Parshat Hukkat/Father’s Day/Flag Day/Graduation BBQ

June 14, 2013

Tonight is a special occasion.  Today we honor those who have reached a milestone in their lives.  We are grateful for their presence in our lives and look forward to their return, yet we also wish them good luck in all their endeavors.  I ask ___ and ___ to come forward, to receive a token of our admiration.  Whether in their room at home, a dorm room, or a room in their future homes, may these mezuzot provide a reminder of their heritage, may they be a sign on the doorpost of their hearts, that they keep our traditions dear, and hold them in their hearts.  Thank you for being here tonight, and I pray that we will see you regularly in the future.  Whether at OCC or Cornell, I pray that Hillel becomes a second home for you, that your Yiddishe Neshama, your Jewish soul, will guide your choices and your actions today and each day forward.  You may be seated.

Today is Flag Day, a little known holiday.  Two hundred and thirty-six years ago, on June 14, 1777, the Second Continental Congress adopted our current flag.  While not an official national holiday, it is renewed regularly by presidential proclamation, reminding us to think about our blessed status as Americans, to think about the symbols that bind us together.  Whether on the national stage or the Jewish one, we have symbols that remind us of our values.  The flag reminds us of liberty, of freedom, of democracy, of the ideals of 13 separate colonies that did not always get along, yet chose to band together, declare independence and create a free country.  The flag reminds us not just of the gifts of our American heritage, but of our obligations, taxes, voting, sometimes even military service. In our Jewish tradition, we have many symbols, from tallit and tefillin to Torahs, yads, mezuzot, Seder plates, or Hanukkah candles.  Each of these symbols reminds us of our commandments and obligations.  The mezuzot that we include today are not just pretty cases.  Within them is a handwritten parchment, including the words of the Shema.  We are commanded to love Gd with all our bodies, minds and souls, with our hearts, our lives, our might, and our resources.  We are commanded to remember Gd’s commitment to us and declare our commitment to Gd.  We declare Gd’s oneness, Gd’s singularity, and remember this when we lie down and when we rise up, when we sit in our homes and when we walk along the road.  By putting a mezuzah on our doorposts, we have a physical reminder of our spiritual commitment, of our Jewish heritage, but also of our Jewish present and our future.

Tomorrow morning, we will read Parshat Chukat.  We read about Israel’s journey in the wilderness and the challenges of water availability, culminating with Moses striking the rock.  (While we have not worried so much about water in our recent rains, the availability of potable water worldwide is a major challenge!)  Most powerfully, this parsha includes the death of Aaron.

Chapter 20:23 At Mount Hor, on the boundary of the land of Edom, the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 24 "Let Aaron be gathered to his kin: he is not to enter the land that I have assigned to the Israelite people, because you disobeyed my command about the waters of Meribah. 25 Take Aaron and his son Eleazar and bring them up on Mount Hor. 26 Strip Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar. There Aaron shall be gathered unto the dead."

27 Moses did as the Lord had commanded. They ascended Mount Hor in the sight of the whole community. 28 Moses stripped Aaron of his vestments and put them on his son Eleazar, and Aaron died there on the summit of the mountain. When Moses and Eleazar came down from the mountain, 29 the whole community knew that Aaron had breathed his last. All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days. http://www.jtsa.edu/PreBuilt/ParashahArchives/jpstext/hukkat.shtml

While incredibly powerful to see the ENTIRE house of Israel mourning together, more interesting to me is the moment before.  Gd commands Moses to take off Aaron’s priestly garb and place it on his son.  Before Aaron can die, he must pass on his legacy to his son.  While sending a child off to college is hopefully not as final, it is a transitional moment, a time when we think about our values and what comes next in our children’s lives.  In college, young adults have opportunities and temptations with far less supervision, yet parents must trust that the values they instilled will make for responsible choices--or at least that poor choices have limited long-term consequences!  With the advent of facebook photo sharing, parents and future employers can see many of their children’s choices--whether they want to or not!  When Aaron gave his son his priestly garments, he was giving him the responsibility to care for the entire nation of Israel, to offer atonement on their behalf.  He had instilled in Eleazar his values and had to trust that Eleazar would use those values.  In the same way, we are faced with such choices today.

