Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Yom Kippur 5779

Here Come Moses’ Children

YOM KIPPUR 5779

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

On a hot day in June of 1964 Rabbi Richard Levy relates that, 

I was at a convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis when Martin Luther King sent a telegram asking for rabbis to join him in a demonstration in St. Augustine, FL…. So I went with fifteen other rabbis. We were ushered into a [room] where King was speaking and as we came in he said, ‘Here come Moses’ children’.

Here come Moses’s children. How about that? How striking… Which led me to ponder: What does it mean to be Moses’s children today? Thus this sermon… which is Part Two of my exploration of the legacy of the Sixties that I began last night.

Some of you know that one of those Augustine sixteen was my own rabbi, from Temple Israel in Croton-on-Hudson, NY, Rabbi Michael Robinson, of blessed memory. Another was my late professor at Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Eugene Borowitz. These brave souls spent all night in a sweltering jail. At 3:00 AM, by the light of a single naked light bulb in the corridor outside their overcrowded cell they wrote a letter, Why We Went.

The Augustine Sixteen declared, 

We came because we could not stand quietly by our brother’s blood. Here in St. Augustine we have seen… the deep implacable hatred. What disturbs us more deeply is the large number of decent citizens who have stood aside, unable to bring themselves to act, yet knowing in their hearts that this cause is right and that it must inevitably triumph.

The Augustine Sixteen were telling us that when we stand idly by we are not innocent; we are part of the problem.

King himself said in his famous Letter from Birmingham City Jail that, 

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

King said,

I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham.

King said,

We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate… who is more devoted to “order” than to justice… and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a more convenient season. Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

The man who spoke at the famous March on Washington just before King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” was a rabbi. His name was Joachim Prinz. A refugee from Nazi Germany, he led a congregation in Newark, and he helped lead the Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement. Rabbi Prinz said that day,

The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.

Yet another great rabbi from the civil rights movement, Abraham Joshua Heschel, perhaps said it best,

In a free society; some are guilty, all are responsible.

Fast forward fifty years: She was not a rabbi or a minister, but I am still haunted by the words of Heather Heyer. Do you recognize that name? She was the young woman killed in Charlottesville, when she was rammed by a car driven into the crowd by an avowed racist.

Heather Heyer wrote that day in what would be her final Facebook post:

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.

Are we outraged? Are we paying attention? Are we standing up or are we standing by?

In the spirit of King and the Rabbis and Heather Heyer: What does it mean to be Moses’ children today?

What does it mean to be Moses’ children in the wake of the racist violence of Charlottesville and Charleston?

The police violence of East St. Louis, Staten Island, Baltimore, Baton Rouge?

The mass shooting violence of Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Sutherland Springs, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland?

What does it mean to be Moses’ children in a time of #black lives matter and #me too and #march for our lives?

What does it mean to be Moses’s children in a time of zero tolerance of migrants and the separation of children from parents?

In the spirit of our revolutionary ancestor, allow me to respond that to be Moses’s children means, if nothing else: Opening our Eyes and Voting with Our Feet.

Opening our Eyes:

When he was a young man the Torah says that Moses “went out to his people and witnessed their toil.” (Ex.2) Then he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen, and he acted.

Later on Moses opens his eyes again. “He gazed and there was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed. Moses said, ‘I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight.’” (Ex.3) God too opens His eyes, as it were, as the Torah says, “God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.”  
 
Deep into the civil rights struggle, during his Poor People’s Campaign near the end of his life, King said,

We must see that the struggle today is much more difficult. It’s more difficult today because we are struggling now for genuine equality. Negroes generally live in worse slums today than 20 or 25 years ago. In the North schools are more segregated than they were in 1954…. The unemployment rate among Negroes is [worse]; twice that of whites. And the average income of the Negro is today 50% less than whites.

If we open our eyes today, what do we see 50 years after the Civil Rights movement?

Black kids are three times as likely to be poor as white kids. 

Black unemployment is twice that of white unemployment. 

Homeownership is 40% for African Americans; 70% for whites.

Four in ten black and Latino students attends schools that are 90% minority. In NYC it’s five in ten.

Latinos actually are now the largest minority in the country. Poverty rates have declined for all Americans except Latinos. One out of four Hispanic adults lives below the poverty line; one out of three children. Millions more, who cut our lawns; clean our pools, wash our dishes, and pick our fruit live just above it.

