Questions for Yom Kippur Yizkor

What do you want your family to know?

(Ideas for/from Rabbi Weintraub’s Yizkor sermon)

You may have a will.  You may have a living will.  You might even have a designated healthcare proxy.  But do you have an ethical will?

Ethical wills usually include:

• Important personal values and beliefs
• Important spiritual values
• Hopes and blessings for future generations
• Life's lessons
• Love
• Forgiving others and asking for forgiveness

Some questions that might helpin preparing an ethical will AND/OR having important conversations with your family.  Some will be relevant to you.  Others will not be.  Use what is helpful and ignore the rest.  It may be useful to write the answers to some of these questions or to video yourself answering them, so that your family can keep them for the future.  You may want to take them out and revise your answers periodically.

What comes to your mind when thinking about yourself?
What makes you laugh?
What do you do that makes others laugh?
What is your greatest love?
What makes you happy?
What concerns you the most?
What do you like to say? (sayings? catchphrases?)
Why are you Jewish?
What do you do Jewishly?
What rituals do you do that are Jewish in origin?
What family rituals do you have? (Sunday morning brunch, Mets baseball, Islanders Hockey?)
What do you like to do with your friends?
What do you want your family to know about you?
Do you have a personal mission statement?

Where were you born?
Where did you grow up?
Where did you go to school?
Why did you become a painter/doctor/lawyer/plumber/teacher/whatever you did?

If married/partnered:
Where did you meet your spouse?
What attracted them to you?
What did you learn about relationships from them?

Make a family tree.  Update it regularly.  Keep it somewhere safe.

Tough questions:
If Gd-forbid you couldn’t breathe or your heart stopped, what would you want done?  
Would you want to be on a ventilator?
Would you want a feeding tube put in your stomach?
Would your answers be the same if the doctors thought you would wake up again?  Would your answers be different if the doctors thought it would be unlikely for you to regain consciousness or awareness?  Would this be true if you had a terminal disease?

Do you have a clear will?
Do you have a living will?
Does your family know your financial advisors or where the information is for all of your bank/financial/medical/legal account information?  Is there a place where your email/web/facebook usernames and passwords are?  Do you have an address book accessible to others?

Yom Kippur Yizkor

Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
Yom Kippur Yizkor 5773, 2012

Boker Tov, Gmar Tov.  Before I begin, I want to share a joke with you.
A rabbi, a priest and a minister are sitting at a deli discussing their lives.  At one point the rabbis asks his friends, “What do you want people to say about you at your funeral?”  
They sit and think for a moment.
The priest responds first.  He says “I want people to say that I was generous to the poor, that I served my flock well, that I was a good preacher, and that I made a difference in people’s lives.”
The minister thinks for a moment and says, “I agree with the priest, but I also hope my wife and children can say that I took time for them, too.  I want to be remembered as a good husband and father, as well as a good minister.  Rabbi, how about you.”
The rabbi waits to make sure his timing is just right and then says, “ I want someone to say: ‘Look, he’s moving!’”

Now that I got your laughing on Yom Kippur, I need to ask your forgiveness.  In my pastoral education program at Vassar last year,  I discovered that one of my biggest gifts and also one of my biggest challenges is that I can find humor in almost any situation.  For some this is helpful, it serves as a way to connect, a way to see that even in our darkest moments, there is always some light to be found.  At the same time lightening the mood in the wrong place is painful, humor can be a defense mechanism, a way to prevent us from feeling our emotions, our grief, our loss, our sadness.  This is especially challenging since we live in a world that wants us to be happy all the time. For some the solution to that pressure comes in a bottle or a pill or a drug.  While this is NOT a sermon about addiction in the Jewish community, we must be aware that the classic statement “a shichur is a goy” is not true, there are Jewish alcoholics, drug addicts, and we cannot abandon them by pretending they do not exist.

This morning I want us to think about our legacies.  While the rabbi in the joke turned his answer to a serious question into a joke, the priest and minister thought about what they wanted to pass on to their flock and their children, what lessons were important to them.  Even if they spoke of what they wanted to be remembered for, they were defining their values: taking care of the poor (tzedekah and gemilut chasadim), serving their community, and being part of a mishpacha, family.

In just a few minutes, we will recite the Yizkor prayers.  We will remember family members, fellow congregants, parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers, wives, husbands, those nearest and dearest to us, but also those who are more distant.  We will think about how they touched our lives; how they helped us grow and develop.  We might also think of the challenges and obstacles they had in their lives.  What lessons did they learn from them?  What lessons did they teach us?  Were they hindered emotionally or physically from early challenges?  How did that affect us?  How does that affect our memories of them?

Last October, the weekend of the blizzard and my installation, take 1, my grandmother, Alice Paulin, had a stroke.  Since that point, she can occasionally hold a conversation, but in many ways, she is like someone with Alzheimer’s.  She can communicate, but not clearly.  Sometimes her sentences make sense.  Sometimes they do not.  Sometimes she seems to be in the present, other times, she asks for family members who passed away long ago.  Regularly, she asks about her mother, her father, her husband (my grandfather).

Before her stroke, my grandmother had difficulty seeing and hearing, but was mentally great.  She would tell me stories about her parents and grandparents, her family.  She told me about her life.  Unfortunately, I never took good notes, so the stories are all jumbled in my head.  I don’t know all of the names or places.  I know she had a relative with a fur factory in the south, and was able to get a beautiful coat.  I know the styles changed and she had the trim redone by her father? grandfather? here in NY.  I know that when she was able to use her computer, she used family tree software to trace our genealogy back generations, but that computer doesn’t work anymore and she never printed it out!  

