Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
10/11/16
Four years ago yesterday, I was telling my wife that if she could have held our daughter inside just one more day, H could be born on 10/11/12. My love did not find it nearly as amusing as I did. Yet, numbers, gematria, have a long history in the Jewish world. Today I think about another anniversary. Fifteen years ago, on September 11, our world changed. Occurring just six days before Rosh Hashanah, the terrorist attacks sent rabbis scrambling, forced to rewrite their holiday sermons, forced to confront the reality of evil in a world where it had seemed vanquished.
The horrors of the collapse of Yugoslavia, the violence and Bosnia genocide there was just six years before; the Rwandan genocide was just a decade before. In some ways, it felt a more innocent time. CNN had been around for twenty years but Foxnews had not even seen a decade. You could go to an airline gate with barely an ID check, hang around an airport and watch the planes take off, or even chat with a pilot during the flight. You didn’t have to take your shoes off and you could carry a soda or water from your car all the way to the airplane. Heck, you could show up 10 minutes before the flight and probably still make your plane.
While the lesson that evil still exists was the one that resonated with most people, there was another side, too. The Red Cross had to stop accepting blood, because their banks were all full. People spent weeks and months working “the pile” trying to save anyway left and then later to make sure that families could have as proper a burial as they could.
What have we learned in the last fifteen years?
This year we flew to Atlanta on September 11. I have to say, I was a little concerned. It was actually one of the most uneventful and fastest security experiences we had at Newark. My wife even got precheck and was able to leave her shoes on! With the privilege of modern air travel we were able to welcome our newest niece into our family. What a mitzvah to celebrate the birth of a new child. There is nothing more optimistic in the world that looking into the potential of a newborn. Seeing the tiny fingers and toes, we cannot help but take a breath and give thanks for all that is good in this world.
It seems like we all need more reminders to give thanks, although there is much more work to be done. Looking around the world, there are so many places with seemingly endless strife and unrelenting conflict. The war in Syria is getting worse and worse. In Afghanistan, we have faced the same challenges the Russians had decades ago and the British had a century before. Russia is getting more and more totalitarian--and don’t even get me started on this election.
Yet the big question I have is why are we so afraid?
Our economy is much better than it has been. Gas prices are lower than they have been in years. Grocery costs are down. Electronics are cheaper, too. Car technology has improved tremendously. Healthcare is still a mess, but more people have insurance--it might be more expensive but it covers more conditions--especially in New York. After quite a runaround, my love got new hearing aids, mostly covered by our insurance company! Consumer confidence is up to some of its highest levels, yet there is a feeling of unease. For a little while we worried about police being killed, but those numbers are still down by a third from the early 80s and have continued to drop. As long as you weren’t murdered in the spike of killings in a handful of cities this year, overall violence and violent crime is way, way down. Unlike Australia, we still have a problem with school shootings, but overall, we are very lucky to be alive right now. For many Americans, this year finally, finally saw some real wage growth. Are we trying to return America to some ahistorical moment of greatness or steadily build a future that has opportunities for ALL.
As Jews, we can always find things to worry about--our children, our Jewish future. We definitely have a lot of work to do. Synagogue memberships are down across virtually all denominational lines. Yes there are hot spots of growth, growing cities where more are connected, and ultra-Orthodox groups where extremely large families are the norm, but affiliation is down across EVERY religion. Catholics and Protestants are also mourning the growth of the nones--unfortunately we are not alone.
So many are “spiritual but not religious”. They don’t believe in organized religion, but they are searching. I like to remind people that Judaism is a “disorganized” religion, but a little humor doesn’t solve every problem--it helps--and as I mentioned on Rosh Hashanah, might even help get you into heaven. But seriously, why don’t the spiritual searchers not find us? What can we do to make our community more engaged, our services more exciting? Websites and books promise to deliver the secrets to get millennials and other young people more involved. I’ll tell you a secret. There are no secrets.
The answer is simple, but slow. We must love what we do. We must feel that it is important. If we see our faith, our Jewish practices as unimportant, so will those around us. If we want others to take us seriously, we have to take it seriously, too! If we love our shul, we will tell our friends and family. In some ways being a part of a community is like being in a relationship. If it is exciting we tell all of our friends. They might occasionally get nauseated at how often we talk about it, but our passion is contagious. Yes, we need to advertise and try new things. Rabbi Freedman and I put out a radio ad this high holiday season. I made a new website for that promotion and am working on a new website for the shul--there is a draft out that you might have seen! In the last few years, we have been successful here. Overall numbers grow and shrink--we can increase new members but cannot eliminate death or moving away.
