently explained, discussion and debate for the sake of heaven is central to the Jewish tradition. And anyone familiar with Jewish culture would find it hard to imagine us refraining from voicing opinions on matters of mutual concern.

But the rule regarding politics is another matter entirely. Members of our shul who share the same religious heritage may differ significantly in their political views, and the clergy and temple leadership generally try to respect those differences. We do not want the temporal issues that may divide us to overshadow the essential, ancient, spiritual relationships that bind us together with one another.

At the same time, as a religion, we are asked to adhere to a set of moral and ethical standards, and to speak out when they are violated. Leviticus (19:16) famously admonishes us, "do not stand idly by while your neighbor's blood is shed." And our tradition also includes the Kabbalistic notion of tikkun olam, the repair or healing of the world, as our central obligation. This is a precept that has become central for the Reform movement that we are a part of (a movement that is sometimes also referred to as Liberal or Progressive Judaism).

And we well recall the words of Hillel, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? And if not now, when?" We recognize that Hillel's three sayings represent a call to stand up for ourselves and our principles, to seek justice and compassion for others, and as a call to action.

Last year, one of our Trustees, Norman Rosen, voiced his concern over the way that the Israeli government has handled egalitarian worship at the Kotel, the Western Wall, which represents the holiest site in Judaism. This is a longstanding controversy, and the Reform movement has been especially supportive of and involved in the Women of the Wall movement. The Knesset approved a compromise regarding the site, which has been under Orthodox control, but the Israeli government has failed to enforce the compromise.

Norm was deeply disturbed by what he had witnessed firsthand at the Wall, and asked the Board of Trustees to send a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Following in-depth discussion by the board members and clergy, the proposal was approved, a letter was drafted, signed by the vast majority of the board, and delivered to the Prime Minister's office. [Editor's note: See out previous post, Our Letter to Netanyahu.] No reply has been forthcoming so far, long delays are commonplace, but the Jewish Standard will be publishing an article based on Norm's experiences that led to this effort.

Equal rights for women is, of course, a political issue, as is Israel's governmental policy regarding administration of the Temple mount. But the subject of our letter is also a religious issue, and the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist branches of Judaism have long been fighting for official recognition by the Israeli government, for example in regard to marriage, conversion, etc., and egalitarian worship at the Wall is another issue that directly concerns our standing and legitimacy in the Jewish state. In this instance, we are standing up for ourselves as much as for others. If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

At our February board meeting, Rabbi Schwartz brought to the board a resolution crafted by Leonia's interfaith clergy in response to Donald Trump's January 27th executive order that barred people from 7 Muslim-majority countries from entering the US, and stopped all refugee admissions. In addition to criticizing the ban, the resolution asks the Borough of Leonia's Council to designate Leonia as a sanctuary city. Just as his colleagues were doing with their own church leaders, our rabbi asked the board if we would sign onto the resolution on behalf of our congregation.

An in-depth discussion of the legal and moral considerations ensued, followed by a vote in which the rabbi's request was approved by a supermajority of over ¾ of the board members present. This was a rare instance in which the board was asked to take a stand on a political issue, and most felt that the actions of the government were so extreme as to merit making a statement, even if it is only symbolic. If I am only for myself, who am I?

One of the questions that came up in our discussions was whether getting involved in any kind of political issue would endanger our 501(c)(3) tax exempt status. Here is the explanation that board member Michael Fishbein provided: "The activity that could jeopardize tax exemption is essentially taking sides against or in favor of a particular candidate during an election. Commenting on social issues or issues of human freedom is not barred. So, for example we could advocate in favor of gay marriage, just as another religious organization can advocate against gay marriage. However, we cannot endorse a particular candidate because he or she is pro gay marriage."

Personally, I usually favor having our congregation avoid political controversies, whether it has to do with Israel or the US. What makes any given topic an issue is the fact that there are pros and cons, reasons for and against. Not everything is an issue for that reason. No one is really pro-illness for example, or pro-poverty. But there are reasons why some favor apply Orthodox strictures to the Kotel, and a strict ban on immigration to the US.

