Years ago I had an interesting conversation with a colleague of mine in West Hempstead. He said that usually he encourages people in his community to take gradual steps when it comes to making changes in their lives. Not to do anything all at once.
But there’s one time a year that he encourages people to leap forward. Not to take small, cautious steps but to leap.
And that time of year is Passover. There’s actually a basis for this - I’m not making it up! On Passover we read Song of Songs - a series of love poems - and - as my colleague pointed out - Song of Songs speaks of a lover leaping over the mountains - מדלג על ההרים m’daleg al he’harim.
This is the time for us to learn how to leap.
First of all, we need to learn to take a leap of imagination.
Imagination is at the core of the Passover story, at the core of the quest for freedom.
We are slaves for generations and God challenges us to imagine what it would be like to be free.
Our present reality is dire and God challenges us to imagine a better future.
A group of Israeli musicians called Koolulam determined that they would create singing events to bring together people of different backgrounds in order to learn songs and perform them together. The video that we sent the congregation before the holiday was produced by this group. Thousands of people came together in Haifa to sing the song “One Day” by Matisyahu, a song which imagines a world without violence and war. The version that they sang includes the original English, along with Hebrew and Arabic verses.
They created another video at a Jerusalem children's hospital, with hundreds of staff, parents and children/patients singing “Or Gadol” - a song about light and hope.
These efforts took a leap of imagination. What might it look like, the organizers imagined, to bring people together of different backgrounds - men, women, old, young, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, sick and well - to sing songs of peace and hope?
A few weeks before Purim, Rabbi Polakoff of Great Neck Synagogue invited me and the associate rabbi of Temple Beth El to put together a video based on the recent Super Bowl ad featuring a rabbi, a priest, an imam and a Buddhist monk. The theme of the Super Bowl ad, you may recall, was “we are one team” and that was the theme of our ad. It was fun to produce and people seemed to enjoy watching it.
The video got lots of comments and I was quite moved by the comments from people who live in Israel. "Why can’t we do this in Israel?" someone wondered. "Why can’t we bring together rabbis from the different movements who respect each other enough to be able to joke around?"
A leap of imagination helps us to bring people together in interesting ways, to find solutions to challenges that aren’t immediately obvious.
I want to ask you, on the holiday that we imagine lovers leaping over the mountains, what challenge in your life might benefit from an imaginative solution? A very different way of looking at things?
Related to this, we need to learn how to take a leap of courage.
A few weeks ago I went to Washington DC with AJWS, American Jewish World Service, to lobby for human rights the world over.
The rabbis who went to DC come from all over the US and I was honored to be lobbying with the New York delegation. Like the rabbis in the GN video, by the way, we were male and female, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform.
I’ll tell you about our meeting with Senator Kirsten Gillebrand. Each of us brought up a different issue. I raised the genocide taking place in Myanmar and asked her if she would co-sponsor a bill to impose targeted sanctions. There are pressures not to co-sponsor and I expected her to say she’d think about it. She said, affirmatively, “I AM going to co-sponsor that bill." I was about to give her more reasons to co-sponsor when I heard my mother’s voice saying to me, “She said yes. Stop talking.” At a certain point in the conversation, one of my colleagues asked the Senator, “What do you need from us?” She said, I need you to reclaim scripture. We asked her to clarify what she meant. She said, I need you, loudly and boldly, to teach scripture as a source of tolerance and justice, rather than judgment and punishment.
We were gathering at the end for a photo and I said, Who knows, maybe you were chosen at this time so that you could exhibit this kind of courageous moral leadership?
And she said, without missing a beat, ״Like Esther.״
Esther, who took a significant leap of courage to speak out in front of the most powerful person in the land.
If we don’t take leaps of courage, nothing that needs to change will change.
Lastly, we need to learn how to take a leap of love. A leap to begin loving relationships, for sure, and another leap to commit once we have found a satisfying relationship.
I’m about to do the heavy lifting right now so that parents and grandparents don’t have to keep asking and asking at the Seder and throughout Passover. Here goes:
If you are dating someone you love, if you are wondering whether or not to commit - know this: There is NEVER 100% certainty. There is always risk involved when human beings are involved.
At a certain point, if you are in a relationship - if there is mutual respect and understanding - you need to decide that you are going to take a leap of love.
I’ve told this story before but I’ll tell it again on the chance that it might have an impact on someone sitting here this morning.
When Deanna and I had been dating for a few years, my father said to me, so nu? What’s going on? What are you thinking?
And I started to say, I love her. But how do you know when you’re ready? How can you be sure? And I kept talking a bit more - I don’t remember exactly what I said.
My father interrupted me and said, “Listen to me. Don’t be foolish (That’s not quite what he said - I cleaned it up). You won’t do better. You’ll do worse.”
Passover encourages us to leap over the mountains, to take risks when we are unsure of outcomes. To imagine what the world could look like. To have the courage to advocate for such a world. To commit to loving, and creating, a relationship and a home with another human being in order to help bring about such a world in microcosm.
Leaps of imagination, courage and love. All interrelated, all outgrowths of this holiday, all necessary if we are going to move forward, to make important changes, to leave the constraints of Egypt once and for all.
I hope that within each of us, and between us, and in collaboration with one another, this holiday will inspire many leaps and many bounds. Hag Sameah!