And did you see this last week: In 2016 net worth among white middle-income families in America was 19% below 2007 levels (adjusted for inflation). But among blacks, it was 40% below, and for Hispanics 46% below.

Do you call that an economic recovery?

Praying with our Feet:

God said to Moses to get up and start marching back to Egypt to speak truth to power. Later God told Moses to get up and start marching out of Egypt and toward the Promised Land.

Professor Michael Walzer of Princeton writes in a powerful verse that we often read from our prayerbook,

Standing on the parted shores of history we still believe what we were taught before we ever stood at Sinai’s foot; 

that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt; 

that there is a better place, a promised land; 

that the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness; 

that there is no way to get from here to there except by joining hands, marching together.

When Rabbi Heschel marched with King at Selma he remarked afterwards, “I felt as if my legs were praying.”

Praying with our feet means marching and lobbying. I was so proud when young people across America led the way last spring in the March for our Lives and the national school walk-outs. 

I was so proud when I found out that our own Leonia high schoolers Maddie Raciatti and Isabel Raskin were among the student leaders here in Leonia. 

I was so proud last year when I went to a Leonia Town Council meeting to advocate for the Leonia sanctuary city resolution that our own Sandy Pecht had made a special trip back from college to do the same. 

The year before last I had the privilege of meeting civil rights icon John Lewis, still feisty after all these years. I shook his hand and told him that I was the head of The Jewish Publication Society that had published the work of Rabbi Heschel. He recalled marching with Heschel and how much that meant. He said to us rabbis: 

Keep marching. Raise your voices. Make some noise!

I know that if Dr. King was here, if Rabbi Heschel was here, if Rabbi Prinz was here, if Rabbi Borowitz was here, if Rabbi Robinson was here… they would all say the same thing as Jon Lewis.

They would remind us that the Torah commands (Lev. 18):“You shall not stand idly by.”

They would remind us that the Torah commands (Ex. 23): “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

They would remind us that the Torah commands (Deut. 16): “Justice, justice shall you pursue.”

They would remind us, “Open your eyes and vote with your feet.”

They would remind us that so much is at stake in American today.

We are fighting for freedom of the press right now.

We are fighting for oppressed refugees right now.

We are fighting for traumatized children right now.

We are fighting for victimized women right now.

We are fighting for the future of our very democracy right now.

We are fighting for the future of our gasping planet right now.

They would say at this New Year: Remember who you are!

They would say, as we enter the room:

Here come Moses’ children. 

Here come Moses’ children. 

Make way for the children of Moses.

Rabbi Schwartz's Sermon for Rosh Hashanah Morning 5779

SO I WILL PLANT FOR MY CHILDREN

ROSH HASHANAH 5779

RABBI BARRY L. SCHWARTZ

The year was 1871. Ulysses S. Grant was president. The Civil War had ended just 5 years before. The great Chicago Fire killed 300 and left 100,000 homeless. The first major league baseball game was played on May 4th and the first home run was hit on May 8th. Across the pond, Queen Victoria ruled England. Lord Stanley located a missing explorer in Africa and greeted him with the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

In Hoboken, a group of German Jews founded a congregation that they called Adas Emuno—the assembly of the faithful. Twelve years later, in 1883, they built a synagogue; a Gothic Revival building that still stands today and which the Hoboken Evening News called "a credit to the city". We have a yad, a Torah pointer, from that dedication that is kept right behind me in our Ark; and we still read from the Torah with the help of this 135-year-old yad. 

While most of our congregational records have been lost over the decades, the original minutes from our first years survive. They were hand written in German, in an old style few people can read today. But one person who can is our very own Kurt Roberg, whom many of you know. Kurt, a refugee from Nazi Germany, with a remarkable story that he has written a book about—and possibly our most senior member at age 94—has been reading and transcribing those minutes.

At the first Annual Meeting of the congregation on Sunday, Oct. 20, 1872, the president praised the generosity of the members in acquiring a Torah and other sacred objects, of raising some $1385 against total expenses of $1088 for a cash-on-hand balance of $297. Two weddings were held that year, and two b’nai mitzvah. Two funerals were also held that year, the latter writes the president "for my little son." The president concludes his address to the congregation at the first annual meeting by saying, "I have now given you an overview of everything that concerns our congregation, and even though there are some things that we still wish to accomplish, we may be proud of the advances we made in one year. Don’t hesitate to sacrifice whether time or money to complete the task we have begun."