But there are times when it is difficult to stand idly by, and I believe that these two instances are exceptions to the rule about not speaking out when it comes to politics and the polite company of our congregation. They are two instances in which the board felt it important to stand up for ourselves, to stand up for others, and to take action and make a statement. If not now, when?

The Rabbi’s Top 10 Jewish Modern Events

This past Monday, April 28th, was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, this coming Monday, May 5th, tomorrow that is, will be Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Memorial Day, and the day after that, Tuesday, May 6th, will be Yom HaAtzma'ut, Israel's Independence Day.

In honor of this sequence of highly significant commemorations, we are pleased to repost here on our blog Rabbi Schwartz's list of the ten most important modern Jewish events, which originally was published on April 24th in his online column for the Times of Israel, under the heading of The Rabbi’s Top 10 Jewish Modern Events:

As we approach Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, I offer a history list – my compilation of the most consequential events of modern Jewish history. As always, I welcome your comments.

1. Spinoza’s Excommunication—Launched thinker’s epic contribution to “modernity” and the notion of the secular Jew.

2. Mendelssohn’s “Jerusalem”—First modern attempt to reconcile faith and reason.

3. Rise of Hasidism—Kabbalistic spirit becomes energizing movement.

4. Parisian Sanhedrin—Challenges of citizenship become evident.

5. Frankfort Rabbinical Conference—Reform of Judaism finds its place even as a backlash ensues that helps create Conservative and Modern Orthodox denominations.

6. Emigration to America—Demographic shift begins to the new world.

7. Dreyfuss Trial—Persistence of anti-Semitism shook Herzl and Europe.

8. First Zionist Congress—Herzl’s reply and the first achievement of modern Zionism.

9. Holocaust—Tragedy on an unimaginable scale.

10. Birth of Modern Israel—Triumph on an unimaginable scale.

Previous posts in this series include The Rabbi’s Top Ten: The Best of Everything Jewish, and The Rabbi’s Top 10 Jewish Foods. 

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.

Zohar Talk at Rutgers

 

The Zohar: Masterpiece of Kabbalah

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012 AT 7:30 P.M. 

Daniel Matt, translator of the Zohar

Supported in part by the Sagner Family Foundation

Rutgers Student Center

Daniel Matt is one of the world's leading authorities on Kabbalah. He has published over ten books, including The Essential Kabbalah (translated into seven languages),Zohar: Annotated and Explained, and God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality.

Matt is currently engaged in an immense project of translating and annotating theZohar, the masterpiece of Kabbalah. So far, he has completed seven volumes of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (Stanford University Press), covering more than two-thirds of the Zohar's commentary on the Torah. For this work, Daniel has been honored with a National Jewish Book Award and a Koret Jewish Book Award. The Koret award called his translation "a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought."

Dr. Matt has been featured in Time Magazine and has appeared on National Public Radio and the History Channel. For twenty years, he served as professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, and has also taught at Stanford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

And from http://stanfordpress.typepad.com/blog/2008/01/a-masterpiece-o.html:

A masterpiece of Kabbalah

This week’s Stanford Report profiles the Zohar project: a collaboration between Stanford University Press and the Pritzker Foundation to bring the fundamental body of Kabbalah literature to the English-speaking world. 

Daniel Matt has completed four of a projected dozen volumes of the Zohar’s unique combination of biblical commentary, mysticism, and myth. As the Report describes, the origins of this text are a puzzle: Matt believes that “75 to 80 percent comes from [Castilian Jew] Moses [ben Shem Tov de León], who died in 1305,” although Moses claimed that he was merely translating a second-century manuscript. “‘It matches no Aramaic dialect in the world… it’s amazing.’ Matt said. And the most amazing thing, he adds, is its crazy, invented language that revels in the sounds of strange words.” 

The Zohar also reaches some controversial conclusions about the nature of God. In Matt’s words, the Zohar concludes that “humans actualize God by living ethically and spiritually. Human holy actions fulfill God.”