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we think about our mortality.  We wonder who will be here with us next year and remember those who were with us last year.  In preparing for my family’s future, I just purchased life insurance.  While debating about how much/what kind/what can I afford, the broker said, “sign up for some today, you don’t know what happens tomorrow.  We can always change the coverage, but if you start today, you know you are covered.”  While it was a little depressing to think that I could be run over (Gd forbid) walking to shul one day, buying life insurance was one step of my Rosh Hashanah life review.  

It made me think about my story.  What do I want to tell my children (one day)?  What do I wish my parents or grandparents told me?  What should I ask my parents?  
When thinking about our stories, we think about our personal character and influences upon it.  What are the driving forces in our lives?  For me, this includes parents who value education, who motivated me to self-motivate, who demonstrate the importance of helping others, and who teach me that we are obligated to treat everyone with respect.  After first meeting my wife, Rebecca, I immediately recognized these common values, which led us to pursue our relationship.

Although every moment in our lives is important, if we could remember or tell our story moment by moment, the story would last as long as our lives.  In recalling, we think of key events and instances that have particular impact.  For me this would include childhood memories of my brother and sister, shame over not clearly citing sources in a 6th grade paper (it sounds funny, but it’s true!), helping my Dad at a conference for adults with disabilities, many memories of USY, gaining scholarships to Brandeis and JTS, key conversations with classmates and professors from college and seminary, and of course, the influence of Rebecca and her entire extended family, who I first met at our nephew’s first birthday party, not too long after we started dating.  

In sharing our stories, we may want to gloss over negative influences or events.  We may not want to discuss the time we drank too much or made other mistakes in our lives.  We may not want to discuss times in our life when we were not at our best, when we padded our resumes or were not respectful of our commitments to our spouses or others.  Personally, I am still a little embarrassed that at my high school awards ceremony, I was given an award for doing more than 300 hours of community service.  (I think they double counted something or mixed up volunteer hours and working in Hebrew school hours, but I was told not to worry about it when I asked if the numbers were accurate.)  Of course, if you are telling your life story to your children and family, there is a difference between brutal honesty, whitewashing, and sharing your story.  Hopefully you can find the right balance.  Do remember, if it is a matter of public record, ie you are secretly a Roosevelt, a Lincoln, a Mother Theresa, a Maimonides, a Sandusky, a Madoff, or any other public figure, your family will know more about you than you care to reveal, so you may want to share your perspective.

No matter your public persona, your accomplishments are a joint effort.  They came about through your work, your family’s influence, society’s influence, and maybe even government’s influence.  There is a reason that on Yom Kippur our confessions are in plural, very few of our actions are done individually--good or bad.  So we have to acknowledge the contributions of others in our lives.  I mentioned before my parents and grandparents, my wife and inlaws.  I cannot imagine my life without the influence of numerous Rabbis like Josh Heller in Atlanta, Bill Lebeau or Neil Gillman at JTS, or Mark Greenspan in Oceanside, just to name a few.

Don’t look now, but in the special Yom Kippur pamphlets, I have given you a list of questions and ideas to think about that will help you tell your story.  I encourage you to document your life for your family.  Teach them about your history.  What drove you?  What led you here?  How integral is Judaism in your life?  Take pictures and label them.  Give captions to the people and places that you know you will always remember, but your family might not.  Collect videos and photos and writings and stories and put them together somewhere safe AND somewhere where you and others know where they are.  If they are in a bank vault and no one has the key, that is not very helpful.  As long as your stories remain in your head, they are in a similar vault.  Put them somewhere safe before you lose your key!

This morning I have raised too many questions.   I have been told that if you ask more than one or two questions in a sermon, you lose your audience, because they are too busy thinking.  I hope that a few of you are still with me as we prepare for the Yizkor service.  At the same time, I pray that these words will inspire you to share your own stories, to write them down and ensure that your family members will truly remember you.  Now that we have thought about our own legacies, about our family’s legacy, we can properly pay respect to those in our family who are no longer with us.  As we remember them, we connect ourselves to the chain of Jewish tradition.  By saying Yizkor we add another link in that great chain.  We acknowledge our place in Jewish history by remembering those that allowed us to be here today.

We turn now to p. 290.

Kol Nidre-thank to Rabbi Shai Held at Machon Hadar

Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
Kol Nidre 5773, 2012

Thanks to Rabbi Shai Held at Machon Hadar for the texts for this drash.
On Wednesday July 11,  I participated in a Yom Iyun, a day of in-depth study, on the topic “Loving and living with others: Exploring Interpersonal Relationships.”  Studying at Machon Hadar, an egalitarian, yet traditional Yeshiva, I learned from Rabbis Shai Held, Ethan Tucker and Avital Hochstein.  This evening, I want to share with you some ideas and texts from Rabbi Held’s presentation:  “Judaism’s Fourth Cardinal Sin: Better to Die than Humiliate Another.”
It was a really interesting day, studying Torah with lots of different people.  Some were rabbinical students; some were college students studying Torah for the summer; some were business people that took a week off work to study Torah and others were people that took one day to look deeply at Jewish texts and how they talk about treating people.
You might ask “Why do you need Jewish texts to treat people with respect?”  What does Judaism have to add to that conversation?  You might say “Of course Judaism says you have to be respectful of others, how could it take an entire day to learn that?”  While some of the texts were familiar to me, others were new.  I would like to spend a few moments sharing with you the wisdom of our sages.

You may have heard that in the Jewish tradition there are three cardinal sins, which if someone held a gun to your head, you should die rather than violate.  According to the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin (74a),

Every transgression in the Torah, if they say to a person, transgress and you will not be killed, he should not transgress and not be killed, except for idolatry, sexual immorality, and murder.

Yet according to many Jewish sources, there may be one more!

In another tractate of the Talmud, Bava Metzia (59a), which generally deals with business, it is written in the name of

R. Simeon b. Yohai: It is preferable for a person to throw himself into a fiery furnace rather than publicly humiliate his neighbor. How do we know this? From Tamar, for it is written, "As she was being brought out. she sent this message to her father-in-law."