By the 1890s the congregation had tripled to a hundred families. The flourishing community included a religious school, a choir, and a benevolent association to aid the poor called the Hebrew Ladies’ Aid Society. At the turn of the century a Hanukkah menorah was dedicated to the congregation on December 13, 1900. Our 118 year old menorah is right here and we still light it every year.

On May 27, 1917, a teen named Esther Cohn was confirmed at the Temple. She must have misplaced her Confirmation Certificate because I found it behind some books in our vestry room a few years ago. It was signed by the rabbi, Moses Eckstein. and by the president, Samuel Neuberger. Evidently, each student picked a "motto" for their certificate. Esther chose a verse from the 23rd Psalm, "I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." A hundred years later we still have a Confirmation Class, and each year I ask my students to pick a verse for their Confirmation essay.

Records grow scant as the 20th century progressed. We do know that in 1919 dues were set at $30 a year. They rose to $45 by 1924. But High Holy Day seats were extra, and the ones closest to the bimah cost another $15. We no longer sell seats. On October 4th, 1951, Milton Neuman, who was chair of the Eightieth Anniversary Committee of the congregation, received a congratulatory letter from President Harry Truman. I have a copy of that letter here. It reads, "Dear Mr. Neuman…." Milton Neuman’s nephew, Michael Levy, is an active third generation member of the congregation. His parents and grandparents were members, and two of his grandchildren became b’nai mitzvah here.

Every time we enter this synagogue, which became our home only after a century in Hoboken, we are reminded of our origins. We pass the dedication plaque at our entrance to the left most often without noticing it. Then we enter the sanctuary and see the memorial plaques from our original building. The names of our predecessors and their loved ones are not forgotten.

We are now just three years away from what our past president, Lance Strate, reminds us is our sesquicentennial. We will soon need to think about what kind of birthday party we will throw for our 150th . But I am not a party planner; I’ll leave that to others. However, I do want to weigh in with a suggestion, a big one, for our coming milestone.

Let me introduce this suggestion with a treasured story from our tradition. The Talmud records the life of an unusual and remarkable sage in ancient Israel named Honi the Circle Maker. Nobody knows why he received that name, but he is said to have gone around the land of Israel planting carob trees, a Jewish Johnny Appleseed, if you will. When asked why he took upon himself such an adventure, Honi responded that one day when he was still a young man he saw an old man planting a carob tree. Honi said, "Old man, why are you planting that tree. Don’t you know that it takes a carob tree seventy years to bear fruit?" The man paused, looked up at him, and said, "Just as my ancestors planted for me, so I will plant for my children."

That piece of wisdom changed Honi’s life. And it just might change ours. If we embrace the realization that we are not here solely for ourselves; if we stand in gratitude for what those before us have done for us and decide to pay it forward to the next generation.

When the founders first established this congregation in Hoboken, they were thinking about the next generation of Jewish life beyond New York. They were thinking about their children who would grow up in the new world, and speak English. They were thinking about the next generation when they established a religious school and and a youth group.

When the leaders of Adas Emuno made the difficult decision to move to Leonia, they were thinking about the next generation as well. They were thinking about how Jewish life was now growing beyond the first tier suburbs to the promising frontier of Bergen County. They knew that Congregation Adas Emuno was never big or rich and might not survive the move. But they also knew that Adas Emuno was a dedicated and down-to-earth assembly of the faithful. I call us "the little engine that could." We keep chugging along, even as larger congregations have come and gone.

So what does it mean for us to now think about our next generation? Let’s be honest. Our numbers are diminishing. The demographic tide in our little corner of the world is turning against us. Leonia is a community in transition. The largest group of students in our school district is Asian American. Jewish Americans are now statistically negligible. In this regard we are following in the footsteps of our neighbor Palisades Park and other nearby communities. It has been almost a decade since the only other synagogue in our community, Congregation Sons of Israel, closed its doors. To keep our doors open we will need help.