The Report’s article links to some excerpts from Volume IV of the Zohar; additional commentary and excerpts from Volume I can be found on the SUP Zohar page, along with the original Aramaic text Matt’s translation is based upon. You can also sign up to be kept appraised of new developments related to the Zohar.

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Kol Nidrei 5773

JUDAISM ON FIRE

EREV YOM KIPPUR 5773

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

It is not everyday that I take as my rabbinic teaching text, not the Torah or the Talmud… but Sports Illustrated!

I love basketball, playing (once upon a time) and watching. I went to Duke University, and am a passionate Blue Devils fan. I grew up a Knicks fan in the glory days of Willis Reed, Dave Debusschere, Walt Frazier, Bill Bradley, and Earl-the-Pearl Monroe.

This year I rooted for King James to get his crown and the Dream Team to get their gold.

Some years ago when I lived in the Philadelphia area the Sixers' Allen Iverson went off for a career high 60 points against the Orlando Magic. The very next week, Sports Illustrated did a piece called: “How It Feels… To Be On Fire.”  It was marvelous. And I said to myself:  There’s a Yom Kippur sermon there!

I’ll make this brief, but allow me to quote a few of the players cited in the piece so you get a feel for what I’m talking about: to be “on fire”:

Jason Terry: “There’s no feeling like it. It’s like a hip-hop song. You’re just there grooving, swaying back and forth. It seems like the net doesn’t even move.” 

Ben Gordon: “You lose track of time. What quarter it is. You don’t hear the crowd. You don’t know how many points you have. You don’t think. You’re just playing. Offensively everything is instinctive.”

Vince Carter: “It feels like nobody’s out there, you’re playing by yourself. You don’t care how good a defender is guarding you.”

Joe Dumars: “It’s like an out-of-body experience, like you’re watching yourself.”

Eddie Jones: “All you see is the rim and how big it is. It’s a mental thing. Everything is just correct. Your shot is correct. The way you’re coming down is correct. Your form is correct. Everything.”

Pat Garrity: “The ball feels so light, and your shots are effortless. You don’t even have to aim. You let it go, and you know the ball is going in. It’s wonderful. It’s like a good dream, and you don’t want to wake up.”

And Iverson himself: “You honestly don’t really feel it when the shots are going down. You don’t get the goose bumps until the fans start to appreciate what you’re doing.”

Believe it or not, there is a Hebrew term for “being on fire.” 

The word is hitlahavut.  Lahav means flame. As Rabbi Arthur Green states in his book, These are the Words: A Vocabulary of Jewish Spiritual Life, “hitlahavut means that the soul catches fire.”

Isn’t it interesting that the mystics in Judaism use the phrase “catching fire” just as modern athletes do.

Athletes describe being “in the zone,” when one loses track of time and space. Mystics describe being “in the zone,” usually during ecstatic prayer, when they too lose track of time and space.

Athletes see nothing but net. Mystics see nothing but God. 

Arthur Green, former president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, founder of the Havurah Movement, and something of a practicing mystic, continues: 

In such moments all obstacles to perceiving God everywhere are consumed…. It is a rare and precious moment… Usually it comes and goes almost in a flash. But no matter: the real impact of hitlahavut is in the memory of such moments. They are stored in the contemplative’s mind and become important steps on the road toward the much cooler but longer lasting goal of [devekut], an attachment to God in which one may live and act.

Okay, so why am I talking about basketball and kabbalah? Why am I comparing the runner’s high to the religious high? 

As a ballplayer and as a rabbi , yes, I have “caught fire” on the court and on the bimah (in my better days), but what am I really getting at here?

Well, let me share a story at this juncture.  It takes place in a church in New York. A church with one of those large, formal high ceilings, with ushers marching up and down the aisles. At one particular service, a woman from the south was in attendance (who hailed from a different religious background). During the minister’s sermon she kept yelling out “Amen! Amen!”  An usher scurried over and asked if she was ill. “Ill?” she replied, “absolutely not. I got religion.” “Please,” said the usher, “not in here!”