The question I like to ask myself is what numbers do we use to measure success? We live in the age of numbers, of big data, but what does data tell us about a congregation? It may tell us if the budget balances or the number of people that come to particular program. But does it tell us whose life was changed by coming to a service? Does it tell us the member who felt overwhelmed with grief and then overwhelmed with love when we filled their home or this shul to sit shiva with them? Does it tell us of the college student who received a call or text or letter from us and was inspired to participate in Hillel? I don’t think I’m trying to preserve the rabbinate as a profession, but I define success by inspiration rather than numbers--souls rather than dollars.
Looking at our history--we must think the same way. We have always been a minority of a minority. From generation to generation we struggled to survive, to hold our faith and our place in so many societies. From the Destruction of the Temple and Rome’s eradication of Israel, we did not have a permanent home until almost the present. We were dependent upon the hospitality of host nations--that were not always enthusiastic to have us. In 1948 we turned a dream into a reality, the State of Israel. Like our own reality, it is imperfect. It must learn about the separation of synagogue and state, how to better welcome refugees, how to create opportunities for all its citizens and what a lasting peace will look like. At the same time, it has made the desert bloom, produced more NASDAQ companies than almost anywhere else, invented parts of every modern technology and created its own Silicon Valley. Next June, join me for the trip of a lifetime, connecting your past to our shared present, your history to our Jewish future. Flyers are in the hallway and I hope that you will take your entire family and join mine--if my parent’s come, my little ones will come, too! (I know that it an incentive for a few of you on the fence.)
Judaism is not just about history, but the present. We use our history and our Torah to teach the most important of values. Tomorrow afternoon, Rabbi Freedman and I will be using texts from HIAS to discuss the struggles of refugees around the world. From their website:
Founded in 1881 originally to assist Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, HIAS has touched the life of nearly every Jewish family in America and now welcomes all who have fled persecution.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the 1951 Refugee Convention became the basis for U.S. asylum law, giving HIAS the basis for all future work to assist refugees no matter where they were.
- 1956 - HIAS assisted Jews fleeing the Soviet invasion of Hungary and evacuated the Jewish community of Egypt after their expulsion during the Sinai Campaign.
- 1959 - HIAS set up operations in Miami to rescue the Jews fleeing Cuba’s revolution.
- 1960s - HIAS rescued Jews from Algeria and Libya and arranged with Morocco's King Hassan for the evacuation of his country's huge Jewish community.
- 1968 - HIAS came to the aid of Czechoslovakia's Jews after the suppression of "Prague Spring" and to Poland's Jews after pogroms racked that country.
- 1975 - Following the fall of Saigon, the State Department requested HIAS’ assistance with the resettlement of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians. That year, HIAS found new homes for 3,600 in 150 communities in 38 states. While not the first time HIAS had assisted in the resettlement of non-Jews, the organization’s assistance with this large-scale refugee crisis garnered a special thank you from President Gerald Ford. HIAS continued to assist refugees from Southeast Asia through 1979.
- 1977 - HIAS helped evacuate the Jews of Ethiopia, which culminated in several dramatic airlifts to Israel.
- 1979 - The overthrow of the Shah precipitated a slow but steady trickle of Jews escaping the oppressive theocracy of Iran. HIAS helped hundreds of Iranian Jews with close family living in the U.S. resettle here.
- Hias helped with Jews from the former USSR.
Starting in the 2000s, HIAS expanded our resettlement work to include assistance to non-Jewish refugees, meaning we became involved in the aftermath of conflicts from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Hungary, Iran, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Tunisia, Vietnam, and the successor states to the former Soviet Union. We began to work in countries where refugees fled to identify those in immediate danger to bring them to safety. We realized that there were many refugees who would not be resettled and that it was important for us to help.
Today that means working with Syrian refugees--a conflict that has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands and created millions who cannot return home. As Jews, we know what that is like. In the coming weeks, we will have more opportunities to discuss this. I would like us to sign on to HIAS welcoming congregations list and perhaps even adopt a family. More to come as information is available.
Tonight we have crossed back and forth across Jewish history, from past to present, looking closely and more distantly at numbers. Tonight is the one night a year when we wear a tallit, so I want to close with some numbers about the Tallit’s fringes:
While there are several different numerical interpretations of the tzitzit, the one I like best is the Gematria value of the word "Tzitzit" itself--(tzadi-yod-tzitzit-yod-taf) is 600. Since each corner has eight strands and five knots, making 13, looking at any corner reminds us of the number 613. With 613 commandments/mitzvot, holding any corner is the same as holding the entire Torah, holding all of our tradition, showing us a physical connection to our past and present. Discussing the tzitzit, the Torah says, "You should see them and remember all God's commandments and do them." (from the last paragraph of the shema).
However we count our fringes, let them be a reminder to us of our connection to our heritage, to God’s commands, and to the possibility of changing the world for the better. We are not alone, God is with us, and we should work to inspire one another and those around us to living with that holiness.
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