Our Future Depends on Us - Remarks at Temple Israel's Annual Dinner Dance

I’m looking out at everyone in this beautiful ballroom with all of the tables set up so magnificently and I have an idea for a little makeover for Rosh Hashanah services.   So bear with me for a moment.

Instead of all those prayers we say before most people get here, we’ll start with a nice cocktail hour, you mingle, wish people a good new year, apologize to people you might have offended.  Then we proceed to our tables, say a few prayers, sit down for the salad course.   And so on.  You get the idea.  We’ll have an early seating and a late seating.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight is overwhelming.  Deanna and I and our family are overwhelmed with the generous, joyous spirit in this room tonight. 

Moving Beyond Trauma

At the end of last week’s Torah reading, we were left with one of the most powerful cliffhangers of all time.  You recall – Joseph’s brothers, including Benjamin, went back to Egypt to meet with Joseph, despite Jacob’s fear that some disaster might befall Benjamin.

Joseph places a silver goblet in Benjamin’s sack, apprehends Benjamin and, though Judah offers to remain Joseph’s slave in exchange for the release of Benjamin, Joseph refuses and says, only the one who took the goblet will be my slave.  The rest of you can go home peacefully to your father.

That’s a cliffhanger.  Judah knows he can’t go back to his father without Benjamin – it would destroy him.  Joseph has put the screws on.

This week’s reading is inspirational.  It’s a great story and it also has a great deal to teach. 

Training for Life

Every Friday morning, Rabbi Adelson and I do singing and a little praying with the students in our Beth HaGan preschool.

The other day, we were speaking with our director, Rachel Mathless, about what songs to sing for Thanksgiving.  And we started with all of the songs about turkeys – including the famous “gobble, gobble, who is that?  Mr. Turkey, big and fat.”

And halfway through our conversation, we said to each other – you know, it’s nice to sing about turkeys, but we should also find a song about saying thank you.

And it didn’t take long for us to realize that we should do some of the songs and prayers that we do whenever we are together that have to do with expressing our thanks.

So, at the Thanksgiving gathering, we sang a song that we sing every time we’re together that introduces the prayer מודה אני לפניך modeh ani l’fanecka, I thank you. 

And it goes like this:  It’s another wonderful morning and I’ll start it with a song.  I will sing my modeh ani would you like to sing along?  All you need to say is thank you.  I’m happy that I’m me.  Modeh ani l’fanekha I’m as thankful as can be.

Many of us had a nice turkey dinner a few days ago and perhaps we’re still eating leftovers over Shabbat.  When tryptophans are at work, rabbis have to work fast.

So here’s my thesis:  religion is about training.  Training us to live differently than we otherwise might.  And that’s a good thing.

The Cries That We Keep Inside

There’s a TV series that came out a few years ago in Israel called Serugim.  It deals with a group of 30-somethings who grew up modern orthodox and who continue to practice Judaism traditionally. 

They are in many ways integrated into modern contemporary life and culture.  They work as physicians and accountants and they watch Monty Python movies and Seinfeld. 

But the essential dramatic element is that, in a community where most people are married by that age, they are all single. 

One is the daughter of a rabbi, who is dating a secular archaeology professor.  Another is pining after a doctor who has no interest in her. 

And there’s a character named Amir who is divorced from his wife, who teaches in a girls’ high school and is trying to date, bearing the stigma that divorce sometimes carries in that community.

I want to just describe one scene involving Amir that I found very poignant.  At one point, during a Shabbat service, for reasons I won’t go into, he loses his yarmulke.  He borrows one from an older gentleman that is not the style he usually wears.  He usually wears a small crocheted colored yarmulke but he ends up taking a large white yarmulke typically worn by followers of certain charismatic rabbis.

He’s walking in a park Shabbat afternoon and comes upon a group of guys sitting and singing on a blanket together, all wearing the same white yarmulke that he’s now wearing.  (There’s a lot of humor in the show, by the way.)

They invite him over – come here, brother, join us!  He hesitates at first and then he comes over.  And he starts to sing with them, soulful, mystical nigunim – songs without words.

At one point they ask him to share one of his own melodies.  He hesitates and then he starts.  He’s not the greatest singer in the world.  But while he’s singing, he starts to cry.   And he’s crying while he’s singing, and the men around him join him in his sad melody as the camera fades into another scene. 