For me, this is a special weekend.  For the first time Father’s Day is not about buying a card or a tie for my dad, but a little bit about me!  Yet I see it as a reflective time.  What kind of father do I want to be?  What examples do I use from my own father and grandfathers, or my father-in-law?  How about uncles and brothers-in-law, rabbis, teachers, friends? How do I co-parent with my wife?  When do I make decisions on my own and when do I consult with her?  How will I be prepared in 18 years to send my daughter off to school?

Clearly these questions will not be asked nor answered all at once, but I pray that in the coming years, I follow the best examples of the ones I love.  I pray that I will teach my children how to make responsible choices AND when it is safe and acceptable to be silly or goofy or simply let loose.  I pray that all of our collective children grow to be healthy, responsible adults, who value the gift of a Jewish life, and use their Jewish souls to make good choices.  Shabbat Shalom!

The Constitution and Parshat Emor

Rabbi Philip Weintraub

Congregation Agudas Israel

Parshat Emor

April 27, 2013

This week’s parsha, Emor, includes many commands from Gd to Moses to the people Israel.  While they are on diverse topics, life and death unite them.  Death opens and closes our parsha, yet festivals and celebrations are in between..

Our parsha opens:

1 The Lord said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: None shall defile himself for any [dead] person among his kin, 2 except for the relatives that are closest to him: his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, and his brother; 3 also for a virgin sister, close to him because she has not married, for her he may defile himself. 4 But he shall not defile himself as a kinsman by marriage, and so profane himself.

5 They shall not shave smooth any part of their heads, or cut the side-growth of their beards, or make gashes in their flesh. 6 They shall be holy to their God and not profane the name of their God; for they offer the Lord's offerings by fire, the food of their God, and so must be holy.

It closes:

17 If anyone kills any human being, he shall be put to death. 18 One who kills a beast shall make restitution for it: life for life. 19 If anyone maims his fellow, as he has done so shall it be done to him: 20 fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The injury he inflicted on another shall be inflicted on him. 21 One who kills a beast shall make restitution for it; but one who kills a human being shall be put to death. 22 You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike: for I the Lord am your God.

23 Moses spoke thus to the Israelites. And they took the blasphemer outside the camp and pelted him with stones. The Israelites did as the Lord had commanded Moses.

http://www.jtsa.edu/PreBuilt/ParashahArchives/jpstext/emor.shtml

In between we have the festive calendar, the command to be joyous and celebrate the festivals.  We are commanded not to work on the festivals, not to afflict ourselves, but so that we may have time to enjoy, to celebrate.  If we are always connected to work, whether physically or mentally, we cannot truly celebrate.  If we are always waiting for one more call at a birthday party or one more email at a romantic dinner, we are not truly experiencing the moment.  To me, that is perhaps the greatest reason for the command not to work on the Sabbath and Festivals.  The command is not to keep one from enjoying a freshly prepared, hot meal, but to keep anyone from being a slave in the kitchen or anywhere else.

Speaking of commands, I want to return to the commands around death.  The opening of our parsha teaches us the laws of mourning, of the people who are so important to us, that we must stop everything we do, and focus on their loss.  While the loss of any individual is difficult, the loss of a parent, a sibling, a child or a spouse is even more so.  (Although not mentioned in this text explicitly, spouses are included in this category)

When we lose anyone in these categories, which unfortunately, is inevitable, we are commanded to stop our normal routines.  We literally put our lives on pause.  Ideally, the community rallies around us.  They help us with our basic needs, so that we do not have to worry about them.  Our homes are prepared, a special meal is prepared for after the funeral (as well as meals for the duration of shiva).  Rather than leaving our homes and going to shul for minyan, the minyan comes to us.  Together, in community, with at least nine others, we say our daily prayers and praise Gd.  Even in the midst of tragedy, we remember that we were created for a reason, and even with the loss of the ones we love, our own purpose remains.

In recent months, we have seen the loss of too many old friends.  When my grandmother passed away, I was overwhelmed with the support from this community.  Every single night in Atlanta, food arrived from different places and different members of the shul.  It was so appreciated, so appreciated.  I pray that we can one day do that for ALL members.  So thank you, but I challenge us to be even more proactive for those in need.  Now a small tochecha, a small criticism, to those in mourning.  Shiva is important.  I know for some it is difficult to sit a full week, to have guests every night or every day, but we lose something when we sit only one or two days of shiva.  Yes, it is overwhelming.  Yes, for some, it can be irritating to have so many people over when they just want some time alone.  If you need alone time, it’s perfectly acceptable to kick people out, but first you must allow them in.  In Victorian England, mourning clothing had strict customs for extended periods of time.  I’m not suggesting that we need to wear black for three years, but our holy customs can bring us some solace!

