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.