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on Passover 5778, March 31, 2018
With Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
But there’s one time a year that he encourages people to leap forward. Not to take small, cautious steps but to leap.
And that time of year is Passover. There’s actually a basis for this - I’m not making it up! On Passover we read Song of Songs - a series of love poems - and - as my colleague pointed out - Song of Songs speaks of a lover leaping over the mountains - מדלג על ההרים m’daleg al he’harim.
This is the time for us to learn how to leap.
First of all, we need to learn to take a leap of imagination.
Imagination is at the core of the Passover story, at the core of the quest for freedom.
We are slaves for generations and God challenges us to imagine what it would be like to be free.
Our present reality is dire and God challenges us to imagine a better future.
A group of Israeli musicians called Koolulam determined that they would create singing events to bring together people of different backgrounds in order to learn songs and perform them together. The video that we sent the congregation before the holiday was produced by this group. Thousands of people came together in Haifa to sing the song “One Day” by Matisyahu, a song which imagines a world without violence and war. The version that they sang includes the original English, along with Hebrew and Arabic verses.
They created another video at a Jerusalem children's hospital, with hundreds of staff, parents and children/patients singing “Or Gadol” - a song about light and hope.
These efforts took a leap of imagination. What might it look like, the organizers imagined, to bring people together of different backgrounds - men, women, old, young, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, sick and well - to sing songs of peace and hope?
A few weeks before Purim, Rabbi Polakoff of Great Neck Synagogue invited me and the associate rabbi of Temple Beth El to put together a video based on the recent Super Bowl ad featuring a rabbi, a priest, an imam and a Buddhist monk. The theme of the Super Bowl ad, you may recall, was “we are one team” and that was the theme of our ad. It was fun to produce and people seemed to enjoy watching it.
The video got lots of comments and I was quite moved by the comments from people who live in Israel. "Why can’t we do this in Israel?" someone wondered. "Why can’t we bring together rabbis from the different movements who respect each other enough to be able to joke around?"
A leap of imagination helps us to bring people together in interesting ways, to find solutions to challenges that aren’t immediately obvious.
I want to ask you, on the holiday that we imagine lovers leaping over the mountains, what challenge in your life might benefit from an imaginative solution? A very different way of looking at things?
Related to this, we need to learn how to take a leap of courage.
A few weeks ago I went to Washington DC with AJWS, American Jewish World Service, to lobby for human rights the world over.
The rabbis who went to DC come from all over the US and I was honored to be lobbying with the New York delegation. Like the rabbis in the GN video, by the way, we were male and female, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform.
I’ll tell you about our meeting with Senator Kirsten Gillebrand. Each of us brought up a different issue. I raised the genocide taking place in Myanmar and asked her if she would co-sponsor a bill to impose targeted sanctions. There are pressures not to co-sponsor and I expected her to say she’d think about it. She said, affirmatively, “I AM going to co-sponsor that bill." I was about to give her more reasons to co-sponsor when I heard my mother’s voice saying to me, “She said yes. Stop talking.” At a certain point in the conversation, one of my colleagues asked the Senator, “What do you need from us?” She said, I need you to reclaim scripture. We asked her to clarify what she meant. She said, I need you, loudly and boldly, to teach scripture as a source of tolerance and justice, rather than judgment and punishment.
We were gathering at the end for a photo and I said, Who knows, maybe you were chosen at this time so that you could exhibit this kind of courageous moral leadership?
And she said, without missing a beat, ״Like Esther.״
Esther, who took a significant leap of courage to speak out in front of the most powerful person in the land.
If we don’t take leaps of courage, nothing that needs to change will change.
Lastly, we need to learn how to take a leap of love. A leap to begin loving relationships, for sure, and another leap to commit once we have found a satisfying relationship.
I’m about to do the heavy lifting right now so that parents and grandparents don’t have to keep asking and asking at the Seder and throughout Passover. Here goes:
If you are dating someone you love, if you are wondering whether or not to commit - know this: There is NEVER 100% certainty. There is always risk involved when human beings are involved.
At a certain point, if you are in a relationship - if there is mutual respect and understanding - you need to decide that you are going to take a leap of love.
I’ve told this story before but I’ll tell it again on the chance that it might have an impact on someone sitting here this morning.
When Deanna and I had been dating for a few years, my father said to me, so nu? What’s going on? What are you thinking?
And I started to say, I love her. But how do you know when you’re ready? How can you be sure? And I kept talking a bit more - I don’t remember exactly what I said.
My father interrupted me and said, “Listen to me. Don’t be foolish (That’s not quite what he said - I cleaned it up). You won’t do better. You’ll do worse.”
Passover encourages us to leap over the mountains, to take risks when we are unsure of outcomes. To imagine what the world could look like. To have the courage to advocate for such a world. To commit to loving, and creating, a relationship and a home with another human being in order to help bring about such a world in microcosm.
Leaps of imagination, courage and love. All interrelated, all outgrowths of this holiday, all necessary if we are going to move forward, to make important changes, to leave the constraints of Egypt once and for all.
I hope that within each of us, and between us, and in collaboration with one another, this holiday will inspire many leaps and many bounds. Hag Sameah!
Originally shared with the Temple Israel of Great Neck community on Passover 5778, March 31, 2018
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