In this parsha, we do discover that the Cohen Gadol, the high priest’s duties were solely to Gd and the community.  That individual was exempted from normal mourning, his duties were so important to the very survival of the community. Very few of us have jobs like that.  Even if we are surgeons or accountants before tax time, we need at least a little time to process the loss of those dear to us.

Our parsha ends with the law that is sometimes called lex talionis, an eye for an eye.  The sad thing in the modern world is that many who see the Bible as archaic or the “Old Testament” as brutal or harsh focus on these laws.  By reading too literally, they miss the point of the laws entirely.  What these laws are teaching is that we are all equal in the eyes of Gd. Rich or poor, prominent or not, we all have value.  As such, even if the least of us are harmed by the greatest of us, they deserve fair and just treatment and compensation.  In the rabbinic tradition, in the Jewish tradition, these laws were rarely, if ever, seen to be literal.  Rather, our tradition teaches us that financial compensation was the norm, not physical compensation.  Judaism teaches that vengeance and justice do not go together, but that true justice comes about through due process and the legal system.

How many of you watch the Daily Show with Jon Stewart?  I recently started watching again and was deeply moved by three segments that they showed recently.  Two were discussing gun control and using the example of Australia.  In previous years, Australia had numerous episodes of gun violence like we saw in Sandy Hook not long ago.   To be precise, 13 gun massacres from 1978-1996. Since passing comprehensive gun reform in 1996, there have been exactly ZERO gun massacres in Australia. “Studies found a marked drop in gun-related homicides, down 59 percent, and a dramatic 65 percent drop in the rate of gun-related suicides, in the 10 years after the weapons crackdown.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/03/us-usa-guns-australia-idUSBRE9320C720130403

Speaking with former Australian Prime Minister Howard, as well as several conservative law makers who lost their seats, but were happy to make the political sacrifice for the greater good.  This was shown in a major difference in perspective to American legislators who see success as re-election, rather than serving their citizens!  

The third segment was about due process and our Constitution.  Quoting FoxNews Anchors, they showed clips suggesting the removal/restriction/or ignoring aspects of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th Amendments.  Regarding not just terrorists but also the rest of us citizens, Fox anchors had no problem establishing or limiting religion, allowing unreasonable searches and seizures, allowing double jeopardy, taking away due process, the right to counsel, and trial by jury, allowing cruel and unusual punishment and taking away rights that are not specificall enumerated in the Constitution. I would love to say they were consistent in supporting states rights (the 10th Amendment) but in disregarding the ninth, the tenth goes along with it.  Guess which amendment they did support though?  The Second Amendment!  They said “it’s black and white, how can you limit it”--after systematically eradicating the rest of the Bill of Rights!  Jon Stewart closed the segment with  "Yes, it turns out there’s only one amendment in our Constitution’s pantheon that is exempt from statistical analysis or emotional freak-out-itude, and it is the Second.  God help us if the muslims ever decide to form a well-regulated militia.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/jon-stewart-fox-news-shre_n_3153921.html

Concluding from our parsha, whatever your take on gun control, even for terrorists, due process and constitutional protections apply to all--even if we don’t like them!

Yom Hashoah

On Sunday April 7 at 2PM, the Newburgh Jewish Community Center (along with my synagogue, Congregation Agudas Israel) joined with Mt. St. Mary College for a Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) Commemoration.  An annual program of the Newburgh JCC, this year’s program was organized by Debbie Sanford, that organization’s Executive Director.

I (Rabbi Philip Weintraub) was proud to participate in this program, offering memorial prayers and psalms, as well as inviting participants to light 6 memorial candles, representing the 6,000,000 Jews murdered by the Nazis and their associates during the Holocaust or Shoah.  Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, was created by an act of the Knesset(Parliament) in Israel to be a world-wide memorial to those murdered by the Nazis, but also as a reminder of the Jews who had the opportunity to fight back, who rebelled against the vicious Nazis, for example in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Debbie Sanford brought a powerful speaker, Rudy Rosenberg, to educate us about the horrors of the Holocaust.  Rudy Rosenberg was born in Belgium.  He and his family went into hiding in 1942 and remained there for the rest of the war.  The author of And Somehow We Survive, he shared the difficulties of a life in hiding.  While he hid with his mother, he was separated from his sister and father for much of WWII.  Over the course of an hour, he shared details of his wartime experiences.  This included numerous close calls and the difficult decisions his parents made to survive.