There he is, surrounded by total strangers, and somehow the pathos of his life is released and bursts forth.

This morning I want to say a word about the power of the cry when it’s released and when it’s held back.

Making Tough Decisions

A long, long time ago, back in the day, before GPS, before Google maps and Waves, when people would get in a car and drive from one place to the other, they would listen to traffic reports and decide what roads to take based on hearsay and reasonably blind faith.

De and I would set out in our car from Long Island and head to NJ to visit my parents with our children joyfully coexisting in the back seat.  And as we were driving north on the Cross Island, the inevitable question would be raised. 

Do we take the Throgs Neck to the Cross Bronx or the Triborough to the Harlem River Drive?

I would pose the question to De and, over time, she learned not to answer.  Because if she answered and then we got stuck in traffic, while I didn’t mean to blame her, my affect and tone of voice would suggest otherwise.

I want to spend some time reflecting on how we make decisions.  Indeed it is easier now than it was 15 years ago to figure out what roads to take from point A to point B in the literal realm, but metaphorically it’s another story. 

Many of the decisions we are called upon to make, large and small, economic and emotional, remain quite challenging.

Do we pursue this career or that career?  Do we take the job offer at the startup company or the established company?

Do we join this synagogue or that synagogue or no synagogue at all?

Do we commit to the person we’re dating or not?

Do we seek this treatment or that treatment for a particular illness?

Singing and Dancing Our Vision

I imagine that each of us could identify a number of highlights from the expansive range of holidays that we shared together.   I would like to mention a few from Temple Israel’s recent celebration of Simhat Torah, the day which Rabbi Yitz Greenberg describes as the “coda of joy” at the end of the fall cycle of Jewish holidays.  More precisely, I want to reflect on the highlights that bring our vision to life. 

On Simhat Torah night, following much joyous dancing, a large group of men, women and children gathered around one of our historic Iraqi Torahs as a teen from our congregation chanted passages from the final portion of the Torah.  Everyone present had the opportunity to recite the blessings before and after he read each passage.  At one point, I took a mental snapshot of him, pointing to the words and singing the melody while surrounded by so many of Temple Israel’s children. 

Over at the Youth House, Temple Israel teens hosted residents from two local group homes for adults with developmental challenges.  Our teens paired up with these adults for a variety of activities and then we all danced together with a Torah scroll.  At one point, Youth House Director Danny Mishkin invited up everyone who wanted to come see the inside of the Torah.  We said the blessings together and read a passage from the Torah.  Following that, everyone had dinner and our teens brought their guests over to the Sanctuary to join in the synagogue-wide celebration.  I took a mental snapshot of our teens and our guests surrounding the Torah as it was read. 

We Need to Understand Each Other Better - A Message for the New Year 5774

When I was a sophomore in high school, I was in biology class taking a test and in the middle of the test I needed a Kleenex.

I walked up to the front of the class to get one when I heard my teacher ask, “Are your eyes wandering a bit, Mr. Stecker?”  Implying that I was looking at someone else’s test paper on my way to get the Kleenex.  

Now I was not looking at anyone else’s paper and I was mortified.  Had she said, are you a bit neurotic about your academic success, Mr. Stecker?  Are you dreamy and unfocused, Mr. Stecker?   Even, do you feel nerdy and unworthy from time to time, Mr. Stecker?  I would have been put off, but ultimately not as offended.  There was some truth to all of those things, certainly when I was a teenager.

But to ask if I was cheating?  That hurt.  I was not, and am not, a cheater.

Her snarky question sliced right through me not just because I was wrongly accused, but because I felt fundamentally misunderstood.  If she implied that about me, then she didn’t understand me at all.  At 16 you tend to feel that sort of thing powerfully.

But it’s not just something you feel as a teenager.

Generations Yet Unborn Are Watching

I want you to imagine the scene.  Moses looks out and sees thousands of people. He says to the people, atem nitzavim hayom kulchem:  you’re all standing here together, the leaders, the men, the women, the children, the stranger, the people who cut the trees and the people who draw water from the wells.  You’re all standing here to enter a covenant.  And furthermore, the covenant between you and God is not just with you.  It’s also with those who are not here today.  ואת אשר איננו פה עמנו היום V’et asher einenu po imanu hayom. (Deut. 29:13)

Rashi, ibn Ezra, Ramban – all interpret this the same way.  Who are the people Moses was referring to who were not there, but who were nevertheless bound by the covenant?  Gam im hadorot ha’atidim lih’yot.  The covenant also includes the generations yet to come.