We are certainly grateful for young families that have recently joined our ranks, primarily from Fort Lee and Weehawken. They have sought out a progressive, inclusive Reform Jewish community. They have sought out a congregation that welcomes interfaith households and blended families. They have sought out a congregation that is haimish and humble. That is who we are. We still have a place; we still serve a need; we still fulfill our mission. 

But with diminished numbers, beyond a vigorous outreach effort, we will need another kind of help as well. Declines in membership means we will be even more dependent on non-dues income to stay afloat. Our congregation has always done a relatively good job of living within our means; compared to other places our expenses are very low. Up until now we have largely avoided ruinous deficits without the benefit of appreciable reserves. Up until now.

Congregation Adas Emuno needs and deserves a Heritage Fund. Living on the frontier of sweeping changes to Jewish life, it is now time to think about how we will secure the next generation of Jewish life given the realities of our future.

With the approval and support of our Board of Trustees, I am calling upon our congregation to formally establish a $150,000 Campaign for our 150th anniversary. By synagogue standards that is a modest goal that befits a small congregation. We hope it is more than attainable. Over the coming year we will speak to you about two ways you can make a pledge to our 150th Anniversary Fund. The first is an outright contribution, over a maximum of three years. For some of our older individuals, required minimum distributions from IRA accounts might be the ideal way to do this. For others it might be a charitable trust, appreciated securities, or an old-fashioned check. The other way of pledging is through a bequest. How fitting to remember our synagogue in our estate planning.

Mark Rosenberg and I are co-chairing this campaign. As Harry Truman said, "the buck stops with us." Or you might say, "the buck starts with us." Mark and Michelle have pledged $10,000 to this campaign. Debby and I are doing the same. We hope that above and beyond your support of this synagogue through dues, above and beyond your support of this synagogue through our annual appeal and other fundraisers, you will consider a generous contribution or bequest to Adas Emuno’s 150th Anniversary Fund. It will not be used for our operating budget at all, but as I mentioned, for the building of our reserves to be tapped only by decision of the full board.

And we will not be launching another heritage campaign like this for at least fifty years, until our bicentennial, in 2071.

Permit me to conclude with an understandable question. It is natural to ask: Why should I contribute to this synagogue campaign if I myself may not be here? Why plant this tree if I may not eat of its fruits? Long ago a sage in ancient Israel heard an answer that changed his life. Long ago a group of German Jewish immigrants thought about the next generation in America, their new promised land.

“Just as my ancestors planted for me, so I will plant for my children.”

So may it be.

Eikev

This past Friday both Rabbi Schwartz and Cantor Horowitz were out of town, so for the first time in four years we had lay led services. And in response to requests, I promised I would share my D'var Torah here on our congregational blog:

Parsha Eikev

This week's Torah reading is the third from the Book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Torah. The name Deuteronomy come from the Greek, meaning Second Law, because it follows the first set of laws in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers, repeating and expanding upon them, including a slightly altered version of the Ten Commandments. But the Hebrew name for the fifth book of Moses is Devarim, which means Words. So if we want to use this book's real name, not the ancient equivalent of its Ellis Island name, we would refer to it as the Book of Words.

In ancient times, books did not have titles, but were known by the first few key terms of the text, and Devarim begins with, "These are the words that Moses spoke to all of Israel on the other side of the Jordan." Taken together, the literal translation of the Hebrew names of the five books of the Torah are 

• In the Beginning (Genesis)
• Names (Exodus)
• And He Called (Leviticus)
• In the Dessert (Numbers) and
• Words (Deuteronomy).

I want to point out that the names of three out of the five books refer to forms of communication: Names, And He Called, and Words. And I think it only fitting that the final summation of the Torah is the Book of Words. After all, In the Beginning, God begins the labor of Creation with words, with the speech act, Yehi Or, Let there be light. And it is through God's command, in the form of words, that light is first created.

The first thing we learn about God is that God uses words. And what else could it mean when it says that God creates the first human being in God's own likeness? Not that we look like God, because God cannot be seen. But God can be heard, human beings can hear God's voice calling to them, and we are like God in being given the gift of words. It follows that the first thing that Adam does after he is created by God, the first assignment given to him by God, is to name all the animals.