Rudy is part of the Hidden Child Foundation (http://archive.adl.org/hidden/default.asp) which seeks to share the experiences of those who survived the Holocaust in hiding, many of whom lived separately from their families during the war, and remain as the sole survivors from their families.

For more information about Yom Hashoah, see the websites of the US Holocaust Museum in DC: http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/dor/

In NYC, we have the Museum of Jewish Heritage: http://www.mjhnyc.org

In Rockland there is the Holocaust Museum and Studies Center: http://www.holocauststudies.org/

The Newburgh Jewish Community Center hosts numerous educational and social programs: www.newburghjcc.org/

My congregation is Congregation Agudas Israel www.congregationagudasisrael.org

And I can be found on facebook https://www.facebook.com/RabbiPhil or Twitter @tweetedtalmud

Marriage Equality, Kashrut and Truth

Rabbi Philip WeintraubApril 6, 2013Parshat Shemini

My homiletics teacher at JTS told me I should never ask more questions than I intend to answer, that when you do so, people think about their answers rather than yours.  Great advice, but sometimes it needs to be ignored!  So I ask you:How do we read the Torah?  Do we read it literally?  Do we read it allegorically?  What is Truth with a capital T?So before I continue (and lose you), what are your thoughts on any of those questions?


You might ask what inspired me1) Letter saying marriage is defined by GD (and that we shouldn’t support gay marriage)2) Parshat Shmini discussing death of Aaron’s sons Nadav and Avihu3) Parshat Shmini discussing rules of kashrut


On Friday I read a letter in Thursday’s paper telling us why, since Gd said marriage should be between a man and a woman, the state or federal government should agree.  Ignoring the Constitutional issues, such as the first amendment’s establishment clause, as much as I support Gd and Torah, I think that I read it just a little bit differently than the letter’s author.  On that note, before I continue,I want to share with you a letter I wrote to the editor of the Times Herald Record.  I think it is important for people to know that people of faith believe that gay marriage should be legal.  Even if you religiously believe that it is unacceptable for your church or synagogue to perform gay marriages, it should be legal for those that are not members of your church or synagogue.


My letter read:I read in the THR Friday  (oops-Thursday’s paper-I read it Friday) from a minister saying that only G-d defines marriage.  While that may be the case in his church, as is his first amendment right, NY state defines marriage within this state.  He is free to perform any marriage legal in the state and is under no pressure to perform gay marriages in his church.

On TV and in the paper, we often equate religion and anti-gay or even homophobic sentiments.  As a Conservative Rabbi, I remember that one of the first parts of creation was G-d noting that it was "not good for man to be alone."  I cannot imagine a loving G-d, who would create people with no acceptable marriage possibility.  That is why I support marriage equality.

If fundamentalists of any stripe are going to spend a lot of time parsing Leviticus, they should join me in keeping kosher: abandoning pork, shellfish and mixed meat/dairy meals.  If they aren't willing to live by the laws of the Bible, perhaps they shouldn't impose them on others.  That, too, is the principle of the First Amendment.

Additionally, our parsha speaks about the story of Nadav and Avihu, who offered “strange fire” before Gd.  The commentators fall over themselves trying to explain how this must be a just punishment from a just GD against evil people.  They say Nadav and Avihu made all sorts of different mistakes, that they disobeyed Gd.  Modern commentators speak of them being under the influence, perhaps that “strange fire” was them imbibing in illicit substances or drinking too much.  Others take another task, that they were so righteous and so so desired to be one with Gd, that they purposely sacrificed themselves!  However we read the story, it is a different one, that challenges our ideas about Gd and ourselves!

Finally our parsha concludes with animals we can and cannot eat.  It literally discusses the sacred and profane, implying that “we are what we eat.”  There is a great holiness to keeping kosher.  If we are aware of all that we put before our lips, if we say blessings over what we eat, we create a connection to Gd’s holy creation.

I found it particularly appropriate that the letter writer wrote this week, as we read about Kashrut.  I find it fascinating how so many people take the Bible so literally, yet are very selective in how they follow it.  Many people are quick to judge others for their sexual morality, yet have no interest in the numerous other prohibitions surrounding those.  