R. Shimon bar Yochai says that given the choice, we should throw ourselves into a raging fire than humiliate ourselves.  I guess USWeekly, People, Entertainment Weekly, TMZ, and others should all be out of business!  So who is Tamar?  What is her story and how do we learn from her that it’s better to die than humiliate someone else?

Tamar’s story is that she was the wife of one of Judah’s sons, named Er.  Er died, childless, so according to the law, Tamar married Er’s brother, Onan.  Onan didn’t like the idea of fathering a child in his brother’s name, so when the time came for him to consummate the relationship, he did not complete his task, and was struck down by Gd.  Judah’s third son, Shelah, was younger and Judah told Tamar to go home and wait until he called her--making it pretty clear that he would not be calling for quite awhile  Now, the problem for Tamar was that she could not marry anyone until Shelah either publicly says he will not marry her or marries and divorces her.  As such Tamar is in limbo, an agunah, a chained woman.  To rectify this status, she dresses as a prostitute and waits for Judah (who recently lost his wife) to walk by her spot.  He propositions her but does not have payment.  He leaves the ancient equivalent of driver’s license and credit card--staff and seal and then sends a servant later to pay, at which point the “prostitute” is nowhere to be found.  Genesis 38 continues:

About three months later. Judah was told, "your daughter-in-law Tamar has played the harlot; in fact. she is with child by harlotry." "Bring her out," said Judah, "and let her be bumed." As she was being brought out, she sent this message to her father-in-law: "I am with child by the man to whom these belong." And she added, "Examine these: whose seal and cord and staff are these?"

Judah recognized them. and said, "She is more in the right than I, inasmuch as I did not give her to my son Shelah." And he was not intimate with her again.

וַיֹּאמֶר צָדְקָה מִמֶּנִּ--She is more right than me.

Rather than publicly embarrassing Judah, by saying that he was the one looking for a consort, she speaks quietly and lets Judah implicate himself.  Even at the time when she could be executed, she does not rush to save herself, as it might embarrass Judah.  That is a pretty powerful moment!

Can you imagine, standing before someone who wants to have you executed and rather than publicly defending yourself against false charges, you slip a note to the prosecutor saying that he is the one who should be tried??  After this day of study, I realized how incredibly powerful Tamar is.  She stood up for what was right, took what was being denied her, and simultaneously found a way to be kind to everyone at the same time.

Continuing on this theme, we moved from Talmudic times, back to Biblical times and now I want us to look at a source from the middle ages, the Tosafot, from medieval Europe. When discussing Tractate Sotah 10b, they quote our verse and expand it.

"It is preferable for a person to hurl himself into a fiery furnace'’, it says in Bava Metzia: "All of those who descend to Gehenna eventually return, except for three-and one of them is the one who publicly humiliates his neighbor" (BM 58b). And it says, "It is preferable for a person to co-habit with a woman who may be married rather than publicly humiliate his neighbor. How do we know this? From David"[and Bathsheba] (BM 59a).

Imagine that!  Have we ever been in a place where we could have spoken ill of someone else and didn’t?  Have we ever been in a place when we could have spoken ill of someone and did?  According to these texts, that is pretty problematic.  The biggest challenge is that it is a sin so many of us are guilty of.  We live in a society that sees speaking of others as the cost of doing business, the cost of winning an election, the cost of interesting news on tv, the internet or magazines.  We see British royalty publicly embarrassed by photographers with zoom lenses from thousands of feet away. We remember not so long ago, Princess Diana killed because we all wanted one more photograph.  We see Presidents and potential presidents speaking of their opponents with derision and sharing stories that may or may not be based in reality.

While I am not saying that we are all going straight to Gehenna for this, I do wonder about the cost of a society where this is acceptable.  Of course, the alternative is not so pretty either.  Looking around the world, we see countries where any disagreement is met with violence, any threat to the government or religion is seen as blasphemy that must be avenged.  Over and over, we see that our Constitution’s right of free speech is a powerful blessing, and restrictions on it are very dangerous.  Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote in 1906, describing Voltaire, but frequently misattributed to him, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”  I think of the disgusting speech of the KKK, neo-Nazis, or the Phelps church, yet I would not want to live anywhere where I could be arrested for disagreeing with the government!  Our challenge today is: how do we create a culture where we allow people the freedom to say whatever they wish, but take the responsibility not to intentionally hurt others?

In Turkey, three hundred years ago lived a rabbi by the name of R’ Eliyahu Hakohen.  He spoke of the challenge of speech.    He said it is OUR responsibility to guard our tongues.  Speaking of the severity of publicly humiliating someone else, he said it was “worse than murdering someone.”  How could it be worse?  It’s worse, because

when the person who has been humiliated sees the people who were witness to his humiliation, he is humiliated all over again, and his blood is spilled repeatedly. When you murder someone, you kill them once, but when you humiliate them, you kill them over and over again.

The challenge with speech is that it is so easy to say something and so difficult to take it back. I think of the student at Rutgers, who committed suicide after being exposed publicly by his roommate.  I think of the middle school and high school students that commit suicide after relentless bullying.  I think of the damage to a company that can come when a product is defective or seems defective.  How many recalls are done for fear something might happen rather than because something actually has?  (I strongly believe that is how it should be, as I would much rather have Tylenol or Advil pull a batch of pills before many people are sickened.)

What I am teaching and asking tonight is how do we talk to others and how might we reconsider it?  In our own building we have had numerous rumors and misdirections about what Kol Yisrael is and what it ought to be.  For more information, please attend the Sukkah celebration on October 7.