Poor Moses – by his own admission he is not suited for public speaking.  And he has to consider, when he speaks, not only those standing there, but subsequent generations.

My son went down to DC with a few friends to see the 50^th anniversary of the March on Washington.

I watched it on computer, hardly the same effect, but impressive nonetheless.

I want us to rewind 50 years, to think back on the crowds that descended on Washington, DC, united by a commitment to the equal rights of all American citizens, regardless of color.

The Sound of the Circle - A Musical Offering for 5774

As the New Year approaches, enjoy this video of Israeli singer Avraham Tal singing Kol Galgal, a song which invites contemplation of the connection between our voices, the sound of the Shofar, and the continuity of life.  

"The sound of a circle rolls upwards from below, hidden chariots revolving. The sound of melodies rises and falls; it goes wandering in the world. The voice of a Shofar extends through the depths and the circle spins around. That's the sound, the sound of a circle rising and falling."

 

Can Curses Lead to Blessings?

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin told the following story about a rebbe who survived the Shoah, known as the Klausenberger Rebbe. 

When he was a child, Rabbi Riskin was praying at the Klausenberger Rebbe's shul. The Rebbe had lost his wife and thirteen children in the Holocaust. He was one of the last to leave Europe, as he told people that a captain does not leave a sinking ship before the passengers.

He eventually got out, and on the Shabbat morning that Rabbi Riskin came to pray, something unusual happened: When the Torah reader came to the passage of tochecha, "rebuke," or curses that would befall the Jewish people due to our straying from the Torah and tried to read those verses quickly and quietly - as is the custom - the Rebbe said only one word: Louder!

The Torah reader was confused that the rebbe would go against tradition and decided to proceed quickly and quietly, assuming he had heard wrong, but then the rebbe turned around to the congregation with his eyes blazing and banged on the lectern, “I said louder!” he shouted. "Let the Master of the Universe hear!  We have nothing to be afraid of. We have already received all of the curses - and more. Let the Almighty hear, and let Him understand that the time has come to send the blessings!"

Rabbi Riskin was trembling, other congregants quietly sobbed. The Torah reader then read the verses loudly and slowly. At the end of the services, the rebbe turned back to the congregation with deep love in his eyes, "My beloved sisters and brothers, the blessings will come, but not from America. God has promised the blessings after the curses, but they will only come from the land of Israel. Let us pack our bags for the last time." Soon after that Shabbat, the Klausenberger Rebbe led his congregation to Israel, where they settled in Netanya. 

This morning, we read the tochecha, the rebuke.  We did it quietly, according to the traditional custom.  But the Klausenberger Rebbe’s angry request is understandable.  As was his insistence that his flock make aliya. 

Seventy years after the Shoah, the number of people who witnessed it continues to decrease.  And it seems pretty clear that a large segment of the Jewish world population will continue to live in the Diaspora, as has nearly always been the case.

It also seems clear that blessings and curses are to be found wherever we live – Israel or Diaspora.

This morning, I want to look at the tochecha, the list of Tochecha from a different perspective.  Not as a description of what ultimately occurred, but as a way of demonstrating the value and purpose of our tradition.  In a roundabout way, the curses delineate our blessings. 

Polarized or Unified? Depends Where You Look

Deanna and I spent July in Israel.  I participated in the Rabbinical Assembly convention, as well as the first part of the Rabbinic Leadership Initiative of the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, which describes itself as a center of transformative thinking and teaching that addresses the major challenges facing the Jewish people.

Those who have spent time in Israel know that it is teeming, exciting and dynamic. 

When I was praying on our balcony, I couldn’t concentrate so well because there was construction going on, starting at 7 am, right across from where we were staying.

But I smiled to myself when I got to the phrase Bonei yerushalayim, acknowledging God’s role in the building of Jerusalem. 

There I was, praying about building Jerusalem while the crew across the street was actually doing it.

Building is taking place everywhere you look, as it always has.  Urban planners are urging greater building within the borders of Jerusalem so that a green belt, traversed by a relatively new bike path, can be preserved.  