Returning to my original questions:How do we read the Torah?  I read the Torah with a loving eye.  I see it as the source of my life, the source for all life, the place where all secrets are hidden and the place where Gd shows Gd’s love to us and the world.  (While that may sound a little Christian, in my recent studies of the Christian Bible I discovered that 97% (my guess) of what Jesus says is either elsewhere in the Jewish Bible or in rabbinic literature.  It is Saul/Paul who drastically changed Jesus’ message.)Do we read it literally?  Yes, sometimes.Do we read it allegorically?  Yes, sometimes.In the Middle Ages, Saadia Gaon argued that a biblical passage should not be interpreted literally if that made a passage mean something contrary to the senses or reason (or, as we would say, science; Emunot ve-Deot, chapter 7). Maimonides applied this principle to theories about creation. He held that if the eternity of the universe (what we would call the Steady State theory) could be proven by logic (science) then the biblical passages speaking about creation at a point in time could and should be interpreted figuratively in a way that is compatible with the eternity of the universe.It is only because the eternity of the universe has not been proven that he interpreted the verses about creation at a point in time literally (Guide, II, 25), but he still insisted that the creation story as a whole was written metaphorically (Book I, Introduction). (http://www.myjewishlearning.com/beliefs/Issues/Science/Creationism_and_Evolution/Bible_as_Allegory.shtml)

What is Truth with a capital T?  Truth is love.  Truth is the spirit behind the words.  Truth is what lives deep inside of us, in the light that is our soul, in the Gdliness that is demonstrated by Bereshit’s note that we are all created in the image of the Divine.  Truth with a capital T is not found simply by reading the words on the page.  It is in the words, under the words, struggling with the words.  It is reading 4 translations and 8 commentaries.  It is parsing with a chevruta, studying with a friend.  Truth is Divine.Shabbat Shalom.

Marriage Equality

My letter to the Times Herald Record today. Let's see if it gets published!

I read in the THR Friday from a minister saying that only G-d defines marriage. While that may be the case in his church, as is his first amendment right, NY state defines marriage within this state. He is free to perform any marriage legal in the state and is under no pressure to perform gay marriages in his church.

On TV and in the paper, we often equate religion and anti-gay or even homophobic sentiments. As a Conservative Rabbi, I remember that one of the first parts of creation was G-d noting that it was "not good for man to be alone." I cannot imagine a loving G-d, who would create people with no acceptable marriage possibility. That is why I support marriage equality.

If fundamentalists of any stripe are going to spend a lot of time parsing Leviticus, they should join me in keeping kosher: abandoning pork, shellfish and mixed meat/dairy meals. If they aren't willing to live by the laws of the Bible, perhaps they shouldn't impose them on others. That, too, is the principle of the First Amendment.

Did the Rabbi really speak at the Lenten service?

Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
February 27, 2013
GNMA Lenten Service

Thank you to Grace United for hosting us for this Lenten Series, to the GNMA for inviting me to speak this morning and to Rev. Windom for sharing his pulpit.  My name is Rabbi Philip Weintraub and I lead Congregation Agudas Israel, just a few blocks away on North Street.

I have to say I was a little surprised to be asked to speak at this event.  Ash Wednesday, Lent, and Easter are not Jewish traditions.  The Hebrew Bible includes three sections, the Torah (Genesis-Deuteronomy), the Prophets, and the Writings, what you would call the Old Testament, although you all have a different order for some of the books than we do, which is something I recently discovered when I decided to read the Christian Bible.  At the same time, with our shared biblical heritage we have many traditions in common.  While your Lent will end with Easter, during Passover, which begins a few days before and overlaps Easter, we will begin counting the Omer.  From the 2nd night of Passover, we count 49 days, 7 weeks of 7 days (per Leviticus 23:15/16) to Shavuot, or what you would call Pentecost, when we celebrate the receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai.  During that time, similar to the Christian practice of Lent, we consider our actions.  While it is not necessarily a time of penance, it is a time for us to improve ourselves, to make changes in how we look at the world and ourselves, to find ways to whittle away our rough edges and make ourselves into our better selves.  In this time, some Jews do not shave, go to concerts or schedule weddings, remembering the many Jews that were killed by the Roman persecutions and during the Crusades.