God speaks to Adam and Eve, to Cain and Noah, to Abraham and Moses. The first set of stone tablets containing God's commandments, the stone tablets that Moses shattered when he came down from Mount Sinai and saw his people worshiping the golden calf, were written by God, inscribed by the finger of God according to the Torah. The second set of tablets were not written directly by God. They were only dictated by God to Moses. Moses was then acting in the likeness of God in writing down God's Law.

The first prohibition in the Ten Commandments is against worshiping other gods, and the second is against making graven images, making any likeness of anything that exists on earth, in the waters, or in the heavens. This commandment is linked to the prohibition against the worship of false gods, and idolatry, and throughout the Torah and Tanach we find a polemic against idol worship.

But the prohibition against images goes beyond their worship; it extends to their creation. Why else would this be, except for the fact that images compete with words for our attention. Images compete with words as ways of representing our world. Images help us to visualize, and visualizing is a mental activity that we have in common with animals. Words, on the other hand, give us uniquely human tools for thought.

It is worth recalling the story of Helen Keller, who lost both her sight and her hearing when she was only 19 months old, and was unable to communicate as a young child. She only learned language through the dedication of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who used a method of spelling words through the sense of touch. Keller learned the method, but for a long time didn't understand the meaning of the words, didn't understand that they represented the names of things in her environment. The breakthrough came on April 5th, 1887, when Sullivan took the then seven-year-old to a water pump. As Helen Keller described the event in her autobiography:

As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that ‘w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.

Words unleash our human potential, and beyond learning the name for that wonderful cool something she experienced in that moment, she would learn that that same word represents the liquid we drink from a glass, and bathe in, that falls from the sky, that fills ponds, lakes, rivers, and oceans, and that turns to snow and ice when the temperature drops. The concept of water in general, as a category that includes a wide variety of experiences and phenomena, is impossible to convey in an image, a likeness.

The same is true for rules, for laws, for commandments, because they are generalizations. An image can depict a specific incident in which a theft occurs, but it cannot portray the abstract idea that it is wrong to steal the property of others. And consider the fact that so many of our laws and commandments are prohibitions, rules that say, you shall not do something, shall not engage in a particular activity. There is no way to produce a likeness of the concept of not, or no, or negation. There is no likeness of the number zero, no image that resembles the absence of something. These are all abstract concepts, as is the idea of one God who cannot be seen, who is not tied to a particular location, who is everywhere, all-powerful, all-knowing.

The prohibition against image-thinking is an effort to get us to use our words, and thereby to engage our higher mental functions, to expand our intellectual capacities, to open the door to more abstract thought, and thereby to accept a new form of religion based on monotheism, and the pursuit of justice through the rule of law.

So we destroyed our idols and replaced them with Torah scrolls, rejected the image and embraced the word. And we were among the Semitic peoples who developed the first form of alphabetic writing in the ancient world, and used the aleph-bet to construct the first fully formed legal code, to develop a higher form of ethics than had ever been known, to revolutionize the conception of the sacred and the divine, and to compose the first form of historical narrative. We became the first people of the book, but we remained people of the ear, not the eye.

When the ancient Greeks adopted the alphabet and adapted it to their culture, they placed an emphasis on the visual. And that emphasis became one of the primary characteristics of western civilization. Most of our figures of speech that employ visual metaphors come from ancient Greece, so when we talk or write about our thought processes and ways of knowing, we say things like, the way that I look at things, the way that I see it, from my perspective, from my point of view, this peculiar way of talking about our mental processes comes from the ancient Greeks. And so, we talk about a process of reflection, observation, about self-image, about having vision, foresight, hindsight, and insight, or about being blind . From image we get the word imagination, and the etymological root of the word idea come from the Greek verb for to see, the same root as video. We speak of in the first place, the second place, and third place, and I don't know about you, but I've never been able to visit these places, or find them on the map. Even the word topic comes from the Greek word for place, the same root as topography, topology, and topiary.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his discussion of this week's parsha, makes note of this disparity, and writes:

Judaism, by contrast, is a culture of the ear more than the eye. As Rabbi David Cohen, the disciple of Rav Kook known as 'the Nazirite', pointed out in his book, Kol ha-Nevuah, the Babylonian Talmud consistently uses the metaphor of hearing. So when a proof is brought, it says Ta shma, 'Come and hear.' When it speaks of inference it says, Shema mina, 'Hear from this.' When someone disagrees with an argument, it says Lo shemiyah leih, 'he could not hear it.' When it draws a conclusion it says, Mashma, 'from this it can be heard.' Maimonides calls the oral tradition, Mipi hashemua, 'from the mouth of that which was heard.' In Western culture understanding is a form of seeing. In Judaism it is a form of listening.