The anonymous rabbi who tells this story goes on to write:

It is my belief that the hitlahavut, the religious fervor, of Hasidic Judaism, is a sorely missing ingredient in the life of the American synagogue.

This sermon is about rekindling our religious flame. It is about finding our Jewish passion, our Jewish enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm, by the way, from the Greek, en (in) and theos (god). 

I always give my sermons titles. Not that it especially matters, since the words are spoken, not read. The title I gave this sermon is “Judaism on Fire.”  

What sparks each soul is going to be different for every human being. 

But in the words of the old church saying: “Find your glory.” Find what you are passionate about. Show your enthusiasm.

Both my sons interviewed for new jobs this year. I told them that when I have hired someone, more than the resume, more than the references, it ultimately came down to the passion the candidate showed for the position. 

In the Jewish context our tradition teaches that one should be passionate about three things: learning, praying and giving. These three things are called “the foundations of the world”. They are considered the classic pathways to loving God and loving your fellow.

On this Yom Kippur I want to take up the challenge of religious passion. And yes, in this secular age, this skeptical age, this is a challenge. And yes, unbridled passion can sometimes degenerate into fanaticism, but don’t let the zealots and the fundamentalists hijack passion. It’s too precious, too important.

Learning (Torah).  Can we be passionate about Jewish life-long study? Can we infuse our Jewish learning with as much zeal as our secular pursuits? Can we take the plunge and dive into the sea of wisdom that has been deepened for three and half millenia? 

Learning is a voyage of outer exploration that inevitably ends in self-discovery. As Arthur Koestler once commented, there are three kinds of stories:

Ha-ha stories amuse and entertain.Ah-ha stories expand and teach.Ahhh! Stories connect and inspire.

What’s on your reading list? I’d be happy to make suggestions.

Come learn with us every Shabbat morning. This year we are studying the master work of Moses Maimonides, considered the greatest sage in Jewish history. Make the connection. Experience the ah-ha and the ahhs!  

Praying (avodah). Can we be passionate about prayer? Ironically, for many of us, this may be the most difficult of the three paths, even though it is the easiest. Orthodoxy excepted, we are not much of a praying people anymore.

When it was revealed that up to the day he died, Pope John Paul spent several hours a day in prayer, some of it raptuous, we were piqued but largely uncomprehending. When we sense the spirit of many of our Christian neighbors we are perhaps momentarily tantalized but then inhibited. Jewish ecstatic prayer is largely a lost art, though its roots are Biblical and its branches bear fruit in every age and place.

Come pray with us. Nourish the spirit. Discover a lost art. 

Giving (g’milut hasadim). Can we be passionate about our sharing?  Of our wealth? Of our time?  Of our hearts?

In the words Edward Markham:

 “Giving is living,” the angel said. “And must I keep giving again and again?” My selfish and querulous answer ran. “Ah, no,” said the angel, as her eye pierced me through. “Just give till the Eternal One stops giving to you.”

In the words of Noah Ben Shea:

A rich man cam to Jacob [the baker] and sought his advice. “Why must I give…?” “Because [giving determines] your freedom,” said Jacob.The man was astonished. “How does giving… bring about my freedom?” “You see,” said Jacob, “either the key to a man’s wallet is in his heart, or the key to a man’s heart is in his wallet.So, until you express your charity, you are locked inside your greed.”

What’s in your wallet?

“Live generously.”  And we thank you for supporting our congregation!

Isn’t it interesting that when Moses found his calling, when his life changed forever, the imagery is fire.

 An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire out of a bush. He gazed, and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2-3)

Later, when the people of Israel find their destiny, once again it is fire:

Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the Lord had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently. (Exodus 19:18)

A contemporary poem captures the moment

Somewhere out of timeIn the mystery of time…I remember how I once stoodAt your mountain tremblingAmid the fire and the thunder…

And, yes, I can rememberHow the thunder was my heartAnd the fire was my soul.

O God, I do remember.The fire burns in me anew.And here I am, once more.