I am glad to stand here before you, to help us, together, think about the beautiful quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  How can we use our faith to, as he said, “hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope?”  I was asked to speak about slavery.  In America, we, especially white Americans, think that slavery is a relic of the past.  We think of it as a tragic history, a blot on the progressive nature of our country.  We remember the horrible conditions, the inhumane treatment and we watch movies like Lincoln and think it was all in the past.

I ask for your participation.  Raise your hand, call out.
How many people in this room have a smartphone?  
A laptop?  
A tablet?  
Any computer?  
Any cell phone?  
Do you wear clothing?
Do you wear shoes?
How many of you eat dinner?

If you say yes to any of these things then you have slaves working for you.  In our global economy, people farm our food and make our products around the world.  While working conditions in this country our regulated, they are not in the same ways around the world.  In recent months, we have seen fires and employee deaths that remind us of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911.  In Bangladesh, workers in factories burned to death after the doors out were locked to prevent stealing.  Clothes produced in those factories were sold by Walmart, Sears and even contractors for the US Marines.  Even when companies think their supply chain is ethical and clean, the contractors of the factories that they checked may subcontract to other factories.  If Target places an order for 100,000 tshirts, an “ethically approved factory” may take that order even if they can only produce 50,000 shirts.  They will then outsource again to other factories and you can end up with a tshirt produced by an 8yr old paid virtually nothing.

The same is true about electronics.  In recent weeks, Apple, Samsung, and other companies have “discovered” that Foxconn and other companies in China have used student “internships” to get access to skilled but very cheap labor, lowering the costs of all the devices in your pocket, purse or living room.

This does not even begin to address the human trafficing and sex slavery that happens not just around the world, but in this country.  Women, girls and boys are promised a better life elsewhere and then their passports are held hostage until they earn enough to cover their smuggling fees via prostitution.  This does not just happen around the world, this happens right here in New York!

Right here in Newburgh, there is gang slavery.  A young man or woman enters a gang imagining money, power, sex and quickly finds that leaving is far more difficult that entering, that many of the “benefits” are a mirage, but the consequences, the potential jail time, the crimes are very real.

On the State Department’s website, they have a link called “What is modern slavery?”  On this page it speaks in detail about forced labor, sex trafficking, bonded labor, debt bondage among migrant laborers, involuntary domestic servitude, forced child labor, child soldiers and child sex trafficking.  We thought the scourge of slavery ended with the Emancipation Proclomation, but it didn’t.  We thought it ended with the 13th Amendment, but it didn’t.  We thought it ended with the Brown v. Board of Education, but it didn’t.  We thought it ended with the Voting Rights Act, but it didn’t.

When I searched my slavery footprint, at the appropriately named slaveryfootprint.org/, I found that 58 slaves work for me. Fifty-eight!  You might have less if you don’t have children or tons of electronics!?  But 58?  How is it possible that in 21st century American there are 58 people that work for me, that I do not know, and yet are enslaved, partially because of me?!

Our Torah, the Bible teaches us about slavery, but its model is very different.  It speaks of debt bondage, that if you owe someone more than you can pay off, you can work for them to pay off that debt.  Yet there are many conditions on this, one of which is from the reading from Leviticus we just heard.  Chapter 35:40-41 says

כְּשָׂכִיר כְּתוֹשָׁב, יִהְיֶה עִמָּךְ; עַד-שְׁנַת הַיֹּבֵל, יַעֲבֹד עִמָּךְ.	40 As a hired servant, and as a settler, he shall be with thee; he shall serve with thee unto the year of jubilee.
וְיָצָא, מֵעִמָּךְ--הוּא, וּבָנָיו עִמּוֹ; וְשָׁב, אֶל-מִשְׁפַּחְתּוֹ, וְאֶל-אֲחֻזַּת אֲבֹתָיו, יָשׁוּב.	41 Then shall he go out from thee, he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.

Unlike the horrendous slavery of American history, biblical slavery required that a person be set free.  In the rabbinic/Jewish tradition, many more requirements were put on the slave-supervisor (I can’t say owner, because in the Jewish and biblical tradition, a person can never truly be property).  The supervisor had to provide food and clothing to the worker.  He had to eventually set him free.  In Leviticus, the maximum term is 7 years, although a worker could choose to remain longer, up to the absolute maximum of the Jubilee year, which was every 49 years, so in theory it could be that long, although highly unlikely.  When a worker was freed, he/she had to be paid wages for all the work that was done.  A worker could not be released with nothing.