When I went into the city on July 11, I also spent a little time with my great aunt, Esther.  I speak of her because she might be like many people in our community.  She is an active, widowed woman.  She gets out , socializes and travels solo.  Yet, she can be lonely, at times.  She loves and appreciates visits and calls from family and friends, spending time with the ones she loves, who are so frequently busy elsewhere, and no longer live nearby.  As I spoke this evening about how important it is not to embarrass others, to work together and find the best in one another, I also need to remind myself and others the importance of reaching out.  As Jews, not only must we work to curb negativity and inaction, but we must also do positive things.  It is not enough to just not be mean, we must be kind.  It is not enough to not be a jerk or not humiliate people, rather we must actively look to see the best in others.  

We are very blessed at Congregation Agudas Israel.  We have a group of people that share a common goal and purpose and genuinely care about each other.  Our challenge is in expanding that circle.  With the addition of the JCC and Temple Beth Jacob through the auspices of Kol Yisrael, we have many opportunities to treat each other with respect and kindness.  I pray that we see this as an opportunity for cooperation and caring, rather than as an opportunities for condescension, competitiveness and rudeness.
To me this is one of the most important topics we can discuss on Yom Kippur.  As we think of gaining atonement, of asking forgiveness, the best tshuva, the best repentance we can do is to plan for a year when we will have little for which to repent.  What would our lives look like if we only saw the best in others, if we were to dan l’chaf zchut, judge others with merit?  What would the world look like?  As we continue our Kol Yisrael adventure, we will have many more opportunities to see the best in others.  Let’s try it together now!  
Turn to p. . . .

Rosh Hashanah Day 2

Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
Rosh Hashanah Day 2 5773, 2012

This morning we read the challenging story of the Akedah of Abraham’s almost sacrifice of Isaac.  Yesterday we read of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Ishmael and Hagar.  We read of an ancestor who spoke to Gd, listened to Gd, and changed his life because of Gd.

In just a few weeks we will read Parshat Lech-Lecha, from the book of Bereshit/Genesis.

וַיֹּאמֶר ה" אֶל-אַבְרָם, לֶךְ-לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ, אֶל-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ.	1 Now the LORD said unto Abram: 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee.
ב  וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ, לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל, וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ, וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ; וֶהְיֵה, בְּרָכָה.	2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and be thou a blessing.
ג  וַאֲבָרְכָה, מְבָרְכֶיךָ, וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ, אָאֹר; וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ, כֹּל מִשְׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה.	3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and him that curseth thee will I curse; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.'

This promise is the first reference to the Promised Land, to Israel in Torah.  In the rest of the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings, (TANACH), Israel is mentioned many, many, many times.  It is seen as a Holy Place, a gift from Gd.  It’s boundaries are debated and defined in different places, including Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47.  Throughout our Bible and our history, we read of Israel as Canaan, Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel), Zion, or simply “Ha-Aretz” (just “the land”).  Exiled from their home, Jews for centuries wrote of their despair.  Numerous poems, lamentations, and piyyutim, are written on the subject, chanted on Tisha B’av and other fast days.  On every holiday, including this one, we include a paragraph in the Musaf Amidah that begins “Because of our sins we were exiled from the land” ומפני חטאינו גלינו מארצנו

Many commentators, including one of my teachers, Rabbi Reuven Kimelman, write that the daily Amidah, the prayer that Jews say three times a day, is itself almost entirely devoted to the prayer for Jews to once again have sovereignty over Israel and to live in a more perfect world.  For Jews of many generations, that was a pipe dream.  It lingered forever in the distance without the slightest possibility of coming true, yet they continue to pray for it, every single day.  While all of those generations of Jews prayed for the possibility to live as a Jew in the Land of Israel, today it is a reality. As an associate member of Hadassah,  I recently received my Hadassah magazine, celebrating 100 years since Henrietta Szold led the first Hadassah meeting.  Before that meeting, she and her mother, in 1909, visited pre-state Israel.  It was a very different country than it is today.  Sanitation was poor; resources were lacking.  There was no hi-tech industry, since there was barely industry or technology in Israel.  Today the environment is different!  Heck, it wasn’t a country, and certainly not a Jewish state.  Today there is a sovereign state of Israel.  Today Hadassah is a multi-national organization that helps connect Jews to the Jewish state, building phenomenal hospitals, schools, and more.

If you have not been to Israel in the last five years, it will look very different than your last experience.  I need your participation for a moment!
How many people in this room have been to Israel?  Raise your hand!!
How many people have been to Jerusalem?  
How many people have seen the Kotel, the Western Wall, thall that remains from the Holy Temple?
How many people have been to Tel Aviv?
How many people have walked on the very same stones that were walked on 2000 years ago?
How many have been to the Golan? Tasted the wine? Looked over into Lebanon and Syria?
How about Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial?  If you haven’t seen it since it was redesigned, it is a totally new place.
This spring, you are invited to join me to Israel.  We plan on leaving Sunday, February 24 (Purim afternoon) and staying through Tuesday March 5, with an option to spend another few days.  You should have flyers around with some of the places we plan to visit.  Whether this is your first time or your fiftieth time, I promise you will see things you have never seen before.  You will experience sensations you have never experienced before.
Israel is a land of mavericks and mystics.  It is a place filled with energy.  Some of that energy is good, some is more tense.  When you walk the streets of Jerusalem, some say there is a heaviness in the air, as the souls of all who have been there don’t ever want to leave!  You see the land that is coveted and holy to more than half the world’s population.
If you are concerned about safety, about Iran, about rockets, I understand.  The world can be a scary place sometimes.  However, you might just be safer in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv than you are here.  While unfortunately here in Newburgh there is tension between some residents and the police, in Israel, the police and army are more respected, at least most of the time.  When they aren’t respected, they are equally disdained by Jews and Arabs, though!   In my rabbinic training, I spent several months living in Jerusalem and many more living in New York City, the city that never sleeps.  While NYC never sleeps, I felt far more comfortable walking around Jerusalem late at night, taking buses, cabs, or my own two feet than I ever did on the subway in NYC.  ITC, our travel company, is in constant contact with Israeli security forces.  Tourism in Israel is a major industry and the government goes out of its way to ensure the tourists are especially well protected.  If there are any threats, our itinerary will be adjusted to avoid them.  