As I was researching the term hitlahavut for this sermon, I came across an essay by Rabbi Yitzhak Miller about why he left a lucrative position in business consulting to become a rabbi. Here is the concluding paragraphs of his essay:

 The last of my story: after I was accepted to rabbinical school, my mother sent me a cassette tape in the mail, with no indication of what it contained, but simply a note attached that said, “put in your tape deck and push play”. It was the voice of my grandfather, and the tape from my Bar Mitzvah- a message I probably didn’t even hear when I was 13, but at least didn’t remember. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to hear it then. Who knows? But 14 years later, and some 12 years after his death, I not only heard but felt the blessing he offered me.

Not fame , not fortune…  not even happiness. “hitlahavut,” he said. It was an old Chassidic term- you see, he was supposed to be the next in a long line of Chassidic rabbis, but gave up that calling when he emigrated to America as a teenager. “I wish you hitlahavut in your life,” he said, “the burning fire that comes from your soul when your heart and your mind are dedicated together to that one holy purpose for which God placed you on this earth.”

That is my wish for us, on this Yom Kippur. May we discover that holy purpose, that holy flame. 

Could it be that the eternal light above us burns brightly for that very reason, to remind us to find the flame within?

A final word: I came across a news item in my file, a piece from the New York Times a few years back: “Dying Star Flares Up, Briefly Outshining Rest Of Galaxy.”

It begins:

For a fraction of a second in December, a dying remnant of an exploded star let out a burst of light that outshone the Milky Way’s other half trillion stars combined, astronomers announced Friday.

Ironically, you and I didn’t notice because most of the light was in the form of gamma rays that are blocked by our atmosphere. But instruments on every NASA spacecraft went berserk. Even though a lone physicist, from Ben Gurion University in Israel no less, had predicted that what they call a magnetar flare of such huge proportions could theoretically occur, scientists were dumbfounded.

 [It] seems so improbable it’s a puzzle right now, said NASA’s lead scientist. “There’s something going on here that we don’t understand.

I’m no astrophysicist, but I’ll tell you what’s going on. That star is on fire. It’s got hitlahavut, baby.  It wants to go out with a bang.

But I hope that star realized that it shone its whole life. The divine light is everywhere. Just find your glory.

He turns. He shoots. Nothing but net. Nothing but God.

Holy purpose, holy flame.

L’shanah tovah. May you be inscribed for a good year, a passionate year, on fire!

Why Yom Kippur?

Why Yom Kippur?

A Kol Nidre Message

from Lance Strate, Vice-President

Congregation Adas Emuno

Leonia, New Jersey

for Yom Kippur Evening

September 17, 2010

We are gathered together here at Congregation Adas Emuno to observe Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.  But, you knew that already.  Jews all over the world have been gathering together for Yom Kippur.  And even those of us who do not observe the holiday know that this is the Day of Atonement, and this is a day when we all feel especially Jewish.  Of course, this is also a day when we feel especially hungry, but feeling hungry is simple enough to understand—feeling Jewish, now that's a bit more complicated.  We could spend the entire day discussing what feeling Jewish is all about, but one thing that's especially Jewish is asking questions.  In our tradition, we're allowed to ask questions, and we’re encouraged to ask questions, so much so that the first religious role that we give to our children is to ask the four questions at Passover.  Why is this night different from all other nights?


For millennia, our scholars and spiritual leaders have been asking the fundamental question, how does God want us to live our lives?  And in looking to the Torah for answers, they have found themselves asking still more questions, such as, How are we to understand these writings that speak to us from a distant time and place, and how can we apply their messages to contemporary life?  And in our tradition, we can even question God.  Job asked God why bad things happen to good people.  Jonah questioned why the city of Nineveh was spared from divine retribution.  Moses wondered why he, of all people, had to be the one to confront the Pharaoh and lead his people to freedom.  And in Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye says to God, " I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?"