So, what do we do with this information?  How do we turn this mountain of despair into a stone of hope?

To this, I have a very Jewish answer:  Ask a good question!

Isidor I. Rabi, the Nobel laureate in physics who died Jan. 11, was once asked, ''Why did you become a scientist, rather than a doctor or lawyer or businessman, like the other immigrant kids in your neighborhood?''

Dr. Rabi's answer. . .was profound: ''My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: 'So? Did you learn anything today?' But not my mother. She always asked me a different question. 'Izzy,' she would say, 'did you ask a good question today?' That difference - asking good questions -made me become a scientist!''#

To change the world, we have many questions to ask.  We have to ask every company, every store, every person:
Where was this made?
Under what conditions?
Was their child labor?
Even as we struggle with our own shrinking paychecks, we may have to be willing to pay a little bit more to ensure that we are not furthering slavery.
We have to write to our congresspeople, call our senators, email the president demanding labels that don’t just say “Made in Bangladesh” but “Made in China with no child labor.”

We need to think about making and buying more things in this country, where we have clear regulations about the number of hours and breaks that are fair, where it is illegal to employ an 8-year old to use a dangerous machine.

We have to vote with our wallets.  If we do not like an answer, buy something else!

We have to ask more questions.  Whether we buy our clothes at Brooks Brothers or Walmart, Nieman Marcus or Old Navy, we need to be able to know under what conditions are our products manufactured.  Ethical issues abound.  Is it better for a 12 year old girl in Bangladesh to work in a factory under poor conditions and earn a pittance, when that pittance is more than she would make in even worse conditions?  Do we stop producing in those countries, possibly letting more children fall into the sex trade?  Those are questions for economists and ministers, ethics experts and all of us.  We have to weigh the costs and benefits of our choices and sometimes recognize that no choice will be perfect.

And yet, I have hope.  One hundred years ago, factory conditions in this country were abhorrent.  Child labor was rampant.  We, as Americans, demanded better conditions and we received them.  Was that struggle easy?  No.  But it happened.  Unions were formed, government regulated.  (Today we struggle with the balance of regulation, but I, personally, would much rather have some stupid regulations than a wild west!)

In this country there are many human rights organizations, many of them with religious backgrounds.  They use our biblical traditions to say “Hey, this isn’t right!  We need to change things!  All people should have access to health care, decent working conditions, jobs!”

They remember the first verses we read this morning, that if your brother has become poor, is unable to work, that you should support him.  You should not lend him money at ridiculous rates.  You should not give him a mortgage he can never pay back or forgive his second mortgage and refuse to negotiate the first one.  (OK, the last line is not in Leviticus, but I think you get the message.)

Our shared religious heritage says that we are not just encouraged to do right by others, but we are required to help those in need.  We must stand together to work for the betterment of humankind, not just of the people that look like us, but all people.  Hosea 6:8 is one of the most famous prophetic verses.  It teaches us

ח  הִגִּיד לְךָ אָדָם, מַה-טּוֹב; וּמָה ה' דּוֹרֵשׁ מִמְּךָ, כִּי אִם-עֲשׂוֹת מִשְׁפָּט וְאַהֲבַת חֶסֶד, וְהַצְנֵעַ לֶכֶת, עִם-אֱ-לֹהֶיךָ.  {ס}

8 It hath been told thee, O man, what is good, and what the LORD doth require of thee: only to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God. {S}

This is what we were put on Gd’s green earth to do.  That is how we hew a stone of hope.  We demand action.  We make changes.  We ask questions.
This is my message for us to day.

לא עליך כל המלאכה לגמור, ולא אתה בן חורין ליבטל.

"He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not upon you to complete the task, but you are not free to idle from it.

AMEN!

Terumah and Truth (and please vaccinate your children)

Rabbi Philip Weintraub
Congregation Agudas Israel
2/15/2013
Parshat Terumah

This has been a tough time for us at Congregation Agudas Israel.  In the last few weeks we have had far too many funerals.  In my own life, in addition to those, I had two other funerals of family friends.  As such, I have been mentally, physically and spiritually exhausted!  When we reach that state, we have to think about how to get ourselves back to normal.  For me, one way to deal with stress is to go to the gym.  Wednesday morning I was at the gym and these ideas came to me!  It made me first think of an article I saw last Sunday, which said that more and more studies continue to demonstrate that a brief nap, a longer vacation, and a little more rest make us all far more productive than burning the candle at both ends.