Neighborhoods are being built and rebuilt, new urban spaces are being constructed.  Jerusalem’s version of the high line in NYC is the walkway and bicycle path on the former train tracks.  Many people joke that travel will be much faster now that it’s taking place on bicycle, as compared with the old train that took 2 ½ hours to get to Tel Aviv.

For now, I want to address a single theme, namely:  Although it often seems that Israel is more polarized than ever, with increasing disparate elements and more animosity between different groups, if you look more carefully you see  the emergence of much cooperation despite differences.

Twenty-eight Rabbis Together in Jerusalem

What do you get when you engage 28 rabbis in creative Jewish learning and programming in the heart of Jerusalem?  For nearly four weeks, I participated in the first stint of the fifth cohort of the Rabbinic Leadership Initiative (RLI), sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute.  Our cohort consists of rabbis spanning at least 25 years in age and representing a broad ideological spectrum.  

Among the group are several Renewal rabbis as well as members of the faculty of Yeshivat Maharat, which describes itself as “the first institution to ordain Orthodox women as spiritual leaders and halakhic authorities."

 

In the coming months, I will be writing and speaking further about what I’ve learned so far through RLI.  At this point, I want to give some impressions and a few anecdotes as an introduction to the scope and depth of the program.

Morning with President Shimon Peres

Deanna and I joined over 200 members of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international organization for Conservative rabbis, to hear Israeli President Shimon Peres. Here we are, standing outside the President's house in Jerusalem, before we entered to hear him:

Peres, whose recent 90th birthday celebration included tributes by Bill Clinton and Barbara Streisand, approached the podium after a soaring introduction by RA President Gerald Skolnik.  

The President spoke about the importance of Israel being guided by Jewish values such as equality and intellectual curiosity.  He urged that the success of a democracy hinges upon protecting people's rights to be different.  

Peres has long been a champion of peace against great odds and despite significant opposition.  No one can accuse him, at ninety, of being a naive upstart.  Rather, with decades of experience behind him and an impressive degree of energy still, he presents as an indefatigable optimist.  Deanna and I were inspired by the content and manner of his presentation, as were my colleagues, who gave him a robust standing ovation when he was finished speaking.

In response to a question about conversion standards, Peres told a story about Ben Gurion's meeting with Charles de Gaulle a few years after Israel was established.  De Gaulle asked Ben Gurion to share with him his profoundest dream for the State of Israel.  More land, perhaps?  More resources?  Ben Gurion didn't hesitate.  He told the President of France that he dreams about one thing, and one thing only, for Medinat Yisra'el.  More Jews.  He told De Gaulle that he believed that Jews would leave America, France and Russia in great numbers.

"Now that so many Jews have finally arrived from Russia, decades after Ben Gurion's remarks," said Peres, "shouldn't we figure out how best to welcome them as Jews?"

In Peres's presence, my colleague, Rabbi Mauricio Balter, offered the blessing that one recites when seeing a major leader.  The sentiments of the blessing have certainly taken root in lifelong visionary leader, President Shimon Peres.

ברוך אתה ה’ אלהינו מלך העולם אשר נתן מכבודו לבשר ודם

Praised are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has given Divine glory to flesh and blood.

Confronting Our Inner Korach - Reflections on the Celebrate Israel Parade

The rabbi of a synagogue comes down with the flu.  He calls the president and says he can’t attend that night’s board meeting.

The next morning, the president calls the rabbi.  He tells him the meeting went well.  And in fact, the board wishes him r’fuah shleima, a complete recovery.

That’s so nice, says the rabbi.

Yes it is, says the president.  And by the way, the vote was 20 to 18. 

Now in my head, right now, I hear my college professor who taught us Aristophanes’ comedy, the Frogs, saying to me, “Kiddo – don’t try to explain a joke.  Either it flies or it fails, but don’t try to explain it!”

Well, professor, I’m going to just take a minute to talk about the joke for the sake of a higher purpose.

First, a board of 38 is too large so of course you’ll have problems. Second, I wonder if Episcopalians tell such a joke about their ministers or Muslims about their imams.  Is there something especially Jewish about the joke or is it applicable to any religious institution?

In a Jewish context, it somehow captures the sweet, yet sometimes idiosyncratic relationship between rabbis and congregations, though each rabbi likes to think that his or her numbers are more favorable than those in the joke.

It also takes as a given that there are always detractors, people who have issues with whomever or whatever is in place. 