On Yom Kippur, we are especially chosen, especially Jewish, and especially questioning, as we question ourselves, our actions and our intentions, our mistakes and our wrongdoings.  But to be especially Jewish, I believe, we also need to ask, why is this night different from all other nights?  Why do we have a Day of Atonement?  After all, in our tradition, we can pray at any time, we can repent on any day of the year, God is always listening, and willing to forgive.  We don't have to wait for Yom Kippur to atone.  So why do we have Yom Kippur?  I believe that is a question worth asking, and I want to share with you what I think the answer might be.  I offer this to you as my own thoughts about Jewish spirituality in the modern world, with no intention of imposing them on you, but in the hope that it might help you to ask questions of your own, and arrive at answers that are meaningful to you.


We refer to this time of year as the Days of Awe, with Yom Kippur marking the end of a ten-day period that begins with Rosh Hashanah.  And to understand the ending, it helps to begin at the beginning, and Rosh Hashanah is a celebration of beginnings, of In the beginning, Bereishit, Genesis, the Creation of the World.  We say that Rosh Hashanah is the Birthday of the World, and by “the World” we don’t just mean the planet Earth.  The Torah tells us, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  The World, then, refers to all of God's Creation, or in more contemporary terms, the universe.  And whatever our beliefs may be, how can we not stand in awe before a universe that our scientists say is approximately 14 billion years old, and that is at least 92 billion light years in diameter, a single light year being almost 6 trillion miles.  And how can we not stand in awe when we consider that we, our planet, our solar system, and our galaxy, are moving at a speed of 1.3 million miles per hour as the universe continues to expand due to the force of the Big Bang that occurred some 14 billion years ago.


But we can also empathize with our ancestors who stood in awe before the immensity of their world, before the power of nature, with its earthquakes, windstorms, tidal waves and volcanoes.  And we can understand how they stood in awe before the marvelous beauty of Creation, the night sky glittering down on them, the mountains towering above them, the ocean waves crashing onto the shore, the wind blowing through the trees, and the mystery of life.  That sense of wonder as we regard the majesty of Creation was expressed so very well in the 8th Psalm of David:

O Eternal One, our God, how glorious is Your Name in all the earth! whose majesty is set above the heavens.

Out of the mouths of babes and newborns, You deliver strength in the face of adversity, and still the voices of violence and vengeance.

When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your hands, the moon and the stars, which You have established;

What is humanity, that You are mindful of us? Mortal beings, that You think of us?

Yet You have made us but little lower than the angels, and have crowned us with glory and honor.

You have made us caretakers over the works of Your hands; You have put all things at our feet:

Sheep and oxen, all of them, yea, and the beasts of the field;

The birds of the air, and the fish of the sea; all that passes through the paths of the seas.

O Eternal One, our God, how glorious is Your name in all the earth!

Thinking about how small we are in comparison to the immensity of the universe may be enough to put the fear of God into anybody, but fear itself is not what Yom Kippur is all about.  The Days of Awe cannot be reduced to shock, or intimidation, for they encompass that sense of wonder at the majesty of the World, and the miracle of our own existence.  But the High Holy Days are more than just a reminder of Creation as an event that occurred a long time ago, that came and went at some time in the past, and has long since been over and done with.  Creation is an ongoing process that is dynamic, unfolding from one moment to the next.  We are riding on the Big Bang, and everything that exists in our expanding universe came from that initial point of Creation, so that we are all made of the same stuff that stars are made of.  Or to invoke the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, we are reflections of God's divine light, all of Creation emanates from God's first action.


In the beginning, there was sound, a form of energy, as God speaks.  That’s the Big Bang of the Bible, and we are riding that first utterance to this day.  “And God said, let there be light, and there was light.”  And the speed of light is the only constant in the universe, as revealed by Albert Einstein in his famous equation, E=MC², which expresses the idea that everything in the universe is a form of energy.  Even things that appear solid and stable to us, including ourselves, are actually a dynamic dance of subatomic particles.  We are all made of energy, we are all made of the same stuff as stars, we are all echoes of God’s words and reflections of God’s light.