The Hebrew word shema, so familiar to us as the beginning of the watchword of our faith, is root of all these terms, and as Rabbi Sacks relates,

Shema is one of the key words of the book of Devarim, where it appears no less than 92 times. It is, in fact, one of the key words of Judaism as a whole. It is central to the two passages that form the first two paragraphs of the prayer we call the Shema, one in last week’s parsha, the other in this week’s.

And he goes on to explain,

At the most basic level, Shema represents that aspect of Judaism that was most radical in its day: that God cannot be seen. He can only be heard. Time and again Moses warns against making or worshipping any physical representation of the Divine. As he tells the people: It is a theme that runs through the Bible. Moses insistently reminds the people that at Mount Sinai: “The Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deut. 4:12).

Our embrace of the ear over the eye is fundamental to our tradition and identity as Jews. When we recite the Shema and our other prayers, we do so as a community, a congregation, together as one. This is true whenever we sing together, or chant, or recite, or even when we listen. But when we read in silence, even if we all are reading the same passage at the same time, we become individuals, separated and isolated from one another.

When we read from the Torah, we read it out loud. It is meant to be heard. And most of our prayers are said out loud, and are composed in the first person plural, not singular. We mostly pray as a collective, as we, as us, not as I and me. On Yom Kippur, we atone for our sins together, not just individually, taking responsibility for our families, communities, nations, for our people and for humanity as a whole. It is no accident that the word audience is a singular noun, while the word readers we all know to be plural.

We do acknowledge the importance of the individual and the role of individuality, the uniqueness of every single person. The idea of law introduced to the world the idea of equality before the law, equality as individuals. But our tradition does not go overboard in emphasizing individualism, not the way that western culture as a whole has, and American culture in particular, to the detriment of our sense of community. 

The fact that Jewish culture remained a culture of the ear is reflected in the sometimes half-serious way that we refer to ourselves as the tribe, as members of the tribe. We did not, in fact, sever all connection to the tribal way of life, as literate and urbane as we have become. In this sense, we remain connected to one another, we remain in touch with one another.

When Helen Keller was asked, if she had a choice, would she rather be blind or deaf, she answered blind, because people are kinder to individuals who have lost their sight. Without vision, we still remain connected to other people, through conversation, through speech and hearing. When we lose our ability to listen, we become isolated not only from an entire dimension of our environment, but more painfully, from one another.

Vision distances us from our world, leads us to treat the objects in our environment as things, and to objectify other people as well. It places us in what Martin Buber referred to as I-It relationships, in contrast to the I-You relationships that are associated with being in dialogue with others, with responding to others as persons just like ourselves, others
who experience the same kind of subjectivity as our own, with empathy.

This distinction also informs our tradition of written law, of what is expected of us in response to God's commandments. Rabbi Sacks explains that the word shema is actually untranslatable. Yes, we translate the prayer as Hear O Israel, but that is only one possible way to render it in English. As he explains,

It means many things: to hear, to listen, to pay attention, to understand, to internalise and to respond. It is the closest biblical Hebrew comes to a verb that means “to obey.”

Rabbi Sacks later goes on to explain,

What Moses is telling us throughout Devarim is that God does not seek blind obedience. The fact that there is no word for ‘obedience’ in biblical Hebrew, in a religion of 613 commands, is stunning in itself (modern Hebrew had to borrow a verb, letzayet, from Aramaic). He wants us to listen, not just with our ears but with the deepest resources of our minds.

According to Rabbi Sacks, when Moses says in this week's parsha, "If you indeed heed my commandments which I charge you today, to love Adonai your God and worship him with all your heart and all your soul" (Deut. 11:13), what he is essentially saying is, "If you listen—and I mean really listen."