And, one wonders, might such people be able to separate the ideological from the personal?  Leading to a prayer not unlike the prayer for the czar in Fiddler on the Roof, “May God give the rabbi a full recovery far away from here.”

This week, we read about the rebellion of a classic detractor named Korach, a Levite who gathered a bunch of people with him and challenged Moses and Aaron’s authority with a statement and a question.

Sometimes the Danger is Real: Crossing a Threshold in Hungary

Every year, Jews the world over read about the 10 scouts who entered the land and brought back sample of its fruits, along with a negative report.  They said that while the land is flowing with milk and honey, it is nevertheless impenetrable.  ארץ אוכלת יושביה  A land that consumes its inhabitants.

And I suspect that most people speaking about this reading will say something negative about the scouts who gave the negative report.  They lacked faith.  They lacked hope.

I’m pretty sure that most of the times that I’ve spoken about this story, that’s what I’ve done.  I’ve been sharply critical of the 10 scouts who bring back fruit from the land but say “let’s steer clear of the place” and I’ve spoken about the positive virtues of hope and faith.

But this time, I want to say that sometimes the people who say “there’s serious danger and let’s not downplay it or overstate our ability to overcome it” - sometimes those people have a point.  

The Washington Post recently wrote an article about the Hungarian government under Prime Minister Victor Orban, a right-wing nationalist.  The article criticized constitutional changes that Orban’s government has made which include restrictions on free speech and funding only those religions that collaborate with the state for the public interest.

A colleague forwarded me a video about disturbing trends in Hungary that contained a clip of a leader of a far-right party advocating, as part of a discussion about Israel, that Jews in Hungary be registered as such on a special list.  

A Jewish professor who was interviewed, an 80 year old woman whose father was killed in Auschwitz and who lives in Budapest, said she was deeply disturbed by the fact that a party leader would say such a thing in parliament. To his friends at a social gathering is one thing.  But to advocate in parliament for the forced registration of Jews?  That, as she put it, crossed a threshold. 

And once you cross such a threshold, she observed, a dangerous momentum comes into play.

Persistence and Respect: Learning From the Mess

We know that we can tend to romanticize the past.

When I was the rabbi in a previous congregation, a woman in my office would frequently tell me that her parents, in their eighties, had a tumultuous relationship with pretty frequent loud disagreements.

When her father passed away, her mother, shortly after the funeral, she said to her daughter, “you know, dad and I occasionally had our differences.”

Her daughter didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  She said, “mom, just a few months ago you and dad were arguing so strongly I had to literally pull you apart!”

Mind you, the mother may have had fonder feelings for her husband than she let on all along.  And perhaps his passing softened her feelings and her tone. 

But we know that we claim and reclaim the past in all kinds of ways.

On Shavuot Night, this upcoming Tuesday, we’re going to be looking at the questions “why we disagree” and “what we might do about it.”

In addition to studying traditional texts, we will hear a talk by Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU.

He has extensively studied the origins of morality.  What makes people hold the beliefs that they do about politics and social issues.

Why do some favor gun control and marriage equality while others are firmly opposed?

Why do some believe in extensive government-supported safety nets and others do not?

In a video that I sent to the congregation, Professor Haidt bemoans the extraordinary rift between left and right today and the inability to collaborate. 

He points out that there was a time of greater bipartisan collaboration, following World War II, when Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, compromised on legislation in order to make progress.

I understand that, but I would say that overall, in the history of our country, there was fierce partisan fighting and little compromise.  And we can learn from those times as well.

Having It All

A close college friend asked if I wanted to join him for the annual Columbia Barnard Hillel dinner, so I said sure.  As he had driven down from Boston for it, I figured I could take the train into New York City. 

So we met, mingled and had the reality check of recognizing that even though being among college students made us feel like college students, the students are the ages of our children.  And they weren’t looking at us like peers, they were looking at us as, well, potential funders for the programs they want to continue to enjoy.

But this will not be a discussion about the egos of middle-aged men, which are, frankly, predictable and not so interesting.

It will be a discussion about the challenge to “have it all” that these college students pose.

The students, whom we spoke with individually and who addressed the entire dinner crowd, want to have it all. 

They want to be fulfilled as individuals.  They want to find fulfillment in the Jewish community.  They want to make a difference with humanity at large.  And they want to help prevent the world from depleting its resources before they might bring their own children onto the global stage. 