I have mentioned in other sermons that when I spent my Seminary year in Israel, there was a war in Gaza.  At that time II met two Conservative rabbis, who brought twenty congregants on short notice to !Davka!, specifically, go to the “dangerous” part of the country.  We met political leaders and police in bombshelters, met soliders in a staging area, in their tanks, and offered neck-warmers and prayer-cards.  On that day, I also feel like we had Divine protection, because never once did we hear the siren warning us of an impending rocket attack.  We did see however, the storage area where the rockets are collected in the South.  Thousands of metal pipes, some with their original plumbing marks on them have been transformed into weapons by terrorists in Gaza.  In past years we heard complaints about the lack of diversity of products in Gaza.  The IDF greatly limited shipments in, because they discovered that construction supplies, pipes, and even certain types of laundry detergent were being modified into explosives!  In the last few years, the situation has improved, but there are new challenges.  As another reminder, unlike that mission, we will NOT be going anywhere dangerous, so save your worrying for another topic!

In Israel, people look after one another.  Several of my classmates had their first children while we were in Israel.  Walking to the supermarket, on a bus, in the market, they got advice from everyone.  “How can you go outside without a hat for your baby?  Why does he have a sweater on, it’s too hot!?  Let me help you.  Oh, motek (cute!)!!”  Yes, Israelis are also known for directness, or among Americans, rudeness or brashness, but they take care of each other in ways that we do not see here.  

In Israel, Jewish life is palpable.  Yes, we frequently hear that Israel is divided into secular (chiloni) and religious (dati) sectors.  While that is not entirely untrue, life is far more nuanced than that.  Torah is taught in schools.  Many that call themselves secular light candles for Shabbat and say Kiddush over the wine.  Many more go to seders and light Hanukkah candles than do here.  Unless they try to eat treif, many people unintentionally keep kosher, since most of the major grocery chains carry only kosher foods.  (At the same time, you do have to be careful when choosing restaurants, since not EVERY restaurant is kosher!)  Of course, on our trip, many meals are included, so I promise those are kosher!

One way to make this trip a family vacation is to invite family along.  If you have friends or family in other parts of the country that want to join us, they absolutely are welcome.  They can be in touch with me or with ITC, just make sure they tell them our synagogue name and my name so they get put on our trip.  If the timing of our trip doesn’t work for you, please let me know.  Hopefully we can make them a more regular occurrence.  I know Rabbi Scheff in Orangetown leads two trips a year!

I’m going to now summarize everything that I just said.  Israel is our homeland.  You have to see it to believe it.  Come join us.  As Hillel says, “if not now, when?”

If you are not ready to go, but are looking for ways to invest in Israel, plan for retirement, or give gifts to your children, grandchildren and friends, we also have information about Israel-bonds.  If you aren’t ready to go to Israel, but your teenagers are, please talk to me about USY Pilgrimage and Ramah Israel Seminar.  Both are phenomenal summer programs that will have your teens immersed in Israeli life and culture, and they might even come back knowing how to lead the entire weekday and Shabbat service!  Now that is OWNING their Jewish experience.

As I mentioned at the start, the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah is about Abraham and Sarah, Hagar,  Isaac and Ishmael.  Within the stories of those ancestors is our story, the story of Israel and all of its challenges.  We learn from the very beginning that Abraham’s life will not be simple or peaceful.  Neither are our lives, nor the lives of Israel and her people.  

As Americans, it is easy for us to watch from afar, to see Israel as a vacation spot or a place from our history.  While Israel can be both of those, it is so much more.  I hope this morning I have inspired you to find the beauty, the holiness, the power of the land and people of Israel.  Join us in February and enrich your Jewish life.  Please begin making your deposits to ITC Wednesday!  We would like all deposits by the end of October.  We will have another informational meeting on Thursday October 4 at 7PM in the Sukkah.

I wish you a sweet, health, happy New Year.  May you be written in the Book of Life.

Rosh Hashanah Day 1

Rabbi Philip Weintraub

Congregation Agudas Israel

Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5773, 2012 September 17, 2012

L’shanah Tovah, I wish you a sweet, blessed, and fulfilling New Year. May you be written into the book of life.  It is wonderful to see your faces this morning.  I am so happy to be spending my second Rosh Hashanah in the “Jewel of the Hudson”, Newburgh!  We have been blessed this year with the sweet voice of Shoshana Friedman, a rabbinical student from Hebrew College in Boston.  She has elevated my davening this morning, and I pray she has done the same for yours.

For many of us prayer is a double-edged sword.  It is a gift, a way of striving towards the Holy One, of bringing the Divine into our lives.  Yet, it is also a challenge.  We are busy.  We are tired.  We don’t expect much from Gd, so we don’t put in effort to truly pray or truly listen.  In recent weeks, I have heard Gd more than I did in rabbinical school, more than I did in any other position in my life.  Before you put me in a straight jacket and send me to a psych ward, let me explain how my spiritual life has grown recently, and how yours could, too.

I recently began an ambitious project of Jewish learning, Daf Yomi.  Literally it means a page a day, and in practice, that is what it is.  Every day I study both sides of one page of Talmud.  Since there are 2711 pages in the Talmud, it will take about 7.5 years to complete the task.  Today is the 46th day and since the Talmud starts on page 2, I am on the 47th page of Tractate Brachot, whose main focus is prayer: how, when, where, and why we pray.  (The only who it goes into is that we pray to Gd and no others.)