Listening for that still, small voice that in our tradition comes from God, and listening to each other, has become increasingly more challenging when we are surrounded by so much noise. There is the noise pollution from traffic, and trains, and airplanes and helicopters, and the sounds of construction and machinery. There is the noise that comes from radio and television, from our smart phones and tablets, and all of our devices and gadgets. And there is the noise we generate ourselves, when we talk at each other, shout at each other, and refuse to listen to each other.

In this last great speech that Moses delivers to the children of Israel in the Book of Words, he asks us to listen, and to remember what we have heard. It is not enough to write things down, to record them in a book. Written records are not memory. Memory is not a thing, not an object, it is an action, an act of remembering. And the most powerful way to perform this act, to remember, is to remember not alone but with others, to remember together. The most powerful form of memory is commemoration. We remember together when we speak, when say it out loud, when we tell our stories.

Stories help us to remember. They take a bunch of isolated events and bring them together, connect them to give them form, organize them and put them in some kind of order, and help us make sense by providing a coherent framework for what may otherwise seem like the random chaos of life. And so Moses tells the Israelites the story of what they have  already experienced, what they already know, the events of their lives. He takes their experiences, and turns them into a story. He does so, so that they can continue to remember those events, to retell them, and keep them alive. The story he tells them is the story we continue to tell to ourselves, and our children. It is the story of God's signs and wonders, God's mighty hand and outstretched arm, and above all God's words, bestowed upon a humble people, nomads and slaves, a people often ungrateful, disobedient, and sinful. A people whose only redeeming quality is the capacity, sometimes, to use our words, to speak, to read and write, to tell stories, and to listen.

7 Reasons Why Einstein Should be Considered One of the Prophets

We are pleased to share the following op-ed by Adas Emuno president, Lance Strate, which was published on March 9th in the Jewish Standard.  The title it was published under was, Seven Reasons Why Albert Einstein is a Prophet, and here it is:

The number 139 is not one we are likely to pay attention to, so this anniversary may not get a great deal of attention. We tend to sit up and take notice when the anniversary is a multiple of 100, or 50, or 10, or even 5.


At the very least, we have a psychological bent toward even numbers, and 139 is decidedly odd. But if Einstein were still with us, he might point out that 139 is more than odd; that it is, in fact, a prime number, which makes it quite significant in its own right. He also no doubt would point to the arbitrary nature of anniversaries, and of calendars for that matter. Einstein’s date of birth on the Hebrew calendar was the 19th of Adar in the year 5639. This year, Adar 19 corresponded to March 6, last year it was March 17, next year is a leap year so it will be February 24 for Adar 1, and March 26 for Adar 2.

I suspect that the differences between the solar calendar of secular society and the lunar calendar of Jewish tradition had some influence on Einstein’s thinking. After all, when we say, for example, that Chanukah is coming late in a given year, it is just as true to say that Christmas and New Year’s are early. The experience of living with two so very different calendars could not help but point to the relativity of time.

And as we remember Einstein, we do so, along with the rest of the world, for his contributions to science, as the recipient of the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics, and the person named in 1999 as Time magazine’s Person of the Century. More than anyone else, Einstein was the person responsible for the paradigm shift in science that replaced Newton’s mechanistic view of the universe with a relativistic understanding of space and time.

And we also remember him as an especially noteworthy member of the Jewish people, one of our many gifts to the world, a prime example of what we sometimes refer to as yiddishe kop, intelligence born out of a tradition of literacy and learning, one in which teachers and sages are seen as heroic. And we may also recall that as a Jew, Einstein was forced to flee Nazi Germany as a refugee, and that he was a supporter of the Zionist movement and the State of Israel.


 

We do not remember Einstein in a religious context, however; he was not a rabbi or talmudic scholar or theologian. I want to suggest, however, that we should remember him as a prophet. Admittedly, in our tradition we consider the age of the prophets to have ended long ago, but we cannot rule out the possibility of modern prophets altogether. And while we would tend to be suspicious of anyone claiming to be a prophet today, Einstein never made any such claim, so he cannot be rejected as a false prophet.

But I do think a case can be made, and I hope you will consider the possibility as I put forth seven reasons for naming Albert Einstein as a modern-day prophet.

1. Einstein’s name has become synonymous with genius. We typically say that a given individual “is” a genius, but everyone who truly fits the description will more accurately refer to “a stroke of genius” in the sense of something coming from outside of themselves. The word “genius” originates from ancient Rome, and refers to a guiding spirit or deity, a supernatural source, like a guardian angel. (Prophets are the recipients of divine revelation, some form of communication, or we may call it inspiration, which literally means, “to breathe into,” which is how God brings Adam to life in the Book of Genesis.)