Central to our faith is the belief in One God, in the unity of the Divine, the wholeness of all that is Holy.  And as there is One God, there is One Creation, and so there is an underlying unity that binds everything together in interdependent relationships.  Einstein explained that there is no space outside of time, and no time outside of space; there is only the single unity that he called spacetime.  And we can understand, then, that Creation is the entirety of spacetime, all of the space that ever was and ever will be, and all of time, past, present, and future.  Creation, being made in God’s image, reflects the Oneness of God, and there is also an underlying unity that exists between Creation and Creator.  We call Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement, and the word “atone” originates as a contraction of two words, at and one.  Yom Kippur is the Day of At-One-Ment, a day when we join as one with all of Creation, and together seek communion with our Creator.


The word universe, with the prefix uni-, speaks of oneness, togetherness, wholeness.  But the universe is also diverse, the unity of Creation also includes the quality of difference, the differences between light and darkness, day and night, the heavens and the earth, the land and the sea, plants and animals, male and female, the sacred and the profane.  These differences make it possible for all things to change, and grow, and evolve.  All forms of life evolve, but so too does the universe itself evolve, as it expands and forms galaxies, and stars, and planets.  And it is also the human mind and consciousness that evolves, as we develop new ways of knowing and understanding our world.  It's been said that the Jewish people invented history, as the Torah and the rest of the Bible tells the story of our evolving relationship with God, a story that continues to this day, a story that we all are a part of right here and now, as we have entered the year 5,771.  We count the years, as we think of history and evolution as a progression along a straight line, a journey down a road from beginning to middle to end.


But we count the years in two different ways, as we live by two different calendars, the solar calendar that comes to us from the Roman Empire, and our own modified lunar calendar, which we use for religious purposes.  And I am certain that every one of you here tonight has either said or heard someone remark that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are very early this year.  And in response to that, I want to say to you, it is September that has come very late this year.  That is, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur never come early, or late, they come exactly when they are supposed to come, on the first and tenth days of the month of Tishrei.  In truth, from a scientific point of view, neither calendar is more real or more true than the other, and all that we can really say is that the High Holy Days are early in relation to the Roman calendar, and that September is late in relation to the Jewish calendar.  And I can't help but wonder if this understanding didn't have some influence on Einstein as he developed his Theory of Relativity, which states that the passage of time is relative to the speed at which we're traveling.


We live within different calendars, but within the calendar, we live within two different types of time.  There is the idea of time as a line or road, as moving forward and evolving.  But we also have the sense of time as a cycle, as a circling around, and revolving. And it is through our religious traditions that we sanctify the circle of life, the cycles of maturity and marriage, of birth and of death.  And we celebrate the cycles of the year, the seasonal festivals of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, and the cycle of Torah readings that end and begin again every Simchat Torah.  And we gather together, as we do now, to celebrate the Days of Awe as a time of renewal.  These cycles represent a sacred time, separate and distinct from the profane time that we envision as a straight line.  These cycles give us the opportunity to connect to the time of Creation itself, which is an ever-renewing process.


Creation intersects with all times, but it exists outside of profane, linear time.  Creation is not the year One, or the year Zero; if anything, it is the year Infinity.  And if all this makes your head hurt, then I ask you simply to think about those moments in your lives when times seems to slow, or even stand still, when everything seems to stop; moments when it seems like you're stepping outside of yourself, when you feel like you're at one with the universe, when you experience Eternity.  That experience of timelessness goes hand-in-hand with those feelings of awe and wonder expressed in the 8th Psalm of David, and they often come in response to an encounter with the glories of nature.


We can have these experiences anywhere, and they can come upon us unexpectedly.  But our sanctuary and our ceremony are here to help us obtain that sense of oneness, to help us to feel that connection to sacred time.  Some of us here tonight may be feeling that sense of connection to Creation and Eternity, some of us may not, but by gathering together we are all lifted up as a congregation, and together we have entered that sacred time.  We don't have to do it alone, and more importantly, we can't do it alone.  You can pray to God by yourself, but you can't practice Judaism by yourself, and in that sense you can't be very Jewish by yourself.  It takes a village, it takes a minyan, it takes a community to achieve communion.  Einstein, with his theory of relativity, said that everything in this universe exists only in relation to everything else.  Another of our great sages of the 20th century, Martin Buber, said that everyone in this World exists only in our relationships, our relationships to other people, to other things, and to our God.  Therefore, it is not sufficient to atone all alone, we have to atone together.


