Great Neck Shabbat Project 5775: October 23-25, 2014

On October 23-25, the entire Great Neck Jewish Community will join together to celebrate Shabbat as part of the world-wide Shabbat Project.  Highlights will include a communal Challah baking, Friday night services and dinners for all ages, and an exciting community-wide Havdalah and concert.  The above video was produced by the fun-loving folk at Temple Israel of Great Neck. Any resemblance to something you've seen before is purely coincidental...

We Still Need to Hope

Some summers are entirely pleasant affairs, filled with long strolls and ample time for reading and contemplation.  This was not that kind of summer.  The conflict between Israel and Gaza was intense and bloody and the after-effects remain.  The threat of ISIL seems to grow larger with each passing day.  The unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, was unsettling on many levels. 

Living in Jerusalem for a month this summer, I experienced and observed certain aspects of the Israel-Gaza conflict.  Mind you, it was quite tame in Jerusalem compared to southern Israel and Gaza itself.  But I did get a feel for the mood of many Israelis, including residents of the south, reservists in the army and parents of soldiers, as well as a few Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem.

The mood overall was characterized by anguish and frustration.  As I wrote from Jerusalem several weeks ago, the word I heard repeatedly with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “intractable.”  Both an Israeli reservist and scholar and a Palestinian urban planner, speaking to my rabbinic cohort at the Hartman Institute in separate contexts, bemoaned the complicated dynamics that, to their thinking, make a full resolution of the conflict extremely unlikely in the near future.

And yet, even during the depth of the violence, I saw seeds of hope.  Muslims and Jews gathered together to break the Fast of Ramadan and the Fast of Tammuz.  The uncle of one of the slain Israeli teens received condolences from Muslim co-workers.  A group of Jews, including rabbis, offered condolences to the family of a slain Muslim boy. 

We Hold the Highlighter

Thirty years ago, I was sitting in an English literature class and I raised my hand at one point, as other people were doing, to offer an idea about a poem that the professor was discussing.  And he said to me, “just like a broken clock.”  And I said, “sorry?”  And he said, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  If you keep on offering that idea, eventually it will apply.”

I didn’t say very much else in that class.  But I continued to listen.  He was a good professor, if slightly acerbic.  One day he gave us his "highlighter theory." There was one novel in particular that we were reading which he said could be subject to multiple interpretations.  He said, you can take a highlighter and highlight certain parts, and then the novel reads like a very optimistic embrace of life.  You can highlight other parts and it comes across very cynical.

So, with due deference to my professor, I want to say something similar about the Torah.

A lot depends on what you do with your highlighter. 

Highlight certain parts and you have a tradition about taking care of the vulnerable, about showing mercy and giving the benefit of the doubt.

Highlight other parts and the thrust is about war and violence, about clearing a path for your people even at the expense of others.

Passing the Torch of Peace, Unity and Brotherhood in Violent and Chaotic Times

De and I traveled a bit in Europe after we left Israel, specifically in Italy and Greece.  In Greece, one of the places we toured was Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympics.

The ancient Olympics occurred over a period of 400 years.  In modern times, the International Olympic Committee reinstated the Olympics in 1896.

We are familiar with the Olympics tradition of carrying the torch from Greece to wherever the current site of the Olympics is.

The Olympic flame beginning its journey toward London in 2012

The first time that was done was for the summer Olympics 1936.  The place: Berlin, Germany. 

Now the three cornerstones of the ancient Olympics were Peace, unity and brotherhood.

The tourguide showed us the place in Olympia, a kind of fire-pit, where the torch was lit before it was brought to Berlin.  And she said, "Imagine the torch representing brotherhood, peace and unity arriving at the stadium in Berlin as Adoph Hitler presided in the stands."