While Talmudic logic sometimes comes to clear conclusions, oftentimes it does not.  Sometimes it raises questions that are never intended to be answered.  Other times it raises questions and says “This is the practice.  This is how we act as Jews. Do not deviate from it!”  Beautifully, it is an associative conversation; even though it supposed to help us with Jewish law, it acts more like a conversation between scholars and friends.  If a page begins R. Levi the son of R. Hama said in the name of Reish Lakish, we may then get three more quotes in those names on completely unrelated subjects.  Although it makes getting a simple answer more complicated, the discussion is far richer (for it).  Thus, in just a few weeks, in a tractate devoted to prayer, I have learned a little something about agriculture, ancient bathrooms, Torah, food, sex, Gd, theology, theodicy, angels, demons, ritual slaughter, coinage, holidays, death, mourning, and of course, the principle subject of the volume, the proper mindset of prayer.

Today’s study, p. 47, is in the seventh chapter, which mainly discusses Grace After Meals.  Just as the Gemara connects one story to another, this section reminds me of a story in my own life.  I was once finishing a lunch in the food court of a mall in Jerusalem.  Sitting with me was an Orthodox rabbi I had known in college.  As we prepared to say the Grace After Meals, he wondered aloud about people’s quest for spirituality.  He said he could not understand how some Jews described themselves as “spiritual but not religious” but that many of those very people did not say Thanks to Gd after they ate.  He said “How can you take the great blessing, that is eating, being blessed to have enough to eat in such an insecure world and NOT thank Gd for such good fortune!”  I was glad he spoke rhetorically, since I had no good answer to his challenge!  It made me think about my own difficulty in saying Birkat Hamazon, Grace after Meals, regularly, and he thus encouraged me to say it more often.

As I mentioned, today I am to look at the 47th daf/page of Brachot.  On that page I will see conversations about waiting for others to be served and bless their food before eating; when to say “Amen” to the blessings of others; how much food a waiter needs to eat to join a group who would like to say Grace after meals; the fact that a convert is not Jewish until he/she has gone to the mikvah (ritual bath); and can you have a minyan of 9 plus a Torah?  As you can see, some of those subjects are clearly related to Grace after Meals and others seem like tangents, but very interesting ones.  For more details, you’ll have to look at it yourself.  Or if you prefer, you might go on facebook or twitter, because in an effort to reach out to you and the greater Jewish community, I have begun tweeting the Talmud @tweetedtalmud.  There I post a few points that I learn each day.  Occasionally I get behind, especially since I do not post on the Sabbath or Festivals, but I usually catch up within a couple days.  If you aren’t ready to study Talmud yourself, looking into what I’m doing just might be a way to get your feet wet.  

Now as much fun as the Talmud is for me, and I hope one day it is for you, too; as much as I love Jewish study, prayer, teaching, chaplaincy and all the other aspects of my rabbinate, I do occasionally like to see what is going on outside of Newburgh.  Rebecca and I were able to celebrate our third wedding anniversary by seeing The Book of Mormon, a musical written by the creators of South Park: Trey Parker and Matt Stone.  As such, it is rude, crude, irreverent, and I must admit, laugh-out-loud funny.  According to some it lampoons both musical theater and organized religion, but I didn’t mind too much, since the last I checked Judaism was NOT an organized religion.  Anyone that attends a meeting of any Jewish organization, local or national will soon be aware of that fact!   (For those who heard that joke last night, glad to see you again.)

Without getting too far into the musical, the plot involves missionaries to Africa who want to civilize the natives and instead are civilized by them.

One song was called “I believe” in which one of the main missionaries sings:

“You cannot just believe part-way, you have to believe in it all

My problem was doubting the Lord's will, instead of standing tall

I can't allow myself to have any doubt, it's time to set my worries free

Time to show the world what Elder Price is about, and share the power inside of me!”#

My immediate reaction was, if that is Mormon faith, it’s clear why I’m Jewish and not Mormon.  However, since this was a comedic musical and not a scholarly work, I think I can guess that it doesn’t represent what all Mormons believe.  In fact, Maimonides, one of Judaism’s greatest teachers, from the 12th century, writes similarly about faith.  This morning I will take a slightly different view.

For most Jews today, faith is important, but absolute faith is not the be all and end all.  You can be a practicing Jew and have doubts.  You can be a Jew and disagree with aspects of your faith.  While ideally we do not pick and choose, cherry-picking the parts of our religion that most appeal to us, there are always ideas and ideals which will appeal to us more than others.  For example, in biblical and rabbinic times, slavery was accepted practice throughout the world and in the Jewish world.  I can find slavery abhorrent, yet recognize that it was once permissible as part of my faith.  At the same time,  I can admire my forebears for limiting the context of slavery and requiring slave owners to recognize that their slaves were people and treat them with respect.  As a Conservative Jew, I can see that Jewish attitudes towards women have not always matched my worldview.  As such, I choose to practice as part of the Conservative movement, which uses our tradition to grant women the same opportunities it grants men.  Again though, I can be a Jew without believing in exactly the same way as you, [point to different people] you, Rabbi Freedman next door or Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in Israel.  Ignoring the differences among Orthodoxy, Conservative and Reform Judaism, even within any one of those groups, different Jews have different concepts of how Gd acts or doesn’t act with the world, how the world came to be created, what happened at Sinai, etc.  Not only is that ok, it is tradition.  As they say, two Jews, three opinions.  As I mentioned earlier, the Talmud frequently presents arguments among scholars of the best way to practice Judaism.  Famously, the schools of Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai had differing views.  Regarding these seemingly divergent paths it is written: “Elu v’elu divrei E-lohim Hayyim,” “these and those are the words of the living Gd,” but it also says, “the halacha is according to Beit Hillel.”  As much as we can respect different opinions, we believe that there is the possibility of A single correct answer, even if we have trouble finding it at times.