The opening of this week’s parsha includes chapter 25, verse 10 and 11 of Exodus.  While discussing the construction of the Tabernacle in the desert, the Sanctuary of the people Israel in the wilderness, we hear:

10 They shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. 11 Overlay it with pure gold — overlay it inside and out — and make upon it a gold molding round about.

Immediately I wonder, why does the ark need to be gold on the inside.  It made me think of a story I once heard about a man painting his fence with his children.  The children asked, why are you spending so much time painting BOTH sides of the wood, before constructing the fence.  Won’t we only see one side?  Won’t the other side be against our neighbors’ fence, and they won’t see it either.  (You can say the same about intricate watches, where only the watchmaker knows how beautifully it is constructed.)  The man’s response was “integrity and responsibility.”  Even if the only one who knows of that beauty is myself and Gd, it is worth it.  I will spend the extra time to paint the fence or make the inside of the watch pretty, because it is a representation of myself.

I see this as a midrash on the verse.  Just as the ark should be gilded inside and out, so, too, should we be gilded inside and out.  We should strive that our private behavior matches our public behavior.  We should treat our family and especially our spouses with at least as much respect as we treat others.

Just a few weeks ago in my daily Talmud study, daf yomi, I studied Shabbat 104a.  On that page, I found a discussion of truth and lies.  In Hebrew, the word for truth is EMET and lies is SHEKER.  The rabbis note that those letters have something in common.  Each of the letters in truth have two legs to stand on, but the letters in lies have only one.  Thus, the rabbis say, truth is stronger (not stranger) than fiction, because it is based on two legs.

שקר
אמת

Yet, when we look around the world, we see many examples of lies seemingly beating out truth.  We can think of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a spurious work that claims to be of a secret meeting of Jews who control the world, for their own nefarious purposes.  First published in 1903, it was celebrated by the Nazis, Henry Ford, and was even made into a TV series in Egypt.  In the 21st century, a previous Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, the entire education ministry of Saudia Arabia and even a member of the Greek Parliament have claimed it to be truth, even though the New York Times exposed it to be a complete fraud in the 1920s.  Even with decades of exposes of its fraudulent nature, it still comes back among anti-Semites!

What prompted my consideration of truth and lies was the issue of the connection between vaccines and Autism.  Since Andrew Wakefield (no longer a doctor) published a (now retracted) paper in the Lancet, in 1998, many have argued that Autism is caused by the mercury in vaccines.  They do not care that the study was a fraud.  They do not care that the amount of mercury in those vaccines was less than in a can of tuna.  They do not care that there is absolutely zero factual evidence of any connection between mercury and autism.  They do not care that mercury hasn’t been used in most vaccines for more than a decade and autism rates have not dropped AT ALL, in that time.  Those who claim this ridiculous lie continue to publicize it and refuse to vaccinate their children, creating a public health risk.  No amount of evidence or fact will change their minds.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is another place where fact and fiction are hard to discern.  For many, Israel can do no right, and Palestinians can do no wrong.  While Israel, like any nation, occasionally makes bone-headed choices, the facts are far more nuanced, yet for many, especially in Arab countries, that is not the case.  To them, Israel stole their land and started wars, even though the facts seem to suggest otherwise.

So how do we deal with those who do not care for truth?  Arguing seems futile.  Regarding the autism issue, I saw a facebook post of a physical therapist, someone who should have understood science, and yet she posted that nonsense.  When I called her on it, she said, we didn’t have to be facebook friends anymore.  We were never facebook friends to begin with!  Facts just didn’t matter!  As Jews, we learn that כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה, all Jews are responsible for each other.  As such, the rabbis say we have to critique each other when we know we see Jews sinning.  If we see Jews making mistakes, we are supposed to help them see the truth.  As such, I share this sermon.

Can we convince everone of truth when they are caught in a lie?  Unfortunately no, but if we continue to advocate for the truth, we pray that it will have a fighting chance.  Winston Churchill once said  “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”  If we simply accept the status quo, we do ourselves a disservice.  As Jews, we should encourage truthfulness.  At the end of the day, truth WILL win, but it needs our help.  Shabbat Shalom.

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See also: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/123/1/e164.full