Judaism Should Challenge Us

Jon Stewart did a great routine two years ago, comparing Passover to Easter.  Stewart himself is Jewish.  He went over to his special “camera 3” where he "addresses" the Jews in the audience. He said, "mishpocha, we’re losing the contest with Easter."  He held up a basket and said, "Check this out.  Chocolate bunnies, eggs filled with chocolate."

And then he held up the seder plate and said, “but we have matzah, bitter herbs and eggs filled with – EGG.”

It’s a funny routine, worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet. 

In the aftermath of Passover, it’s hard to deny that sometimes Judaism is challenging.  It’s challenging to prepare a house for Passover.  Parts of the Seder are difficult to understand. 

To be sure, there have always been attempts to make it more user-friendly.  Selling the chametz, for example, allows us to avoid serious waste and financial loss.  (Though the legal fiction, whereby all of the chametz in your house belongs to a non-Jew for the duration of Passover, has sparked its own share of jokes.  One Jew sees another smoking on Shabbat, which is against the rules.  He says, “My friend, what are you doing?  You’re not supposed to smoke on Shabbat.”  And the friend says, “It’s OK.  I sold my lungs to a gentile.” )

Notwithstanding efforts to make Passover more manageable, it’s still a challenge.

If anything, we’ve seen increased effort over the years to make Judaism more user-friendly and to the extent that we are engaging more people in the experience of our tradition, that’s a good thing. 

But I want to urge us, this morning, to consider various ways in which Judaism challenges us and why that’s a good thing.

The Torah gives us multiple rules that encourage us to relate to one another with a certain amount of dignity.

One has to do with how we treat older people.  מפני שיבה תקום והדרת פני זקן Mipnei seyva takum v’hadarta pnei zakan.  You shall rise before the aged and show deference to the old.

Why the explicit appeal?

Because, whether we want to admit it or not, it doesn’t always come naturally to show deference to older people.  If it did, we wouldn’t need to be told. 

One of my teachers at the Hartman program recently told our class, in the context of a discussion about aging, that her mother, in her 80’s, makes a point when she goes to the market to say boker tov, good morning, to the salespeople.  If she says boker tov to them, then they say boker tov to her.  Otherwise, she said, as an older person, she often feels ignored.

So the Torah challenges us.  Now, what we’ve all come to realize, throughout our lives, is that when we show deference to people, when we give them a greeting and spend some time, we often find that we wish we had done it sooner because we then have the pleasure of someone’s presence and company that we didn’t have before.

And truly, I believe that most of us have found, throughout our lives, that in general, the more a person has lived, the more he or she has to offer.

So the Torah’s challenge, which serves as a corrective to our natural inclination, has the potential to bring benefit to both parties.

Second area.  I mentioned, on the last day of Passover, that Jews historically have taken measures to ensure the likelihood that certain events will be remembered.  Remembering is important for Jews. 

In the Biblical context we’re asked to remember slavery in Egypt, to remember that Amalek attacked us, to remember Shabbat each week.

As I discussed on Passover, we take measures to remember things even while they are happening.  The Israelites were not just told to prepare to leave Egypt; they were told what to say to their children about the experience when, one day, their children would ask.

In our own day, we work hard to ensure that the events of the Shoah are not forgotten.  For that reason, we give the survivors in our community the opportunity to share their experiences on Yom Hashoah. 

Learning about difficult matters such as the Shoah is not easy, not for children and not for adults.  As we know, it is often very difficult for survivors to speak of their experiences.  Thane Rosenbaum, the son of survivors, wrote a book of short stories called Elijah Visible in which explored, among other themes, the difficulty that survivors have often had sharing their experiences with their children.

But the painfulness of speaking about the Shoah, the challenge of keeping it alive in our memory, should not discourage us.

There are many positive outcomes to remembering.  First, there is inherent merit in maintaining awareness of any aspect of our communal experience.   Second, remembering the past impacts how we face the present.

When, for example, the children in our seventh grade class learn about the Shoah, they are asked to think about it in the context of current danger that intolerance poses and the need to speak out against it.

So, while it’s challenging to learn about troubling events, taking up the challenge brings numerous benefits.

I don’t believe that religion is meant to be easy or, for that matter, completely natural.  That’s certainly true of Judaism.

When we say, “It’s hard to be a Jew,” I don’t think we’re just saying, “oy.  Va va lah.  Look at the things that happen to us because we’re Jewish.”

I think we can also understand it to mean that Judaism challenges us because of a fundamental belief that, left to our own devices, we wouldn’t always do what’s proper or healthy or necessary.

So we’re given a little push.  To show deference even when we don’t feel like it.  To remember even when we’d rather not.

When we are told, קדושים תהיו Kedoshim tihyu, ּBe holy – because that’s what God is – I believe that we’re being told that we need to stretch ourselves, to accept the challenges that ultimately deepen and elevate life for everyone – rich and poor, old and young, child of Israel and stranger in our midst. 

We wouldn’t have much respect for a physical trainer who said, “Have a seat, watch TV, enjoy some Haagen-Dazs and I guarantee you a strong, slim physique in no time.”

So why should we expect less from a religion tradition that aims to bring blessing, through us, to כלמשפחות האדמה kol mishp’chot ha’adama?  All the families of the earth?

Let’s accept the challenges.  The rewards will be that much greater if we do.

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on April 26, 2014