For me, faith comes through study.  As one of my teachers at JTS taught me, from his teacher, Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, study is where Gd speaks to us, while prayer is where we speak to Gd.  (So at the start when I said Gd had recently spoken to me, this is what I meant.)  Today, on this holiday we spend a lot of time in prayer.  Hopefully we reach out to Gd with an open mind, an open heart and an open soul.   Hopefully we pray with all of our hearts, all of our souls and with all of our might.  We plan how we can live a better life, but we also pray to Gd that we will be heard and forgiven.  In an early Conservative Machzor, printed by Rabbi Morris Silverman, the opening page is a poem called the “old prayer book.”

It begins:

“This book of prayers, old and stained with tears,/ I take into my hand/ And unto the God of my fathers/ Who from ages past has been their Rock and Refuge/ I call in my distress. . .”#

The poem reminds me that this time of year is known for tears.  We look at old Tallitot, yellow not just with age, but with the tears of our ancestors, praying that their prayers would be answered, that they would have another day, another year, another Rosh Hashanah.  I think our faith is stronger when we cry a little more, when we dance a little more, when we sing louder.  My goal, which I hope is also yours, is that our prayer can be, as Heschel also wrote an “island across the restless sea of time” that is powered by the “wake of undying wonder.”#  For our prayer to reach that level though, it takes work.  It takes practice.  It takes study.

There are many ways to study Torah.  Earlier I mentioned that I have been engaging in Daf Yomi.  If that sounds a bit much for you, I’m always glad to offer suggestions, meet with you, study with you, or start a new class based on your interests.  Of course, the only way for me to know what could be meaningful FOR YOU is through hearing FROM YOU, so please be in touch!

One good place to start studying Torah is from a section of the Talmud known as Pirkei Avot, the Ethics or Sayings of our Ancestors.  Found in most Shabbat prayerbooks, it is filled with short, pithy statements, that reveal so very much meaning when we spend a little time with them.  A mini-guide for life, numerous books of commentary are written, old and new about this collection of texts.  For example from:

Chapter 1, Mishna 15(a)

"Shammai said: Make your Torah study fixed, say little and do much, and receive everyone with a cheerful countenance."

א,יד  [טו] שמאי אומר, עשה תורתך קבע, אמור מעט ועשה הרבה; והוי מקביל את כל האדם, בסבר פנים יפות.

One teacher.  One sentence.  So much!  “Make your Torah study fixed, set aside time daily to study”--as with Daf Yomi.  As we need to be regularly reminded, actions speak louder than words, [walk the talk].  If you know you don’t have time to do something, it may be kinder to say you cannot do so, than to say you will and not follow through.  Make your words count by following them with action.

Shammai, who was not known to be the friendliest teacher, concludes his statement by telling us that we should always greet someone with a smile.  I guess we have to take it from an angry person that smiles are contagious!  If he, a brusque man, knew it, how much more so can a happy person recognize this truth.  Later commentators interpreted that we required to be grateful, that we must cultivate an attitude of thankfulness, that we must look at the world and each other with open hearts.  

See how much we can get out of one sentence when we spend time with it?  Imagine what your prayer or life would be like if you used that same intensity there?

Another phenomenal mishnah is nearer the end of Pirkei Avot:

Chapter 5, Mishna 26

"Ben (son of) Bag Bag said: Turn the Torah over and over for everything is in it. Look into it, grow old and worn over it, and never move away from it, for you will find no better portion than it."

בן בגבג אומר, הפוך בה והפך בה, והגי בה דכולא בה, ובה תחזי, סיב ובלי בה; ומינה לא תזוז, שאין לך מידה טובה יותר ממנה.

I am so glad to see each and every one of you here today.  You are investing in your Jewish future and in your soul.  By coming to shul today, you are saying, “I am connected to the Jewish world, to Gd, to Israel.  I am part of Gd’s covenant with our ancestors.”  By making Torah and Judaism a part of your life not just a few times a year, but more regularly, you will find the spiritual dividends grow much faster.  With compound interest in the Divine Bank, your payoff is much greater the more frequently you make deposits.  Come to shul once a month, twice a month, every week.  Take a class, make an appointment with me.  Play scrabble or bridge or mah jhong in the building.  Every time you walk through these doors or live you Jewish values at home, at work, at school, you bring Gd’s presence into your life.  This leads me to my final text of the day, which is the end of the previous mishneh:

בן האהא אומר, לפום צערא אגרא.

Ben Hei Hei would say: According to the pain is the gain.

Yes, his name was a little funny, but he articulated a point repeated in 1650 by Robert Herrick, in 1734 by Ben Franklin and in the 1980s by Jane Fonda, if you put in the effort, you will reap rewards.  Neither I, nor any other rabbi, can make you love Judaism or living a Jewish life.  I cannot create meaning in your life.  The only one that can do that is you.  The Jewish religion has an abundance of tools, guidebooks, paths, maps, GPS’s, and tricks up its metaphorical sleeve to help you lead a meaningful, productive life, but the only one that can lead your life is you.  To find holiness in your life, you have to put in the work and practice, practice, practice.  As I mentioned this morning, we can find holy moments in theater, in books, in study and in prayer.  May it be Gd’s will that these High Holy Days will inspire you to guide your Jewish journey to the next level.  Your quest continues and so does mine.  Join me on facebook or twitter @tweetedtalmud.  Call me.  Email me.  Come to a class.  There is a lot more to Torah and Judaism than what you learned in Hebrew School.  Let’s discover it together.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to You, O Lord.  May this holy congregation be written in the book of life.  Amen.