It’s easy to dismiss this as naïve idealism, but we shouldn’t.  And it isn’t narcissism either, because the aspirations of these young people pulsate with a desire to give, not just to receive.  

What should we do about that?

Love, Not Conquest: A Lesson for All Religions from the Boston Bombings

As Dzhokhar Tsarnaev recovers in a Boston Hospital, he has confessed to the planting of the bombs that killed 3 and injured hundreds during the recent Boston marathon.   The suffering of those injured is extraordinary and ongoing.  The pain of the families whose loved ones were killed is unimaginable.  We also now know that the brothers were planning a trip to New York City, to detonate bombs in Time Square.

More and more is being revealed about the way Dzhokhar’s older brother, Tamerlan, was introduced, starting in 2008, to a form of radical, anti-American Islam back in the family’s native Chechniya and recent investigations suggest that there may have been local influences as well.

Muslim leaders in various Boston mosques were asked whether they would hold a funeral for Tamerlan.  An imam from the Islamic Institute of Boston said, “I would not be willing to do a funeral for him. This is a person who deliberately killed people. There is no room for him as a Muslim.” (Huffington Post, picked up by US News, April 24, 2013) 

Often in the Jewish community, we see a reaction of great embarrassment when people suspected and convicted of crimes are discovered to be Jewish.  There was widespread disgust when Bernie Madoff was convicted of Ponzi scheme fraud and when Baruch Goldstein was found to have shot 29 worshippers at a Mosque in Hebron. 

The Boston bombing is tragic and devastating.  While life in Boston will go on, the attacks have irrevocably altered the lives of the families of the victims and the dynamics of the community as a whole. 

I’m heartened that Muslim leaders are expressing disgust at the crimes to which Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is confessing.  Ideally this should spark continued cheshbon hanefesh, soul-searching, on the part of the Muslim community.

We should not generalize about the Muslim community any more than we would want people to generalize about the Jewish community based on the actions of Bernie Madoff, Baruch Goldstein and others.

But I do expect my Muslim colleagues to say something like, “This behavior does not represent us.  It does not represent our view of Islam!” I hope that institutions such as the Islamic Center in Boston will make explicit that terrorism has no place in Islam. 

Because the stakes are really high.  Future human lives are at stake.  To the extent that the appropriation of Islam to justify brutal terror goes unchecked, we will see more and more victims killed and struggling to piece their bodies and their lives back together.

I believe the future of religion is at stake, as well, and this has profound implications for the future of human life.

Will the 21^st century see, once and for all, the demise of religion as a force for good in the world?  Will the religion of conquest emerge victorious?

I think about that, and we should all think about that.  Will today’s bar mitzvah, and his sisters and his friends, think that religion is basically about defeating the enemy in God’s name – I conquer and kill in the name of my God – because those who are practicing religion in this way are so loud and so relentless?  

Our task is no less than to demonstrate, within these walls and beyond, that religion can be a force for good.  That it can cultivate a sense of wonder, a sense of humility, and a sense of responsibility. 

That religion should ultimately be about love and not conquest.

Empathy Holds Us Together: a Message for Yom Hashoah and All Year Long

On March 21 of this year, Rabbi Herschel Schacter died at the age of 96.  Rabbi Schacter had a long career as a pulpit rabbi in the Moshulu Jewish Center in the Bronx.

But he is even more widely known as the first Jewish chaplain to enter Buchenwald following its liberation by General Patton in April, 1945. 

When he entered, he asked if there were any Jews still alive and was taken to a barracks of Jewish inmates, lying on planks.  They looked down at Rabbi Schacter, in military uniform, and they were frightened. 

He said, Shalom Aleichem, yidden.  Ihr sint frei.  Greetings, Jews.  You are free!

And slowly, slowly, people began to absorb the significance of what had happened.  And some started to join Rabbi Schacter, going from one barracks to the other, telling one another that they were now free.

Weeks later, it was Pesach Sheni, the second Pesach, the day set aside in ancient times for those who were unable to celebrate Pesach during its ordinary time.

According to an account by a prisoner of the camp, Shiku Smilovic, Rabbi Schacter brought matzah and distributed it to everyone.  He started to deliver a sermon to all of the recently liberated prisoners.  At one point, the rabbi said, “We know what you have gone through” and a former prisoner started to scream.