2. As a teenager, Einstein imagined himself chasing after a beam of light, which led to his understanding that light cannot be slowed or stopped, that the speed of light is constant, and that it is time, instead, that must vary. This thought experiment was the foundation that led to his special theory of relativity. Other thought experiments followed, notably the difference in what we  would observe when standing on a train vs. standing on a platform as bolts of lightning strike the train. (Prophets are known to receive revelation via visions, as in Jacob’s ladder, Joseph’s dreams, the chariot of fire that appeared to Elijah, and Ezekiel’s wheel within a wheel.)

 


3. One of Einstein’s most significant achievements was determining the nature of light as consisting of quanta, aka photons, and that light has a dual nature, as both waves and particles. Clearly, he had a unique relationship to the phenomenon of light. (Prophets are closely associated with light and enlightenment, Genesis famously says that light was the first of God’s creations, Moses has a halo when he descends from Mount Sinai after speaking to God face-to- face, a direct encounter with the divine countenance that we pray may shine upon us.)

4. Einstein gave us a new way of understanding the universe, of space and time as a single phenomenon, spacetime. (Prophets teach us about the nature of Creation to better understand the Creator, and our place in the world.)

 

5. Einstein invoked the philosophy of the Enlightenment founder Baruch Spinoza in explaining his own view of a pantheistic God. That is a view that traditionally has been seen as heretical, but is consistent with some approaches to Kabbalah, God as the Ein Sof, and certainly is acceptable within Reform Judaism. Above all, it is a view consistent with science; as Einstein famously remarked, “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” His resistance to the uncertainty principle of quantum theory was famously expressed in the quote, “God does not play dice with the universe,” asserts that Creation is governed by laws that are rational and ultimately discernible, as well as based on an underlying monotheism, as God would have no one to play dice with. (Prophets often have been critics of established religious authority, in favor of a direct encounter with God via nature.)

6. Einstein spoke out for social justice. He did so on behalf of his own people, in opposition to Nazi Germany, and in favor of Zionism and the State of Israel, but also as a strong critic of racism and supporter of the civil rights movement in the United States. He also was quite critical of capitalism, arguing on behalf of socialism and advocating for a democratic world government and pacifism after the conclusion of World War II. (Social justice is one of the primary themes of the Prophets section of the Tanach.)




 

7. Einstein warned President Roosevelt of the danger of Nazi research into the development of the atomic bomb, leading to the Manhattan Project. He later became an outspoken critic of nuclear weapons. His warnings largely have fallen on deaf ears, at least as far as governments are concerned. In 1947, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists introduced the image of the Doomsday Clock, setting it to seven minutes before midnight. On January 25 of this year, the minute hand was moved up to two minutes before midnight, the closest it has ever been, mainly because of North Korea and our president’s threatening remarks, and not taking into account Putin’s recent statements about Russian nuclear missile capability, and his animated image of the bombardment of Florida. (The biblical prophets issued warnings about the destruction of Israel and Judea, and the name Jeremiah has become synonymous with pronouncements of doom.)




 

Einstein’s predictions in the realm of physics continue to be supported by astronomical observation and experimental evidence. Perhaps his predictions about society and politics ought to be taken seriously as well?

Why bother arguing for Einstein as a prophet?

• Because American culture always has had a strain of anti-intellectualism, one that includes resistance to many aspects of science, notably Darwinian evolution.

• Because climate change is at least as great a threat as nuclear war, and is being met with denial, dismissal, or disinterest from significant portions of the population, and all too many in leadership positions.

• Because facts and logic are under assault by religious fundamentalists, cynical political opportunists, and corporate executives with eyes only for short term profits.

As Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz makes clear in his recently published book, Paths of the Prophets: The Ethics-Driven Life, our prophetic tradition is of vital importance, one that always has and always will be relevant for us.

 
Naming Albert Einstein a prophet should not detract from this tradition, but rather enhance it, by adding a dimension that we need now more than ever: the truth that ethics cannot be divorced from an understanding of the world, of reality, in all its complexity, and glory.