In the Book of Genesis, not long after the story of Creation, and the story of Adam and Eve, we find the story of the first murder, as Cain kills his brother Abel.  And God asks Cain, "Where is Abel, your brother?" God would have known the answer, of course, but the importance is in asking the question, to which Cain responds, "I know not, am I my brother's keeper?"  Through this negative example, the Torah drives home the point that we ought to be our brother's keeper, that we are responsible for each other.  And God then says, "What have you done?  The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the ground."  This poetic statement is echoed later, in the Book of Leviticus, in the commandment that says, "You shall not stand idly by your brother's blood."  In this way, we are commanded to take responsibility, not only for ourselves, but for others.


Just as we gather together to be at one as a community, we gather together to atone as a community.  That is why we have Yom Kippur, why we have a Day of Atonement.  In our faith, we are our brother's keepers, we do not stand idly by, we feel a sense of shame when one of our own is guilty of wrongdoing, and we take responsibility for our family, our friends and neighbors, our congregation and community, our nation and our people, and for humanity and Creation.  We are gathered together to atone, not only for ourselves, but for each other, for the mistakes and the sins that we have committed collectively as well as individually, because we are all connected to one another, all responsible for one another.  And we are here to repent and commit ourselves to doing better both individually and collectively, because we cannot fight the evils of the world on our own.  Only together can we address such problems as poverty and hunger, prejudice and hatred, ignorance and fear, violence and war.


In our tradition, we are not satisfied with the way things are, we are obligated to strive to make things better, to work for progress, growth, and evolution.  In our tradition, we don't believe that this is the best of all possible worlds, we believe that Creation is an unfinished business, and that this is a broken world, God knows that we have experienced just how broken it can be, and that it needs to be repaired.  In our tradition, we do not accept the status quo as a matter of fate or predestination, we ask questions, we ask, why?, knowing that Creation is a Book that is still being written.  In our tradition, we don't say, "let it be," we say, "let me help."


Everyone is searching for meaning and purpose in a world where we are so overloaded with information, and entertainment, and material things, but in our tradition, the meaning and purpose of our lives was clearly expressed by the prophet Isaiah:  "I, God, have called you to righteousness, and have taken you by the hand and kept you. And I have made you into a covenant of the people, and a light unto the nations."  We are here to carry on God's work, the Creation that began with light, and we are here to continue what God began in the beginning, to heal and repair our broken world.  It is a daunting task, sure, but in the words of Rabbi Tarfon, "You do not have to complete the work, but neither are you excused from it."  To which we can add, it is not your responsibility alone to do the work, but it is our responsibility to work together.


I am reminded of the Chanukah song that Peter Yarrow wrote, that was performed by Peter, Paul, and Mary, called "Light One Candle."  The chorus goes, "Don't let the light go out.  It's lasted for so many years.  Don't let the light go out.  Let it shine through our love and our tears."  And so, maybe on this Yom Kippur, during this sacred time, a good question to ask ourselves is, will we let the light go out?  Or will we keep it going?  How can we work together to strengthen the light of our congregation, so that it can continue to provide warmth and illumination for all of us, and for the generations to come?  How can we keep the light of our faith and our people shining so as to fulfill God's covenant and Isaiah's prophecy?  How can we help to generate the healing light of tikkun olam, and contribute to the light of Creation, the light first kindled by the Creator?  How can we make the light that shines within each and every one of us to shine ever more brightly? And how can we bring that light within us together in unity, because when we are gathered together as we are tonight, our light can shine as brightly as the stars.  


We are gathered together here at Congregation Adas Emuno because Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the time for us to begin anew.