Opening Doors: A Special Passover Appeal to the Younger Generation

 

In keeping with the speech that President Obama delivered recently in Jerusalem, addressed to the younger generation of Israelis, I want to speak in particular to the younger generation here.  If you are young enough that your whole life unfolded since the advent of the Internet, please listen carefully.  (And everyone else can listen, too.)

I want to emphasize the importance of opening doors.  Toward the end of the Seder, following the meal, we pour a cup for Elijah and we open the door to our homes.

We connect the two customs today; however, they emerged at different times, for different reasons.

The pouring of a cup for Elijah is an early modern custom – as Elijah is associated with redemption, the “fifth cup,” connected with redemption, became known as the Cup of Elijah.

How about the custom of opening the door?  That custom precedes the Cup of Elijah by several centuries.

Rabbi David Silber offers that it may have been a way to emphasize the imperative to invite all who are hungry to eat; it may also have been a way to invite everyone to praise God during Hallel.

Opening a door requires risk.  At the very least, you throw off the carefully controlled temperature inside. 

And who knows who may come in if you open the door and how it might change the dynamics within?

But since we’ve been opening doors for at least 10 centuries, maybe there’s something to it.  Something to the balance between risk and hope that opening a door represents.

So if you’re young enough that you don’t think that “retweet” is someone saying the word “retreat” with a speech impediment, I’m about to ask you to consider opening some doors.

Ancient Priests, New Pope: Where Judaism Coincides and Differs

Mr. Goldberg was bragging to his boss one day, "You know, I know everyone there is to know. Just name someone, anyone, and I know him."

Tired of his boasting, his boss called his bluff, "OK, Goldberg, how about Tom Cruise?"

"Sure, yes, Tom and I are old friends, and I can prove it."

So Goldberg and his boss fly out to Hollywood and knock on Tom Cruise's door and sure enough, Tom Cruise, shouts, "Goldberg! Great to see you! You and your friend come right in and join me for lunch!"

Although impressed, Goldberg's boss is still skeptical. After they leave Cruise's house, he tells Goldberg that he thinks Goldberg's knowing Cruise was just lucky.

"No, no, just name anyone else," Goldberg says. "President Obama," his boss quickly retorts. "Yes," Goldberg says, "I know him, let's fly out to Washington."

And off they go. At the White House, Obama spots Goldberg on the tour and motions him and his boss over, saying, "Goldberg, what a surprise, I was just
on my way to a meeting, but you and your friend comeon in. Let's have a cup of coffee first, and catch up.”

Well, the boss is very shaken by now, but still not totally convinced. After they leave the White House grounds, he expresses his doubts to Goldberg, who again implores him to name anyone else.

"The Pope," his boss replies. "Sure!" says Goldberg. "I've known the Pope a long time."  

So off they fly to Rome. Goldberg and his boss are assembled with the masses in Vatican Square when Goldberg says, "This will never work... I can't catch the Pope's eye among all these people. Tell you what, I know all the guards so let me just go upstairs and I'll come out on the balcony with the Pope."

Passion is Not a Dirty Word

A few years ago, Bill and Jerry Ungar, longstanding leaders of our congregation, were honored in the city and I was asked to introduce them, which I was happy to do.  Jerry passed away a few years ago and Bill, who wrote two books about his survival of the Shoah and his experience in America, recently celebrated his 100^th birthday. 

I was so honored to be able to introduce them that I got very excited when I was speaking.  

I finished my intro and walked off the stage when I heard a voice saying, “You spoke with great passion!” 

It was an unmistakable voice and it took me a moment to process.  I looked and saw Dr. Ruth Westheimer, looking up at me.

I thanked her quickly, walked back to my table, and immediately texted my wife, Deanna:  “Just received an unexpected compliment from an expert.  Details to follow.” 

With subjects like Bill and Jerry Unger, it’s easy to get passionate, so easy that you overcome whatever natural reticence you might have.

I believe that in general, we are hesitant to show people that we’re really “into” something.  For children and teens, even for adults, there is a certain pressure not to go “over the top” in all kinds of situations, not to appear “too excited” about things, to more or less keep things cool.

This morning, with reference to leaders past, and bar mitzvah boys and girls present and a few others, as well, I want to make the case that we need to try to overcome our inclination to keep things cool.

Passion is not a dirty word.  We need more of it, not less.