Notes:

All lyrics property of their authors and copyrights.  Text taken from

http://lyrics.wikia.com/The_Book_Of_Mormon_(2011)

from Rabbi Morris Silverman’s High Holiday Prayer Book, printed by the Prayer Book Press, Media Judaica, Bridgeport, CT. 1986

Heschel. Man Is Not Alone, p. 78.

A little piece of Rosh Hashanah

One of these excerpts made it into my Rosh Hashanah sermon. The other two got cut. I didn't want to abandon them completely, so here you go!

There were three songs that really made me think about my faith.  

Early in The Book of Mormon, the missionaries enter Africa.  Their introduction to the poor living conditions is a song  “Hasa Diga Eebowai.”  While I cannot translate it from the bimah, it means “Expletive You, Gd!”  Once the missionaries find out what the song means, they are distraught and upset.  They think, How could I possibly say such a horrible thing to Gd!? While I do not think it is a song I will be singing around the house anytime soon, from a Jewish perspective it is not the end of the world.  I admit, It makes me uncomfortable, but honestly, I am glad that the characters were engaged with Gd.  Even if their language was unpleasant; even if they are angry at Gd for allowing them to live such miserable lives; they did not abandon Gd or ignore Gd.  They cursed out Gd.  Is it ideal?  Of course not, but I would rather have someone come to my office and say they are furious at Gd then come and say that Gd has no place in their life.  (Just to make it clear, if either situation is true, I would be glad to see you and discuss how we might change the situation.)  When you do come into my office to discuss your relationship with Gd, I will discuss other ways you can express your frustration with Gd without resorting to curses.

Another song was called “I believe” in which one of the main missionaries sings:

“You cannot just believe part-way, you have to believe in it all

My problem was doubting the Lord's will, instead of standing tall

I can't allow myself to have any doubt, it's time to set my worries free

Time to show the world what Elder Price is about, and share the power inside of me!”#

My immediate reaction was, if that is Mormon faith, it’s clear why I’m Jewish and not Mormon.  Of course, a musical does not necessarily accurately share the intimate religious beliefs of a person or religion.

For a Jew, faith is important, but absolute faith is not the be all and end all.  You can be a practicing Jew and have doubts.  You can be a Jew and disagree with aspects of your faith.  While ideally we do not pick and choose, cherry-picking the parts of our religion that most appeal to us, there are always ideas and ideals which will appeal to us more than others.  For example, in biblical and rabbinic times, slavery was accepted practice throughout the world and in the Jewish world.  I can find slavery abhorrent, yet recognize that it was once permissible as part of my faith.  At the same time,  I can admire my forebears for limiting the context of slavery and requiring slave owners to recognize that their slaves were people and treat them with respect.  As a Conservative Jew, I can see that Jewish attitudes towards women have not always matched my worldview.  As such, I choose to practice as part of a movement that uses our tradition to grant women the same responsibilities, obligations and opportunities as it grants men.  Again though, I can be a Jew without believing in exactly the same way as you, you, Rabbi Freedman or Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef.  Ignoring the differences between Orthodoxy, Conservative and Reform Judaism, even within any one of those groups, different Jews have different concepts of how Gd acts or doesn’t act with the world, how the world came to be created, what happened at Sinai, etc.  Not only is that ok, it is tradition.  As they say, two Jews, three opinions.  In the Talmud it says “Elu v’elu divrei Elohim Hayyim, “these and those are the words of the living Gd,” but it also says, “the halacha is according to Beit Hillel.”  As much as we can respect different opinions, we believe that there is the possibility of A right answer, even if we have trouble finding it at times.


The third song that resonated with me, or didn’t resonate with me was a song called “Turn it Off”  

“Turn it Off”
I got a feelin' that you could be feelin'
A whole lot better than you feel today
You say you got a problem...well, that's no problem!
It's super easy not to feel that way
When you start to get confused because of thoughts in your head –
Don't feel those feelings – hold them in instead!

Turn it off!
Like a light switch
Just go 'click'!
It's a cool little Mormon trick
We do it all the time

From a Jewish or psychological perspective, turning off our feelings is not ideal.  This past year and a previous summer, I did chaplaincy training.  One of the most important lessons was the importance of allowing people to feel their feelings.  For someone to recover from grief, they have to grieve!  While someone’s first reaction is to tell their friend to “stop crying, it will be ok.”; that is not necessarily the best reaction.  Sometimes we need to cry.  On the Jewish calendar we have an entire day devoted to crying!  On Tisha B’av we are meant to mourn not only for the loss of the Temple in Jerusalem, but for all of the tragedies in our Jewish and maybe even personal lives.  On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we celebrate the new year, but we also beg for atonement.  We plan how we can live a better life, but pray to Gd that we will be heard and forgiven.  In one of the first Conservative Machzorim, printed by Rabbi Morris Silverman, the opening page is a poem called the “old prayer book.”

It begins:
“This book of prayers, old and stained with tears,/ I take into my hand/ And unto the God of my fathers/ Who from ages past has been their Rock and Refuge/ I call in my distress. . .”

The poem reminds me that this time of year is known for tears.  We look at old Tallitot, yellow not just with age, but with the tears of our ancestors, praying that their prayers would be answered, that they would have another day, another year, another Rosh Hashanah.  Those Tallitot are also stained with the tears from Yizkor, from remembering those no longer here.  I think our faith is stronger when we cry a little more, when we dance a little more, when we sing just a little bit louder.  NOT when we “switch it off.”


IMPORTANT NOTE: All lyrics property of their authors and copyrights.  Text taken from http://lyrics.wikia.com/The_Book_Of_Mormon_(2011)
Poem from: Rabbi Morris Silverman’s High Holiday Prayer Book, printed by the Prayer Book Press, Media Judaica, Bridgeport, CT. 1986